Chapter Ten
Nate & Sam’s House in Marietta
Sam had promised herself she was going to bed. If she waited up for Nate to text or get home, it looked desperate. And she wasn’t desperate.
But she was a little worried about him. Just because he hadn’t texted and he’d said he would. It wasn’t like him. Worry wasn’t desperate. It was love, she was pretty sure.
Who knew what he’d run into at the hotel. It wasn’t even ten. Maybe the adulterous lovebirds hadn’t shown up yet. She was being ridiculous.
She considered texting him to tell him to go ahead and get a room so he wasn’t driving slick roads late at night, then talked herself out of being a henpecking significant other.
Nate was a grown man who’d survived war. He knew how to take care of himself.
She could always track his location if she got too worried. Something he’d put in her phone, but she never used because it felt … weird.
Which she knew was all her issues, because she certainly didn’t care if he tracked her. It wasn’t like either of them was the type to keep tabs unless it was for a good reason and—
Sam stilled in the kitchen as she heard something from the entryway. She looked down at herself. She was in her pajamas—just thick socks and one of Nate’s old T-shirts that fit her like a dress. Her gun was in the safe in the bedroom.
She crept forward toward the noise. They hadn’t gotten an alarm system for the house like she had at Honor’s Edge. Maybe they should talk about getting one, because as she poked her head around the wall, she could definitely see the knob on the door move.
Then the door swung open, and Nate stepped in. Sam let out a slow breath of relief, tried to hide the fact her hand had gone up to her heart.
“You’re home.” She was proud when she managed not to sound strangled, even if it was an inane thing to say.
He glanced up at her, as if surprised to find her here when, you know, she lived here.
“Yeah, I…” He shook his head. “Sorry, I wrote out a text when I was leaving, but then I forgot to send it.” He dropped his keys, wallet, and a paper onto the table by the door. He shrugged out of his jacket and hung it up.
She couldn’t quite read his mood. Definitely on the grumpy side, but something else underneath. He sat with a thump on the little bench by the door and pulled off his boots, making sure to let them land on the rubber tray that kept snow from melting all over the entryway.
She moved toward him, not sure how to approach. Or if she should. But something was off, and she was a little too curious to figure out what. She was about to ask him if there’d been a problem with the Hyatts, but her gaze was caught by the piece of paper he’d set down with his wallet and keys.
The type of paper she recognized because she’d possibly gotten a few traffic tickets in her day. “Hey. What’s this?”
Nate glanced over at her with a confused frown that then smoothed out into that blank of his. “Oh. Got a ticket.” He got to his feet.
She shook her head. “You? Mr. Boy Scout driver got a—hey…” She recognized the signature on the ticket. “Jake gave you a ticket?”
“Yeah.”
He offered nothing else, but Sam knew that couldn’t possibly be it. Jake wasn’t a road cop. He was a detective. “And?”
“And what?”
“Why was Jake pulling you over giving you a ticket?”
“I guess that’s a question for him,” Nate replied brusquely. “I did ask. He chose not to answer.”
Sam made a face as she looked back down at the ticket. Going twelve over the speed limit. She nearly laughed. She did that all the time. But the fact it was Jake, and she hadn’t mentioned the potential connection to him in her research this afternoon, left Sam feeling a little … weird.
Of course, the subject of Jake Hayes was always a little weird between them. Which felt so high school to give it any credence, but at the same time, it felt weighty and important that Jake had gone out of the strict definition of his job to mess with Nate. She hated it.
She trailed after Nate to their bedroom, chewing over the fact that she needed to talk to Jake about his dad, probably, for the whole Glenda case, which meant she needed to tell Nate about that and…
Ugh.
“Kind of odd timing,” Sam forced herself to say. “I came across something in my research today that led me in the direction of Hayes.”
“Of course it fucking did,” Nate muttered, pushing into the bathroom.
She trailed after him. “What’s wrong? It’s more than just Jake and the ticket.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, which was a relief that he wouldn’t try to deny it. “Between the Hyatts and my brother, it’s a lot more than just that asshole giving me a ticket.”
He flipped on the shower to the hottest setting, which was when she realized his leg must be bothering him.
He didn’t like to admit that it still hurt him after all this time.
Sam didn’t know if that was some weird macho bullshit or like a PTSD thing, so she didn’t poke at it.
She just left the bathroom, retraced her steps to the kitchen, and got him some painkillers and a glass of water.
When she got back to the bathroom, he was in the shower, steam billowing into the small room.
“Start with your brother,” she told him.
She set the glass and the two ibuprofen on the bathroom counter for when he got out. She half expected getting the information out of him to be a lot more difficult than the demand, but Nate spoke.
“Cal got a threat. This weird envelope with his name on it stuck into the back door of Honor’s Edge. A vague kind of threat—this weird drawing—but it’s clearly a threat. I’ve got a picture on my phone.”
He’d put that on the bathroom counter, too, so she picked it up and typed in his code. His background picture was a selfie of the two of them that she’d taken when he’d closed on the house. Every time she saw it, it still gave her heart a little flutter.
But she ignored that and pulled up his pictures. The first being the drawing. Clearly of Cal if the little briefcase in the figure’s hands and the exaggerated widow’s peak were anything to go by. The numbers with the Xs.
“What’s with the numbers?” she muttered. “Why isn’t eight exed out like the others?”
“I think it’s like … a riddle. Meaning his days are numbered.”
“Oh. Wow, that’s clever.”
“Great. We’ve got a clever threat.” He stepped out of the shower and took the towel she handed him, doing a piss poor job of toweling himself off, per the norm. Still not a bad view, but the threat against Cal … well, that was concerning.
“I guess we’ve got another case to look into.”
Nate sighed heavily, water dripping from his hair and the beard that was starting to accumulate because he hadn’t shaved in a while.
He downed the pills and the water. “Yippee.”
*
He took the pills, trying to work through all the different emotions assaulting him about that.
That she saw through him and understood he was in pain.
That she wasn’t put off by the fact he was kind of being an asshole. Or at least she was refusing to be put off by it. Maybe out of spite.
He liked her spite.
He loved her. Mostly he saw that as a net positive in his life, but when he was feeling like a jackass, he wondered why she bothered putting up with him. Why he put her through what he did.
This was why. After he’d been medically discharged, he’d found himself a loner in a cabin in the wilderness of Tennessee and set about building a life where he had no interaction with people.
He might have let that spiral. Might have leaned into the dark, edgy need to hurt, to isolate.
But he knew she felt the same way. That she was too sharp and dogged and mean, and that he didn’t deserve that from her, even though she couldn’t always stop herself from dishing it out.
Maybe that was love. The ways you tried to be better for each other and worried it wasn’t quite good enough.
She handed him some pajamas, so he pulled on the boxers and pulled the T-shirt over his head.
“You need some sleep,” she told him. “I’ll handle the ticket in the morning.”
She started to move out of the bathroom, but he took her arm and stopped her forward movement. “No. I’ll pay it. That was more the cherry on top of the shit sundae than the shit itself. It’s fine. I didn’t get arrested, did I?” He tried to smile at her, to make the joke land.
Her mouth curved slightly.
“I’m sorry,” he said, earnestly. “For being an ass.”
She studied him. “Sounds like you had a shit day and came by it honestly.”
She was trying to excuse it, but he didn’t want any excuses. “I don’t like taking my shit day out on anyone.”
“Yeah, not ideal, but it’s better than letting it sit.” She patted a hand against his heart.
He wondered if that was true. Wasn’t sure he’d ever know for sure. “Jules Hyatt showed up at the hotel after I expressly told her not to.”
“Ah,” Sam said, like that really explained his mood. “She sure gets under your skin.”
Nate moved with her into their bedroom. Because his leg did hurt and because he was tired, but he also had to find some way to explain to Sam why this Hyatt thing got under his skin.
He didn’t think it was what she thought.
He wasn’t sure she could understand, because even he struggled to fully understand.
But something about the weird kind of flashback when Mrs. Hyatt ambushed him gave him kind of a clue into pieces of it, anyway.
“She’s a victim. I believe that.” They both crawled into bed. “But she’s trying to … use me as some sort of weapon, and I really fucking resent it. I’m done being anyone’s weapon.” The military’s.
His father’s.
Sam curled up next to him, placed her hand over his heart. “No one can make you that again, Nate,” she told him softly.
He wished he believed it.