Chapter Twenty-Six
Kalispell, Montana
The drive had been long and boring. Every once in a while, Cal would manage to stumble Hayes into a decent enough conversation. They had similar taste in music, similar opinions on football and hockey—though Hayes was some kind of heathen who thought baseball boring.
When they ventured into law—something they both knew a lot about—things got tricky.
That was the problem with cops—they saw everything as black and white. No amount of dealing with grey ever changed their minds on that score.
It was also the problem with him, because he really liked to stir people up, and Hayes with his black and white view of criminal behavior would have made it so, so, so easy. Like taking candy from a baby.
But now wasn’t the time—something Cal had to keep reminding himself. Not if he was going to meet the stranger apparently leaving him threatening drawings.
Could it be that easy? Cal doubted it. He assumed this was just another step toward figuring out whatever the hell was going on. Swenson would have some connection to someone else who connected to someone else. Maybe in ten years they’d figure it all out.
If he didn’t wind up dead first.
He should probably be more concerned about that.
They reached Kalispell and agreed to stop at a fast-food place and get something to eat before they went into the wrestling school to try and track down Andrew Swenson. Again, they could have called. Again, it felt like forewarning would work against them.
So they sat in a grimy booth, eating pretty crappy burgers, in silence. Cal figured they were both lost in their own myriad thoughts … and was proven right when out of nowhere, Jake spoke. And not about Mr. Everly, or hunting accidents, or death.
“So tell me something, Bennet. You really believe this bullshit that your brother ran away for fifteen years, comes back and is nothing but a perfect war hero?”
Cal looked up from his wrapper, eyed Jake while he thought through how to respond. There were a lot of ways he could answer that would piss Jake off, a few that he could tell Nate about later that would piss Nate off.
But in the moment, weird as it might be, Cal found he only had the truth. “Yeah.”
Which was clearly not what Hayes wanted to hear. “I don’t remember him being some paragon of virtue before he left.”
“No, none of us were.” He could leave it at that. He could dive into the heart of whatever this was really about—Cal had a pretty good idea, but the idea Hayes could really think there was something fishy about Nate…
Maybe it was weird, probably some kind of twisted he should discuss with his therapist, but he tended to view Nate as the one who’d had it worst. Sure, Cal had witnessed the worst, but Dad had beaten Nate. Nate had run away, survived on the streets, become a soldier.
All alone.
Cal had been messed up, but he’d always had the ranch. And Landon, for as much as either of them let that be a thing, Aly, always. In all the trauma he’d survived, both he and Landon had always had people, even when the relationships weren’t good.
Nate had lost everyone.
Standing up for his baby brother wasn’t going to get him anywhere with Hayes, but maybe the detective would honor the truth enough for that to matter.
“I think I was so fucked up, Landon and Nate stepped into the role of protectors … in very different ways, without fully realizing it.” Something Cal wasn’t sure he’d realized until this moment. He was the oldest. He should have been the one protecting, but…
He’d run away.
He didn’t know how to grapple with that—certainly not in this dingy fast-food restaurant with Jake Hayes of all damn people.
“I’m not saying Nate doesn’t have faults, but he doesn’t have secrets. There’s some core of do-gooder in there. He’d tell you he joined the military to get out of being an abused, runaway teenager.” Cal let it sit a beat.
The truth of it. The victimhood of it. So maybe Hayes could get it through his head that Nate hadn’t just swanned out of town and then back in.
Not like Cal had.
“But it wasn’t his only option, no matter what he thinks.
It was the only option that felt like help to him.
And he needs to help. Whether that came from watching the way our family was, from not being able to help Mom, being helpless himself, I don’t know.
But it isn’t just something he does for fun or for some kind of accolades.
It’s a driving need. For all his faults, he’s the best of us. That’s for damn sure.”
Hayes said nothing to that. Didn’t look moved at all.
So Cal went in for the kill, because he was who he was. “If you’re thinking he’s got some deep, dark secret you’ll expose that’s going to mean you can swoop in and steal Sam away, I’d have to bet against you.”
Hayes got up, trash crumpled in his hand. “That’s not what I’m thinking.” Then he stalked over to the trashcan.
“They’ve got that same thing Landon and Aly have,” Cal continued, because he was fascinated by the reaction. By this whole thing.
“Oh, yeah. What’s that?” Jake grumbled, striding outside.
“That linked thing. Where they’re like two different sides of a whole that lock in together.
That understand each other.” Like destiny or fate, which Cal didn’t believe in and certainly wasn’t going to verbalize.
“Sam really that special?” he asked conversationally, following Hayes out to his truck.
“My questions weren’t about Sam,” Hayes replied cooly, unlocking his truck and climbing into the driver’s side.
Cal climbed into the passenger. But he didn’t let it go. “Then what were they about?”
Hayes turned to him, fixed him with a very hard cop glare. “How I’m supposed to believe the three of you came from one rotten-ass apple and rolled far, far from the tree.”
Cal held the accusatory glare for another beat of silence. When he spoke, he made sure his voice was very soft. A page he’d taken out of his therapist’s handbook. Soft could crumble foundations with more stealth and force than sharp.
He thought of how Jake had once described his father.
“You don’t strike me as a careless man, Detective.
” Hayes didn’t say anything, but Cal pressed.
“So I’m wondering why you’d think your dad had less of an effect on you than ours had on us.
Sometimes, when the apple knows the tree sucks, it rolls as far as it fucking can.
” He wanted to believe that. Needed to, these days.
Jake started the truck. “Maybe we should stick to Swenson.”
Cal smiled. Sharp and antagonistic. “Happy to.”
*
Jake didn’t have the faintest idea how he’d wound up playing buddy-buddy investigators with Cal fucking Bennet. Or why he’d thought it’d be a remotely good idea to ask Cal about Nate fucking Bennet.
Jake didn’t know what the hell was going on with him, but he figured the blame lay somewhere on his dead father’s shoulders.
So he focused on that. How Everly had led them here, to whoever was threatening Cal. How that all connected to the Harringtons and his dad’s hunting accident made absolutely no sense, but he couldn’t deny there seemed to be some connection.
Maybe it’d be nothing, but Jake wasn’t washing his hands of this until he was sure.
So he drove to the wrestling school in a nondescript, warehouse-looking building on the outside of town. Inside was fairly nice, though. A big reception area with a store of wrestling supplies. From deeper inside you could hear the thuds and grunts of actual wrestling going on.
A young girl stood behind the front desk looking at them skeptically. But she flashed a polite customer service smile when they approached. “Welcome to Swenson Athletics. May I help you?”
“We’re needing to talk to Mr. Andrew Swenson,” Jake said. To save time, he pulled out his detective’s badge and showed it to the girl. “Is he here?”
She blinked at the badge, then at him, then nodded wordlessly. “Um, yeah. I’ll just … get him.”
She scooted from behind the counter, gave him and Cal one over-the-shoulder glance, then disappeared into a hallway. When she reappeared a few minutes later, she gestured them forward. “Mr. Swenson is in the last room in the hall. He said to come on back.”
Cal took the lead, which might have irritated Jake if he knew what he was after coming here. But he figured the guy being threatened could lead.
For now.
They walked down a short hallway adorned with giant pictures of wrestlers wearing medals or holding awards. The door to the last room was open, and a man sat behind a desk.
He eyed them as they entered. He didn’t look the same as he had in high school, but Jake figured he didn’t either. Still, under the right circumstances, he might have been able to place him without knowing who he was.
Cal stepped forward first, reaching across the desk. “Cal Bennet.” He held out his hand for a shake, and when the man didn’t take it, just shrugged easy as you please. Cal pointed at Jake then. “This is Detective Jake Hayes.”
Andrew eyed Jake. “I know you.”
Jake nodded. “Yeah, we went to high school together.”
Andrew nodded slowly, as if he was putting that memory together. But Cal had used the word detective very purposefully, and Jake knew when someone was at ease with a cop in their space.
So he didn’t offer anything else like he normally would. An introduction into why they were here and what they wanted to ask him.
No, he let the silence stretch out, watching Andrew for some kind of reaction.
But nothing changed from wary distrust. “So, what is this about?” he finally asked. Not jumpy at all, just kind of pissed. “Something in Marietta? Because I’ve got to tell you, I haven’t been back in over a decade.”
“We had some questions about your … art,” Jake offered, keeping it purposefully vague.
“My art?” The guy looked at both of them like they were crazy. He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms behind his head. “I think you’ve got the wrong Andrew Swenson.”
Cal frowned at him. “Your uncle is Daryl Everly.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So, he said it was your art that was hanging in his living room.”
Andrew laughed then shook his head—both actions coated in bitterness. “I don’t know why that asshole told you that. I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. I’m a wrestler.” He gestured around him like those two things were obviously mutually exclusive.
He had a bit of a point, because there was no art in this office. It was all bland colors and wrestling paraphernalia and clutter.
And he’d called his uncle—who had talked in such glowing terms about him—an asshole.
Obviously, if he’d been the one to send Cal threats, it made sense he’d lie, but the man seemed so genuinely baffled.
And was calling Daryl Everly an asshole.
If Jake thought long and hard, he thought he remembered having some issues with Mr. Everly back in high school, but in that typical teenage boy way, chafing against authority.
The man they’d talked to in his house had been …
kind, cheerful, and definitely not an asshole.
Even when the topic had been uncomfortable.
“You have a falling out with your uncle?” Jake asked, trying for casual.
Something he usually didn’t have any issue with at work, but something about Bennet being here and well, dear old Dad’s memory, had him feeling itchier and less in control of himself than he’d like.
“You could say.”
“What would you say?”
“I’d say, why are you here?” He wasn’t being belligerent exactly.
Not even cagey. Just … frustrated. If he was the one who’d threatened Cal…
Yeah, it didn’t track. Jake knew what guilty people of all stripes looked like—even the good actors had a tell.
This guy did not understand for the life of him why they were here and had next to no feelings on Cal at all.
“We had a conversation with Daryl Everly and noticed some drawings on his wall that matched some threatening drawings received. He claimed you were the artist, so we came down here to ask you about them.”
“Artist? Threats? He’s got some nerve. Daryl Everly is my mother’s brother.
He terrorized my grandparents, and they gave him all this leeway for his PTSD, but if you ask me?
He was just an asshole. He threatened my mom—his own sister—long before he went to Vietnam.
I don’t have anything to do with that guy anymore.
Once I was old enough to leave them behind, I did.
Mom eventually saw the light and followed me here.
Grandma’s in an assisted-living place in Bozeman.
Grandpa’s dead. As far as I know, no one in my immediate family still talks to Daryl.
Because he’s toxic, and he sure as hell doesn’t have anything of mine hanging on his walls. ”
Toxic.
Jake exchanged a look with Cal, who looked even more baffled than Jake felt.
“So, you don’t do any kind of drawings?”
“Hell no.”
Jake had no doubts the guy was telling the truth. All his doubts now centered on why Daryl Everly had claimed it was true.
“Thank you for your time,” Jake told him. “Sorry to trouble you, but this clarified some things. Thanks.”
Andrew looked from him to Cal, some of the anger dissipating.
“Yeah, sure. Listen, if he’s finally getting in some trouble, I’ll help in whatever way I can. Guy deserves anything coming to him if you ask me.”
Jake nodded. “Thanks for the offer.” He glanced at Cal, who just turned and left without another word.
Jake followed, down the hall then out of the building and into a rapidly falling evening.
None of it made sense. Not one lick of it.
“I keep thinking we must be talking about two different Daryl Everlys, but I don’t know how.” Cal looked back at the building again. “One of them has to be lying.”
“Yeah, and I think it’s the one who fed us a load of bullshit and sent us on a wild goose chase,” Jake said, squinting out at the setting sun. “Why? What’s the purpose of doing that?”
“I don’t know.” Cal looked like he wanted to punch something. Jake felt oddly calmer about the whole thing now. “But if he sent us here, on this wild goose chase, I don’t think we should spend the night here.”
Well, they could agree on something, it seemed. Because someone had drawn those pictures that looked like Cal’s threat, and if Everly had sent them to someone who definitely didn’t, he knew who did.
“No, let’s get back to Marietta. ASAP.”