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Chapter One
Honor’s Edge Investigations Office
Things were boring.
Samantha Price had been through enough excitement in her life to know that this was a good thing, for her mental well-being anyway. It wasn’t exactly good for business though.
Private investigating required a certain level of not-so-boring to be profitable. She had all of one case here at the end of a particularly hot summer that had meant a lot of wildfire threats around the pretty little town of Marietta, Montana.
But fall was sweeping in. Cooling things off. Maybe the heat, the threat of loss, had kept cheating husbands, embezzling employees, and bored teens bent on destruction home and otherwise occupied.
Besides, the two biggest criminals of the area were currently behind bars. Two murderers.
Her father.
And the man walking through the front door’s father.
It was what had brought Nate Bennet back to Marietta. Sam’s quest to clear her father’s name. And she might have—he hadn’t committed that first murder—Benjamin Bennet had. But something about the time in jail for a murder he didn’t commit had broken her father. He’d committed his own, and framed Benjamin for it this spring.
Sam wasn’t altogether sure if she’d dealt with it yet. But how did she deal with everything she’d believed and rested her reputation and hopes and dreams on being a lie? A tragic, pointless lie?
She shook her head and the past away with it. As much as she could. Nate barreling toward her helped.
“You sent me on a fake errand,” he accused, as she’d known he would.
When Mrs. Cather had been their one and only case, Sam had pretended to hand it over to Nate to give him his first solo case, now that he was licensed.
In reality, she’d been desperate to pass off Mrs. Cather on someone else.
“It’s not fake,” Sam replied with a bland smile. “Mrs. Cather loves hiring Honor’s Edge. She pays.”
“No one dug up her damn sunflowers except her own dog. Maybe herself. I’m not altogether sure which.” His scowl was fearsome, irritation roiling off him.
He made an impressive figure when angry. All windswept dark hair, no matter how little wind there was. He’d never gone back to the military short, but he didn’t let it grow too long either. He’d returned to Marietta more soldier than the lanky, abused boy he’d slunk out of it as, but he’d still been recovering from an injury these past few months.
The limp was mostly gone now, and he was packing on more muscle. The gaunt look in his face had softened into chiseled. She couldn’t deny that the changes made it harder to ignore the fact that he was … physically appealing.
She rolled her eyes at herself. Physically appealing. The guy was drop-dead gorgeous and she was hardly the only one in Marietta to notice. Ever since word had gotten out that he was working for Honor’s Edge, she’d noticed an uptick in the female population walk by, necks craned to peer in her windows.
She scowled at her own thoughts, her own reaction. Pushed it away. Ignored it, because if there was anything Sam Price could do, it was ignore that which she didn’t want to deal with. “She’s old. She’s alone. She’s bored. Did you hear the part where she pays?”
This did not appease him. She hadn’t really expected it to. “Then you take it,” he said. “You deal with her.”
“Nope. I’m the boss.” She kicked up her heels on her desk and shot him a grin. “Finally, some perks.”
His scowl lightened a bit, and she knew she’d amused him at least a little. “Should I ask the cops to arrest her dog then?” he grumbled.
“Present her with the facts. Act all apologetic like. She’ll eat it up, make you some cookies—very good cookies, I might add—and then she’ll leave you alone for a few weeks. Then next month she’ll have a new mystery for you to solve. Remember, Nate, you’re working partially on commission, and if she wants to pay you for a little attention, that’s part in parcel with what we do here.”
He sighed heavily. He didn’t need money quite the same way she did. He was getting some kind of army compensation. For Nate, this job was something to do. Something to give him purpose. And yeah, Mrs. Cather wasn’t much of a purpose, but Sam didn’t have anything else to give him at the moment.
She understood it might be more difficult for a former Army Ranger to make sense of small-town nonsense, but he had grown up here. Even if he’d spent fifteen years off in the world doing army things. He should know how things worked. How people worked.
“Those out-of-town cases sure dried up fast.” He stated this like it was just a casual observation and not a complaint.
Sam shrugged. It was true. After news that Honor’s Edge had been involved in finding the truth of two murder cases—one fifteen years old—business had really picked up. She’d been slammed, and desperately waiting for Nate to finish his licensure so she could send him off on his own on occasion.
But the rush had turned to a trickle, and now there was nothing coming out of the tap. Sam had to believe it was just a hot summer. Fall would pick up. Besides. “The trial and sentencing will rile it all back up again.”
“They said December for my dad’s trial.”
“Talking September for mine’s sentencing.” She smiled at him ruefully. “Aren’t we a pair?”
He made a kind of grunting noise she’d taken to counting as a laugh, even if it was a little on the bitter side. The way she saw it, they both had some things to be bitter about. But if they let that eat at them…
She couldn’t help but remember the way her father had tried to justify killing a woman in cold blood. Bitterness had done that to him. She wouldn’t let it happen to her.
“Listen—” She was about to do something dumb, like invite him to dinner or suggest they go hit the bar.
Stupid because they spent too much time together as it was, and maybe they considered each other friends, after a fashion, but they didn’t need to spend all their time together. That felt … risky. Especially when they were both feeling a little bored and antsy, because no cases and boredom might mean having to face their daddy issues.
We are a pair indeed.
Luckily Nate’s phone ringing cut her off. He pulled the cell out of his back pocket. His expression changed from annoyed to something far more guarded. “It’s Landon,” he muttered.
She watched for another second as he only looked at his phone, didn’t answer it. Maybe the brothers had made some inroads at repairing an incredibly broken relationship the past few months, but only some.
“Answer it, Nate,” she said, in that gentle way Nate brought out in her that she still hadn’t figured out what to do about yet.
Apparently hire him so you can be around him all the time.
“Hey,” Nate greeted, phone to his ear. He listened, grunted a few times, then said, “Yeah, sure. Right now’s good. Yeah, bye.” His frown was back but puzzled as he pushed END on his phone screen, but then just kept staring at it, like he wasn’t sure how it got in his hands. “He wants us to come up to the ranch.”
Sam glanced at the clock on the wall. “You go ahead. I’ll close up.”
“Us, Sam.” He looked up at her, worry and probably frustration over the worry in that dark gaze. “Not me. Honor’s Edge Investigations. Something is wrong.”
Sam sighed. This was all her fault.
She’d thought things were boring.
End of Excerpt
