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Chapter One
Nate & Sam’s House in Marietta
Nate Bennet stared at the man on his porch and genuinely could not parse the words he’d just said.
Because that’s about how long she’s been dead.
Dead. Jules Hyatt. Who had been an obnoxious, frustrating, pain-in-his-ass client. He’d spent months dealing with her while he’d investigated her husband for cheating on her, but Jules had spent most of those months hitting on Nate and not taking no for an answer.
Now, she was dead.
And Detective Jake Hayes wanted to ask him questions about it.
Nate stood frozen in his own doorway as scenes of every interaction he’d had with the frustrating Mrs. Hyatt flashed through his mind. Particularly those last few weeks. She’d thought she was in danger, and he’d brushed her off because she kept resisting going to the police. Because she’d been such a pain.
And now she was dead, and if a detective was here, it wasn’t exactly a natural causes or accident situation.
Unsteady, Nate shoved a hand through his hair and moved out of the doorway. “Come in,” he said to Hayes.
Sam gripped his arm, not moving out of the doorway so Jake could enter. “Nate, you don’t have to do this tonight,” she said earnestly.
He looked down at her. He felt dazed. Like he wasn’t quite here. Like she wasn’t.
She’d said yes to his marriage proposal, and now Jake was here with questions about a dead woman Nate hadn’t helped.
“We just got back from Cal’s party,” Sam told Hayes with condemnation in her tone, referring to Nate’s brother’s celebration for passing the Montana bar. “And…” She looked down at her hand.
Nate’s eyes followed hers. To where the engagement ring he had literally just put on her finger not five minutes ago winked in the light.
It seemed completely incongruous to this moment. Because Nate was much better versed in death than he was in life. Jules Hyatt being dead honestly felt a lot more sensible than happy, celebratory parties followed by Sam agreeing to marry him.
When he managed to look away from her hand, the ring, he met Jake’s hard gaze.
Yeah, the detective no doubt didn’t care for that development.
But this wasn’t about Sam or even Jake. It wasn’t about engagements or old jealousies. A woman Nate had failed to help was dead. He needed to do everything he could to help get answers.
Nate gently pulled Sam out of the way so Hayes could step inside. “Come in. I’ll answer whatever questions you’ve got.”
But Sam was having none of it. “You don’t speak to cops without a lawyer. Lesson number one. Especially cops who hate your guts.” She glared at Jake.
Jake didn’t so much as look at her. “You were at Cal’s party. Can I assume you’ve been drinking?” he asked, his tone devoid of any kind of censure.
Normally, it would have still rubbed Nate the wrong way—most things Jake did accomplished that—but Jules was dead. Dead.
“I had a whiskey and a glass of champagne over the course of a few hours.” Nate shoved his fingers through his hair again. The party felt like a lifetime ago already. “I’m fine enough to answer questions. I’m fine. I want to help however I can. We don’t need lawyers. We need answers. If you want to ask me questions, you have … suspicions about the nature of how she died.”
Jake’s response was a noncommittal kind of sound.
“You’ve talked to her husband, right?” Nate said.
He’d never witnessed even a hint of violence from the guy, but a soon-to-be-ex-husband had to be the primary suspect.
“I’ve got his information if you need it.” He looked around the living room like he would find it there, when it would be at the office or in his laptop or…
“That won’t be necessary.”
Right. Hayes probably had everything he needed. For as much as he irritated the hell out of Nate, he was a good detective. Nate blew out a breath. He needed to get his head on straight. Focus.
“What can I do? I’m not sure my records would help any, but you can have whatever you—”
“Bennet,” Hayes said, effectively cutting off his ramble. “What would you say the nature of your relationship with Jules Hyatt was?”
Sam made a pained kind of noise, but Nate was so rattled he didn’t even really notice it. He was too busy answering.
“She was a client. I investigated her husband’s affair.” Hadn’t Hayes already known that?
“And how long did this investigation run?”
“I’d have to go through my records for exact dates, but it was about a month. Maybe a little more. I can get exact dates.” He started to pull his phone out of his back pocket, but Hayes was pushing on.
“And in the course of that month, did you ever have an altercation with Mrs. Hyatt?”
“Altercation? No, of course…” But then it all came back in a kind of strange, screaming color.
When she’d ambushed him at the hotel, after he’d expressly told her to leave him be to take pictures of her husband and his young side piece. He’d taken the pictures, Mrs. Hyatt had jumped out of the shadows, and he’d very forcibly told her to leave him the fuck alone. In front of quite a few people. Nate wouldn’t have called it an altercation since he hadn’t laid a hand on her, but…
It was starting to dawn on him then. Behind a step, because he cared. Behind a step, because he hadn’t done any damn thing wrong. But this was no fact-finding mission on Hayes’s part.
Nate looked at him now, saw something like triumph in the man’s eyes. A distinct go in for the kill expression Nate recognized from his days in the military.
“I’d call it a disagreement,” Nate said blandly, still very stupidly wanting to help somehow, even knowing what Hayes was trying to get at. “But yeah, we had one of those.”
“And where did that take place?”
“In the lobby of the Geneva Hotel in Bozeman. She crossed a line. I told her to stop, and then I left. That was the extent of it.”
“And when was this?”
Nate didn’t look away from Jake or that smug glint in his eye. He didn’t pay attention to Sam telling him to stop. He told the truth because the truth was he hadn’t done a damn thing wrong, and Hayes was just being a dick.
So Nate would be the bigger man. “The night you pulled me over, Detective.”
Hayes nodded. Nate noted he wasn’t taking notes. Wasn’t recording anything. Just how on the books was this questioning?
“That just leaves one more. For tonight. Where were you on the night of April twentieth?” Hayes let that sit a beat before adding, “From the hours of eight p.m. to five a.m.?”
Sam felt her whole world bottom out. For a moment, there was just a throbbing kind of silence. She was quite certain neither she nor Nate breathed.
Jake looked calm enough. Calm and sure and…
“Get the fuck out.” She hadn’t meant to say it, but she didn’t take it back or reverse course.
No, she doubled down and pointed at the door.
Jake’s sigh was long-suffering. He did not move to get out. “Sam, I’m doing my job.”
“No, you aren’t. We all know that. Get out of our house.” She stalked over to the door herself, wrenched it open.
She’d bodily remove him if she had to.
“Sam.” Nate sounded vaguely lost.
Like he didn’t understand what was going on, but Sam did.
Oh, boy, did she.
Jake gave Nate one last glance and then headed for the door. “You’ll have to answer the question eventually, Bennet.”
“Why should he when you’ve already decided where he was?” Sam demanded. She had to ride the tide of fury, or a million other feelings storming around inside of her were going to win out. “I thought better of you, Jake. I really did.”
He stopped there in the threshold of the house. Her house. With Nate. Who had just proposed to her and now this…
She shook her head as Jake gazed down at her.
“Same goes, Sam,” he said, like he was disappointed in her.
She’d show him some fucking disappointment.
“It’s due diligence,” Nate said gently.
He tried to put a hand on her shoulder, but Sam shrugged it off, gripped the door with her hand while Jake stepped out onto the porch.
“It’s bullshit.” She wanted to start throwing punches, but that would get her arrested, so she managed to stop herself. Barely. “Don’t ever come back here,” she told Jake. Vibrating with rage, because if she acknowledged anything else inside her right now, she might actually collapse. “Or anywhere near us.”
Jake looked at her with something like pity. It was a pity that was so familiar to her life, she nearly lunged at him, but Nate put his hand on her arm. Held on tight like he could read her mind.
“I have a job to do, Sam,” Jake said. So certain. So wrong.
“Fuck your job.” She slammed the door on him.
Then she stood there, breathing like she’d run a marathon. Her mind was racing and she couldn’t get a grip on anything.
Except this was all wrong. She looked down at the ring on her finger.
Or maybe you’re just cursed.
Nate gently turned her around so she had to face him, but she couldn’t look in his eyes right now. So she just stared straight ahead into his chest. Still wearing the dress shirt he’d worn to the party, though she’d unbuttoned the top few buttons herself what felt like a lifetime ago but couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes.
“Sam. Take a breath.” He sounded so calm.
He certainly wasn’t hyperventilating. Didn’t he understand?
“They have to check into everyone,” he continued. So certain and sure. “It’s policy. It’s normal. You know that. I don’t even think Hayes is trying to be insulting, and that’s coming from me, Sam. I hate that guy. Either way, it doesn’t matter. We both know I didn’t do anything. Not directly.”
She couldn’t even deal with his self-blame at the moment. Not directly her ass. But that was a secondary point. The primary point was that she’d been here before.
Exactly here.
Terror was too real a thing when twining with adrenaline and a million other things.
“Yeah, we both know that.” She sounded as winded as she felt, no matter how she tried to breathe as he’d suggested.
She managed to look up at him now, though that made tears prick her eyes. But she wouldn’t let them fall. “We also both know, better than anyone, that it doesn’t matter what you really did if they decide you’re the suspect they want.”
Nate’s grip on her shoulders tightened. His gaze softened. Not pity, like so many other people had given her over the years. But understanding.
“This isn’t going to be like your father.” He said it like a vow.
But he was wrong, and she knew it, even if he didn’t.
End of Excerpt
