Was that on the up-and-up, or was it something more complicated?
No, he didn’t likeanyof this.
“Then I guess there’s only one thing to do,” Nate said, because at the end of the day, they were investigators.Damn good ones, in fact.
Sam sighed, glanced at him.“Catch a tail?”
He didn’t love the idea, but at least they were on the same page.“Better get dressed.And armed.”
Chapter Sixteen
Crawford County Jail
“Ben, I’m advisingyou against this.It’s a bad move.”
Benjamin Bennet stared at his lawyer.Ben was the kind of man who could afford a good lawyer—Landon couldn’t keep him from money that was rightfully his—and he liked to think he had gotten one of the best.The problem was, Zachary Wheeler might understand the law, a courtroom, weaseling his clients out of things on a technicality.He was, in fact, excellent at all those things or Ben wouldn’t have hired him.
But Wheeler didn’t understand Montana.He didn’t understand a jury of Ben’s peers.He didn’t understandenough.He had his head in books and rules and procedure.
Benjamin Bennet understood everything.He saw every angle.He was strong where everyone else was weak.
His sons most of all.They could turn on him, they could think they’d banded against him, but it wouldn’t hold.
Nothing held against the will of Benjamin Bennet.Maybe jail time had shaken his confidence a little, but only for a short while.He was going to get out of this.Because he was a man who didn’t makemistakes.He fixed them.
And he made everyone who’d pushed him into those mistakes pay.
Now that he’d pulled all the right strings, because he always did, he knew exactly how to twist this, fix this,winthis.
And everyone who’d been against him would suffer.Pay and suffer.He had plans.Because he had nothing buttimeto plan with.
Wheeler was pacing the small room they were meeting in after court had recessed.Ben was in handcuffs and shackles.He couldn’t let himself think too much about that, or who’d put him here, or his temper would start to take over.
Temper could be a good motivator, but it could ruin things.Like alcohol could.Both were weaknesses, and Ben dealt with his weaknesses.Better than anyone else.
“We have to see where the prosecution goes before we consider this as a possibility,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler was placating him.Ben knew it.Wheeler knew it.
Ben didn’t care for beingplacated.Not when he was the smartest man in the room.Smarter than any fuckinglawyer.If his disappointment of an eldest son could reject everything Ben had built for him to be a lawyer, any piece of shit could.
“It’ll work,” Ben replied, happy with how calm he sounded.“There’s no one to prove me wrong.”
Wheeler looked at him, and Ben saw too many things that poked at his temper.Arrogance, condescension.The lawyer was lookingdownat him.Rejecting his ideas just because he thought he was better because he wasn’t in chains.
“You said Glenda Harrington might know…”
“That bitch doesn’t talk, does she?”He would have killed her a long time ago if she did.
In fact, he should have killed so many more people.Anyone in his way.He should have given them what they all deserved.
He didn’t mind killing.He’d even kind of enjoyed it, but the… aftermath of killing was complicated.It weighed and required an agility he’d maybe had as a young man on an isolated ranch but would be more complicated these days.
It didn’t mean he wasn’t up to the challenge.He just needed the right plan.And to get the hell out of this damn jail.
Once he got out, he would get rid of anyone in his way.Cal—too much of his mother’s blood in there.Weak and useless and not intelligent enough to know when to lie down anddie.
Yeah, Cal would have to go.Glenda Harrington—maybe she was no threat, but she’d helped Marie and for that… she’d die.
