Frustrated, edgy, Nate moved to leave the diner and came face-to-face with a familiar face.
“Bennet,” Detective Jake Hayes greeted.
Nate resisted a sneer.It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t born of any professional gripe.Just a personal one that he didn’t have any right to hold.
“Detective,” he managed to say in the same monotone.
There was a weird kind of standoff—like neither was going to be the first to break eye contact or move.He could hear Sam’s voice disgustedly calling it astupid male pissing match.
Which made him feel ridiculous, so he stepped out of the detective’s way and headed for the door.Not without looking over his shoulder to watch the detective slide into the seat Nate had vacated.
Hayes had been part of the case.Of course he’d be on the stand too.Nothing to be concerned about, the lawyer meeting with one of the investigating officers.Par for the damn course.
He shoved out into the late morning.The bright sun and blue sky were akin to a lie.
God, it was cold.Like tiny daggers across any point of exposed skin.But it made him feel…real.Reminded him a heart beat in his chest, and when he sucked in icy air that felt like more daggers on the inside, he was pumping blood through a body.
This trial was the kind of dread he didn’t know how to deal with.It wasn’t like an army mission—those involved a lot of unknowns, a lot of things out of his control, but he had weapons and training to deal.
He had nothing forthis.
But it was ridiculous to be so out of sorts about it when the most likely outcome would be that his father would be convicted—thanks to him, thanks to Sam, thanks to his brothers.Dad would be sentenced to something—and maybe Nate could feel some trepidation of what that sentencing might be.Men never quite paid enough for the damage they did to the world.Didn’t he know that firsthand?The military was a study innot paying.Or paying way too much for someone else’s cost.
And maybe that was the real fear, underneath all these myriads of concerns.No matter what happened in that trial, the cost had already been paid by his mother.And nothing, not even justice, could make that right.
A fact of life.One he was struggling to find a way to step around.It seemed the irrefutable fact that kept him stuck in place.He could take little steps forward, inch closer and closer to feeling like he was building a life here in Marietta.
But he couldn’t step over that very big obstacle to find what was on the other side.
Frustrated with himself, he returned to the office.He looked around for his doppelganger, was relieved when it was just Sam at her desk, alone, tapping something into the computer.
“He gone?”
Sam nodded.“I had him fill out an application.We’ll do a background.See what we can find first, then we’ll go from there.I got some vague details, so I’ll see what I can verify before we dive into the deep end.”
Deep end.Yeah, it felt like a high dive all right.One he wanted to avoid.But that was an old knee-jerk reaction he was trying to find some way to crawl out of.If he let the bad fester, it would only rot.
“He looked like me,” Nate managed to say, watching Sam’s expression carefully.Because sometimes she felt like a guidepost when he did not know how to move forward.
Sam met his gaze.She kept her reaction to that statement guarded, hidden under a quiet, calm exterior.“Shorter.Skinnier.But yeah, he did.”
“What do you make of that?”He supposed he’d needed that morning in the diner to find some point of purchase so he could ask her that without feeling like crumbling.
And he’d consider later, or never, why he felt like he couldn’t crumble.
“A million things, Nate,” she said in that brook-no-argument tone.Because she wasn’t going to let him make this a disaster before they had all the facts.“And since there are literally a million explanations, we’re not jumping to worst-case scenario right off the bat.”
“We’re not?”
“We’re not.”
It eased something inside of him—even if he was already considering alotof worst-case scenarios.He could trust Sam to be the anchor in this.
He could trust Sam, period.
“The lawyer’s going up to the ranch this afternoon, wants me to come up.Guess I wasn’t the best witness this morning.I don’t have anything pressing on the Kilburn case.Still waiting to hear back on everything.”
“Take the afternoon then,” Sam said with a wave.“You want to meet here in the morning and head over to the courthouse together or are you staying at the ranch tonight?”
