She’d found his obituary, which had given her a few new details about the man, but not much.Nothing abouthowhe’d died—which was still a mystery to her.Glenda was his only wife.Shawn Harrington his only child.Jill and her brother his only grandchildren.There was no mention of parents or siblings.
But there’d been one little throwaway detail that Sam had thought was interesting.A few friends had been mentioned as part of some veteran hunting group.
It was beyond a long shot to start investigating those guys, but Sam was all out ofsure things.A long shot seemed her only option.Vietnam and hunting buddies it would have to be.
She’d moved from the microfilm room to the library computers, searching the two names given in digitized records.She’d head back to the microfilm room if she had to, but she just wanted some overallideasfirst.
She found one.
One of Gerald’s buddies had preceded him in death—by six months.And he had a familiar last name.
Hayes.
Sam didn’t know much about Detective Jake Hayes’s family.He was about ten years older than her, and she didn’t think he had any brothers or sisters in the area.She didn’t remember ever knowing his parents or any other Hayes in Marietta, but it wasn’t a totally uncommon name.
Maybe it was a coincidence.
Still, Sam was following any coincidences she could find.
She packed up her stuff, a million next steps going through her mind.She drove back to the office trying to decide if she should just go ask Jake if his dad was Charles Hayes or do some research first.
That whole silly conversation aboutjealousyfrom the other night replayed in her head.Okay, so deep down, she knew that Nate had been jealous of Jake.Jake had point-blank asked her out, more than once, before she and Nate had figured out what the hell was going on between them.
Sure, she’d said no, but she thought of the flirtatious Mrs.Hyatt and how little she liked Nate spendingalonetime with her, no matter how uninterested Nate might be in seeing what else was out there.
Yeah, probably in her best interest to do a little research and mention everything to Natebeforeshe had a meeting with Hayes.Aprofessionalmeeting.
She parked in the back of Honor’s Edge and headed inside.Nate was stepping into the back room from the front when she stepped in.
“Hey, you’re back.”He crossed to her, gave her a quick greeting kiss.“Any luck?”
“Luck is not in the job description,” Sam muttered.“Where are you off to?”
“Well, Ifinallyconvinced Mrs.Hyatt that she was going to have to let me do my jobaloneor there’d be no job to do.”
“Look at you, Mr.Hardass.”
He shook his head.“Yeah, something like that.Anyway, I’m heading out to Bozeman to try and catchMr.Hyattin a lie.I don’t suppose you’d want to come with?”
She considered it, but with this hunting group to research, she didn’t feel right about putting it aside.“Nah, I think I’ve got some Glenda threads to tug on.”
“Sounds promising.”
She huffed out a laugh.“Soundsgrasping at straws, but who knows.You think you’ll be overnight?”
“Hope not, but it’s hard to say.I’ll keep you updated.”He slid an arm around her waist, kissed her goodbye.His mouth pulled back, but he didn’t fully release her right away.“You know, we should take a day off sometime.Go to Bozeman or somewhere.Just for fun.Relax.”
She lifted an eyebrow.She honestly couldn’t picture what that would even look like.“You and me?Relax?”
He grinned at her.“Until you find yourself stumbling across another mystery to solve.Yeah, I bet we could fit in an hour of relaxation or two.”
She snorted out a laugh.An hour or two sounded about right.
Chapter Eight
Geneva Hotel in Bozeman, Montana
Nate didn’t particularlylike sitting in the hotel bar alone.There were a lot of parts of his job that were boring as hell—that involved waiting, waiting, and more waiting.As a former soldier, this wasn’t all that hard or out of the norm.
