Page 2 of Dead Man's Alibi

“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 distinctgo in for the killexpression Nate recognized from his days in the military.

“I’d call it adisagreement,” 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 thetruthwas 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 herwhole 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.

Likehedidn’t understand what was going on, but Sam did.

Oh, boy, did she.