Page 27 of Dead Man's Alibi

“I don’t understand it,” she muttered.“He’s married.Heknows he’s married.Sheknows he’s married.And instead of just dealing with it, they have to sneak around?They have to make everything ten times more complicated?All because he can’t wait to take off his pants until he tells his wife he wants a divorce?Then, somehow, a woman ends up murdered, all because they couldn’t be adults?Andwe’recaught in the middle.Two people who had nothing to do withany of it.I just don’t understand.What makes so many people do so many terrible things?”And why do they all seem to revolve around me?

“Maybe it’s just human nature.”

“It’s notyourhuman nature.”She’d say it wasn’t hers either, but Jake Hayes was currently making her question that.Because given the chance to lock him in a basement or attic or something and leave him to die, she was quite certain she wouldn’t think twice.

“You’re putting me up on a pedestal, Sam,” Nate said gravely.“I have killed people.”

She sat up so she could look him in the eye.She might be a wreck, but she was done dealing with his martyrdom.He needed some of his old self-preservation instinct.

“You were a soldier, Nate.It’s not the same.Don’t pretend it’s the same just to… do whatever this is.Make yourself feel bad.”

“In the moment, I’m sure that’s how I justified it to myself too.In the after?I don’t know.”

“Well, I do.”

He sighed again, reaching out to cup her face, his thumb trailing back and forth over her cheek.“I appreciate how hard you’re working.How in my corner you are, all of you.But I can’t stand the thought of you losing sleep and not eating over this.I know this is like reliving your worst nightmare, and I’m sorry I somehow dragged you into that, but I need you to take care of yourself.”

“Why do you always do that?Blame yourself?It isn’t your fault she’s dead.You didn’t drag us intoanything.Jake Hayes did.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but she wouldn’t let him.“Itisn’tyour fault.I get that you feel some responsibility for Jules.Maybe I would in your shoes, but you couldn’t have known someone would do this.”

His hand fell into his lap.“Someone didthisto my mother too.We just dealt with a maniac who killed two menjust because.How could Inotknow?”

“Because we aren’t murderers, Nate.Because to go around thinking anyone could be is depressing as shit and just… too heavy and terrible to bear.”But him bringing up his mother… well, she’d been thinking of all the ways this was likeherchildhood.The person she loved implicated in a murder they couldn’t possibly have committed.

She hadn’t been thinking about the fact Nate had lost his mother to violence at the same age.Thathismemories might go back to that awful time of loss.Of shock.Of having his dad beat the hell out of him and running away afterjustlosing his mother.

Which made her feel guilty for being so self-absorbed, but worse… “You think you were to blame for your mother?”she asked him gently.

She thought they’d mined it all by now, but maybe there would always be pockets of trauma and surprise surrounding this strange, awful event that had tied them together at fifteen and brought them back to each other at thirty.

“No.”But he shifted uncomfortably, like he did when he was lying.“Not directly.Not… okay,no.I don’t actually think that, but hell, Sam, there’s a lot of regret there.All rehashed by all the regret I feel over Jules.I can’t blame not helping Jules on being a kid.”

“You told her to go to the police.You told her to get real help.You did what you could.”Was there a way to word it, to say it, that he might actually absorb and accept?

She saw the way he was working up a defense against that.How he could have gone with her.Could have followed through more thoroughly, but then his eyebrows drew together.Like they did when he was surprised by something.

“She said shewasgoing to go to the police,” he said carefully, as if mulling over each word.“That day she was in the office.The last time I saw her in person.She said she was going to the police, and then she called me and told me they wouldn’t do anything because there wasn’t any evidence.”

“Right.”

“So, there should be a police officer in Livingston or Bozeman who has some kind of record of meeting with her.Which probably doesn’t help us any, but…”

Sam’s heartbeat picked up like it did any time they got a good clue on a case.“But we don’t know until we know.”

Jake would have no doubt covered this angle, but since Sam wasconvincedhe wanted Nate to be the murderer out of spite or weirdly misplaced male ego, he might have missed something.Or ignored something.

They needed to talk to whatever cop she’d gone to.Find every last detail they could.“Did she tell you a name?A department?”

Nate shook his head.“No.She was vague, and I was distracted by everything going on with Glenda at the time.Livingston would be the most sensible option, since that’s where Michael lived, but since she was staying in Bozeman, that’s an option too.”He shook his head.“How do we go about figuring out who she went to though?”

She had a million ideas, but… “We should probably let Cal handle it.”He’d been right up at the Bennet Ranch.

Too much was at stake to make a mistake.

He frowned at her.“You don’t want to do that.”

“No, but cops stick together, so no one’s going to talk to us if we’re trying to go against Jake’s theories.And like Cal said, we have to be careful.Evidence matters and where it comes from matters.If we poke our nose in the wrong place, it might backfire on us.Wehaveto be careful.”