Page 43 of Dead Man's Alibi

She didn’t so much as crack a smile.“Can’t hunt me down if I’m long gone.”

He had to admit, she sounded a little bit more like herself in this moment.Hard-edged.Strong.It was a relief.He certainly didn’t know what to do with ghost Sam, who appeared fragile.In all his years of knowing her, he had never once considered her that.

“It’s hard for me to imagine you being long gone while Nate’s in a cell.”

Sam inhaled, the sound melding with the faint rustle of the evening breeze.He expected her to say something, maybe get offended.

She was quiet.She was shivering.

On a sigh, he stepped back inside, grabbed one of Aly’s coats off the rack and his own.Back on the porch, he draped Aly’s coat over her shoulders before he shrugged into his.

Sam didn’t move.Not to put her arms in the sleeves or anything else.She just stood there.He couldn’t make out her expression in the dark, even with the moonlight and starlight, but he couldfeelher tension.

It mirrored his own.

“Cal knows what he’s doing,” he said.Out loud and sure.For the both of them.

“Yes,” Sam agreed.“I keep telling myself that.He sure did a number with your father’s case.”

That hung between them, because it felt like an echo.That he’d once defended a man accused of murder.A man who’d lived in this house, run this ranch, and raised three men in such a way they hadn’t even recognized their own abuses until it was too late.Had terrorized his wife so much she’d hidden a fourth son—one who wanted nothing to do with the family.

Landon couldn’t even blame Bo for that.

Cal had been a big reason Benjamin Bennet had finally been taken down.But so had Sam.And Nate.And Glenda and Jill, and Aly.

Landon wasn’t sure he’d done much of anything except finally accept he’d been wrong.It didn’t feel like enough in this moment, or any moment, really.

So he tried to do something in this moment.Offer…something, even though he was pretty sure they shared all the same concerns and worries.

“There won’t be any evidence since he didn’t do it.Maybe they can fuck us all up for a while, but it ends when they finally accept they don’t have anything on him.”

“Does it?”Sam replied.

Her tone was almost mild enough to believe that was a casual response.

Almost.

“I told myself that once, Landon.I’ve got bad news for you if you believe it now.”

“It’s not the same.”He knew that was a knee-jerk response.

In a lot of ways, how was it anything but thesameas when her father had been arrested for his mother’s murder?But… but this was Nate.This was now.

She laughed.Bitterly.And he thought maybe she was crying too.Shit.He really should have stayed in his damn room.He wasn’t equipped to handle this.He was no friend, no confidant, no cheerleader.

He sure as hell didn’t know what to do with Sam’s tears.

She wiped them away, but they just kept coming.And so did her words, in a fresh torrent of pain.

“It’s exactly the same.Exactly.Someone I love is somehow wrapped up in a murder they have nothing to do with.Last time, I didn’t know how it could end.I didn’t know that I could fail day in and day out forfifteen years.Now I know.That I can work my ass off, follow every thread and every trail, and there is a distinct possibility it doesn’t fucking matter.He suffers, and Ifail.”

Landon didn’t have a response to that.What response was there?He’d lost his mother all those years ago.Sam’s dad was still alive, even if he was in prison.But Landon could acknowledge in this moment that she’d lost him all the same.And while, in the end, it had been of his own doing, for fifteen years, it hadn’t been.

“The thought of failinghimis unbearable, Landon,” she choked out.She looked right at him for the first time.The moonlight made the tears on her cheeks shiny.“So, you’re right, I guess.It’s not the same.”Her face crumpled.She covered it with her hands, and though her next words were muffled with sobs, he heard them all the same.“It’s worse.”

He wanted to swear and reverse time andnevercome out here, but he could hardly just let her stand therecrying.Sobbing, actually.Just wrecked.It twisted inside of him because he felt just as wrecked, but he was trying to keep a lid on it because…

Because that was how he always got through things.Push it down.Push it away.