Page 51 of Dead Man's Alibi

Cal and Jill shared a surprised, arrested look.

“What?”

Cal shook his head.“No, it’s… nothing.I’m just surprised to hear she went to the Marietta police.”

“I want to find out who.If Jules was happy after, she was either lying to her friend, or someone took her seriously.Someone might have clues they’re sitting on.”

Cal and Jill shared another look that confused Sam.

“What aren’t you telling me?”Sam demanded, bracing for more bad news.

“It’s nothing,” Jill said at the same time Cal said, “Just a theory.”

“Well, which one is it?”Aly demanded.

“Cal just had me run through it like I was plotting a book.Not because that’d be real answers, but just because it might give us a different angle to approach different suspects from.”

Sam looked at Cal dubiously.Sounded a bit like he was trying to get in Jill’s pants if anyone asked her, but he looked so serious.

Okay, so if she took this seriously… a fictional version of events.It irritated her because she couldn’t put Nate into fictional terms.But when Jill explained where she’d take the story, and tied it into what she’d found out from the Bozeman and Livingston police departments, Sam found herself getting a little caught up in it.Natewasinnocent, and they had nothing to go on.So why not entertain some fiction?

“Obviously, this is just supposition and… hell, fiction,” Jill finished, a little desperately.

“But you came up here to tell us,” Aly said.“So you think someone at the police department could be involved in, like,framingNate?On purpose?”

It sounded like everything Sam had hoped for when it came to her father’s case, but it hadn’t been true for him.It hadn’t been some purposeful campaign to frame her father.In a lot of ways, he’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Benjamin Bennet had used that, as he so often did, to manipulate everyone around him into seeing truth where there wasn’t any.

Farfetched as it seemed for Nate to be a direct target, it also seemed impossible there was anyrealevidence against him.So, if someone had produced something that allowed a judge to sign off on a warrant… well, an inside job made sense.And she did believe someone in the police department knewsomething.Olivia’s depiction of what Jules had done all but proved it.

Sam pondered what Jill had recounted.Put it together with the facts.“If Jules was directed to a detective, more than likely that would be…” Sam’s brows drew together.“Surely if Jake took Jules’s report and took it seriously, he would have…” But Sam trailed off.

Red hazed her vision, fury and violence taking up residence in her chest.“I’ll kill the fucking bastard myself.”

*

“Looks like you’vegot company, boss.”One of the ranch hands approached Landon, where he was preparing his horse to head out to do a round of checks on the calving.

“Your brother and Jill,” Skinny explained.He gestured to the horse.“I can take this over if you were wanting to head up to the house.”

Landon glanced at Skinny.He took a lot of the extra work when Landon was wrapped up in family stuff, and so he’d taken on alotover the past year.It weighed on Landon with a guilt he didn’t love, but he’d tried to repay Skinny with a raise and a promotion.

It just never felt like enough.But, yeah, CalandJill seemed like something he should probably head inside for.

“I’m sorry I keep getting pulled away.”

Skinny shrugged.“’S life.”

Landon thought that over as he strode from the stables to the house.Was it justlifeto constantly be surrounded by murder and threats and ghosts of a past that couldn’t quite unwrap its vines from the fabric of the Bennets?

Maybe.

Normally, he’d go in through the back, but the front was quicker, and hopefully this wouldn’t require sitting and staying awhile.He could just poke his head in, make sure everything was all right, then head back to work.

But even from the porch, Landon could hear yelling, and when he pushed into the house, he found his living room resembling something more like a war zone.

Cal and Sam were locked in some kind of physical altercation, while Aly and Jill flitted around them in a circle, shouting at them both to stop and calm down.

Landon tried to raise his own voice above the din, but no one was listening.So he did the only thing he could think to do.Put his fingers in his mouth and blew.