Page 65 of Dead Man's Alibi

“No, I’m not flying off the handle.”She had her hands in fists, lifted a little like she was physically fighting the urge to do just that.“I’m going to call Cal.”She blew out a breath.“We’re going to work through this in the best way for Nate.So we’ll call Cal, and tell him, and go from there.”She blew out a slow breath, clearly still fighting the urge to fly off the handle.

Aly exchanged a glance with Landon, but Aly saw that same flicker of fury she’d noted there the other day.He did a better job of leashing it than Sam, but eventually…

All this leashed fury from everyone was going to fray.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The apartment above Honor’s Edge Investigations Office

Cal paced hisapartment with his cell phone cradled between his ear and his shoulder.Hehadbeen eating dinner.Now he was about ready to fly off the handle.

“You can’t push discovery back until next week.”

“I can.I did,” the prosecutor replied.“Have a problem with it?Take it up with Judge Smith.”

The line went dead.Cal narrowly resisted hurling the phone across the apartment.Instead, he clenched it hard in his hand and tried to breathe through his frustration.

Legalities were nearly always frustrating.Lawyers were assholes, and judges were worse most of the time.Any case was a slow and careful study in dealing with annoying people working at cross-purposes to each other.

But this took the cake.Discovery would allow him to know exactly what kind of evidence they thought they had against Nate.Which would allow him to poke holes in all of it.Pushing it back was tasking Nate with rotting in that cell for even longer.

He looked out the window, down at Main Street.Marietta, Montana.He’d grown up here, itched to get out, and now he couldn’t help but wonder why the hell he was back.This place was fucked.Particularly and maybe only if your last name was Bennet.

There was something in that, though, that felt like a challenge.You want to get rid of me?We’ll see.

His phone chimed, and he glanced down at the text.From Jill.

“Are you home?”

He stared at those three words for longer than he should.No doubt it was more stuff about the case, or maybe even her book.It wasn’t personal.It wasn’t unrelated to everything going on.

And he wanted it to be.

Which was real nice, considering his brother was sitting in ajail cell.

Disgusted with himself as much as everything else, he replied.“Be down in a minute.”

He didn’t bother with shoes.Just jogged down the stairs to the back door downstairs.He unlocked it and opened it for Jill.

It wasn’t full on dark yet, but back here the buildings and trees shaded the area from the setting sun, so she seemed only illuminated by the security light.Her dark hair shined under the weird yellow glow.Fresh-faced with apology in her eyes, she was the strangest breath of fresh air.

“Hi,” Jill offered.“I tried to call you, but it went to voicemail.And since I was, like, right here, I just thought… I’m probably overstepping, but this was too weird.”

Weird.Great.

“You’re not overstepping,” he said, moving out of the way so she could step into the back room of Honor’s Edge.

But she was already talking before he’d even gotten the sentence out.“I still haven’t gotten that report, even though I should have according to the lady I ordered it from.Every time I’ve called the police station, I get put on hold and basically given some weird runaround.”She stepped inside, the faint smell of something floral following her.“So, after I ran some errands this afternoon, I stopped into the station thinking maybe if I talked to an actual person, I’d get somewhere.”

He closed the door behind her, and she turned to face him in this dimly lit backroom.Her gaze was direct, worried.She wore jeans and another chunky sweater that seemed too heavy for the spring weather, but he’d noticed she seemed to run cold.

The things he’d filed away about her were getting to be a little bitconcerning.Because they were spending a lot more time together than usual, and he wasn’t getting his usualcompartmentalizetime.Especially with so much of his brain power going into Nate’s case.

“Cal, they said there was some kind of technical problem, and they no longer had access to the report.”

The words flat out didn’t make any sense.“A technical problem?”

“Yes.They’d had the report, had filed the order for it to be sent to me, but now it’smissingfrom their system.”She looked up at him earnestly.Worry in those dark brown eyes.