Page 67 of Dead Man's Alibi

“It’s Sam.Just give me a second.”

*

Jill’s heart beaterratically as she stood all but pressed to the door behind her.She knew she was being… something.Something not smart.Maybe delusional.

Whatever that moment had been… well, it had to be one-sided.She’d imagined something he hadn’t intended.She was certain of it.

She wasalmostcertain of it.

Cal had bigger things to worry about than…

Well.

She could hear his side of the conversation with Sam, but she couldn’t make much sense of it.Except Cal waspissed.Even more pissed than he’d been about the missing report.

She blew out a careful breath, reminding herselfagainthat she’d been imagining things.Because this man had way too much on his plate to be thinking about kissing her.

He ended the phone call, but he didn’t immediately turn to look at her.He didn’t immediately say anything.He stood there, a tense, tight man clearly on the precipice of something he was fighting back.

He was always fighting something.Pretending he was at ease, or a mess, or whatever suited him when the truth of the matter was he… he was the captain of whatever strange ship they were all on together.The leader.And as part of that, he took too much responsibility on himself.Too much blame and stress.

She just wanted to take some of that weight off his shoulders.He was so sharp and interesting when he wasn’t weighed down.

Then he turned, faced her down with thatlawyerlook.All direct and certain and, yes, angry, but with a purpose behind it.

“When Jake told you he had physical evidence, did he make it sound like there was a lot of physical evidence?”

“I…” Jill tried to think back, tried to engage her brain enoughtothink back.“I guess I’m not sure.It wasn’t my interpretation that there was a lot.Just… enough.But I could be misremembering.”She stepped closer, narrowly resisting reaching out to touch him.To find some way to comfort him.“Cal, what is it?”

“Jake told Sam one of the main pieces of evidence against Nate was one of those Bennet pocketknives found at the scene.”

She let out a breath of surprise.“Nate’s?”

He shook his head.“No.Everyone in the family has theirs.Sam told Jake that, but he seemed unmoved.But Sam and Landon and Aly got together and remembered the knife Nate found in the creek last spring.Its owner was never identified, which means it’s likely still police property.”

Police property.Like someone reallywasframing Nate.Before she could think of anything to say, anything to do, Cal turned again, this time more violently.In a shocking move, he hurled his phone against the wall.

Jill flinched in surprise as the phone clattered against the hard surface, then to the ground.For a few silent, throbbing seconds, they both just stared at it.The screen had cracked.

“Fuck,” he muttered viciously.

“Cal…” She didn’t know what to say.He so clearly needed a breath, a moment, and instead, he kept getting bad news he didn’t know what to do with.

“Look, I’m sorry.You shouldn’t have to witness me come unglued.I—”

She crossed to him then.She didn’t feel like there was any choice.He desperately neededsomeoneto ease all these aches inside of him.So she wrapped her arms around him, tightened her grip as best she could.

For a moment, he was only stiff in her arms.She was about to release him, step back, apologize for crossing some boundary, but then he finally just relaxed on a long, slow exhale she felt in her hair.His arms came around her.

Jill felt like she’d done something.Given him something.She’d gotten to know him well enough over the past year or so that she knew no matter how much he’d worked to repair his relationship with his brothers, there were always things he didn’t know how to let his family see.

He couldn’t hide his trauma or how he viewed himself as some kind of… broken.He used that as a shield and weapon more than something he hid away.But there was an element of his own insecurities that he kept tightly hidden under all the bigger things.

And by letting her hug him, by relaxing into it and hugging her back, he was giving her some small piece of that part of himself that he hid from everyone.

She rubbed her hand up and down his back, her face tucked into the crook of his neck and shoulder.“You can’t handle everything,” she told him softly.“You’re only one person.That’s why we’re all working together.”

He inhaled through his nose, then out through his mouth, which fluttered through her hair.He didn’t tense at the words exactly, but he started to pull away.