Page 36 of Tracking Down the Lawman's Son

Nathan’s teeth came together. “Bree can be here,” he said.

Good. With that formality out of the way, Luca jumped right to the heart of the matter. “Tell me about your relationship with Brighton Cooper.”

Nathan seemed to do a mental double take. “Brighton?” He shook his head. “I was aware of who she was. She’d come into the hospital a couple of times, but there wasn’t a...” He stopped, studying Bree’s and Luca’s expressions.

The doctor had been about to lie. Luca was certain of it. But Nathan must have sensed this could be a trap.

“Has that bar owner and bartender said something about me?” Nathan asked.

“You mean Manny Vickery and Tara Adler?” Luca prompted when Nathan didn’t add anything.

Nathan nodded.

“How did you know we’d interviewed them?” Luca pressed.

Nathan’s jaw went tight again. “Word about that sort of thing gets around. Did they say something about me?” Luca didn’t respond. He just stared at Nathan until the doctor huffed. “Manny or Tara probably told you I occasionally went to the bar. You might even have proof of that if you looked over old credit card charges. Is that it? Is that why I’m here?”

Luca felt as if some of the wind had been taken out of his sails. He’d been hoping that Nathan would deny even being atthe Hush, Hush, but if word had indeed gotten around about Manny and Tara being questioned, then Nathan might have realized it’d be stupid for him to lie.

That didn’t mean the doctor was innocent though.

“And your relationship with Brighton?” Luca repeated.

Nathan huffed. “It was hardly a relationship. We didn’t exactly travel in the same social circles or anything.”

The man’s snobbery was coming through so Luca gave that a nudge. “What do you mean by that?”

Nathan huffed again and looked at Bree. “I swear, I didn’t have anything to do with Brighton when I was seeing you. I didn’t cheat on you.”

Bree shook her head. “We dated, and that wasn’t exclusive, so even if you were with Brighton or anyone else it wouldn’t have been cheating.”

Oh, Nathan didn’t like that, but instead of doling out a verbal blast to Bree, he turned his frosty gaze on Luca. “All of this feels like a witch hunt and a gross violation of my privacy.”

“Not a witch hunt,” Luca said. “But interviews can definitely take pokes at privacy. Especially if the interviewee has something to hide. Did you want to hide your relationship with Brighton?”

“It wasn’t a relationship,” Nathan practically yelled, but the outburst was short-lived, and he made a visible effort to rein in his temper. “Brighton and I hooked up a few times, that was all. She wasn’t my type, and she was six years younger than me.”

“Hooked up?” Luca questioned. “Does that mean sex or just hanging out at the bar together?”

If looks could have killed, Nathan would have finished Luca off then and there. “Both. Briefly,” he quickly tacked on to that. “I was only with her a couple of times and never when I was with Bree.”

That was probably meant to give Luca a dig, to be a reminder that Bree and this jerk had once dated, but Luca didn’t get the jolt of jealousy that Nathan was likely hoping for. Luca felt nothing but disgust over Nathan’s behavior once Bree had ended things with him.

“Did you hook up with Brighton or hang out with her at the bar at the same time she was seeing Manny?” Luca asked.

Nathan did a double take, part flinch, part raised eyebrow. “Maybe. I don’t know when she was involved with Manny. I’d stopped seeing her long before she died. Months,” he provided.

“Yet you were at the Hush, Hush at the same time the night she died,” Luca pointed out.

“That could be true, but if so, she wasn’t there with me,” Nathan insisted.

Maybe. But Luca wished he had security footage of Brighton leaving the bar that night so he could see if she’d left with either Nathan or Manny. The camera footage hadn’t been preserved since they hadn’t known for weeks that Brighton had even been to a bar in Austin. By then, the security system had recorded over the old footage.

“I didn’t have anything to do with Brighton’s death,” Nathan went on, talking to Bree now. “You know me. You know I’m not capable of violence.”

Bree stared at him. “I know you’re capable of stalking.”

Nathan cursed. “That wasn’t what was happening. I simply didn’t understand why you said you didn’t want to see me anymore. I thought maybe it was a misunderstanding and that if we just talked, you’d be able to see that I cared deeply for you. I still do,” he added. “And that’s why I’m so worried about you now.”

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