Page 8 of Montana Mystery

Another side effect of all the love that had been going around: everyone thought they were a matchmaker. I wasn’t going to say no to the potential of something. But neither was I going to be the asshole that pushed myself on someone. Especially in her current situation. The last thing I wanted was for anyone to feel like they owed me anything.

All I wanted was to help her.

Granted, I wasn’t sure what I was helping with yet. The information we had clearly wasn’t the whole story. She was right. The odds that this had been a random attack were slim. So if the kid was in trouble, maybe that trouble could help us root out the rumors in our backyard. And even if we found nothing, I would feel a lot better making sure he was all right.

“So, now that you know everything, we can go see her. And try not to overwhelm her? Obviously, this hasn’t been an easy day.”

No one joked about that. We all knew what these kinds of days were like too intimately to make light of them.

Kate was curled up in one of the armchairs by the fire when I stepped out of the security office. She didn’t see me immediately, and it was clear she’d been crying while we’d been discussing things. Her eyes were red and she was sniffling. I grabbed a box of tissues from the kitchen counter on my way over.

“Kate.”

She didn’t quite jump at the sound of my voice, but she’d obviously been in her own small world. “Sorry. Yes.”

She took in the group of us. Thankfully she didn’t seem afraid. But she did seem miserable. Sitting in the armchair across from her, I leaned forward on my knees. “Are you all right?”

“Not really. But then again, am I supposed to be?”

“No,” I said softly. “I suppose not.”

Daniel stepped forward and sat on the couch in the space nearest her chair. The twinge of jealousy I felt surprised me. I’d already told myself there was nothing more to this. Clearly, the subconscious part of my mind wasn’t on board with that yet.

“Kate, my name is Daniel Clark. I’m very sorry to hear about your brother. For the short time I knew him, he seemed like a nice young man.”

There was a brief flash of a smile. “He is. Most of the time.”

“I just wanted to reassure you. No one at Resting Warrior had anything to do with your brother’s condition. Nor would we ever condone something like that.”

“Yeah.” Her whisper was choked. “I think I knew it was a long shot even while I was driving up here. But I had to try, you know?”

“Of course.”

I cleared my throat. “We can’t promise anything, because we know so little, but we’re going to look into it and see what we find. If there’s anything we can tell you, we will. If there’s some kind of connection to us in what happened to him, we want to know about it.”

“Will you help find who did this to him?”

Daniel spoke before I could answer. That didn’t surprise me, because the words on the tip of my tongue were “of course.” But I couldn’t make that promise. None of us could. Because it wasn’t one we could keep, and we did our best not to break promises.

“Let’s see what we find first, and we’ll go from there, okay?”

Kate looked at Daniel for a long moment, and whatever she found there wasn’t the answer that she was looking for. Suddenly the bravery was gone from her face. Her shoulders drooped, and she looked... smaller.

I felt eyes on me. Liam was looking at me with barely concealed glee. I shot him a glare that told him the next time we were in the gym together, I was going to pound his ass into the floor.

Lovingly, of course.

“Thank you,” she finally said before looking at me. “I guess I should be getting back. Long drive.”

I stood. “I’ll walk you out.”

She grabbed her coat, and I pointed at Liam, making sure he was controlling himself before I followed her to the door.

“You’re going to be cold,” she said when I closed the doors behind us without my own coat.

“I’ll be all right.”

Her car was parked haphazardly in front of the lodge. It was almost strange not to see a truck sitting there. Most people up here preferred them for their utility. But this was a smaller car. “Will you be okay with the snow?”

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