Page 1

Her phone trilled in the dark.

Chloe Brink rolled over to find the other side of the bed empty, which was good. Best . Considering the screen on her phone read Do Not Answer .

In other words, it wasn’t work or something important. It was her brother calling her. At two in the morning.

She loved her baby brother and wished she could save him, but he was an addict. And until he accepted that, until he decided he wanted to change, her relationship with him had to be distant.

She was a sheriff’s deputy. She couldn’t rush in to save him from every problem. It would only get them both in trouble.

So she didn’t answer.

The first time.

After the ringing paused, only to immediately begin ringing again, she sighed and did the inevitable. Maybe one of these days all the steps she’d taken to try to insulate herself from this need to be his—or anyone’s—savior would actually work.

But not tonight.

She closed her eyes, let her head flop back onto the pillow and took a deep breath. “Ry, what is it?”

“I need your help.”

She counted to three, inhaled deeply. Let it out. He didn’t sound high, but that didn’t mean anything. “We’ve been over this.”

“Chloe, you don’t understand. This is serious. It wasn’t me. I don’t know what to do. There’s bones. It wasn’t me. It’s too old. Too deep. Chlo, I don’t know what to do .”

Panicked, clearly. But bones didn’t make sense. She pushed up into a sitting position on the bed, tried to clear her mind. “What do you mean, Ry? I don’t understand.”

“By the barn. I’ve been digging for that new addition, right?”

She didn’t say what she wanted to: At two in the morning? She let him blabber on only half making sense. At least it was just some jumbled talk about bones, not actual trouble with the law.

“You have to come. What am I supposed to do? I didn’t do this. This isn’t mine. It’s bones .”

Chloe went over everything her therapist had told her. It wasn’t her job to clean up Ry’s messes. He had to be responsible for his own choices.

But this wasn’t the exact same thing. He wasn’t in a fight with someone. He wasn’t asking her to get him out of a ticket or an arrest. He’d just stumbled upon some bones—animal, probably—and convinced himself, perhaps with the aid of an illegal substance, it was a bigger deal than it was.

If she went over there, told him everything was fine, he’d stop bothering her for a few days. “Fine. Listen. I’ll come over. But just to look at these bones, okay? But you have to stay put. And sober.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

“I mean it, Ry. Not even a sip of beer. If I can’t trust you to—”

“Okay. I promise. Nothing. Nothing else. If you just come over. Quick. I don’t know what to do.”

“Just don’t move, and don’t touch anything. Or take anything,” she muttered, before hitting End and tossing her phone onto the empty side of the bed.

This was what her therapist didn’t understand. Sometimes going over to help was the better course of action. She’d nip it in the bud and then be free of him for a few days. Best all around.

Best or easiest?

She groaned.

“Bad news?”

She didn’t jolt, didn’t open her eyes right away. She’d woken to an empty bed, so she figured he’d gone, because that was how this worked. Usually, that caused an ache around her heart, one she was determined to stop and never did—but tonight, him still being here was the last thing she wanted.

Just another one of her very own choices she had to face. She opened her eyes.

Jack Hudson stood, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe of her bedroom. He was dressed now, in the clothes they’d left work in: Khakis that weren’t so perfectly pressed like they had been all through his workday. A Sunrise Sheriff’s Department polo—untucked now.

But she knew what he looked like without all those clothes. Hot .

Maybe his hair was a little rumpled, but no one would think or even believe that it was sex -rumpled hair. Jack Hudson, the upstanding sheriff and uptight head of the Hudson clan, engaging in a clandestine affair with one of his deputies? Impossible .

She still hadn’t spoken, and now she watched as Tiger wound her way between Jack’s long legs like she always did. Because that animal was just as foolish and weak as she was when it came to Jack.

“Chloe,” he said in that half-empathetic, half-scolding tone.

He only ever used her first name here , what they were—and weren’t—perfectly compartmentalized. Her fault as much as his, she knew, though she wished she could blame him and his rigid personality. But she’d put up walls to save herself too.

Because she was self-aware enough to know he could emotionally crush her if she didn’t. She didn’t think he knew that, and that was all that mattered.

“Just my brother. Needs me to come check something out. Typical.” She slid out of bed, pulled on some sweats and put her smartwatch on her wrist. But Jack didn’t leave.

She shoved her phone in her pocket. Keys and shoes were out in her living room. So she moved for the door, but Jack still stood there. Blocking her exit.

“You should head home,” she told him. “A bit late for you.”

He didn’t say anything for a few moments as he studied her in nothing more than the glow of her smoke detector. They were shadows to each other, and yet it felt like—per usual—Jack Hudson could see everything .

“I’m coming with,” he finally said.

Not Would you like me to? Can I? Should I? Not for Jack Hudson. “Not necessary, Sheriff.” She threw that one at him when she wanted him to back off. Usually, it worked.

He didn’t budge.

“It’s two in the morning.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s your brother.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going with. We can either drive together or I can follow you, but I’m going.”

“And be seen together at this hour?”

He didn’t say anything. But he didn’t move. Because no, Jack Hudson didn’t relent. He was who he was.

Sometimes she thought she was as bad as her brother. Jack was her drug, and she couldn’t give him up. Because he wasn’t good for her—the secrecy; the way she couldn’t get past that impenetrable, taciturn wall. But the way he made her feel when he put his hands on her was worth it.

She sighed, and she didn’t relent, but Jack seemed to read the surrender in that sigh.

“I’ll drive,” he said, turning toward her front door.

“Of course you will,” she muttered, and didn’t bother to argue. She just made sure Tiger didn’t bolt out the door with them in a shameless effort to follow Jack.

Chloe might be a mess, but she knew better than to throw herself against a brick wall that wasn’t budging.

J ACK H UDSON WAS well aware of his reputation. He knew what just about everyone thought of him. It varied a bit. To some people—particularly the law-abiding citizens of Sunrise, Wyoming—he was a saint. That was how he’d won the election for sheriff time and time again. To others—usually criminals and people related to him—he was an uptight ass.

Jack knew he was no saint, but he didn’t quite agree with his siblings. Maybe he was a little strict, a little more controlled than completely necessary. But hey, they’d all somehow made it into adulthood in one piece and were mostly successful, and that was because of him .

He’d held the family together after his parents’ disappearance when he was eighteen. He’d created Hudson Sibling Solutions to ensure his siblings always had jobs and to help other people with unsolved cold cases—solving quite a few, thank you.

Though never his own.

His parents—good, upstanding ranchers not involved in anything shady, that anyone had ever found—had disappeared on a camping “date weekend” one night seventeen years ago. Just vanished.

All these years later, hours and hours of police work, private investigator work, research from every single member of his family, no one had ever discovered even a shred of evidence of what had happened to Dean and Laura Hudson.

He told himself, day in and day out, that it was over. There would never be answers, and sometimes a man just had to accept the hard facts of life.

He was also an expert in denial.

The woman in his passenger seat, case in point. Chloe Brink hadn’t always been a problem. Or maybe she had been and he’d just been younger and delusional. Hard to say now.

They’d been engaging in this whole thing for a year now, and he didn’t relish the secrecy. It was an irritating necessity. But one of the short list of positives was that this was something his siblings had no idea about and, therefore, no say in, no opinions.

Everything that happened with Chloe was all his.

“Don’t worry,” Chloe said in the dark cab of his truck as he slowed down to take the turn into the Brink Ranch entrance. “Even if Ry said something about us arriving together in the middle of the night, no one would believe him. Or at least, not believe the real reasons.”

Jack didn’t respond, though it required him to grind his teeth together.

He knew she didn’t understand his determination to keep this a secret. He’d never tried to explain it to her because she wouldn’t believe it. In her mind, he was embarrassed, and he knew her well enough—whether she wanted to admit it or not—that it stemmed from her own issues. It took a lot to be a cop in the same place where your last name was pretty much synonymous with criminal .

Hell, wasn’t that part of why he liked her so much? He wouldn’t say they were too alike outside their profession. Chloe was fun and friendly. No one had ever accused him of being either. Not since he was a teenager anyway.

But they both shared a dogged determination to see through whatever they thought was right.

What she would never understand—partly because of that dogged determination and a thick skull—was that people knowing about their...relationship...would cause problems for both of them.

He’d been around enough to know she’d bear the brunt of any negative reaction to their...relationship. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, but it wouldn’t matter what she did. Or what he did to try to protect her.

She was a woman, and she’d get the short end of the stick when it came to their work reputations. Right or not, police work—especially police work out here in rural Wyoming—was still male dominated. Jack dealt with the public enough to know a lot of people were still stuck in the Dark Ages.

He wouldn’t let Chloe get a bad rap all because he... He was weak when it came to her, and that was his fault. He’d be damned if he let her take the fall for that.

So it had to be a secret, but that didn’t mean he didn’t care or was embarrassed of her.

It also didn’t mean he had to like it.

Jack Hudson was well-versed in all the things he didn’t like but dealt with anyway.

He pulled through the open gate to the old Brink place. It was open at a crooked angle and clearly had been that way for a while, as grass and vines had grown up and twined around it.

He didn’t say anything about that either. Chloe’s family was her business, and maybe he’d on occasion mentioned something about her brother, this ranch and so on, but she always put him in his place.

When he pulled up to the house, Ry was standing out in front of it, pacing back and forth. Jack could see the look on his face in the harsh light of the porch—just a light bulb screwed into the wall, no cover.

Ry was all nerves. Worry. Concern. But something was missing, and he’d dealt with Ry enough in a professional capacity to find it interesting. Chloe’s little brother, for once, didn’t look guilty.

Yeah, interesting.

“Why’d you bring him?” Ry asked on a whisper when they got out of the truck. Not quiet enough for Jack to miss it, but he pretended he had.

“What’s the emergency, Ry?” Chloe asked, sounding less like a sister and more like a cop—but if she was thinking with her cop brain, she wouldn’t be here.

“It wasn’t anything to do with me. I just found it,” Ry said, louder this time, making sure Jack heard it.

Jack studied Ry Brink. No doubt he’d been high at some point today, but whatever he’d been on was wearing off. He was jittery, gray faced. Scared.

Chloe’s expression was blank. “Show us,” she said. She switched on a flashlight Jack hadn’t realized she’d grabbed on their way out, so he figured he could turn on the one he’d gotten out of his truck as well.

Ry leaned close; this time whatever he whispered to Chloe was lost in the sound of insects buzzing and breezes sliding through the dilapidated buildings.

“Show us,” she repeated, whatever Ry had said clearly not winning her over.

Ry led them away from the house, which had seen better decades. They quietly moved toward a caved-in barn. Ry. Chloe. Jack.

It was his desire to take over, to lead the way, but he tamped it down. Because this was Chloe’s deal, no matter how little he liked it, and he’d only come along to ensure her brother wasn’t laying some kind of trap.

Chloe might not think Ry capable, but Jack had spent his entire adult life seeing what drugs did to seemingly reasonable people. Part and parcel with a life in law enforcement.

They walked for a while in silence, and Jack noticed as they came around the side of the barn that there was a battery-powered lantern sitting in the dirt, tipped over, like it had been dropped there.

“I had this idea that I’d dig out a new entrance to the cellar,” Ry said. And if he was telling the truth, it was clear he’d been high when he’d had that idea, because that wasn’t going to work.

“The first one I hit, I figured it was animal. Dad used to bury the dogs out here. You remember, Chloe?”

She didn’t say anything. She pointed her flashlight beam on the unearthed dirt. A shovel lay haphazardly next to the pile.

“Then I got a few more and... It’s not animal bones. I know animals. It ain’t animals.”

Jack didn’t believe that. Lots of people mistook bigger bones for human. He approached the hole with Chloe, shined his light at the ground as well.

He sucked in a breath. Heard Chloe do the same.

Human. Definitely. A full skeleton, almost. Jack swept his flashlight beam down the bones, his mind already turning with next steps. They’d have to notify Bent County. The Brink Ranch was a little outside Sunrise’s jurisdiction—and besides that, they didn’t have the labs or professional capacity to deal with dead bodies.

It might not be nefarious. Ranchers back in the day buried their kin on property. There were laws against such things now, but it didn’t mean people always abided by them. This could be anything. It didn’t have to be criminal.

Still, Jack studied the skeletal remains with an eye toward foul play. Hard not to. He swept his beam back up and noticed that something glittered. He didn’t want to touch anything, destroy the scene any more than Ry already had, but he trained his light on that glitter and crouched so he could study it closer.

And it felt like the earth turned upside down, like every atom of oxygen in his body evaporated. He saw dark spots for a moment.

Chloe crouched next to him, put her hand on his back. “Jack? Are you okay? What is it?”

He had to breathe, but it was hard to suck in air. When he spoke, he heard how strangled he sounded. But he said what needed saying: “I recognize that ring.”

Chloe peered closer. “How?”

“It was my mother’s.”