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“He lied.”

Jack looked up from the computer screen that had been giving him a hell of a headache. With Steve out and Chloe needing to ride two-man, adjusting the Sunrise SD work schedule was a hell of a puzzle he hadn’t fully figured out yet. Even with him stepping in to cover daily shifts. So he didn’t quite follow Chloe’s dramatic statement. He only knew she was standing in the doorway, looking like a storm ready to break. “Who lied about what?”

“Ry lied to the detective.”

Jack tried not to swear, tried to maintain a detached kind of calm that she no doubt needed, but he wasn’t perfect. “Lied how?”

“All she wanted to know, allegedly, was if he’d had contact with Dad lately. He told her he hadn’t talked to Dad since he went to prison, but he refused to hand over his phone, of course. And he kept saying he hadn’t done anything wrong, and that’s always when I know he has.”

She looked up at Jack then. Tears swam in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. “He’s had contact with Dad over the past year. Text messages and emails.” She raked her hands through her hair, loosening more strands from the once-tight braid she’d had at the beginning of the day.

“He said it didn’t have anything to do with anything. Just father-son stuff. I can’t believe he...” She was pacing the tiny office room. There was no room to pace, but she clearly couldn’t sit still. Anger and frustration pumped off her, but underneath all that was the impossible pull of wanting to do the right thing for her family and needing to do the right thing for the law.

“I should have handled it better. I should have found a way to get him to admit it to the detective. He always lies when he’s backed into a corner, and if I had—”

“You’re not blaming yourself, are you? Because I know you know you’re not to blame for Ry lying.”

She took a breath and finally stopped pacing. She looked at him with heartbreak in her eyes. Then shook her head. “Bad habit.”

“I know. So, let’s work through this. He told the detective he hasn’t had contact with your dad?”

She shook her head. “Oh, no, of course not. He said I haven’t talked to him since he went to prison, so he’s convinced it wasn’t a lie because he only communicated in texts and emails. God, I’d like to strangle him.”

“And he says these conversations were just generic. Did he let you see any of them?”

She shook her head. “He claims he left his phone at my cabin, and he’ll show them to me later. I know he didn’t, and I know he won’t.”

“So he is hiding something.” Jack sighed. It just didn’t add up. What would Ry be hiding? He’d been too young to really be involved in any kind of murder or coverup. Besides, if Mark Brink killed those people...

“He’s protecting our father, for whatever godforsaken reason,” Chloe said, clearly trying so hard to be strong. For what, he didn’t know. Neither her father nor her brother really deserved that kind of dedication.

But even if they didn’t, their behavior connecting to cold case murders didn’t make sense either. “If Mark knew about the remains before Ry dug, how did Ry warn him before he dug? And if Ry knew your father committed those murders and is trying to cover for him, why would he dig there or anywhere? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m not sure what my father or brother does always adds up.”

“Sure, but... We’re missing something here. The timing doesn’t work out for them to be purposefully covering up something Mark did that Ry knew about.”

Chloe sucked in a breath. “We should let the detectives handle it. I’ll tell them... I’ll tell them...” She couldn’t seem to get out the words. He hated why, but he understood it all the same.

“You don’t want to tell Laurel what you know.”

She looked up at him, her eyes still shiny, but clearly she had determined she wasn’t going to cry over this. “Ry needs to be maneuvered. You can’t just get answers out of him. And if there are answers to be had, I’m the best chance we have of getting them. If I involve the detectives, I just don’t think it’ll give us answers. Not without someone getting hurt.”

She shoved her hands in her pockets, looked at some place on the wall just behind him, as if it’d give him the illusion she was making eye contact.

“I know it’s wrong. I know I shouldn’t still want to protect him. But he’s not a murderer. Maybe Dad’s wrapped him up in this but only because he knows how to manipulate him. Not because Ry did anything wrong. I mean, he did. He lied. I just...” She seemed to run out of words, or maybe they were lodged in her throat. Because she just stood there, looking miserable.

So he moved over to her. He pulled her close, rubbed his hand up and down her spine until some of that tension in her loosened. “Take a breath, Chloe. We’ll work through it. One step at a time.”

“I’ve got to stop laying this stuff at your feet. You’re the real victim here. You and your family.”

“Sounds like we’re all victims.”

She shook her head against his chest, but she didn’t pull away from him. She let him hold her.

He figured if anything made sense about the two of them, it was this. They both felt they had to do it all, hold it all together, and because they did, the other was the only person they knew how to lean on.

“You shouldn’t be comforting me. You’ve got your own awful stuff to deal with.”

“Yeah, but mine is old, and while it’s not dealt with, you went with me on that drive the other night. You hate heights, and you sat next to me and listened to me talk. Things I can’t seem to admit to anyone else.” He held her closer.

“But—”

He pulled her back so he could look into her gaze. He hadn’t fully realized until all this had gone down how much she’d hidden from him in the past year. Old childhood hurts, insecurities. Trauma.

He’d had his own trauma, but he’d had a foundation to deal with it on. She’d had nothing but herself.

“All this bad stuff? It’s not math. There’s not a chart. You get to be upset. I get to be upset. And we’ll comfort each other however we can. Love isn’t a contest or a transaction, Chloe. It doesn’t work that way.”

Her chin wobbled, but she firmed it on an exhale. “I don’t know how love works.”

“Well, I guess you’ll figure it out as we go.”

She rolled her eyes, but not disdainfully. And she didn’t pull fully away. But the misery was still in every line of her face.

“We need to get to the bottom of this, Jack. I don’t want to go to Laurel, but you need answers. We all need answers.”

“So we’ll find them. Together.”

“How?”

Maybe he’d been avoiding it, but he’d known, since this morning, since Chloe’s safety had come into question, he couldn’t play hands-off anymore. Not and live with himself.

“By making this a Hudson Siblings Solutions case.”

C HLOE HAD HELPED the Hudson clan with cold cases before, but mostly in a very supplementary way: getting them information they couldn’t get themselves, responding to active threats connected to their cold cases. But she’d never been involved in a full-fledged Hudson Sibling Solutions meeting.

It wasn’t all that different from a family dinner. Everyone shoved together in the living room instead of the dining room. The low buzz of conversations, bickering and the most recent addition of a baby occasionally fussing while everyone arrived and got settled.

Carlyle was missing because she’d made up an excuse to use Ry to do some evening chores with her and Izzy out at the dog barns. Jack had offered to let Ry be part of the meeting, but Chloe had nixed that idea.

She loved her brother, wanted to protect him with all she was, even to the point of risking things she shouldn’t risk, but she couldn’t trust him with anything . Especially this. She might want to protect him from the repercussions of what he’d potentially done, but she wouldn’t do it at the expense of finding the truth.

She didn’t really think Ry had done anything wrong when it came to the skeletal remains, but she could see how any involvement with their father could mean he was mixed up in something wrong.

“This meeting better be about what I think it’s about,” Anna said, with baby Caroline situated on her lap.

The fringe conversations began to die out, and all eyes turned to Jack. Chloe had always known he’d taken on too much here with his family, felt a responsibility that was maybe bigger than necessary.

But she’d never so clearly seen it in action—everyone he loved turning their attention to him, looking to him for answers. Since he’d been eighteen years old. Her heart ached for the young man he’d been.

“The case regarding the skeletal remains—that, I’ll point out, have not been positively IDed yet—has changed on us, gotten more complicated, and now it includes a potentially current threat.”

“No one is threatening me,” Chloe muttered, because for all that was mixed up and wrong, some mutilated snake on her porch with absolutely no information didn’t lend itself to her being worried. The dolls in the chest were an old “joke” from her father. She didn’t have any actual fear of a threat, but she was letting Jack take care of her.

Or trying to anyway.

“I think a mutilated snake on your porch is threat enough, whether we know what it’s threatening or not,” Mary said primly.

“Maybe it doesn’t connect. The snake. Mark Brink. The remains. But the timing feels like too much of a coincidence,” Jack continued. “I still want us supporting Bent County detectives in all facets we can, but things have changed enough, I think we should launch our own investigation.”

Chloe expected there to be some reaction from the Hudson siblings. A grim kind of excitement or relief that Jack was okaying what he’d previously forbidden.

But there was silence. Dahlia snuck a look at Grant. Palmer suddenly found the ceiling very interesting. Anna studied Caroline’s socks as if they had the answers to the mysteries of the world on them.

Jack sighed. “So go on and get everything you’ve been gathering in secret and against my wishes. We’re looking into it now. As a team.”

“Thank God,” Anna muttered. She looked over at Hawk, who got up and left the room. One person from every couple did the same, slowly returning with arms full of things. One by one, they dropped files, notebooks and printouts onto the table in the center of the room in front of Jack. Chloe’s eyes widened as it became a tower of papers that nearly toppled over. She snuck a glance at Jack.

He didn’t look the least bit surprised. Resigned, a little disapproving, but maybe even just a hint of pride.

Chloe realized then that he’d known they were doing it. Behind his back. Even though he didn’t want them to. And he wasn’t angry about it.

Something about him knowing and just...letting them, even when he didn’t want them to. It settled in her like warmth. Everyone painted him as so rigid, and he could be on the outside, but on the inside...

He was someone else entirely. And she loved him so much, it turned into anxiety inside her. Because love could so easily be taken away. Especially with a last name like hers.

“I haven’t put it in my notes yet, but I may have eavesdropped when Detective Delaney-Carson interviewed Ry again,” Anna said. She looked over at Chloe. “He’s lying.”

Chloe nodded. “I know.” She swallowed. She didn’t want to share with all of them what she’d found out, because she wasn’t sure they would agree with Jack that they should all work together.

And she wanted to protect Ry, but in the audience of everyone whose parents might be buried on her family ranch, she felt the need to be honest. Even at Ry’s expense.

“He admitted to me he’s had written contact with our father. I haven’t figured out what they talked about yet, but I’m going to.” She took a deep breath. “And I’ll make sure to share it with you as it pertains to the skeletal remains, but I also understand this is complicated. Well, that I make it complicated. Threats or no, we’re looking at my father and a ranch my name is on. I understand if there’s a thread of mistrust here, and I don’t have to stay.”

Jack gave her a sharp look, but it was nothing on Mary’s.

“Chloe Brink, I have known you since we were in kindergarten. And not once, in all that time, all those different phases of our lives, have I ever thought you were anything like your father or your brother.”

Before Chloe could respond to that, Palmer spoke. Because Chloe knew that for all Jack and Mary were on her side, it wasn’t unanimous. Palmer had made it quite clear he had his doubts about her.

“It doesn’t matter if she’s like them if she’s more worried about protecting them than getting to the truth,” Palmer said. He didn’t budge when both Jack and Mary glared at him. He sat where he was, looking right at Chloe. “I don’t have anything against you as a person, Chloe, but your involvement is complicated.”

“I agree. That’s why I’m saying I don’t have to be here.”

Mary and Jack immediately began to argue with her. Anna looked to be on the fence, while Cash and Grant said nothing. The significant others didn’t add anything at first, but eventually, when the arguing was clearly going nowhere, Louisa cut through all the chatter.

Chloe looked over at her. She was gripping Palmer’s hand. Clearly they’d had a few discussions about this.

“The real question is this,” Louisa said once everyone looked over at her. “If you found something implicating your brother, would you turn him in?”

Chloe turned her gaze from Louisa to Palmer. He looked so much like Jack, was nothing like his older brother. Except in this. That stoic, stern expression.

She could lie. She could be a good liar when she wanted to be. Hell, she lied to herself on a daily basis. But she shrugged. “I really don’t know. It would depend on the situation.”

Palmer leaned back in his seat, flung his arm over Louisa’s shoulders. “Then my vote is that you stay.”

Chloe had already started standing up to leave before the words penetrated. “Wait, what?”

“You were honest. That’s all that really matters. We can’t have secrets in an investigation, but siblings... I wouldn’t believe you if you’d said yes. But an I don’t know ? That, I get. God knows I thought I’d have to cover up for Anna committing a crime at some point in our lives.”

“You mean, you haven’t?” Hawk murmured.

Anna put her hands over Caroline’s ears. “Not in front of the baby ,” she said with mock seriousness. “She’s going to grow up thinking her mother is a saint.”

This elicited a laugh from just about everyone in the room. A laugh. While they were sitting around talking about their parents’ disappearance and potential murder. Her family’s involvement in such a tragedy.

But, Chloe realized, here in a room where all the Hudsons were gathered—but not just Hudsons. Significant others and offspring too. Seventeen years of unknowns while life marched on had meant probably figuring out...you couldn’t live your life constantly mired in that old tragedy.

So maybe she should stop living mired in the reputation other people had given her last name.