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Jack drove out to the campground he hadn’t been at in a very long time. For the first few years after his parents’ disappearance, he’d scoured every inch. Over and over again, with any free moment he had—which weren’t many, when he’d essentially been raising five kids. But he’d found time.

He’d always found time. No doubt his siblings had as well. Always so sure there had to be an answer here. But that answer had never been found. Even now, knowing those skeletal remains were likely his parents, it didn’t feel like answers were really within reach. Just farther and farther away.

It didn’t bother him as much as he’d thought it would. He hadn’t been fully cognizant of how the past few years had changed him. Even if now he could pinpoint it back to a moment.

Grant had finally left the military and come home for good a few years ago. That had been such a relief, not just for him but for the entire family. Tragedy hadn’t struck again. Someone else in their family hadn’t been here one day and gone the next.

Jack hadn’t done more than glance at his parents’ case since. He hadn’t even driven down the road that led to the forest preserve. Maybe not consciously, but he’d avoided poking at that old wound in the same ways he’d been doing up to that point.

He didn’t know if anyone else had felt that way. He wasn’t even sure he’d fully realized it until this moment, driving into the forest preserve, realizing how much of his parents’ case he’d put away.

Because somehow all the Hudson kids had made it into adulthood, not unscathed but alive. Building lives and families all their own. Digging into old tragedies felt like begging for trouble.

Yes, someone deserved to pay for what had happened to his parents. He still hoped someone would .

But what would be the cost?

It didn’t matter. Answers or no. Trouble was here, in the shape of skeletal remains, missing detectives, the woman he loved and her runaway brother. So he had to see it through.

They didn’t call Bent County. Jack knew they should. They were possibly going into something dangerous, and doing so without backup and without every local law enforcement agency having the information was risky. A risk neither of them should be taking. A risk he’d never take.

If it wasn’t for her.

He drove, and neither of them suggested calling it in. Neither of them suggested anything. Chloe was as silent as he was. She was no doubt dealing with her own demons. Because Ry taking off around the same time Hart disappeared into presumably thin air felt ominous—connected, even if he couldn’t see how. And there was no doubt in Jack’s mind that Ry’s disappearance was why neither of them were calling it in.

Bringing in other people would make it harder to protect Ry, no matter how little he deserved protecting.

When Chloe finally spoke, it was to give him directions to follow different twists and turns in the dirt road to find Ry’s location somewhere within the preserve. Not too deep in it, or they’d be losing reception, and they wouldn’t be able to track Ry’s location if he didn’t have service either, so that was good.

“Maybe we should approach on foot,” Jack suggested when Chloe said they were getting close. “Gives us the element of surprise to really figure out what’s going on here before Ry or whoever knows someone is coming.”

“Yeah,” Chloe agreed. Jack pulled off the road on the dirt shoulder. He turned off the car. “Grab the flashlight. I’ve got the only gun, so I want—”

“Me to stay behind. I know, Jack.”

She didn’t snap it. She sounded so defeated, it was like a little stab to his heart. That so many people in her life had failed her and lead her to all this mess, and she’d held up so well to all of it, but when did it get to be too much?

Jack knew there was nothing he could say about Ry, about her father, about her that could make this better. He hated that he couldn’t do something to make this okay.

But there was no way to fix it, so they got out of the truck. Quietly, she came around to his side. She had her phone on, and the screen illuminated her face. She didn’t look affected by what was going on, but her usual cop face had an air of exhaustion to it.

She switched on the flashlight from his truck and moved the beam around in front of them. “I think if we follow this road, then take the first right we come across, it’ll lead us to him.”

She didn’t mention the possibility it wasn’t Ry himself. That they could stumble upon just his phone and nothing else. So Jack didn’t either. Why verbalize what they both knew?

“Got it,” he replied instead. He followed the beam of light she held, making sure she stayed behind him enough that he felt reasonably sure he could stop anything unexpected from hurting her.

They moved in quiet precision. Jack was sure they were both trying to keep their minds blank, pretend like it was any Sunrise Sheriff Department case. Nothing that involved his parents or her brother.

When the flashlight beam illuminated a turn in the dirt road, Jack took it. They quickly found it wasn’t actually a road, just a path to a parking area. Chloe came up next to him, sweeping her light around the dirt in front of them. Stopping when it landed on the lone car parked in the lot.

A car Jack recognized. Chloe’s car.

Jack lifted his gun, looking around what little of the parking lot he could see in just the flashlight beam. It seemed to be deserted aside from the car. He glanced over at Chloe, who would be hurt by this. No matter what it was. Her brother had left the Hudson Ranch—likely hot-wired her car, since Jack doubted she’d left her keys behind—and was quite clearly up to no good.

Jack could tell she was looking straight ahead, staring hard at her car parked there. Jack couldn’t make out her expression in just the glow of the flashlight, but he could feel the hurt radiating off her.

She audibly swallowed. “I’m calling Detective Delaney-Carson,” she whispered, reaching for her pocket.

Jack put his hand over hers before she could grab her phone. “We can handle this, Chloe. You don’t have to call it in if you don’t want to.”

She finally turned to look at him. He couldn’t make out her features in the dark. She was just a shadow, but her voice was convincing enough. Firm and determined. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

C HLOE ’ S HAND SHOOK as she held the phone to her ear, but she didn’t think Jack saw the tremor. He was busy watching all around them, making sure they weren’t sitting ducks.

For what, she didn’t know. Whatever was going on...nothing added up or made any sense. But she could feel danger in the air like an impending storm.

There wasn’t any movement from the car. No sounds but the rustles and chirps of an evening in the wilderness. Wherever Ry was, it wasn’t right here. Chloe refused to let her mind bound ahead to worst-case scenarios. Most likely, he was out here scoring a hit from some drug dealer.

Funny how she hoped that was all it was.

The phone rang and when the detective answered, it was with a terse, “Yes.”

“It’s Deputy Brink. We haven’t found any sign of Hart, but my brother took off from the Hudson Ranch. We’ve tracked him to a parking lot in the Franklin Forest. I don’t know if it connects to Hart, to the scrapbook, but I think you should send someone over. We’ve found my car that he used, abandoned in a lot.”

There was a pause. “I’m coming myself,” she replied. “We got word from Texas. Mark Brink didn’t show up for his last parole meeting. He’s missing.”

Chloe didn’t swear. She couldn’t even muster up surprise. Maybe she didn’t think her father was behind stealing that scrapbook because it didn’t make any sense, but maybe she was giving him too much credit to think he had to make sense.

“I’ll send you our exact location,” Chloe said.

“Good. I’ll be there soon.”

The call ended, and Chloe sent the location to Delaney-Carson. She took a deep breath, staring at her car. Parked. Ry’s phone must be in the car, but Ry wasn’t.

Unless...

She swallowed down a bubble of fear. If he was hurt, well, she’d deal with it. “Let’s look at the car but not touch anything. I don’t want anyone accusing us of tampering.” Because if she stood here waiting for Laurel without doing anything, she’d think of a million terrible situations that involved Ry bloody and dead somewhere and she couldn’t...

She was so angry at him, but she knew herself well enough to know she’d make a wrong choice if she let herself get too worked up about the possibilities of him being hurt. And she... She’d made too many bad choices when it came to her brother.

That ended now.

“Chloe—”

“If I say we should look at it, we should look at it. If you want to go first and keep me behind you, I’d start moving.” She knew she was being a jerk when Jack was trying to be protective and sweet, in his way, but she was holding on by a thread.

She needed to do everything she could to treat this like a crime scene that had nothing to do with her. To treat Jack like a fellow cop, not the man she loved.

They moved forward in tandem, Chloe training the flashlight on the car. They were quiet, watching for movement, listening for sound. But there was nothing as they got close enough to the car to look inside.

Chloe swept the beam over the entire car and in each window, heart in her throat, praying it would be empty.

And it was. There was nothing amiss inside. It looked almost exactly like it had when she’d left it on the Hudson Ranch, with the one exception of Ry’s phone lying in the console.

That made her nervous, of course, but at least it wasn’t a body.

At this point, Ry had made bad choices. She could accept that. She had given him every opportunity to make different, better choices. He’d refused. She could mourn that, but she couldn’t keep blaming herself for it.

But she could never stop hoping he was alive. Hoping he’d find some way to get himself out of all the choices he’d made. Maybe it hurt her heart, but that was the bottom line now.

Meanwhile, Jack Hudson stood beside her, offering not to call the authorities they needed to call, wanting to protect her—and if that meant bending his very strict moral code, apparently he was willing to do it.

Chloe couldn’t let him. It would just about kill her.

“I want to know who he talked to, but we better wait for Bent County to open the door with gloves. There might be prints that give us a hint as to what’s going on. If he was here with someone else.” She looked out into the darkness around them. “Meeting someone? I don’t know. But it’s going to be Bent County’s job to figure it out.”

Jack nodded. “Okay, but if he drove your car here, left it here, we should be able to pick up his trail for a little while.” Jack reached for the flashlight. He didn’t take it from her but pushed it down a little so the light illuminated their footprints. Nothing super clear, but enough of an indentation to tell that someone had been walking across the makeshift lot. “Or we can stay here and wait.”

It was up to her. A lump formed in her throat. Funny how she wouldn’t mind him sweeping in and making the decisions for her right now. But that was because these were the kind of decisions she had to make for herself, even if she didn’t want to.

Chloe used the beam, searching out footprints that weren’t hers or Jack’s. Eventually she zeroed in on a pair that was either Ry’s or some other random person’s. Jack walked ahead, gun drawn and at the ready, as her beam led them away from the parking lot and into the low grasses that made up the field in front of them. There was a path, it looked like, though it was hard to tell in only the beam of the flashlight if it was just from animals trampling through or an actual marked hiking trail in the forest.

She didn’t want to follow his footsteps too far with Bent County coming, but it was hard to hold herself back knowing Ry could be out there. Doing who knew what.

“Chloe.”

Jack had that tone in his voice. Like something bad was coming, but she didn’t see what it could be. She looked around, she listened, but nothing.

Then his hand came over her wrist, he pulled her a little forward and he moved the light beam to something on the ground.

It was just a small little circle, but Chloe had been a cop too long not to know what blood dropped onto dirt looked like.

Her hand shook for a second, but only a second. The light trembling was enough for her to ground herself. To remind herself she was strong, capable. A cop , not a big sister who’d failed.

She moved the beam up the trail. Not much farther up, there was another spot, about the same size as the first.

She took a few steps forward, and Jack never released her hand, but he didn’t stop her. He moved with her.

The third circle was bigger. Noticeably so. She inhaled, knowing it was shaky. Knowing she couldn’t quite make herself immune to this.

Someone was bleeding, and the chances it wasn’t Ry felt really, really low.

“What do you want to do?” Jack asked her quietly. “Wait or follow?”

They should wait. That would be the safe thing to do. But as much as she was ready for her brother to face the consequences of his actions, she wasn’t ready for him to be hurt. Or worse, dead.

“Follow.”