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Jack didn’t bother to try to convince Chloe to go home and rest and eat first, though he wanted to. It would be the smart thing to do. He knew this rationally.

But he’d also been in her position before. He knew too well what it felt like to have a family member in danger. There’d be no rest, no taking care of herself, until they’d exhausted every resource in finding Ry.

Because it was one thing for Ry to be missing, running off on his own volition, but to be missing with one body already found was something else. Something urgent.

But where to begin? The cops were crawling all over the parking lot and crime scene, gathering clues, compiling evidence. Of course, their focus was on a dead Mark Brink and a missing detective, not Ry. Not yet. Not when they had one of their own missing.

“What if we follow that trail past where my father was found?” Chloe suggested. “Ry didn’t come back to the car, and I’m not sure I buy that he and my father were out here if they weren’t together. Especially with my car. Ry had to go somewhere. Somewhere in the preserve.”

Jack didn’t want to burst her bubble, but they had to analyze all the facts. “Your father might have had a vehicle. Ry could have taken that.” Or been taken in that, though Jack didn’t point it out. Maybe they didn’t need to analyze every possibility. “Whoever killed your father could have had a vehicle.”

“Did you see evidence of anyone else?” Chloe returned.

He hadn’t, though, in fairness, it was hard to determine what was wind mark and what was made by car and human in the dirt of the parking area. It wasn’t an often-visited area since the campground was on the other side of the preserve. You’d have to be a pretty intrepid hiker to be on this side. So a lack of evidence of other people could point to something.

He supposed it was just as possible Ry was still in the preserve as not. But it was a vast preserve. “I’m not sure even with Laurel’s okay they’re going to let us walk down that trail again.”

“Let’s go around and meet it up a ways after.” Chloe looked down at her phone screen and the map of the forest preserve she’d pulled up. “If we walk back to the road, then take it a while, we can cut over. Should be light by then, and we’ll have an easier time of meeting up with the trail from the road.”

Jack wasn’t sure it was the best idea, but he knew Chloe needed to feel like she had a handle on something. Besides, even if it was the wrong avenue to go down, the entire Bent County Sheriff’s Department was also looking into this whole thing. They could stumble into finding Ry as well.

Hopefully alive. Hopefully not a murderer.

But first, he had to be found, so Jack nodded at Chloe, and they started walking back out to the road. There was a hint of a sunrise to the east. She was right: it wouldn’t take long for the light to catch up with them.

That would be good. That would help. Jack told himself this over and over again. That he was the sheriff, that this was his job . Not a painful tightrope walk with the woman he loved, trying to unearth secrets that would hurt them both.

“Losing service,” Chloe muttered, holding her phone up to the sky as if that might help. “I don’t think we should cross over to the trail just yet. We need to go at least another half mile.” She lifted her hand, poked at something on one of those high-tech watches Jack couldn’t begin to understand.

“You know, you should get one, Jack,” she said, as if she’d read his mind.

“I don’t even like my cell phone. Why would I want it on my wrist?”

She shook her head, her mouth curving ever so slightly. The old, familiar argument was something like a comfort in the middle of all this unfamiliar.

“Do you know where it was?” she asked, not looking at him as they walked.

He didn’t have to be a mind reader to understand what she was asking. “The campground on the north side was the last place anyone saw them. I’ve been up and down every inch of it, and this preserve. We’re pretty far away.”

She nodded. “Ry was too young to have been involved in that, but... Maybe we should head that way after we follow the trail for a bit. I don’t think any of these things make sense enough to connect, except for the timing. I want to ignore the timing, I really do, because it feels so circumstantial. But...”

“Timing is part of it. I agree. We’ll head out that way if the trail doesn’t offer anything.”

This time, she did look over at him. “Another thing you don’t have to be here for.”

“I’ll be here,” he said, and realized she had said the same exact thing, at the same exact time, mimicking his deep voice while she did it.

He frowned at her, but there was no heat behind it. In truth, he was glad she could still make fun of him in the midst of this mess.

Still, he wanted to make sure she understood. “Not leaving your side, Chloe.”

She reached out with her free hand, laced her fingers with his. “Thanks.”

They walked, hand in hand, in silence for the rest of the way until her watch beeped, signaling they’d walked far enough to cut through the low-level brush and find the trail.

The world was all alight now, still pearly and dim, but they wouldn’t be risking twisting an ankle or stepping on something that didn’t want to be stepped on by heading off-road to cut toward the trail.

They’d taken only a step or two off the road when they both paused. Jack thought he’d heard something from behind them. Likely from the parking lot, where even now a couple of Bent County deputies were working; though that wasn’t the direction the sound had seemed to come from.

But in their stillness, Jack heard it again. A noise. A human noise. From the opposite direction of the parking lot. It had to have been.

Because it was someone’s voice. And whatever they’d said sounded a lot like help . The cops certainly wouldn’t be yelling for help.

“Is that someone calling for help?” Chloe asked, her hand squeezing tight in his. Too hopeful, too desperate for it to be Ry.

So he held her still to keep her from immediately running toward it and hated having to be the voice of reason. “Sounds like it—but we need to be careful, Chloe. We don’t know what we’re dealing with. Calls for help are just as likely tricks to—”

“I know, Jack,” she said, but she was already moving toward the noise. Though she didn’t pull out of his grasp, just pulled him along with her. Back onto the road and farther up.

He could have stopped her, but he didn’t have the heart. They’d approach carefully. Together. They’d protect each other.

Jack realized they were close to the edge of the preserve that backed up to the highway. It could have been a trick of noise carrying. It could have been...

But as they walked around a curve in the road, they both spotted someone. Jack put his free hand on the butt of his weapon as he scanned the area. One solitary figure. Stumbling.

Too tall to be Ry, but there didn’t appear to be a weapon, a threat. Still, Jack didn’t take his hand off his gun until...

Both he and Chloe seemed to recognize the man at the same time, because they said his name and moved forward at a jog in unison.

When they reached Hart, he stumbled a little when he lifted his head to look at them. It was clear he’d been hurt. Blood crusted over the side of his face. But he was alive, and that was better than Mark Brink.

It wasn’t Ry, and that was a shame for Chloe, but maybe it was a lead. If all these disparate things connected.

“Hart, what the hell happened?” Jack asked, dropping his hand off his gun and offering an arm for the man to lean against him. The fact that Hart did gave way to just how hurt he was.

“It was a woman,” he rasped. Jack couldn’t make sense of the words right away.

“A woman?” Chloe repeated gently. She stood on the other side of him, ready to take any other needed weight.

“I was getting into my car at the sheriff’s department, and I heard a woman scream for help,” Hart said, clearly trying to find the strength to stand on his own two feet as he recounted what had happened. “I looked over and I saw her. So I jogged over. I think I did...? I don’t know. It’s a little fuzzy. The next thing I really remember is waking up. Which I did, because I fell.” He gestured with one arm, hissed out a breath, clearly in pain. “Not sure where I was. I think I might have been dumped out of the back of a truck. Once I could, I got up and started walking, hoping to find someone.”

That would make sense, as they were close to the highway out here. Jack surveyed the distance between where they were and the parking lot where the other Bent County deputies were. Too far.

“We’ll call you an ambulance,” Jack said.

“Call Laurel. She’ll get it sorted and know I’m okay all in one fell swoop, and she can pass it around to my family.”

Chloe nodded and pulled her phone out of her pocket, taking a few steps away—in search of service, no doubt.

“I don’t know what the hell’s going on, Sheriff,” Hart said in a quiet tone Chloe wouldn’t be able to hear. “But I do know whatever it is ties to the Brink family. There’s just no way it doesn’t.”

C HLOE JOGGED AWAY in search of service. Jack and Hart followed at a slower pace, and when she finally had a bar, she lifted her phone to her ear and called Detective Delaney-Carson.

She tried to feel relief as they moved through the next steps. A sense of happiness that even though Hart was hurt, he hadn’t ended up like her father.

But Ry was somewhere out there, and she wasn’t sure she’d feel anything good until she knew where. Until she knew he was okay.

With the phone call made, Chloe fell back into step with Jack and Hart. Chloe wondered if they should have him sit and rest, but if he’d suffered any kind of concussion, he probably needed to stay alert.

“What did this woman who called for help look like?” Jack asked Hart.

Hart licked cracked lips. He needed water. Probably some stitches for that gash on his head. They should really let him take it easy, but Chloe wanted answers, so she didn’t stop Jack’s questions.

“I don’t really remember. It happened so fast. I heard it more than anything. ‘Help.’ Someone needed help.” He said it as if trying to convince himself when it was clear that it had been a ploy. A ploy to get him away from the scrapbook, and that had to have been perpetrated by more than one person.

And none of those people could have been her dead father. He hadn’t had the scrapbook on his corpse.

Ry also couldn’t be involved in that. Because Hart had disappeared before Ry had taken off from the ranch. So he wasn’t involved. She tried to comfort herself with that knowledge.

But she was too much of a cop not to accept that while he hadn’t been part of the ploy to distract or hurt Hart, that still didn’t mean he couldn’t be involved in other things that connected.

Some comfort.

“I didn’t have my full belt on me, but I did have my gun. They took it,” Hart said with disgust. He stumbled a little, even with Jack holding him up, so they stopped their progress.

Chloe knew she shouldn’t keep poking at him. He was hurt. But... “They also took the scrapbook. Out of your car. From the security footage, it seems like that’s what they were after. Them letting you go seems to add credence to that theory.”

Hart scowled. His gaze lifted briefly to Chloe, but then he looked back at Jack. He didn’t say anything to that, so Chloe continued.

“You guys looked through the scrapbook when you had it. Right? You looked through it and couldn’t find any evidence of note. But Delaney-Carson said she thought you should keep it, and you were the one who wanted to give it back.”

“She wanted your take on it,” Hart confirmed.

“So, what was in it?” Jack asked.

“It was black-and-white pictures. Old people. Ranches. Homesteader stuff with plat maps. Boring. Pointless.” He glanced at Chloe again. And even though she could see suspicion in his gaze, she couldn’t get mad at a man with a bloody face who couldn’t even walk without help right now.

“I figured if it connected to what’s going on, you’d lead us to whatever connection once you had it.”

Then she realized what Hart’s plan had really been. “You were going to follow me.” It shouldn’t make her angry. It was decent enough police work.

But it was barking up the wrong tree, so she couldn’t quite ignore the feelings of frustration bubbling up inside her.

“I was going to investigate,” Hart said coolly.

By following me . But she supposed she didn’t need to argue with an injured man. It didn’t change anything. He’d been hurt, the scrapbook had been taken and she didn’t have the first clue as to why.

“Did you ever see the woman who called for help? Stranger? Maybe someone familiar?” Jack pressed.

Hart took some time to think about it. “I’m not really sure. I think... There had to have been two of them, right? If I went to help the woman, someone had to jump me from behind.” He gestured at the bloody portion of his head.

True. And either one could have been the person in the hoodie who’d come back and taken the scrapbook. But there also could have been a third. Too many people involved now. What kind of sense did that make?

The ambulance finally came and so did Detective Delaney-Carson, relief etched in every line of her face. She explained that she’d called his family, asked him a few questions and then instructed the ambulance to take him away.

Laurel watched the ambulance go, then turned to face them both. Her expression was grim, her words all warning.

“We’re dealing with two attackers—that we know of, there could have been more. These could be our murderers, or there could be more. I’m going to go to the hospital in a bit so I can ask him some more questions once he’s been fully checked out. I know you guys want answers just as much as I do, but I wouldn’t recommend heading out into this isolated place just the two of you. That’s begging for trouble.”

When neither Jack nor Chloe said anything, she sighed. Then she opened the bag she was carrying. She pulled out a couple of granola bars and two water bottles.

“This won’t do much, and I’d recommend a full meal and some sleep, but you’re not going to listen, so...” she said as they took the offered sustenance. “I have to focus on my investigation, my guys. Understand the risks before you go wading into it.”

Chloe nodded and glanced at Jack, who was doing the same.

“I’ll leave you to it then. Watch your backs. I’ll try to contact you when we get some answers, but if you go out there, it’ll be hard to reach you.”

Again, silence seemed to be the best response, so Chloe kept her mouth shut and so did Jack.

Laurel shook her head. “It’s a bad idea, guys.”

But she turned and left them to it without any further warnings.

Chloe wasn’t sure what their next move was going to be, but she’d search every inch of this forest preserve to find Ry. And she couldn’t possibly go home and rest or eat before she did.

“She’s right,” Jack said once Laurel was gone.

Chloe turned to face him, her stomach sinking. Because she couldn’t go back to the ranch and just wait. She couldn’t . She knew he wouldn’t leave her to handle this alone, but she couldn’t possibly let him bulldoze her into going back to the ranch. “Jack—”

“Just the two of us is begging for trouble,” he said firmly. Then his gaze moved from the horizon to meet hers. “So let’s call in reinforcements.”