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Chloe figured she’d heard him wrong. She had to have heard him wrong. But he stood abruptly and took hard strides away from the remains. She was frozen, looking down at the skeleton in the beam of her flashlight. She tried to process what he was saying.

Because it couldn’t be. Of all the crazy, impossible, terrible things this might be, it couldn’t be that.

But she saw the ring, and Jack Hudson was not a jump-to-conclusions guy. He didn’t say any random thought he had. The man plotted out his life to the millisecond. Even in crisis.

If he said that the little glitter of gold and diamond there in the dirt was his mother’s, she believed him.

Oh God .

She stood up about as abruptly as he had. Crossed to him. There were so many...so many horrible revolving pieces to this. And she somehow had to find a path through.

For him. “Jack.”

“I’ll call it in,” he said roughly.

“Jack—”

But he shook her off and lifted his cell to his ear. He’d have to call in Bent County. To get a dig team, the coroner. Who’d likely have to call in a forensics team from somewhere farther afield.

Chloe’s mind was whirling. Too many things at once. She had to focus. Tap into cop brain. She’d been through a million crises in the past six years of being a cop. She knew how to compartmentalize.

A seventeen-year-old cold case’s first huge lead being your boss slash hookup buddy’s mother’s bones on your family’s property?

Okay, the situation was new.

“They’ll send out the detectives, a few deputies to zone it off. Get in touch with the coroner,” Jack said.

“Gracie Cooper. We know her. She’s good.” Which, it wouldn’t matter if she wasn’t. She was the Bent County coroner. But it seemed a tangible thing to hold on to.

“There’ll be a lot of questions for Ry.”

“He’ll hold up,” Chloe said, with far more confidence than she felt when it came to her brother. But she’d make sure she kept him in her sight, and as long as she did that, she could make certain he held up.

Right now he was pacing from Jack’s truck to some point just beyond, then back again. He raked his hands through his hair. He muttered to himself.

But he didn’t run. She’d give him that in this moment. While keeping an eye on him to make sure it stayed that way.

Chloe didn’t let her mind go to all the things this could mean. She didn’t ask herself why—why now, why here, why anything. She focused on the next steps.

Jack would need to go tell his family. He could wait for some clearer confirmation. After all, that ring—even if it had been his mother’s—wasn’t irrefutable proof the skeleton belonged to Laura Hudson.

Chloe had to suck in a careful breath. She could still picture the woman all these years later. Because Mrs. Hudson had been the kindergarten-room mom since Chloe had been in class with Mary, Jack’s little sister. Laura had embodied everything a mother should be, and nothing Chloe had ever seen a mother be, so she’d been fascinated.

But worse than that memory was the fact that this discovery affected not just Jack but also Mary, one of her closest friends. Anna, their other sister. All those Hudsons.

They’d worked so hard, but the answers had always eluded them. And Chloe had never considered what it might mean—good and horrendously awful—if they finally got them.

She looked at Jack in the shadowy dark. No matter what it meant, he shouldn’t be here. He needed to be with his family.

“I’ll oversee this, then have Ry drive me back to my place. You go home.”

“We both know your brother’s license is suspended. You’re not having him drive you anywhere.”

“Fine. I’ll have someone appropriately licensed drive me home.”

Jack shook his head. Stubborn no matter what. “I don’t like that.”

“You’ve got bigger things to deal with.” He’d want to tell his family before anyone got word of this. He needed to.

He swallowed, looked hard into the dark—the opposite direction from where that set of bones lay in the ground.

The ground of her family’s ranch.

Would he be okay driving home on his own? Even if it wasn’t confirmed, it was possible that this was his mother. He probably shouldn’t be driving anywhere by himself.

This is Jack Hudson you’re talking about . Still, the idea of him driving by himself back to the Hudson Ranch after this... It didn’t settle right.

“Maybe one of your brothers—”

“I can handle a two-mile drive.” He snapped it out like an order. Boss to subordinate. But that wasn’t really him, even when they were working, so she just nodded.

He needed to feel in control. She wasn’t going to take that away from him in this moment. This horrible, awful, impossible moment.

“Then go,” she told him. Because he didn’t need to see the whole production once Bent County got out here. He didn’t need to see any of this.

Still, he hesitated. She couldn’t begin to imagine all the reasons he might have, but she reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. Friend to friend. Coworker to coworker. And, okay, whatever else they were when no one was around.

“Go. I’ve got this. You trust Deputy Brink to do her job. That’s who I am right now.”

His gaze finally met hers, dark. She couldn’t read whatever lurked there—because he knew how to hide. Right in plain sight. Wasn’t that the crux of so many of her problems with this man?

“I trust you , Chloe. Period,” he muttered. Then he sighed, big and deep. “Promise me.”

She could have pretended to misunderstand, but she knew him all too well. “I promise I won’t let Ry drive me anywhere. Go. Be with your family. I’ll get you an update once I have one.”

She thought he might argue some more, but there was one indisputable fact about Jack Hudson. No matter how uptight, no matter how controlling, no matter how everything , his family came first.

So he walked back to his truck and went to them.

J ACK WELCOMED THE numb feeling that settled over him. Numbness was better than pain, and pain was pointless until he had real answers. Even then...

If he thought he could hide this situation from his siblings until he had confirmation, he would have. But with Bent County involved, there were just too many ways the whispers would start.

And come knocking on the door of the Hudson Ranch.

So he drove home in the middle of the night, not sure how everything had just flipped on him. His entire adult life, suddenly different.

If that skeleton was his mother...

It wasn’t a shock in that she was dead. He’d known both his parents had to be. There was no way they had disappeared on purpose. They’d been good parents, good people. They never would have left their six kids alone and defenseless.

Not on purpose.

So Jack and his siblings had known for a very long time that even if they ever found answers, there was no happy ending to this story.

But Jack had never fully realized, in all these years, how there had still been this awful bubble of hope inside him. A stray thought that they might be alive. That there might be a reason that wasn’t terrible.

This strange little dream he might see them again someday.

And now that hope was gone.

It would take time to match the bones to his mother. It would take more time to filter through all the evidence. So they were dealing in unknowns for a while yet, and Jack was no fan of dealing with those.

But in a place the size of Sunrise, with a cold case that still lingered in the town’s entire identity—in the Hudson family’s entire identity—he couldn’t hold off going to his siblings with the facts.

He had to tell them the possibilities.

He didn’t drive his truck to the outbuilding where they parked their vehicles. He parked right out front of the main house and was greeted by a couple of Cash’s dogs. He didn’t crouch to pet them like he usually did. He went straight for the front door, punched in the security code and then stepped inside.

The house was dark and quiet, but only for a moment. He heard a stair creak, and then the hall light came on, illuminating Mary. She was the oldest of his two younger sisters but still eight years younger than him. He’d been an adult when their parents disappeared. Well, eighteen. She’d been ten.

And still she’d stepped up. She’d helped with meals, with keeping school paperwork organized. As she’d gotten older, she’d taken on most of the administrative tasks of running Hudson Sibling Solutions and the Hudson Ranch.

“What are you doing up?” he asked.

She put a hand over her ever-growing stomach. Pretty soon there’d be another baby around here. Such a strange twist and turn of fate these past few years. Marriages and babies and adulthood for his younger siblings, far beyond what Jack had ever found for himself.

He’d been keeping as busy as possible lately to keep from thinking too much about that.

“I was up using the bathroom for the hundredth time and heard the alarm disengage and the door open. It’s four in the morning. Did something come up?”

It would be easy to lie to Mary. Being sheriff gave him the perfect alibi for everything, but Mary tended to see right through him. And really, there was no point in putting her off. This had to be done.

“Yes, something came up that we all need to discuss.”

He watched her hand tighten on the banister, but no sense of foreboding showed on her face. “What is it?” she asked calmly.

He couldn’t tell her it wasn’t serious like he wanted to. This was incredibly serious. “No one’s in danger. But this is important. For all of us. Once everyone wakes up—”

“It seems like this is something that requires waking everyone up.”

“It won’t change anything. To wait.”

Mary studied him for a few seconds. “Then it won’t change anything to wake everyone up.” She turned then, not waiting for him to agree or disagree.

Jack didn’t follow, but slowly and quietly—no doubt for the sake of the still-sleeping kids, since his family usually didn’t do anything quietly—his siblings began to arrange themselves in the living room.

Once everyone had settled, Mary nodded at him. She stood leaning against her husband, and Anna stood next to hers as well. Grant and Dahlia sat on the couch next to Cash. Carlyle stood behind Cash, clasping his hand at his shoulder. Palmer and Louisa settled themselves on an armchair.

Jack had gotten used to being a solitary figure long before his siblings had all coupled up. He’d been the man of the house. In charge. He’d needed that separation. To not be their brother anymore but to be the adult. To be in charge so he could keep everyone together until they were old enough to go on their own.

No one had. Oh, Grant had gone off to war; Mary to college; Palmer and Anna, the rodeo for a bit—but they’d all come back home. They’d all come back.

And now, in this moment, he was the only one who knew this terrible thing, and it killed him because he wanted to keep it that way. So his siblings would never have to feel this.

But it just wasn’t possible. So he jumped right in. “There was a body uncovered on the Brink Ranch. It had been there for some time. Bent County will take on the investigation and attempt to identify the body, determine a cause of death.”

“Why’d you wake us all up to tell us this, Jack?” Anna asked. With the kind of gravity like she knew exactly why.

“There was a ring with the remains. I recognized it right away. Mom’s wedding ring.”

There was a moment of complete and utter silence, everyone absorbing those words. Then Jack watched as every single member of his family turned to each other. Mary buried her head in her husband Walker’s chest. Anna turned away, but Hawk pulled her back into an embrace. Louisa wound her arms around Palmer’s waist, Cash’s grip on Carlyle’s hand tightened, and Dahlia rested her head on Grant’s shoulder.

Jack tried to swallow the obstruction in his throat to ensure his voice was calm and clear. It came out rusty. “This is not incontrovertible proof, but it’s—”

“What about Dad?” Anna demanded. Her voice was harsh, but there were tears in her eyes.

“I don’t have any answers, Anna. All I have is a ring.” He thought that admission might break him in two, but when his heart kept beating and his breath kept filling his lungs, he figured he’d survive. “Deputy Brink is handling it. We all know we can trust her to handle it.”

“Except this was found on her family’s ranch?” Palmer said, no doubt echoing some people’s thoughts on the matter.

But Jack didn’t need to defend Chloe. Mary did it first.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” she said, standing up for her friend. “I trust Chloe. No matter what.”

“The Brinks—”

Carlyle cut off whatever Palmer was going to say. No doubt something about the Brinks and their connection to crime, drugs and a hell of a lot of trouble.

“The Bent County detectives will be the ones handling it, right?” Carlyle asked. “Hart and Laurel? They’ll be doing the investigation, and we all know they’re damn good at their jobs.”

Thomas Hart and Laurel Delaney-Carson had worked with Cash and Carlyle a few months back, and their hard work had helped keep Cash from being blamed for his ex-wife’s murder. Hart had also been involved in helping to solve a case last year when someone had tried to kill Anna.

They were both good detectives, and Jack trusted them.

He had to.

“We’ll be investigating too,” Anna said.

“No,” Jack said firmly, looking at his baby sister and the stubborn set of her chin. “We’re staying out of this.”

All eyes turned to him, surprise slackening every single person’s features.

“Jack. You can’t be serious,” Grant said in his quiet way.

But Jack was very serious. He’d made this decision the minute he’d driven off the Brink Ranch. “This is a Bent County investigation. We will stay out of their way and let them investigate. There’s nothing for us to do here.”

“Do you have a head injury?” Anna demanded. “This is our parents we’re talking about. Our seventeen-year-old cold case. Why the hell would we stay out of the way now that we actually have a lead?”

“Maybe once we have all the facts, we can decide to pursue it. But for now, we wait. Because none of us need to be involved in the details of our parents’ remains.” No one in this room needed to see what he’d seen tonight, needed to have that haunting them for the rest of their days.

For years, they’d tried to come up with clues to follow when it came to their parents’ disappearance. For years, they’d gone over the campsite. Their parents’ pasts. Anything and everything. That had seemed innocent enough. Important enough that they could all be in on the investigating.

But nothing had involved bodies. Nothing had involved the reality of their parents being dead. Not just dead— bones .

No. None of them needed to see it. “We’ll give Bent County the space to handle the investigation. There’s going to be talk around town. People will want to know what we think. I want us to be as quiet about it as we can until we know for sure what we’re dealing with. Because we don’t know yet. All we know is, we’ve uncovered a ring that used to be our mother’s.”

For a moment, that old hope tried to grow back, but he ruthlessly plucked that weed of a thought.

His parents were dead, and it was someone else’s job to figure out how. And why.