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Chloe was bone tired, but a text or a phone call wasn’t going to cut it. Not for this.

She hadn’t been back home. When the police had arrived at the ranch, she’d stayed through everything. Even when it became clear what they were dealing with, and someone pointed out that Chloe was one of the landowners.

The detectives hadn’t liked that, but she knew enough to avoid anyone hauling her off the property. Just like she knew enough to keep Ry from being hauled off too. Once she’d gotten as much out of Bent County officers as she knew she was going to get, she’d driven Ry back to her cabin and insisted he stay put.

She didn’t know if he’d listen, but it didn’t matter. She had to drive back out to the Hudson Ranch and update the family.

Eventually, Bent County would get around to filling them in, but they were likely still organizing information. Chloe had to get in and tell the Hudsons some things before Bent County did so the Hudsons could organize.

Jack probably had a plan in place already, but he didn’t know...

Chloe pulled up to the main house on the Hudson Ranch with nothing but dread in her stomach. She was used to delivering bad news. It went hand in hand with the job. And in a town like Sunrise, she was often delivering bad news to people she knew and liked.

But this was different. On so many levels. Complicated levels. And she just didn’t know how to arrange it all behind her usual cop facade.

She got out of her car and trudged toward the porch. She’d been to the Hudson house for a variety of reasons over the years, but never for the reason Jack came to her place. Set lines. Set boundaries. Ones she’d helped enact because she’d thought it would somehow keep her safe from all her soft feelings.

It hadn’t, and she didn’t like to be reminded of that. She straightened her shoulders, knocked on the door. She’d changed into her Sunrise SD polo and put on her badge in an attempt to feel official on the outside since she didn’t feel it on the inside.

Mary answered. She was dressed for the day, prim and proper as usual, even with her big pregnant belly. She was clearly tired, though, but Chloe wasn’t about to tell her that.

“Aren’t you pretty.”

Mary’s smile was faint, and she rolled her eyes. “I’m puffy and exhausted and ready to be done. I’m guessing this isn’t a social call,” she said, nodding at Chloe’s badge.

Chloe tried to keep her smile in place as she shook her head. “No, I thought I’d update you all before Bent County swoops in.”

Mary nodded. “Come on. We’re all in the dining room.” Mary led her deep into the house. Normally, there would have been lots of conversation, arguing, shouts and dogs barking echoing through the house before Chloe even got close to the dining room.

This morning it was silent. When she entered the room, the only sound was the scraping of forks on plates, though she wasn’t sure anyone was eating a lot.

The table was full, everyone—and there was a lot of everyone at this house—taking a seat. Paired up with their significant others. Cash’s twelve-year-old flanked between him and Carlyle. Anna’s baby tucked into her husband’s arm.

And Jack, sitting at the head of the table. Surrounded by his family, and yet he looked so alone.

There was a chorus of unsure greetings from the table when Mary announced her arrival. Chloe refused a seat and a plate. “I just came to give you all a few updates. I’ll be out of your hair in a few minutes.”

It wasn’t pure cowardice. She wanted to get out before Bent County showed up and asked why she was here. Besides, she had a shift to work.

“Izzy and I are going to go handle the dog chores,” Carlyle said, her hand on Cash’s twelve-year-old daughter’s shoulder.

Chloe half expected the girl to argue. Even she knew Izzy didn’t like to be shuffled off, but it seemed there’d already been discussion and agreement since she disappeared with Carlyle to take care of Cash’s dogs without argument.

“Go on, then,” Jack said, not unkindly but with that stoic detachment of his firmly in place.

“Another set of remains was found next to the first.” Chloe had to resist the urge to clear her throat, but she couldn’t resist the urge to look at Jack, to try to see what he was really feeling under that mask of stoicism.

Mostly, she figured no one would see that lost look to his dark eyes. They’d see the grim expression, the hard line of his mouth, and think he had it under control.

He didn’t. Chloe knew he didn’t, and she knew he’d die before admitting it to anyone. Even himself.

“Any identifying information?” he asked.

“They wouldn’t tell me anything, but I took a slightly illegal and unauthorized picture of some evidence they gathered. I can show whoever is willing to bend the rules a little bit what I’ve got.”

Immediately, most of the Hudsons crowded around her as she took out her phone. She pulled the picture up on the screen and tried not to betray her surprise when Jack stepped close enough in front of her to see it as well.

“You already saw one ring, Jack, but there was a ring with the other remains as well. They’re both in this evidence bag.” She zoomed in on the picture so they could see the rings.

Then she looked up at Jack. He didn’t have to say anything. Chloe could see it in his eyes.

He nodded.

Chloe knew it would be Dean Hudson’s wedding band, but maybe she’d hoped... Oh, she didn’t know. There was very little possibility the two skeletal remains weren’t the missing Hudson parents.

She had to remind herself to look away from Jack, to focus on her job. “The detectives will be by to fill you guys in. To ask questions, I’m sure. I...tried to convince them to let me, but it was a no go.”

“It’s best if it’s a third party,” Jack said. “We’re all staying out of it, letting Bent County do their job.”

Chloe opened her mouth to say something, but she forgot what because that didn’t make any sense. “I’m sorry. What?”

“See?” Anna muttered. “Staying out of it doesn’t make any sense.”

But Jack’s expression remained firm, and he didn’t look at Anna. “Thanks for the update, Deputy Brink, but we think—”

“ You think,” Palmer interjected.

“—it’s best if we let police handle this.”

“Oh. Well, sure.” She had just been resoundingly dismissed. She was so shocked by it, so confused by Jack’s unusual response, she just stood there for a moment, not quite sure what to do.

“Are you sure you don’t want any breakfast, Chloe?” Mary asked.

Chloe shook her head. No. She needed to leave. She needed... She glanced at Jack. He was calmly sipping from his coffee mug. But she recognized those careful, mild movements.

They were very deliberate. Very careful , like he was holding himself braced for a blow. He’d looked like that when Louisa had been kidnapped last year, when Anna had been in the hospital—basically any time a member of his family was in trouble, it was like there was a ticking time bomb inside he was doing everything he could not to detonate.

And it was none of her business. “Well, I’m heading into my shift. I’ll...” She didn’t know what to say if they didn’t want insider updates on the whole thing. Well, not they . Jack.

But Jack ran the show. This time she had to clear her throat in order to speak. “I’ll see you all later.”

She turned on a heel, and she had no idea why she felt emotional . And just so very, very alone. But she walked out of the house having to work way too hard to fight back tears.

She just needed rest. After she worked her shift, she’d sleep. Of course, first she’d have to deal with what she was going to do with her brother. Which was a whole other headache she didn’t have any answers for.

Before she could reach the bottom of the porch stairs, she heard Jack say her name.

She closed her eyes and sucked in a breath. Repeated her Be strong mantra a few times before she turned to face him.

“Thank you for coming out,” he said, a little stiffly. “We appreciate the update.”

She couldn’t help but be amused despite everything churning inside her. She knew them all a little too well. “Mary made you come say that.”

One side of his mouth almost curved. “My siblings can’t make me do anything.”

“But she did. Because she’s Mary, and she can make you do things. Especially when she’s that pregnant.”

He shrugged, not refuting it. He squinted out at the mountains, the pretty Hudson Ranch, and didn’t say anything. But he didn’t leave either.

And she knew he shouldn’t since he had all that family under his very own roof, but she could see the loneliness on him. Because like recognized like.

“They’ll run tests,” she said reassuringly. Maybe she didn’t understand the hands-off stance he was taking, but she wanted him to know it was handled. “They’ll do what they can to determine when. How.”

“I know how it works, Chloe.”

It was ridiculous the little thrill she got out of this man calling her by her first name when he damn well should . It wasn’t like they were at work. “Sometimes it’s good to hear someone else say what you already know.”

He didn’t say anything to that, and she knew she should go. Had to get out of here soon. But she just couldn’t step away from him when he seemed so alone.

“They’re not going to let me within a hundred feet of this case since my name is on the deed of the land. They’ve already questioned Ry. I’ll be next.”

“What about your parents?”

She shrugged, trying not to go on the defensive. He had every right to ask that question. Hell, she’d asked that question. “I imagine they’ll do that too. But they’ll have to get down to Texas to visit Dad in prison—and if they have better luck tracking down my mother than I ever have, more power to them. I’ll be first because I’m here. Because I was there.”

“I was there with you.”

“I didn’t mention it.”

“Chloe. I called it in.”

She shrugged. “You can always say I called you first and then you called it in.”

“Why would I lie about that?”

“You know why, Jack.”

“I know why you think I should lie, but I don’t think you have any clue what I think.”

She had no business getting pissed at him over relationship stuff. Mostly because she was just as much to blame for everything involved in this, but also because now so clearly wasn’t the time.

But she was tired, and she was feeling all emotional over too many things to count, and he was the one who’d brought it up. So she snapped. “Oh, really? Then enlighten me. What does the almighty Jack Hudson think?”

“You think it’s because I’m embarrassed. Because of your family or because I’m your boss.”

“That’s not embarrassing, Jack. It’s unethical. Something you are historically very opposed to.” She looked up at him to give him a kind of so there smirk, but his expression was serious, his gaze steady, and when he spoke, he spoke with all the gravity of the truth.

“I’m not embarrassed of you, Chloe. Not in the least.”

Her foolish heart felt as though it actually skipped a beat. Was she really this pathetic?

Yes, yes you are. When it comes to him, you always have been.

She swallowed, trying to find some retort that would settle all this terrible longing inside her, but she heard the sound of a car approaching and turned toward it.

Not just any car. A Bent County cruiser was driving up the gravel road when Chloe had been planning to get out of here before they showed up. Because no doubt the detectives were inside.

“Damn,” she muttered.

“Don’t worry. I’m going to protect you, Chloe,” Jack said, like that made any sense. But before she could ask him what on earth he was talking about, he was striding forward to meet the detectives.

J ACK DEALT WITH the detectives. He didn’t lie to them about being with Chloe when her brother called, but he didn’t explain either. Since the detectives were more concerned with identifying the remains, keeping Sunrise SD out of the proceedings and the Brink family connection to the Hudson family, they didn’t prod for answers. It wasn’t relevant to the case.

He wouldn’t let it be. He’d protect her reputation. No matter what.

The detectives didn’t share any breaking new information. Next steps were with the forensic anthropologist and the assurance that all the Brinks would be questioned.

He might have balked at that, but at the end of the day, it was clear the remains had been in the ground for some time. Long enough that Chloe and Ry would have been kids when it happened. Maybe the detectives thought they’d seen something, heard something, would remember something from back then, but Jack doubted it.

First, Chloe would have said long ago. And even Ry didn’t seem like the type who could keep his mouth shut about much. That’s half of why he got in so much trouble. No criminal mastermind, there. Just a kid with no direction who’d gotten mixed up with drugs.

It amazed him, regularly, that Chloe had somehow come out of all that to be the good cop and good person she was.

She’d left pretty quickly after the detectives had arrived, having to get to her shift, and Jack had taken the detectives inside, working with Mary to gather all the information they had on their parents’ case. He handed over years’ worth of files.

“You don’t want to make copies?” Laurel asked with a raised eyebrow.

“We have most of this stuff digitized, but we’re happy to hand over anything that might help you get to the bottom of this.” He ignored the disapproving look on Mary’s face.

Hart looked from Mary to Jack, a handful of files now in his grasp. “It’s going to be best if you guys stay out of it for now.”

Jack nodded. “We plan to.”

“You forget I’ve had to deal with your family before, Sheriff,” Laurel offered with a smile, as if to put some kind of friendly spin on things. Jack didn’t particularly feel like being friendly.

“I’ve made it clear to my family our best course of action is to step back and let you all do your job. I can’t promise they’ll listen, but I’ll do my best to control the situation.” That was what he’d done for the past seventeen years. No reason to stop now.

Hart and Laurel shared a look, clearly not believing him. But they didn’t press the matter.

“We’ll keep you as informed as we can. We’re going to be looking into the disappearance again, but no real answers can come until the forensic anthropologist gives us a report. We don’t have a timetable on that.”

Jack nodded. He’d never dealt with a case like this, so he wasn’t fully abreast of the procedure, but he knew the general proceedings when anyone had to call in outside agencies for help. No doubt it would be a long, drawn-out process. Even more reason for his family to stay out of it. Focus on the lives they were building, cases that needed their attention, the ranch.

Mary showed the detectives back out, and Jack tried not to think about how long this was going to drag out. How much he was going to have to deal with the speculation at work. How difficult it was going to be to keep his family reined in.

But difficult was the name of the game, wasn’t it? It wasn’t like things had been particularly easy lately. Sure, his siblings had paired off, some of them starting families, but there had been danger and threat at every turn.

No rest for the wicked.

And still, he just stood in the office where they kept their paper files and stared blankly at the now-empty drawer. Sixteen years of work. Research. Investigation. And he was just handing it over to two people who’d never met his parents.

Who’d never been hugged by his mother or listened to one of his father’s corny jokes. People who’d never been surrounded by the love that Laura and Dean Hudson had imbued every last interaction with.

They hadn’t been perfect people. He knew that. But they’d been good.

And he thought he’d grieved over it a long, long time ago.

He knew, mired in all this old grief, he was absolutely doing the right thing for his family. Maybe he couldn’t save them from going through this all over again, but if he could make a buffer, a wall between them and all this old hurt, he would consider it a success.

“For the record, I may not agree fully, but I understand what you’re doing.”

Jack turned toward Mary, who was standing in the doorway, arms across her chest and resting on her pregnant belly. Expression disapproving even if her words were about understanding.

“What’s that?”

“Trying to protect us from the harsh reality that our parents were murdered, put in a shallow grave some seventeen years ago, and we never would have found the answers if not for Ry Brink’s random and likely drug-fueled decision to dig a hole.”

Jack felt something inside him constrict at the tidy, emotionless way Mary laid out the truth.

“You saw something you don’t want us to have to see,” she continued.

He tried to block the image of that ring and bones from his mind, but he couldn’t quite manage it.

“I think if you were honest about that, you’d have more of us supporting you. Even Anna might relent a little if she knew—”

“Hawk will keep her in line.”

“I can’t believe you just said that. Out loud. And no bolt of lightning came to strike you down like it very well should.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean he loves her. He’ll protect her, and that means keeping her from diving headfirst into all this.” Not that Jack was sure he’d succeed, but Hawk was the only chance of Anna actually listening. So Jack would depend on it.

Mary was silent for a long while. “Sometimes love isn’t about protecting people, Jack. Sometimes it’s just about loving them.” She didn’t wait for him to have any answer to that. She just left.

Jack refused to engage with that sentiment. It was his normal weekend off from the sheriff’s department anyway, so he went out and did some ranch chores. He went through his normal day, trying to shut everything off.

But it only seemed to settle deeper, tying tight, heavy knots in his gut, in his chest. Every step, every breath became harder. Every minute that ticked by seemed to be leading somewhere terrible.

Only nothing out of the ordinary happened. He had a normal dinner with his family. Well, not normal . There was a heavy quiet that had taken over the house today. Even baby Caroline appeared to have gotten the memo and wasn’t overly fussy or energetic. No one could seem to muster a conversation that didn’t immediately lull into silence.

People excused themselves earlier than usual. No one ate dessert. Jack had cleanup duty with Carlyle, whose nervous energy seemed to suck all his own energy away. Or maybe it was the fact that he hadn’t really slept.

Once she’d brought all the dishes into the kitchen, she paused, staring at him. Since he’d never known her to hesitate over just about anything, he raised an eyebrow. “Something you wanted to say?”

“Cash wanted me to run it by you first, but I figure I’d tell Zeke,” she said, referring to her brother not mixed up in the Hudson household. “He’s got all those crazy connections to underground spy people. I know you want Bent County handling it, but Zeke might have a line on a good... What did they call it? Forensic person or whatever? He knows some people who could poke around, and they wouldn’t get in Bent County’s way.”

Jack wanted to dismiss it out of hand. He wanted to dismiss everything out of hand, but the more people looking into this who weren’t his family, the quicker this could move. “That’d be fine, Carlyle. Thank you for asking.”

They worked in silence for a while; then, just about when they were finished and he thought he could escape to the isolation of his bedroom, Carlyle said something that stopped him in his tracks.

“Chloe’s a good listener.”

Jack turned his head slowly to stare at her. Her blue-gray eyes held his, but she didn’t look accusatory or like she was holding some secret over his head.

She shrugged. “I just know, from experience, sometimes you don’t want to, like...be a burden to your family. And I could sit here and lecture you for a million days how you’re not, but it doesn’t change the feeling you don’t want to unload on the people also going through what you’re going through.”

“What does that have to do with Deputy Brink?”

Carlyle rolled her eyes. “ Chloe’s a good listener. That’s all I’m saying.” Then she shrugged and left the kitchen.

Leaving Jack standing there, breathing a little too hard. It wasn’t concern that Carlyle knew he had a more-than-working relationship with Chloe. He’d had a bad feeling for a while that Carlyle had some inkling of what was going on between them. But she’d never come out and said anything, and Carlyle wasn’t exactly subtle .

It was Mary’s words about love. Carlyle’s words about unloading on people. It was the oppressive silence in the house, like grief had tightened its ugly chains around the whole ranch once again.

He didn’t want it to. That first year after losing his parents had been the hardest damn year of his life—all their lives—and he didn’t want it touching any of his siblings again. Ever again.

But here it was, and he couldn’t seem to breathe. Couldn’t seem to find a solution. No amount of keeping them separate from the realities seemed to change what they were all feeling internally.

Sad and shaken and quiet.

Except there was something else inside him. A tightening in his chest, a struggle to breathe. The pressure of seventeen years beating down on him, like someone pounding a stake into the ground, and he was the stake.

He was half-afraid he was having some kind of cardiac event, but there was no shooting pain in his arm. No losing consciousness. Just this overwhelming pressure —worse but not all that different from when things went off-plan.

Panic attack.

To hell with that. Just to hell with it. He strode out of the kitchen, out the back door and toward his truck. Normally, he’d make sure someone knew where he was, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

He had to get out, and even though he wouldn’t admit to himself where he was going, it didn’t surprise him to pull off onto the shoulder of the road that led up to Chloe’s cabin fifteen minutes later.

He didn’t turn into the driveway. He idled on the shoulder, staring at the front door. She likely had Ry in there. She wouldn’t want her brother staying out at the ranch when he was unpredictable, and likely there was some police presence still. So this was a pointless endeavor. He wasn’t going inside. He wasn’t going to use her like some kind of crutch.

He did just fine on his own. Had for sixteen years. He’d finished raising a family. He’d built a business, been a cop, become sheriff. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t control. All on his own.

And still he fished his phone out of his pocket. Still he brought up a text message to Chloe.

He shouldn’t do this. He knew he shouldn’t. That was the wildest part of everything that had happened with Chloe since he’d let his guard down at that ridiculous party last year. She had touched him, wearing that excuse for a dress, and it had upended something inside.

Every finely tuned, rule-following, controlled, upstanding rule he’d set for himself, killed himself to follow...

He’d break, every time, when it came to her. Just like he was doing right now, typing out the text.

You want to go for a drive?

She didn’t respond, but not two minutes later the door to the cabin opened, and she stepped outside. Her hair was wet, and she was wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt, but she smiled at him and walked toward his truck, her cat in her arms.

And weirdly, he could breathe again.