Page 17 of Cold Case Discovery

For a long time she could only stare at him. Ry at the Hudson Ranch? Ry withallthe Hudsons. And her. No. “Jack, Ry isn’t...”

“I know what Ry is and what he isn’t,” Jack returned. “You’re both going to be looked after until we get to the bottom of this.”

Chloe felt like she couldn’t breathe.Looked after. It was one thing in secret. It was another thing if he waslooking afterthings in front of his family. Another thing if Ry was involved.

“Jack, we can’t...”

“I understand your reticence, Chloe, I do,” he said, his voice low and less cop-Jack and more the Jack he only ever was when they were alone together. “But this is concerning. I can’t just ignore it, and I can’t just let you handle it on your own when you’ve got Ry and a job to contend with and this could be... We don’t have the first clue what happened here or with my parents. Until we do, we have to act with all the caution in the world so no one else gets hurt.”

He tried to hide it, but she could easily see all that grief he’d talked about up at the overlook there in his dark eyes, and she didn’t know how to argue with that. So she went inside to tell her brother they were going to stay at the Hudson Ranch.

JACKLETCHLOEdrive Ry and Tiger over to the ranch in her personal car, though it pained him. They both had a shift tomorrow, so he could drive her to her cabin on the way into Sunrise headquarters and pick up her patrol car.

Maybe this whole thing was an overreaction. He could admit that he did that sometimes when it came to people’s safety. But the sayingBetter safe than sorrywas his own personal mantra. Maybe itwassomeone who was ticked off Chloe had arrested them, and she was as trained and capable of handling it as anyone, but it could just as easily be a threat that pertained to last night’s discovery. And that made everything more tenuous.

Either way, someone had laid a threat at her door. The real shock was, she hadn’t really fought him on it. She’d gone inside, collected her things and her brother—maintaining a clear barrier between him and Ry.

Jack wasn’t sure which one of them she didn’t trust, truth be told. He was pretty sure she had a clear head when it came to her brother, but Jack also understood—even though his siblings tended to stay on the right side of the law—how easily someone you felt responsible for could blind you to the reality of a situation.

Jack pulled up to the main house, Chloe parking her car next to his truck. It was dark now, but the external house lights were on, along with a few internal.

Ry looked up at the house with wide eyes as he got out of Chloe’s car. Jack understood the mind of an addict a little too well. He was likely adding up how many hits he could get for the different things he saw. Jack hoped for Chloe’s sake that Ry could keep it together for this.

Ry didn’t say anything. Chloe seemed pretty determined to keep him and Jack from speaking at all, and Jack had no problem with that. He led them inside to where Mary was pacing the living room, Walker looking on disapprovingly from one of the armchairs.

“What happened?” Mary demanded. Not of Jack but of Chloe.

“Your brother overreacting?” She crouched and let Tiger go. The cat went all of three steps to lean against his leg.

“A mutilated snake was very purposefully strewn all over Chloe’s porch sometime this evening,” Jack said, trying to keep any and all inflection out of his voice.

Mary’s expression pinched. “Then I have to agree with Jack about you guys coming here. That timing... When you’ve never had anything like that happen—and then all of the sudden, bones and snakes. I don’t like it.”

“Well, you’ve got us in your clutches now. The magical Hudson Ranch, where nothing bad happens,” Chloe said, irreverently, of course.

Jack’s scowl deepened, but he didn’t have to defend his position. Mary did it for him, and Jack was well aware Mary’s very pregnant belly helped soften the message, and Chloe’s belligerence.

“We have an extensive security system. You won’t even get one of those doorbell cameras at your cabin.”

Chloe wrinkled her nose. “Those can’t protect you. All they can do is potentially identify whoever might be engaging in criminal behavior in their view.”

Jack narrowly resisted rolling his eyes.

“Well, we’ve got some rooms made up. Follow me and I’ll show you where to put your things. Are you hungry? We’ll get you all set up.” Mary was ushering them out of the room and up the stairs before anyone had a chance to answer any of her questions.

Walker was standing now, frowning at the stairs after his wife. “I tried to tell her to relax and let someone else handle it.”

“Yeah, how’d that work out for you?”

Walker grinned. “Yeah, well, I know she’s exhausted, because she let me help make the beds.”

“Are you sure you shouldn’t take her to a hospital right now?”

“That’s not funny. I tried.”

Jack chuckled. If there was anything that gave himsomelevel of comfort, it was the fact that his siblings had all ended up with people who tried to take care of them and ran into the same roadblocks he always did.

“This whole snake thing seems pretty personal. Meant to make her scared,” Walker said, growing serious.

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