Page 6 of Cold Case Discovery

“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 trustyou, 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 howeverything, his family came first.

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

JACKWELCOMEDTHEnumb 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 Solutionsandthe 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 andadulthoodfor 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.

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