Page 11 of Cold Case Discovery

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.

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