Page 22 of Cold Case Discovery

But the past few days were getting all muddled, blurry, when it was the last thing that should be happening, what with skeletal remains and mutilated snakes and her own damn family. It was turning her soft.

Because she should have pushed him away, but she let him kiss her here. In broad daylight. In front of the Hudson house, which housed like a hundred people. People who would have questions, who would tell other people, who would erase all the lines they’d carefully drawn.

And still she drowned in the kiss. They weren’t supposed todothis, but she couldn’t stop herself because he kissed her with a gentleness that undid all her paltry walls. These were the ones that really got to her. He didn’t pull this out often. Usually, there wasn’t time for soft, leisurely. But his hands were on her face, his grip gentle as the kiss spun out into something that reached deeper than anything else ever had, until she felt like gravity simply ceased to exist.

He eased back, his dark eyes studying her face, his mouth still just a breath from hers. She wasn’t quite sure how, after a year of sneaking around, something could change, but something had.

Maybe this place was magic.Or a curse.

She had to shake her head to get both ridiculous thoughts out. Step away from him to find some anchor in this storm. “We have to get to work.” Her voice shook.

“Yeah.” His voice didn’t, but his exhale did.

Well, at least there was that.

She should break it off. Stop this right now. Before it got more complicated.

It was already way too complicated.

But she walked back into his home, shoulder to shoulder to him, and didn’t say a word. They went their separate ways in the house, and she ran through the shower upstairs, got dressed for work and then ignored Mary’s insisting she eat something. She knew Jack expected to drive her over to her cabin and drop her off at her cruiser, but she needed some space.

She didn’t even get halfway to her car before she heard him call her name. She turned. He’d also showered, changed into work clothes. He looked put together as always, in his perfectly pressed khakis and Sunrise Sheriff’s Department polo.

His expression was very grim, which wasn’t all that unusual for work, but there was something about him that had her tensing.

“We have to get to the hospital,” he said, striding toward his cruiser.

“The hospital. Why?”

“Suzanne just called me,” he said, referring to the Sunrise administrative assistant. “Kinsey was at your place when—”

“You had someone watch my cabin overnight?” she demanded, surprised by this brand-new information, which he had neither shared with her nor asked permission todo.

“No, I had someone drive by a few times overnight and—”

“Without telling me?”

“Yeah, without telling you. Now, would you let me finish?” He jerked open the driver’s-side door. “Kinsey was shot at. Suzanne says it was just a graze, but he’s at the hospital getting it looked at, and we need to go down there and get his story.”

Chloe’s heart slammed against her chest, enough to get over the frustration with Jack doing all that without telling her. She hopped into the passenger seat. “You sure he’s okay? Should I call Julie?” Steve’s wife would no doubt be worried sick.

Steve Kinsey had been with Sunrise since its inception, moving with Jack over from Bent County. He was in his late forties and had three teenagers at home, who he liked to bemoan even though he did everything he could to take time off to make all their many birthdays, holidays and sporting events.

“He called Julie himself. He’s fine,” Jack said, pulling out of the Hudson Ranch and onto the main highway, which would take them into Hardy and to the hospital.

But his hands were so tight on the wheel that his knuckles were white. Back to a perfectly capable outer shell and nothing inside but ticking time bombs.

Chloe blew out a slow breath, trying to focus on the important things. Steve had been shot. At her cabin? “Was someone trying to break in?”

“Suzanne didn’t have the details. We’ll get them from him ourselves.”

They drove for a while in silence. Sometimes she wished she couldn’t read him so easily. She tried—so hard—to keep her mouth shut. To let him deal with his stuff without trying to offer some kind of comfort.

This was work. This was that line they hadbothagreed on. And it was a line that had worked for ayear.

But as they approached the hospital, she couldn’t keep it in any longer. “It could have been anything, Jack. Not just the thing you asked him to do. That’s the job.”

“But it wasn’t anything, was it?” Jack pulled the cruiser in front of the hospital, and they got out at the same time.

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