Page 4 of Cold Case Discovery

Ry leaned close; this time whatever he whispered to Chloe was lost in the sound of insects buzzing and breezes sliding through the dilapidated buildings.

“Show us,” she repeated, whatever Ry had said clearly not winning her over.

Ry led them away from the house, which had seen better decades. They quietly moved toward a caved-in barn. Ry. Chloe. Jack.

It was his desire to take over, to lead the way, but he tamped it down. Because this was Chloe’s deal, no matter how little he liked it, and he’d only come along to ensure her brother wasn’t laying some kind of trap.

Chloe might not think Ry capable, but Jack had spent his entire adult life seeing what drugs did to seemingly reasonable people. Part and parcel with a life in law enforcement.

They walked for a while in silence, and Jack noticed as they came around the side of the barn that there was a battery-powered lantern sitting in the dirt, tipped over, like it had been dropped there.

“I had this idea that I’d dig out a new entrance to the cellar,” Ry said. And if he was telling the truth, it was clear he’d been high when he’d had that idea, because that wasn’t going to work.

“The first one I hit, I figured it was animal. Dad used to bury the dogs out here. You remember, Chloe?”

She didn’t say anything. She pointed her flashlight beam on the unearthed dirt. A shovel lay haphazardly next to the pile.

“Then I got a few more and... It’s not animal bones. I know animals. It ain’t animals.”

Jack didn’t believe that. Lots of people mistook bigger bones for human. He approached the hole with Chloe, shined his light at the ground as well.

He sucked in a breath. Heard Chloe do the same.

Human. Definitely. A full skeleton, almost. Jack swept his flashlight beam down the bones, his mind already turning with next steps. They’d have to notify Bent County. The Brink Ranch was a little outside Sunrise’s jurisdiction—and besides that, they didn’t have the labs or professional capacity to deal with dead bodies.

It might not be nefarious. Ranchers back in the day buried their kin on property. There were laws against such things now, but it didn’t mean people always abided by them. This could be anything. It didn’t have to be criminal.

Still, Jack studied the skeletal remains with an eye toward foul play. Hard not to. He swept his beam back up and noticed that something glittered. He didn’t want to touch anything, destroy the scene any more than Ry already had, but he trained his light on that glitter and crouched so he could study it closer.

And it felt like the earth turned upside down, like every atom of oxygen in his body evaporated. He saw dark spots for a moment.

Chloe crouched next to him, put her hand on his back. “Jack? Are you okay? What is it?”

He had to breathe, but it was hard to suck in air. When he spoke, he heard how strangled he sounded. But he said what needed saying: “I recognize that ring.”

Chloe peered closer. “How?”

“It was my mother’s.”

Chapter Two

Chloe figured she’d heard him wrong. She had to have heard him wrong. But he stood abruptly and took hard strides away from the remains. She was frozen, looking down at the skeleton in the beam of her flashlight. She tried to process what he was saying.

Because it couldn’t be. Of all the crazy, impossible, terrible things thismightbe, it couldn’t be that.

But she saw the ring, and Jack Hudson was not a jump-to-conclusions guy. He didn’t say any random thought he had. The man plotted out his life to the millisecond. Even in crisis.

If he said that the little glitter of gold and diamond there in the dirt was his mother’s, she believed him.

Oh God.

She stood up about as abruptly as he had. Crossed to him. There were so many...so many horrible revolving pieces to this. And she somehow had to find a path through.

For him. “Jack.”

“I’ll call it in,” he said roughly.

“Jack—”

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