Page 37 of Cold Case Discovery

Mary and Jack immediately began to argue with her. Anna looked to be on the fence, while Cash and Grant said nothing. The significant others didn’t add anything at first, but eventually, when the arguing was clearly going nowhere, Louisa cut through all the chatter.

Chloe looked over at her. She was gripping Palmer’s hand. Clearly they’d had a few discussions about this.

“The real question is this,” Louisa said once everyone looked over at her. “If you found something implicating your brother, would you turn him in?”

Chloe turned her gaze from Louisa to Palmer. He looked so much like Jack, wasnothinglike his older brother. Except in this. That stoic, stern expression.

She could lie. She could be a good liar when she wanted to be. Hell, she lied to herself on a daily basis. But she shrugged. “I really don’t know. It would depend on the situation.”

Palmer leaned back in his seat, flung his arm over Louisa’s shoulders. “Then my vote is that you stay.”

Chloe had already started standing up to leave before the words penetrated. “Wait, what?”

“You were honest. That’s all that really matters. We can’t have secrets in an investigation, but siblings... I wouldn’t believe you if you’d said yes. But anI don’t know? That, I get. God knows I thought I’d have to cover up for Anna committing a crime at some point in our lives.”

“You mean, you haven’t?” Hawk murmured.

Anna put her hands over Caroline’s ears. “Not in front of thebaby,” she said with mock seriousness. “She’s going to grow up thinking her mother is a saint.”

This elicited a laugh from just about everyone in the room. A laugh. While they were sitting around talking about their parents’ disappearance and potential murder. Her family’s involvement in such a tragedy.

But, Chloe realized, here in a room where all the Hudsons were gathered—but not just Hudsons. Significant others and offspring too. Seventeen years of unknowns while life marched on had meant probably figuring out...you couldn’t live your life constantly mired in that old tragedy.

So maybe she should stop living mired in the reputation other people had given her last name.

Chapter Twelve

They went over it all. The old information the police had gathered when their parents had disappeared, what his siblings had gathered in the past few days. Nothing new, nothing groundbreaking, but it was good to talk it through.

Jack was trying to convince himself it was good. He knew it wasn’t true, but hefeltlike the only one struggling with the weight of what they were discussing. Not just anyone’s skeletal remains—his parents.

Not positively IDed yet, he reminded himself. Or tried to.

Though they’d all done some of their own investigating over the years, there wasn’t anything really new so far. Anna and Palmer had both been looking into any connection Mark Brink might have had to their parents. Mary had been looking through old ranch records to see if something jumped out connecting anything Hudson to the Brink Ranch. Cash had been working with Zeke and Zeke’s connections to see if he could get more information on the crime scene as it was right now.

“So, we did all this and we’re still in the same exact spot?” Anna groused.

“It’s not the same exact spot,” Mary said, clearly trying to sound optimistic. “Just like any cold case. We don’t know which corner might lead us to a new thread. So we keep going. I still have old ranch records to look through, and we don’t know what the forensic anthropologist might have to say. It’s a step.”

“It’s a foolish step,” Anna muttered.

“I think that’s a sign someone is tired,” Hawk said, earning a scowl from his wife. “Mary’s right. We’ve got next steps. Let’s call this a night. Caroline’s conked out anyway,” he said, gesturing to the sleeping baby in Anna’s arms.

She sighed and got to her feet, and everyone else began to disperse, couple by couple.

Chloe stood. “I better go check on Ry. Make sure Carlyle hasn’t scarred him for life.” She tried to smile. It faltered.

“Did you want to go get that scrapbook?” Jack asked.

She waved it off, already heading out of the room. “Tomorrow morning is soon enough,” she muttered. Then she disappeared. Jack wanted to follow her, but Mary started tidying up, so both he and Grant stepped in to stop her.

“Go to bed, Mary. We can clean up.”

She frowned at them both, hands on her hips, but Walker urged her out of the room so that it was just Jack and Grant collecting debris. Jack figured they’d work in quiet. Grant usually did.

“So, how long has your thing with Chloe been going on?”

If it had been anyone else standing there asking him that question, Jack would have had a quick answer. An easy lie. He expected things like that from just about everyone.

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