Page 44 of Cold Case Discovery

Jack pulled out a flashlight he must have grabbed from his truck. The beam shone across the grass, to a nice patio equipped with a ridiculously complicated-looking grill and then to a sliding glass door on the back of the house. Another curtain pulled tight. No lights here either.

“He’s not here,” Chloe said in a whisper. Not because they really needed to whisper, but because the night seemed to call for it.

“No.”

But before they could discuss it further, something beeped, and it was so incongruous to the quiet night around them that Chloe nearly screamed.

Funny how she could almost always put her cop hat on, put the fear of danger to the side, but something about this case involving her father inanyway made her feel more like the little girl who’d been terrified of him and less like the woman she’d built herself into.

He wasn’t evenhere.

Jack pulled his phone out of his pocket. Someone wascallinghim, because little pinging noises were hardly her father jumping out of the shadows to be her own personal bogeyman.

Jack answered, and Chloe could hear the faint hum of a female voice on the other line but not the actual words. And still, something about the way Jack held himself told her it was bad news.

“Thanks, Mary. Keep me updated.”

He turned to her in the dark. She couldn’t make out the expression on his face, but he touched her shoulder.

Bad,badnews.

“Ry’s missing.”

She didn’t know what she’d been expecting. But not that. Sheshouldhave expected it, but somehow it took the wind right out of her. “But...” Nobuts. That’s what Ry did.

She always screwed it all up, no matter how hard she tried.

“I’m sorry, Chloe.”

She shook her head, not that he could see it in the dark. Maybe it took her off guard inthismoment, but she’d also been ready for this in the long run. “I can track his phone. Maybe.” She pulled her own phone out of her pocket, ignoring the way her hand shook. “I wasn’t about to leave it up to chance. It’s something I used to do when he was in high school, and I was trying to keep him in school. I haven’t done it for years, so I was hoping he wouldn’t notice and turn it off.” She clicked the screen on her phone, brought up the location tracker and hoped.

The map moved around, zooming into a spot. Chloe would have felt immense relief, but he was in the middle of a campground by the mountains.

Not just any campground.

“That’s where my parents were camping the night they disappeared,” Jack said, his voice devoid of any and all emotion.

Chloe felt like her chest was caving in, but she didn’t let it show. Couldn’t. “If you don’t want to go there, we can—”

“I’m going,” Jack said sharply. But his voice softened on the next words. “This might connect, Chloe. Ry. The scrapbook. Hart missing. We can let someone else lead this. One of our guys. One of theirs. I can take you back to the ranch, but—”

Chloe shook her head. She had always protected her brother, would always want to, but now, in this moment, she realized if he was really involved in this... She wouldn’t be able to stomach getting him out of it.

She took Jack’s arm and pulled him back toward the truck. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Fourteen

Jack drove out to the campground he hadn’t been at in a very long time. For the first few years after his parents’ disappearance, he’d scoured every inch. Over and over again, with any free moment he had—which weren’t many, when he’d essentially been raising five kids. But he’d found time.

He’d always found time. No doubt his siblings had as well. Always so sure there had to be an answer here. But that answer had never been found. Even now, knowing those skeletal remains were likely his parents, it didn’t feel like answers were really within reach. Just farther and farther away.

It didn’t bother him as much as he’d thought it would. He hadn’t been fully cognizant of how the past few years had changed him. Even if now he could pinpoint it back to a moment.

Grant had finally left the military and come home for good a few years ago. That had been such a relief, not just for him but for the entire family. Tragedy hadn’t struck again. Someone else in their family hadn’t been here one day and gone the next.

Jack hadn’t done more than glance at his parents’ case since. He hadn’t even driven down the road that led to the forest preserve. Maybe not consciously, but he’d avoided poking at that old wound in the same ways he’d been doing up to that point.

He didn’t know if anyone else had felt that way. He wasn’t even sure he’d fully realized it until this moment, driving into the forest preserve, realizing how much of his parents’ case he’d put away.

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