Page 38 of Cold Case Murder Mystery

That, she just couldn’t deal with right now. Old feelings. Mixed-up nostalgia and dreams and delusion.

So she turned to Zeke. The emotional stuff didn’t matter, did it? She had a case to solve. And now she had some things she could do right here. Everything else he’d said last night didn’t matter, even if deep down she wanted it to.

They’d had their chance. It hadn’t worked. She had bigger things to concern herself with right now.

So she smiled at him, and focused on work. “Want to help me smuggle a skull?”

His mouth quirked. “You know me so well.”

Chapter Twelve

Zeke waited for Brooke to gather her stuff, and then he drove her into Bent and the sheriff’s department. She instructed him not to follow her inside. He was supposed to drive around, get some coffee or something, then come back at one and pick her up.

Her idea, and while he didn’t like taking orders from anyone, he found he didn’t mind Brooke being in charge. Besides, staying away was easier than trying to explain his presence to the deputies and detectives inside. He would likely raise a few eyebrows and questions that might make it more difficult for Brooke to do what she’d gone there to do.

He was still having a hard time believing she was going to essentially steal remains. Maybe she’d been trained in the North Star way of bending the rules that needed bending, but he’d certainly never seen her bend any rule with ruthless efficiency.

She wanted to be good, always, because the thing about Brooke Campbell was, no matter how she’d grown up, no matter how much time she’d spent in North Star, she was good down to her soul.

Still, she spent her days studying the remains of dead people. That had really never computed with her personality, either, and yet she did it, and well. Analyzed that gruesome data and put it together in even more grim reports.

Still she managed to be soft and lovely andher.

Zeke sighed and tried not to wonder if he’d never seen her again, would he have gone through life in denial of what was missing from it?

He returned to the station a little before the appointed time and just stood outside his truck, watching the comings and goings of a county police force.

He’d considered going to the police academy the past few months. He needed something to do, and he kept resisting the idea of actually trying to ranch. It left a hell of a lot of room for failure.

Police work? He could do that. Well... Following rules and laws had never been in his wheelhouse, even when he’d been in the army. He liked to do thingshisway. But he knew how to deal with people, with clear rules and expectations.

Sort of.

He could have joined the Hudsons like Walker had done. The HSS had invited him to become an investigator. Mostly he’d declined because being around all that family, marriages, babies,lifemade him more itchy than he cared to analyze.

He could have done lots of things. Gone lots of places.

And instead he’d stayed in Sunrise and bought aranch.

It hit him at the oddest times that these past few months had been the calmest of his life and the most uncomfortable and unsettled he’d ever felt. And still, with all that internal upheaval, he hadn’t bolted. Because with Walker and Carlyle safe and happy and settling down, it didn’t feel right to leave them behind to worry about him.

Luckily he didn’t have to consider that any longer because Brooke walked out of the police station, her hands gripping the straps of her backpack. No doubt because she’d succeeded and there was a skull in there. Her grip was all nerves.

But she walked slowly and calmly to him, the sunlight dancing in the reddish strands of her hair. And there was that vise around his chest again, like a full breath would break him to pieces.

Likeshewould.

She got into his truck without looking at him, placing the backpack in the backseat with care.

He got into the driver’s seat, trying to focus on the problem at hand over his pointless, roundabout thoughts. She needed to take the remains back to the ranch and work in her lab.

But he had other ideas. “I was thinking we should pick your car up on the way back to my ranch. Keep moving it around. Just to be safe.”

“But Royal was the one following me. I mean I’m all for having my car back, but we have that,” she said, nodding at her backpack.

Mostly he agreed with her. He’d even tossed the tracker he’d put on his truck the other morning because he was fairly certain Royal had been the one to put it on Brooke’s car. He had been the one following her, so nothing else added up.

But...

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