Page 43 of Cold Case Murder Mystery

“We’d likely all have ended up dead if they hadn’t helped. And I didn’t have to beg. They were involving themselves before I even got half the request for help out of my mouth. It’s hard to leave all this stuff behind, even when you want to. But even more than that, Brooke, we’re all still a family.”

“I had no problem leaving North Star danger behind,” she said.

A bit stiffly, he noted, and with some of that old primness that might have made him smile if he didn’t feel sorry for her. “Yes, the danger. I’m talking about the people, Brooke.”

She expressly didn’t meet his gaze. And maybe he shouldn’t poke. She didn’t need him to psychoanalyze her. She’d beendesperatelyin love with him and he’d screwed it all up.

But she was here, and maybe he was old enough, mature enough,finally, to realize that life didn’t present you with many opportunities for something good... so he probably shouldn’t be afraid of them.

“And I know you stepped away from all the people too.” He’d kept in touch with everyone enough to know only Granger had been able to touch base with Brooke over the years. “But it wasn’t because you wanted to.”

“Oh, wasn’t it?” she returned with that chin raised in that way she had. But she didn’t meet his eyes because she knew he was right.

And he understood, in part, because he’d kept his own family at a certain kind of arm’s length for a while there. Thinking if he hid who he was, what he felt, all that untenableworrythat existed inside him, they’d be better off.

He’d learned the hard way, when they’d fought through a lot of danger to solve their mother’s murder, he’d been wrong.

And Brooke was wrong to cut off people who cared about her. He understood why, but that didn’t make her less wrong, and she should know it. Sometimes it took someone saying what you knew flat-out to you for you to finally accept it.

“You’re always so afraid. That you might ask too much. That you have to walk on all those eggshells your foster families made you walk on. That if you’re not perfect, people will turn you away. I suppose I didn’t help that any. And I’m sorry. For a lot of things.”

She looked at him now, blue eyes wide and startled. “I don’t think now is the time to have some kind of postmortem about our relationship, Zeke.”

“No, it isn’t. But I’m going to take the opportunity anyway. Because it’s here. I think you must know I didn’t hurt you on purpose, or you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have called me for help. Or maybe I just hope that. I had my own issues, which isn’t an excuse. I’m still sorry.”

She stood there, very still, but he knew she was absorbing what he’d said. Taking it in, sorting it through. Her precious data points. And that was fine. He’d said what he’d needed to.

They could focus on the danger at hand now. So he led her to the living room and told her to take a seat on the couch while he grabbed his laptop. Once they settled together, hip to hip, with the computer on the coffee table, Zeke put in the video call to Granger. He was grateful the man answered right away.

Granger’s expression registered some surprise, no doubt at seeing both of them on the screen, but then he just smiled. “Well, hello. It’s nice to see you two together.”

Neither Zeke nor Brooke said anything to that, but Zeke could see in the screen the bland kind of smile Brooke offered at those words. No point in arguing abouttogether. But she didn’t like it.

“Hey, Granger. We’ve got a... bit of a situation.”

“Of course you do,” he returned, mostly with humor. “Lay it on me.”

Zeke relayed the information from the stalking to Royal to the car bomb. Brooke explained a little about what she was doing with the remains, and the skull.

She leaned forward, getting closer to the screen. “You helped me get Royal the lawyer, send those letters so they wouldn’t be traced back to North Star at all. But he didn’t get them, and he didn’t know I was the source of the lawyer.”

Granger frowned at that. “Not sure how that could have happened. I can go back and look into it. The lawyer. Where the letters would have gone through.”

“And more into her father,” Zeke added. Because if Royal thought this could involve old members of the Sons, why wouldn’t they look into that? North Star might have destroyed a lot of their records, but Granger knew how to get any and all information on any old Sons’s activity.

“He’s still in jail,” Brooke said tightly.

“Yeah, but if Royal thinks it might connect, we need to know... There’s something with your family and their ties to the Sons going on here because of Royal. Let’s find all the information we can, even if it ends up not connecting to the danger.”

“Zeke’s right,” Granger said. “The more information, the better off you are. I’ll see what Shay and I can come up with. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Brooke,” Granger cut her off gently. “North Star might not exist anymore, but we’re still a family. Always will be.”

Zeke took Brooke’s hand, squeezed it, tried to get that sentiment through to her. Regardless of... anything. They’d all been connected by something, and it didn’t just go away because that something didn’t exist anymore.

“We’ll be in touch.”

---