Page 4 of Cold Case Murder Mystery

When she stepped inside behind him, she made another little noise. A kind of startledohmuch more positive than the last one.

The note of surprise to her voice made him smile in spite of himself. Because the outside looked pretty awful, but he’d done a hell of a lot of work on parts of the inside. The living room and kitchen weren’t half bad—if the duct-taped window was ignored, which he’d fix any day now.

Really.

“Not living in total squalor,” he offered, but his phone rang before he could say anything else. He pulled it out of his pocket and took the call from Ida, the lady who ran the diner and kept him fed more nights than not.

He listened grimly then thanked her before relaying the information she’d shared to Brooke.

“The car was gone when the cops got there. Ida said it took off not long after me, though not in the same direction. Not sure I like that.” Had they seen her? Or just gotten antsy because she hadn’t come back to the table they no doubt had been watching. “Did you get the plate?”

She shook her head. “They didn’t have a front plate. I never could get a look at the back.”

Zeke nodded. Probably no back plate either if they really were following her. “The crew you’re working with at Bent County should know. Is that the detectives?”

She shook her head. “I don’t want the detectives to know.”

He frowned at her. Surely she’d learnedsomethingabout keeping herself safe after years of investigating dead bodies. “You have a death wish?”

“No,” she replied evenly. “I think we discovered long ago that was your problem, not mine.”

Oh, so true. Sometimes he thought he’d changed in that regard. Gotten too old or watching his siblings settle down or something. The kind ofsomethingthat had prompted him to buy this ranch when he’d never owned a piece of property in his entire life, never even dreamed about it.But then something like this came along and...

Well, he didn’t know what he felt.

“I apologize,” Brooke said so formally. “We shouldn’t discuss... long ago.”

The way she talked, all prim and proper, like she’d been raised in a mansion, gone to some fancy Ivy League school. But no. She’d affected that on her own through grit and determination.

He wished he didn’t know it.

“You called me because you’re worried. Clearly, I was a last resort.”

“Yes, because I don’t want the detectives to know. I need to finish this case. It’s... I need to. If they’re worried about threats to me, I’ll either get replaced or they’ll worry more about new threats than the very important information I’mthisclose to uncovering.”

“I thought they knew who killed those people. What more important information could there be?”

She hesitated, because clearly she knew more about the case than he did and she probably shouldn’t be sharing details with just anyone.

But he wasn’tjustanyone.

“If you want me to keep you safe, Brooke, I have to know what I’m keeping you safe from.”

Chapter Two

Brooke knew Zeke wasn’twrong.You had to know what a threat was to be able to neutralize it, but she just didn’t know for sure if it was a real threat. It skirted a very careful line to let a civilian in on a case.

Especially since she hadn’t shared her theories with the detectives yet.

Of course, Zeke was hardly acivilian.She didn’t know how to classify a man who’d been in the army, been a North Star operative taking down gang members and who knew what else, but “civilian” didn’t cover it even if he was no longer affiliated with either of those things.

“Brooke. You came to me for a reason, and you knew I’d need to know.”

“I didn’t think that far ahead, to be honest. I just knew I didn’t want to be alone in my rental tonight.” Did that sound like an invitation? It was decidedlynot, and she almost opened her mouth to say so, but reason won out.

He knew what she meant. She didn’t need to embarrass herself on top of it.

“Okay, well, think that far ahead now. Explain to me what you’re afraid of. You can trust me.”

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