Page 37 of Cold Case Murder Mystery

“Hart called,” Zeke said. “He had court this morning, so couldn’t be out at the cave, and Laurel’s still out. He said he could send another deputy out with you, but he’d prefer from here on out it just be the detectives if you didn’t mind taking the morning off from excavating.”

She wasn’t sure why the detective had shared that information with Zeke rather than leave her a message or text on her own phone, but didn’t know if she wanted to dig too deep into anything that involved Zeke at the moment.

So she sat and ate breakfast next to him. She didn’t say anything. She really didn’t know what to say, and he seemed to be in the same boat. The only sounds in the kitchen were the scraping of forks and the dog occasionally huffing at their feet.

They even washed the dishes in silence. But once they were done and before she could excuse herself, Zeke opened the back door from the kitchen.

“I want to show you something, if you’re up for a little walk?”

She hesitated. He wasn’t exactly... acting like himself, but she couldn’t sort out what that meant. He was more calm than he’d been yesterday, but there was a kind of grimness wrapped into it that she didn’t know how to parse.

“Okay.”

They both got shoes on and then she followed him out into the sunny late morning. Viola dashed into the yard, then dashed back, over and over again, making Brooke smile as they walked to a building. A barn, she supposed.

Zeke stopped at a normal-size door on the side of the barn, pulled a key out from his pocket, and unlocked it. Then he held the key out to her.

She frowned.

“It’s yours,” he said, pushing the key into her palm. Then he shoved the door open and gestured her inside.

She stepped into a darkened barn, though it didn’tsmelllike a barn. It smelled... clean. And when lights flipped on above her, she realized why. This was no barn to house horses or store crops. It looked like... a lab. Her old lab at North Star, to be precise.

“Is this...?” She stepped forward then stopped herself and looked back at him.

“It’s a private lab. To run whatever tests. Granger helped with the supplies, information to make sure everything is up to code, just like you used to have at North Star. So it should be most of what you need, but he can get us anything else. A few things he sent need to arrive yet, but we’ll get there.”

Brooke felt frozen in place. It was set up perfectly. Notquitelike any of the labs she’d worked with at different police organizations, but that’s because they were often multipurpose, underfunded and overcrowded.

Her North Star lab had been different—set up exactly the way she liked—because they hadn’t exactly always been working within the law. “I’m not sure anything I do here would hold up in court.”

That was a very ungrateful thing to say. When he’d gone to all this trouble. When he’d reached out to Granger. When she could test that skull hereimmediately.

Zeke shrugged and didn’t voice any irritation with her response, even though he had every right to. “You don’t have to use it. Or you can use it in conjunction with the lab in Cheyenne. Up to you.”

Up to her. But that was ridiculous. This whole thing was so damn ridiculous. “Why did you do this?”

“Because I was worried the lab in Cheyenne and the sheer amount of people dealing with your case might have something to do with what was going on with you being followed. So, I got the ball rolling with Granger, and then it just felt like you might as well have some space here to work. You’ve got a lot of remains to work through.”

Didn’t she just.

And because her heart seemed too big for her chest, and her eyes were full of tears she wasn’t about to let fall, she changed the subject entirely.

“How is Granger?” she asked, inspecting one of the machines. She would have thought he’d gotten rid of all this once North Star had disbanded. She should have known Granger MacMillan might have let North Star the entity go, but he wasn’t about to not have the means to help anyone who needed it.

“Looks like him and Shay are swamped in foster kids and farm animals.”

Brooke smiled. She hadn’t talked to her old North Star bosses in a while. She hated to bother them when they had this new life they were building.

“Do you keep in touch with anyone else?”

“Oh, sure. Here and there. You don’t?”

She didn’t want to answer that. So many of her old North Star friends she’d retreated from. Because they’d all been starting new lives, and she didn’t want to be some old reminder, some old burden. So she’d just... held herself apart. She’d never refused a call, but she hadn’t made any. She’d kept to herself.

It was a bit of a surprise Zeke hadn’t. Zeke who had provided this... It was really too much. To think about the two people who’d run North Star, who’d taken down the Sons and saved so many people, now married and raising kids and farm animals and just living a normal kind of life... While she was standing here with Zeke.

All she’d ever wanted and known she couldn’t have.

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