Cold Case Murder Mystery (Hudson Sibling Solutions #7)

Chapter One

Brooke Campbell knew she was being followed.

Okay, scratch that. She didn’t know it. There was no clear, incontrovertible proof. And there were certainly times when she was deep in a case and her paranoia got the best of her.

Maybe she was imagining things. Her current case was deep and disturbing. She’d originally been brought to Sunrise, Wyoming, to study the found human remains of two bodies, but when that assignment had ended with two police officers being held captive in a cave, it had led to the discovery of even more remains.

Brooke’s latest count was up to twenty different corpses discovered deep in the cave system of a local nature preserve. As a forensic anthropologist, she had excavated and studied many human remains, but never so many in one place.

Brooke loved her work, but some cases were . . . more affecting. Especially since the police thought they had the perpetrator locked up and . . . Brooke wasn’t so sure.

Still, it was possible the fact that this same silver sedan had been tailing her every day for the past three days was a coincidence.

She really wanted it to be. When she turned into the parking lot of the little diner, a deviation from the past two days, and the car didn’t follow, she breathed a sigh of relief.

Her relief lasted only about ten minutes. She was seated in a booth by the window, sipping her coffee and waiting for her food, when out of the corner of her eye, she saw a familiar silver sedan pull into the parking lot across the way.

It parked. No one got out.

She could keep ignoring it. Pretend it wasn’t happening. No one had tried to approach her. There’d been no threat of or attempt at violence toward her, so who knew what it might be about. If it wasn’t a coincidence, then it might not be nefarious. She likely shouldn’t worry about it.

But the last thing she wanted to do was to return to her pretty and cozy and isolated rental cabin all by herself for the night knowing that someone might be following her. Camped out across the street watching her.

She could call the police. She knew quite a few Bent County deputies and detectives now, as well as some deputies and the sheriff from the Sunrise—and her rental cabin was technically in Sunrise so these would all be reasonable people to reach out to. But . . .

If she was going to tell them, she would have done it already. And she hadn’t told them for a number of reasons. But it came back to a simple one.

She wanted to crack this case. She was so close. It would be the biggest of her career—not just because of the unfathomable body count, but for how long the skeletal remains had been hidden.

Brooke had solved a lot of crimes as a forensic anthropologist, but this one would point to more than just the current suspect. It would, hopefully, allow the police to find another murderer. Worst of all, Brooke still hadn’t reached the end of remains—which meant there were more bodies to analyze and hopefully identify. Maybe another person could do it, but she didn’t want that.

Maybe she wasn’t the best forensic anthropologist in the world, but she knew she was good, with a unique set of skills. She couldn’t risk being taken off the case.

She was afraid any threat to her—real or only perceived—would have her lifted from it. Granted, isolated Wyoming wasn’t thick on the ground with forensic anthropologists, but still. She had to protect her ability to keep working.

She sat with that feeling for another ten minutes. Excavating it. Because she did have an alternative to telling the police. But she needed to know, for sure, that she wasn’t making excuses so she would have to take the alternative.

Zeke Daniels. Oh, he’d been such a mistake. She still couldn’t believe she was back in his orbit after all this time, but his friends had needed a forensic anthropologist and he knew one of those.

Or had. Very well. Very, very well. Back when they’d both been members of a secret group that had first organized to take down a dangerous and powerful biker gang in South Dakota. After they’d succeeded in that mission, they’d taken on others until the entire organization had disbanded about three years ago.

And in between those two things, she had fallen in love with Zeke Daniels and he’d let her think he’d loved her too. Then he’d broken her heart, crushed it into teeny-tiny pieces. Maybe she’d been na?ve enough to deserve it, and maybe it hadn’t even been all his fault.

Brooke scowled into her coffee. No, she didn’t want to see Zeke. Maybe she was curious about how he’d fared, but she didn’t want to risk getting caught up in him again.

So, she supposed, that was her answer. She didn’t want his help but kind of needed it.

She pulled out her cell phone, still watching the car across the road through her peripheral vision. She brought up the email he’d last sent her that had included his phone number in case she “needed anything”

while in Sunrise. Brooke typed the number into her phone, doing her best to never fully take her gaze off the car.

It rang once, then a deep voice answered.

“Brooke?”

Did he have her number programmed into his phone? Wow, Brooke, that means absolutely nothing. Unfortunately the whole body reaction to his voice meant more than she’d like.

“Hi, Zeke.”

“Everything all right?”

“Of course . . . not.”

She certainly wouldn’t be calling him if everything was all right, and he knew it, even if her first instinct was always to tell everyone she was fine and everything was just great. Luckily, she no longer cared what Zeke thought of her. She didn’t care if he thought her request was needy because she didn’t need him. Or want him.

The end.

“I think I’m being followed.”

Best to be quick and to the point.

She squinted out the window, to where the silver sedan still sat. She couldn’t make out how many people were in it, but she knew no one had gotten out. The license plate was shrouded in shadow and had never been close enough for her to read the letters or numbers, no matter how she’d tried.

There were a few beats of silence. She didn’t rush to fill them like she might have once. She’d learned a thing or two about how to use the skills from her job in her personal life. She’d learned a thing or two about life since parting ways with one Zeke Daniels.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“The diner.”

Only one of those around Sunrise.

“Give me about fifteen.”

She didn’t know exactly what that meant, but the line went dead and she rolled her eyes. He’d never been a man of many words.

Certainly never the ones she’d wanted to hear.

The waitress served her the food she’d ordered and, even though she didn’t feel hungry anymore, Brooke forced herself to eat. It was important to keep up her energy and focus for her job, and not let emotions get in the way.

People following her or not, she was going to keep working on this case. She was going to give the detectives every last piece of information she could so they could get to the bottom of it.

So far, she’d unearthed almost twenty skeletal remains in that cave. Twenty. And she didn’t think she was done. It was a gruesome thought, and gruesome work but it gave people answers. So the nightmares were worth the outcome if she could provide answers.

Her phone trilled. A text from Zeke.

Get up, pretend you’re going to the bathroom, then take back exit. Waiting in my truck.

Well, he hadn’t gotten any less demanding in the years since she’d last seen him.

Another text came in.

Leave your coat.

Now she scowled at her phone. Typed her own response.

I like my coat.

Leave it so they think you’re coming back.

Hard to argue with that, she supposed. But she also needed to pay her bill. She could hardly stiff this small-town diner for her meal. Surreptitiously, under the table, she rummaged through her purse until she found a twenty. She slid it under her plate, making sure her arm would hide what she was doing to anyone who might be watching from outside.

Then she got up and made a big show about asking where the restroom was. The woman pointed to the hallway leading to the restrooms . . . and no doubt the back exit Zeke had spoken of.

Brooke’s job was investigation—old investigations at that—so she didn’t deal with a lot of danger, but she’d seen her fair share as a member of the North Star team.

And before.

But she didn’t think about before if she could help it. Too many old ghosts, nightmares and regrets.

She walked past the restroom door, through the kitchen, without paying any mind to the speculative look from a dish washer, and then out the back.

Where a large, shiny black truck was parked as close to the door as allowed, its passenger-side door open. Head high, she did her best to crawl up into the seat without looking foolish. She doubted she’d managed. But she settled in the seat and closed the door behind her.

She didn’t want to look at him but supposed she had to. She braced herself for impact, plastered a polite smile on her face and turned to face him as he began to drive.

He had not changed. Which was a real bummer. Because Zeke Daniels was ostensibly the most attractive man she’d ever laid eyes on. Worse, he knew it, if he thought about it at all, which was questionable because she figured his thoughts were likely more serious in nature.

He was the tortured-brooding-loner type. And she had, once upon a time, been the kind of silly girl who’d believed she’d get through to that type. Love them into change.

Luckily, she was older and wiser even if he was not any less hot. All dark wild hair and gigantic body that made this humongous truck look tailored for a giant of muscle such as he.

It was very, very unfortunate that she could remember just how his muscles had felt under her hands.

“Stay low,”

was all he said.

Despite her feelings on him, she followed instructions, slumping down in the seat so as they drove out onto the road and passed where the silver sedan was parked no one would see her inside.

“I talked to Ida. She called Sunrise SD, saying the car was scaring away customers. Someone will question the driver.”

“Oh.”

Well, that was all good and smart. Not that she knew who Ida was. But Zeke kept driving. Brooke peered at the passing landscape then at him again. His eyes were focused on the road, his square jaw tense—as always—but his hands on the steering wheel looked relaxed enough.

Large hands that have touched every single inch of you.

She tried to ignore the heat that crept into her cheeks—a mix of embarrassment and remembering.

“Where are we going?”

she asked.

“My place. You’ll be safe there.”

Safe? She doubted that.

Zeke knew he was making a mistake. It wasn’t just because Brooke was Brooke, though that was some of it. Part of the mistake was treating this like a North Star mission when his old group of secret special operatives had disbanded, going into civilian work, and leaving him . . .

At loose ends.

He’d bought a ranch. He still couldn’t quite believe it, but since his sister had acted like it was the greatest level of insanity he’d ever stooped to, he’d pretended it had been his plan all along.

He hadn’t decided if he liked it or not yet. There was a lot of work to be done to get it back in working order, and he didn’t mind the work. He in fact enjoyed work—the harder, the better.

But the chance to jump back into something dangerous . . . well, that was like coming home. It was familiar. It made him feel . . . useful.

That was probably not mentally healthy, but a guy couldn’t win them all. Besides, Brooke was in his truck looking . . . like Brooke. Strawberry-blond hair pulled back all sleek and professional, serious blue eyes that should really be run-of-the-mill but somehow weren’t. Not with her intelligence and warmth behind them. She still had that peaches-and-cream complexion that showed a blush all too well, and he could not go thinking about that.

He turned off the highway and onto the bumpy gravel road that led down to his dilapidated ranch house. The drive needed regrading, but that didn’t hold a candle to what needed to be done to the house as a whole. He’d made different parts livable—the living room, the kitchen, his bedroom and one upstairs guest room. A work in progress that he’d never once felt even the least bit ashamed of.

Until now.

“Oh, dear.”

Brooke was looking at the house with a kind of crestfallen expression that made him want to laugh for some inexplicable reason.

“Not quite the accommodations you’re used to?”

“It’s not about the accommodations, Zeke,”

she said, affecting that scolding tone that had, once upon a time, made him grin. “It’s the fact it’s your chosen one.”

“I’m renovating.”

He pushed the truck into Park in front of the house.

She made a considering—and disbelieving—sound.

But she got out of the truck at the same time he did. She walked toward the house, studying the sagging eaves and the one window, currently held together by duct tape, that needed to be replaced. She hesitated a moment before following him up the rickety stairs—he skipped the splintered one.

He unlocked the door and, even though he wasn’t watching her, he was observing her. Just as he had been since she’d stepped out of the diner.

She wasn’t quite the same as the last time they’d seen each other. That made sense. It had been close to four years ago. She had a different kind of . . . poise now. A stillness that hadn’t been in her when she’d been young and . . . he didn’t like the word desperate, but there had been a kind of driving need inside her. To be useful, to help, to never be a nuisance or a problem.

So, naturally, he’d taken all that shaky trust she’d had in him and broken it. He didn’t like to think he’d been the cause of any change in her, and maybe he hadn’t. She’d had four years out in the real world, maybe it had instilled some wariness in her.

Good. He didn’t need another chance at shattering the fragile glass she’d once been made of.

When she stepped inside behind him, she made another little noise. A kind of startled oh much 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 learned something about 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 of something that 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’m this close 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’t just anyone.

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