Cold Case Murder Mystery (Hudson Sibling Solutions #7)

Chapter Eighteen

Zeke didn’t like how long it was taking to walk to the back of the cave. The map had made it look like a short distance, but this was taking too long. Or maybe he was too impatient, thinking of Brooke sitting in that cave alone. Possibly trapped—on purpose.

His training told him to turn off all thoughts of Brooke. Bank those emotions and deal with reality. He didn’t know if it was age, years out of North Star, or the depth of his feelings for Brooke, but he just couldn’t manage it. His pace kept picking up.

Luckily, they hadn’t encountered anyone yet. Not random hikers or campers and, more importantly, no law enforcement. That led Zeke to believe rescue efforts were focused on the front side of the cave.

So theirs would focus on the back.

“Do you think Chloe will let you know if they get her out of there?”

“Yeah, she’ll probably send me a text, but I don’t know if I’ll get it with the patchy service,”

Carlyle replied.

Well, then he’d try to convince himself Brooke was fine and they just hadn’t gotten the message. He’d slow his pace. Be careful and tactical.

“They ever teach you stealth in the Sons?”

Zeke grumbled since Royal seemed bound and determined to rush ahead even worse than him, being loud enough that anyone might know they’re coming.

“I wasn’t in the Sons,”

Royal returned. “I was infiltrating the Sons and lived to tell the tale. I’ve got plenty of stealth.”

“Maybe use it,”

Carlyle muttered, her eyes moving around the trees that surrounded them.

Zeke didn’t mind their bickering. It kind of reminded him of being back in North Star. There was a certain level of . . . levity you had to maintain when dealing with such serious situations. It was like falling back into old familiar patterns. But not . . . going back in time. More a nostalgic feeling.

Something he was grateful to have in his past. Not necessarily something he wanted to go back to. And that was . . . new.

But he didn’t have time to think about that, to consider what it really meant, because a little prickle started at the base of his neck and he heard something . . . off in the trees around them.

Zeke held up a hand. Something or someone was out there. Rescue personnel headed for the back cave entrance? Or a threat—to them or to Brooke? He had never heard of any cave-ins at this cave, and if Jen Rogers had lived there for years, undetected like they’d claimed, he doubted any cave-in was natural.

Both Royal and Carlyle stopped on a dime, everyone holding up their guns and surveying the area. Carlyle, knowing the drill, moved back-to-back with Zeke.

Royal caught on quick and moved so they stood in a defensive position, facing out, backs protected.

Zeke heard it again. The crack of a twig. Could be an animal but . . .

A man stepped out from behind a few trees. He wore jeans and a hoodie and hiking boots. He didn’t appear to be carrying a weapon, but he grinned. Right at Royal.

“Long time no see.”

He didn’t carry a gun, and now had three trained on him, but was far too cheerful to not have a trick up his sleeve.

“Vince,”

Royal returned, acting as relaxed and belligerent as he had when Zeke had first met him, even with a gun pointed at the new arrival. “Fancy meeting you in Wyoming. Didn’t think you ever climbed out of the sludge in South Dakota.”

“You’ve recruited some friends, Royal.”

The man shook his head. “Too bad for them.”

Another former member of the Sons. Clearly. No doubt part of the threat against Brooke, thanks to Royal. Had he caused the cave-in? Was this really all about Royal and the Sons? It didn’t add up, but Zeke wouldn’t put anything past a bunch of embittered criminals.

“You’d be surprised who it’ll be too bad for,”

Carlyle returned, always running her mouth.

“So would you, babe.”

The man took his gaze from Carlyle to Royal. “You made a lot of enemies that day.”

As if that was the cue, three other men—all with guns—stepped out from around the cave entrance they’d been heading for. “Time to pay up.”

“You guys don’t have an independent thought of your own. Always have to be following some vindictive leader. What do you think my father is going to do for you while he’s locked up?”

Royal demanded.

“I don’t think that’s any of your business, traitor.”

“There’s nothing to betray,”

Royal responded with an impressive amount of calm Zeke had to give him credit for. “Y’all were held together by a psychopath, and he’s dead. Everything else is blown to hell. Why don’t you just go live your lives? Why concern yourself with old pointless business?”

For a moment, the ringleader simply blinked, like that had never occurred to him. Then he scoffed. “We’re our own group now. Stronger than anything Wyatt ever did. Loyal to Jeremiah Campbell.”

Zeke laughed. Couldn’t help himself. Ace Wyatt had been a psychopath, albeit a brilliant one. He’d wielded his brand of sadism and cunning to form a powerful gang for decades. Whatever these four were involved in, it was nothing like the Sons.

“I’ve never even heard of Jeremiah Campbell,”

Zeke offered. “And I’ve personally taken down more Sons members than some low-level lackey like you have probably ever met.”

This ticked off all four of the men, based on their expressions, but the three with guns didn’t start shooting. So they stood in a ridiculous standoff here in the middle of a nature preserve.

“You’ll see,”

the unarmed guy offered with a sneer.

“Yeah, I bet,”

Royal said. “So, what? You’re just going to have a shootout here? And then what? Disappear?”

“Disappearing is our specialty.”

“Imagine this guy thinking he has a specialty,”

Carlyle said, pretending she was making a throwaway comment to Zeke and Royal rather than addressing the guy specifically.

“You know cops are crawling all over this preserve, right? One shot fired and you’ll be done for in no time,”

Royal said.

“No Sons to wriggle you out of jail time now, is there?”

Zeke added. “Your ‘better’ group got a passel of lawyers and paid-off cops lined up? Because that was Ace Wyatt’s real specialty, as I recall.”

“Don’t you know about this cave?”

Vince said, jerking a thumb behind him where the back entrance to the cave was not too far away. “People who disappear here don’t come out, and hey, if you and your friends here were looking for your sister, why wouldn’t you get turned around and just . . . poof.”

He made a little hand gesture to go with the sound effect.

“Guess you better start shooting then,”

Carlyle said. “See who winds up on top.”

She dramatically flicked the safety off her gun.

Hell. She never did have any patience. So Zeke followed suit, wondering how he was going to keep all three of them from getting shot.

Brooke stayed frozen. Leon just stood there, gun pointed at her, though his arm was starting to shake. She didn’t know how to get out of this. He blocked the only exit she knew of—with a gun.

She could knock him over, and he very well could miss shooting her since he was hardly holding the weapon steady. But was it worth the chance? Shot by accident was the same as on purpose when all was said and done.

But there was a slight discrepancy here. “You don’t kill your victims with a gun.”

She hadn’t gone through all the remains in this cave, but aside from the ones Jen had confessed to, no remains had showed any evidence of a gunshot wound.

He raised his eyebrows then gave a nod like she was quite right. “You’ve been studying my prizes. So, how do I do it then?”

Brooke pressed her palms to the cold, wet rock behind her. She used that as a kind of centering. She was still alive. There was still hope. Just keep him talking until she got out. People knew she was in here. They were working to get her out. Not just people. Police officers. With guns of their own.

“With the age of the remains I’ve dated and studied, my guess would be starvation or terminal dehydration is your preferred method.”

Again he nodded, like a professor proud of a student for getting a difficult question partially right. “Sometimes we found them that way. An offering from the cave. And sometimes Father and I worked as a team.”

He smiled fondly. “My father was a good partner. He understood the god. The offering. My daughter . . .”

He shook his head and the smile died. “I went through a dark period when she was my partner. It’s better alone again.”

“That section over there.”

Brooke pointed to the second quadrant. The one she’d just begun to study. “I haven’t gotten very far, but I’ve found more broken bones than this quadrant.”

“Mmm.”

Leon studied her but didn’t offer anything else.

“So, you were more violent with those victims?”

Brooke prompted.

“Stop calling them that.”

His mouth turned into a scowl, his nostrils flared. Anger seeped into his expression. “Not victims. Offerings. Prizes. For me. God of the cave.”

The scowl curved back up into a psychotic grin that turned her blood to ice. “Violent, maybe. But broken bones don’t kill, do they?”

“They can.”

“But did they? That’s the question.”

“I haven’t studied that portion enough to know,”

she hedged. “It takes time. To study. To excavate. To discern.”

She glanced at the wall behind her. She didn’t hear anything coming from the other side. Had more deputies been trapped? Hurt? Was it worse on the other side?

Brooke looked back at Leon. He pointed to her bag that still sat next to the quadrant she’d been working on. “Take your tools. Tell me.”

She didn’t want to do anything that he told her, but if she got her tools, she had a weapon. Maybe it wasn’t a gun, but it was something. She moved forward, keeping a careful eye on him so she knew she was always out of reach. She did her best to keep that gun from pointing directly at her as she gathered her bag of tools. She moved over to the quadrant she’d only just begun.

There could have been a lot of reasons the bones in this sector were more broken over here. It could have meant a violent means of death or something more environmental. She wasn’t far enough in her excavation and research to know for sure.

If she dragged this out, took her time, surely someone would be able to get to her by then. No matter what things looked like on the other side of that pile of rocks, too many people knew where she was. People who would save her. The police. Zeke. Her brother. She wasn’t going to wither away here.

As long as she survived whatever Leon was up to. So she turned her attention back to the ground beneath her. She had to excavate. Slowly. Much more slowly than even she usually went. Time was her best weapon. She’d have to use it.

Brooke got to work, trying to block out Leon’s existence, or why she was doing this. Just fooling herself into thinking it was any other workday. Uncover a bone here, another bone. Carefully. She didn’t take pictures like she usually did, but Laurel had been the one with the camera and, well, anyone could forgive her for not attempting that in her current circumstances.

After a while, she became aware of his hot breath on her neck. She tried to breathe through the wave of nausea that swamped her. Tried not to let her hands shake. She didn’t remove any of the bones, just uncovered them as they were laid out. Legs to hips to rib cage to . . .

“What do you think?”

he asked just as she uncovered the neck.

Brooke swallowed so her voice would sound calm and clear. So she didn’t shudder at the nearness of him.

“I’d need to run tests. I’d need my lab. I can’t tell just by looking.”

Of course she had enough experience to make an educated guess. Broken neck.

Was that what he wanted her to say? But she forgot everything when something wet and sticky touched her neck, like a tongue, and on a shriek, she jumped up. Halfway through the knee-jerk reaction, she chose to use it to her advantage. She flung her head back as she came up, the top of her skull crashing into his chin, his frail body stumbling backward. The gun he’d been holding landed on the ground with a dull thud.

Brooke made a dive for the gun, not allowing herself to think about anything else, but she crashed into him trying to do the same. Something he did caused one of the lights to topple over, making a popping sound as it went dark.

He cackled with delight as they both got a grip on the gun at the same time. She ripped it out of his weak grasp, but he must have known she would. Or maybe everything was just against her—because the last light toppled over.

And they were plunged into utter darkness.

Brooke didn’t panic . . . at first. She got to her feet, curled her hand around the weapon and adjusted it until she had it in a shooting position. She tried to feel around for the safety, but she didn’t know what kind of gun it was and couldn’t find it.

Maybe he didn’t have it on. She curled her finger around the trigger, and then tried to decide what to do.

From far too close, a gurgling cackle echoed around her.

And she couldn’t see where to go. Or where to shoot.