Chapter Two
Adrial Tucker had seen bloodstains before. But this…
He couldn’t force himself to study the crime scene photos spread across his desk for very long.
After closing the file folder, he scrubbed at his face with both hands.
No leads. No answers. No closure. He was stuck with nothing more than a handful of cold clues, disinterested investigators and years of questions.
It was the same routine. Open the file, make himself sick scanning the crime scene photos, shove it to the back of his drawer, throw himself into the other cases stacked in front of him, drive home, eat a crappy microwave dinner before restlessly tossing and turning in bed all night.
Then he’d do it all over again. No end in sight.
And it wouldn’t change. Not until he found something—anything—he could work with.
It hadn’t happened in more than five years. He wasn’t sure what he was still waiting for. The details of the case weren’t suddenly going to make sense. The black tar pit sticking in his chest wasn’t going to let him breathe.
He’d been a detective for more than a decade, but this particular case didn’t want to be solved. At some point, he had to come to terms with that. Not today, though.
His office door cracked open with a two-rap knock.
The scent of coffee preceded the intimidating stature of the man crossing the threshold, both hands full with to-go cups.
Baxter Kelly—Cold Hollow Investigations’s forensic analyst—set one of those cups on the edge of the desk and took a seat, one ankle over his knee. “You hear about Hutton?”
Yeah. He had. Arthur Hutton—Black Hollow’s esteemed chief of police for the past thirty years—had passed away earlier this week.
Natural causes. For once, no one in Black Hollow was up in arms over a death in the community, but it wasn’t the loss of his former partner tightening around his rib cage.
It was what came with that loss. Well, who came with it.
His chair protested as Adrial leaned forward, elbows on the desk.
After tossing one of his pens to one side, he pulled another file in front of him.
A missing husband presumed dead by BHPD from four years ago provided distraction as that tightness in his gut wound tighter and tighter at the thought of tumbling red hair, intelligent hazel eyes and fifty-six freckles across her pale cheeks. “Anyone show at the funeral?”
“A few.” Baxter took a sip of his coffee, his mouth pinning in a straight line as he swallowed, the picture of ease. But a full beard failed to hide the lines etched by the cases they worked and the personal pain his friend tried to hide. “Including Winnie.”
Adrial read the same line in the incident report three times as he tried to exorcise the easy-to-access mental images of his ex.
Winnie Hutton. Hell, he hadn’t let himself think about her in a long time—years—but one mention and his entire body seemed to light up at the idea of seeing her.
Except he had no need. He wouldn’t be passing on his condolences, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to make things any more awkward between them than he already had.
“Not surprised. Winnie and her dad were on good terms as far as I know.”
“So she doesn’t know what Hutton’s been up to these past few years?
” Baxter’s low whistle filled the office, which was stocked with modern wood bookcases painted to match the navy blue walls, geometrical art Adrial hadn’t picked out, dim lighting and a dozen different case-file boxes strewn across what he assumed was an expensive rug.
Camel-colored leather protested under the forensic investigator’s shift.
The dark blue was supposed to be calming, the comfortable seating and modern light fixtures soothing for clients, but all Adrial felt in this office was suffocation.
The wall-to-wall window to his right helped, giving him the perfect view of the east woods with glimpses of Hollow Lake when the sun hit it just right.
Problem was, the sun rarely penetrated the fog that seemed to surround Black Hollow, even on good days when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, instances of which seemed to lessen every year.
Local legend chalked up the roll of the fog to all the victims who’d gone missing since the town’s establishment two hundred years ago.
Thick, silver and unnaturally quiet. For every cold case, the wall of crystallized air seemed to spread, as though trying to keep the residents of Black Hollow from venturing outside of its bounds.
Or keep the threat out. Cold cases that people like him and the rest of Cold Hollow Investigations fought to solve.
To provide closure to the families while potentially never finding it for themselves.
“No. She doesn’t know.” And Adrial would keep it that way.
As much as his imagination had no trouble conjuring situations and conversations that might occur should he run into Winnie while she was in town, he wouldn’t say a word about her father.
About the kind of man she’d grown up thinking was her own personal hero and protector of their hometown.
Last he’d heard, she’d gotten married to some lawyer she’d met in college and started a whole new life.
One he hadn’t been able to provide for her.
She didn’t need him interrupting that. He tilted the cold-case file on an angle, but nothing was getting through the sudden punch of memory from the last time he’d seen her.
With tears in those soft eyes. “You need something, or did you just come in here to derail my day?”
Baxter shoved himself to his feet, towering over the desk at six-three and a chest that blocked Adrial’s view of the door.
With tattoos climbing one arm, his preferred uniform of T-shirt and jeans and the sides of his head shaved close to his skull, the man gave off wilderness-survival—or end-of-days apocalypse—vibes rather than scientist ones, but there were about a dozen families who would owed Adrial’s best friend their lives for closing their loved ones’ cases.
He pushed pretty much everyone away, but deep down, Baxter loved harder than anyone Adrial knew, and it’d bit him in the ass in the worst way possible. “You got a client.”
“I don’t take clients.” Adrial dragged the file back in front of his face, but his focus was shot.
All this talk of Chief Hutton, funerals and the one woman he sure as hell wasn’t inclined to see had provided the distraction he’d needed, but these cases weren’t going to solve themselves.
“Send them Michal’s way. I can hear her pacing back and forth in her office. ”
“This one’s not leaving until she talks to the man in charge.” There was no arguing with Baxter’s tone. Of course, the forensic investigator would’ve already run interference, but if there was a problem with the agency, Adrial needed to be the one to step up.
Cold Hollow Investigations picked up where law enforcement officials left off, pulling together pieces of a case most likely forgotten, lost or plain abandoned for those who were still waiting for answers.
Every investigator on his team—a former detective like him, a forensic anthropologist, a district attorney, a former police chief from a neighboring town and their very own forensic investigator—believed in their cause, and Black Hollow had provided the perfect location to dive straight in.
Staying in his hometown hadn’t been the plan.
He’d worked years to rise through the BHPD ranks to get promoted to detective, but there were bigger cities, bigger cases, more opportunities, and he’d gotten what he’d wanted for a while.
Then his parents had passed away, and his wife…
She’d ultimately left, too. Black Hollow had called him home in the end, and by closing more than a dozen cold cases left unsolved right here within the town’s limits in the past two years, his team had already proven their dedication to serving the community.
But some cases haunted investigators for life.
Adrial couldn’t help but think about Hutton’s obsession with the Lila Mercer case, the investigation that’d driven him to part ways with the Black Hollow Police Department and thrown the old man into a tailspin the last few years of his career.
It was bad enough Hutton had destroyed his life and every relationship he had.
Adrial couldn’t let the chief of police drag him—or his daughter—down, too.
But if Winnie was back in Black Hollow for the funeral, somehow the bastard had kept her from learning the truth about that case.
He leaned back in his chair. He wasn’t going to get any work done. “Fine. Send her in.”
Baxter retreated from the office with his coffee in hand but left the door open. “You can go right in. Oh, and if he gets grumpy, just give him this. He loves these things. Pops them anytime he thinks no one is looking.”
Holy hell. Adrial dropped his head into his hands then shoved to stand, rounding his desk to intercept his friend from revealing any other embarrassing details. He grabbed for the doorknob and wrenched the lightweight wood back. “Stop handing people candy to get me in a better mood.”
He froze at the lift of hazel eyes to his, and Adrial lost hold of the present. Just for a moment.
“Is that even possible?” That voice, though soft and feminine, rocked through him as efficiently as a 9.
5 earthquake. Coiling red hair, a full pink mouth, lean everywhere but hips he could still feel his fingers sinking into and a thick dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks.
Every single one of them accounted for. She studied the bright blue package of gummy clusters, turning it over in one hand.
“I have to imagine the committee that hands out jerkwad awards would demand him to return his if that’s the case. ”
Baxter’s laugh rumbled through the short hallway that branched off into the investigators’ offices, as real as he allowed it to get. His forensic investigator’s gaze brightened as he locked onto Adrial. “Oh, I like her. Please tell me we can keep her.”
Adrial set one hand on the doorframe, the wood protesting under his grip.
“Flirting with her will only end up with you injured.” He shifted his attention back to the woman who’d consumed too many of his thoughts this morning.
And here she was. Looking exactly as he remembered in jeans and a buttoned blouse that only highlighted her natural beauty.
Like he’d conjured her out of thin air. Or someone was playing a very sick joke on him. “Trust me.”
The slight lifting of her chin, showing him she wouldn’t back down to the taunts, tugged on something deep in his gut.
She’d been raised around overprotective police officers her entire life, always finding ways to slip into places where she wasn’t supposed to be.
Interrogation rooms, holding cells, even the evidence room at one point.
Yeah. She liked to give the impression few things scared her—least of all him—but Adrial knew the truth.
She wouldn’t have come here unless absolutely necessary.
Without taking his attention off his ex, he motioned to Baxter. “Get me those results on the missing husband as soon as you can.”
“You got it, boss.” The forensic investigator made quick work of disappearing, though Adrial expected they’d be playing twenty questions by lunch.
“Take a seat.” He didn’t wait for her to follow as he headed for his desk.
Closing the door behind them—sealing herself inside with him—Winnie Hutton stood her ground mere feet from his position. “Adrial.”
He leaned back against the edge of his desk, arms crossed to keep his heart from beating straight out of his damn rib cage. She was here. And there was only one reason she’d willingly seek him out. “Hello, Red.”