Cold Case Investigation, page 1
“Hudsons don’t hide.”
“Well, maybe pregnant ones should.”
They were squaring off in his living room. Him all sooty and sweaty, and her, perfectly fine, except for the rising tide of nausea she was desperately trying to ignore.
And worse, so much worse, the little wiggle of softness at the idea that he wanted to protect her. Even as she convinced herself he only wanted to protect the current vessel of his child, she felt that warmth.
You are a fool, Anna Hudson.
A fool who usually preferred a fight. To wear down her opponent until she got her way. Because she always won. Always got her way.
She had the very frightening thought that Hawk might not wear down as easily.
Cold Case Investigation
Nicole Helm
Nicole Helm grew up with her nose in a book and the dream of one day becoming a writer. Luckily, after a few failed career choices, she gets to follow that dream—writing down-to-earth contemporary romance and romantic suspense. From farmers to cowboys, Midwest to the West, Nicole writes stories about people finding themselves and finding love in the process. She lives in Missouri with her husband and two sons, and dreams of someday owning a barn.
Books by Nicole Helm
Harlequin Intrigue
Hudson Sibling Solutions
Cold Case Kidnapping
Cold Case Identity
Cold Case Investigation
Covert Cowboy Soldiers
The Lost Hart Triplet
Small Town Vanishing
One Night Standoff
Shot in the Dark
Casing the Copycat
Clandestine Baby
A North Star Novel Series
Summer Stalker
Shot Through the Heart
Mountainside Murder
Cowboy in the Crosshairs
Dodging Bullets in Blue Valley
Undercover Rescue
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Anna Hudson—The youngest Hudson sibling and a private investigator who also works with her siblings at Hudson Sibling Solutions as an investigator.
Hawk Steele—Bent County fire inspector who is investigating the fire that was meant to kill Anna.
Jack Hudson—Eldest Hudson sibling, sheriff of Sunrise, Wyoming, and head of Hudson Sibling Solutions.
Palmer Hudson—Anna’s closest brother and an investigator at HSS.
Louisa O’Brien—Anna’s best friend from childhood who is dating Palmer.
Mary Hudson—Anna’s only sister and the administrative assistant of HSS.
Cash Hudson—Anna’s brother who works as a dog trainer for his own company that sometimes helps HSS with search dogs, etc.
Izzy Hudson—Cash’s eleven-year-old daughter and Anna’s niece.
Grant Hudson—Anna’s brother, former military and current HSS investigator who is dating Dahlia Easton.
For all the heroes I’ve denied.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Excerpt from Dangerous Recall by Tyler Anne Snell
Chapter One
Anna Hudson was no stranger to mistakes. She was an act first, think later type of person. Because more often than not, that worked out for her.
And if she was being bracingly honest with herself—which her current situation seemed to call for—it tended to work out because she had five overbearing, determined and with-it older siblings to help her clean up her messes.
The fact that she’d spent most of her adult life—which wasn’t a huge amount of time considering she was only twenty-five—trying to create some distance, some independence from her family was something she’d been proud of. She certainly didn’t want someone always sweeping in and cleaning up her messes. She wanted to prove to the people who’d raised her from the time she was eight and her parents had disappeared that she could take care of herself.
Too bad she’d finally gotten herself into a jam no one could save her from. She took a deep breath of the cold, invigorating air. Winter held the Hudson Ranch in its grips and for the first time in her life Anna wasn’t wishing for spring. Or summer.
Especially not summer.
She closed her eyes, willing the nausea away. Her doctor—not her normal doctor, because even doctor-patient confidentiality wasn’t safe in Sunrise, Wyoming, but the doctor she’d found the county over—had told her “morning” sickness could hit at any time and last possibly her whole pregnancy.
Three months in was definitely enough for Anna, but her baby didn’t seem to be getting the memo.
So far, she’d been able to keep everything on the down-low, but the more unpredictable the nausea and food aversion got, the harder it was to hide.
She couldn’t conceal it forever. Realistically, she understood that. In practice? She’d given herself three months. She considered that fair. Lots of women waited to announce their pregnancy until they were into their second trimester.
The problem was her secret was getting harder and harder to keep. She lived with too many people, had too many friends. And the three-month mark had come and gone.
Surely she could wait until she started to show? That seemed fair. Her family would be upset, but...
“You okay?”
Anna jerked. She hadn’t heard Cash approach. She turned to face him and forced herself to smile. She couldn’t throw up in front of him. That would be too much. Someone would insist she see a doctor, and then...
“You aren’t...pregnant, are you?” he asked very, very carefully, and out of nowhere to Anna’s estimation.
Of all the people she’d expected to call her out on it, her brothers had been at the bottom of her list. Particularly Cash, who didn’t even live at the main house and kept his nose out of her business the most out of any Hudson—though that was still pretty nosy. Still, Cash didn’t butt in, for the most part. He had his own daughter to raise.
She supposed it made sense, though. Since he was a dad. Izzy was eleven, and her mom hadn’t stuck around for long, but once upon a time, Cash had been the attentive husband to his pregnant wife. So of all the people in her life, he’d been the closest to the signs of pregnancy the most recently.
“Hell in a handbasket, Anna,” he muttered when she didn’t answer.
She swallowed down all that wanted to come up. “I don’t see what business it is of yours.” Bravado was often the best response to her overbearing siblings. Or had been.
Cash rolled his eyes. “You wouldn’t.” He adjusted his hat on his head. “Who knows about this? Certainly not Jack or we’d have had a shotgun wedding by now.” His frown deepened. “You’re not even dating anyone.”
She smiled at her brother, because an off-putting offense was always the best defense. “I know you’re a monk and all, but there is this thing called a one-night stand.”
He swore again, taking off his hat and raking his hand through his hair. “Who is it?” he demanded, all furious and older-brotherly.
Anna didn’t shrink in on herself, though she kind of wanted to. Pregnancy was making her weak. She sniffed and lifted her chin instead. “None of your business.”
“Why not?”
Anna had always considered Cash the most reasonable of her brothers. Jack and Grant were the upstanding stick-in-the-muds, Palmer was more like her—or had been before he’d decided to go fall in love with her best friend—and Cash was...the reasonable one. The single dad who kept an even keel no matter what went wrong. His typical response to anything was to hunker down.
But the look on his face was decidedly unreasonable and bloodthirsty.
“I don’t need you wading in to fix my problems, Cash. I can handle this.”
Cash’s expression changed. She realized he might be the calm one, but he was also the worst one to find out about this. Because he’d been in an accidental pregnancy situation himself. As the father of the baby.
“You told the guy, right?” he said. Very carefully. All cool and detached while his eyes were hot with his own issues.
Anna decided silence was her best weapon. But that only made Cash swear even more.
“Anna, you gotta tell the guy.”
She shrugged jerkily, because anyone telling her what she had to do grated. Especially when they were right. “Why?”
“Because it’s his kid, too.”
There was no argument to be had here. First, Cash wasn’t the audience. Second, she knew she had to tell the father. Every night she told herself tomorrow would be the day.
And every morning, she chickened out.
“He isn’t local.”
“So take a trip,” Cash replied. Firmly.
And she had to blame it on pregnancy hormones. Because she was not a soft woman. She’d learned to be hard. She’d lost her parents at eight, and though her sister had tried to fill in as a kind of maternal influence, Mary was only two years older than she was. So Anna had learned how to be tough, how to be a Hudson.
She’d done the rodeo. She was a licensed private investigator. She’d fought people, shot people, been shot at.
She didn’t cry.
But there were tears in her eyes now, even if she managed to blink them away. “Cash, I can do this on my own. Well, not my own. But I have you guys. We’ll be all right.”
Cash inhaled, then pulled her into a hug. Because he had a little girl, and he was a good dad, and he knew how to comfort better than any of them. “We will be, Anna. No matter what.” He pulled back, fixed her with a stare that made her wonder if her parents would just despair of her if they were still around. “But he has to know. You’ve got to give him a chance to be all right, too.”
“I know. I do. I just...” Well, bottom line was she just didn’t want to. She had always handled guys easily. She had four older brothers, plenty of family trauma. Guys had never scared her, never gotten the upper hand on her. She enjoyed the ones she wanted, then discarded. And had lived that way quite happily and carefully...
Until she’d met Hawk Steele’s dark blue gaze across the room at a bar. She’d been handling a private investigation case, away from Sunrise and away from her family, and he had...
She’d never felt that way. And as tough girl as she liked to pretend, she’d never had a one-night stand before. They hadn’t even exchanged last names at the time. There’d just been something elemental. Necessary.
And she’d been foolish enough to forget all her rules. To forget everything. Until she’d woken up in his bed, wrapped up in him, knowing she had to get the hell out before...something.
She hadn’t been surprised when he’d shown up in her life a little while later. Because of course she’d looked him up after that night. It wasn’t hard to track down a guy named Hawk in Bent County, Wyoming. Especially when, it turned out, he worked for Bent County as a fire investigator.
So when her friend Louisa’s family home burned down before Christmas, Anna had figured she’d end up running into Hawk Steele. She’d practiced her casual, flirty smile. Her unwavering I don’t care about you bravado. And it had worked. When they’d run into each other, she’d been calm and cool.
He had been shocked. For a second. But a second of shock on Hawk Steele was something.
“I can come with you,” Cash offered, bringing her back to the present.
It was a sweet offer. She wouldn’t take it, but for the time being, she’d let him believe she might. “Thanks. I’ll... He kind of travels around, so I’ll see if I can pin him down for a meeting.” She pulled back from Cash’s hug, flashed him a smile. “Promise.”
“Look, if you need me to, I can cover your chores. Izzy can help out a little more with the dogs. Then I can—”
“No. I’m good.”
“You don’t want to overdo it.”
“I know. I listen to all my doctor’s many instructions.” She looked up at the gray winter sky. The Hudson Ranch had been in their family for generations. Though all of them worked on their pet project—Hudson Sibling Solutions, solving cold cases for people like them who didn’t have answers—the ranch was their foundation. The six of them worked together to keep it going.
Because her parents had. And her grandparents. And so on.
“Mom handled all this stuff when she was pregnant with me, right?” Anna said, waving her hand around the stables and the cows and the mountains that made up her life, her roots. “That’s the memory. Supermom doing ranch work and taking care of all of us and... I bet she never...” Anna couldn’t finish the sentence. She rarely thought of her mother, only remembered odd flashes of a strong, warm woman who’d always made her feel safe.
Until she and Dad had just been...gone one day.
“She was supermom,” Cash agreed. “But, first of all, we were kids and she was an adult, so we don’t really know what she had going on or didn’t. Second, and take it from someone who spent a lot of years trying to be Dad, you don’t have to be the parents ours were. You just have to be the one that’s best for your kid.”
Kid. She still really didn’t quite think of whatever was growing inside her as a kid. Or herself as a parent. Maybe that was just another thing she was putting off.
“I’ve got chores to do. Then I’m heading out of town for a few days,” Anna said firmly. Because she’d already decided that, and she wasn’t changing any plans just because Cash had found her out. “And before you lecture me, it’s just research. Nothing dangerous.”
Cash’s frown was epic, but she was used to big-brother admonitions over her side job.
“I don’t think you should keep doing your private investigation work.”
“And I don’t recall asking your opinion. I told my boss I’m taking a break from the bounties and stuff like that for a while, and that I didn’t want to travel as much. This is a simple gathering of some adultery evidence over in Wilde. Take some pictures. Hand them over to the PI office. The end.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Didn’t ask you to.”
Cash blew out a breath. “Fine, but for the love of God, tell Jack about this before you go. I do not want to be the secret keeper.”
“But you’re so good at it!”
He groaned as she walked away, laughing. Because... Well, Hawk was a multilevel problem, sure, but Cash was right. She’d be okay. She always was.
* * *
ANNA DIDN’T LIKE to admit that pregnancy had an effect on her body. But after a day of driving around trying to catch some salesman cozying up with his pretty lawyer, and coming up empty, Anna was exhausted. And since Wilde was too small to have even a nearby B and B, she’d had to drive over to Fairmont to find a place to stay.
Since she was going under the radar, she stayed at a run-down little motel a few miles outside of Fairmont. Not her first choice, but it was one night and she could sleep one night anywhere, especially as exhausted as she was.
She thought dimly about calling up Hawk. She didn’t have his cell or personal number, but she had his work number. After watching him handle Louisa’s fire case, she knew he was enough of a workaholic to probably answer even after hours.
But she was too tired. Maybe she’d wake up early and call him.
She crawled into the dingy bed, not even bothering to shower. She’d handle it all in the morning. She was always a good sleeper, so it was no shock when she fell into an almost immediate sleep.
She woke up to a coughing fit. When she blinked her eyes open, they started to sting. It was dark, but something was wrong. Her throat burned. It was too warm. And...it smelled like fire.
She leaped out of the bed in the same motion she swept the phone on the nightstand into her hand. She didn’t know where the fire was coming from, but there was one. She ran for the door, grabbed the handle and pushed, thinking it would give, because of course it would. But it didn’t, so she just rammed right into it. She twisted the dead bolt, then tried again, but nothing happened. The door was stuck.
The knob wasn’t hot, though, so the fire was coming from...somewhere inside. Smoke was filling the room, so she crouched, trying to find some better air to breathe.
She didn’t panic. Couldn’t. She dialed 911 on her phone while still turning the lock and knob. There was no window in this room. There was one in the bathroom, but she was afraid that was the source of the smoke.
Someone picked up, but before she could even get out a word, something hit her head. Hard. So hard she only had a moment to try to brace her fall before the world went dark.
When she woke up, she was in a hospital bed.
She blinked at all the blinding white. Everything was fuzzy. Groggy. Had the fire been a dream? Was this a dream?
She didn’t know how long she existed in this odd in-between state before it felt like she was really with it. Before she understood and started to remember.
