Cold Case Investigation, page 10
And as if he’d spoken it into the ether, a dog began to bark. Pita. Somewhere outside, another one began to howl.
None of the men said anything. They just started running.
* * *
ANNA PACED MARY’S ROOM. She couldn’t settle because Palmer’s explanation of the problem had made her nerves hum. She also couldn’t settle because Mary’s room was like a shrine to orderliness and cleanliness—and freakishly white. Anna was always afraid she’d mess something up.
And, okay, sometimes she messed something up on purpose. But not tonight. Tonight...
“Anna, you’re making me dizzy,” Mary said in exasperation. She was sitting at her prim little white desk, carefully going through case files.
“I just don’t know why I couldn’t go down and look at the computers like Palmer.”
“Well, you could,” Mary said calmly, placing one file neatly on the other, then looking up at Anna. “As I have never once in your entire life known you to follow an order.”
Anna scowled, because it was true. Because she should just march down there and demand to be involved.
But didn’t, because Hawk had put his hand on her stomach, where some baby the size of a peach grew, completely unaware of everything going on around them.
Mary turned in her chair and studied Anna. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Well, I’ve never been pregnant before,” Anna grumbled, even knowing that wasn’t what Mary meant. Even knowing the way she was acting had to do with Hawk as much as pregnancy.
“So, that’s the only explanation for how you are around Hawk?” Mary said, in that careful way that strangers thought meant she was agreeing with them.
She never was.
“And how am I around Hawk?”
Mary took a minute to consider. Then smiled. “Thunderstruck.”
Anna recoiled. “I do not think so.”
“If it makes you feel better, he’s equally thunderstruck by you.” She turned back to her desk like this was all just normal conversation. And obvious. When surely...
Well, maybe he was a little something-struck by her. It shouldn’t—she really didn’t want it to—but it did make her feel better. The idea of making Hawk Steele thunderstruck, well, it was a powerful feeling and—
She heard the faint yip of a dog. Pita, no doubt. She should go downstairs and—
Then, outside and farther away, the howling of another dog. One of the older dogs that would be over by Cash’s cabin. Anna looked over at Mary, who was already on her feet.
“You should stay here,” Mary said. “I’ll go see—”
Anna crossed and grabbed her sister’s arm. “We’re going together. No one goes it alone, right? Did Louisa stay? We should grab her too, if Palmer’s downstairs already.”
Mary hesitated, but only for a moment before she nodded. “All right. Let’s get her.”
Louisa was already out in the hall when they stepped out. So were Grant and Dahlia. Grant was carrying two guns.
“We don’t know what’s going on just yet, but the dogs sense something and the security has been tampered with.” He handed one gun to Louisa. “You’re coming with me.” He looked over at Anna. “You three are staying put.”
Anna opened her mouth to argue, rote habit, but Grant shook his head. Still, he handed her the other gun in his hand.
“I know you don’t like holding back, but Dahlia hates guns almost as much as Mary does. I know you can handle yourself with one should the need arise, so I’d appreciate it if you stayed back.”
Mary and Dahlia might hate guns, but they both knew how to shoot. She scowled at her brother. “You’re full of it, Grant Hudson.”
His mouth almost curved ruefully. “Not completely. It’s a solid plan even if you don’t like it. We’ll send Izzy up when we can. It’s possible this is all a...false alarm.”
“Don’t placate us, Grant,” Dahlia said disapprovingly.
He leaned forward and placed a kiss on his girlfriend’s cheek. “We’ll be back. Keep your phones on you.”
Then Grant and Louisa disappeared downstairs, and Anna stood in the hallway with Mary and Dahlia and tried not to feel like some damsel in distress locked in a tower.
“There’s plenty we can do,” Mary said. “Just because you’re used to doing the active work doesn’t mean the groundwork isn’t just as important. We have case files, and you have some computer expertise.”
“Not as much as Palmer.”
“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t figure it out with time. I’ll grab my files, and we’ll go down to the surveillance room. It’s as safe down there as it is up here.”
Anna realized with a little start that she sometimes, inadvertently, underestimated her sister on this level. She knew Mary was the heart of how everything ran at both the ranch and HSS. She was the organizer, the analyzer, the details person. And it was easy to forget that because she did it all quietly, in the background. Without ever asking for help, attention or recognition.
Anna nodded, because her sister was right. There was still a lot to be done on this side of things. “Okay, yeah. That’s a good plan.”
Mary bustled back into her room to collect the files while Anna and Dahlia stood, as if frozen by circumstance.
“It’ll be okay,” Dahlia offered reassuringly. “Maybe this could even be the end of it,” she offered hopefully.
Anna wanted to believe it could be, but it was a big ranch. So many places to hide, so many ways someone could get hurt.
So many ways to disappear.
She swallowed down that ugly thought and forced herself to smile at Dahlia. “Yeah, maybe it’ll all be over.”
Chapter Twelve
Hawk crept through the dark night, Pita by his side. He’d convinced Jack that a dog was enough of a partner until Cash and one of his dogs could meet up with him once he’d gotten Izzy tucked away in the house.
Which had put him on house duty, while Jack and Grant went to check on the animals together.
So Hawk moved around the house in slowly bigger circles. He listened. He searched for signs of someone. Hawk didn’t see or smell signs of any fire, and it ate at him. Because he knew in his bones it was coming...just not exactly where. Or how.
He made another circle around the house. Anna was the target. She’d been the one who’d been hurt and left to die. The following fires being at her work and her truck meant the focus was on her.
But Hawk couldn’t ignore the possibility that someone would hurt her family to hurt her. And if Jack or Grant got themselves hurt or worse out there, it would just feel like his fault. Like he’d let her down.
The thought ate him up inside.
He had to stop letting Anna be a distraction. He should be working night and day on this, not having family dinners and spending the night in her bed actually sleeping and not doing any work. He needed to—
Pita began to growl—something he’d never once heard the puppy do. Hawk crouched, wrapped his arm around the dog. Hawk didn’t want him bounding off into the unknown.
He watched the shadows and tried to listen for something. The wind blew softly and cold. There was the odd rustle—but it could have been animal, the line of evergreen trees or even just the wind blowing snow around.
But Pita’s growling didn’t stop.
Hawk adjusted his grip on his gun. He had a flashlight, but he wasn’t going to use it just yet. He also wasn’t going to risk his dog.
Pita was vibrating in his arms—Hawk wasn’t sure if it was fear or pent-up energy ready to attack. Either way...
“Stay,” he said firmly to the dog. If Hawk had brought a leash with him, he would have tied Pita up, but as it was he just had to hope the commands they’d been working on worked. “Stay,” he repeated.
Then he moved forward. Into the dark. Toward the sense of noise and shadow. He kept his peripheral vision on the house. Most of the lights were off, but Mary’s bedroom was on this side, so a very dim light shone through the curtains there. It gave him enough of a sense that he would be able to see if someone tried to creep toward the house in the otherwise dark yard.
He willed Cash to hurry up because a bad feeling was crawling up his spine. Obviously, things were wrong, but something felt especially off.
Anna telling him sometimes people were backward kept echoing in his head. Reminding him you couldn’t always reason bad choices and soulless people. Patterns didn’t always have to make sense to the sane.
He gripped the flashlight and looked back at the dog. Pita was whimpering but staying. “Good dog,” Hawk whispered. Cash would take the dog inside once he got here. Get him out of harm’s way. So Pita just had to stay put for a few more minutes.
Please only be a few more minutes. The dog was too much of a distraction, a worry.
Hawk crept farther away from the house, trying to put Pita out of his mind. Whoever was after Anna was likely after starting a fire, not hurting a dog.
Hawk stilled and listened, trying to get a sense of what was out here—not worry about Pita and Anna. He’d never felt this torn before. Investigations and danger were easy.
Because he’d had no one and nothing for far too long. Now he had a...family. Weird and complicated and certainly not set in stone, but people and an animal he cared about. Needed to save and protect. Something he hadn’t had to worry about since he was fourteen years old.
And look how that turned out.
Hawk shook that thought away. He hadn’t been able to save his mother because she’d been sick. He’d damn well save Anna from some lunatic who wanted to hurt her. It was his job. Everything he’d built himself into. His very identity. Finding answers and stopping people from doing more harm.
But his heart thundered in his chest, and worry slithered into and scattered his focus. He’d never once had to do his job when he cared this much about the person he was protecting. He’d never dreamed he’d have to.
He heard two things at once—a shuffle, and Pita letting out a pained yelp. Instinct told him to move toward the shuffle sound for his own good, but he couldn’t stand the thought of someone hurting Pita, so he turned toward the dog.
Mistake, he realized as pain bloomed out from the base of his skull...and turned his world dark.
* * *
“WHAT ABOUT THIS?” Dahlia said, pointing to the file she’d been reading. Anna had dozed off a little, not even getting through one file. She would have thought nerves and worry and frustration would have kept her wired and awake, but apparently not. She could only chalk it up to pregnancy, yet again.
Anna looked down at the keyboard she’d fallen asleep on. She hadn’t gotten very far in trying to find the source of the glitch. Some help she was. She swiveled in her chair to try to focus on what Mary and Dahlia had found.
Izzy was curled up in a little nest of blankets in the corner with a puppy, both asleep and snoring lightly. Anna couldn’t help but smile at the image they made. And the knowledge she was growing one of those. If everything went the way it should, someday she would have a son or daughter, curled into the corners of the Hudson Ranch...even if danger rained down around them.
She thought of Hawk as a boy, trying to take care of his dying mother. Being left alone. Being told he wasn’t wanted by his own father. She wanted this family for him as much as she wanted it for their child.
But now was not the time for these thoughts. Because Hawk was outside, in the dark of night, heading off danger with her brothers and her best friend.
“This HSS client from a few years back,” Dahlia was saying to Mary. “He owned a computer company. Wouldn’t that mean you know a lot about computers and how to hack into security systems?”
“Maybe,” Mary agreed. “This was a client?” Mary asked, frowning as she moved over to Dahlia to look at the file. “Oh, yes. I remember this. A missing wife.” She frowned. “But this was when Anna was in the rodeo. I don’t think she would have worked any of it.”
Both women looked over at her. Dahlia held out the case file for her to read.
Anna studied the information. “No, I didn’t work on that case.” But there was something familiar about the name of the victim. She tapped the page. “Francine Evans. Why does that sound familiar?” she mused aloud.
“I’m not sure. You might have heard us discuss it. One of the few cases we’ve ever taken where the missing person was still alive—and had changed her identity on purpose.”
“To get away from her husband?” Dahlia asked.
“Sort of. She drained his bank accounts before she took off. He didn’t tell us that, so it became a whole big complication. When we found her, she acted like she was afraid of her husband. When we told him we’d found her, but refused to tell him any details, he told us about the bank account and was angry we wouldn’t help him. Basically, they both did a lot of lying, so in the end, we just pulled out of the whole mess. Told him to have the police handle it.”
“So he might be angry with HSS,” Dahlia said.
“Yes, but again, Anna wasn’t here for that. She didn’t work on the case. So why target her?”
“Who was the lead on this case? Cash?” Anna asked, flipping pages. “If I was in the rodeo, Jack was just starting as sheriff, Grant was deployed, Palmer was with me. Cash and you were kind of holding down the fort, though Jack would have helped. And I guess Palmer and I might have stepped in during breaks, but I don’t remember this one.”
Anna looked back down at the file, and she flipped through it. Cash had indeed been the lead, and there wasn’t any piece of this case that was familiar except a vague memory of Cash and Mary relaying the story.
But something about a computer company definitely felt like too much of a coincidence. The husband in this case was Clarence Samuels. He owned CS Computer Systems.
A name that was familiar to Anna for completely different reasons. “The guy I was following for Fool’s Gold the day someone first tried to kill me? He was a salesman for CS Computer Systems. The same company this guy owns.”
Mary frowned deeply. “Well, that’s too close of a coincidence for comfort, isn’t it?”
Dahlia nodded.
“But...the salesman. Deputy Hart and Hawk interviewed him. He had an alibi,” Mary said. “Airtight. Deputy Hart told me so himself.”
Anna nodded, because she’d heard the same from Hawk.
“People lie, though, right?” Dahlia offered.
“That they do,” Mary said darkly. “I’m sure Hawk and Deputy Hart will look into it, a possible connection. Dig deeper. This is a good lead. The first good lead we’ve had.” She smiled reassuringly at Anna, but Anna didn’t feel reassured, God knew why.
Anna turned back to the computers, determined to figure out the glitch. Determined to do something instead of sit here and worry.
But only a few minutes later, they heard the low voices of the men returning. They sounded urgent, and when Jack opened the door and immediately met her gaze, she knew something was...terrible.
“No fire, but we’ve got a different situation.” She swallowed at the bleakness in Jack’s dark eyes. “I’m sorry. We can’t find Hawk. He’s not answering his phone. It looks like...”
“It looks like what?” she said, not sure if it came out as a whisper or a shriek. Because her heart was pounding in her ears.
“There was some blood. Some marks in the snow that made it look like he’d been...” Jack cleared his throat. “Dragged away.”
“Then what are you all doing here?” Anna demanded, though she was glad Mary was standing there, holding her up. Because she felt like she might collapse. “We need to find him. We need to—”
“I’ve called some deputies in. And notified Hart. Palmer is getting a few horses saddled, and Grant and him are going to follow the tracks.”
“You will saddle up a horse for me. I don’t want to hear one damn argument,” Anna said, forcing herself forward on shaky legs.
But Jack stopped her easily, his hand wrapped around her shoulder gently. “You aren’t going, Anna. He wouldn’t want you to.”
She knew that was true. She hated that it was true, and that she really wasn’t feeling up to getting on a horse, and probably shouldn’t. She hated being held back like this. She needed to...
She looked up at her big brother. She knew he would do anything for her, but he wouldn’t let her risk herself under the circumstances. She also knew that because she cared about Hawk, so would Jack.
So she had to trust Jack to take this on, since she couldn’t. But that didn’t mean she had to just give up and step aside and become the weeping pregnant lady in the corner.
“If I’m not going, I’m calling the shots. Palmer stays and helps me with the computer stuff. Maybe we can get something to go off there. Jack, you go with Grant to track Hawk. Your deputies don’t need you micromanaging, so Mary will manage them once they get there. Cash can take Louisa and use the dogs to track or whatever he thinks is best. Understood?”
Jack looked at her for a very long time and she was afraid she’d just fall apart, start sobbing and never stop. Imagine every possible terrible outcome of this.
But Jack nodded. “All right, Annie. Understood.” Then he cleared his throat. “Just a small...catch to that plan.”
“What?”
“Cash is busy right now. He’s patching up Pita. The dog’s fine, just got a bit of a...gash.”
Anna’s knees went weak, but Mary and Dahlia held her up until she was steady again. Then she was pushing her way out of the room.
