Cold Case Investigation, page 6
He’d prefer her farther away, somewhere secret and isolated, but this was indeed a compromise.
“Okay,” he agreed. Easily and without one argument. He had to bite back a smile at the look of shock on their faces. “I’ve got some meetings, so you can take Anna on back to the ranch. After I get my work done, I’ll pack up and be on over to the ranch this evening.”
“I should go with you,” Anna said, frowning.
Hawk moved past her and picked up Pita’s leash. He affixed it to the puppy’s collar. “No.” He pushed the door open and took the puppy out to do his business, Anna following behind him.
“I am going to be part of this investigation, Hawk.” She didn’t look at the burned remnants of her truck, but then again, neither did he. It felt better to ignore it, and a lot of things, in this moment.
“You should go home, Anna. Make me that list of people who might want to hurt you. That will help me with my investigation and make you a part of it.” Pita did a little squat, right on the concrete. Hawk scowled. Couldn’t even pee in the grass like a normal dog.
“An investigation you’ve told me nothing about.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “You didn’t exactly give me a chance to this morning,” he returned. Pointedly. Pointedly enough Palmer groaned behind Anna. “Besides, you didn’t give me your files.”
“And I won’t,” she returned mulishly, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s an invasion of privacy. But I’ll get you a list.”
“Fantastic. So you have your job today, and I’ll go do mine. In perfect agreement.” He smiled at her. “I’ll see you tonight at the ranch.”
She narrowed her eyes, scowling, and he was a smart man, so he knew better than to believe her silent exit was going to be good for him. Palmer’s low whistle and pat on the back as he passed to follow her to his truck only sank that dread further.
“You’ve got a lot to learn, pal,” Palmer muttered.
Hawk watched them get in Palmer’s truck and leave. A lot to learn. He supposed about Anna and figuring out how to be a dad, he did.
But when it came to investigating arson, he was the best. And that was the most important thing to focus on today. He glanced at the puppy, who was currently sitting at his feet and chewing on the laces of his shoes.
“Well, Pita. Looks like you’re my partner today.”
* * *
BACK HOME AT the ranch, Anna put together her list. People she’d investigated or bounty hunted who might want to target her and were out of jail or alive enough to do so. She created little dossiers on all of them, ranking them from smartest to dumbest, violent to not even knowing which end of a gun the bullet came out of, and in the end ranked them from most likely to least likely.
Then she emailed it to Hawk and the Bent County detective. “Take that, hotshot investigator.”
Once she’d done all that work, she wasn’t sure if she was more hungry or exhausted. Growing a baby was hard.
She yawned. She’d just crawl under her covers for like five minutes and then go get some food. Then she’d go find Hawk. Trail him through his investigation. She could probably figure out everyone he was talking to today.
But when she blinked her eyes back open, the room was dark.
And, just like when she’d woken up at the hospital, a man was standing at the end of her bed.
“Your sister said you were in charge of determining where I’d sleep.”
“Oh.” Anna tried to get her brain to engage. Tried to think past the way he looked in a suit, his tie loosened as though it had been a hard day. “Well, there’s room here.” She patted the space on the bed next to her and smiled at him.
Hawk’s eyes narrowed and darkened, even in the dim light. Quite the lethal combination. Did the people he interrogated find themselves unreasonably turned on?
“I might not know anything about family dynamics, but I’m not sleeping in the same room with you under your brother’s roof,” he said.
Poking at her temper, whether he meant to or not, Anna wasn’t sure. “It’s my roof too, buddy.”
“Be that as it may, not happening.”
She considered. She didn’t want to put him in the guest room. It was far away from hers, and she wouldn’t get her whole point across. It needed to feel like they were on top of each other. He needed to be around her constantly enough to be annoyed by her. “I thought you wanted to get married.”
“Well, unless we’re heading over to the courthouse tomorrow, that’s a moot point.”
“Not for me. I could hardly marry someone I haven’t lived with. This is actually perfect. It doesn’t have to be messy with joint leases and copies of keys. It’s like a trial run.” She smirked up at him. “If I can stand to share a room with you in this big house, maybe, just maybe, I could entertain the thought of marrying you.” Or make you run screaming in the opposite direction.
He didn’t immediately argue, though he did look at her with a heap of suspicion. “I’m not having sex with you with your entire family all around.”
She grinned at him, because sure. “Mind in the gutter, Hawk. I just need to know if you’re a cover hog. What time is it, anyway?” She glanced at her nightstand clock. “Time for dinner. Good—I’m starved.” She got out of bed and grabbed his arm as she passed him.
“I already ate,” he said, standing firm when she tried to tug him along with her.
She laughed. “Like that matters. Staying under the Hudson roof means you are required to attend Hudson dinner. It’s the law.” She tugged harder this time, and he reluctantly moved with her out of the room and down the hallway.
“I never agreed to follow Hudson law.”
“It doesn’t require your agreement. That’s the beauty of it.” She let him go but hooked her arm with his as they descended the stairs. “So. Get any leads today?”
There was a slight hesitation, no more than a fraction of a second, but she was investigator and woman enough to know he’d considered lying to her. But in the end, he told her the truth, and she had to be not warmed by that. Because he’d thought about lying to her, and that should matter.
But it didn’t right now.
“No. But I cross-referenced your list with Quinn Peterson’s. Almost identical. First few weren’t immediate possibilities, so we’ll go down the line. Shouldn’t take more than a day or two to get initial impressions, and by that time I should have some of my lab reports back from the crime scene.”
“Bent County would have other lab reports, right? Yours would be fire. Theirs would be attack.”
“I work for Bent County, so we’ll work together.”
Anna nodded. “Quinn told me Thomas Hart is the detective on the case, and she knows him. Said he’s good. Jack hasn’t worked with him, but I guess knows him in that cop way, and was complimentary. Well, as complimentary as Jack ever is.”
Hawk nodded in silent confirmation, which Anna figured was practically like a presidential commendation.
“In fact, Hart brought up an interesting point today.” Hawk stopped moving, and Anna could have kept pulling, but there was something about his expression that had her stopping.
“Okay.”
“We’re looking into your work, but we haven’t really asked about your personal life.”
She wanted to laugh. Make a joke. It was on the tip of her tongue. And if it had been anyone else, she likely would have teased him about wanting to know about her past lovers.
But someone had tried to kill her, and he looked so serious. And he wanted to marry her and be a father to their baby because he hadn’t had one.
So, she swallowed down her smart replies. “I haven’t...” She felt unreasonably exposed by the admission, even though it hadn’t been that long. Even though she had been busy. She cleared her throat, trying to push away her discomfort. Because the truth was more important than her ego. “I haven’t been with anyone, or seen anyone, since that night at the bar.”
His eyes deepened, and that answering flutter started low in her stomach. “It was...Christmas,” she managed, though her voice came out strangled. “I was busy.”
His mouth quirked up, and the flutters turned into something far more dangerous. “And before that?”
She shook her head. “I’d have to look through my calendar to know exact dates, but I’d been focused on proving myself at Fool’s Gold, so dating hasn’t been high on my list.”
“Anything that ended badly? No matter how long ago?”
“I mean, I slashed my high school boyfriend’s tires when I found another girl’s bra in the back of his precious Mustang, but he’s now married to said girl, so...” She shrugged. “Come on. Let’s go eat.”
Anna led him into the big dining room, where they always tried to have dinner together. And everyone was indeed here today—including Dahlia and Louisa. And Cash’s menagerie of dogs.
Pita saw or scented Hawk and scrambled over with an excited yip, though they couldn’t have been parted for long. Anna had the strangest sensation that at some point, she’d have a kid...who might just get excited at the sight of their father.
Kid.
Father.
“Anna, are you okay?” Mary asked, looking up from where she’d been placing a big bowl of green bean casserole on the table. “You look pale.”
“Fine. Just hungry.”
“Well, sit. Eat.” She smiled encouragingly at Hawk. “If you have any dietary concerns, just let me know. I’ll add it to the spreadsheet.”
“I...don’t. I’ll eat anything.”
“Fantastic.” Mary bustled off to get the finishing touches on dinner together, and Anna gestured Hawk into a seat, trying to shake off the weird feelings plaguing her. There was a lot of time before this baby was a real baby, so a lot of time before she had to figure out what to do with the whole father part.
Her only goal now was to convince Hawk he couldn’t possibly want to marry her, so he’d stick to that decision.
Oh, and find out who wanted her dead.
“So, Hawk.” Jack stared down the table at him, and Jack looked so much like their long-gone father in that moment, Anna’s heart turned over with a longing so sharp it nearly made her want to cry.
Until Jack said, “Why don’t you update us on the investigation?”
Chapter Eight
Hawk felt like he’d been through the weirdest-ass gauntlet he could imagine. He didn’t know why he thought he could handle the Hudsons. It was like trying to handle a million yapping prairie dogs with the plague.
He had a headache now, and a weird kind of guilt over quizzing Anna on her past relationships—even though he shouldn’t feel guilty, because that was the job. Worse than the guilt was some sort of primal, absurd satisfaction that there hadn’t been anyone after him.
Like that mattered.
Or the way she’d looked, curled up in her bed, fast asleep. Sweet and vulnerable, while he’d had to breathe through the knowledge someone had tried to kill her. And he was no closer to finding out who.
Now Jack wanted to itemize the investigation for the whole Hudson clan to hear. Uh, no.
“I’m not sure that’s appropriate dinner conversation.”
“We don’t worry too much about appropriate these days,” Jack countered easily. “Do you have a list of suspects?”
“Whether I do or don’t, I won’t be sharing that list.”
“Why not?”
“Because involvement by any of you could harm not just the investigation, but the results. You’re in law enforcement, Jack. You know as well as I do protocol is just as important as answers. When we find the person behind this, there won’t be any loopholes. The case will have to be ironclad so they can spend the rest of their lives in jail, where they belong. I can’t risk civilian involvement.”
“I’m not a civilian,” Jack retorted.
“No, but you’re not an unbiased party either.”
Jack’s mouth firmed, but he didn’t keep up the argument.
What Hawk didn’t know about the Hudsons, he’d made sure to brush up on today. Even though it wasn’t part of the case, per se, he’d thought it smart to understand all the players he would be sharing a roof with.
Jack Hudson was indeed the oldest and had raised his siblings after their parents’ disappearance. He’d been in the police academy when it had all happened, and stuck with that, working at Bent County for a time, all the while lobbying the town of Sunrise to start their own department. Once they had, he’d run for sheriff. For eight years, he’d been in the top position at Sunrise, and ran a tight ship.
Which meant he should know Hawk was being honest. He couldn’t risk the investigation with a lot of Hudson interference.
Mary, who handled not just playing hostess, but apparently all the administrative and accounting tasks for both the ranch and HSS, expertly steered the topic of conversation away from Hawk and investigations and toward other things, like puppies.
Hawk appreciated the help, but he knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. He glanced at Anna. She was whip-smart, so fooling her wasn’t going to be easy, but he had to make her feel like she was part of the investigation without that actually being the case.
The list she’d emailed him today had been far more thorough than Quinn Peterson’s, even if their conclusions were the same. Sadly, of the top two possibilities they’d both chosen, one had been in a holding cell in Denver the night of the motel fire. The other had been in the hospital.
Ironclad alibis.
There were still other names to check into, and he hadn’t gotten into asking her family about threats they might see, because Thomas had said that was on his agenda for tomorrow.
Hawk’s focus had to be the fires.
Cash and Palmer cleared the table while Mary and Dahlia brought out dessert and conversation zinged around like a Ping-Pong game with five hundred balls. When Hawk glanced to one side, he caught the little girl, Izzy, staring at him. Chin in her hands with a dreamy smile. “Can you play the drums?” she asked him out of nowhere.
“Uh. No.”
She sighed as if this was a great disappointment to her. Hawk didn’t know what the hell to do with that, so he kept his eyes on his dessert until he was reasonably sure everyone was finished. He risked a glance up at Palmer, who was whispering something into Louisa’s ear that made her blush.
Families were weird. “When you get a chance, Palmer, I want to see the security setup.”
Anna elbowed him, harder than necessary. “I can show it to you.”
“I thought that was Palmer’s deal.”
“It is, for the most part, but I help, so I know. What exactly is it that you think I do as a private investigator? Google people and pore over their LinkedIn profiles?”
Hawk shrugged easily, because he knew it would irritate her and he wasn’t immune to the way she glared at him. “Maybe.”
“It’s a lot more than that. Especially the cases Fool’s Gold takes on. The women who come to us are already close enough to being victims. They don’t need more hardship. My investigations have to be just as airtight as yours, to protect those people desperate for help.”
She was so...passionate about it. It wasn’t that it surprised him, exactly. She was a woman full of...well, passion. Just that he still didn’t know what to do with the way she was comfortable with that passion, that emotion, all those feelings. She just laid it all on the line and never once seemed uncomfortable with it.
He turned to Mary, who was clearly in charge of these dinners, no matter what Jack might think down there at the head of the table.
“I feel like I should help with something,” he said. “I’ve been on my own for a while. I can handle just about any chore you throw at me.”
Mary smiled kindly at him. “You will, but you get a day to ease in first. I’ll add you to the spreadsheet and give you an overview of your duties tomorrow.”
“You seem to have a lot of spreadsheets.”
“Oh, Hawk.” She got up from her seat and took her empty plate and his. “You have no idea.” Then she headed for the kitchen, and Izzy and Jack were clearing the rest of the table. Because they clearly all had jobs. He supposed it was the only way a family of this size could function and run two businesses together.
“Come on,” Anna said at his side. “Let’s take a look at the security room.”
He nodded and followed her out of the dining room. She led him down the hallway and into a smaller room that had probably once been a utility closet or mudroom at one time. Now it was clearly a security hub for HSS.
Anna went through the whole thing. Computers, cameras, monitors. It was surprisingly high-tech and impressive. The whole ranch wasn’t under surveillance, because of the sheer size, but the house and the yard had the capability of being completely watched.
“Is this the result of paranoia or experience?” Hawk asked, watching one of the monitors’ grainy view of the porch at night.
“Both, I think,” Anna returned, unfazed by the word paranoia. “We’ve had a few people not too happy with the cold cases we’ve uncovered. That’s why Cash tends to keep himself separate. Doesn’t want anyone targeting Izzy or him, with her mom out of the picture. It also allows us to offer anyone who hires us protection. When Dahlia hired us, she had someone following her, so we put her up here and the cameras helped us catch some of the people involved.”
He studied her profile as she fooled with some keyboard. The idea of her being targeted never failed to feel like a lance of pain right in his gut. But the idea she was always out there, investigating things that might come back to haunt her. He really didn’t know how to deal with that.
