Cold Case Kidnapping
Author
Nicole Helm
Reads
16.5K
Chapters
22
To save her missing sister, they'll have to confront a dark past… But can he protect her from the approaching threat? A mysterious family tree. A man thought long dead. Dahlia Easton has few solid clues to find her sister, missing for a year. But she's in danger the moment she reaches Wyoming's backcountry. To protect her, cold case investigator Grant Hudson must confront his town's unresolved nightmares — even as an unspeakable threat from the past is fast closing in to silence him and Dahlia for good…
CHAPTER ONE
Grant Hudson had been well versed in fear since the age of sixteen when his parents vanished—seemingly into thin air, never to be seen or heard from again. So, as an adult, he’d made fear and uncertainty his life. First, in the military with the Marines and now as a cold case investigator with his siblings.
Privately investigating cold cases didn’t involve the same kind of danger he’d seen in Middle Eastern deserts, but the uncertainty, the puzzles and never knowing which step to take was just as much a part of his current life as it had been in the Marines.
And if he focused on seemingly unsolvable cases all day, he didn’t have time to think about the nightmares that plagued him.
“Your ten o’clock appointment is here.”
Grant looked up from his coffee. His sister was dressed for ranch work but held a file folder that likely had all the information about his new case.
Hudson Sibling Solutions, HSS, was a family affair. The brainchild of his oldest brother, Jack, and a well-oiled machine in which all six Hudson siblings played a part, just as they all played a part in running the Hudson Ranch that had been in their family for five generations.
They had solved more cases than they hadn’t, and Grant considered that a great success. Usually the answers weren’t happy endings, but in some strange way, it helped ease the unknowns in their own parents’ case.
Grant glanced at the clock as he finished off his coffee. “It’s only nine forty-five.”
“She’s prompt,” Mary agreed, handing him the file. “She’s in the living room whenever you’re ready.”
But “whenever you’re ready” wasn’t part and parcel with what HSS offered.
They didn’t make people wait. They didn’t shunt people off to small offices and cramped spaces. Usually people trying to get answers on a cold case had spent enough time in police stations, detective offices and all manner of uncomfortable rooms answering the same questions over and over again.
The Hudsons knew that better than anyone—particularly Jack, who’d been the last person to see their parents alive and had been the only legal adult in the family at the time of their disappearance. Jack had been adamant when they began the family investigation business that they offer a different experience for those left behind.
So they met their clients in the homey living room of the Hudson ranch house. They didn’t make people wait if they could help it. They treated their clients like guests... The kind of hospitality their mother would have been proud of.
Grant had made himself familiar with today’s case prior to this morning, but he skimmed the file Mary had handed off. A missing person, not out of the ordinary for Hudson Sibling Solutions. Dahlia Easton had reported her sister, Rose, missing about thirteen months ago, after her sister had disappeared on a trip to Texas.
Dahlia Easton herself was a librarian from Minnesota. Dahlia was convinced she’d found evidence that placed Rose near Sunrise, Wyoming—which had led her to the HSS.
Ms. Easton hadn’t divulged that evidence yet, instead insisting on an in-person meeting to do such. It was Grant’s turn to take the lead, so he walked through the hallway that still housed all the framed art his mother had hung once upon a time—various Wyoming landscapes—to the living room.
A redhead sat on the couch, head down and focused on the phone she held. Her long hair curtained her face, and she didn’t look up as Grant entered.
He stepped farther into the room and cleared this throat. “Ms. Easton.”
The woman looked up from her phone and blinked at him. She didn’t move. She sat there as he held out his hand waiting for her to shake it or greet him in some way.
It was a strange thing to see a pretty woman seated on the couch he’d once crowded onto with all his siblings to watch Disney movies. Stranger still to feel the gut kick of attraction.
It made him incredibly uncomfortable when he rarely allowed himself discomfort. He should be thrilled his body could still react to a pretty woman in a perfectly normal way, but he found nothing but a vague sense of unease filling him as she sat there, eyes wide, studying him.
Her hair was a dark red, her eyes a deep tranquil blue on a heart-shaped face that might have been more arresting if she didn’t have dark circles under her eyes and her clothes didn’t seem to hang off a too-skinny frame. Like many of the clients who came to HSS for help, she wore the physical toll of what she’d been through in obvious ways...enough for even a stranger to notice.
He set those impressions and his own discomfort aside and smiled welcomingly. “Ms. Easton, I’m Grant Hudson. I’ll be taking the lead on your case on behalf of HSS. While all six of us work in different facets of investigation, I’ll be your point person.” He finally dropped his hand since she clearly wasn’t going to shake it. “May I?” he said pointing to the armchair situated across from the couch. His father had fallen asleep in that very chair every single movie night.
“You look like a cowboy,” she said, her voice sounding raspy from overuse or lack of sleep, presumably.
The corner of his mouth quirked up, a lick of amusement working through him. He supposed a cowboy was quite a sight for someone from Minnesota. “Well, I suppose in a way I am.”
“Right. Wyoming. Of course.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m out of sorts.”
“No apologies necessary.” He settled himself on the chair. She didn’t look so much out of sorts as she did exhausted. He set the file down on the coffee table in between them.
“I have all the information Mary collected from you.”
“Mary’s the woman I talked to on the phone and emailed. I thought she’d...”
“Mary handles the administrative side of things, but I’ll be taking the lead on actually investigating. I can get Mary to sit in if you’d feel more comfortable with a woman present?”
“No, it isn’t that. I just...” She shook her head. “This is fine.”
Grant nodded, then decided what this woman needed was to get some sleep and a good meal in her. “Have you had breakfast?”
“Um.” Her eyebrows drew together. “I don’t understand what you’re...”
“I’d like you to recount everything you know, so we might be here a while. Just making sure you’re up for it.”
“Oh, I’m not much for breakfast.”
He’d figured as much. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and sent a quick text to Mary. He wouldn’t push the subject, but he wasn’t about to let Dahlia keel over either. He slid the phone back in his pocket.
“I’ve got your file here. All about your sister’s trip to Texas. The credit card reports, cell phone records. Everything you gave us. But you said you had reason to believe she ended up here in Wyoming.”
“Yes,” Dahlia agreed, putting her own phone into a bag that sat next to her. “Everything the police uncovered happened in Texas,” Dahlia said. “But she just...disappeared into thin air, as far as anyone can tell me, but obviously that isn’t true. People can’t just disappear.”
But they did. All the time. There were a lot of ways to make sure a person was never found. More than even Grant could probably fathom, and he could fathom a lot. Which was why he focused on one individual case at a time. “So, there’s no evidence she ever left Texas?”
“She took one of those DNA tests, and it matched her with some people in Texas,” Dahlia said earnestly, avoiding the direct question. “She was supposed to go to Texas and meet them. She never made it to the people—at least the police there didn’t think so. When all the clues dried up, I decided to look at Rose’s research. The genealogy stuff that prompted her to take the DNA test. I researched everything she had, and it led me to a secret offshoot of the Texas family that wound up in Truth, Wyoming.”
Grant tried not to frown. Because, no, there wasn’t proof Rose Easton had left Texas, and also because no one in Sunrise particularly cared to think about Truth, Wyoming. “Ah” was all he said.
“It’s a cult.”
“It was a cult,” Grant replied. “The Feds wiped them out before I was born.” Still, people tried to stir up all the Order of Truth nonsense every few years. But there was no evidence that the cult had done anything but die out after the federal raid in 1978.
“Doesn’t everything gone come around back again?” Dahlia asked, nervous energy pumping off her. “And if this line of our family was involved then, doesn’t it mean they could be involved now?”
Grant studied the woman. She looked tired and brittle. It didn’t diminish her beauty, just gave it a fragile hue. Fragile didn’t cut it in these types of situations, but here she was. Still standing. Still searching.
She was resting all her hopes on the wrong thing if she was looking into the Order of Truth, but she believed it. She was clearly holding on to this tiny thread for dear life. So Grant smiled kindly. “Let’s see your evidence.”
HE DIDN’T BELIEVE HER. No different than any of the police officers and detectives back home or in Texas. Once Dahlia uttered the word cult—especially one that had been famously wiped out—people stopped listening.
Grant Hudson was no different, except he was placating her by asking for her evidence. Dahlia didn’t know if that was more insulting than waving her off or not. Honestly, she was too tired to figure out how she felt about much of anything.
She’d driven almost eighteen hours from Minneapolis to Sunrise in two days and had barely slept last night in the nice little cabin she’d rented. She was too anxious and tangled up about this strange connection. Too amped at the thought of hope after so long.
“I think you probably have all the evidence you care about,” Dahlia said, trying to keep her tone even. “I know investigators are obsessed with facts, but facts haven’t helped me. Sometimes you have to tie some ideas together to find the facts.”
Grant studied her. It had been a silly thing to say, that he looked like a cowboy, but it was simply true. It wasn’t just the drawl, it was something about the way he walked. There were the cowboy boots of course, and the Western decor all around them, but something in the square jaw or slightly crooked nose made her think of the Wild West. The way he hadn’t fully smiled, but his mouth had curved in a slow move that had left her scrambling for words.
“We are investigators, and we do have to work in the truth,” Grant said, still using that kind veneer to his words, though Dahlia sensed an irritation simmering below them. “But I think you’ll find we’re not like the police departments you’ve dealt with. I’ll admit, I think the cult is the wrong tree to bark up, but if you give me reason to change my mind, I’ll bark away.”
The tall slender woman who’d let her in the house entered the room pushing a cart. She wore adorable cowboy boots with colorful flowers on them and Dahlia had no doubt when she spoke, it would be tinged with that same smooth Western drawl Grant had.
It was easy to see the two were related even if Grant was tall and broad and...built.
There was something in the eyes, in the way they moved. Dahlia didn’t have the words for it, just that they functioned like a unit. One that had been in each other’s pockets their whole lives.
People had never been able to tell that about her and Rose, aside from being named for flowers. It took getting to know them, together, to see the way they had learned how to deal with each other and their parents. The rhythm of being a sibling.
Dahlia had been turned into an only child now, and she didn’t know how to function in that space. Not with her parents, who had given up on Rose when the police had. Not with her friends, all of whom were more Rose’s friends than hers and who wanted to be involved in a tragedy and their grief more than they wanted answers.
Only Dahlia couldn’t let it go. Couldn’t hold on to her old life in this new world where her sister didn’t exist.
Not dead. Not gone. She didn’t exist.
“I told you I’m not a breakfast eater,” Dahlia said sharply and unkindly. She might have felt bad about that, felt her grandmother’s disapproval from half a country away, but she was tired of caring what everyone else felt.
Grant apparently felt unbothered by her snap. “So consider it lunch.” He looked at his sister. “Thanks, Mary.”
She nodded, smiled at Dahlia, then left. Grant immediately took a plate and began to arrange things on it. Dahlia figured he’d shove it at her, and she had all sorts of reasons to tell him to shove it down his own throat.
Instead, he set it next to the file folder. Picking a grape and popping it into his own mouth before pouring himself some coffee.
Dahlia knew she’d lost too much weight. She understood she didn’t sleep well enough, and her health was suffering because of it. She’d seen a therapist to help her come to terms with Rose’s disappearance.
But no amount of self-awareness or therapy could stop her from this driving need to find the truth.
She didn’t know if Rose was still alive. She was prepared—or tried to prepare herself—for the ugly truths that could be awaiting her. Namely, that Rose was dead and had been all this time. Her sweet, vibrant sister. Murdered and discarded.
It wasn’t just possible, it was likely, and yet Dahlia had to know. She couldn’t rest, not really, until she had the truth.
And if you never find it?
She simply didn’t know. So she’d keep going until something changed.
Grant continued to eat as he flipped through papers that were presumably the reports and information she’d emailed to Mary.
Dahlia wasn’t hungry, but she hadn’t been for probably the entire past year. Still, food was fuel, and this food was free. She could hardly sidestep that when her entire life savings was being poured into hiring Hudson Sibling Solutions and staying in Wyoming until the mystery was solved.
She finally forced herself to pick a few pieces of fruit and a hard-boiled egg and put them on a plate. She’d been guzzling coffee for days, so she went for the bottle of water instead.
“Tell me why you decided to come all the way out here.” He said it silky smooth, and whether it was the drawl or his demeanor, he made it sound like a gentle request.
She knew it was an order though. And she knew he’d ignore it like everyone else had. It was too big of a leap to take, and yet...
“Rose found out our great-grandfather was married before he married our great-grandmother. And he had a son from this first marriage. A man named Eugene Green.”
Grant’s expression didn’t move, but something in the air around them did. Likely because he knew Eugene Green to be the founder of the Order of Truth.
“That’s not exactly a close relation, is it? Something like a half great-great-uncle. If that.”
“If that,” Dahlia agreed. Her stomach turned, but still she forced herself to eat a grape. Drink some of the water. “But it was in Rose’s notes.”
Grant flipped through the papers again. “What notes?”
Dahlia moved for her bag and pulled out the thick binder she’d been carting around. “After the police decided it was a cold case, they returned her computer to me. I printed off everything she’d collected about our family history. That’s what took her to Texas. She had a binder just like this. With more originals, but she scanned and labeled everything. So I recreated it. The Wyoming branch and Texas branch of the family are one and the same. It connects.”
Grant eyed the binder. “Ms. Easton...”
“I know. You don’t believe me. No one does. That’s okay.” She hadn’t come all this way just for someone to believe her. “And you can hardly look through it all. But there is this.” She pulled out the piece of paper she’d been keeping in the front pocket of the binder. “The picture on the top is from security footage of the gas station in Texas where Rose was last spotted. That’s Rose,” she said pointing to her sister. “No one can identify the man with her, but he looks an awfully lot like the picture on the bottom. A picture of Eugene Green from my sister’s notes.”
Grant didn’t even flick a glance at the picture. “Eugene Green is dead.”
“Yes, but not everyone who might look like him is.”
Grant seemed to consider this, but then people—law enforcements, investigators, even friends—always did. At first. “Can I keep this?”
Dahlia nodded. She had digital copies of everything. She wasn’t taking any chances. If HSS took all her information and lost it, discarded it or ignored it, she’d always have her own copies to keep her going.
“Did you have anything else that might tie Rose to Truth or Wyoming?” Grant asked.
No, she hadn’t come here thinking HSS would believe her, but she’d...hoped. She couldn’t seem to stop herself from hoping. “No, not exactly.”
“Can I ask why you couldn’t have told us this over the phone?”
Dahlia looked at the picture. Every police officer she’d talked to about it told her she was grasping at straws. That the Order of Truth was gone, and all the Greens had long since left the Truth area. That the man in the picture wasn’t with Rose. He was just getting gas at the pump next to her.
“I’m not sure I could explain it in a way that would make any sense to you, but I needed to come here.”
Grant nodded. “Well, I’ll look into this. Is there anything else?”
Dahlia shoved her binder, sans security picture, back in her bag and then stood. He was dismissing her now that he understood her evidence was circumstantial—according to the police.
She was disappointed. She could admit that to herself. She’d expected or hoped for a miracle. Even as she’d told herself they wouldn’t care any more than anyone else had, there’d been a seed of hope this family solving cold cases might believe her.
She should end this. The Hudsons weren’t going to do any more than the police had, and she was going to run out of money eventually. “If you don’t have anything new in a week, I suppose that will be that.”
His eyebrows rose as he stood. “A week isn’t much time to solve a cold case.”
“I don’t need it solved. I just need some forward movement to prove I’m paying for something tangible. If you can prove to me the Order of Truth has nothing to do with this—irrefutably—that’ll be enough.”
He seemed to consider this, then gave her a nod. “You’re staying at the Meadowlark Cabin?” Grant asked as he motioned her to follow him.
Dahlia nodded as she retraced her footsteps through the big stone-floored foyer to the large front door with its stained glass sidelights. Mountains and stars.
“How long are you planning on staying?”
Dahlia looked away from the glass mountains to Grant’s austere face. “As long as it takes.”
Again, his expression didn’t quite move, but she got the distinct feeling he didn’t approve. Still, he said nothing, just opened the front door.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said.
She forced herself to smile and shake his outstretched hand.
Just because he’d be in touch didn’t mean she was going to go hole herself in her room at her rented cabin in Sunrise. No.
She planned on doing some investigating of her own. She’d come here hoping the Hudsons could help, sure, but she’d known what she really needed to do.
Help herself.
