The Hidden

“I’m going back on the computer—see if we’ve missed anything on Ben and Trisha,” Brett said. “I’ll call HQ, too—tell them to dig deeper.” He hesitated. “Ben did have access to the museum and the Colt that killed the Parkers.”


“I’m surprised Gray hasn’t arrested him already. He brought Scarlet in just for having pictures on her camera.”

“Pictures Ben told him about,” Brett reminded him.

“True,” Diego said. “But do you really see him being capable of it? He’s not a young man.”

“It doesn’t take a young man to pull a trigger.”

“Yes, but Larry Parker was strung up a tree. That takes strength.”

“Maybe Ben and Trisha are a pair of psychopathic killers,” Brett said.

Diego let that thought settle, trying to envision the two of them slinking into town, somehow getting the Parkers alone, then dragging or forcing them up the hill. “He’s living his dream in his ancestral home. Are you saying his dream was to re-create his ancestors’ deaths?”

“As a motive, it’s a little off,” Brett agreed. “But we’ll look into his—and Trisha’s—past. If nothing else, it always helps to eliminate suspects.”

“True,” Diego agreed with a nod, then headed down the stairs to await Jane’s arrival.

He stepped outside into a beautiful fall day. The sun was already up, and the air was crisp and clean.

The sight that greeted his eyes, the peaks of the snowcapped Rockies rising over the tree line, seemed so serene that it was hard to imagine the horror of bloodshed intruding.

But intrude it had.

As he stood in the sun, he heard car tires on the gravel drive. He stepped forward. Jane had arrived. She parked, and he headed over to greet her.

“Grab my portfolio, will you?” she asked as she got out of the car. “I sketched his face from a few different angles. I have no idea of eye or hair color, obviously, so I played with that a bit, too.”

“You don’t even look tired,” he told her.

She flashed him a smile. “I am, but I’ll sleep as soon as we’re set with this.” She grabbed her purse and her computer bag, and started toward the museum.

She paused, looking around as they entered the museum. She smiled, as if she had somehow come home.

“Wow. Authentic. I love a place like this, small but real, and full of treasures. Those mannequins are incredible,” she said, then frowned suddenly and approached the statue of Nathan Kendall. “Amazing workmanship,” she said.

“That’s Nathan Kendall, the man who founded this ranch,” Diego said. “His father-in-law had it commissioned after the murders. He also commissioned one of his daughter, but she seems to have been lost over the years.” He shrugged. “It’s no wonder you like the West. I understand you worked in Texas at one point.”

“Not to mention my husband, Agent Sloan Trent, is from Arizona,” she said. “We met at an old theater in Lily, Arizona. They had a lot of old props like the collection here. I’m always fascinated by all the history out here.” She smiled ruefully. “I’ll gawk later. Where would you like me to set up my computer and lay out my pictures?”

“Up in the living room,” Diego said. “I’ll lead the way.”

Upstairs, Jane greeted Brett with a smile. Scarlet hadn’t appeared yet, so Diego led the way to the living room. While Jane set up her computer on the coffee table, Brett called Matt and told him and Meg to head over.

Diego sat next to Jane as she booted up her computer and hit the buttons to bring up her rendering.

“This isn’t a perfect science,” she reminded him. “But we know he was Caucasian, about thirty-five, so I worked with the standards for tissue depth and so on, and then, as I said, created different combinations of eye and hair color.”

Her computer had a high-def seventeen-inch screen. As she hit a key, an almost photographic likeness of a face popped up. “There he is,” she said. “Our John Doe. Not a bad-looking guy. Here he is with dark hair and blue eyes. Next I have him as a brown-eyed blond.” She clicked. Another sketch.

“Face look familiar to you?” Diego asked Brett.