Chapter 3
Brooklyn Sloane
The double glass doors of S&E Investigations clicked open before Brook could reach the biometric scanner.
Arden Hinnish had been keeping tabs on the security monitor again, though not from the reception area.
She immediately spotted both him and Theo through the glass wall of her office.
Arden had activated the lock, where he was placing her hot morning beverage on her desk while Theo occupied the guest chair, his legs stretched out in front of him, his posture deceptively relaxed.
The scent of her daily coffee reached her before she'd made it halfway across the foyer, and something in her chest loosened at the delicious fragrance.
Her one cup. Her single daily allowance, sanctioned by her OB and defended by her with a resolve that hadn't surprised anyone.
Arden had taken it upon himself to have it waiting for her each morning, and she had never once had to ask.
The fact that Theo was already in her office meant one of two things, though.
Either someone on the team had a problem, or the Bureau had called with a request. Given that he understood the unwritten rule about not speaking to her before she'd had her first sip of caffeine, she was betting on the Bureau.
“Good morning,” Brook greeted them as she walked through her office door.
“Everything alright?”
The question had been asked in unison.
She almost smiled.
Almost.
Before her pregnancy, arriving twenty minutes late wouldn't have registered.
She used to beat everyone into the office by at least a couple of hours, so such a trivial thing would have gone unnoticed.
The pregnancy had changed all that. Her body demanded more sleep now, and she'd reluctantly adjusted her schedule to accommodate it.
Seven o'clock had become her new baseline, which meant twenty minutes to eight had both men on high alert.
“I stopped by the condo to check on things,” Brook replied nonchalantly as she crossed to the coatrack in the corner and hung her leather bag on the hook. She extracted her cell phone before making her way to her desk. “I hadn't been there in a few days.”
The tension in the room dropped by several degrees.
Not entirely, though. It never did anymore.
It was impossible to reassure them that Jacob wouldn't eventually surface.
He was coming for her, and the only questions that remained were when and how.
That reality had settled into the walls of this office like a low hum that no one acknowledged, but everyone could hear.
Arden lingered near the edge of her desk, his salt-and-pepper mustache carrying its usual precise trim.
He was a former private detective who had long since traded fieldwork for the steadying role he occupied at S&E.
He kept hard candies in a jar on his desk, maintained paper records alongside the digital system he openly distrusted, and referred to every woman under forty as “dear” without a shred of condescension.
His quiet presence at the firm had become as essential as the locks on the doors. He was also the only one who had figured out the complicated coffee machine that doubled and technically tripled for almost every other beverage imaginable.
Brook set her phone down and reached for the mug that had BOSS printed across it in elongated block lettering. She ignored the two men and brought the rim to her lips, taking a long and very slow sip.
She moaned in pleasure.
She couldn't help herself.
The warmth, the sweetness, the mixture of caramel and cinnamon settling on her tongue. For three uninterrupted seconds, the world was exactly as it should be.
When she finally opened her eyes, Arden was smiling. He gave her a small, contented nod, a gesture that conveyed more affection than most people express in full sentences, and then he walked out of her office without saying another word.
Theo remained in the guest chair.
He was observing her with that subtle intensity that she'd come to rely on over the years.
He'd been her first hire. A former federal agent with an athletic frame that carried strength born from discipline rather than vanity.
His dark skin caught the morning light from the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the rich brown leather eye patch he wore sat snug against his face without apology.
He'd lost his right eye on a case gone wrong, and the Bureau had tried to bury him behind a desk.
He hadn't let them, and she’d benefited from their loss.
What she valued most about Theo was his balance.
The steadiness of a cop's son, the empathy of a man who'd lived his own share of pain.
He could press when the situation demanded it, and he could listen when it didn't.
He was also her best friend.
“Stop,” Brook directed him as she glanced toward the foyer. “Everything is fine.”
A floor-to-ceiling glass wall separated her private office from the reception area.
The transparency had been intentional. From her desk, she had an unobstructed view of the elevator banks and the main corridor.
Anyone who entered the floor would be visible to her before they reached the front doors.
It also meant that anyone in the common space could see within, and Arden was feigning interest in his computer monitor.
Theo tilted his head slightly, as if her directive had confirmed whatever he'd been searching for in her body language.
She used to be better at this. There had been a time when her expression was a vault that no one could get through.
Not strangers, not her colleagues, not even her therapist. But the last several years had changed her in ways she was still quantifying.
The walls she'd spent decades constructing hadn't crumbled, exactly.
They'd merely developed cracks. Narrow ones, barely visible, but enough for the people closest to her to peer through.
And Theo always knew where to look.
“You know I live in the same building,” Theo said, his tone mindful as he continued to study her. “All you had to do was ask me to stop by your condo.”
“I'm not an invalid.”
The sharpness in her voice surprised even her. It came out harsher than she'd intended, the kind of edge that used to be her default but now seemed like a step backward. She drew in a slow breath through her nose and let it settle before releasing it.
“I'm sorry,” Brook murmured, bringing the mug to her lips again. The second sip was just as good as the first. She let the warmth of it soften the residual tension in her chest before lowering the cup to the coaster. “That was uncalled for.”
Theo didn’t appear the least bit offended. If anything, the corner of his mouth twitched upward, and the amusement in his single brown eye was unmistakable.
“If I didn't need this caffeine as badly as I do,” Brook said, her voice quieter now, “I'd lob this mug at your head. Just remember the last time someone mentioned pregnancy hormones in my presence.”
Theo's laugh was brief but genuine. He then leaned forward in the chair, resting his elbows on his knees, and the shift in his posture indicated the personal portion of their morning had concluded.
“We got a call from the Bureau,” Theo shared, his interest in what they had to say evident. “They're requesting our assistance on a case out in Indiana.”
Brook wrapped her hands around the warm mug.
“Go on.”
“Eight sets of remains have been discovered in a greenhouse on a private estate. A federal forensics team is already on site and expects to be there for days sorting through the bones.” Theo paused, giving her time to really absorb the meaning of the number.
“The property owner was a man named Nestor Ellingham. Botanist. A quick search revealed his wife died of cancer back in the early eighties. After her death, he reportedly spent close to a decade trying to develop some kind of plant-based cure. Then he up and disappeared sometime in the mid-nineties. No one has heard from him since, though the forensic anthropologist believes that one set of the remains might belong to him.”
“In his own greenhouse?”
“Yes, though they're still working on confirmation.”
Brook studied the surface of her coffee. The cinnamon had left a faint pattern on top of the froth. Theo had left out a crucial detail, or else he wouldn’t be in her office.
“And the other seven?”
“All female.”
And there it was, the first indication of a serial killer.
“The forensics team was able to partially expose each burial site during the initial survey, enough to make preliminary biological assessments based on pelvic morphology.”
Brook lifted her gaze from her mug to meet Theo's stare. He held it, knowing she needed a moment to let the shape of the case form in her mind before she asked her next question.
“The FBI wants this handled quietly, Brook. They don't want rumors about a serial killer spreading, which means they don't want to pull federal agents into the investigation just yet. They'd rather go through us.”
Brook nodded slowly, understanding their reasoning.
The Bureau had its own investigators, plenty of them, but cases like this attracted attention.
Congressional inquiries, cable news segments, podcast producers with Freedom of Information requests already drafted.
S&E operated outside that spotlight, which was precisely why the Bureau leaned on them when discretion mattered more than optics.
“Has the medical examiner given a preliminary timeframe of death? Either the male subject or the female remains?”
“All buried during the same general period, but obviously that could change depending on what the soil composition and skeletal analysis reveal. Thirty years is the floor.”
Brook tapped her index finger against the side of her mug.