Chapter 15
Brooklyn Sloane
“Ms. Sloane, I’m sorry to have to tell you this.” The edge to Sheriff Gentry’s voice had Brook tightening her hand around the phone. “Porter Voss is dead.”
Bit was at the far end of the table, and he must have read something in her expression because his fingers stilled on his keyboard.
The dining room, which had been humming with the quiet productivity of background checks and database searches for the better part of the afternoon, went silent.
Brook stood from the table, walking around the edge until she had a full view of the staircase.
“What happened?”
“His truck was found about twenty minutes ago, wrapped around a telephone pole on County Road Nine, just past the Schroeder curve. Single vehicle, as far as we can tell. The front end is demolished. He was gone before anyone got to him.”
“Is it your opinion that the crash was an accident, Sheriff? Or is there a possibility that another vehicle was involved?”
“Honestly, Ms. Sloane, I don’t know,” Sheriff Gentry responded after a slight hesitation.
“There’s too much damage to the truck to say one way or the other right now.
That stretch of road has a sharp corner, and the tire marks on the pavement are a mess.
Could be he took the curve too fast. Could be someone ran him wide.
I just can’t tell you which from what I’m looking at. ”
“I need you to stay on site and keep everyone away from that vehicle.” Brook turned toward the window now that she was certain Gwenyth wouldn’t overhear anything. “Don’t let anyone move the truck or disturb the road surface. I’m sending a federal crash investigator to examine the scene.”
She turned to Bit, who was already reaching for his own phone. He gave her a single nod, indicating he would take care of the request.
“I can do that,” Gentry agreed, relief evident in his tone. “I’ll have my deputies cordon off the area. Should I contact the next of kin? Porter has a sister in Arizona.”
“Please do. She should hear it from your office.” Brook’s gaze drifted again toward the staircase in the foyer.
The upper landing was empty, the burgundy wallpaper absorbing the sconce light the way it always did, but the gravity of what she was about to set in motion pressed against her chest. “I’ll contact Dale Ellingham myself. ”
“Understood. I’ll send you a pin for the location.”
“Thank you, Sheriff. One of my team members will be heading your way shortly, as well.”
She disconnected and stood in the silence of the dining room for a moment, the phone still in her hand, while Bit continued to speak with someone from the local FBI office.
His voice was low and efficient beside her, but it registered only as background noise.
The grandfather clock continued its steady, indifferent pulse.
Porter Voss had left the estate that morning without telling anyone.
Now he was dead.
The man who had lived on this property for decades, who had defended Nestor’s character to anyone who would listen, who had pressed clean linens for rooms he’d prepared for strangers, was wrapped around a telephone pole on a county road.
The timing was either a terrible coincidence or it wasn’t a coincidence at all.
The front door opened, and Theo stepped into the foyer. He was carrying a bottle of water and had his phone in his other hand. He stopped when he registered Brook’s expression.
“What happened?”
“Porter Voss is dead. His truck hit a telephone pole on County Road Nine. Sheriff Gentry isn’t able to determine if it was an accident or if another vehicle was involved.
” Brook crossed the dining room to meet him at the threshold, lowering her voice.
“I need you to drive out to the crash site. Gentry is sending me a pin. I’ll forward it to you.
Bit is arranging for a federal crash investigator to handle the investigation, but I want your eyes on the scene before anything gets moved. ”
“When did it happen?”
“The truck was found about twenty minutes ago. I don’t have a time of death yet.
” Brook paused, and the next part came out quieter than she’d intended.
“I was waiting for Porter to come back to the estate to question him about Nestor’s equipment.
The greenhouse was stripped clean, every piece of equipment gone, and I believe there’s a lab somewhere on this property that no one has told us about.
Gwenyth mentioned it this morning. She said her father’s equipment is in his lab, and when I asked where, she pointed me back to the greenhouse. It could be beneath the structure.”
“A lab,” Theo repeated, his gaze drifting toward the window. “It never occurred to me to question the equipment a botanist would have on hand.”
“Bit’s been going through blueprints, county records, every property filing he can find.
Nothing shows a secondary structure or a room that isn’t accounted for in the original floor plans.
” Brook adjusted her stance when the baby shifted, seeking a more comfortable position.
“Porter was the one person on this estate who might have known where it was.”
The implication hung between them without needing to be spoken.
If Porter’s death wasn’t an accident, then someone had ensured that the one individual who could answer Brook’s questions never would.
When Theo spoke, his voice had dropped into a register that Brook recognized.
It was the tone he used when he was choosing his words carefully because the wrong ones would start a fight he didn’t want to have.
“Brook, if someone killed Porter to keep him from talking to us, then this isn’t a cold case anymore. This is active.” His gaze moved from her face to her stomach and back again, and he didn’t try to disguise it. “That changes things.”
“I know what you’re about to say.”
“I’m going to say it anyway.” Theo crossed his arms. “If there’s someone in this area willing to kill a man to protect a thirty-year-old secret, then everyone on this estate is a potential target. Including you.”
Brook held his gaze without flinching. She’d had this conversation with Theo earlier in her pregnancy. He needed to hear her acknowledge the risk, because that was how Theo processed his concern.
“Bit has every inch of this property covered,” Brook said evenly, not wanting to turn this into a lengthy discussion.
“Cameras on every access point, motion sensors along the perimeter, and a monitoring station ten feet from where I’m standing.
No one is getting on or off this estate without us knowing about it. ”
She paused, and when she continued, she gave him the reassurance he sought.
“And I will make sure that I am always in someone’s presence while we’re here. You have my word on that.”
Theo held her gaze for another beat, reading her the way he always did, measuring what she said against what she meant. Whatever he found satisfied him enough to let it go, though the tension in his jaw didn’t fully release.
“I’m holding you to that promise, Brook,” Theo said quietly. He switched his phone for his keys, pulling them from his pocket. “I’ll head out now. Cal Brennan wasn’t home when I stopped by his residence. I’ll follow up with him tomorrow.”
“That’s fine. The crash site is the priority right now.”
Theo nodded before exiting the house. She heard the SUV start a moment later, followed by the crunch of gravel as he pulled down the drive. The sound eventually faded, and she turned to find that Bit had ended his call.
“A federal crash investigator is on the way,” Bit said as she made her way toward him. “Should be on site within two hours.”
“Good. I need you to pull the footage from this morning. We know that Porter left the estate early this morning, but I want to know if any other vehicles entered or left the property not belonging to the forensics team before or after he did.”
Bit’s fingers moved across the keyboard, scrubbing through the surveillance feeds he’d set up the day before.
The cameras covered the main drive, the gate opening in the stone wall, and the gravel path near the barn.
The monitor cast its glow across his face and the half-empty bag of chips beside his elbow.
After a minute, he stopped on a frame and pointed at the screen.
“Porter’s truck passed through the main gate at six forty-seven this morning. Heading toward town.”
“Any other vehicles in the camera’s view?”
Bit scrubbed forward and backward through the surrounding hours, checking every camera angle. He eventually shook his head.
“Nothing. Porter was the only vehicle in or out of this property between midnight and when we started moving around this morning. The forensics team arrived in two separate vans around seven-thirty, and Dr. Kessler arrived at approximately two minutes to eight.” Bit opened a new screen.
“I’ll access the closest traffic cams. If Porter drove within view, I’ll be able to see if anyone was following him. ”
Brook stepped away to let him work. She pulled up Dale Ellingham’s number and placed the call. He answered on the first ring.
“Mr. Ellingham, I’m calling because I have some difficult news.
” Brook kept her voice steady and direct.
There was no gentle way to deliver this, and Dale wasn’t the kind of man who would appreciate an attempt at one.
She wasn’t even certain that he would care one way or the other.
“Porter Voss was killed in a vehicle crash this afternoon.”
The silence on the other end of the line stretched for several seconds. When Dale spoke again, his voice had lost the practiced quality it usually carried.
“Porter is dead?”
“Yes,” Brook replied, weighing how much she wanted him to know at this point. “I requested the crash investigation be taken over by the FBI, given the circumstances.”
Dale cleared his throat, and when he spoke, the composure was already reassembling itself, though the seams were visible.
“I’ll head your way. Gwenyth is going to be devastated. Porter was the only constant she had in her life.”
“We’ll see you when you arrive.”
Brook disconnected and set the phone on the table.
The dining room was quieter than it had been all day, and Porter's death hung over the room in a way that she couldn’t shake.
Dale intended to be the one to tell Gwenyth.
It was the natural assumption. He was family, and despite everything Brook had observed about his motivations, he was the person with the potential legal standing and the blood relation to deliver that kind of news.
She had been prepared to let him do just that, but something stopped her.
Dale could very well frame it in such a way as to lure Gwenyth off the property.
He would no doubt use Porter’s death the same way he’d been attempting to use everything else, as evidence that Gwenyth couldn’t survive on her own, that the estate was dangerous, that the guardianship needed to proceed immediately.
He would walk up those stairs with grief on his face and a calculation behind it, and Gwenyth would receive the second worst news of her life filtered through the agenda of a man who wanted to sell her home.
Brook’s own mother had spent years receiving difficult news filtered through other people’s narratives. Brook understood what that did to a person, how it shaped the grief into something that served the messenger rather than the mourner.
Gwenyth deserved to hear this from someone who had no stake in what happened next.
“Bit, when Dale arrives, tell him I’m upstairs with Gwenyth. We’ll be down shortly.”
Bit looked up from his laptop. Whatever he read in her expression, he didn’t question it.
“Got it.”
Brook crossed the foyer and placed her hand on the banister.
The wood was cool beneath her palm, worn smooth by decades of use.
The staircase rose above her, splitting at the landing.
Somewhere behind a closed door at the end of the right-hand corridor, a woman who had already lost her father was about to learn that the last person who had chosen to stay had been taken from her, too.