Chapter 29
Brooklyn Sloane
The lobby of Brook’s building carried the familiar scent of polished marble and the faint trace of cleaning solution used by the maintenance staff.
The air conditioning was a relief after the August heat, and she adjusted the strap of her bag as she crossed the lobby.
She hated the waddling gait, unaccustomed to how convincingly awkward the extra weight made every step.
Charlie was behind the front desk, his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, a newspaper spread across the counter. He glanced up and broke into the same broad grin he’d been giving her since the day she’d moved in.
“Ms. Sloane. How are you feeling today?”
“Like I’m carrying a bowling ball, Charlie.”
He laughed and folded the newspaper. It didn’t take long for his grin to fade.
“I thought the movers were arriving tomorrow. Please tell me that everything is still on schedule.”
“Still on schedule. The baby’s due date is next week, so as long as my water doesn’t break, I’ll be here.”
“Good, because Lou already put up the decorations. The breakroom has streamers everywhere, though don’t you tell him I told you.” Charlie pointed a finger at her with mock seriousness. “Mrs. Delgado in 4B has been assigned to creating the games, and I’m under strict orders not to say another word.”
Brook smiled, doing her best to keep the exchange casual. She made sure to appear unhurried, the way she always did when greeting Charlie. The earpiece in her right ear was nearly invisible, tucked beneath the fall of her hair, and the voices on the other end were quiet but present.
Graham.
Bit.
Theo.
Sylvie.
All of them were listening to her side of the conversation.
“I meant to ask,” Brook said, shifting her bag to the other shoulder. “That virus that was making the rounds a few weeks ago. Has it finally worked its way through the building?”
“Just about.” Charlie pulled his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Everyone’s back on their feet except Colin. He still hasn’t gone back to work.”
“We don’t know if he can hear you, Brook.” Graham’s deep voice came through low and clear in her ear. “Tread carefully.”
“I hope someone checked on him,” Brook said, hoping to garner a bit more information.
“Yesterday, actually. Knocked on his door, and he answered right away. Looked rough, if you want to know the truth, but he reassured me that he was on the mend.” Charlie shrugged as he hung his glasses from the front pocket of his uniform. “I’m sure he’ll be back to work in no time.”
“That’s good to hear. Then he won’t be bothered by the movers.” Brook tapped the counter lightly with her fingertips. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Charlie.”
“You, too, Ms. Sloane.”
Brook advanced toward the elevator bank. She pressed the call button, the indicator above the doors displaying numbers as the car descended from the sixth floor. Not once did she glance toward the security camera tucked in the corner.
If she were right, Jacob was monitoring every single feed from every angle.
The realization had come to her right after Gwenyth Ellingham’s arrest. Hiding in plain sight.
Brook had asked Bit to pull the building’s exterior camera feeds, starting a few days before the Indiana case.
They discovered that Colin had hosted a gathering one evening.
At least twenty-some people had arrived over the course of two hours, entering the building in small groups, the way friends did when they were meeting up for drinks or a dinner party.
The footage showed the groups coming through the lobby, Lou buzzing them in, and the elevator making its trips.
When the party ended, the guests left in phases.
A group of four around eleven. Another three just before midnight.
Stragglers trickling out well after midnight.
It was the kind of departure pattern that made counting difficult, because the exits were spread across hours, and the camera angles didn’t always capture faces clearly.
It was the reason the footage hadn’t flagged anything unusual.
Twenty-some in, and what appeared to be the same number of people out.
But Brook and Bit had combed through the footage frame by frame. They had counted the arrivals, matching faces to the entry log, timestamping each one. Twenty-three people entered the building for Colin’s party.
Twenty-two people left.
It had been raining that night. Several of the guests had arrived in hoodies and rain jackets, hoods up against the downpour, faces obscured by the angle of the fabric and the low resolution of the exterior cameras.
One of the visitors had walked into the building with a group of three, his hood pulled forward, his gait unremarkable, his build close enough to any number of the other guests that nothing about him registered as out of place.
He’d never walked out.
If it were Jacob who had remained behind, he’d altered his posture and gait to not display his injury. Pain aside, he would have done what was necessary to ensure his presence hadn’t been detected.
Brook was just grateful she’d already moved the small box, which was now in a safe place. It would remain that way, too.
Whatever Jacob had planned was scheduled for tomorrow. She didn’t doubt that he was aware of her plans to move, given that he’d almost certainly been monitoring her movements. This was his chance, and he would have set everything in motion down to the second.
The elevator chimed, and the doors swooshed open.
Brook stepped inside and pressed the button for her floor. The doors closed, leaving her alone in the small, mirrored space. Graham’s breathing was barely audible in her ear. He was holding himself back, and she understood the effort it cost him.
He’d wanted to storm the building.
He’d argued for a tactical team, a coordinated entry with an overwhelming force applied to Colin’s unit while Brook was nowhere near the building. She had talked him down, and the conversation had been one of the most difficult of their relationship.
A forced entry would end with Colin Vogel’s body being discovered, and Jacob would somehow manage to be gone before the first officer ever cleared the threshold. Her brother didn’t barricade himself in rooms and wait to be captured.
He adapted.
He moved.
He had contingencies that no tactical plan could anticipate, and if he sensed an operation closing in, the collateral damage would extend well beyond Colin’s unit. Brook believed that with absolute certainty.
The elevator doors slid open.
Brook stepped out into the hallway without hesitation. The wall sconces cast their warm light at even intervals along the corridor, though she didn’t bother to glance to her right. She turned left instead, walking the short distance to her own door.
“Teams are in position.” In her ear, Graham’s voice came through, barely above a whisper. “On your signal.”
She could make out Bit’s breathing, faster than the others. Theo was silent, which meant he was focused. Sylvie would be monitoring the building’s exterior feeds from the van parked across the street.
Given the likelihood that Jacob had found a way to tap into the building’s security system, he’d known the moment she entered the lobby.
He was sitting in Colin’s unit right now, listening, watching, tracking her movements through whatever feed he’d compromised, and he was making the same calculation he always made.
Whether the opportunity in front of him was worth the risk.
Brook stopped at her door. The thin strip of transparent tape stretched across the seam between the door and the frame. It no longer mattered, but she followed through with the motion of removing it before pulling her keys from her bag.
She unlocked the door.
The condo was still and quiet, though the familiar cinnamon scent did nothing to relieve the tension in her shoulders.
The afternoon light came through the living room windows in long, amber streaks that fell across the hardwood floor.
Jacob would be wondering if she’d come today to take down the murder board on her dining room wall, and she would remain inside the condo long enough for him to assume it, too.
He would then take the risk to confront her.
To end her life.
Brook closed the door behind her with a soft click.
She set her leather bag on the entryway table and immediately unzipped the middle compartment.
Two firearms were tucked inside, and she proceeded to take them out one by one, placing them where she’d already decided they would give her the easiest access.
With how large her stomach appeared, there was a chance her brother might believe she didn’t have a weapon on her person.
She had one holstered behind her waist, should Jacob demand she relinquish one, but she had another tucked inside the prosthetic beneath her blouse. The prosthetic was the detail that held the entire operation together.
Brook had gone into labor eight days ago, the day after returning from Indiana.
She’d delivered her son in the upstairs bedroom of Graham’s estate.
There had been no hospital. No public record of admission, no insurance filing that could be traced, no digital footprint that Jacob’s resources could intercept.
Graham had arranged everything months in advance, though the details had been quickly modified after discovering Jacob’s presence in the building.
An OBGYN who had served with Graham overseas had been on hand.
A certified nurse-midwife, as well, along with a neonatal nurse in case of complications.
All of them had arrived at the estate separately, through different entrances, at staggered intervals, and none of them had been told the full reason for the secrecy.
The delivery had been difficult. Fourteen hours of labor had tested her limit of endurance, but their son arrived healthy and screaming, seven pounds of fury wrapped in a white blanket.
And when Brook held him for the first time, the fear she'd been carrying for close to nine months didn't vanish.
It had rearranged itself into something far fiercer.
Their son was at the estate right now, in the nursery that she and Graham had finished just the other day.
Arden was with him, rocking him gently, because the older man had refused to be anywhere else.
The baby was safe. He had been protected from the moment Brook decided that Jacob would never know his nephew existed until their final confrontation was over.
The prosthetic belly was silicone, custom-molded to match the size Brook had been at thirty-six weeks, and it sat beneath her clothing with enough weight and movement to fool anyone who wasn’t pressing their hands against it.
Charlie hadn’t questioned it. And Jacob, monitoring her through whatever camera feed he’d compromised, would see exactly what Brook wanted him to see.
A pregnant woman.
Alone.
Vulnerable.
The three things Jacob believed she was at the moment, and the three things she had never been less in her life.
Brook inhaled deeply as she crossed to the dining room wall.
The murder board stared back at her, the way it had for years. Photographs pinned in rows, newspaper clippings yellowed at the edges, lengths of red and blue string connecting faces to locations to dates in a grid that only she could read without a legend.
She reached up and pulled the first pin.
A photograph of Jacob in high school. She set it facedown on the dining room table.
Then the next pin. A clipping from the Morton Times-News.
Then another. A gas station receipt from a town in Montana.
She worked methodically, pulling each piece from the wall and stacking them in a pile that grew behind her.
With every pin she removed, the wall paint emerged a shade lighter than the surrounding paint.
After today, she wouldn't need any of it.
She would either walk out of this condo and never come back, or she wouldn’t be walking out at all. Those were the only two outcomes, and she’d made her peace with both of them before she’d kissed her son’s forehead this morning and handed him to Arden.
But there was one thing she needed to say aloud before Jacob strolled through the door…
“I love you, Graham.”