Page 27 of Scarred By Sin

“Again, both could be valid,” Brook said as she pulled her chair back out from underneath the table. “Which is why I’m not committing to either framework until we have more from Kessler. What I can tell you is that the ritualistic care demonstrated in the female burials is behaviorally inconsistent with the violence of Nestor’s death, but you all know that anyway. Those are two distinct signatures, and reconciling them under a single offender profile is difficult. Not impossible, but difficult.”

Brook sat down and adjusted the angle of her laptop screen. The chair creaked beneath her in the same way every seat had since she’d reached the second trimester.

“I’m also working on a third profile,” Brook added. She needed to use the bathroom, but she wanted to finish the briefing first. “There is a slim possibility that whoever killed Nestor had no idea there were additional remains in those flowerbeds. I’ll draft it for you to have in case the investigation shifts.”

There was no holding her bladder any longer.

Brook stood and made her way around the table, delivering assignments as she went.

“In the meantime, we work all the angles. Sylvie, I’d like you to interview Owen Pruitt. It sounds as if he’s been managing Gwenyth’s medication, and Porter’s revelation about illegal prescriptions gives us enough reason to have a direct conversation with him. Don’t lead with the prescriptions, though. Start with his relationship to Nestor, his knowledge of the research, and his access to the estate. Let him talk.”

“Understood,” Sylvie replied, already closing her laptop.

“Theo, I’d like you to drive out to Seldon’s Garden and Nursery. Ward Seldon supplied Nestor with specialty soil and plant specimens. The man had a professional and personal relationship with Nestor, as well as regular access to the property through his delivery route. Find out what he knows about the research, the greenhouse, and who else had access through his operation. Get a sense of the man, as well as a list of drivers back then.”

Theo nodded and pushed back from the table.

Bit shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his gaze drifting from the dining room through the open doorway and toward the staircase in the foyer. The upper landing was empty, but the way his stare lingered there suggested that empty wasn’t the same as reassuring.

“I’ll be here,” Bit muttered with a note of resignation, adjusting his knitted cap. “Doing my thing. I’m going to dig deeper into Helen Uche. Employment history, medical records, any connections to this area or to Nestor Ellingham’s research. If she came to this estate because of an alternative cancer treatment, there’s a trail. I’ll also keep updating the background checks as new information comes in from Kessler’s team.”

“Good.” Brook turned to face the staircase herself. The foyer was quiet, the upper landing shadowed in the late morning light. The burgundy wallpaper absorbed the glow from the sconces rather than reflecting it, giving the space a quality that was less dark than it was dense, as though the air itself were thicker on the second floor. Somewhere up there, behind a closed door at the end of a private corridor, Gwenyth Ellingham was living the same day she’d lived for the past thirty years. “After I use the bathroom, I’m going to find Porter. Nestor spent over a decade filling that greenhouse with scientific equipment, and every piece of it is gone. Porter has been on this property longer than anyone. If something was moved, he might know where it went.”

12

Theo Neville

July 2026

Thursday — 1:04 pm

The sign for Seldon’s Garden & Nursery was hand-painted, faded by years of sun and weather, and mounted on two wooden posts at the edge of a gravel lot. Theo pulled the SUV into a space near the entrance and killed the engine, though he didn’t reach for the door immediately.

Brook’s profiles were still turning in his mind.

Profile A or Profile B, it really didn’t matter which framework turned out to be correct. Either way, the person responsible for what had been buried in that greenhouse had once walked freely through this part of Indiana, and the thirty-year gap since didn’t guarantee they’d stopped walking.

If the subject was in his seventies, he was probably still alive. Still capable. Still potentially within driving distance of the estate where Brook was currently working a case while eight months pregnant.

If she had been a field agent rather than a consultant, the Bureau would have assigned her to desk duty months ago. There were rules for a reason, and Theo understood them, even if he hadn’t agreed with every one of them when they’d been applied to him.

Losing his eye had put him behind a desk faster than he could have filed an appeal, and the Bureau’s reasoning had been sound. He understood it. That didn’t mean he’d accepted it quietly, and it didn’t mean Brook would have, either. She would have burned the desk and mailed the ashes to headquarters before she’d have sat behind it voluntarily.

The reality was that the team would likely head back to D.C. sometime next week once forensics finished the excavation, and they had a solid foundation of preliminary interviews. In the meantime, Bit had spent a good portion of yesterday mounting surveillance cameras across the estate grounds, wiring the perimeter with motion sensors, and running cable from the monitoring station in the dining room to every access point he could identify. No one was reaching the main house without Bit knowing about it.

That gave Theo some reassurance.

Not enough, but some.

He stepped out of the SUV and took in the nursery. The heat hit him before both feet were on the gravel, and the air carried the rich, loamy scent of fresh soil and fertilizer that seemed to radiate from every surface of the operation. It was larger than he’d expected. Several open-air greenhouses stretched across the property. Rows of potted plants, shrubs, and bagged soil were arranged in orderly lines beneath the structures, and a handful of customers were wandering the aisles with flatbed carts. Sprinklers ticked from somewhere deeper in the nursery, and the sound of water hitting broad leaves mixed with the low rumble of a truck idling near the loading dock.

Beyond the retail area, a chain-link fence separated the public space from what was clearly the business's working side. A loading dock, a storage building, and two delivery trucks were parked side by side with the nursery’s name stenciled on the doors in green lettering that had been touched up recently enough to appear brand-new.

Theo walked through the outdoor section until he reached a young man in a green vest who was restacking bags of mulch onto a wooden pallet. The kid couldn’t have been more than seventeen, with sunburned arms and a pair of work gloves that were two sizes too large.

“Excuse me. Is Ward Seldon around?”

The kid straightened and pushed a strand of hair off his forehead.