Page 31 of Scarred By Sin

Gwenyth spoke again, though the words seemed to arrive from somewhere further away.

“Do you think that maybe the man who used to sneak onto the property at night hurt Daddy? I always thought he was nice. So nice.”

Brook’s hands stilled in her lap.

“What man, Gwenyth?”

But the window had closed.

Gwenyth unfolded herself from the step and stood with the slow, deliberate movements of someone surfacing from deep water. She pulled the cardigan tighter around her frame and turned toward the staircase that led to her wing. The light from the corridor window caught her profile for a moment as she turned, and Brook caught sight of the sharp lines of her cheekbones and the hollows beneath them, the face of a woman who had once been beautiful and had stopped caring a long time ago.

“I’m tired.”

She climbed the remaining steps without looking back, her bare feet padding softly against the wood, and disappeared down the second-floor corridor. A door opened and closed somewhere beyond Brook’s line of vision, and then the house was quiet again. The clock resumed its measured pulse, and the afternoon light through the foyer windows had shifted enough that the shadows on the staircase had lengthened by an inch since she’d sat down.

Brook remained on the landing, her hands resting in her lap, staring at the empty staircase above her. Gwenyth had just revealed two things that changed the shape of this investigation.

Gwenyth had pointed her back to the greenhouse, and Brook believed the answer was underground. And at some point during the years before Nestor’s death, someone had been coming onto the property at night without permission.

The lab could contain everything Dr. Kessler had identified as missing from the greenhouse. Nestor’s journals alone might document who had access, what compounds were being developed, and whether any of his research had been diverted toward something other than its intended purpose.

And the man who came at night could be the individual who put seven women in the ground.

Brook gripped the banister and pulled herself to her feet. The effort was considerable, and she made a mental note to choose her seating positions more carefully for the remainder of this pregnancy. She descended the staircase and crossed the foyer toward the dining room, where Bit was sitting at the end of the table in front of his laptop with a bag of chips off to the side.

“Bit, I need you to go through every blueprint, county record, and property filing on this estate. Floor plans, building permits, renovation records, anything that shows the layout of this property.”

“What am I looking for?” Bit asked after chasing his snack with the rest of his energy drink.

“A room or chamber that isn’t on any of the plans.”

14

Sylvie Deering

July 2026

Thursday — 1:58 pm

The Pruitt residence sat on a quiet street three blocks from the center of town, a single-story ranch with vinyl siding, a two-car garage, and a flower bed along the front walkway that someone tended with more dedication than talent. The marigolds were thriving, but the petunias had seen better days.

Sylvie pulled the SUV next to the curb and checked the address against the one she’d retrieved from Owen Pruitt’s background check. The house was modest in the way that most homes in this part of Indiana were modest, built for function rather than impression, maintained because that’s what you did when you owned something. A flag hung from a bracket beside the front door, limp in the windless afternoon, and a garden hose lay coiled near the garage in a loose pile that suggested it had been used that morning and not put away properly.

She walked up the concrete path and rang the doorbell. A dog started barking immediately from somewhere inside, the deep, insistent kind that belonged to a larger breed. A woman’s voice followed, muffled through the door, telling the dog to hush.

The door opened, and a woman in her early seventies stood behind a screen door. She had silver hair cut to her jawline, reading glasses pushed onto the top of her head, and an apron dusted with flour. The smell of something baking drifted out through the screen, warm and sweet.

“Can I help you?”

“Good afternoon. My name is Sylvie Deering. I’m with S&E Investigations.” Sylvie produced her credentials and held them at a height where the woman could read them through the screen. “I was hoping to speak with Owen Pruitt, if he’s available.”

The woman hesitated, her hand still on the lever of the screen door. She shifted her weight and glanced back over her shoulder before turning to Sylvie again.

“May I ask what this is about?”

“I’m here regarding Nestor Ellingham.”

Something in the woman’s expression eased at the name, and after a moment, she pushed the screen door open wider and stepped aside.