Page 35 of Scarred By Sin

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.