Page 8 of Scarred By Sin

Brook nodded slowly, understanding their reasoning. The Bureau had its own investigators, plenty of them, but cases like this attracted attention. Congressional inquiries, cable news segments, podcast producers with Freedom of Information requests already drafted. S&E operated outside that spotlight, which was precisely why the Bureau leaned on them when discretion mattered more than optics.

“Has the medical examiner given a preliminary timeframe of death? Either the male subject or the female remains?”

“All buried during the same general period, but obviously that could change depending on what the soil composition and skeletal analysis reveal. Thirty years is the floor.”

Brook tapped her index finger against the side of her mug.

Cold cases were the foundation of S&E Investigations. She had built the firm on the premise that forgotten victims deserved answers regardless of how many years had passed.

“Where are we on the current caseload?” Brook asked, though she had already been apprised of it during yesterday's team briefing. She wanted to hear Theo's assessment, anyway. “Is this something we can take on at the moment?”

“The Hargrove and Patterson cases are waiting on DNA results,” Theo advised as he leaned back and pulled his phone from his pocket. He checked the display but made no move to answer a call or return a text. “The samples from both investigations were submitted to the federal lab, but the backlog is what it is. We're looking at a minimum of a month, more likely two or three. There's nothing we can do on either front until those results come back.”

“And the third?”

“Arden and Bit are still pulling records. They've got a lead on a former landlord who might have witnessed something the night in question, but the guy moved to New Mexico and apparently doesn't believe in answering his phone. Bit's working on tracking down a current address.”

Brook processed the information quietly. Three cases, all in holding patterns of one kind or another. The DNA results were entirely beyond their control, subject to the same institutional bottleneck that plagued every law enforcement agency in the country. Arden and Bit were doing the legwork on the newer investigation, but it was a cold case from sixteen years ago. It would take time to build the framework.

“Is it your recommendation that we take on something larger while we wait?”

“Yes.” Theo met her gaze without hesitation. “It would also do the team good to have something else to focus on.”

Brook studied him for a moment, reading the angle of his shoulders and the steadiness in his expression. There was something beneath the professional recommendation. A readiness that went beyond casual interest. He hadn't simply received a call from the Bureau and decided to pass along the information. He had already discussed it with the others.

Brook lifted her mug and took another sip, observing him over the rim.

“You already talked to them.”

“Yes.”

She wasn't surprised. The team had been on pins and needles for months. Bit had rigged every alert system at his disposal, from facial recognition sweeps across the city's camera networks to custom algorithms that flagged anomalies in the surveillance feeds around the office, Graham's estate, and Brook's condo building.

Not a single viable hit had come through.

Jacob had survived an Alaskan ice cave collapse that should have killed him, traveled from Alaska to Illinois without detection, and returned to D.C. without tripping a single wire. The Bureau had officially closed its search after the collapse, convinced he was dead. Brook knew better, and so did her team.

What made it worse was the certainty that he was close.

The footage Bit had captured months ago semi-confirmed that Jacob had been inside the D.C. area, and the intelligence they'd gathered since placed him somewhere in the city.

All by design, of course.

But somewhere was a word that offered no comfort.

Jacob had always understood how to move without being seen. Wraparound sunglasses, hoods, facial hair, altered gait patterns. Now he had a genuine limp, but they had no idea how severe his injury from the fall had been. He could defeat facial recognition software the way most people avoided parking tickets. Easily and without a second thought.

The bottom line was that Brook noticed the toll all the waiting had taken on her team. She detected it in the way Theo's gaze lingered on her when she entered a room, scanning for distress before he greeted her. She observed it in Arden's insistence on arriving before anyone else and leaving after everyone had gone. And she witnessed it in the subtle tension that rippled through the office whenever her cell phone rang.

They were all waiting for the same thing.

The only difference was that Brook had been waiting for such an outcome her entire life.

“What else do you know about the case?”

"Apparently, Nestor Ellingham lived on the estate with his daughter, Gwenyth. After his wife’s death, Ellingham threw himself into his research, and the further he went down that road, the more isolated he became. After he vanished, no one looked too hard for him."

“Who took care of the daughter afterward?”