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Brook patiently waited until Harden came to a stop in front of her.
“Why?”
Brook didn’t need to expand on her question.
“You’re the talk of Quantico. Literally. Your closure rate was better than that of any profiler within the agency, and the upper brass is beginning to realize that your inherent talent can’t be taught in their classrooms.” Harden shrugged underneath his black dress coat, but there was a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. “Let’s just say that I believe they’re regretting letting you slip through their fingers.”
Technically, Brook had been the one to end their contract after discovering that Jacob had murdered her neighbor in his desired, brutal manner. He preferred to slice his victims’ flesh right off their faces until there was nothing left to identify them except through their dental records or fingerprints. He was of the opinion that those women who believed they had the perfect lives should be taught a lesson…a fatal one. While Brook had been the one to turn in her resignation, the Bureau would have undoubtedly requested it once her affiliation with Jacob had hit the airwaves. She’d preempted their administrative action.
After all, public image was everything.
“Ann? Really? You had to bring the one agent who can’t stand working with me?”
“Frank really is underwater with a counterintelligence investigation.” Harden narrowed his eyes for protection when a cold gust of wind worked its way up the street. “The other agents I have underneath me now are too inexperienced, and they would have only gotten in your way.”
“You knew that Ann would let us run with this case, didn’t you?” Brook recalled how Harden had the ability to move his agents about as if they were pieces on a chessboard. “She’s…harder than before, if that’s even possible.”
Harden would never divulge the confidence of one of his agents. In this case, he didn’t need to, because Brook was well aware that Ann had been shot in the line of duty well over a year ago. The incident had taken place about a month before Brook had resigned, and the two of them hadn’t spoken directly since. Still, the change in the woman’s bearing was obvious, and her words backed up her newfound attitude toward investigations.
Ann no longer took risks, and she sure as hell wasn’t about to sink her teeth into a case that had gone cold over three years ago without absolute proof that there was juice worth the squeeze.
“I’ve already received approval to bring your firm aboard for this investigation, if it turns out that we are dealing with the same unsub,” Harden said in an effort to end the discussion regarding Ann. “You know how it works, Brook. I don’t need to read you the fine points. I’m just glad to see you missed us as much as we missed you.”
Brook shook her head, refusing to engage with Harden’s disillusion that she’d ever really fit in amongst his team of agents. The only one that she’d ever felt a kinship to had been Special Agent Frank Lyle. He’d gone out of his way to include her, no matter that she’d succeeded in keeping her personal and professional life separate.
“It looks as if the forensics team has finally arrived,” Harden pointed toward a white van that had pulled up directly in front of the coffee shop. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Brook had kept her hands in the pockets of her dress coat since she hadn’t brought her gloves with her. The only reason that she’d felt comfortable enough leaving her belongings inside the café was that Sylvie remained inside. It was doubtful that she’d gotten anything useful from the patrons, especially since the footage showed the woman leaving her handprint a little after seven o’clock this morning. The only ones who had still been inside the coffee shop from that time of the day had been the staff, but Brook had questioned them herself. They’d all been too busy waiting on their customers to notice something so strange as a smear on the window.
It was more likely that the customers entering the café had noticed the bloody handprint, but most people living in the city tended to ignore things of that nature. It wasn’t so much that they were self-absorbed as it was that they simply weren’t comfortable getting into someone else’s business.
Could she have read the situation wrong?
Had the woman been strung out on drugs and not aware that she’d been bleeding until after she’d pressed her hand against the window? There were multiple, plausible scenarios that could have occurred other than a serial killer returning to his hunting ground three years after taking his last victim.
“Brook?”
She’d been staring down the street in the direction the woman had taken upon walking away from the café. The tone of Sylvie’s voice had Brook dragging her gaze toward the entrance where two forensic techs were studying the bloody handprint. Theo had joined Harden and Ann as they walked across the street to their vehicle, so they were completely out of earshot.
“Yes?” Brook asked after clearing her throat. She might desperately need her daily fixture of caffeine, but she wasn’t wrong about her deduction of the evidence. “Did someone recall something significant?”
“No, but I have something better.”
Sylvie waited until Brook was closer before revealing her headline. She hadn’t bothered to put on a jacket since it was obvious that she preferred to speak with Brook inside. She was fine with that decision, because standing outside had the bitter cold wind seeping into her bones.
“What did you find?” Brook got right to the point after stepping across the threshold, earning her a glare from one of the technicians.
“Bit,” Sylvie corrected with a smile as she handed Brook a hot coffee. More precisely, a large caramel macchiato. “Bit ran the footage from the café through his facial recognition program. Brook, he got a hit on a woman who was reported missing two weeks ago by her husband. It looks as if we caught a hot one.”
Considering that S&E Investigations, Inc. had been created for the sole purpose of cold cases, the majority of their investigations had either become active midway through a case or they’d made exceptions for one reason or another.
A hot one referred to the latter, but Brook didn’t mind making a concession in this case.
The unsub had returned to his hunting ground, only he had no idea there was another predator in this patch of the jungle…her.
Chapter Four
Brooklyn Sloane
