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“For someone who is supposed to notice almost every detail of a crime scene, I’d say that knock to the head has done some serious damage.” Lorena whistled loud and long, as if she were disappointed in Brook’s lack of awareness. “Before I dragged your ass to the car that I had parked in the garage and stuffed you in the backseat, I took your coat. Good thing that it had a large hood on it, too. I moved that nice SUV of yours and parked it in front of a house that I was considering using before choosing one with an attic. Your team will be busy elsewhere while you tell me all about Sarah Evanston. By the way, Blondie wasn’t much of a talker when it came to Jacob or Sarah Evanston, but she was always praising that tech boy of yours. What’s his name? Bet? Bot? Bit! That’s it. They’ll never think to look for you here. I brought us back home so that we could spend some quality time together.”
“Home?” Brook hadn’t shown any emotion during Lorena’s replay of what had taken place in the past couple of hours. The woman thrived on others’ fear, and Brook wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. “Last I checked, this home belonged to Erin Smith. Tell me something, Lorena. What is it about Jacob that fascinates you?”
Lorena stood up and walked over to the window. The adrenaline that was surging through her body was too much for her to handle. The fact that Brook hadn’t confirmed nor denied Bit’s ability to access footage of the neighborhood was now one of the woman’s numerous focal points.
Lorena peered outside, but Brook couldn’t see just how bad the weather had gotten since she had been knocked unconscious. It was still rather difficult to fight off the nausea, but at least the pain in her head had become somewhat dull.
“Jacob understands me.”
Brook could easily detect the change in Lorena’s voice.
“People don’t…” Lorena dropped the blind back in place. She turned to face Brook, but Lorena stayed near the window. As far as Brook was concerned, the farther away she was from the living room, the better chance that Brook had to figure out a way out of her restraints. “Jacob and I are the pariahs of society when it’s really the other way around. He sees the world through my eyes. He loathes the same kind of people as me, and he goes through life eliminating them.”
Lorena narrowed her eyes as her previous anger returned, but that had been Brook’s intention. She needed to keep the woman’s emotional state unbalanced to buy time. It was why she nodded her understanding and once again brought up Lorena’s mother.
“Your mom took issues with your behavior, didn’t she? Too bold? Brash? Did you sully the family’s name when you decided to have sex with an ex-con? After all, Brad had just served a six-month sentence for selling drugs to some middle school students, right?”
“You don’t know anything about my life,” Lorena yelled as she closed half the distance between them. “Nothing.”
“That’s not true,” Brook said as she noticed a plastic knife near the edge of her boot. The serrated edge wasn’t sharp enough to immediately cut through the zip ties, but it could make enough of a dent to help snap the plastic in two with enough force added to the pressure. “I know a lot about you, Lorena. I know that your mother was concerned enough by your temper tantrums at four years of age that she consulted the town’s pastor. When you were eight years old, you cut off the pigtails of a girl on the playground using the teacher’s scissors just because she got to be Rudolph in the Christmas play. Then there was the time that you got caught shoplifting lighters at a convenience store. You tried to blame the same poor girl, but surveillance footage showed that she was in the back near the drinks and never even walked down that particular aisle.”
“Poor girl? You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lorena spat out as she glanced over her shoulder at the blinds. Brook did her best not to tense when Lorena finally advanced and knelt in front of Brook with one knee touching the Berber carpet. Their faces were inches apart. “You remind me of her. Long black hair. Blue eyes. A holier than thou attitude.”
Brook couldn’t stop the cry of pain from escaping her lips when the blade of the knife abruptly penetrated her upper leg. The fact that Lorena was already holding up the knife to see if any blood remained on the silver tip told Brook that the cut hadn’t been too deep.
Deep or not, the sudden pain had been staggering.
Unfortunately, Brook had gotten Lorena’s message loud and clear—the injury had merely been a warning of what was to come.
“How is your attitude now, Brooklyn Sloane?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Theo Neville
February 2024
Monday — 1:08 am
Snow swirled around Theo as he stood in the center of the cul-de-sac, surrounded by multiple patrol cars. Their red and blue lights lit up the immediate area, but the storm had only gotten worse in the past few hours. Two of the homes still had their Christmas lights strung up from a couple of months ago, but those small bulbs paled in comparison to the bright illumination given off by the light bars.
Theo’s breath was visible in the frigid air.
The snowstorm had managed to muffle the surrounding sounds and blur the once-familiar lines of the neighborhood. He had turned so that his patch caught the biting wind instead of his good eye. As it stood, he still needed to squint to see which officers still needed to be given assignments.
“You two take Maple Street,” Theo directed as he caught sight of Graham standing off to the side. He had been on the phone for most of the time that Theo and Beeson had been going back over the grid inside one of the vehicles. “Contact Beeson if you find anything.”
The police officers nodded their understanding before quickly making their way back to their car. The roads were close to impassable, but they would continue to search until they were forced to stop. Theo, Graham, and the two federal agents assigned by Harden wouldn’t stop at all, even if it meant they had to canvass the neighborhood on foot.
“Get your tech guy on the phone,” Harden called out after he had opened the driver’s side door of his unmarked vehicle. The man was the epitome of a federal agent, all the way down to his cropped hairstyle. He had gone grey at the temples a few years back. Brook’s disappearance would no doubt add to that color. “Tell him to contact…”
Harden rattled off a name and number, which Theo immediately memorized as he placed the call. Not sure if Bit would be able to hear him over the wind, Theo opened the door to his Jeep and settled in behind the wheel. While the engine wasn’t running, the brief respite from the wind made the interior seem warmer than it actually was at the moment.
“Big T, I was just about to call you.” An irritating noise came across the line, but Theo recognized the sound of the phone being moved across Bit’s shirt. He must have switched the cell to his other ear to use both hands to type. “Remember when I said that Boss left the vacant property north of you? How she drove to your location and then disappeared from view to the left of that street? Well, it wasn’t her. Lorena Dobbs had to have been wearing Boss’ coat. Little T noticed that the person who walked to the Land Rover wasn’t wearing Boss’ boots. At least, not the ones that she wore inside the house.”
“Are you telling me that Brook is still somewhere inside that house?”
“No,” Bit replied with regret, pausing afterward to say something to Sylvie. The two had a brief conversation before Bit came back to the conversation. “Another vehicle left the same real estate listing that Boss was searching, but I lost sight of the car near Oak Street.”
