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Sylvie’s attack had nothing to do with her father.
“Really?” Brook taunted even before the lobby had stopped spinning around her. She used the wall next to the elevator to keep her upright, but she still managed to keep her voice steady. While she had done everything in her power to limit Jacob’s ability to contact anyone from the outside, the guards understood that he had access to her. This was the first time since he’d been behind bars that he’d taken advantage of such liberty. “I’ll admit to being caught off guard by your involvement, but I’m surprised you would have used someone so inept to do your dirty work. Sylvie might have been injured this evening, but it’s clear to me that you underestimated her. She’s resting comfortably in a room.”
Brook had taken a rather costly chance in assuming that Jacob had set up such an attack in advance. He was under such close surveillance in the prison that she doubted anything or anyone had slipped through the cracks.
Brook and the team had covered every angle possible with regard to Jacob contacting someone on the outside. When he had walked into FBI headquarters to turn himself in, he hadn’t intended for his stay to be long. She had managed to prevent two attempts at escape already, and she didn’t doubt that he had many more aces up his sleeve.
“That’s a shame. I envisioned you standing over her grave while recalling every word I said to you when we were together in that cornfield. You do remember, don’t you, Brook?”
“Tell me something, Jacob,” Brook said, purposefully injecting a small dose of satisfaction into her tone. “Is it true that prisoners who had no fear of closed spaces can eventually develop claustrophobia?”
Brook could picture her brother tightening his grip on the receiver in an attempt to control his rage. The only reason she was able to maintain a front was due to his incapacity to know the true outcome of his plan. He had no idea that surgeons were doing everything in their power to keep Sylvie alive.
Brook needed to make sure it stayed that way.
“I’ll let Sylvie know that you were thinking of her, Jacob. Enjoy the rest of your evening reading the last few chapters of The Odyssey.”
The only reason that she had mentioned the classic novel was to make sure Jacob was aware that she was monitoring him every second of the day. She somehow managed to lower her arm and disconnect the call without dropping her phone.
Bile hit the back of her throat, but she was able to constrict her esophagus in time so as not to embarrass herself in front of a couple of hospital employees waiting for the elevator. She pressed the back of her hand to her lips just to be safe.
She was the reason that Sylvie was lying on an operating table.
While Jacob might have been the one to orchestrate such an attack, Brook might as well have been the one plunging the knife into Sylvie’s abdomen. Brook had known such a possibility could happen, yet that hadn’t stopped her from going against her sound judgment. She had even warned her team that such an event could take place. She could see now that all of them had gotten too complacent with Jacob behind bars.
The woman posing as Erin Smith had all the information that she needed about the team to use to her advantage. Jacob wouldn’t have chosen her if she wasn’t cunning, but what had he offered her?
Where had he found a woman who was willing to kill for him?
Brook had a decision to make, but it was rather difficult to concentrate with such an overwhelming sense of guilt. Sylvie’s life hung in the balance, a direct consequence of the dangerous game that Brook had been playing with Jacob ever since he had left her in that cornfield. Her side of the conversation on their phone call had been a calculated move to keep him in the dark about Sylvie’s fate, and now Brook grappled with the harsh reality of her actions.
The choice before her was a difficult one.
Should she continue with the plan that she had laid out for the team or strike out on her own? The former option would only serve to put the lives of those she cared for in even more danger. The latter option would destroy everything she’d built…especially with Graham.
All the trust that Brook had spent fostering between them would be erased, yet she was at her best when navigating the shadows alone. Her next steps would shape not only the course of the investigation, but the relationships that she had spent years forging with all of them.
Brook turned her attention to her phone, noticing that she only had one percent of its charge left. She blinked away the moisture that had formed in her eyes to type out two, brief sentences…ones that would alter her immediate future.
Her thumb trembled as it hovered over the screen of her phone.
“I’m sorry,” Brook whispered in remorse as she pressed the send button. She had still been staring at the display of her cell when it went dark. The battery had finally died, but she wouldn’t be using the external charger. “I’m so sorry.”
Chapter Four
Theo Neville
February 2024
Friday — 1:03 am
“What about the car?”
Theo rubbed the back of his neck in frustration. Anger had taken a back seat after deep-seated fear had settled in, only to then have frustration win out in the end. What the hell had Brook been thinking when she decided to go underground? By disappearing into thin air?
“Can you use the street cameras to follow the driver’s route?” Theo asked, still in complete disbelief that he was even having this conversation with Bit. “What about the driver’s cell phone? Maybe map out the path that was taken when he left the hospital to the time he clocked out at midnight.”
Theo had been on the phone with Bit pretty much the entire time since receiving Brook’s test message. Two concise sentences, to be exact.
