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Brook, on the other hand, seemed to be standing on even ground.
“What is it that stands out about Lorena Dobbs?” Brook asked as if she had been by his side since he had returned home.
“Impulsiveness.”
“What else?”
“Dobbs has trouble containing her anger,” Graham tacked on in a clipped tone, wanting to address her reaction to the situation rather than the situation itself. “Are you not going to ask about Sylvie?”
“Sylvie will be moved out of ICU before dawn,” Brook responded as she walked across the hand-stitched 18th-century Persian rug. His private office was large enough to have a sitting area in front of a hand-carved cherrywood fireplace with a mantel tucked inside stark white marble tiles. It was hard not to notice the numerous post-it notes stuck to the leatherbound classic novels that lined the built-in bookcases. “Keep going. Lorena Dobbs is reckless, reactive, and…?”
“Obsessive.”
Brook smiled, which was a rarity that he didn’t often get to witness. He couldn’t prevent the slight twitch of his lip in response. She was infuriating, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to express his annoyance at her. At least, not yet.
“Lorena Dobbs is obsessive,” Brook stated matter-of-factly before retracing her steps and taking him by the hand. The way she had avoided discussing Sylvie meant that Brook wasn’t as calm and at peace as she had led him to believe. “With her cover blown and Sylvie no longer a potential funnel of information, Lorena will focus on me. Her main objective is to find out information on Sarah Evanston’s whereabouts. We know that Jacob was confident Evanston would leave the witness protection program after he turned himself into federal custody. If Lorena and Jacob met in Idaho, he has been planning this for a while, which means he believes we know Evanston’s location. Since we’ve made it so that Jacob has no contact with the outside, Lorena wouldn’t know that Evanston went back into the program.”
Graham’s chair had been moved out of the way, and it was obvious that Brook had been using his desk to sit on while studying the murder board. The desk was Thomas Jefferson’s correspondence desk from Monticello. It had been restored with loving care, and she was currently using it as a seat. He rubbed his chin in resignation as reminded himself that she forgot all about the outside world when working a case. Apparently, Thomas Jefferson was included in such exclusion.
“You made it so that Lorena Dobbs has become obsessed with finding you instead of focusing on the other team members,” Graham stated with understanding, though his acceptance of her logic was limited.
The shock of finding her at home was wearing off.
Graham needed her to see the situation from his point of view, as well as the rest of the team’s opinion of her actions.
“Brooklyn, you closed us out. You can see that, right?” Graham inquired as he slipped his hands into his pockets. “You sent a random text to Theo apologizing for putting him in charge, and then you went silent. Do you understand the strain you put on those relationships?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Brook took his hand and pulled him in between her legs until her hands could frame his face. “If you had come home Thursday night, you would have found me here. I knew that your mother was on her cruise and that Lacy had the week off. I would never have put them in danger. I didn’t use any electricity that could be seen from outside the walls, and I made sure to send each and every one of you a sign.”
“A sign?” Graham wrapped his fingers around her wrists and brought her hands close to his chest. “What about a phone call? It’s not like—”
Graham brought himself up short.
She turned her hands so that their fingers were laced together. The lengths that Jacob had gone to involve an unhinged young woman who had brutally murdered her parents meant that there was no line he wasn’t willing to cross.
What did Brook know that had escaped the rest of them?
“Bit runs scans on everyone’s phones, tablets, and laptops to make sure there are no viruses or bugs,” Graham reminded her cautiously, knowing from the glint in her eye that he had missed a vital piece of information.
“Not every single day,” Brook countered as she tightened her grip on his hands. “You and the others might believe that my decision to take myself out of the equation was an extreme reaction to the situation, but we have no idea who is watching or listening to us. I’m not talking about our online footprints, either. Look at how easy it was for me to get an orderly to report on a patient. I know every single time that a nurse updates Sylvie’s chart. Jacob might not have access to anyone outside the prison, but we have no idea what kind of network he set up for Lorena before turning himself in.”
“You and I both know that Dobbs is a loner,” Graham said, attempting to poke a hole in Brook’s theory.
“You’re right, but I couldn’t afford to take that chance. Besides, my absence wouldn’t have been drawn out if you had just come home Thursday night. I knew you would probably be at the hospital for a while, but when you didn’t show up by Friday afternoon, I figured that you were staying at the office. That’s about the time that I realized I needed to take some risks. I used one of your vehicles in the garage to drive into the city. I parked in front of the coffee shop, turned on my tablet enough for it to power up completely, and then shut it down before driving away. Bit would have been monitoring all my devices, so he would have seen my location.”
Bit had mentioned that one of Brook’s devices had been powered on, but that meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. Graham would have inquired what she had done to reach out to Theo and Arden, but it didn’t matter in the long run. Graham had learned long ago that Brook’s method of dealing with similar circumstances was to compartmentalize her emotions. She bottled them to use as fuel to move forward. He understood the reason behind such conduct. In her own way, she had attempted to break the cycle.
“Sylvie won’t blame you.”
Brook’s grip loosened on Graham’s hands, but he wouldn’t allow her to pull away.
“No one blames you for this.” Graham paused when she glanced away, zeroing in on the information over his shoulder. He released one of her hands so that he could cup the back of her neck. Only when he had her full attention did he finish his thoughts. “What good does it do if everyone blames themselves in this scenario? Sylvie will believe that she should have known something was wrong with the aide hired to help her father. Bit will take responsibility for ignoring Sylvie’s directive to not waste his time when she believed she had done a thorough background on the healthcare agency herself. Theo and Arden will both shoulder some blame for not visiting Sylvie more during a time when her father is mere weeks away from drawing his last breath.”
“We could have lost her,” Brook whispered hoarsely, blinking furiously to keep her tears at bay. “She could have died.”
“According to you and those who appear to owe you countless of favors, it sounds as if Sylvie is in the clear.” Graham brushed his thumb across Brook’s cheek to capture one of the escaping tears. Given her pallor and the slight tremor in her fingers, he already had an answer about her nourishment. “You’ve cultivated an amazing group of people, Brooklyn. As I said, the blame for this is solely on Jacob’s shoulders. I suppose now is a good time to tell you that I went to see him in person.”
Brook closed her eyes upon hearing the latest development.
