Brooks had dealt with his share of clients who had come to him needing his help. At least half of them had been women. Many of those had approached him with hope in their eyes, but he didn’t recall any of them ever looking at him with quite this amount of hope brimming in their eyes.

  “So what do you say, Mr. Colton? Would you take on my case and find my mother—or what happened to her—for me?” Not wanting to take a chance on having the man turn her down, Gwen decided to add a little bit of ammunition on her side.

  “My grandmother’s not in the best of health and not being able to find out what happened to my mother has really taken a great deal out of her over the years. Finding my mother, or at least what happened to my mother, would go a long way in helping my grandmother get closure and help give her a better lease on her remaining years.”

  “I—” Brooks started to tell Gwen that he would be happy to take her case.

  But he got no further than that because, afraid he would turn her down, Gwen quickly interjected, “I can’t pay you much to begin with. I’m a schoolteacher and we don’t exactly earn very much, but whatever I have is yours. And as for the rest of it,” she continued, guessing that Brooks’s fee would probably be high because the trail was so cold, “I can make regular payments to you until the entire amount is paid off. How about it?” Gwen pressed. “Will you take on the case?”

  “It’s not a matter of the money,” Brooks began, wanting to assure her that money was never the motivating factor in whether or not he took a case. If it had been, the money that Shelton had offered him right up front to take his case would have been more than enough for him to say yes.

  Again, Brooks didn’t get a chance to say anything further. But this time, the attractive redhead sitting across from him wasn’t the one to interrupt him. The cell phone in his pocket was guilty of that. It rang just at the wrong moment.

  Habit had Brooks taking his phone out and glancing at the screen. He had every intention of telling whomever was calling that he would get back to them—in his line of work he couldn’t afford just to ignore an incoming call without saying anything.

  But then he saw who it was. The incoming call was from Jordana, one of his sisters. A year older than he was, Jordana had risen through the ranks of the Braxville Police Department and was currently working on the force as a police detective.

  It was Jordana who had used her influence to get him hired on to act as a part-time police consultant. He worked on some of their more complicated cases, the ones that could use someone thinking outside the box rather than being restricted by the need to toe the line and obey all the rules. As a private investigator, Brooks was able go places and do things that a police detective couldn’t—as long as that fact wasn’t broadcasted.

  Brooks held up his hand, stopping Gwen before she could continue. “I really need to take this,” he told her apologetically.

  Gwen nodded. “Of course. Go ahead,” she said, gesturing toward the phone in his hand.

  “Thanks,” he murmured. With that, he rose and made his way over to a corner of the shop that was currently unoccupied. Opening his phone, Brooks said, “I’m with a client, Jordana.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to tell the client that you’ll get back to them, Brooks,” Jordana replied, her solemn tone leaving no room for argument. “Right now I need you here.”

  Brooks glanced over his shoulder, looking in Gwen’s direction. He felt himself wavering, but he knew that his sister wasn’t given to arbitrarily calling him in for a case, not without a very good reason. But he was just about to get into Gwen’s case and he had to admit that she had managed to pique his interest, not to mention the fact that he wanted to have an actual reason for getting closer to the woman.

  “You sure this can’t wait, Jordy?” he asked his sister. “I can swing by later—”

  “No,” Jordana said, cutting him short. “I need you to swing by now. This case can’t wait. It’s already waited for about twenty-five years as it is. And don’t call me Jordy,” she told him, not for the first time.

  That little voice in his head instantly came to life the second he heard how long it had been. Twenty-five years. The same number that Gwen had mentioned just a couple of minutes ago in reference to her mother’s disappearance.

  This couldn’t just be a coincidence. But he needed more information before he allowed himself to get carried away.

  “What’s waited for twenty-five years?” he asked pointedly.

  He heard his sister sigh before answering him. “Dad’s company is in the middle of a new project. They were just demolishing an old warehouse building.”

  “And?” Brooks asked, glancing back at Gwen again. His potential client looked as if she was growing restless.

  “And they found a body buried in the wall,” his sister told him.

  He felt as if he had been punched in the gut. It couldn’t be that easy—could it? He had to ask. “Was it a woman?”

  “No, a man,” Jordana answered. “Why would you think it was a woman?”

  So much for easy, Brooks thought. “I’ll explain later when I get there. Do you have any idea who this man is?” he asked, although he had a feeling he knew what her answer probably was.

  “No, but he hasn’t been completely unwrapped yet,” Jordana answered.

  “Unwrapped?” Brooks thought that was an strange way for his sister to put it.

  “Yes, it’s the oddest thing,” Jordana continued. “Turns out that the body is in surprisingly good condition, given when the wall was actually built. Whoever killed this man painstakingly wrapped the body up really well and in this instance, that somehow managed to preserve it, although I doubt that even entered the killer’s mind when he, she or they did it. Do you want to come down and take a look?” she threw in since Brooks hadn’t already told her he was on his way.

  “Do I want to come down?” Brooks repeated incredulously. “Try and stop me.”

  “I kind of thought you’d have that sort of reaction,” Jordana said, although it certainly had taken him longer to arrive at this reaction than she would have expected. “Well, then, get a move on. The world isn’t going to stop turning, waiting on you,” she reminded him. And then she told her brother exactly where they were in reference to the warehouse. “You can’t miss it. We’re the site with all the debris, surrounded by police cars.”

  “Very funny. Okay, hang on, Jordy. I’m on my way,” Brooks told his sister.

  Now he just needed to put Gwen and her technical missing persons case on hold, he thought, terminating the call from his sister before she could tell him for the dozenth time not to call her Jordy.

  The little voice in his head was telling him that there was a connection between the body that was just found and Gwen’s missing mother, but he wasn’t going to say anything about that to Gwen quite yet.

  He didn’t want to risk disappointing her in case he was wrong.

  Besides, he reasoned as he crossed back toward Gwen, a grown man responding to a little voice in his head wasn’t exactly the easiest thing to sell or explain.

  Chapter 3

  By the time Brooks returned to the small table, Gwen was on her feet, as if she anticipated that their impromptu meeting was over.

  He wasn’t about to keep her wondering. “I’m afraid I have to go.”

  “Another case?” she asked.

  The private detective had looked rather interested in her mother’s story until his cell phone had taken him away. Now he seemed to be in a hurry to go somewhere. She could only assume that it had to do with a case he was probably working.

  “Something like that,” Brooks answered, keeping the specifics vague.

  “You’re not at liberty to say,” Gwen guessed. It wasn’t a question.

  Brooks smiled at her, glad she wasn’t pressing him for any information on the call he’d taken. “You’ve read the bylaws.”

  Gwen lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “Confidentiality is an important cornerstone in building trust and I assume that if a person hires a private investigator, they want to be able to trust him—or her,” she added as an afterthought.

  Her eyes held his, searching for some indication that she was right.

  He would have liked nothing more than to go on talking to this woman and to take on her case, which he had to admit intrigued him. But Jordana had that urgent sound in her voice and he knew better than to keep his sister waiting unless it was unavoidable, which, in this case, it wasn’t.

  Jordana was the reason he had gotten his consultant’s gig with the department in the first place, although her new captain wasn’t happy about the situation and was looking for any reason to change it. Hopefully the man wasn’t a permanent fixture.

  Reaching into his pocket, Brooks took out his business card, a very plain card with his name and business number proclaimed in bold, black letters.

  Brooks Colton: Private Investigator.

  His cell phone number was directly beneath that. He held the card out to her.

  “I’d like to talk more about your case,” he told her. “If I don’t get back to you by tomorrow afternoon, call me.”

  Gwen looked at the card he had handed her with interest, then turned her eyes up to his. There was amusement in hers. “You need to be nagged?”

  “No,” he laughed. “It’s just that right now there’s a lot on my plate and I wouldn’t want your case to get lost in the shuffle.”

  “Does that happen often for you? Things get lost in the shuffle?” she specified, curious as to how this man operated and if she was possibly making a mistake, hiring him.

  He knew better than to give her a definitive answer. He didn’t want to risk her changing her mind. It wasn’t every day that he got an intriguing cold case.

  “Always a first time,” was all he was willing to admit.

  Gwen wavered. Maybe she was making a mistake. But the man was a Colton, which could be handy, and besides, he was really charming.

  More important than that, he had gone out of his way to warn her about Daniel, confirming the uneasy suspicion that had been in the back of her mind. Daniel had turned out to be a stalker in the making.

  “All right,” Gwen finally said, slipping Brooks’s business card into her purse. “You have two days to get back to me.”

  They began to walk out of the coffee shop together. “Make it one,” Brooks told her, fairly certain that whatever Jordana needed wouldn’t take him longer than that to handle.

  Gwen inclined her head. “All right,” she agreed, “one it is.”

  They separated right outside the coffee shop entrance, with Gwen going to her car while Brooks went in the opposite direction toward his.

  He was already looking forward to seeing her again.

  * * *

  The site of Colton Construction’s current project was located on the east side of town, some twenty minutes away by car, as long as the driver obeyed the speed limits that were in force.

  Brooks made it there in less than fifteen, zipping through yellow lights about to turn red. The company was demolishing one of their own old warehouses. The building was earmarked to become part of the Crest View Center, which in turn was to be even more modern than Ruby Row, the former shopping center, had ever been.

  Brooks had never been part of the construction company, not even summers to earn extra money when he was going to school. But he was still a Colton and he kept up on his father’s projects if for no other reason than because there were times when someone might ask him about them. He didn’t want to sound as if he and his father hadn’t spoken, which on occasions was truer than he was happy about.

  But Fitz Colton had always put his company first because he found work to be more interesting and rewarding than family life.

  It wasn’t so much a failing on Fitz’s part as just the way he was built. Brooks and his siblings had accepted that fact a long time ago, just as their father had grudgingly accepted the fact that none of his children had any intentions of working with him in the company.

  As Brooks came closer to the actual demolition site, it felt as if there was a cloud of dust still hanging in the air, a leftover residue thanks to his father’s people having brought down two of the warehouse walls. Those walls, or what had been found in those walls, was ultimately the reason he was here.

  After parking his vehicle in an as out-of-the-way space as he could find, Brooks got out and made his way to the center of the debris. That appeared to be where most of the uniformed men and women had gathered.

  One such uniformed police officer instantly snapped to attention when he saw Brooks approaching.

  Spotting the officer, Brooks caught himself thinking the young man in the crisp uniform had that fresh-out-of-the-academy look about him. He began silently guessing just how long it had been since the police officer had actually graduated.

  Brooks realized that the officer had now put himself directly in his path, keeping him from going any farther.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t be here,” he announced.

  Brooks looked beyond the young officer’s shoulder. Not more than ten feet away he could see the body his sister had called him about. It was lying on the ground like some sort of prized trophy. And, just as Jordana had said, the body was entirely wrapped in transparent plastic from its head all the way down to its feet.

  Fascinating, Brooks couldn’t help thinking as he quickly circumvented the rookie.

  “Hey, I said you can’t be here!” the police officer shouted, growing indignant that he’d been disobeyed. “Stop right now or I’ll have to restrain you!” he threatened, turning around.

  “It’s okay, Officer... Madison,” Brooks said, pausing to read the name on the young man’s badge. “You’re new here. I’m Detective Colton’s brother. She asked me to come here,” he explained.

  The boyish face, which seemed to be utterly devoid of the slightest hint of facial hair, scowled at him. “Yeah, right. Now get back or I’m going to have to—”

  “It’s all right, Madison. I asked him to come,” Jordana told the young officer, weaving her way over to him and her brother. “This is my brother Brooks Colton. He’s a private investigator and on occasion, he acts as a consultant on some of our more...unusual cases,” she said, settling on that word even though other, more descriptive ones occurred to her.

  Brooks flashed a quick smile at the officer.

  The officer flushed a little, obviously embarrassed that he had made a mistake.

  “Oh sorry. I didn’t know,” Madison apologized.

  Brooks had no desire to torture the young man. Who knew, the officer might come in handy down the line in this case or some other one. He liked maintaining positive relationships whenever possible.

  “Why would you?” he asked charitably. He turned his attention back to his sister. “You found him like this?” he asked her, nodding at the body.

  “Wrapped up neat and tidy like a serving of fish that was prepared this morning,” she commented.

  “Remind me not to have dinner at your place,” Brooks quipped.

  “He came tumbling out of the north basement wall. Nearly scaring one of dad’s people half to death,” Jordana told him. “Poor guy couldn’t stop shaking.”

  Crossing over to the body, Brooks was about to bend down for a closer look when Jordana put her hand on his shoulder, stopping him.

  “Something wrong?” he asked her.

  “You can look, but don’t touch. The captain is lurking around here somewhere. He’s trying to be more hands-on,” she explained, and it was obvious that she didn’t welcome the watchful attitude. “I just wanted you to see the body for yourself. Any ideas?”

  “Well, the guy definitely hung out with the wrong crowd,” Brooks joked, straightening up.

  Jordana sighed. “Any ideas that haven’t occurred to the rest of us already?”

  “Not offhand,” he told her honestly. He looked at his sister. “I take it the guy had no ID on him.”

  “We haven’t checked yet, but I’m betting that if someone went through all the trouble of wrapping his body like this, they weren’t about to leave any telltale evidence in his pockets,” Jordana said. She frowned, looking down at the plastic-cocooned body. “Whoever he is, he obviously got on someone’s wrong side.”

  His interaction with Gwen still fresh in his mind, Brooks had another take on the crime. “Or he could have walked into something that someone else was trying to hide and paid the ultimate penalty for it,” he conjectured.

  Jordana eyed her brother sharply. “Why? What are you thinking?”

  Brooks didn’t like to offer half-formed theories without first thinking them through. “Nothing yet. But his body had to be in obviously great condition to look that preserved after being dead for twenty-five years.” He looked back at the body, specifically at the dead man’s hands. “I’d say that there’s a good chance you can lift a set of viable fingerprints off your victim.”

  Jordana had already thought of that as well as the possible outcome of the search.

  “It won’t do us much good if the guy wasn’t in the system,” she pointed out. “Twenty-five years ago, only a limited number of people were fingerprinted. It’s not like it is today.”

  Brooks didn’t believe in coincidences, and the story that Gwen had told him about the private investigator her grandmother had hired who wound up vanishing just seemed like too much of a coincidence to him. From where he stood, it almost seemed like fate dealing him a hand.