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Brooklyn wished breakfast hadn’t been so tense. But the kiss lingered in her mind. On her lips. Colin’s touch was still a vivid memory in her brain, and she couldn’t think of anything else. She should never have been so bold, but she didn’t regret finding out if they would be well-matched. They were. For the brief moment he let go and let his emotions take him, she knew what being in a relationship with him would feel like.

She thought maybe the kiss would get these feelings out and she could forget all about any romantic feelings for him. Thought that he was a forbidden guy, so of course she wanted to kiss him all the more. But that wasn’t it at all. The opposite had occurred. The kiss cemented in her mind that she wanted that relationship as badly as she wanted Kane brought to justice.

“Brooklyn, did you hear me?” Dev asked from the other side of the island. “Are you ready?”

“Oh, yeah. Ready.” She pushed the counter stool back and stood.

Dev shook his head. “I don’t know what’s going on with the two of you this morning, but you’re both out of it. Something you want to share?”

“Blake is waiting at the door,” Colin said. “Let’s go.”

She jumped up and raced for the door. She was all for moving on as she wouldn’t tell Dev about the kiss, and the tension with Colin was too much for her to handle right now. She soon found herself in the elevator with four men discussing the investigation, one guy less familiar than the other three, but she hadn’t known any of them for more than a few days. Just a few days. Hard to believe when she had such strong feelings for Colin.

She snuck a look at him, and her heart tripped into gear. There he was. Standing tall. Holding his own in the conversation, his rugged jaw set when he wasn’t talking. His dark eyes were rapt with interest as Blake ran down the procedures the Center followed to secure evidence.

She had no interest in evidence protocols unless it involved digital evidence. She could get behind a visit to Nick’s lab. She hadn’t been able to take a tour because Kane knew of her friendship with Nick, and they never knew if Kane would track her here. But it was a certainty that she wouldn’t be leaving this building without seeing it this trip. Plus, she might need to use a computer to tempt Kane to come out into the open.

Blake tapped the button for the lower level. “Kelsey has asked to see you right away, so we’ll be starting with her.”

“Did she say why?” Colin asked.

He shook his head. “No, but I believe she’s discovered something of interest.”

The elevator carried them to the basement, everyone falling silent and leaving the tiny space filled with a different kind of tension. Pondering-life-and-death kind. If the others were like Brooklyn, they were trying to figure out what Kelsey might have discovered in the gruesome recovery of the body.

When the elevator stopped, Blake held up a finger. “Before we exit, just a reminder that you need a staff member with you at all times and you must always wear the security pass. Any questions?”

Brooklyn looked down on the white plastic badge hanging from the lanyard around her neck and shook her head.

“We’re all glad to respect your rules,” Colin said.

The doors split open to a brightly lit but windowless hallway holding several doors. An unpleasant smell permeated the air. Brooklyn hoped Blake would explain it.

He held the doors so they could exit the car. “The osteology lab occupies this entire floor. Everyone calls it ‘The Tomb’ for obvious reasons.”

Yeah. All the bones. Brooklyn shuddered and stepped into the hallway with the others.

Blake let his hand drop, and the doors whooshed closed. “The odor is one of the reasons she has the entire floor when other labs share floors.”

“I’ve been trying to be polite and not point it out,” Dev said. “But it’s been hard.”

“Sorry about that.” Blake glanced over his shoulder as he led the way down the hall. “Even though we have an industrial exhaust and clean air system installed, sometimes the odor seeps out when she cleans bones. We don’t like to offend our private DNA customers, so we contain the odor down here.”

“Cleans the bones?” Brooklyn asked, but the minute the words came out, she really wished she hadn’t.

He continued walking. “Before bones can be examined or analyzed, the remains almost always must be macerated or boiled to remove any flesh and connective tissue.”

Her stomach roiled, and she regretted asking even more. She had to change the subject before he shared additional details. “Do you know Sheriff Abby Day? That’s who we’re working with on the investigation.”

“I know of her, but haven’t worked with her.” He stopped outside a door marked Osteology Lab. “She has a solid reputation in the law enforcement community though, and that speaks volumes to her skills and dedication.”

“Good to know,” Brooklyn said.

Blake pressed his fingers on a keypad on the door, and it popped open to reveal a well-lit room with several stainless steel exam tables. The back wall held a display case filled with bones that were labeled with their names.

A human skull sat on one table, and a full skeleton lay on another of the long, stainless steel tables. Kelsey stood over the skeleton, a long bone in hand.

Was this their victim? Had she already cleaned the bones?

As if she could read Brooklyn’s mind, Kelsey held up the bone. “My latest investigation before I got called to your crime scene. I’m trying to determine a cause of death.”

She set down the bone and stepped out from behind the table. She wore a frilly patterned dress in a vibrant fuchsia color under a lab coat and stunning black pumps with three-inch heels that Brooklyn would love to own. She seemed so delicate and fragile, and yet she worked in such a harsh field. Maybe she wore the dressy and feminine clothing as a counterbalance. At least Brooklyn could see that happening.

“Sorry about the odor today. We’re working on several investigations, and my assistants have kept the wet lab running nonstop.” She pointed at a glass-and-metal door, sealed tight.

Brooklyn took a quick look into the room that held similar metal tables, but these were connected to large stainless sinks against a wall. A huge burner and large pots sat on another wall. Tools took up yet another wall.

She looked at Kelsey. “That’s where you boil the bones.”

She tilted her head. “I’m surprised you know about that.”

“Blake told us.”

“Thank you for explaining.” She gave Blake a smile. “It really is the most obnoxious part of the job. Well, some days maggots and other insects take top billing.” She gave a nervous laugh.

Brooklyn couldn’t laugh along with her.

“Blake said you wanted to see us,” Colin said, thankfully changing the subject Brooklyn wished she hadn’t delved into but somehow, like coming upon a car crash, she couldn’t figuratively seem to look away.

Kelsey moved over to the skull. “This is the arson victim’s skull.”

She turned it over and pointed at a hole in the temple. “Do you see the beveling around the hole? A sort of cone-shaped bone erosion?”

“A gunshot wound.” Colin blinked at her. “Our guy was shot?”

“He was indeed, and this is the direction of the bullet path through the cranial vault.” She took a long metal pointer and stuck it through the entry wound and out a hole on the other side. “This is the exit wound, which you can tell by irregular and external beveling—the bone erosion on the outer part of the bony table.”

“Any idea of caliber?” Dev asked.

“At this point I can tell you it was a low-velocity weapon, i.e., a handgun.” She set down the skull. “But the good news is we recovered a slug containing tissue so I believe it to be the bullet that ended this man’s life. We’ve taken our DNA samples from the slug, and Sierra has fingerprinted it, so Grady—our weapons expert—is evaluating it now.”

“When we’re done here, I’ll give him a call to see if he has anything to report,” Blake said.

“Is this the cause of death, then?” Colin asked.

Kelsey nipped on her lip. “Without any soft tissue or organs intact, I can’t conclusively say it is, but few people would’ve survived such a trauma. Still, it is survivable. At least for a short time. So he could’ve died from smoke inhalation or the burns or something else that I haven’t discovered yet. Sorry. I wish I could be precise, but assigning a cause of death in a trauma like this one will not be straightforward and will take some time.”

“At least we know someone attempted to kill the victim by shooting him, even if he didn’t succeed,” Colin said. “Any leads on the victim’s ID?”

“Too early for that as well, but I do have one additional thing that could be helpful in identifying him. He’s missing the index finger on his right hand.”

“Missing, as in totally gone?” Colin asked.

She nodded. “We searched the scene carefully for any of the bones we might have overlooked, and I’m confident we didn’t miss anything. The fire was still too hot for scavengers to arrive before us and carry off a bone without burning their feet, so we know that didn’t happen.”

“Can you determine a time when the finger was severed?” Dev asked.

“The remaining bone shows no sign of remodeling, so very recent. But the area around the body hadn’t been disturbed after the fire, so odds are good he lost this finger before the fire.”

“Yeah, that could help,” Reid said, finally breaking his silence. “We’ll have Sheriff Day ask local agencies if someone who recently lost a right index finger is missing. We can also plug it into ViCAP.”

“ViCAP?” Brooklyn asked.

“The FBI’s Violent Crime Apprehension Program,” Blake said. “It’s a database of unsolved violent crimes entered by law enforcement all across the country in hopes that other agencies will search the database and be able to match their crime to one already registered, and both will be solved.”

Not something she’d ever heard of. “Sounds like it might pan out.”

“It could indeed.” Blake smiled. “If we’re done here, I know Sierra is waiting to see you.”

“I’m done until the rest of the bones are ready for examination.” Kelsey rested her gloved hands on the table. “I’ll put all of this information in an official report, and if I locate anything else, I’ll contact you right away.”

“Thanks for all of your help,” Colin said. “We appreciate your expertise.”

They all murmured their thanks before Blake escorted them out the door.

“Sierra’s lab is on the fourth floor.” He punched the four on the elevator number pad. When the door opened on their floor, he gestured with his free hand to step out ahead of him.

He led the way toward the lab that had a sign posting Trace Evidence outside a long window. He opened the lock, and Brooklyn slipped inside. She took in the large room with long stainless steel tables in the center and workstations to the left, where lab-coated individuals were busy working. Very few of them bothered to look up. Large pieces of scientific equipment she couldn’t possibly identify ringed the room. The only things she recognized were stainless steel refrigerators.

Sierra stood behind one of the long tables covered with white paper. The black box from Kane’s house sat on top. Its singed appearance looked more dramatic in this sterile environment, but Brooklyn couldn’t wait to see what was inside and rushed across the room.

Sierra smiled. “Perfect timing. I’m about to open this. I just have one more fingerprint to lift.”

She grabbed a roll of wide tape and pressed it on the top where she’d dusted it with some kind of white powder. Her eyes were narrowed in concentration, and she chewed on the corner of her lip as she pressed the tape onto the box and then lifted to hold it up to the light. “Perfect. Just perfect. A latent print that every trace evidence expert dreams of finding. Now all we need to do is find a match.”

“And how do we do that?” Brooklyn asked.

Sierra pressed the tape on a white postcard-sized card and looked up. “I’ll submit it to AFIS—the national fingerprint database—to see if there’s a match in the system. If not, unless we have a suspect’s fingerprints on file, we won’t be able to match it to anything. Do you know if Tarver’s fingerprints are in the system?”

“He was arrested several years ago for internet crimes,” Brooklyn said. “But he was never tried due to lack of evidence, so would they have his fingerprints?”

“Depends on if he was actually booked,” Blake said.

“He spent a few weeks in jail, so he was booked,” she said, recalling his virulent email threatening retribution after he got out.

Blake gave a firm nod. “Then his prints should be there. Unless there was some glitch. Which you can never rule out when you’re dealing with humans who can make errors and electronics that can fail.”

Brooklyn didn’t like the sound of that. “Does it happen often?”

“No, but more often than we would like.”

Sierra held up the card. “If this is his print, which we can surmise at this time it could be, it matches the prints I lifted from the weapon, doorknob, and shell casings I recovered.”

“So we have proof he fired a gun.”

“No,” Colin said. “If these are his prints, all the doorknob tells us is that he was at the house. And on the casings and gun, we can only infer that he touched them at some point. He could’ve loaded the weapon but not fired it.”

“In either event, he most likely touched them before discharge, but definitely before the fire,” Sierra said. “The prints were covered with soot, but he could’ve picked the items up to look at them before the fire started.”

Brooklyn suppressed a sigh. They seemed to have a lead but not really have a lead. “How does any of this help us, then?”

“If he’s arrested and charged with a crime,” Blake said, “the doorknob placing him at the house could be important for prosecuting him.”

“But not help in finding him,” she clarified. Right now she wanted to find him.

“Right,” Colin said. “Let’s hope the box’s contents will do that.”

Brooklyn stared at the sooty container and couldn’t help but compare it to Pandora’s box, waiting to unleash untold miseries. “Can you open it now?”

“Yes. Time to pick the lock.” Sierra took out a black leather pouch from under the table and removed a few slender metal tools. She inserted two of them into the lock and moved them around until it popped open, the sound reverberating around the quiet lab.

Brooklyn jumped. The sound felt almost like a gunshot to her. Surely not as loud, but as sharp and crisp, and it warned her to take care.

Sierra rested her fingers on the lid.

An ominous feeling settled deep into the pit of Brooklyn’s stomach. As Sierra slowly lifted up the top, Brooklyn had to fight not to look away from the lead she wanted, yet dreaded to see.