Chapter 4 The Ring

Brooke

Cullen thought I was sleeping.

That was probably why he had finally stopped checking on me.

I waited until his footsteps disappeared down the hall before slipping out of my room and heading toward my parents’ bedroom. The police had released most of the upstairs the night before, but my father’s office remained sealed and Detective Mercer had made it clear that anything related to his business records was now evidence.

Fine.

My mother had taken a sleeping pill after another round of questioning and was asleep in one of the guest suites. Cullen had insisted on staying at the estate because, according to him, I shouldn’t be alone right now.

Apparently what I wanted still wasn’t especially relevant.

I closed my parents’ bedroom door behind me and looked around.

My father’s side of the room was tidy. His reading glasses sat folded on the nightstand beside a half-finished biography with the corner of the page turned down.

He would never finish it.

The thought hit harder than I expected, and I had to stand there for a moment before I could keep moving.

Whatever my father had done, whatever those documents meant, he was still the man who had taught me how to ride a bicycle and attended every science fair even when he spent most of them answering emails. I could hate what I was discovering about him without knowing how to stop loving the father I thought I’d had.

I opened the top dresser drawer.

Nothing unusual. Wallets, tie bars, spare watches, an old passport.

The second held paperwork, mostly warranties and receipts, and the third contained several small velvet boxes.

One of them made me pause.

I recognized it.

Inside was my father’s old signet ring.

He had worn it constantly when I was younger, a heavy gold band engraved with the Mitchell crest. Somewhere during my teenage years he had stopped wearing it, and I couldn’t remember ever asking why.

I lifted it from the box. There was something engraved inside the band.

Six numbers.

041973

I frowned. It wasn’t his birthday. It wasn’t my mother’s, mine, or their anniversary.

I turned the ring between my fingers, trying to remember whether I had ever seen the engraving before.

“Brooke?”

Cullen’s voice carried down the hallway.

I nearly dropped it. I shoved the ring into my pocket and closed the drawer just as his footsteps approached.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked from the doorway.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“So you decided to go through your father’s things?”

The question was reasonable.

His tone wasn’t.

“I wanted something of his.”

Cullen’s expression softened as he stepped closer. “You should have woken me.”

“I didn’t need help opening a dresser.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

I knew exactly what he meant. Cullen wanted to be present for every decision, every conversation, every emotional reaction. 

“I’m going home,” I said.

His brows drew together. “Tonight?”

“I need clothes. My laptop charger. A few things.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No.”

“Brooke.”

“I want an hour alone.”

He studied me long enough that I wondered if he could somehow see the ring through my pocket.

Finally, he exhaled. “Call me when you get there.”

“I will.”

I lied.

My house was fifteen minutes from the estate, a modern three-story place I had purchased after Mitchell Systems made its first serious profit. No family money, no trust fund, and no father negotiating the price behind my back.

Mine.

Everything looked normal when I let myself inside. I locked the door behind me and went straight to my home office, where I pulled the ring from my pocket and set it beneath the desk lamp.

I photographed the engraving with my phone before searching the number several different ways. Nothing obvious came back. It wasn’t a date connected to anyone in my family, an account number I recognized, or anything else that immediately made sense.

Maybe it meant nothing.

Considering everything else my father had been hiding, I doubted that.

I left the ring beside my keyboard and went upstairs to grab clothes. I had just pulled out jeans when my phone chimed from the bed.

SECURITY SYSTEM OFFLINE.

I stared at the notification.

Then something crashed downstairs.

Every muscle in my body locked.

Another sound followed, quieter this time. A drawer opening. Then another.

Someone was inside my house.

I locked the bedroom door and called 911, keeping my voice barely above a whisper while the dispatcher told me officers were already being sent. 

By the time red and blue lights flashed across my bedroom windows, the house had gone silent.

The officers found a rear door forced open and no one inside. Once they cleared the house, I followed them downstairs and stopped in the living room.

Drawers hung open. Sofa cushions covered the floor. Books and papers had been dumped from shelves, and my office looked even worse.

Yet my television was still mounted on the wall. My laptop remained on the desk. A diamond bracelet sat untouched inside an overturned jewelry box, and nearly two thousand dollars in emergency cash was still hidden in my bedroom.

“Can you tell if anything was taken?” one officer asked.

I looked toward my office.

The ring.

I hurried inside. It was gone.

I searched beneath the desk and through the papers scattered across the floor even though I knew exactly where I had left it.

Nothing else from the desk appeared missing.

Only my father’s ring.

The numbers I had photographed suddenly felt much more important.

Whoever had entered my house hadn’t come for money, jewelry, or electronics. They had torn through my belongings looking for an old signet ring I had taken from my father’s bedroom less than an hour earlier.

Which meant someone knew I had it.

A colder realization followed.

They had known almost immediately.

Maybe the ring opened something. Maybe the numbers identified an account, a location, or something my father had hidden. I didn’t know yet, but whoever killed him apparently believed it mattered enough to break into my house while I was inside it.

The police were building a murder case around me while someone else was watching closely enough to know what I took from my father’s dresser.

Staying here was no longer an option.

Once the officers finished taking my statement, I packed quickly. Clothes, cash, a charger, my encrypted backup laptop, and my passport went into one suitcase.

I didn’t know where I was going.

I just knew I needed to disappear before the police decided to arrest me or whoever had been downstairs decided to come back.

I dragged the suitcase into the garage and hit the button for the door.

The overhead lights came on. The door rattled upward.

A man stood on the other side. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dark suit beneath an open black coat.

He looked from me to the suitcase before holding up a badge.

“Brooke Mitchell?”

My grip tightened around the suitcase handle.

“Special Agent Weston Foxx,” he said. “FBI.”