at the look of happiness on her face, he swore at himself. When was the last time you made her look that way? He couldn’t even remember.
She looked up. “And, oh, the way he looks at Harper, Mark. He worships her.”
He laced his fingers. “Do you think that’s a good thing?”
She shrugged. “You mean do I think he could make her his whole world when he should be focusing on, well, the whole world?”
“Yes, exactly.”
She looked to the side, thinking again. “Maybe. But I think Harper’s an intuitive girl. I think she’ll help guide him, and step back if that’s the case.”
“I hope so.”
She nodded. “Me too.”
For a moment they sat there staring at each other, both smiling, things needing to be said, though Mark wasn’t sure where to start, not sure he wanted to do this. Not yet. Not now. Then when? The ringing of his cell phone saved him from having to answer his own internal questions.
“You get that.” Laurie stood, seeming slightly relieved by the interruption too. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
Mark nodded, reaching for his phone as she slipped out the door. He felt her loss, but simultaneously, was glad she was gone. Although that’d been a step on both their parts, and Mark was glad for it. “Mark Gallagher.”
“Agent Gallagher. This is Kyle Holbrook, returning your call.”
Isaac Driscoll’s former assistant. Mark was momentarily taken aback by the deep tenor of the man’s voice. He sounded much older, but Mark knew from his online portfolio, that he was in his thirties.
“Yes, thank you for calling me back, Mr. Holbrook.”
“Of course. I would have called you sooner, but I was away for the holidays. This is in reference to Dr. Driscoll?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, I’m investigating a crime. Isaac Driscoll was found murdered. I understand you were his research assistant sixteen years ago.”
There was momentary silence on the other end of the line. “Murdered? Jesus. I didn’t expect that. I assumed you were calling because he’d done something . . . weird.”
Weird? “Why would you assume that, Mr. Holbrook?”
Another pause. “Well, to be honest, I hadn’t thought about Isaac for years, so I had to think back when I heard your message. But, he had grown increasingly . . . odd at the end here. I feel bad saying that now that he’s . . . dead. But, honestly, I was happy to see him go. He was always going on about war and how we were all going to die off because people were selfish and stupid and couldn’t think beyond their own needs. But most disturbing of all was he tried to convince me that we should start doing research on people, like, not just have them fill out questionnaires or surveys, but like, put them in real-life situations and see how they’d react. But, like everyone knows, that’s not how social science works. Or even psychological study. You can’t emotionally scar human beings for the sake of research.”
Mark nodded, a cold feeling settling in his bones. “Do you have any reason to believe he acted on any of this talk?”
“No. In fact, I thought that was the reason he retired early. He realized the job was causing him to entertain unhealthy ideas. But when I heard you mention his name in the message, I feared he might have gone back to work somewhere else and done something unethical, if not . . . immoral. I’m glad to hear that’s not the case, though I’m sorry to hear something so terrible happened to him.”
Mark’s mind was racing. “Mr. Holbrook, if I email you a couple of photographs, can you let me know if you’ve seen either of the people in them?”
“Of course. I have my email open now, if you’d like to send them over.”
“Okay, great. It’ll just take a second.” Mark drafted a quick email and attached the photographs of Jak and Emily Barton saved to his desktop and pressed send.”
“Got it,” Kyle Holbrook said a second later. There was a pause and then the man came back on the line. “No, I don’t know either of them. I don’t suppose you can tell me who they are?”
“The woman was murdered in Helena Springs in a similar manner to Dr. Driscoll.”
“Christ. Two murders?” He sounded genuinely shocked, but of course, Mark was only going by his voice. “This other photograph you sent me, is he a suspect?”
Mark hesitated to call Jak a person of interest, though in actuality he still was. He has secrets in