Page 4 of Her Last Refuge

Or—and this possibility broke Rachel’s heart—there was absolutely no foul play involved and Eleanor had simply taken her grieving to a toxic and helpless place.

With a heavy heart, Rachel closed the tab.

It wasn't that she'd stopped believing there was something there. If anything, the abrupt end to Farrell's involvement with the family right when it should have deepened only made her more convinced. But she had an actual caseload waiting for her, a stack of active files that had nothing to do with a farm accident from decades before. She wasn't supposed to be spending Bureau time chasing personal quests, anyway.

So she reoriented her mind to her actual job, pulling up her email.

Her inbox had the usual overnight clutter. A meeting request from Novak for later that morning, the subject line merely reading: catching up. That probably meant nothing more than him wanting to compare notes on an active file before the day got going. There was also note from the field office's admin team about mandatory training modules due by the end of the month. Lastly, there was a request from Anderson to look over a series of case notes filed by a rookie agent that needed a bit of help with structure.

Rachel worked through them one at a time, replying where she needed to, and let the morning pull her back into its own shape. But even as she worked through it, some small part of her stayed with Eleanor and her father. She also thought of the photograph of a lean man waving in front of a courthouse, and of the four lines at the end of Eleanor’s unsent letter, suggesting a name she’d never gotten to speak out loud.

CHAPTER THREE

The break room smelled like microwave popcorn again, which meant someone on the third floor had brought a bag down and left the bag in the trash. Rachel figured it was better than whoever bought in leftover salmon from the night before and nuked it in the microwave. That was nasty. Slightly charred popcorn, she could deal with.

Because of the slight stink, she carried her sandwich back to her desk instead, along with a small bag of chips she'd bought from the vending machine. She ate at her keyboard while she worked through the rest of the rookie’s incident report, not sure if she was happy or upset that this was the fourth day of a long stretch of low, dull ones.

It had been a slow day so far, the kind that made the hours feel longer than they were. Novak had stopped by around eleven just to say hi and reminded her to respond to his meeting request…and then they just had the meeting in her office, and it took less than fifteen minutes. She'd told him nothing about Farrell or Eleanor. She hadn’t shared any of the details with him yet. He only knew that a woman she’d grown close to at the hospice had passed away recently.

She was two bites from the end of the sandwich—tuna salad on white bread that had gone a little soggy from sitting in her bag since morning—when her personal phone buzzed against the desk.

She almost let it go to voicemail. She didn't recognize the number, and most calls from numbers she didn't know these days turned out to be about a car warranty she didn't have. But something made her pick it up anyway, swallowing the last of her bite before she answered.

"Hello?"

"Hi, is this— sorry, is this Rachel Gift?" The voice was male, young, and sounded a little unsteady.

"It is. Who's calling?"

"My name is Caleb Durst. I uh…I doubt you remember me." He paused for a moment to see if the name registered with her. When it was clear it hadn’t, he went on. "You knew my grandfather, Walter. You sat with him a lot, near the end when he was in hospice."

It took her a second, and then it clicked into place. Walter Durst. She could picture him now, a thin man with a gentle laugh who'd liked to talk about his years working for the railroad. He’d also been a little too involved with football and would complain for hours about how he didn’t see the point in changing the name of the Washington football team. She remembered his hands, how they used to shake by the end, and a grandson who'd visited sometimes on weekends. This had been Caleb, quiet and polite, usually keeping conversations brief while Rachel was around.

"Caleb, of course. I remember you." She sat back in her chair, chips forgotten on the desk in front of her. "It's good to hear from you. Is everything alright?"

There was a beat of quiet on the line before he answered. Her agent-senses instantly picked up the tension in that silence. And something in that silence told her before he said the words that it wasn't good news.

"It's actually my grandmother," he said. "Ruth. She, um. She passed away last night."

Rachel closed her eyes briefly. She could recall meeting Ruth a time or two during her visits. It had been about two years ago, but she could still see the woman’s sweet face. She’d been in good health then, from what Rachel could remember. "Oh, Caleb. I'm so sorry."

"Yeah, thanks." His voice caught slightly as he spoke, and then he took a deep breath to collect himself. "She was at Ashford Glen, the memory care place out near Brandermill. She'd been there about eight months. Her mind wasn't— she'd been struggling for a while, but physically she'd seemed okay. The nurses always said her vitals were good for her age but her mind…honestly, I think it started to go when grandpa passed."

"How did it happen?"

"That's actually why I'm calling." Rachel could hear him take a breath, like he was working up to something he wasn’t quite ready to share. "The doctor there is saying natural causes. Heart, probably, that's what they think. The medical examiner is going to let us know as soon as he can, of course. And the police came out, but they didn't really investigate anything. One of the officers looked around for maybe twenty minutes and left."

"That's fairly standard, unfortunately, for a death at a facility like that. Especially with a resident who has underlying health issues." She kept her voice gentle, not wanting to seem uncaring. "I know that probably doesn't feel like much comfort right now."

"No, I get that. I do." He hesitated again, and this time the hesitation went on long enough that Rachel almost prompted him. "I guess I was calling because I remembered you're with the FBI,” he finally said. “My mom mentioned it once, back when you were sitting with Grandpa. And I thought…I don't know. I thought maybe you could look into it. Just to be sure."

Rachel sat with that for a second, the sandwich wrapper crinkling faintly under her elbow as she shifted in her chair. She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She knew what the right answer should be, but she didn’t know how to say it without sounding distant.

"Caleb, can I ask— is there something specific that's making you feel like this wasn't natural? Something the doctors or the police missed?"

"Not exactly." His voice was careful now, picking through the words. "It's more just…like, she seemed fine. And then she wasn't. She went from maybe the best I’d seen her in weeks to dead. And nobody at that place seems all that interested in explaining why."

"Grief does strange things to how we look at a death," Rachel said, as gently as she could manage. "Especially a sudden one, even when someone's health has been declining. It's natural to want more of an explanation than her heart gave out. It doesn't feel like enough, even when it's true."