Chapter Twenty-Three

Callum

“W hat the hell do you mean you can’t find him?”

In my eagerness to leave the guard office, I’d nearly missed what Vicek was saying to me. My mind was totally focused on the afternoon festivities at my parents’ place and, more specifically, on how things would play out once I arrived with Madison.

She didn’t want to go. I could tell. Her saying yes in the first place had shocked me completely. Truthfully, I hadn’t even meant to ask her to come along. The question had just sort of slipped out of my brain in the fuzzy afterglow of sex.

And wasn’t that just something to think about. Think I had while stroking myself in bed to the memory of her body on top of mine later that night. Even just reliving that memory was enough to stir the blood in my body, forcing it between my legs.

I corralled the beast within my mind and brought it to heel, however, because the news that had just been delivered to me was not at all what I’d expected.

“Is that why it’s you telling me this and not Jair?”

Vicek nodded. “I thought it best to deliver the news to you in person.”

I stared at him, watching his eyes, the same brilliant green as his mother. They never strayed from me, instead intently watching my reaction to the news that one of the two guards who’d found Noa’s body was now apparently missing.

“He’s supposed to be meeting me for an interview,” I said, restating the obvious. “Could it be he’s here already?”

“There were no signs that anyone had been at his place for a couple of days now,” Vicek said.

“Dyson just up and left? That doesn’t make any sense,” I said, scoffing. “All I wanted to do was talk to him about that day, get him to tell me about it in his own words. He wasn’t in any trouble.”

With the reports taking forever to be dragged out of archives, I’d been filled with the need to do something . So, I’d asked for and received permission to interview both Dyson and the other guard who had found Noa’s body.

I’d expected pushback, irritation, a general reluctance to answer the questions again so much later. But this was just straight-up weird.

“There’s one way in which it could make sense,” Vicek offered.

I stared at him, knowing full well what he was getting at. “You think he killed Noa? That’s preposterous!”

“Why else would he run?”

“But they didn’t even know one another to the best of my knowledge.”

Vicek shrugged then moved out of the doorframe as a pair of guards came in from the end of their shift, both nodding respectfully to the heir to the kingdom.

“Come,” Vicek said, gesturing for me to follow. “This is no place to discuss such things.”

Such things.

“Is there a proper place to discuss the murder of an innocent woman?”

Vicek sighed. “You must keep an open mind, Callum. Otherwise, you may miss valuable information.”

“Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means ,” he said, the iron edge in his tone cautioning me to watch myself, “that you have to at least consider that perhaps Noa wasn’t innocent.”

“I—”

He cut me off. “I said you must consider it. I did not say I believed it. Cal, I knew Noa. She was a lovely lady. But she was murdered in cold blood . That just doesn’t happen among our people. Not to true innocents. There’s always something there, something in their past that comes out.”

“Not Noa,” I said firmly, teeth clenched to hold back the wall of anger. “I knew her. We were bound by the scale, Vicek. I saw into her mind. I saw her hopes, her dreams. I knew her, truly knew her.”

“And perhaps that is why you were able to be blinded,” he suggested softly. “You have to consider it. Something is clearly amiss here. Dyson would not have fled otherwise.”

“Are we sure he fled?”

“His drawers were opened, and items were clearly taken from them. It looked like he’d packed in a hurry and gotten out of there.”

I frowned, thinking it through. “Why in a rush, though? You said it looked like it had been a bit of time, a day or so? I only requested this meeting yesterday morning. So, he would’ve had to leave right away for that to line up.”

“Maybe he did.”

“He didn’t need to rush, though,” I countered. “He had twenty-four hours to pack and to leave. That gives him a hell of a head start. He could quite literally be anywhere right now. We’ll never find him. Which is all the more reason for him to take his time and make sure he didn’t leave any clues. Including signs that he’d left. Better to just vanish without anyone knowing that’s what you did.”

Vicek nodded. “Or he panicked. After two years, having it dug back up again, it’s not that unbelievable to think he assumed you had some evidence on him and that this meeting was anything but. If that were the case, he would have to figure someone was watching him. Hence the need to leave as fast as possible.”

“All right,” I said, playing along. “Let’s assume Dyson did kill her. Why? How did they know one another?”

“I pulled Dyson’s file,” Vicek said, smiling tightly. “I figured you’d want to know.”

He pulled the folded papers from a back pocket and handed them to me. I opened them and began to read.

“They’re similar in age,” I said right away. “That does open possibilities.”

“Keep reading.”

I looked sharply at the other shifter then back to the papers. Clearly, Vicek had already spotted something and was waiting for me to see it, too. My eyes skimmed the paper, listing all his background information and physical traits.

Then it hit me.

“They’re both from Little Isle,” I said, the fact practically leaping out from the page to smack me like a fish jumping from the water. “And only two years apart. They would practically have to know one another growing up, even if she was two years older.”

Vicek’s lips were compressed into a thin line. “That was my thought.”

“So, what, this was revenge for something from their childhood?” I said, skimming the rest of the dossier. There wasn’t much, only the basics. But it had given us a clue. An important one.

“It certainly seems possible. Or there was something ongoing between them. Maybe she was getting cold feet after being mated to you and wanted to be done with it, and he killed her to shut her up.”

I didn’t want to think about Noa that way, but Vicek made a good point. After all, she was dead, and there had to be a reason behind it. I just hoped it wasn’t that. I wanted to remember Noa as a good woman. I didn’t want that memory to be tarnished when some sordid criminal past was unveiled.

But if it brought her killer to justice …

“We need to find Dyson,” I said, smacking my palms together. “But how?”

“I sent a team to perform a full search of his quarters. If they find anything, I’ll let you know.”

“But you don’t expect to find anything, do you?”

Vicek shook his head slowly. “No, not really. He could be on any of the isles by now or even back among the humans. I’m sorry, Cal, I truly am. There’s nothing else we can do at this point.”

It was a dead end.