“Not if they weren’t looking for it. Prevoron is virtually undetectable when first administered, unless you’re specifically looking for it, isn’t it?”
He nodded. A short, sharp movement that spoke of annoyance. Whether its source was my presence or the subject matter was anyone’s guess.
“So, if a Prevoron test was requested, how long would it take to come through?”
“It would depend on how banked up the lab is, but generally only twenty-four hours, especially on a high profile case like that.”
“Then my first request is, can you check Keale’s blood results, and if he hasn’t been tested for Prevoron, could you arrange it?” And soon, I wanted to add, but didn’t push my luck. Although if he wasn’t tested soon, it wouldn’t matter, because the drug would have started leeching from his system.
He gave no indication he would, just said, “And the second request?”
“I wanted to know if Mona was pregnant. And, if she was, was a DNA test performed on the fetus?”
“What gives you the idea she might have been pregnant?”
I hesitated. “I’ve been talking to her driver.”
“Who we have been unable to track down. It appears he’s been absent from his office, has shifted out of his house, and left no forwarding address.” He studied me for a moment. “How did you find him?”
So Darryl had gone into hiding. I couldn’t say I blamed him after what had happened to Val, especially given his knowledge of events were a whole lot more damaging than Val’s ever could be.
“I was lucky enough to run into him.”
“I just bet.” His voice was skeptical. “And, of course, you have no idea where he is now.”
“No, but he does appear sporadically at his office. I caught him there this morning.”
The waitress appeared with our drinks and my cake, and a smile briefly lifted Kaij’s expression again. It made me remember all the times he’d looked at me with such warmth, and found myself fighting the sudden sting of tears.
Which was stupid, because there was no hope of us going back to the way we were. Not now, not ever. Too much had happened between us.
I kept my gaze down, concentrating on stirring sugar into my coffee until I had the memories and tears under control. Not that it would do much good—he was a dark fae, and sensitive to the currents of strong emotion. It was part of the reason he was such a good cop.
Of course, that sharing was a two way street—or rather, it had been—simply because I was siren enough to have formed a connection with him. Whether that connection still held after so many years apart I had no idea, and I certainly had no desire to test it. But if the flashes I kept catching were any indication, it was there to be explored if I did want to.
“Why do you want to know whether Mona was pregnant?” he asked, almost brusquely.
I raised my gaze to his again. There was no sympathy in his eyes. No echoes of the past. No pain. What had happened between us had obviously been dealt with, and he’d moved on.
I thought I had, too.
I pulled the cake toward me and picked up the spoon. “Because it might just provide a clue as to who killed her.”
He leaned forward abruptly. “If you know something, it is in your best interest to tell me.”
I met him glare for glare. “Was she pregnant?”
I wasn’t about to give him any information if he wasn’t at least willing to give me that crumb.
“No.” His voice was flat, but an odd sort of tension surrounded him. “She apparently had a miscarriage five days before she was murdered.”
A miscarriage. Just for a second, all the old pain rose and I had to close my eyes against the grief that never went entirely away. No wonder she’d been acting a little crazy. Grief made you do strange things. It certainly had for me.
God, if Lyle ever found that out, Frank was a dead man. I met Kaij’s gaze again. There was nothing to be seen in those green depths. Not even ashes.
It hurt, but it also made me angry, even if I’d expected little else from him.
“Look,” he said, before I could react in any way. “I’ll see what I can do about Keale, but you really need to tell me what you know. Otherwise, I’ll have to make this interview official.”
I ate my cake as I contemplated my options, but the truth was, I really didn’t have that many. If the information I passed on was kept off the books, then I had a chance of going under the radar as far as my father was concerned. But if it became official, there was no damn chance of that happening. My father had many contacts in the force, and far too many of them owned him favors.
“Okay,” I said. “But you heard none of this from me.”
“Meaning,” he said, voice holding the slightest hint of distaste. “Your damn family is involved.”
“Yeah.” Dark fae and elves generally co-existed pretty nicely, but the Phillecky clan had never been afraid to step on toes, and over the years had become personae non gratae in the dark fae community. Which hadn’t made it easy for me, either before or after Kaij I had split. “Lyle wasn’t the only Phillecky seeing her. Gilroy had been, too.”
“Fuck.” He scrapped a hand across his chin.
“Yeah. And it gets worse.” I told him about James Logan, Mona’s blackmailing efforts, and Frank beating her up. “Both Gilroy and James paid her, but according to Gilroy, she wasn’t happy and demanded more.”
“Which makes him a prime suspect.”
“Except for the fact he was in New Zealand when she was murdered.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You really think that clears him?”
“I know what my family is capable of, so no.” I paused. “I do, however, believe him when he says he did not kill her.”
“And why would he have to, when he has a father who would do it all for him?”
I grimaced. “Yes, but I don’t think he killed her, either. Mona was raped, and my father’s views on that are well enough known.”
“How did you know-” He stopped, then shook his head. “Lyle had to identify the body. He obviously got the information from someone in the coroner’s office.”
“He has plenty of contacts-”
“Your whole damn family has plenty of contacts. And far too many powerful ones.” He eyed me grimly. “You know I’ll have to talk to them all.”
“If you go to them with the information I’ve given you, they’ll know I’m the source.”
And they’d make me pay. I didn’t say the words out loud but it hung between us all the same.
He was silent for several minutes. Weighing up the pros and cons of tackling my father and brother against the backwash I’d cop. His gaze flicked briefly to bruises and scratched on my arms, and something ran through his eyes. Not concern, but maybe frustration.
It was something. Not much, but something.
“Then what the hell do you expect me to do?”
“Talk to Frank Logan. He beat her up once—maybe he did it again. Someone was arguing with her the day after she was paid the money—maybe it was him.” I hesitated. “Did you find any money in her apartment?”
“No. And it didn’t make her bank account, either.” He eyed me for a minute. “I suppose you asked her driver about it?”
“Yes. He generally did her banking, but not recently.”
“And you think he was telling the truth?”
“Yes.”
He grunted. “We still need to talk to him.”
“And then go talk to Lyle. It won’t take very much pressure to get information you need out of him, and my father won’t kill him. He’s family.”
“Is that what he’s threatened? To kill you?”
I smiled, but it was a bitter thing. “Why do you sound surprised? My family hates me almost as much as your family does.”
“My family doesn’t-”
I snorted. “Your mother practically did a song and dance when we broke—”
“Don’t,” he cut in, his expression suddenly fierce. “Because it is neither true nor warranted. She was as broken as you and I by events.”
Events. Even now, all these years later, he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge the miscarriage. It was both sad and infuriating. Damn it, we’d lost our daughter. And just when I’d needed him the most, he’d retreated. Physically, mentally. Unable to cope, and blaming me for the loss.
I grabbed a pen and a piece of paper from my bag, scrawled Lyle’s phone number on it, and thrust it across the table. “Contact Lyle. Talk to him before you go to my father. Give me that much, at least.”
I rose. His gaze followed me. If he saw the sadness and fury, he gave no sign of it. “Thank you.”
I nodded and spun away. But I’d barely gone two steps when he said, “And Harri?”
I stopped and clenched my fist, fighting the urge to run. Fighting the need to turn around and say all the things I hadn’t been able to say all those years ago.
“What?”
“Thank you for allowing Ayasha to be buried on ancestral lands”
I didn’t reply. I couldn’t reply. I just nodded and got the hell out of there.
But I was shaking by the time I got to my car. For several minutes, I did nothing more than breathe deep in a vague attempt to calm the tempest that roared deep inside. It didn’t help, and I once again found myself crying for not only the daughter I’d lost, but for what might have been.
Damn it, why couldn’t he have stayed away? Why did he have to come back and raise old ghosts?
Because until those ghosts are confronted, neither of us really can move on.
And that meant, like it or not, we would be talking again. Because that inner intuition was right. We needed to confront past events if we wanted a future that was brighter. Or at least, I did.
I suspected he did too, even if he’d given very little evidence of it so far. I really couldn’t think of any other reason for him to come back to Berren.
