Any other time, she would have devoured a Bellamy’s cake with relish.
But right now, she ignored the tiny airy sponge cake sitting on her plate. Her mouth was so dry, the cake would stick in a pasty glob in her mouth.
She sat, balancing the mug and the plate and feeling like she’d just been dropped into a bizarre black comedy.
Focus, Clare.
She’d spent the last half hour arranging pens in her pen holder, shuffling papers with shaking fingers, unable to take anything in. To think she’d taken a pay cut to be here, and now…. fuck.
Look what she’d just landed herself in.
Pull yourself together.
Yep. She could do this, she could be professional.
And then Oliver strode in with that lazy, long-legged glide of his. Why did he have to look so damn good? The bastard hadn’t aged (durhh, of course not), though maybe he was a tiny bit leaner in the face, a little more shadowed under the eyes, which she wouldn’t have expected, considering he’d had a cushy job in Selig these past three years.
Maybe he’s racked by a guilty conscience.
Yeah, right. Oliver Hale didn’t have a conscience—or, for that matter, a heart behind that silk waistcoat.
And now, she was going to have to work with him on the most complex case she’d ever undertaken.
She had to shut down her emotions. Be more like him.
Cold. Shrewd. Calculating.
At least she wouldn’t be left alone with him. Yet. Not that they exactly had a team. Saul had gathered an admin assistant, a rookie young cop and a griffin who’d retired from forensics and never been replaced.
Clare remembered Beth—she was a very good operator, a gorgon who always wore very nice head pieces to cover her snakes. She was joined by Sergeant Trent Watts, a fawn with overly large teeth and rather nervous eyes. And then there was Patrick, an ancient phoenix who’d headed up the forensics team for years but had actually retired a year ago. The PD had no forensics team anymore, due to lack of funding, so Patrick was only here to advise.
But with zero bodies found, and not even a fingerprint left where the people had gone missing, Patrick was scratching his beak, completely at a loss.
Oliver called them to attention, then put up the pictures of the missing humans. Clare jolted when she saw the smiling photo of Natalie, her neat small features, her dark chestnut hair hiding her face. That slightly anxious expression she always wore.
The other four were all High Tween—two young women, one called Selina, the other Sophie, and two guys. One, Clare recognized as Edward Bradshaw. His father was a Council of Towns official, and she’d seen Edward at the occasional social in her teens. A shy, pleasant enough young guy who, like her, stood on the sidelines at parties, not talking to anyone. She didn’trecognize the other guy. Paul Bates, a regular young Tween man who’d studied law, like his father. No doubt he’d thoroughly disappointed his family by working in Motham.
Oliver went through a brief history of what was known. This was his forte. Storyboards that made links between supposedly disparate things. She’d always loved watching him construct these in the past.
“What we know from the meager details we’ve gleaned so far is that these humans were all residents of Tween. None come from Twill. They’ve all taken professional appointments, which of course, you would expect humans to do. You don’t see humans in the mines, or docklands. We’re losing elite humans from Tween here.”
“We also have two reported sightings of Matteus Kominsky, from staff members of Tower Security. That is of interest, since he was involved in the abduction of human realtor Shona Dove three years ago, and has never been apprehended. Other than that, we have no clues. Do you have anything more to add, Patrick, from a forensic perspective?”
The phoenix shook his head. “We have scoured for fingerprints, scraps of material, blood traces, nothing. Found nothing untoward in their apartments, though we’ve not yet examined Natalie Spriggs’ apartment.”
“Why not?”
“I er, don’t happen to be on the payroll,” the old griffin muttered.
“Truthfully, Hale, we’ve been waiting on your arrival,” Saul added. Yeah, like everything rested on Oliver Hale. Which, Clare conceded silently, it probably fucking did.
“So you have no medical records, no information from the Tween authorities to date?”
Saul shook his head. “Tween has closed ranks on us.”
“As they always do,” Oliver agreed. “But at least we can glean some information about one of the victims from Detective Doyle.”
Clare put her plate down and looked up to find his dark gaze zeroing in on her. “The latest victim, Natalie Spriggs, was your friend, was she not?”
