Chapter 6: Missing and Presumed Dead
"It's been two days, Dyson," Kenzi said into the phone. Her voice had a frantic edge to it and her face matched it. Her eyes were rolling, trying to read Bo's case notes as fast as possible… for the sixteenth time. It's a pitty Bo wasn't much of a note taker. There were no clues as to where she might be. There wasn't even any evidence to support where she had gone. The notes described the victim's room, the contents of her dresser and desk, and the strange smell in the air. It didn't give the address the victim lived at, it didn't give the name of the client.
The smell.
Dead wet dog.
The smell of a werewolf maybe.
What if the werewolf had caught Bo?
"I know Kenzi," Dyson said, his voice had a strange strained tone to it. Part of it was concern, Kenzi figured, while the other parts could be embarrassment or irritation. Kenzi had avoided Dyson since the second kiss. She didn't know if Dyson remembered it or not, and she wasn't going to bring it up.
"There are just," Dyson paused, sighed. "There are just a lot of problems in the city right now. I'm as worried about Bo as you are. More so. We can only assume she was one of the targets of this killer on the loose. Plus the case she's working on."
"We need to find her."
"I know," Dyson said.
"Could the werewolf she was talking about have anything to do with this?" Kenzi asked. "That's what her case was about."
There was a long pause from Dyson's side. Fear began to creep up Kenzi's spine. A fear that maybe she was right about the werewolf problem.
"Werewolves aren't real," Dyson said, his voice mechanical. A lie. One easy to see though.
"Tell me the truth, Dyson."
"Could you send me Bo's case notes," Dyson said. "They might have something important in them."
"They don't," Kenzi said. She rocked back in her chair, staring at the computer screen, and willing it to say something, anything, different. Like an email from Bo. One saying she's okay, and has already cracked the case. Or just the address of the woman who hired Bo.
"Send them to me anyway."
"Tell me the truth."
"I've told you everything I know," Dyson said. His voice was still strained, and Kenzi could see the irritation level rising, like it was a gauge slowly filling up.
"No, Dyson, you haven't," Kenzi said. She spun the chair around and walked over to the window. Now, the morning light was spilling in, but later the moon would rise high above the horizon. Would that moon be full? Would she hear a strange Fey howling at the cratered satellite? "You haven't told me about werewolves."
"There's nothing to know about werewolves," Dyson said, his voice mechanical again. "What human's think of as werewolves are just shifters. There's no such thing as werewolves."
"And, pigs can fly." Kenzi said.
"Damnit, Kenzi," Dyson said. The tone of this voice shifted again. It was frustration now. Kenzi smiled, she was getting under his skin, maybe, just maybe deep enough to finally get some answers. But, the procedure to get them would have to be round about.
"Why'd you want me to kiss you?"
"What?" Dyson said, knocked off his guard, and left floating.
"Kenzi," Dyson paused, another sigh. She wished she could see his face. The hurt there might destroy her. But, the admission of his love could only come from the bottle. There was, and could not be, any more to it. "I was drunk, and I don't even remember what happened. I know I asked you to kiss me, but I don't know why."
Her chest, filled with air she didn't know she was holding, deflated. Tears crawled into the corners of her eyes. She tried to blink them away; wished she hadn't asked. Dyson, player or not, loved Bo. He could never be with Kenzi. Shifters mated for life. The tears didn't go away, and now there was a pain in her chest.
"I've always heard that the words of a drunk man are words of truth," Kenzi said. The spunk had fled her being. "I wonder if that's true. And, I wonder about werewolves."
%***%
"Kenzi," Dyson said, but the line went dead, right after the remark about werewolves. For what was probably the tenth time today, Dyson sighed. He couldn't help it, couldn't keep it from coming, and hadn't been able to control it at all.
Two days. Two days had passed since he'd last seen Bo; two days since he'd admitted his feelings for Kenzi. And, for the last two days he'd thought of nothing but the two women in his life.
Bo and Kenzi; were they on the killers list? Bo was, without a doubt. The last two vics had been his lovers, for however short a time, and they were, well, it's not hard to guess what they were. But, what was the connection to the werewolf.
Dyson had never been involved with a werewolf case before, not a hunt, or anything. And, the only time he was even close to them was near a channeler colony in what was now West Virginia during the American War for Independence. The channelers handled that situation, and, by comparison, were far more capable of dealing with a werewolf than a typical fey.
He wished Mae was here.
Dyson shook his head, knocking the thoughts away. "If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride," he whispered to himself, and looked back at the computer screen. Whether Kenzi was mad at him or not, she had sent Bo's case notes, and after skimming them, found that Kenzi was right. There was very little of importance in the notes. The smell, of course, Bo was on the trail of the werewolf, and it added two possibilities to the mix.
One: The missing girl was another of Dyson's former lovers.
Two: The missing girl was the werewolf.
But, why attack the women who were once his lovers? Unless those possibilities were both correct. What if the werewolf was one of his former lovers? Somebody who took the one-night-stand a little too far? That would narrow the list, but, unfortunately, the list of Dyson's one-night-stands was almost as long as the original list of suspects. It did, however, eliminate the men on the list.
Dyson looked over at Hale—bent over his desk, hard at work on his computer—scratched the day's growth of stubble on his chin, and turned back to his own desk.
The flower was back, wrapped in a clear plastic evidence bag. It had already been through the extreme level of the CSI lab's tests, and the results it brought back were nearly pointless. It was a very common type of white rose, bought at either Walmart or Kroger, and kept in a vase with very little water and a lot of feed. The blood on the rose was the same type as the vic's with no impurities in the blood. Those impurities would have been an indication of extreme drug use, or lycanthropy. The two were hard to distinguish. Just another way for the werewolf to hide itself. And, there was a partial print on the petals nearest to the stem, but it didn't have enough match points to be used for identification.
In short, the flower was a dead end. Even the werewolf smell, that clung to it like a vice, was a dead end. The werewolf's smell was slowly filling the city, and would make it impossible to track the beast at all in the next few days. Not that either side of the fey were too keen on tracking it.
Dyson looked back at the computer screen, and thought of Kenzi, not Bo. "The words of a drunk man are words of truth," he muttered. Maybe she's right. Maybe all this time it had been Kenzi he was in love with. Playing Bo, adding to the lists of suspects on an almost daily basis, hadn't bothered him in the least. But, now…
Now, thinking about Kenzi, about putting her on that list bothered him something fierce. He didn't want her to be on the list. He wanted to wipe the list clean. Maybe… Just maybe… he did love Kenzi.
He thought of Bo, and knew he would have to put their relationship to rest. Then, and only then, could he have one with Kenzi.
Dyson shook his head again.
"Where are you, Bo?"
Author's Note: Just felt the random need to check in and make sure everybody knows about my blog, Twitter, and Facebook. At these lovely locations you can see updates on my original work, random things that seem to happen way too often, and you get to listen to me whine and complain. Anywho, that's all from me. And, if the links don't work, check my profile page for them :)
