“Yes, babe?”
“Did you find anything? It kinda looks like you’re just standing and staring at Leif’s desk, but don’t let me interrupt you if you’ve got something serious mulling over in that brain of yours.”
I blink a few times, coming back to myself as Echo’s gorgeous eyes come back into focus. Whoops. Looks like I got lost in my head for a while, watching Echo as she scoured Leif's notes on his desk, looking for any clue why the fuck he’s not here.
No wonder we’re not getting anywhere. I’m distracted as fuck by Echo’s presence and the hint of her scent every time she moves around the room. I want to bury myself inside her and mark her with my scent, to cling to her and sink my teeth into her neck, adding another mating mark to her collection and bonding the two of us together so that she can never leave me.
Which is insane. Completely at odds with what I was just thinking. The rational part of me knows I need to let her live a life where she’s happy, even if it’s apart from me.
Let’s just say that me and my more animalistic half are at odds with how we feel about how to proceed with our mate. He isnothappy about the thought of letting her go and it’s irritating as hell having two halves of yourself fighting against each other.
“Did you, er, find anything?” I ask, clinging onto the edge of the desk so that I don’t give into the urge to scoop her up in my arms and nuzzle her neck.
Luckily, Echo doesn’t seem to notice my inner battle as she holds up a piece of paper triumphantly. “Just this. I did the whole scribbling with a pencil to see what he’d last written on his notepad trick you see in old detective movies.”
I can’t stop myself from grinning at her. Man, this woman could not be any damn cuter. “Okay, what does it say?”
She beams back at me. “It’s a name and a room number, so come on, slow-poke, let’s find Soren and see if this takes us anywhere.”
She’s so damn proud of herself, I don’t have the heart to warn her it might just be Leif’s lunch order or something, it probably has fuck all to do with wherever he’s got to. Although It is a little weird that he stopped answering his phone right after Cam went missing.
I have to say that it gives me a weird feeling that three connected weavers now seem to have gone AWOL.
One could be chalked up to someone wanting a break from their life, but two and now three? Yeah, there’s a pattern here, one that makes me have to fight hard not to drag Echo into my arms and not let go.
I’d lose my mind if she disappeared next.
We find Soren a little way down from Madame’s office and he agrees to head to the room mentioned on Leif’s note with zero complaints. In fact, he’s weirdly compliant and I’m a little worried that he had a run in with Madame while we weren’t there and it’s done something to him. I was secretly hoping he might at least plant a tiny seed of doubt so that Echo didn’t get her hopes up too high considering she thinks that this random note is going to crack the case wide open.
Dammit, she’s even got me thinking like an old-timey detective from those films that Wren used to love watching whenever we had a movie night. But if I were a detective, I’d have smelled a distinctive scent in Wren’s room and followed the trail right into our room full of eccentric suspects where I’d proceed to monologue about how it looked to be the most obvious culprit, only to spin around and point a finger at the true murderer.
We reach the numbered door in no time at all and Echo raps on it, trying and failing to hide her excitement. I glance over her head at Soren and he grimaces. It’s then that I realize that we’re both totally on the same wavelength about this. Neither of us wants to burst her bubble or dim her shine.
“Did you get anything on Madame?” I ask via our mental link. Soren shakes his head and shoots me a resigned look.
“She might be involved, but if she is, she knows to cover her tracks too well.”
Echo knocks again, and no one answers, and I watch as her shoulders slump. The weight of all of this is heavy on us all, but I think she’s really feeling it, and somehow her pain hurts me worse than my own.
Because I’m totally head over heels for her.
Another minute of silence passes and Echo rests her head on the door for a moment, letting out a slow sigh of resignation.
“Shitty shitty shipsticks.” She boots the door and turns away, hair flying wildly with the sharp movement. I don’t think I’ve seen her so frustrated.
“Hey, wanna keep it down out there? Some of us are napping.” A tousle-headed guy says from the room opposite.
“Sorry,” Echo says. “You, uh, don’t happen to know whose room this is, do you?”
His eyebrows raise as he considers the three of us. “You’re knocking down the door and you don’t even know whose room it is?”
Echo shrugs. “Oh, well, kinda?”
“Did Beattie sleep with your boyfriend or something? You’re not seeing Leif too, are you? I knew that guy must have a wild side buried deep, deep down.”
Echo visibly swallows, glancing at us both before stepping closer to this guy. It’s then that I notice that he’s shirtless and I also take a step closer, although I’m not entirely sure what I’m planning to do—maybe shield her eyes from his nakedness to protect my mate’s sweet gaze.
“What about Leif? You don’t know where he is right now, do you?”
