My amusement faded. “Yeah.”
He nodded, curiosity evident. “I want to help you. I know it’s hard when you can’t tell me what you need, but if there’s anything either me or Rys can do, then I hope you find a way to ask us.”
“Thank you.” I hoped so too because I had a feeling we were going to need it.
I waited until we’d dropped Mase off at home before raising my concerns with Jake. I’d made him drive so I could gather my thoughts better.
“He doesn’t remember,” I muttered, working through the possible reasons why that might be. “According to Stella’s records, Oscar worked that night in the back-room bar.”
Jake sighed, hands tightening on the steering wheel. “You believe him then?
“I didn’t detect anything to suggest otherwise, and Mase said he didn’t feel any change in his emotions.”
“His magic is still new, though,” Jake argued. “It could be that he can’t control it enough yet and missed it.”
“True,” I conceded. The thought had crossed my mind. “But if Oscar was lying. If he’d been at the bar that night, he’d have known what went down. The fact that we were asking specifically about the back room, surely that would’ve evoked some reaction? Even if he managed to tamp it down quickly, wouldn’t we have picked up something?”
“Yeah,” Jake said softly, not looking my way. “We should’ve.”
As paranormal police detectives, both Jake and I had undergone specific training to develop and hone our senses to a greater degree of accuracy than an average shifter. We’d learnt to pick up on the slightest changes in human and paranormal bodies, and yet I’d sensed nothing unexpected coming from Oscar when I’d questioned him about the back room of the bar.
An uneasy silence settled in the car.
It wasn’t until Jake pulled onto the drive outside our house that he spoke again. “If he has no memory of working that night, then either the pub records are wrong, or…” He didn’t finish, letting it hang there. I didn’t blame him. I didn’t want to think about what that might mean either.
“Yep. It’s theorI’m worried about.” People make mistakes, someone could’ve entered the wrong name in the records.
But instinct told me we wouldn’t be that lucky. Right about now I could’ve done with Dathal to tell me if we were on the right track.
“Fuck,” Jake hissed, banging his hands on the steering wheel. “Do you get the feeling this is about more than a dead beta?”
I fucking hoped not. But…
“Things aren’t adding up, are they?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
The logical next step was something Jake wasn’t going to like, but I couldn’t see a way around it. “I think we need to do the thing on that list that we both added.”
Jake groaned. “I haven’t really spoken to him since it happened.”
“I know.”
“I shouldn’t have left it so long.” He ran a hand over his face before turning to look at me. “We could go on Sunday if you want?”
“Okay.”
His breath hitched, the vulnerability in his eyes my undoing. I reached over and rubbed the back of his neck, a bittersweet warmth filling my chest as he leant into my touch with a soft moan. It would be so easy to tug him closer, to brush a kiss across lips I’d only begun to explore.
I wanted it so badly it physically hurt to let go and sit back in my seat.
Jake’s hand snapped out and snagged mine, twining my fingers. “Don’t let go.” He placed my hand back where it had been, keeping it there with his own. “Please.”
Goddess, help me, I’d give him anything he asked for. I nodded slowly, massaging the back of his neck, not stopping even after his hand fell away.
His eyes dropped closed on a contented sigh, tension draining from him as I worked my fingers into tense muscles that loosened under my touch. I’d done this plenty of timesbefore. When having my hands on him was second nature, when easing his pain was something I did without thinking.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” I whispered.
