Page 10 of Her Forbidden Shifters
I couldn’t understand why he was probing for information on Noah. But I also understood if I needed to know the reason, he would tell me. Besides, he was probably trying to rule him out as a suspect. What my relationship with him had to do with the case, I wasn’t sure. If he got too personal, I would draw the line.
“What kind of romantic history?” he asked.
“What kind do you think?” I asked back and headed to the windows to search for any signs of tampering. After checking all of them, I frowned. There was nothing.
“Fair enough,” he muttered as I moved through the room.
I headed toward the desk which sat right next to her bed and searched for any clues of the struggle. Everything was clean. Neat. The chair wasn’t toppled over. The bed was made and smooth. There weren’t papers scattered along the desk which would signify a struggle. Especially one that Noah had described in detail.
Avery was clean and organized. But this was too pristine to match up to Noah’s story. The laptop had been closed.
Someone must have made it back here and cleaned the place up.
The chances we were going to find anything relatively close to a clue was slim to none, but the best criminals made mistakes. I just had to find it. The one thing that would help push this case forward.
“Do you think he’s telling the truth about all of this?” Liam asked. “This place is pristine.”
I shook my head. “He’s close to his sister. They have a great relationship with each other. Far as I am aware of, there isn’t any bad blood to speak of.”
“Did things end badly between you two?” he asked.
“Me and Avery?” I asked, setting my gaze on him. “No. Why?”
He shook his head. “No, not Avery.”
“Oh, me and Noah,” I said.
He nodded.
“Not necessarily.” I moved to the bathroom to search for a window and anything else that would signify a clue and would point me in the direction I needed to go. There was a basket for dirty clothes, but nothing was in it. Makeup wasn’t scattered along her sink. Everything that I had known of Avery wasn’t present.
“If you had the chance to start again with him, would you?” he asked.
“That isn’t entirely a question I feel comfortable enough to answer right now. Are you finding anything yet?”
“No. And not finding so much as a speck out of place doesn’t sit well with me,” he said.
“Me either.” I moved to the fridge and was shocked by the lack of food she kept. “There has to be something here. Maybe we need to dust for prints, check for bugs, anything that would give us a clue as to the identity of who took her.”
“We could go through the effort, but I can already tell you we aren’t going to find anything. This place was cleaned up. Professionally.”
“Which also doesn’t follow the usual M.O. of the group in question. Which means they are changing up their game or they aren’t involved, and this is some sort of copycat who is sending Noah a message.”
“What about energy?” Liam asked. “Can you detect anything?”
I nodded and then stood still, closing my eyes, and reaching out my magic to detect any foreign energies that didn’t belong. I frowned as nothing stood out. I let out a breath I had been holding and met my boss’s eyes. I shook my head.
Things weren’t adding up. The more I tried to make connections, the farther away it seemed I was getting to finding Avery. Something had to give.
“I don’t get it,” Liam said.
“Whoever did this is skilled,” I said. “They have the means to clean everything, right down to the air and energy. For all intents and purposes, this place is made to look like she simply vanished out of the blue.”
Liam added, “Which begs the question of who is behind this again. I’m starting to believe the organization we’ve been tracking has nothing to do with this and more to do with some sort of bad blood with the brother.”
I nodded. “Maybe. We’re not going to find anything here. My best guess is we may find something more useful in Noah’s place. If whoever is behind this is truly targeting him, they could be surveilling his place.”
“Makes sense. Let’s wrap up here first and then we can head there,” he said.
