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“Are you seeing him again?”
“Dad, will you chill out?”
“I just want to make sure you’re staying safe, honey. That’s what dads do,” he said.
Maybe it was because I was his only child and he didn’t have Mum to temper his reactions, but the moment I was old enough to date, Dad’s protectiveness had amped up like crazy.
It had forced me to sneak around in my teens to see boys without Dad knowing. Kira and Allison had been happy to help.
By the time I got into my late teens, the subterfuge had gotten tiring. We had clashed a lot on whether I was old enough to go out and meet boys. If it hadn’t been for Sandra, I may have lost that battle. As the primary female role model in my life, she came down on my side in matters like that.
Dad said little more as we drove into Dawn and I parked outside the police station. Hopefully, the autopsy results would take his mind off my dating life.
We made our way up to the chief’s office and Dad knocked, entering first when summoned.
Dad spluttered the moment he stepped inside, and I stepped around him to see what the problem was.
Arms crossed, sitting on a chair on the other side of the room was Ben Everhart. In the seat next to him sat Tyler’s stepfather, George, leaning forward on his knees, his head hanging toward the floor.
“Before you say anything.” The chief held up a hand toward me and Dad as she stepped out from behind her desk. “Ben has promised to behave himself to be here today. I hope that’s enough to stop any conflict happening here. This is a solemn matter, after all, and I won’t tolerate any fighting.”
“Of course,” I said before Dad could answer. “We’re happy to cooperate on this occasion.”
Dad huffed a sigh through his nose and side-eyed me.
I ignored him.
“Good.” The chief picked up a file off her desk and handed it to me. “You’ll probably be able to make more sense of this than I will.”
I flipped it open and perused the papers. While my job had entailed mostly diving, I was familiar with autopsy reports. Call it morbid curiosity and friendships within the morgue. Living ones, of course.
“What’s the conclusion?” Ben asked. “You said you’d tell us when they got here.”
“Death by misadventure,” the chief said.
Ben sat bolt upright in his seat, unfolding his arms. “That’s not true.”
I glanced up from the report.
Ben sounded oddly sure that it wasn’t the cause of death. Did he also suspect that foul play was involved?
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
Ben screwed up his face as our eyes met. “Tyler went jogging along that route for years. He knew the dangers. He wouldn’t have fallen off that cliff unless someone?—.”
“Let’s not make any outrageous claims,” Chief Mallory said.
I returned to the report and flipped through it, looking for something, anything that would point to Tyler’s death being something other than an accident.
But all of Tyler’s recorded injuries had occurred because of his fall. No stab wounds, no gunshot wounds, and no talisman marks.
If the merfolk were right and someone had pushed Tyler, there would be no evidence on his body.
My heart sank. If there had been anything in the report I could have called into question, I would have jumped on it. But as far as the autopsy was concerned, this was an open-and-shut case.
I closed the file and handed it back to the chief.
“Looks like an accident,” I said, choosing my words carefully.
