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“He went to secure his mother.”
Cade stayed remarkably still for me as I bent and pulled the gauze, slowly covering his wound. I glanced at the woman again, saw the way her thin mouth tightened until it went white.
“He did inform me she’d been dragged into this. Do we know which idiot decided to bring her from the asylum?”
“Hospital,” Cade corrected. “And it was Lord Malcolm.”
“The dead wolf.”
“The very same.”
“This paints a pretty picture for the Leslies,” the woman said. “They can frame Constable King for the murder, pointing at his mother’s abduction for motivation. Do we know where he was when the murder took place?”
“We split up to cover more ground while searching for the trafficker’s base of operations.” Cade frowned at the woman. “Eucilla, it wasn’t him.”
Her eyes narrowed into terrifying, diagonal slashes in her face. “You take me for a fool? Of course it wasn’t him. But it would be easier to shove their accusations aside if we had a concrete alibi to fall on.”
“Of course, Lieutenant.”
I could feel a new strain in Cade’s body. Under my hands, his muscles tensed, and he watched the dracken with nothing less than wariness as she continued to peruse the paperwork.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” said the dracken without taking her gaze from the paperwork. “I reprimanded him one time for nearly getting himself killed. I do recognize when he’s at fault and when he’s simply been dealt a sour hand.”
All at once, the tension slid out of Cade, and he exhaled. Curiosity prickled at me, and I wanted to ask what action Derrick had been reprimanded for, but with the dracken frowning so intensely at the paperwork on the table, I imagined it was not the time to inquire.
I bent my head and continued to work on the bandage, which was proving difficult given I only had the one hand to work with. A deep ache had begun to spread through my wrist, inching toward my elbow, hampering the process.
“Let’s put our facts in order,” Eucilla said, turning to lean her hip against the table and cross her arms. “We traced the runestones back to the Allegany region, where the Leslies preside with what they would have us believe is complete authority. Midway through the investigation Constable King is contacted by his cousin with a plea for help. He is then placed inside the Leslie manor for several weeks, whereupon he finds zero evidence regarding the runestones or the warlock traffickers.”
“We believe they are working offsite,” Cade said. “I found some old plans for the Leslie manor that prove there’s an underground passageway leading off the grounds. I think that’s how Delilah and Brock left the manor without anyone seeing them.”
Eucilla unfurled a long, yellowed bit of parchment, laying it flat against the table. “These are the plans?”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
I tied the last bit of gauze down. Cade murmured his thanks and reached for his bloodied shirt, dragging it over his head with a grimace. Swallowing, I stepped to the table with him and peered at the blueprints for Leslie manor. It was likely this tunnel was how I’d been removed from the manor as well and I was too curious not to see for myself. Besides, I couldn’t act like a country bumpkin beside the dracken, no matter how intimidating she might be, and I had every right to know what was going on.
The blueprints were old, the ink faded in places so that I had to squint to make any of it out. Eucilla’s fingertip traced a long tunnel running beneath the manor, leading out and away to the east, toward Witches Walk.
“The tunnel itself must be warded from detection,” Cade was saying with a nod at the blueprints.
“I thought your Constable tattoos could get around glamours and wards,” I said.
Cade glanced at me. “Most of them, yes. But some require a more intense search to find.”
“So it is entirely possible that Miss Grayson never left the manor,” Eucilla said. “Delilah may have left her in the tunnels, away from prying eyes where the traffickers could pick her up.”
Cade nodded. “Likely Henry. Has there been word of the man?”
Eucilla shook her head. “Not yet, but we only just arrived on scene and Gretchen is still gathering information from those at the manor.”
“What little Nora can remember, Henry fought Lord Malcolm on location. If we can somehow track the man’s scent, we might be able to find both him and the trafficker’s base of operations.”
The dracken turned her too-wide eyes on me and for a heartbeat I wanted to shrink into nothingness. “Is this accurate?”
I nodded.
“Then we will see if Derrick can track Henry’s scent when he returns,” Eucilla said. “In the meantime, we need a full accounting of what we know.”
