Home > Griffin's Protection(9)

Griffin's Protection(9)
Author: Lola Gabriel

He brought his lips up against hers once more, not enough to kiss, but close enough that their lips grazed each other. “This is gonna be fun.”

She kept her face exactly where it was, breathing out softly onto his lips. “So what now?”

“Now? Now, we find out who actually killed Raz and clear your name.”

Her eyebrow cocked up teasingly. “And how do you propose we do that?”

A smirk slipped over his face as his finger stroked her jawline. “Don’t worry. I have my ways.”

Before she was ready for him to leave, he pulled away and straightened. He summoned up his impressive frame, running a hand through his hair and exhaling to break the mood. He grinned down at her and extended a hand for her to take.

“Ready?”

She took his hand and he pulled her to her feet with an almost humiliating ease. She overshot the landing and stopped right up against his chest until their torsos were almost touching, like he could angle his head slightly downward and kiss her again. His arm curled around her waist, pulling her hip against his as he studied her with passion and a burning desire in his eyes.

“Yes,” she breathed, clinging to his chest and wondering what in the ever-living fuck was happening here. It was like a fairytale. With her hand resting on his chest, she could feel the strength in his muscles as he moved his arm slightly. It was like hugging a god, and when her fingers curled more into his body, she felt the quiet, powerful thump of his heart beating.

He grinned broadly. “Then let’s go.”

 

 

6

 

 

Starting wasn’t nearly as easy as Oakley had hoped.

By the time he’d made the conscious decision to help out Poppy and try to clear her name, he’d thought through the facts. First off, this wasn’t an amateur organization that had arrested her. This was the Immortal Council, and though arguments could be made about how merciful or corrupt they were, nobody disputed that they did their job well. Every bit of evidence that could have been combed through would already have been thoroughly investigated. “No stone left unturned,” was their motto.

Problem was, though they did a good job, there was always a stone left unturned. Somewhere, somehow, every case had one. Usually, the stone didn’t matter much. Usually, it was just another fact pointing to the guilt or the innocence of a party, like the discovery of the fired round from a rifle that had killed someone. The person was guilty, and the rifle was there, and the motive, and the witnesses, but that last stone was finding the bullet. Wouldn’t change much about the case generally, but every now and then, it made a difference.

Oakley was the stone finder. It was what he was good at, and what had given him such a respected reputation. Whenever a case seemed confusing, they’d call him in. Even now, even after being retired for so long, they sometimes would call him in. Truth be told, the fact that he was involved at all was the only reason that the case hadn’t moved forward. The Immortal Council backed their own, and since he was backing Poppy, they were giving him some time. Of course, it wasn’t like they were going to let her walk scot-free, but they were willing to get distracted by other cases for a few days to let him get his ducks in a row.

Oakley hadn’t expected it to be easy to find an unturned rock, but he knew there was one. Even beyond the fact that he didn’t doubt that Poppy was innocent, there had to be some sort of evidence pointing away from her that could clear this whole mess up. Or, better yet, a piece of evidence that would incriminate the actual killer, clearing her name and solving the case in the process.

There was only one problem.

Poppy looked like the killer from every conceivable angle.

Every single thing that he looked into pointed towards all the guilt falling straight on her. She and Raz had some sort of dispute going, enough of a dispute that Poppy never even communicated with him. She’d drop off his potions and wait for the delivery service to take it to him. She avoided even the smallest bit of accidental eye contact with the demon, but apparently, Raz and his mate weren’t on such good terms after a bit of red hair was found on him after a “night out drinking”. Eventually, it turned out that the banishment was mutual. Poppy had banned him, but his suspicious mate had demanded he stay away from the “red-haired bitch’s” shop.

That by itself was a strong bit of evidence. Poppy had a motive and it looked quite likely that she had a sexual relationship with Raz, who came home smelling of other women and with red hair on him. Weird, certainly, but to a court of law, that was a connection. And then, of course, the night that Raz was killed, he was at the apothecary.

If he’d been called in and hadn’t spoken to Poppy, the answer here was clear—Poppy and Raz had an affair, and once his mate found out, she tried to shut it down. But the affair had continued, except one night, something had happened and Poppy had killed Raz. Maybe Raz said it was over. Maybe Raz tried to do something he shouldn’t. Maybe Poppy, in this scenario, had threatened Raz and tried to blackmail him, and when it went bad, she killed him with poison. Or maybe…well, the list went on and on. There was no limit to the ways that it could have gone down in a grisly, deadly way. Oakley had seen it a dozen times, a hundred times. Classic story.

But the single, itsy-bitsy piece of information that he couldn’t get around was that Poppy hadn’t done it. He’d heard the disgust in her voice when she’d talked about Raz. Not hatred! Hatred was an indication of rage, of wanting vengeance, of potentially being capable of murder. But disgust? Poppy just wanted nothing to do with him. She wanted him gone, wanted him out of her life and to leave her alone, just like she would with an especially gross animal or a rotting cheese. There was some animosity, but not hatred. She wanted to scrape him off her shoe like a piece of gum, not carefully brew a potion to murder him and proceed to kill the fucker. Besides, even if she was going to kill him that way, she wasn’t stupid enough to do it like that, in the shop with witnesses.

But how could he prove to the others that Poppy was innocent? It wasn’t like he could stand up, wave around a flag, and declare that she was innocent and everyone could go home now. No, until he found that stone, until he finally uncovered that bit of evidence that could clear her, it was anyone’s game.

He worked for days, communicating with the Immortal Council, scouring their records and spending long hours trying to figure out where in the hell the unturned stone was. He talked with witnesses, read reports, saw pictures of the crime scene. Studied the material in the brew that had been found in Raz’s body from the toxicology report and lined it up with Poppy’s actual medicine she handmade for Raz every time to find that they were virtually identical, with only one poisonous difference. It was obviously her potion that had been slightly tampered with, and whoever did it had added enough of a rare poison to kill a dragon or two. Whoever had done it, had done it on purpose. It wasn’t an accident. Someone wanted him dead, but according to Poppy, she was the only one who made the potion and the only one who knew the recipe. Nobody else touched the shop or worked in the back. Once it left Poppy’s hands and went to be delivered, it was gone. Her hands, and hers alone, knew the potion.

Maybe she’d made it and someone else had added the ingredient later? How did the real murderer get the potion? It just didn’t add up. None of it added up, none of it whatsoever. The more he looked and the more he poked and prodded, the more confusing it became. The more he investigated the scene, the more obvious it became that Poppy was guilty. If his gut didn’t tell him she was innocent, he would be ready to lock her up.

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