What Dave Knew

POV: Rhys

"Walk me through the ambush again," I said, closing my study door behind Dave before he'd even fully settled into the chair across from my desk. "From the beginning. Every detail you remember."

"Why," Dave said, an easy smile settling over his face, though something behind his eyes sharpened slightly at the request. "You've heard it a dozen times already."

"Humor me," I said. "I'm still filling gaps. Some nights I remember pieces I didn't have before. I want to see if your account matches what's coming back to me."

It wasn't entirely true. Nothing had come back to me from that night, not really, not in any way I could point to with certainty. But I'd been sitting alone in the archive too many nights now, my mother's letter burning a hole through everything I thought I understood about my own family, and somewhere in that quiet reckoning, an older instinct had started stirring, one that predated the gentleness everyone kept telling me was new.

Dave settled deeper into the chair, unbothered, his voice smooth and practiced as he began. "I was patrolling the northern line when the reports came in. Rushed south the moment I heard the western gate had been breached."

"Northern line," I repeated. "Not western."

"That's right."

"How long did it take you to reach the western gate from the northern patrol route."

"Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty," he said, without hesitation. "I moved fast."

I nodded slowly, letting the silence stretch, watching his face the way I'd learned to watch council members during difficult negotiations, cataloging every small shift in expression that most people never bothered noticing.

"That's strange," I said finally.

"What's strange about it."

"I asked the gate captain for the patrol logs this morning," I said, keeping my voice level, unhurried. "Standard follow-up, nothing unusual. According to those logs, you weren't on the northern patrol that night at all. Your shift had been reassigned three days earlier."

Something flickered behind Dave's eyes, quick, controlled, the kind of recovery that would have fooled anyone who hadn't spent years learning to read him. "Administrative error, probably. Those logs get mishandled more often than people realize."

"Mishandled," I said. "Interesting choice of word, given the western patrol logs from that same week were altered too."

"Rhys—"

"I'm not accusing you of anything," I said, holding up a hand, keeping my tone mild, deliberately reasonable, the same careful control I'd used my entire life to keep people from seeing exactly how much ground I'd already covered before I chose to reveal it. "I'm simply noting the coincidence. Both logs from the same week, both showing discrepancies, and you conveniently unable to account for exactly where you were when the attack actually began."

"I told you where I was," Dave said, his easy smile thinning slightly now, the first real crack I'd seen in his composure since he'd sat down.

"You told me the northern line," I said. "The logs say otherwise. So either the logs are wrong, which seems unlikely given how carefully they're normally kept, or you weren't where you say you were that night."

Dave was quiet for a long moment, and in that silence I felt something shift between us, old and familiar, decades of trust I'd built with this man since we were young enough to have no reason yet to doubt each other, cracking slowly along a fault line I hadn't known existed until tonight.

"You've been busy," he said finally, echoing words I didn't understand yet but recognized, somehow, as significant.

"I've had time to think," I said. "More than I'd like, honestly, given everything else happening in this house right now."

"Meaning what."

"Meaning I keep finding pieces that don't fit together the way they should," I said. "The patrol logs. Your account of that night. A few other things I'm still working through."

I didn't tell him about the letter. I didn't tell him what I now understood about his connection to my mother, decades before either of us had any reason to trust or distrust one another. That felt too large, too unfinished, to bring into this particular conversation yet. I wanted more before I spent that particular piece of leverage.

"You should be careful," Dave said, his voice quieter now, something almost warning underneath the words, though I couldn't yet tell if the warning was meant for me or for himself. "Digging into things that happened during your recovery. Memory is fragile right now. You might start seeing patterns that aren't actually there."

"Or I might start seeing patterns that were always there," I said, "and simply couldn't see clearly before."

Dave stood then, unhurried, smoothing the front of his jacket, the picture of composure once more, though something in the set of his shoulders had gone rigid in a way I hadn't seen from him before, not once, not in all the years I'd known him.

"Is there anything else," he said.

"Not tonight," I said.

He walked toward the door, and I let him go, watching his back the entire way, cataloging the small, careful stiffness in his gait that hadn't been there when he'd walked in.

At the door, he paused, his hand on the frame, and turned back to look at me one more time.

Something had changed in his expression. The easy warmth was gone entirely now, replaced by something wary, calculating, a man recalculating every assumption he'd been operating under.

He'd understood, in that single unguarded look, exactly what I now knew.

"Goodnight, Rhys," he said, quiet, careful, and left before either of us said anything more.

I sat alone in my study long after he'd gone, the discrepancy in the patrol logs sitting confirmed and undeniable in my mind now, proof that Dave had lied about his own location on the single most dangerous night this pack had faced in years.

He knew something was coming, I thought, staring at the closed door. He had to have known, to lie about where he was so carefully, so specifically, in a way that only makes sense if he's hiding exactly where he actually was that night.

I didn't have the full picture yet. I understood that much clearly. But I had enough now to know that the man I'd trusted with nearly everything for most of my adult life had been keeping something from me, something dangerous enough to require careful, deliberate deception, and I intended to find out exactly what before I said another word to anyone about it.