Dark Choices - I. T. Lucas Page 0,71

arrange meetups between test subjects and clan members to see if there was affinity, and nothing came out of that either. William’s precognition game achieved nothing as well. I don’t know what else is there.”

Kian chuckled. “It wasn’t all wasted effort. William’s game is a financial success, and the meetups provided a good opportunity for hookups. I didn’t hear any complaints from the clan members who participated in those.”

Syssi pouted. “That’s not what they were for. We need Dormants, not hookups. People can get those on their own.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Don’t worry about it. The Fates will even things up. So far, we’ve gotten many more female Dormants than males, and we were worried about the clan ladies being unhappy. Now, we are suddenly faced with the opposite problem, and we are worried about gender imbalance. Things will work themselves out.”

“Perhaps you are right.” Syssi turned to face him. “I wonder when the Fates will start delivering Dormants to the Scottish arm of the clan. That’s another worry.”

“Maybe Kalugal was right about that, and they need to move over here. They live in relative isolation in their remote mountain castle, and only a few of them have contact with humans. What do they expect the Fates to do? Drop Dormants on them from the sky?”

Syssi laughed. “The forecast predicts a drizzle of Dormants,” she imitated the tone of a weather forecaster.

The good news was that she didn’t seem mad at him. The bad news was that he knew his wife, and Syssi didn’t give up that easily. Next time, she would revisit the subject of unification from a different angle, and he would have to defend his position again.

He didn’t like arguing with her, and even more than that, he didn’t like refusing her anything. But it just wasn’t doable.

50

Vlad

“I started my search with the name you gave me.” Roni handed Vlad a stack of printouts. “Margaret Miller, which was Wendy’s mother’s married name. Since you said that her father was abusive, I figured that he’d been abusing her mother as well. Wendy is from Milwaukee, and you didn’t say anything about her moving there from somewhere else, so I assumed that’s where she grew up. I searched the city’s police records from nineteen and eighteen years ago to see if her mother ever filed a complaint against her father. I found several.”

Vlad flipped through the pages. “There isn’t much here.”

“Back then, they didn’t keep digital records. I was lucky to find even that. Someone must have uploaded them but included only the most basic information.”

“So we don’t know how bad it was.” Which was a relief.

If he had to look at pictures of a battered woman, Vlad would have gone nuts with the need to tear Wendy’s father to shreds.

“Regrettably, I couldn’t find anything else, not even Wendy’s birth hospital records. I’m sure the paper files exist, but that doesn’t help us. What surprised me, though, was that Margaret’s maiden name wasn’t Simmons. It was Taylor.”

“Maybe she changed her last name? Though, why would she?”

“That was my first thought, but when I searched further, I found out that Margaret Taylor was the daughter of Greta and Thomas Taylor. So, I switched my search to Edgar Simmons and found out that he had a sister named Greta. Wendy’s mom wasn’t his sister, she was his niece, which makes Wendy his great-niece.”

“Why did he lie about that?”

“I have no idea. Maybe it gave him more leverage over Wendy’s father. Anyway, Greta and Thomas had only one child, Margaret, and they both died young. She was eighteen when she married Wendy’s father and orphaned only a few months prior. He was twelve years older than her at the time.”

“The bastard caught her at a vulnerable time. No wonder that she didn’t realize what kind of vermin he was.”

“I thought the same thing. So, my next line of investigation was to check Roger Miller’s criminal record. All I found were the old police reports of domestic abuse, but charges had never been filed, a few DUIs, and a couple of drunken bar brawls. At one time, he had his driver’s license suspended for a year.”

“Charming fellow,” Vlad bit out.

“Run-of-the-mill nasty drunk. Still, that doesn’t mean that he didn’t kill Wendy’s mother. Most murderers don’t have prior records.”

“What happened to her after she left him?”

“I couldn’t find a single thing.” Roni leaned back in his chair. “There are thousands of Margaret Millers and Margaret Taylors, but I ran them through