365 Days, Zero Missed Calls Chapter 07

365 Days, Zero Missed Calls Chapter 07 – The Case Nobody Could Solve

They gave me Fenwick’s caseload.

Director Larsen slid the stack across the table without a word, which is the Vanguard’s version of a

coronation and a punishment at the same time.

“Commander Vale, since this is your first meeting, allow me to explain how-”

“Please proceed if it makes you comfortable, Your Majesty,” I said. “But I’ve read the arbitration statutes. something’s unclear, you’ll know, because I’ll ask.”

Kian Sterling put his hand over his mouth.

The King opened the second file himself. “Then let’s start with the one that’s about to become a body count Two Houses. One strip of land. Eleven hundred acres between the Redmont and Silvercrest estates. Two years of escalation, four failed arbitrations. Both patriarchs have refused every compromise offered.”

“Marek’s unit worked it,” Larsen said. “Twice.”

“We got nowhere,” Marek said. His voice was flat with old frustration. “Neither of them will speak to the other. Redmont’s put forty men on the fence line. Silvercrest’s put fifty.”

“How long has the land itself been vacant?” I asked.

“…Vacant?”

“Empty. Unused. How long?”

Nobody answered.

“Second question.” I turned my palm up. “What reason did either House give for wanting it?”

Silence. Seven Commanders and a king, all looking at each other.

The King flipped through the file, slowly, page after page.

“There’s no reason recorded,” he said quietly. “In two years, nobody asked.”

“Two years,” Echo said, delighted. “Two years of grown men measuring each other’s fences, and not one of them asked WHY.”

“Do you mind if I take a swing at it, Your Majesty?”

He handed me the file without a single question, and I saw six Commanders register exactly what that

meant.

Marek caught up with me in the corridor afterward.

Up close he’s absurd. Six-two, gray eyes, a scar through one eyebrow, and the particular stillness of somebody who’s never once needed to prove he’s dangerous.

“You’ve been living on the other side of my wall for a year,” he said.

“You’ve been calling me ‘he’ for a year.”

“In my defense, you never came out of your wing.”

“In my defense, your unit’s first thought about mine was to ask how many of my women were ‘willing.

He stopped walking.

“Say that again.”

“Reece and the tall blonde. Courtyard, oath day.” I kept walking. “You’ve got a discipline problem, Commander.

Fix it before I do.”

“Oh, he’s very confused right now,” Echo said happily. “He can’t decide whether to be furious or to marry you.”

“Neither. He’s a colleague.”

“Mm.”

Back in our wing, my unit was waiting on the top floor.

I told them about Fenwick. The whole room went quiet, and then Mara started to cry, and Beck put his forehead against hers, and Flora said, “You hit him?”

“I hit him.”

“In front of the King?”

“The King was extremely helpful about it.”

“No need to thank me,” I said, when Mara tried. “That’s the job. Every one of you, hear this – if anyone in this organization puts a hand or a threat on you, you come to me first. Not after. First.”

Then I handed out files, and by evening every Captain had matched their team to a case with a precision that made me genuinely, stupidly proud.

We took the land dispute as a full unit.

Danica and Orson spent the drive digging. Two hours in, Orson said, “Commander. That eleven hundred acres, has been empty for a hundred and eighteen years. No structures, no grazing, no timber, nothing. It was ceded

jointly in 1908 and neither House has touched it since.”

“1908,” I repeated.

Something moved in the back of my skull. A cold little finger down the neck.

“What happened in 1908?”

“Nothing in the House records,” Danica said. “That’s the weird bit. There’s a whole year missing from both

archives.”

We stopped at a roadside diner an hour out. Waylen, who has no sense of self-preservation, asked, “What were you like as a kid, Commander?”

I thought about lying. I told them the truth instead – my father’s office, the small desk, the phone I wasn’t supposed to answer and answered anyway.

“Hewwo, Boo Wivvel. Who you want?” I said, in a toddler pitch.

Waylen’s jaw came off.

“It was my father’s oldest friend. He laughed. I thought he was laughing at me, so I hung up on him.”

By the time I got to the part where my father banned me from the phone and I kept answering it for another six years, half my unit was crying into their fries.

For about four minutes, I forgot I’d been thrown away.

Then we rolled up to the disputed border at sunset, and there were ninety armed men facing each other

across eleven hundred acres of empty grass with their hands on their weapons.

Not on my watch.

I got out of the SUV, walked into the middle of the field alone, and heard a hundred and eighty heartbeats

change at once.

“Gentlemen,” I said. “Two questions, and then you can all go home.”