Nothing.

She sat back in the chair. As she stared at the blank wall ahead of her, she realized that she’d once again expected a letter from him. Something sincere and heartfelt, along the lines of a last missive that helped her put everything into a good place.

Re-closing the box, she put the credentials into her purse.

As she stood up, she hesitated.

Then she got the USB drive and the credentials back out, and stuffed both of them in her sports bra.

Good thing she was relatively flat-chested. Plenty of room in there.

Longest, lousiest day of his life, Murhder thought a couple hours later.

Okay, fine, so maybe only the first part of that was true. But shit.

As he limped around Darius’s drawing room on his bum leg, he was surprised he hadn’t worn a path in the nap of the rug, his footfalls making a wear pattern that wound in and around the antique furniture.

God, it was difficult being so frustrated with something that didn’t care about his emotional state.

And no, he wasn’t talking about Vishous.

The issue was the sun. That enormous, glowing death ball did not give two shits about how pent-up he was. The sonofabitch was just meandering its way from east to west, and the fact that it had been snowing since about eleven in the morning didn’t help. Vampires were incompatible with daylight in all its forms, and even for somebody as loosely held together as he was, there was no risking even tangential exposure.

At least it was winter in Upstate New York. That grandfather clock had announced it was three in the afternoon a while ago, and darkness would start falling at about four thirty.

If it had been July? He’d have gone insane—

More insane, that was.

One more hour and he was free. Maybe he could get away with leaving in forty-five minutes.

Entering the empty waiting room, he stopped by the desk. Vishous, that supercilious shithead, had done in a number of hours what Murhder had failed to do in twenty years—and the answer had been medical records.

Murhder reached out and turned each of the three letters around so they faced him. He knew them by heart. The handwriting in the first two was painfully imprecise, the words scripted with a shaky pen. The final one was all in the symbols of the Old Language, and they were likewise drawn by a frail hand.

There was also a single piece of paper on the blotter by the computer, and Murhder picked it up. Nothing precise here. Just a bunch of dates scribbled on a timeline. Creating the chronology had been the only piece of teamwork he and V had performed.

Murhder had provided the start date, the night that he had gone back to the second facility, looking for the pregnant female. Working from there, they had traced the events the letters detailed, she being moved to another location, as she had given birth to her son, the years the two had spent together, her escape when the scientists had been transferring her away from her young.

Separated from her son, she had tried desperately to find him, searching every night for the hidden lab. With few resources and no money, she had never gotten very far, and she had another thing working against her: The final letter noted that she was in poor health.

And that was how V had found her. Havers, the race’s healer, had long kept records on his patients, and recently, the files had been transcribed into a database the King had access to. The search function had been complicated and inefficient, especially as they had no idea what she might have had to see the healer about. Because she had given birth, however, Vishous had started with that and managed to identify a pool of females who had come in with issues common to those who had at some point been on the birthbed. From those patients, he had further isolated those who had been born of a son.

Case by case, the Brother had looked for details that might match what Murhder knew and what the female had revealed, tacitly or through implication, in the letters. It had been a long shot more likely to yield frustration than an answer. But then V had found a patient presenting with a vaginal prolapse from a birth ten years before. Follow-up care had been provided to her at her home.

Which was in the same town the letters had been mailed from.

Reading deeper into the records, Vishous had discovered that the female was unmated. The son was not with her. And she had extensive internal abnormalities associated with surgeries not performed by Havers.

As well as a prominent display of PTSD around medical intervention, about which she would not expound on.

It had to be her. It was the only explanation.

And Murhder was going to be knocking on her door approximately two seconds after nightfall.

“You realize you can’t go alone. If you’re allowed to go at all.”

Murhder looked up from the letters. Phury had come to stand in the archway, and his yellow eyes were apologetic as he stated what he apparently thought should have been obvious.

“No, I’ll take it from here,” Murhder said. “This is private.”

The Brother shook his head, his long blond-, gold-, and brown-streaked hair moving on his shoulders. “Not anymore—”

“A bunch of Brothers shows up at her door with me, and you’re just going to scare the shit out of her. She’s had enough of that, trust me. Besides, she asked for my help. Not the Brotherhood’s or the King’s.”

It was easier for him to keep his voice down when arguing with Phury. The two of them had always gotten along because how could you not? The guy had been chasing after his twin Z since he’d rescued the male from the hell of being a blood slave. There had been nothing to be in conflict with, because Phury had always had total decency running through his veins.

“I’m not going to hurt her,” Murhder muttered. “For godsakes, what kind of monster do you think I am?”

Bad question to put out there, he thought to himself.

“It’s not just her we’re worried about,” Phury hedged. “Your history with this kind of thing is not the best.”

How politic, Murhder thought.

“Listen,” he said to the Brother. “Would you have wanted anyone else to go in to save your twin when he was a blood slave? Would you have trusted anybody but yourself to do what had to be done to get him to safety and make things right?”

Phury’s frown was deep enough to shadow his eyes. “I’m not getting personal here. And neither should you.”

“This is my wrong to right, Phury. You’ve got to understand that. I failed the female. I left her behind, in the belly of the beast. I haven’t been able to live with myself since I made that decision. It’s been killing me. I have to do this.”

“It’s official business now. If you’d wanted it to stay otherwise, you shouldn’t have come here.”

“What choice did I have?”

“That’s not the point. It’s where we all are now. We’ll keep you posted—”

“Wait a minute—are you suggesting I’m not even going?”

When there was only silence, Murhder felt a rage ride up on him that was so great, he was liable to tear Darius’s fucking house down.

“Fuck that.”

Before the Brother could stop him, he grabbed the letters, lunged around the guy and went right for the front door. Even though it wasn’t fully dark out. Even though he was just going to toast up. Even though—

His hand was almost on the old-fashioned, fist-sized knob, when a thick arm locked around his throat and hauled him back with such power, he popped off his feet and went flying. As he landed face-up on a very nice Oriental, his back reminded him that it was the second time in the last twenty-four hours that he’d hit the ground hard. But he didn’t give a shit.

He pushed Phury off him and, in spite of his injured leg, went right back for the—

Brothers everywhere: Vishous in front of the door, looking like a brick wall except with daggers in both hands. Rhage racing in with a bagel shoved in his mouth and a pair of guns out. Phury back on his feet and ready to attack again. And then there was the one he didn’t know, who seemed like he was hoping things got stupid so he could hit something.

As Murhder faced off at them all, he knew, if he played his cards right, he could commit suicide right here and now. With a couple of well-timed aggressions, he could force them to kill him, and there was a cowardly relief in the idea of that option.

He was tired. So tired of his broken head. And what had happened in that lab. And what he had done afterward. He was bone-achingly exhausted with where he had ended up, kicked out of not just the Brotherhood, but the lives of the males who had been his family.

When he’d disassociated from reality, the loss of them all had been but a passing blip on his radar, way off to the side. Now, he felt his outsider status like an open grave calling his name.

He’d had pride, once. Just as he’d been sane for a good portion of his life. But both were commodities that had proved to be expendable.

He didn’t bother to hide his suffering as he opened his mouth and spoke in a hoarse rush. “Please, I promise I won’t go off the rails again. Just let me go to her.” He reached into his shirt, which made them all jump. Taking out the piece of sacred seeing glass, he showed them his talisman. “I’ve seen her face. It’s been shown to me. For twenty-five years.”

As some of those expressions softened, he jumped on the opening. “Look, my life is over. Do you think I don’t know that? Even if I do right by her, even if I find her son, I’m not going to make it, but at least my eternity will be less like the hell of my mortal nights. I beg of you, please, let me take care of her.”

Abruptly, through a magic he could not understand, the seeing glass warmed between his fingers. Looking down with a frown, he realized the shard had started to glow—and there she was, the face he had seen for so many years, staring back at him.

Shoving the image outward, his hand shook as he tried to get them to see what he did. And they must have caught it because slowly their weapons lowered.

Then suddenly, he knew what the solution was.

“Xhex,” he breathed. “If you don’t want me to go alone, let Xhex come with me. The female will be comforted by her presence, especially when she says she’s a survivor, too.”