Sarah frowned and glanced over her shoulder. The female commando was talking urgently into a cell phone.

Change? Sarah thought.

When the Brotherhood’s physician arrived ten minutes later, Murhder retreated to the kitchen so that “Doc Jane,” as the female was called, could sit with the young privately.

Dr. Sarah Watkins was alone at the table, the blue bag of that hazmat suit halfway off of her, a backpack set off to the side. She had a cup of coffee in front of her, her stare floating somewhere above the mug. As he entered the room, however, she looked up at him.

And kept looking.

Had she really wondered what he was like in bed? Holy shit, that was hot. And what do you know, his libido was demanding he take this opportunity to show her firsthand that yes, he’d always been good at sex, current two-decades-long mostly dry spell notwithstanding.

But instead of wading into naked waters, he said, “How you doing?”

“I can’t seem to get my brain to work,” she murmured. “It’s the strangest thing.”

He sat down across from her, and fought the urge to try to pull her into his lap so he could hold her. They were, after all, strangers.

“Totally understandable.” He attempted to make sure his tone was gentle because sometimes you could hug someone without touching them, right? “You’re not used to anything like tonight.”

“I’m just a scientist.” She leaned to the side, as if she were checking on the young in the front room. Then she looked back at the mug. “Or I used to be. After this, I don’t think anyone’s going to be hiring me. The whole breaking and entering thing, stealing information, going to the authorities—it’s kind of frowned upon on any résumé to Big Pharma.”

“No one is going to know about this.”

Her eyes shot back up. “Are you kidding me? Kraiten will cover up that secret lab and call the police.”

“No, he won’t.”

“No offense, but don’t be naïve. And besides, I’m going to turn everything over to the Feds. As soon as I finish this coffee, I’m calling the agent who came to see me two days ago.”

“Kraiten’s not going to be a problem anymore.”

“Exactly. Because I have proof of what was being done in that lab of his.” She shook her head. “And if I’m finished in my field, it’s fine. I’d lost my passion for the work anyway. Time for me to find something else to do with my life.”

He traced her face with his eyes. She had a little mole on her cheek. And flecks of green in those pale brown eyes. She had taken her hair out of its ponytail, and the naturally highlighted weight was spilling onto her shoulders.

She smelled like a summer meadow to him, and her voice was hypnotic. He literally could spend an entire night just watching her mouth enunciate random syllables, his ears full with the sounds she made, his skin prickling with sensual awareness of every minute move she made.

“What exactly do you do?” he blurted, aware he’d been silent for too long.

“I’m a molecular geneticist. I work on curing cancer using the body’s own immune system.” Her eyes swung back to him. “We need to tell that doctor what they did to him. And I have scan results and information on the protocols—granted, they’re from two years ago. But after I go to the Feds, I’m sure they can get the most recent studies. There must be records—I mean, I’m assuming they didn’t stop. They gave him terrible diseases and—”

“The doctor knows what they did to him.”

Dr. Watkins—Sarah—blinked. “Does she know about the woman fighter, too?” When he didn’t reply, she prompted, “She said they’d done it to her as well.”

“The doctor knows everything.”

“Is there any chance Kraiten’s illicit program is doing that to anybody else, somewhere else?”

Murhder thought about what he’d seen when he’d tapped into that CEO’s mind. “The young was the last one he had left. He’s been trying to get more but has failed.”

The woman tilted her head. “You have the strangest way of saying things. And that accent of yours. It’s not French, it’s not … well, I know it’s not German. What part of Europe are you from? My fiancé was from Hamburg.”

Murhder stiffened in his chair. “Fiancé? You’re engaged?”

Sorrow suffused her face. “Was. He passed.”

The fact that he was relieved made him feel like a total asshole.

“I offer my sincerest condolences at your loss.” He eased the tension in his body. “May I inquire what happened?”

She sat back in the chair. Pivoted to the side again to check on the young. “Where did the couple go?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The man and the woman who were here with you?”

Footsteps sounded overhead and Murhder looked up. “I guess they are settling in for the night.”

“Oh.” She put her hand on the backpack and went to stand up. “I need to make that call and get those files to the FBI.”

That cannot happen, he thought.

Murhder reached out and put his hand on hers. Instantly, a bolt of electricity rode up his arm … and continued on to places that had not been awake in a very, very long time.

“The doctor isn’t done yet,” he pointed out as he shifted in his own seat. “Let’s hold on until she’s finished in case she needs to ask us anything.”

The woman retracted her hand. Rubbed it on her thigh. Clearly, she had felt the connection, too: Her arousal scent flared, and it was heavenly in his nose, an erotic combination of bergamot and ginseng.

He wanted more of it. He wanted it all over his naked skin, as he entered her sex and felt her claw into his back—

Murhder ducked one hand under the table and discreetly rearranged the sudden and very inappropriate erection that had punched his cock into the fly of his pants.

“Why are you smiling?” she asked.

Because I didn’t know the damn thing still worked, he thought.

“I’m sorry.” He pushed his heavy hair back. “It’s nothing.”

“God, don’t apologize.” She sat down again. “I could use a good joke, that’s all. This has been a rough couple of days.”

Even though there was so much more to worry about, he found himself needing to know what was under the baggy blue plastic suit she had on. What her hair would look like fanned out over his bare chest. How she would sound as he pleasured her.

Crazy, all of it.

Because she needed to go back to her world, without any memory of ever having met him.

First, however, he had to get those files she was talking about.

It was hard to pinpoint exactly when Sarah’s brain began to send out warning signals that all was not as it appeared—or exactly what tripped up her suspicions.

But as she leaned to the side for a third time, and looked down the hall to the front room, she knew something was way off. As she watched the doctor take a bog standard stethoscope out of an old-fashioned physician’s bag and place it on the young boy’s chest … as his blood pressure was taken with a proper juvenile cuff … as the woman in scrubs checked his pupils with a penlight and looked into his ears … none of it felt right.

The doctor and patient talked the whole time, their voices so quiet, Sarah couldn’t hear what they were saying. And she could not find fault with the attentiveness of the clinician. The woman was solely focused on the boy, her face grim, her body turned to him.

But this just was not right.

Sarah shifted her eyes to her commando—the commando, she corrected. “An ambulance is coming, right? They’re taking him to a hospital.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Which one?”

“It’s a private clinic.”

Sarah frowned and shook her head. “Okay, you need to get real with me. What the hell is going on here.”

The commando shrugged his powerful shoulders. “As you see, he’s getting checked out by a doctor.”

She thought of the six-chambered heart. The bizarre CBC readings. The test results that indicated profound disease resistance even in an immunocompromised state.

One of the things they taught residents in medical school was that when you heard hoofbeats, don’t think zebras. In other words, don’t immediately assume a bump was malignant, flu-like symptoms were Ebola, a cough was the Black Death.

For the most part, it was good advice. Right up until the symptoms you were presented with turned out to be cancer or the plague.

She leaned into the table. “That child should be dead right now. He should have died two years ago, assuming that the files I found were his scans, his reports. None of this is adding up.”

At that moment, the doctor came into the kitchen. She was a good-looking woman, with short blond hair and deep green eyes, and you had to appreciate the gravity with which she seemed to be taking the situation. But there was something … well, off about her.

Like she had a different energy source or—

“He’s been through a lot,” the physician announced. “But he’s in physically fine shape. Other than …” She glanced at Sarah. “Anyway, I’d like to bring him in for further testing—”

“I am going wherever he goes.” Sarah got up. “I am not leaving his side. And will someone please explain to me why we’re not on the way to law enforcement and a medical center right now?”

The doctor gave the commando a look like he was accountable for something. Then the woman said, “I’d like to check John before I go.”

“He’s upstairs.” The commando also stood. “And I’ll take care of things down here.”

“Take care of what things?” Sarah asked sharply as the doctor went to the bottom of the stairs and called up.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Sorry about what?”