“Am I being taken into custody for something?”

“If I were arresting you, you’d be handcuffed and in the back of my car.”

“You have such a way with people, Special Agent Manfred. Has anyone ever mentioned this?”

“My ex-wife. For about ten years straight.”

Sitting shotgun in Special Agent Manfred’s unmarked, Sarah couldn’t help but lean into the dashboard as they rounded the drive and BioMed’s low-profile, windowless expanse came into view. With all the snow on the ground, its white walls and gray roof blended in. What did not? All the FBI and other law enforcement vehicles parked right up next to the entrance, without regard to the yellow lines for parking spaces or even the arrows that directed traffic on the lane.

Manfred stopped cockeyed next to a blacked-out SUV, put his engine in park and turned things off. “That’s your car over there, right?”

Sarah looked out the passenger side window. Right where she’d left it. God, with everything that had happened, she almost expected the thing to be turned on its roof with its wheels spinning and flames all over the undercarriage.

“Yes.”

“It’s been here awhile. Look at the snow covering the hood.”

She thought of her front walkway, no longer cleanly shoveled. “Yes.”

“Tell me something, if you came here Sunday night to work and you left your car here, how did you leave? I mean, I’m assuming you didn’t decide to walk all the way back to your house. Nine miles is a long way to go. At night. In weather like this.”

As Sarah turned to face the federal agent, she was amazed at how calm she was. Then again, she didn’t really feel like there was a whole hell of a lot for her to live for. And that kind of made you unimpressed even by someone with arrest powers.

“Do you want to go inside?” she said. “It’s getting cold in here.”

“Sure.” His tone was dry. “I’d hate to be accused of false imprisonment.”

The two of them met up at his front bumper and walked to the entrance together. A member of the New York State police was guarding the interior door and Manfred flashed his ID to the officer.

“I’ve got a witness,” Manfred announced. “We’re walking through the scene.”

“Yes, sir. Head right in, sir.”

Sarah walked through into the lobby, but she didn’t proceed down the hall. Instead, she went to Kraiten’s photograph. As she stared at the portrait, she remembered him under the thrall of Murhder’s mental control, by turns combative and threatening … and then foggy and acquiescing.

“Is he really dead?” she murmured.

“Do you want to see the pictures?”

As she shook her head, she recalled everything about that night: Coming out of the secret lab with Nate. Seeing Murhder, John, and Xhex. Escaping with them and taking Kraiten along to the loading dock. Using Kraiten’s SUV to—

“Dr. Watkins? Hello?”

Sarah turned to the agent. “Who owns the company now?”

“No one. Kraiten shut everything down the day before he killed himself. Weren’t you here working?”

The shrewd light in his eye suggested she needed to step carefully.

“Will you take me to my lab?”

“Sure.” Same dry tone. “I’d be happy to.”

They proceeded down the corridor, going past all the divisions with their opaque glass walls and their closed doors. From time to time, they passed a cop or another agent. Sarah just kept her eyes straight ahead.

When they got to her lab, she stopped. Looked at him. “Do you want me to use my ID to get in?”

He smiled a little. And pushed the door wide. “Locking systems are turned off.”

Sarah stepped by him and stopped. The work area was exactly as she remembered, the cubicles with their desks in the same setup, the chairs where they had always been, the wastepaper baskets down on the floor.

But all the computers were gone.

“My pictures are in a drawer here,” she said as she went over to her assigned area. “Is it okay to take them?”

“Sure.”

She put her backpack down. Unzipped it. Took the photographs out. She found it impossible to look too closely at the images of her with Gerry. The fact that they were all from their uni days had never struck her as significant—until now.

No pictures of them together after they’d moved to Ithaca.

“So how’d you like to tell me about Sunday here.” Manfred hopped up on one of the bare desks. “And be creative, why don’t you. I like a challenge.”

Sarah frowned and looked over her shoulder at the man. It was hard to read his expression, but professional implacability was no doubt part of his training. And yet …

He didn’t know about the raid, did he. Somehow, the vampires had in fact managed to disappear all evidence of the infiltration and extraction—including Sarah’s role in it.

“All I did was check on some work and the order of a new microscope. That’s it.” As Manfred looked away, there was a hint of frustration on his face. “You said Kraiten shut the company down? What do you mean, exactly?”

“He dissolved it. Legally, RSK BioMed no longer exists.”

“What about all the patents? The research? The people who worked here?”

“Let’s refocus. After you finished your work, how did you get home if you left your car in the lot?”

“Look, you already know I didn’t kill Kraiten, right. He was one of the most paranoid people on the planet. Do not tell me you don’t have security feed of how he died.”

“As a matter of fact, we do. But what I’m wondering about right now is why you think you’re a suspect.”

She thought long and hard about what to say. “I’m going to be honest with you.”

“Great way to start. I commend you.”

She took a deep breath. “I think Robert Kraiten murdered my fiancé two years ago. And I think he killed Gerry’s boss, too, but I don’t know why exactly on either account. Gerry was very private about his work. He didn’t talk to me about what he was doing, ever. I have no idea what the Infectious Disease division was working on or why Gerry would be a threat to Kraiten or this business. But I know that Gerry had managed his diabetes well, and I don’t believe for a second that he died of natural causes.”

Manfred’s eyes narrowed. “Why were you really here Sunday night?”

“I told you. I was just checking up on a couple of my protocols. I’ve been working on tumor markers in renal cell carcinoma. Sometimes I can’t turn my brain off for a whole two days.”

“When did you leave?”

“Around eleven. My car didn’t start in the cold.”

“So who’d you catch a ride with?”

Sarah paused. “Kraiten. I rode home with Kraiten.”

After night fell over Caldwell, John Matthew did cartwheels down the grand staircase of the Brotherhood mansion. Like, literally. Hand hand, down—feet in the air. Land, shitkicker shitkicker. Hands in the air. Land, hand hand. Feet in the air. On the red carpeted steps.

He was doing very well, calibrating the stairs perfectly, balancing like a boss—except then he slipped up and bowling-ball’d it, banging and crashing all the way to the bottom. Whereupon he sprawled on the mosaic floor like a crash-test dummy.

Laughing his ass off.

Silently, but still.

Tohr’s face entered his field of vision from above, blocking the lofty painted ceiling of fighters on warhorses. “You okay there, big guy?”

John shoved two thumbs up so high that the Brother had to jerk out of range or get his nose plugged.

Then again, John had made love to his shellan for about seven hours straight—Xhex was still in bed, sleeping the marathon session off—and he’d followed that with a tray brought up from the kitchen by Fritz himself.

Four cheeseburgers. Double set of homemade fries. A gallon of organic milk.

And three frozen Hershey chocolate bars. The one-pounder size.

John leaped up, landing solidly on his shitkickers. Pulling his dagger holsters back into place, he saluted Tohr and then stomped his foot.

Tohr smiled. Pulled him in for a quick, hard hug. Pushed him back. “Okay, okay. I heard from Doc Jane that you’re cleared to fight, so yes, you can go out into the field.” As John pumped a fist, the Brother frowned. “Actually, why don’t you come with me to the Audience House? We had a strange voicemail during the day, and we’re following up on it. A lot of the guys are already there. I’m just running a little late.”

John nodded. Like, a hundred times.

Then he nearly skipped his way to the door out into the vestibule, all full of the joys of spring in spite of it being January. And he would have Easter Bunny’d it out of the mansion—except the sense that he was being watched made him quit the fun-and-games. Just as Tohr opened things for them to leave, John glanced into the billiard room.

Past the pool tables, over by one of the leather sofas, a tall figure stood in the shadows. Staring his way.

A shiver went through him.

“John?” As he jumped, Tohr said, “Is there something wrong?”

John shook his head and walked through the vestibule, doing the duty on the heavy outer door. As he and Tohr emerged into the night, he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate to dematerialize. The fact that Tohr ghosted out first was not a surprise.

Why had Lassiter been looking at him like that?

The blond-and-black fallen angel was rarely serious. And certainly never in the shadows.

Casting off an eerie sense of foreboding, he forced himself to calm down …

… and soon enough was flying through the cold air in a scatter of molecules, zeroing in on the gracious old house that Wrath held his meetings with civilians in. Tohr was waiting for him around back as John re-formed, and they both went into the kitchen.

“Oh, yeah, danish,” the Brother said as he headed over to a silver tray set on the counter. “I need some danish right now.”