Brothers, now, even though they did not share blood.

John turned and started for the door.

“John.” Tohr spoke up. “This about Murhder. It’s not a reflection on you, I promise.”

There was no responding to that because he either railed against not being in the Brotherhood, which was a bitch move, or he came across as not trusting his mate, which was also a bitch move.

Or wait, there was a door number three: He could admit that he wanted to kill another male for no good reason. In which case he was no different than Murhder because that shit was crazy.

Out of the study, he headed down the Hall of Statues, passing by the Greco-Roman masterpieces in their various poses.

Footfalls, quick and nimble, rode up on him.

“John, please—”

As Xhex took his arm, he jerked out of her hold and turned around. Suspicion, as insidious as any disease, had taken root in his heart and it colored her as she stood in front of him. Even as nothing about her, or them, had technically changed, everything felt different.

Of all the people he’d expect to advocate for him, Xhex hadn’t had his six, and he had a feeling he knew why.

She didn’t want him to come. That was why she hadn’t said anything.

“This won’t take long,” she maintained. “We’re just going to go talk to the female and see if we can help her. She’s looking for her son.”

Those gunmetal-gray eyes, the ones that he felt like he’d spent a lifetime looking into, were steady as they held his, and she certainly seemed sincere in this noble quest vibe she was rocking.

Good move, throwing a kid into the mix, too, he thought. Made everything even harder to discount. Made him seem, on the surface, all the more unreasonable for throwing a hissy fit.

John’s hands started signing before he could stop them. When was the last time you saw Murhder?

“There is absolutely nothing going on between him and me.”

Not the question I asked.

She looked away. Looked back. “Last night. I saw him last night.”

John took a deep breath. Before or after that blow job you gave me.

“Really. You’re going there.”

I’m going nowhere, apparently. John took a step back. Do your thing. I’m the last person to order you around and I thought that was why we worked. Tonight? I’m thinking it makes me a pussy.

“You’re out of line on that one.”

The fact that you think so makes me feel like I’m not. You don’t want me to go with you, and you’re hiding behind the Brotherhood-only bullshit so you don’t have to admit it. If I were you, I’d ask myself why that’s so hard to cop to and why you want to be alone with him. I know those are the questions on my mind right now.

“This is not about you.”

Yeah, that’s the party line lately, isn’t it. He touched his chest. Let me tell you that on my end, this feels very much about me.

“Murhder is highly unstable, and that makes him dangerous—”

John threw his head back and laughed mutely. Are you really trying to toss around the it’s-for-my-own-safety shit? You know how well I can defend myself. You can’t possibly be worried about me fighting with him. I think it’s more like you don’t want me to see how much he cares about you, or you don’t want me to see how much you care about him.

This time, when he turned away, she let him go, but he could feel her eyes boring into his back as he headed down to the bedroom they shared.

This was not how he’d expected the night to start. Not even close.

And hey, there were so many dark hours left.

God only knew what was going to go tits up next.

Hepatitis C. Bacterial pneumonia. Viral pneumonia. Seven different kinds of cancer including melanoma, adenocarcinoma, and neuroblastoma.

Sarah sat back on the futon. Then she put the laptop aside and rubbed at the hot spot it had left on her lap.

She had read or reviewed every single file, and God only knew how many hours it had taken. What emerged, as far as she could fathom, was a research protocol that had involved administering various diseases to a living patient housed at BioMed. The monitoring that followed was intended to measure the systemic response.

Which seemed to be none. Whatsoever.

But that had to wrong. There was no way a human being could be exposed to that kind of virulent disease, on top of a suppressed immune system, and not be overcome with the cancer, the viruses, the bacteria. The whole thing defied logic—and ethics. What person would consent to such a thing? And didn’t that raise alarm bells: When you had to ask that question, the underlying assumption was that it was a rhetorical because nobody would.

Nobody would ever agree to this. So had the patient been lied to? Or worse, were they being held against their will?

No. That couldn’t possibly have happened … could it?

The whole thing was like falling into a Michael Crichton novel, except it appeared to be actually happening.

Sarah glanced over at the computer screen as she thought through, for the hundredth time, the images she’d looked at—the PET scans, the CAT scans, the MRIs, the results of blood tests, the cardiac imaging.

She could explain none of it. Not the protocol, which violated every ethical standard in medicine, not the patient’s response, which was inexplicable, and certainly not BioMed’s participation in a study that would expose the corporation to probable criminal liability as well as problems with the federal government, the FDA, the AMA, and all kinds of professional groups.

She also could not explain Gerry’s role.

It was clear that this was a protocol run out of BioMed’s Infectious Disease division. On one of the reports, both BioMed’s logo and the IDD’s notation had appeared at the bottom, as if a document template had been used out of habit. Clearly, none of the study’s lead researchers wanted their name anywhere, and they had taken care to remove all other identifiers of the lab. That one had slipped through, however.

And Gerry obviously had gained access to the study at some point. Probably when his security clearance had been increased. But did he participate in the unlawful practices?

The mere idea of that made Sarah want to vomit.

She thought of his boss, Dr. Thomas McCaid. Tom McCaid had been the one who’d hired Gerry, and she’d told that FBI agent that the man had been a lab supervisor—which was true, but there was more to it. McCaid was the only researcher with that ranking who reported directly to the CEO, Dr. Robert Kraiten.

Not that McCaid was reporting to anyone, anymore.

Sarah had never met the fabled Dr. Robert Kraiten in person. Her hiring had been coordinated through her lab supervisor. But she’d seen the man speak, both at company-wide annual meetings, and on the Internet. He had a TED Talk which had been widely circulated throughout BioMed, on the limitless horizons of bioengineering.

“We are still in the dark ages of medicine …” was how he’d opened his speech. After which he’d gone on to point out that things like organ donation with its immune system problems and Draconian chemotherapy protocols for cancer patients were going to be akin to the leeches, tubercular sleeping porches, and lack of sterilization of the past. Fifty years from now, he maintained, replacement parts for the human body were going to be grown in labs, cancer was going to be battled at the molecular level by the immune system, and aging was going to be a matter of choice rather than inevitability.