“Thanks, Fritz.”

Xhex looked at Sarah. “Do you have everything?”

“Yes. Except I left my backpack in the—”

“I’ll go get it,” Murhder said, and ducked into their room.

There was an awkward moment. And then he was back with her things.

Sarah seemed to force her smile at Xhex. “Doc Jane and Manny know everything I do. Havers is on call to consult if there is any change. But I really think everything’s going to be fine.”

As those names rolled off her tongue—like she’d known the cast of characters for her whole life—Murhder was struck by a profound sadness.

Then there were hugs. Between the two females. Between him and Xhex. Not the doggen, though. Fritz would have fainted at that kind of attention. There were also official words of thanks to Murhder from the King, from the Brotherhood. To Sarah, as well.

Next thing Murhder knew, he and Sarah were walking off alone. Heading for that steel door. Leaving the rest of them behind.

He could feel the stares on his back, but he didn’t turn around.

Instead, he reached for Sarah’s hand. At the same time she reached for his.

When Sarah and Murhder drove out from the training center, she took solace in the fact that the drive from Caldwell to Ithaca was a good two hours. At least. One hundred and twenty minutes. At least. Seven thousand two hundred seconds.

At least.

And yet, all that time later, as she pointed out her little house on her quiet street, and he pulled into her short stack driveway, and put the fancy Mercedes in park … it seemed like the trip had taken only a nanosecond. No longer than a blink or the beat of a heart.

“So this is my house,” she said. Stupidly.

Except even as she spoke the words denoting property ownership, she felt like she didn’t recognize anything about the arrangement of windows, the peak of the roof, the bushes which she herself trimmed once a year in August.

Had she really been living here? Had she actually bought the place with Gerry?

God, Gerry. Her life with him was a century ago. Or longer.

“Do you want to come in—”

“Yes,” Murhder said. “I do.”

They got out together and walked up to the front door. She’d cleared the pathway a couple of days before she’d left and there was new snow buffering the previous hard cuts she’d made with her shovel. Opening the storm door, she propped it wide with her hip and started to unzip her backpack.

“I’ve got to find my keys.” She glanced at Murhder. “It’ll just take me a sec.”

“I’ll bet I can open it.”

As she stepped aside and kept rummaging around, she didn’t particularly care if he shouldered the door open and broke all kinds of things in the process. Nothing about the house seemed to matter—

The door opened of its own volition, the lock retracting itself, the wood swinging wide from the jambs. Inside, her alarm started to beep.

“Wow,” she said as she hustled in and went for the kitchen. “You’re very handy.”

The security pad was in the back, by the door into the garage, and as she came up to it, she wondered whether or not she’d remember her code. But then her fingers made the familiar four-digit pattern: 0907. The day she and Gerry had met in a biomechanics class.

Hitting the pound key, the beeping was silenced, and she looked around. Walked around. Was so surprised to be in the house at all.

She’d expected to get arrested when she’d left. Or worse. Who’d have thought what actually happened would be so much more dramatic than either of those anticipations.

Murhder was standing by the front door, which he’d closed, and she wasn’t sure who was following whose example with the taking-in-the-four-walls-and-a-roof routine: He was looking all around at her things.

Sarah shook her head and went over to the sofa. The throw blanket was wadded up from one of her sleepless nights, and she folded it carefully, laying it on the back cushions.

“This is like being in a furniture store,” she remarked as she plumped the pillows.

“I’m sorry?”

She wandered over to the armchair that faced the gas-powered fireplace. “I’ve never been big into decorating or anything. Gerry and I …” She cleared her throat. “He and I got that couch with these two chairs and the coffee table when we went to Ashley Furniture. They were having a sale and we both thought it was so much more efficient to buy a room’s worth of stuff. I can remember walking through the store and looking at the displays. It was totally overwhelming and utterly banal at the same time. Eventually, my eyes just glazed over and thank God he happened to stop in front of all this.” She looked up at the ceiling. “Same thing with the bed set. Two side tables. A dresser. Headboard.”

“You’re ahead of me already,” he murmured. “I’ve never bought furniture.”

“Sometimes you luck out.” She couldn’t keep her smile going for very long. “Anyway, coming back here feels just like being in that store. It’s nothing but a space crammed with useful objects I don’t feel connected to. Except … I live here.”

When he didn’t say anything, she looked his way. “I’d give you a tour, but …”

Murhder came at her on long powerful strides and she was ready for him, lifting her mouth for his kiss, throwing her arms around him. They were desperate and rough with the scrubs they’d borrowed, yanking, pulling, throwing, and then they were on that anonymous couch she’d gotten so many years ago with a different man.

Who turned out to be a stranger.

Her hands stroked through Murhder’s downy soft short hair. Then she ran them down to his shoulder blades. Caressed the ridges of muscle that wound themselves like rope around his torso. Gripped his hips.

As she split her legs and offered herself to him, he thrust in hard, going deep, making her cry out.

The rhythm was punishing. Just as she wanted it to be.

She was hoping that if the sex was heavy-duty enough, it would make it impossible for him to erase their last time together.

Murhder felt Sarah arch as he penetrated her core. He was too rough, he knew he was being too rough … but he couldn’t stop, and she didn’t want him to. She was talking in his ear, begging …

“Harder … do me harder.”

He pulled her leg up, and shifted the angle, going even deeper. And as he pounded into her, the sofa moved across the rug, leaving tracks in the nap. Something fell with a crash. Her hair tangled.

She orgasmed. He did. They did together.

He wanted it to last forever. But the sex was over way too soon.

To make sure he didn’t crush her—something he always worried about—he put his weight on the arm of the sofa, and he stroked her hair back. Her honey-colored eyes were sad even as her face was flushed from the pleasure and the exertion.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“Everything.”

As they both became very still and very silent, her eyes searched his face. “Don’t do it. Don’t take my memories from me.”

“I have to—”

“Says who?” she cut in. “I promise I will not reveal anything I saw or learned. I don’t even know where that training center is. I am going to go my own way and will never bother the race again. I swear to it.”