It was a moment longer before Boone could turn away, and as they exited the makeshift club, he felt like he had left something crucial to his well-being behind. The urge to turn around was nearly overwhelming.
He told himself that at least she knew how to point a gun at someone.
They were almost halfway back to the car—and yup, Butch had been right, the R8 was still where they’d left it—when the Brother stopped in the middle of the street. Boone went a couple of steps farther and then pivoted around in the snow, expecting the Brother to be checking his phone for a call or a text.
Wrong.
Those hazel eyes were locked on Boone. “Watch yourself, son. She could be in on this in a small way, in a big way. You don’t know.”
“What?” Boone frowned. “She called us about the body. And you told her she wasn’t in trouble.”
“Anything I said back there was to get her to talk. Don’t confuse interrogation with sincerity, even if the person we’re talking to takes it that way. The first rule of homicide is you don’t trust any witness, person of interest, or suspect until you have corroboration or evidence that proves their story to be true. No matter what someone looks like.”
“But why would she have called us if she were involved in the killing?”
“Not our problem at this point. We just need to stick to the facts.” Butch motioned over his shoulder. “That female phoned the emergency line the night our victim was strung up by the back of her skull like a side of beef with what probably was a meat hook. That is the only thing we know for sure about anything right now—”
“She didn’t do it.”
Butch shot over a spare-me-grasshopper look. “How do you know that? Because of the color of her hair? Or was it those eyes you kept trying to catch.”
As Boone stomped his boot in the snow and cursed, Butch shook his head. “Look, I’m not calling you out or anything. This is the first time you’ve been in this situation, so it’s not a surprise you require training. I just need you to keep your head in the right place. I’ve seen a lot more than you have when it comes to this kind of shit. I strongly urge you to take my advice—and if you can’t? It’s no harm, no foul, but you will not be involved in this investigation. Are we clear?”
Boone opened his mouth, intending to bring up how rattled Helania was. How she was clearly traumatized. How she . . .
. . . had beautiful citrine eyes and hair he wanted to run his fingers through.
Clamping his piehole shut, he kept a string of curses to himself.
“Hey,” Butch said, “losing focus happens to everyone. Especially if you’ve never done this before. I just need your game head on, okay?”
When Boone nodded, the two of them started walking again. And as he shoved his cold hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, he decided that he knew one other thing for certain about Helania. Aside from the fact that she was absolutely, positively, not the killer.
He was going to see her again.
One way or another.
* * *
The race’s medical facility was across the river, the sprawling subterranean maze of treatment units buried beneath a farmstead’s flat fields and forested perimeter. There were four entrances to the place; one in the actual old farmhouse—which formed a front for the operation to the human world—and then three other kiosks scattered throughout the acreage in the pine trees.
As Boone materialized in front of the western kiosk, he had no familiarity with the medical center. As an aristocrat, prior to his joining the Brotherhood’s training program, he’d been used to Havers coming to the house if anyone needed a healer. Now, as a trainee, he was treated by the Brothers’ private staff in their own clinic. Plus, if memory served, this was the new, improved facility that had just been opened after the raids.
Butch re-formed next to him and entered a code on a keypad next to a solid steel door. After the lock clicked free, the two of them entered a narrow room, the focal point of which was a set of closed elevator doors.
“You ready for this?” the Brother asked.
“Yes,” Boone answered, even though he wasn’t sure he was.
Butch hit the single button on the wall to summon the lift. As the doors opened, the two of