He debated whether or not to press the butler on if he were certain nothing had been taken out of the closet.

Yeah, ’cuz that had gone so wicked well with the whole decor convo out there.

Refocusing on the leathers, Butch turned them back over so the fronts were showing and stared at the wear marks. The stains. The scratches. Leaning down, he breathed in through his nose, testing the scents.

Okay, right, lot of lesser blood. Some male blood that had to be Syn’s own. Dirt. Sweat. Gunpowder. Sex.

But . . . no female blood. On either set.

Which was kind of a well, shit. Leathers were not the sort of thing that you just threw in the laundry and sent around for a ride with some Tide. They were not cleaned that easily, and going by the butler’s statement, these were the only two pairs that Syn owned.

So, assuming what Fritz said was accurate, it wasn’t like Syn had killed those females, ditched whatever he was wearing on his bottom half, and then thrown on a fresh pair when he got home. Unless he was ordering them himself on the sly and having the rogue leathers shipped to some place in town.

If Butch had some bank account information, he could check and see any transactions that had gone through to that effect. But something told him that that kind of hassle was probably not a big priority for someone who lived this sparsely. Although if you were trying to cover up homicide? You’d Amazon Prime the fuck out of another pair of pants.

Wouldn’t you? he thought.

“What about muscle shirts?” Butch said. “Does he submit them for laundry regularly?”

Fritz bowed. “He does, indeed. He also has two sweatshirts that he alternates between, as well as some gym clothing.”

“I want to speak with the laundress, please.”

Fritz bowed again. “Right away, sire. Stay here. I shall bring her unto you.”

Left alone, Butch sat back on his ass and let his blue-gloved hands dangle off his knees. Staring at the leathers, he tried to find the hole in the reasoning. Some other explanation for why the only two pairs of pants the male seemed to own did not smell like death or the blood of a female.

Maybe Syn had borrowed someone else’s leathers when he’d done the killing and then dumped those. Maybe . . . Fritz had miscounted.

That last one was probably not it.

Leaning to the side, Butch looked out at the vacant bedroom. So empty. So lonely. So . . . not the private quarters of a well-adjusted guy. But the anti-hoarding didn’t mean Syn was a killer.

Helania, on the other hand, had not only been totally certain that she’d seen the Bastard with the deceased, the dark glasses and knit cap she’d described were right here with the rest of Syn’s clothing—

“Sire? This is Lilf.” Fritz entered the closet with a uniformed female doggen. “She would be pleased to answer any of your questions.”

As Lilf bowed low, Butch noted that her pressed gray-and-white uniform matched her gray hair.

“Sire,” she said, “how may I serve you?”

“Hi, Lilf. Thanks for coming here.”

Butch got up to his feet and indicated the pile of clothes: Three muscle shirts, all pressed, and three undershirts, all pressed, and one black sweatshirt. There were also six pairs of thick black socks and a jockstrap.

“Do you wash all of his clothes? Syn’s?” he said.

“I wash everyone’s clothes, sire.”

“Good, and thank you for doing such a nice job on my own, by the way. Now, can you please tell me if, in the last five nights, you have scented vampire blood on any shirt, pant, sock, fleece—anything owned by anyone in this household? I mean, vampire blood that was not that of the owner.”

“Allow me to think.” Lilf’s eyes traveled around the barren closet. “Well, yes. The Brother Vishous had a muscle shirt with blood, not his own, on it. Just this morning. It was female in derivation.”

No doubt from when the brother had moved Mai’s body. “Good. Okay. Anyone else?”

“Balthazar and Zypher had the same blood on their shirts. I could tell by the scent.”

They had helped V, Butch thought.

There was a long period of silence. “I’m sorry, sire, I seem to be quite slow this evening.”

“Take your time, Lilf. It’s really important that you’re one hundred percent sure.”

The doggen crossed her arms over her chest, lowered her chin, and shut her eyes. As she seemed to fall into a trance-like state, Butch prayed that she would remember that—

“No one else,” she said as she lifted her lids. “Just those three. In the last five nights.”

“Out of the entire household.”

“Yes, sire.” She glanced at Fritz. “Have I done something wrong?”

Fritz patted her on the forearm. “Oh, no, dear. You’re doing just fine—as long as you’re certain.”

“I am.” She looked at Butch again. “I do all loads sequentially. There is a system that rotates through all the bedrooms. So I know whose laundry is whose.”

“Is there any way that V, Balthazar, or Zypher’s things could have gotten mixed up with someone else’s?” Butch spoke very carefully, as he didn’t want to offend the doggen. “Is it possible that you could be confused about whose muscle shirt is whose?”

Maybe V threw out his, and Syn’s was the other of the three she was counting. It wouldn’t explain why the Bastard’s leathers were not marked with the scent of Mai’s blood, but it would be something to go on.

“No,” Lilf said confidently. “All loads, no matter how small, are kept separate as each person in the household prefers things cleaned in a different way. Some like fabric softener, some do not. Some like fragrances, some do not. Many have a specific preference of detergent, so as I check in the hampers—”

“You check their contents in?”

“Yes, I have a log.”

Butch stared at the doggen. “Of every piece of clothing sent to the laundry, by owner?”

“Yes, and it has notes on stains, which is how I am sure about the blood.” She tilted her head to side. “How else could I do things properly?”

Dayum. He’d hit the jackpot. “How far do the records go back?”

“Since the first load I did for the King under this roof.”

Well . . . there you go, Butch thought.

“May I see the log?” he asked. “Not because I’m doubting you, I’m just curious how it’s all done.”

And because he was double-checking her.

“Oh, yes, sire. Right this way.”

As Fritz and Lilf walked out of Syn’s suite, Butch followed along.

He was quiet as they went down a back set of stairs to the laundry facilities, but he was not on autopilot.

Quite the contrary.

He was trying to figure out how Syn had managed to slit Mai’s wrists and throat, and string her up by a meat hook . . . without getting any blood on his leathers. His knit cap. His shirt—

Butch pictured Syn coming out of the workout room, covered with sweat.

“Wait!” he exclaimed.

As both doggen halted on the landing with a start, he waved his hand back and forth. “Sorry, I didn’t mean you all. I forgot about the lockers down in the training center.”

The evidence he needed would be there.

He was sure of it.

* * *

Back at Helania’s apartment in her bedroom, Boone was naked and on his back under the covers, his female’s body tucked in tight against him. He was pretty sure she was asleep. After she had taken his vein and they had made love again in here, she had been in that post-feeding logy state, and he was happy to be her bolster as she went boneless and gave herself up to rest.

As he stared at her ceiling, he was aware they were in a holding pattern.

The door to sex was open again, and he was glad about it. But the larger issue of who they were to each other was tabled for the moment.

If she was pregnant, she was right. He was going to want to mate her and that was that. He was not going to have her and a young of his out in the world alone, no way—and it was not a case of honoring his bloodline. Hell, he wasn’t even part of his own family tree anymore, was he.

Getting disinherited was a pretty clear line in that kind of sand. But for him, taking care of her and their young, making sure any offspring of his had a stable, loving home, was a personal imperative, not one tied to the shitshow he had been born into. His sire’s performance as a father was an example of everything Boone did not want to be—

“I need to find that female.”

Boone lifted his head. “What?”

Helania rubbed her face up and down on his chest as if she were trying to stay awake. “The female who came to tell me about Isobel. Who helped me bury her. She deserves to know that the killer’s been found, and she needs to decide if she wants to be there at the end, too.”

“That makes sense.” Boone frowned. “What do we have to go on?”

“The house. The house where she took me. I need to find it, will you help me? I want to try and remember where in town it is. I checked her profile on Facebook, but there’s no address, obviously. No real name. No clues to her identity. Her picture is just a close-up of part of her face, for godsakes.”

“Did she ever get back to you? I know you said you’d messaged her.”

“Not yet, but I haven’t checked since we went out to the training center.” Helania propped her chin on her hand and looked at him. “I feel a responsibility to her. She was as upset as I was. Utterly heartbroken. Clearly, she was a very good friend of Isobel’s.”

“We’ll find her.” He brushed Helania’s hair back and kissed her on the forehead. “And we’ll start by searching that house at nightfall. And we’ll just keep looking for her until you can talk to her again.”

As Helania’s lashes blinked quickly, he wished he could shoulder the pain for her. He would do anything to make her mourning easier, so yes, goddamn it, he was going to find that house, that female, for her if it was the last thing he did on earth.