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It took another minute for her to find what she was looking for.
Right there. In the plot not less than fifteen feet from where Zoey's mother rested for eternity. Grass grown up around it, forgotten.
Cole Gregory Daviess, beloved son of Denise. Born on the first of November. Dead two days later. Fifteen months before her brothers Rafe and Caine were born. Twenty-one months after Luc.
"A relative?" Murdoch pulled her close, a hot hand on her shoulder, as she stared down at the simple, cheap stone.Zoey wanted to turn her head into his chest, and just notfacewhat she was looking at right now.
The stone was so small, so cheap, so…unremarkable.
Where her older brother rested.
No one knew why this baby had died. Sydney was working on finding that answer now. If there was something to find, Sydney would find it. It would just take time.
If there wasanythingto be found, anyway.
There had to be records of this baby somewhere. They should have been relativelyeasyto find. That they weren’t…no. It didn’t add up. She looked at that stone, just couldn’t stop looking at it, and wondered. Had Cole looked like Pen had as a baby? Had he looked like one of their nephews—more like Everett or Dalton or Mikey or Sweeney or Patrick? Had he had the heart condition Pen had? Was that what had killed him?
Had Denise done something to him? Had this baby turned blue and died before Denise could abandon him somewhere? Had thebelovedon the headstone ever meant anything to Denise?
The questions just wouldn’t stop.
Murdoch’s arm hooked around her waist. She resisted the urge to grab him and hold tight. To use Murdoch as her sanctuary from the approaching dark she wasn’t ready to face.
Murdoch wasreal.Right there. And she knew what she would get withhim.No questions, no subterfuge, no lies, or pretty words that meant the opposite of what a woman would think.
Murdoch felt so damned real.
"Thisis my brother. I don't know if she killed him. I have Sydney Beck searching out his medical records now, too."
It wasn’t the wind causing the tears in her eyes, but Zoey would never admit that.
Cole hadn’t even lived three days.
Denise had leftPenoutside in January.
Zoey had looked it up once—the temperature that day. It had been forty-two. Forty-two, and she’d left a critically ill baby outside and just walked away.
What had Denise done tothisbaby?
“I’m sorry, baby. So damned sorry.”
Then the bane of her existence for so long turned her into his arms and held her close, underneath the hot Texas sun. With ghosts of the past all around them.
Feeling strong and right and just like he could hold back every hurt she had ever felt. Keep them from getting to her ever again.
Zoey just clung.
And she cried.
Until she almost couldn’t stop.
For a brother she would never know.
7
Zoey was breaking him.Completely.
She'd driven all this way to confirm the location of two graves. She could have called him. He'd have found them for her. "Even all watery, you are the most gorgeous demon I’ve ever seen. You melt me, woman.”
