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The small bed was just as she’d left it, as if waiting for its occupant’s return. Over on the squat little nightstand was a wildflower Mira had picked earlier in the week, on one of the rare times Sergei Yakut had permitted the child to venture outside. Mira’s flower was wilted now, the fragile white petals drooping and lifeless, green stem as limp as a piece of string.

“Oh, my sweet mouse,” Renata whispered into the darkened, empty room. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry I’m not there for you right now …”

“Renata.” Nikolai stood in the hallway outside the room. “Renata, don’t do this to yourself. You are not to blame. And this isn’t over, not yet.”

His deep voice was soothing, a comfort just to hear him, and to know that he was there with her. She needed that comfort, but because she didn’t deserve it, Renata refused to run into his arms as she so desperately wanted to do. She stayed where she was, rigid and unmoving. Wishing she could reverse all her failings.

She couldn’t bear to remain in the lodge for another minute. There were too many dark memories here.

Too much death all around her.

Renata let the dead flower fall out of her fingers and onto the bed. She pivoted around toward the doorway. “I have to get out of this place,” she murmured, guilt and anguish twisting in her chest. “I can’t… I’m suffocating in here … can’t… breathe.”

She didn’t wait for him to reply—couldn’t wait in there, not one more second. Pushing past him, she ran out of Mira’s vacant room. She didn’t stop running until her feet had carried her out the back of the main house and into the surrounding forest. And still her lungs squeezed as though they were caught in a vise.

In the back of her skull, she could feel a headache blooming. Her skin wasn’t aching yet, but she was bone weary and she knew it wouldn’t be long before reverb took her down. At least her shoulder was feeling decent. The gunshot wound was still there, still a dull throb deep in her muscles, but Nikolai’s blood had worked some kind of magic on the infection.

Renata felt strong enough that when she glanced over and saw the locked barn—the outbuilding where she and so many others had been brought as bait for Yakut’s sick blood sport—she didn’t think twice about stalking over to it and pulling the Enforcement Agency rifle around from where it had shifted to her back. She shot the heavy lock until it broke off and fell to the ground. Then she flung open the door and let loose with more shots inside, peppering the large holding pen, the walls and rafters—all of it—with an obliterating hail of bullets.

She didn’t let up on the trigger until the magazine was empty and her throat was raw from her screams. Her shoulders heaved, chest sawing like a bellows.

“I should have been here,” she said, hearing Nikolai come up behind her outside. “When Lex turned her over to Fabien, I should have stopped him. I should have been there for Mira. Instead I was in bed, too weak with reverb…useless.”

He made a small noise, a wordless dismissal of her guilt. “You couldn’t have known she was in danger. You couldn’t have prevented any of what occurred, Renata.”

“I should never have left the lodge!” she cried, self-contempt searing her like acid. “I ran away, when I should have stayed here the whole time and worked on getting Lex to tell me where she was.”

“You didn’t run away. You went to look for help from me. If you hadn’t done that, I would be dead.” His footsteps moved closer, coming up gently behind her. “If you had stayed here all this time, Renata, then you would have been killed tonight along with Lex and the other guards. What happened here was a coldly planned execution, and it’s got Fabien’s name all over it.”

He was right. She knew he was right, on all points. But it didn’t make her hurt any less.

Renata stared, unseeing, into the gunpowder-choked chasm of the barn. “We have to go back to the city and start searching for her. Door to door, if we have to.”

“I know what you’re feeling,” Nikolai said. He touched her nape and she forced herself to step away from his tenderness.