He was too still, for one thing. For another, he wasn’t coming in and joining the happy crowd. And then there was his expression.
His eyes were burning with emotion.
Blay looked casually at Phury and Cormia. “Hey, how’d you guys like to hold a young?”
Cormia smiled and put out her arms. “Gimme, gimme, gimme!”
Rhamp was thrilled to go to her, answering her enthusiasm with a giggle of his own. And Blay took a moment to tweak his son’s nose before he casually walked out of the room, hands in his pockets, an easy smile for anyone to see on his face.
He dropped the act as soon as he was out of range.
Striding across the mosaic floor, he said, “What’s wrong?”
Qhuinn nodded over his shoulder and didn’t start talking until they were in the lee of the grand staircase.
“I can’t find Luchas.”
Blay frowned. “What do you mean you can’t find him?”
Qhuinn’s eyes couldn’t light on any particular thing, his focus shifting over the balustrade, the door down into the tunnel, the floor at their feet.
“I went to his room to have a visit. Not there. He’s also not at the pool. Not in the break room. Not anywhere in the training center. So I came up here and asked Fritz if he’d seen him in the house? I mean, Fritz knows everything.”
“And what did he say?”
“He hasn’t seen him.”
“Did you ask the medical staff?”
“Manny hasn’t treated him, Doc Jane hasn’t been down there, and Ehlena’s off.”
Blay rubbed his face. “Okay, there has to be a logical explanation. There just has to be. It’s not like he’s disappeared.”
When Qhuinn just stood there, the helplessness was as much of a shock as the idea that Luchas was lost somewhere in the Brotherhood’s compound.
Blay put his hand on the side of his mate’s neck. “We’re going to find him. Do you hear me? We’re going to find him together, all right? I know what to do.”
Qhuinn nodded. And then he made a strangled noise.
“Come here,” Blay murmured as he pulled his mate in. “It’s going to be okay. I promise you, it’s going to be okay.”
Over Qhuinn’s shoulder, Blay noticed that Tohr and Phury had come out of the library. They were hanging back, arms crossed, faces grave. Even though they didn’t know what was wrong, they were prepared to help.
But that was the nature of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. When Qhuinn joined that ancient tradition, he went from being an orphan to having a full-blown family.
And they would no more desert him in a time of need than they would cut off their own hands.
“I know what to do,” Blay repeated firmly.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Qhuinn couldn’t think. But he was aware of following instructions: Go here, sit there, wait for five minutes while V signed into his computer. Other than these very rudimentary functions, however, he was not really connected to anything.
For example, it was interesting, in a passing, well-what-do-you-know sort of way, to realize that he was in the Pit. Evidently, he’d been set on the leather sofa like a throw pillow, and he was facing the Foosball table. As he considered the way the game was played, his brain coughed up a random memory from just twenty-four hours before: Him spinning the spindles against John Matthew, blithely unaware of what that fountain tarp was going to do, what was going to happen to Balthazar up by that shutter, how Zsadist was going to have to do CPR in the snow.
As with all of that, he certainly had never anticipated what was happening right now.
In his peripheral vision, he was aware of V typing on one of his keyboards and then staring at the bank of monitors. Right behind the brother, leaning in over his shoulder, was Blay.