Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series)

CHAPTER TEN



After Naima left, Aaron found himself staring at the chrome showerhead above him. All around him, the hillside chateau was silent. He’d heard muffled voices from outside as Naima had left with the hippie-guy and the human, the slamming of car doors and the fading whine of an engine as they drove away. Then silence, except for the slow, sporadic drip of water from the showerhead.

The first one had hit him squarely in the forehead, making him sputter in surprise. That was when he’d first looked up and noticed it. He’d shifted his position a couple of times since then to avoid the drip, and now it landed somewhere just behind his right shoulder, making a soft plink as it hit the porcelain tub.

I should get up, he thought, craning his head back and watching the next small droplet forming above him. Now would be a really good time to just cut my losses and get the hell out of here.

But he dreaded to think of the homecoming that would be waiting for him if he did. Lamar didn’t take kindly to failure. At all. Aaron had learned this the hard way in 1996, when he’d failed to complete a hit Lamar had ordered on an up-and-coming rapper with a big mouth and too much information to underworld operations that Lamar had felt best kept secret. Known for being a ladies’ man who favored high-end strip clubs, casinos and opulent after-parties, the rapper had seldom traveled anywhere lightly or alone. He’d made enough enemies in enough circles that Aaron should have found himself jockeying for the chance to take the son of a bitch out. And as it turned out, he had.

From the vantage of a nearby roof, he’d used his 98-Bravo sniper rifle to line up a sweet shot as the rapper had walked out of a recording studio late one night. But before he’d been able to fold his index finger fully inward on the trigger, someone else driving by had blown the windows out with a less-subtle submachine gun, spraying the lobby, the rapper and his entire entourage with lead and flying fragments of shattered glass. There had been no time for Aaron to even think about another shot; the rapper had scrambled back, bleeding and cursing but very much alive, into the elevator car, and police sirens had screamed in impending approach.

It hadn’t been Aaron’s fault, but Lamar hadn’t cared. He’d had a job to complete and he had failed.

“Stupidity begat of gross incompetence,” he’d rasped. He’d still been able to speak in those days, but his voice was muffled beneath the thick rubber seal of an oxygen mask. Thin mist spiraled slowly out of slitted vents on either side. He’d ordered Aaron to strip naked, then bind himself using handcuffs to the showerhead in a specially designed stall inside Lamar’s suite. It had neither doors, nor a tub, so that Lamar could be moved easily in and out of it in a wheeled chair when it was time to bathe him. It was also useful in torturing his sons, or at least, his youngest.

Aaron hadn’t questioned Lamar’s command, hadn’t hesitated in accepting his punishment. He’d locked his wrists into the stainless steel cuffs, leaving his hands bound overhead. When Lamar had used a remote control device to turn the water on full-force, a stinging, icy spray that pelted him headlong, he sucked in a gasping breath.

Lamar used a bronze-tipped prod to send searing bolts of electricity through his body. He rammed the tip of the wand into Aaron’s mouth, chest, and rectum, against his nipples, penis and testicles, making him convulse involuntarily, violently against his chains with every agonizing surge. For more than thirteen hours, Lamar had electrocuted him beneath the torrential spray of the ice-cold shower, his mouth stretched in a toothless, leering smile, his raspy voice escaping him in shrill, sadistic squeals, like a schoolboy excited by a new puppy or plaything. Aaron had pissed himself, shit himself, and vomited all over himself, helpless to prevent it.

And then it was over. Julien had saved him. The day after Aaron’s failed assassination attempt, Julien had pulled up alongside the rapper’s SUV on a busy, bustling street in a black Cadillac DeVille with tinted windows and chrome wheels. Before the traffic light could transition from red to green, Julien had lowered the passenger side window, leaned across the dove-grey leather front seats, and with remarkable clarity and accuracy, sank a single bullet through the truck’s window, punching into the rapper’s skull.

After shooting the rapper, Julien had hopped on a Lear jet and returned to the great house. Only then had Lamar taken pity on Aaron. He’d let Julien turn the water off and release his hands from the cuffs. Aaron had crumpled into his brother’s arms, and Julien had lifted him easily, as if he’d been little more than a child.

“Poor Az,” Julien had murmured as he’d carried him to bed. “Poor, poor Az.”

In Naima’s bathtub in Lake Tahoe almost fifteen years later, Aaron rammed his elbow deliberately into the side of his own rib cage, sending a searing spasm shuddering through him as the broken bones grinded together. The pain cleared his head. And pulled it, figuratively, out of his own ass.

If I leave now, with this job undone and Michel Morin dead, then my life is forfeit. This isn’t something Julien can fix for me, not this time. I need to figure out who killed Michel—and fast. Because if I don’t—if I don’t bring this guy’s head to my father on a silver platter to prove this clusterf*ck isn’t my fault, then I’m pretty much a dead man walking. He wriggled, shifting positions again and grimacing. Or in this case, a dead man lying in a bathtub.

Either way, I’m screwed.

***

“Mason?” Naima knocked lightly against the office door, then pressed her ear to the wood, listening for any signs of a response. The crowd inside the clinic had started to thin, as search party members began splitting up per Phillip’s instructions, returning to the woods with renewed, if not bloodthirsty, determination.

She knew she couldn’t leave Aaron alone for long. Even though it would take them awhile to make the hike from the clinic to her house, without her there to maintain the psychic barriers she’d erected, anyone from the Morin clan would be able to sense Aaron’s presence telepathically if they got close enough. She hated to take a chance on leaving him unprotected, but had to.

There’s one more thing I need to do before I go…someone else I’m worried about, she thought, knocking more firmly against the office door. “Mason?” she said again, this time opening her mind and extending her telepathy beyond the threshold.

She could sense his presence inside, but his mind felt murky to her, cloudy and dazed. He was either asleep, or as Phillip had speculated, highly intoxicated. Given his inclinations of late, she suspected the latter.

It’s Naima, she thought to him, pushing her thoughts through the grey-scape of his conscious awareness. Come on, Mason, please. Open the door. Talk to me.

A loud thump! from the other side of the door startled her, and she drew back, wide-eyed and uncertain. She heard a clumsy clatter as Mason pawed at the lock from inside the office, then, after another long moment of silence, the door opened. Not much, little more than a few inches, just enough for her to see Mason inside. A blast of cognac hit her like a thick, pungent wall, and she fought the urge to grimace.

“Mon bijou,” he murmured, his voice slurred almost beyond clarity. He smiled, sloppy and lopsided, as he stepped aside and opened the door wider. “Come in, come in please. You…you must forgive me if I’m not…good company at the moment.”

She stepped into the office, and he closed the door behind her. It was dark in the small room; he’d drawn all of the blinds closed and turned off all the lights. Despite the heavy shadows, she could see that he was still dressed for the previous night’s cocktail party, at least in part. His tuxedo shirt was unbuttoned about halfway down, his tie and jacket long gone. His sleeves were turned back to his elbows, his shirt tails untucked and rumpled. He needed a shave, his chin and cheeks dusted with a dark, coarse growth of stubble. His eyes were rimmed in shadows, sunken and haunted.

“Mason, please come out. Everyone’s been looking for you,” she entreated.

He blinked sleepily at this, and his expression of surprise might have been farcical under any other circumstances. “That’s sweet of you to say, ma chèrie,” he said. “I’m sorry I haven’t yet made more of an appearance. I’ve been a bit…preoccupied.”

He held a bottle in his hand—Courvoisier XO Imperial, gold lettering on the label read. He tipped his head back, drawing it to his mouth. It was more empty than full, but he took a long gulp of what remained, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed.

Naima glanced down at the desk top. Tristan normally manned most medical duties at the clinic, and when he did, the office was always in a state of disarray, the desk as cluttered and paper strewn as if a windstorm had swept through. With Tristan out of commission, however, Mason had taken over in his place, and the blotter was surprisingly neat and tidy, with nothing disorganized or out of place except for Mason’s iPhone, and beside it, a photograph that looked like it had been folded up and carried about in a wallet for a long time; its glossy surface was cracked and creased. In the photo, Mason stood with his arm around a human man, young and handsome, both of them grinning at the camera.

“That’s Andrew,” Mason remarked dazedly, noticing her attention. A soft smile touched his lips and he reached down, brushing his fingertips lightly against the photo. “He used to play left field for the Mustangs—Andrew Taylor?”

There were lots of players on Mason’s team, and she’d met nearly all of them at least once—too many to keep track of. She shook her head, smiling politely. “Sorry.”

“We lost him to Houston last year,” Mason said as he took another swig of cognac. “That’s the business, you know. Free agents and all.” His face took on a melancholy cast. “But God, how I miss him.”

She watched him set the Courvoisier aside, then lift the photograph in hand, letting his fingertips linger almost lovingly against the young man’s image. Mason had been married once. Before the fires in 1815, he’d been in an arranged union according to Brethren law to Edith Trevilian, one of Eleanor’s second cousins once removed, or some such distinction. They’d never had children, however, and once the Morin clan had left Kentucky, Mason and Edith had gone their separate ways. To Naima’s knowledge, he had never remarried. And she’d never heard him speak of a woman with the warm inflection he’d used when mentioning the handsome left fielder, Andrew Taylor.

“He told me I could call him…anytime, he said. Day or night, whenever I need him. But I never have. Called him, I mean. Not need him. That I do. I always have.” He folded the photo in half, and tucked it in the breast pocket of his shirt.

“Mason,” she began gently.

“I’ve started to call him at least a dozen times today…let it ring through once or twice. But I keep hanging up.”

“Please come out,” she pressed. “We need you.”

He blinked, as if remembering she was still in the room with him, then managed a clumsy smile. “Phillip’s here. He’ll…he’ll see to everything. He has it all in hand, I’m sure.”

“Phillip?” Naima frowned. “Come on, Mason. He might be oldest, but you’re the one Michel wanted in charge of the clan. He even put it in his will.”

“Yes, well, I’m sure now that it’s come down to it, that won’t matter at all,” Mason said.

She might have argued with him that it sure as hell mattered—it was Michel’s will, legal and binding, and that Phillip could bitch, gripe and whine to the ends of the earth, and it wouldn’t change a damn thing. She might have…except that Mason’s eyelids had started to droop, his body listing treacherously to the right. She was afraid he’d pass out, keel over right there, but then his eyes snapped open again, and his brows crimped as he struggled to focus his gaze on her.

“It’s my fault,” he said, his expression growing anguished. “All of it. Tristan…mon petit lapin…my poor little rabbit…and now Father…”

“Mason, no,” she said, reaching for him, draping her hand against his shoulder. “You didn’t do this. What happened to Tristan and Michel…none of it is because of you.”

“The alarm was set,” he said in a soft, anguished voice. “After what happened to Tristan, I…I set the alarm here in the clinic. I know I did. I remember punching the code. It’s eighteen-fifteen…like the year of the fires…the same one Father uses for…for practically everything.” Hanging his head, he offered a soft chuckle. “He used to tell me it wasn’t for nostalgia’s sake but because he…he just had too many goddamn numbers to keep track of…in his head…”

His voice faded, and she saw the wink of light reflected as a tear rolled down his cheek. “My God, I am going to miss that man.”

“I know,” she whispered, feeling the warm tickle of her own tears spilling again. “I am, too.”

He looked at her, desperate and pleading. “I set the alarm,” he said again. “How…how could anyone get in? The doors were locked, the windows armed. I was here, Naima—I was right across the hall, in Tristan’s room, at his bedside with Karen when it happened. I should have heard something. How could I not have? How could I not have sensed something?”

“Mason,” she said gently. “It’s not your fault.”

He took another long drink, then lowered the bottle, cognac trickling from the corner of his mouth toward his chin. With a mournful smile, he shook his head. “But it is, ma chèrie,” he said. “God help me, it’s all my fault.”

***

“I was hoping you could give Augustus a ride to the airport later on today,” Eleanor said from behind Naima as she stepped back from the office door. She’d long considered Eleanor to be a friend, one of few confidantes she’d ever had in her life, never mind on the Morin compound. She hadn’t told Eleanor much about Aaron, but still felt hurt and betrayed to know that Eleanor had shared even this precious little with Augustus.

“Is he going somewhere?” she asked drily, turning to face the other woman. Eleanor nodded. The news of Michel’s death had apparently taken a devastating toll on her as well. She was a slim woman by birth, and had come to the compound to receive treatments Michel had engineered to combat a potentially lethal blood disorder. The disease had left her frail, but she somehow seemed even more so now. She wore a white tunic that swallowed her in its voluminous folds; above its scooped neckline, Naima could clearly see the bony prominences in Eleanor’s collar and sternum.

“He’s going to Florida,” Eleanor said. “Brandon’s there. He texted Augustus a short time ago. It must have been urgent, because Augustus would never leave otherwise. Not after Michel…” Her voice faded, growing momentarily choked. “Something has happened, but Augustus won’t tell me what,” she finished at length.

“Yes, well, Augustus has always been good with secrets,” Naima remarked. “That makes one of you, anyway.”

Eleanor blinked at her, her dark eyes round and wounded. “I had to tell him, Naima. Michel is dead.”

“Aaron didn’t kill him.”

“How do you know that?” Eleanor asked.

“I…I just do,” Naima said, catching herself before she admitted too much too readily.

Eleanor studied her for a long moment. The Davenants have severed their ties to the clans, she said at length, her voice quiet in Naima’s mind. Auguste’s brother Benoît told him this only days ago. It was a revelation that troubled Auguste deeply—and your grandfather as well.

Puzzled by the unexpected turn in conversation, Naima frowned. What do you mean? she asked.

Lamar is no longer operating under the oversight of the Elders or Council, Eleanor said. Augustus underestimated his continued influence—his control over his clan. He always believed Lamar’s son, Allistair, to be his biggest adversary among the Davenant clan. But he was wrong. He’s only now beginning to realize the true breadth of his error.

But Lamar needs the Brethren clans, Naima said. That’s where his money comes from, isn’t it? Without the clans, he has nothing.

That’s the way it should be, yes, Eleanor said. Grim-faced, she stepped closer to Naima and reached out, brushing the cuff of her hand lightly against Naima’s cheek. But I overheard Augustus and your grandfather speaking. They had reason to suspect that Lamar has plenty wealth of his own, resources neither of them could have imagined possible.

“What do you mean?” Naima whispered aloud.

When Tessa ran away from the Davenants, she brought a ledger she’d taken from her husband, Martin, Eleanor said. It detailed countless transactions made over the course of more than ten years—payments in excess of three million dollars, all made payable to a company called Broughman and Associates. When Allistair Davenant seized dominance over the clans, he brought Augustus before the Council and used this same ledger to claim Augustus had embezzled the money instead, that there was no Broughman and Associates.

You think Allistair stole the money instead? Naima asked.

Augustus did, yes. Eleanor nodded. At first, anyway. But now he thinks Lamar made Allistair, Allistair’s son Martin, and several other close kin—those he most trusted—to act in his stead, to steal for him the money he’d need to seed his own enterprises, his own financial gain.

Like what? Naima asked.

Eleanor shook her head. I don’t know. Michel and Auguste were looking into it together, even before Tristan was attacked last night. I’ve heard them talking about it for weeks now. I overheard Michel say he’d traced that name, Broughman, to some kind of government security contractor called Diadem Global.

There was something familiar about that name, Broughman, but Naima couldn’t remember what. At least not until Eleanor reached into the hip pocket of her jeans and pulled something out she then pressed surreptitiously into Naima’s hand; a business card. “I found this on the floor this morning,” she whispered. “It must have fallen out of Augustus’ pocket, maybe his wallet…”

Naima looked at the name that had been printed on the card. Aaron Broughman, it read. Chief Networking Officer and Senior Vice President of Social Capital Development for Diadem Global.

Now Naima remembered. “Aaron Broughman—I saw that name on Aaron’s driver’s license. I found his wallet in his car. There was a rental agreement under that name in the glove box, too.”

Then there’s your starting point, I think, Eleanor said.

Naima looked at her for a long moment, torn between being grateful to her for this unexpected help, and still pissed at her for blabbing to Augustus. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because you’re angry with me,” Eleanor replied, with a soft, tired smile. “And perhaps rightly so. I did what I felt I needed to. But I’m sorry that it compromised your trust.”

Stepping forward, she wrapped her arms around Naima, giving her a hug. She felt so slight and thin when Naima returned the embrace, her fragile body little more than bones beneath her clothing.

“I know you loved him once, and that you likely love him still,” Eleanor breathed in her ear, giving her a quick kiss. “Just be careful. I’m begging you. Augustus says he’s dangerous. Even if he didn’t kill Michel…”

“He didn’t,” Naima insisted.

“…then he would have if he’d been given half the chance,” Eleanor finished. “He’s not the boy you knew. He disappeared off the clan registries for a reason—Augustus said Lamar Davenant needs him for something. And whatever that may be, he would never have trusted Aaron to it if he didn’t feel he could implicitly.”

As she drew away, Eleanor cradled Naima’s face briefly between her hands, her eyes glossy with tears. They’ll kill him when they find him, she said telepathically, her voice gentle and pointed in Naima’s mind. You know that, don’t you? Maybe if Michel was here, he might have found some mercy, made them see reason, but now…? Her brows lifted sorrowfully. You can’t protect him much longer.

“That’s why I was thinking you could give Augustus a ride to the airport in Carson City later on,” she said aloud, her voice strangely loud and bright, given the quiet undertones and telepathic exchanges they’d had to that moment.

And then Naima got it—Eleanor was dropping her a hint. I can get Aaron off the compound. I can bring him someplace safe where he can recuperate. No one will be suspicious if Augustus is in the car with me. And maybe I’ll buy a little bit of time, so I can find out who really killed Michel before Phillip and the others find Aaron.

“I think that’s an excellent idea, Eleanor,” she said.

“I thought you’d might,” Eleanor remarked with a smile.