The Hunting Town (Brothers Book 1)

by Elizabeth Stephens

  “Sara.” My teeth crunch together so hard I imagine they’ll splinter. “Who did this?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?” Her face tilts towards mine and her expression is incriminating, but not as incriminating as the finger I’ve got pointed at myself. “They were after you.”

  My insides shred themselves apart and I have no words to express to her. My mouth hangs open and eventually, I manage to thrust aside the sting of her derision and speak. “Russians?”

  She nods, shrugs and clutches the cross at her throat as if in attempt to leach its strength. “Maybe. Probably.” Tears surface on her lower lids which, like her chest, takes on a carmine hue that usually would make my dick stir. Now it might as well be steeped in bleach.

  “Don’t touch me,” she whispers when I reach for her waist. I ignore her and wrench her to my chest anyways because the thought of her meeting those Russian fucks makes my testicles shrivel up and the blood in my veins turn to ash. Brant’s body, squirming between us stills as I knead the delicate baby hairs along the back of the boy’s soft skull.

  Sara’s breathing hitches and I know she’s fighting hard to keep it together, but she isn’t strong enough for this. Neither am I. I never thought they’d go after her. It never even crossed my mind. Why would they when she knows nothing? Why didn’t I give Aiden’s words more consideration? He’d said they’d take leverage from us to tip the scales of power and I’d cut the heart out of my own chest with a butter knife if it meant Sara and Brant were returned to me safely.

  As soon as she stops protesting and melts just a little into my arms, I hold her away from me and sweep her face, inspecting its surface without breathing. My thumbs sweep beneath her eyelids and she flinches when I get to her cheek.

  “How badly did they hurt you and Brant?” I ask, hating and fearing the answer.

  She seems startled, because the cover of her anger slips out of place and for a moment she looks purely petrified. “I…” She shakes her head and looks down at her baby boy. He’s no longer crying. “This is the worst of it. Just hit me when they came into my apartment and shoved me against the wall. One of them wanted to do more but Neil…Erik told them not to touch me because I’m a mother.”

  “Erik?” The voice comes from behind me and my spine stiffens because I had not heard his approach. I turn to see Aiden standing just a few feet away, arms crossed over his chest. The look of boredom perpetually plastered across his lifeless mug manages just a slight change when his dark blonde eyebrow lifts. Mer, Knox, and Clifton stand between Aiden and the door to the house, giving us the space that Aiden didn’t feel was necessary.

  “Yes.” Sara nods and a look of understanding passes across Aiden’s haggard face, causing it again to flatten. It’s the first time I really notice how tired he looks.

  Against his whitewashed skin, blue bags stand out beneath bloodshot eyes. A single vein screams in his neck and another pulses along his left cheekbone. Meanwhile, his body is fuller than I’ve ever seen it, likely from the hours he’s spent locked away in the gym these past weeks. You can hear music screaming through the house as he lifts during the day, and again at night as his feet pound on the treadmill. I never thought to ask him what was up, if he was okay, if there was something I could do. I just took from him, and took, and relied on him because I’m a selfish prick and I don’t deserve an ounce of respect or admiration or love or happiness from any of the people around me. It takes me until then to realize I’m more monster than good.

  Clearing my throat and brushing aside the mounting sense of contrition and shame that’s building up in my right temple like a tumor, I grunt, “What is it?”

  Aiden shrugs, frowns, seems to consider saying nothing at all, then uncrosses his arms. “Erik is their leader. Cousin of Gavriil, one of the guys you sent to the hospital.”

  This comes to me as news, but I shove away my curiosity for a moment and target the more important questions. “How did he know where she lived?”

  Aiden looks at me as if I’m dumber than a box of hair and I curse as the latent realization dawns on me. I hug Sara with one arm, wrapping it tight around her shoulders so I can feel her heartbeat through her chest. It’s pounding too hard and too fast. Or perhaps it’s my own heart that sounds like war drums in the wake of an attack.

  “Ollie,” I whisper. Cold wind rips into me.

  Crushed against my body, Sara shudders. “It might not have been. Erik drove me home the night I first met him. He hit on me at a bar. That’s where he met Sherry. He’s known where I lived for weeks.”

  My mind goes blank for a moment and I hold onto Sara’s open car door for support. My kneecaps have been shot and my legs are crumbling beneath my weight. He knew where she lived for weeks. He knew to target her. He knew that she would be leverage for me even before I did. He knew I loved her when I’d still been committed to hate.

  “This is good news,” Aiden says, and for a moment he might have been speaking Mandarin.

  Clifton, who’s edged closer, says, “How the hell do you figure that? She could have been killed for Christ’s sake!”

  Aiden shrugs and it takes the weight of the girl leaning against my right side to stop me from throwing myself at him and tearing him apart as proxy for the men who brought her harm. “He failed to take Sara, so he has no leverage.” He tilts his head to the side and looks past me, at her. It’s the first time he’s even acknowledged her presence. “How’d you escape?”

  Sara’s whole body sways forward and she nearly tumbles out of my grasp. I slip one arm around her ribs and with the other, take the baby. He lays his head on my shoulder, warm breath blowing softly against my neck, as it should be. As it always should be.

  “I drugged them. Might have killed one. I don’t know.” She buries her face in my side and I feel her tears begin dampening my tee shirt. I need to get her inside. “I asked what they were going to do to us. Erik said he’d let Brant live but that he was going to kill me no matter what. I had to do something.”

  “Good,” Aiden says, entirely oblivious to the state she’s in and the equal devastation rattling through me. Or he just doesn’t care. The bastard doesn’t care about anything.

  Anger hits me like a train on the tracks and I roar, “Why are you even here?”

  Aiden blinks once, then again. “Nowhere else to be.”

  My left foot shoots forward, but Clifton skirts his twin and comes directly in front of me. “Forget him,” he says, “you need to get Sara inside. She’s got to be freezing.”

  Giving Aiden a wide berth, we start towards the door, moving one step at a time and slowly. Clifton’s at her other side and on the house’s brick stoop, Mer’s face has fallen. Her typically tawny skin is whitewashed and pale. She looks like she’s about to be sick and flinches away when Knox reaches for her.

  In the living room, I place Sara on the couch and Brant’s limp body beside her. He curls into himself immediately and as I rise to get a blanket for him, Clifton’s got one already along with a glass of water. I wrap the baby up while she drinks like a woman tasting water for the first time and as I watch her, the thought of her being gone from my life makes it hard to look anywhere else. It’s as if I hope to prove by sight that she’s still here, with me. I touch her knee so that the sensation of sight is accompanied by another, but she pulls out from beneath my fingers.

  “Where are you going?” Knox says and out of my periphery, I see Aiden leaving the room, hands down at his sides.

  “Gym,” he says.

  “For fuck’s sake, brother, can’t you show even a thimble’s worth of concern? She’s practically your sister.”

  Aiden looks at Sara on the couch, then at me and starts to turn, but Sara holds his attention. “Wait. You…you said that if I’m safe they wouldn’t have leverage.” He doesn’t answer. She gulps. “There’s more.”

  “You should take it easy,” Clifton says. “We can go over the details once your heart rate settles…”
>
  “No, this is important.” She gathers her breath and places a hand to her chest. “There were three men, Erik and two other guys. He left me alone with them and when he left, he said that he was going to secure the other package.”

  Aiden’s jaw clenches. Knox’s face falls and he glances in Mer’s direction, as if somehow worried she’d be taken out from under him. Mer’s eyes widen to saucers and her parted lips roar, “Fuck!”

  A string of Spanish curses follow her down the hall as she runs, returning moments later with the phone to her ear. She drops down to her knees, pressing her forehead to the rounded corner of the coffee table’s edge.

  “He’s not answering,” she says, though through the speaker, we can all hear the calls go directly to voicemail. “Hijo de tu puta madre. Charlie’s not picking up.”

  “Find my phone.” The words rip out of Clifton’s mouth as he launches himself towards the stairs to the study, Aiden hot on his trail. I want to follow him, but Sara’s by my side, breathing hard and demanding answers.

  “Dixon, what the hell is going on? Who were those guys? Where is Charlie?” The tears she’d been trying to hide fall now ceaselessly.

  Kneeling before her, I grab the leather couch in each hand on either side of her shins. I kiss the tops of her knees, noting that they’re softer than the leather beside them, and bow my head over her legs. “The story is complicated. Best you know as little of it as possible. I don’t want you tangled up…”

  “Tangled up? Do you call what happened to me and my eight month old baby today tangled up?” Her voice lurches along like a bad drunk until it collapses. She covers her mouth with the back of her hand and shields her face with her hair. She releases a sob as she says, “Neil…Erik…whoever broke into my house today because of you. What did you do?”

  I clench my teeth together and crush the fabric of the couch so hard, I worry I’ll tear it free of its lining. “I know I owe you an explanation…”

  She scoffs, “You owe me a lot more than an explanation. You put me and my baby directly in harm’s way. We could have been killed.”

  The words slam into me and I canter back. The cabinet of DVDs appears before me and I slam my fist into its ebony surface. Dust flakes to the floor, covered in blood from my knuckles.

  “I know,” I say, trying to marshal the volume of my pitch because it’s too loud and my anger isn’t directed at her but at me. “And the thought kills me. If anything were to happen to you, I’d take out everyone responsible.”

  “Including you?”

  I look up at her and my heart breaks. Hatred seeps through her pores as she passes one hand over her baby’s face. I put him at risk. Anyone who does that is demonic in her eyes and I deserve no less than the way she’s looking at me.

  “Including me. I’d be following you to the grave right now if they’d taken you from me. I love you.”

  “Don’t talk about love,” she spits, voice warbling, “and don’t touch me.” She holds up her hand and like a sorceress, it holds me in place. “You don’t have to tell me why this is all happening, but you also don’t ever get to touch me or Brant again.”

  And my heart breaks all over again.

  I don’t have the vocabulary required to convince her this will all be okay, and that she’s overreacting, because it won’t be okay and she isn’t overreacting so the words simply don’t exist. “Sara, I…”

  “We have a location on the phone. They didn’t turn it off so it’s likely they want us to follow.” Clifton bursts into the room, a sling on his shoulders like the one Aiden wears as a second skin. Aiden appears behind him like a more monstrous shadow, mirroring the first image. For each of Clifton’s weapons, he carries two. He has a knife under his right arm and two on his belt, Rugers decorate his shoulders and sides like Christmas ornaments, two with silencer attachments, and when he turns to swing on his jean coat with the white wool lining, I catch a glimpse of a string of hand grenades strapped beneath a floating Steyr machine pistol.

  Clifton holds a Beretta and a Glock towards me and when I glance to the right, I see Sara’s face has gone completely white. Any chance of salvation for me is gone in her eyes, so I don’t bother trying to make it right. I grab the guns, adjust them to my hips and take a mini-Kel-tec 9mm and strap it to my ankle – not the most useful place for it, but it’s the backup for my backups in case everything goes to hell, which it very well might.

  Straightening, I look to Sara. She watches me like she’s never seen me before and I know that there will be no coming back from this. I go to her and grip the back of her head, wrenching her into a kiss that’s rougher than it should be.

  “I will fix this,” I say as I release her.

  She gulps, licks her lips, then blinks very rapidly. “It won’t matter.”

  “I know.”

  Sara

  Dixon breaks the kiss before I do and my whole body sways forward, as if he’s pulled something right out of me. It doesn’t matter. Had I just said that? Because as I watch him gather with his brothers and Mer in the front entryway, my whole body spasms. I want to call the police, call Dixon back, tell him I’ll do anything to keep him here. Sell my soul to the first demon who asks for it.

  Instead, I say nothing and listen to their debate as to who will stay and watch me and Brant. I reach for my baby, resting my hand on the soft blanket that covers him and, feeling his heartbeat through it, I remember that everything I do is to protect him. Dixon will do what he has to, to make sure Brant stays safe. I just pray that safety doesn’t cost him his life.

  A momentary and uncomfortable silence looms, but is broken quickly by Mer. She clears her throat. “You don’t have to ask. I’ll stay with her.” This isn’t the Mer I once knew and suddenly before my eyes, they all change. I know nobody in the room.

  The silence persists and Mer takes a step back, coming towards me. She clips the gun in her hand to the belt at her waist. Two more guns sit beside the first. “You don’t have to worry, D. Nobody’s going to touch her unless they kill me.”

  “Fuck. Now you’re worrying me. I’ll stay with them.” Knox reaches for Mer, but she dodges his hand.

  “As much as I want you to, you can’t leave them hanging. The Russians mob deep. You need manpower. Fire power.” She sucks in a breath that expands her chest. Her shoulders roll back and I feel momentarily inferior. I’m no woman like that. I doubt she would have cried if she’d been confronted by those two thugs. Then again, I wonder if she’s ever had a gun pointed directly at her. Ever been afraid for her life in the way I was less than an hour ago.

  Knox growls, closing the space between them. He grabs the back of her neck and I just barely hear him grumble, “I don’t know if I can leave you. Maybe you should come. Maybe you both should come.”

  He glances at me and I gasp at the same time Dixon and Mer speak together, “No.” Mer ducks her head and gently peels Knox’s hand from her arm. She drops it like a hot stone. “I…I can’t…” The word blusters out of her, the wind felt throughout the house and it’s cold. Frigid. Goosebumps break out on my skin and I start to stand. Shit.

  Shit. Shit shit shit.

  I’ve never heard Mer cry before.

  Knox’s emerald eyes go wide and his fingers skim his cropped hair. He’s shaking as he suddenly rushes in on Mer with enough violence to make me think momentarily that he’ll hurt her. But that’s not violence I see, just their own form of disastrous and perfect affection.

  “I’m sorry,” she says and her throat is cinched shut, so that her pitch comes out real high. “I’m sorry, I just can’t see the Russians. When I do, I think of him.” She inhales once and untangles herself from Knox’s grip.

  He holds her cheek in his hand and stares deeply into her eyes. His teeth are clenched. “They won’t ever touch you again.” Again. What does he mean by that?

  “I know…I know…” She nods and is again the woman I remember. It frightens me the way she does that. Two Mer
s, swapped seamlessly. She inhales, exhales and says firmly, “I know. I just don’t think I’d be much use to you around them. Any of them.”

  “It’s understandable,” Clifton says, ever the diplomat. “And you both will be fine here.”

  He turns to the other two men standing near him. Aiden’s already at the door, staring out at the driveway with apathy. His hand rubs a space at the center of his sternum, tugging on his tee shirt so that I see the outline of a pendant at the end of a long chain. He never seemed like the type of man who’d wear jewelry. Again, I’m revisited by the idea that I know none of these people in anything but face and name.

  Knox and Mer kiss for a moment that lasts lifetimes. Dixon looks at me and I hold his gaze. I wonder what expression I must wear because his response is a grimace that presses his full lips to a thin line. It frightens me in ways I never thought he could. Everything about the world suddenly frightens me.

  Then the front door opens and they leave. I hear an engine rev and go to the window only to see a massive black Lincoln shooting down their driveway like a rocket. They make a turn where the driveway bends and are swallowed up by grass that’s forever green, untouched by the nearness of November. I swallow my heart to keep it from exploding through my mouth the moment Mer slams the front door closed. Locks click into place, but I don’t feel any more secure. I turn to Mer for reassurance, but she doesn’t so much as acknowledge me. She’s got her back plastered to the front door and her chest is surging with each breath that she takes. My adrenaline kicks up and sweat breaks out along my hairline. The doctor in me takes over and I start towards her with quick, short steps.

  “Mer, you’ve got to breathe. You’re hyperventilating.” But she isn’t just hyperventilating. She’s having a full blown anxiety attack.