Then, suddenly, Carrick’s arm was tightening around my waist, pulling me to him. “It’s okay,” he said. And in those two words I could hear so much: the anger for what had happened to me, the need to protect me, the tenderness that made me go warm inside.
He put his lips to my cheek and for a second I just stayed there, eyes closed, as the memories retreated to a safe distance. Then I turned and we were kissing, slow and soft, a kiss that told me he was still there: would always be there. When he broke it, he tracked kisses up my nose and to my forehead, one big hand holding me there for a second before he let me escape. He glanced at the room for a second and then back at me, his heavy brows giving me a warning frown. You know it’s okay, right? You don’t have to tell them if you don’t want to. He squeezed me again, his thumbs rubbing gently over my hips. You don’t owe anyone a damn thing, his eyes said.
I nodded that I understood but then shook my head. “It’s okay,” I said. And when I turned and looked shyly at the others, it was okay. All of them were looking at me with total sympathy: I didn’t need to be embarrassed. I was amongst friends, here.
Together, Carrick and I told the rest. Then we all turned to Kian as he told his story. We’d heard about Kerrigan and the attempted coup in the press but now we learned all the missing pieces. But even though the story had a happy ending, it was somehow sad because Kian was the only one who had to tell his story alone. I could tell, listening to him, just how much he cared for Emily, how strong his need to protect her was. And yet he’d been forced to leave her on the opposite side of the country to come and find Bradan. I wanted to hug him.
With everyone up to date, the talk turned lighter. I looked around at the other couples: of all of them, Carrick and I were by far the newest. Louise and Sean and Sylvie and Aedan had been together months, now. And Louise and Sean were so domesticated. I wouldn’t change my life with Carrick for anything: parties at the clubhouse with the MC, weekends at the cabin, waking up to the sound of the chipmunk scurrying over the roof...I loved it but it was chaotic compared to their settled life. Would we be like that, in six months?
I felt a stab of fear and turned to Carrick. We would last, wouldn’t we?
He caught my sudden movement and looked sidelong at me...and the look in his eyes made all my fears fall away. He had this way of gazing at me that always made me feel special, even when I was at my most awkward. He looked at me as if I was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen and that made me heart swell. Yes, of course we’d last.
Sylvie leaned over to me. “Have you noticed,” she asked, “that the more time these four spend together, the stronger their accents get?” She looked at Aedan. “I give it a week and then we’re going to need subtitles.”
I burst out laughing and Louise and Sylvie joined me. The men looked at one another, suddenly sheepish, but it was true. The Irish in Carrick’s accent had started to rise to the surface, breaking through the California sunshine. The rock in his voice seemed rougher, rasping against my ears in a way that made me squirm and the silver had grown sharper and yet smoother: it seemed to race right down my spine and vibrate through my groin. From the way Louise was looking at Sean, the change was having the same effect on all of us.
Some time later, I wandered upstairs to the bathroom. Sylvie had already complained about getting lost but one advantage of my weird mind was that even the old house’s winding hallways formed a clear map in my head. When I got to the bathroom, though, the door was closed and I could see light coming from under the door. I leaned against the opposite wall to wait.
And that’s when I heard a muffled shriek of horror from inside.
16
Louise
It’s just a trick of the light. But no matter how much I twisted and tilted the thing, it still looked the same.
I’m seeing double. But I hadn’t even touched my wine: couldn’t stomach it. And now I knew why.
No! That’s crazy. I can’t be. I’m misreading the instructions. Relief sluiced through me. Yes, of course. That’s what it was. I re-read the leaflet, heart pounding, then stared at the little plastic window again.
Two lines. Pregnant.
I clapped my hand over my mouth just in time to muffle my shriek of horror. What?! I’d only done the test to put my mind at rest, after all the morning nausea, after not even tasting my Guinness in New York or my wine this evening. I thought I was just a little late! I was just ruling it out!
Someone knocked at the door and I jumped so much I swear both feet left the ground. “Louise?” Annabelle’s voice. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I lied in a strangled voice.
“I thought I heard you scream.”
“I dropped the soap,” I said. Then, “On my foot.” I turned on the faucet to make it sound like I was doing something other than staring slack-jawed at my future. Then I stuffed all the pregnancy test packaging into the pockets of my jeans, hid the test itself under the hem of my top and opened the door, giving Annabelle what I hoped was a placid smile.
I went straight to our bedroom, pulled out the pregnancy test and sat down on the bed staring at it. But before I could even start to process, Sean came in and I had to whip the little plastic stick behind my back.
“You okay?” He sat down beside me, the bed sinking under his muscled bulk. “You went to the bathroom and never came back. You didn’t drink your wine.”
Behind my back, I rolled the pregnancy test in my fingers. It felt red hot: I couldn’t keep it still. “Fine. Just feeling a little...off.”
He frowned and laid a big palm on my forehead to check my temperature. “You’ve been feeling sick for days. I think you should see a doctor.”
I wanted to kick myself for being so stupid. How could I have missed this? “Mmm. You’re right. I’ll make an appointment.” ...with an obstetrician, I mentally added. My mind was shredding: my entire future was reshaping before my eyes and I was desperately trying to cling on. Tell him, I was screaming at myself. But I hadn’t even figured out how I felt myself, yet. It was just too much: diapers and strollers and grade school ,and he or she would need a car and college and oh holy shit I have to give birth—
I want my mom, I thought suddenly. And the fact she wasn’t here, anymore, made me collapse inside like a failing tower of cards.
“You really okay?” asked Sean, his eyes narrowing.
I swallowed and hugged him. “Sure,” I said into his shoulder. “Everything’s fine.”
17
Carrick
We started work the next morning and we didn’t stop for a week. We took over the big hallway where the tree grew, since that was the biggest space, and for the first day Louise’s printer ran non-stop, turning the data from Calahan’s USB stick into a forest of paper that we could pin to the walls.
Calahan’s information was full of anecdotes and specifics but he’d been unable to link it all together with a structure. Unlike a normal cult, Aeternus didn’t have a website or any sort of publicity. They found you. There wasn’t even much information about what the members believed: it certainly wasn’t anything clear-cut and specific. There was no talk of aliens or UFOs or gods. There was talk of loyalty and family and needing one another. But there didn’t seem to be a tier structure of leaders, with the money flowing upward in a pyramid, like I was expecting. In fact, we were having trouble finding a leader at all. Someone must have started the cult, someone must be controlling it...but whoever it was, they sure as hell weren’t in this for the adoration; no one knew who they were.
Annabelle bought a big map of California and started mapping cult activities. Sylvie printed photos of every cult member Calahan had identified and pinned them up as a rogue's gallery so we knew who we were up against. He hadn't been kidding about the cult's grip on society: there were judges, two DAs, a mayor, even a senator. I started to get a sinking feeling. We really were up against it.
The hallway buzzed with activity, people hurrying back and forth with bits of paper or sitting on
couches with laptops looking stuff up. Emily was helping back in Washington, too, sifting through the front companies Calahan had identified. We didn't have his FBI training but we made up for it in numbers: even Kayley helped, when she wasn't at school. She was also loving having three new older brothers around and we, who'd never had a kid sister, quickly became fiercely protective of her.
The house was huge. I was used to the tiny house I shared with Annabelle back in Haywood Falls. Sure, it was small but at least I didn't get lost. Sean and Louise's place was all dark hallways lined with a million identical wooden doors. Twice, I thought I was heading back into our bedroom and walked in on Sylvie and Aedan (once they were kissing up against the wall, her legs around his waist, once hotly debating who would win in a fight between Alec and Aedan).
There were advantages, though: Annabelle was already in love with the huge bedroom with its dark, intricately carved wood furniture and the bed you could live in. When we got back to Haywood Falls, I could see a bigger place in our future. When I first rescued Annabelle, an idea as civilized and normal as buying a place together had been utterly alien to me: you don’t plan long-term when all you live for is the next job and you know there’s a good chance you won’t come back. But she’d changed me for the better.
From the noises coming from the other bedrooms each night, all the couples were inspired by the old, romantic house. Except Kian, of course. His room was silent and we all felt bad for him: Emily was a long way away.
Not all of the rooms had their own bathrooms so the mornings turned into a parade of topless Irish men shuffling through the hallways, towels wrapped round their waists, while women in bathrobes with towels around their heads scurried from room to room borrowing hairdryers. Breakfast was chaos, too, a production line of eggs, bacon, coffee, and toast. Between the eight of us, we ate a lot (I didn’t know if it was because she was a teenager or because she was making up for lost time but Kayley seemed to eat more than any of us). There were so many of us, we had to extend the dining table out to its maximum length, and even then we were touching elbows. But it felt good. It reminded me of the MC. Or maybe it's that the MC reminded me of this: what I should have had all along.
After a week, the walls rustled every time a breeze blew through the house, the paper three sheets deep in some places. We were caught up to the point Calahan had reached...but just like him, we’d hit a dead end. Progress slowed right down: people walked instead of hurried, typed a little slower on their keyboards. We didn't want to run out of stuff to do but, with so many of us chasing things down, it was inevitable. Work ground to a halt.
Calahan was a fed so I still hated him on principle but I was starting to understand how he'd gotten so bitter about the whole thing. Trying to get a handle on the cult was like trying to catch smoke. We couldn’t find a structure, a shape. It felt like we were missing something.
Everyone else went out into the garden to take a break. Late fall, here in California, meant warm winds and just enough sun to be pleasant without it baking you: Annabelle, with her pale skin, loved it. I stayed behind and sat down on the floor, staring stubbornly at the walls as if the answer was going to just suddenly leap out at me.
Then I realized I wasn’t alone. Sean was under the tree, leaning on a branch. “You don’t want to be out there with Louise?” I asked.
Sean shook his head. “Something’s up with her,” he said. “She keeps pulling me aside, like she’s going to tell me something, and then she clams up. How’s Annabelle?”
I sighed and rubbed a hand over my stubble. “Getting frustrated, same as me.” She’d already spent hours poring over Calahan’s notes, her delicate brow creased in concentration until I just wanted to kiss the frowns away. I could tell she was feeling lost in all the talk of loyalties and blackmail, manipulation and secrets. She’d always been better with machines than with “people stuff” and this was as people stuff as it got.
Sean sighed and came to sit beside me and we sat there staring at the walls. It looked as if we’d decorated with the damn stuff: there wasn’t a square inch that wasn’t covered with printouts and it was near impossible to find a light switch. “You think we can figure this out?” said Sean, his voice tight. “Because I’ve got this feeling...I mean, Calahan couldn’t. No one could. How can we?”
I turned to him. “We will,” I said grimly. “Because if we don’t...we’ve lost him forever.”
Sean nodded. We fell silent and he leaned forward, chin on his knees, to think. And that’s when I saw it.
He was wearing a thin white t-shirt and, as he leaned forward, the muscles of his back stood out, stretching the material even more. I could see the dark ink of the tattoos that covered his back...but that wasn’t all. I could see the way the fabric rose and fell to follow lines that shouldn’t have been there. Scars, hidden by the tattoos.
I’d been around violence enough that I knew those sorts of scars. They weren’t recent and they weren’t from a one-off fight. They were from a long time ago...and they’d built up over years.
My first reaction was fury, an incandescent crimson glow lit my chest, shuddering down my arms to form my hands into fists. Someone had hurt my little brother and I was going to kill them.
And then the guilt hit, punching me in the gut and turning all that anger in on myself. It had happened to him because I’d left him alone and vulnerable. I’d abandoned my family and Sean had gone through hell.
The temptation was to run. Sean didn’t know I’d seen: I could get up, march out of the house, climb on my bike and ride off to some bar. Drink like I hadn’t drunk since I rescued Annabelle, drown all that guilt in whiskey.
And then I remembered that my bike wasn’t here yet: the damn delivery company had been stalling for days, saying their driver was sick. It was like a message: I’d run for long enough.
Without words, I reached down, gripped the hem of Sean’s t-shirt and dragged it up. Sean jerked and then started to twist around to stop me but then our eyes met and he saw how determined I was. He stared at me, angry and then ashamed. And then he simply looked away, staring fixedly into the distance: go on, then. Look if you want to.
I peeled the t-shirt up, every inch causing a new stab of pain in my chest. Aw shit! The tattoos did a good job of hiding the damage but close up, in the right light, I could see how someone had gone to town on him, worked him over day after day. The rage glowed white hot: I drew in a deep lungful of air, then another and another. I needed to be able to speak, not yell. “Who?” I got out at last.
“My foster dad,” said Sean. He stared at the floor.
I wanted to tear my eyes away from the scars. Couldn’t. “How long?”
“A few years.”
My biker boots squeaked on the wood floor as a tremor went through my legs. Every muscle was hard with fury, my heartbeat echoing through every straining sinew. “I’ll kill the son of a bitch.”
Sean shook his head. “He’s an old man, now. And I put the fear of God into him a long time ago.” He turned to look at me and what he saw in my face made him freeze.
I’ve never been good at talking but now it was like dredging the words up out of thick black tar. I’d been wanting to say them for so many years and yet I could barely draw them to the surface. “I’m sorry,” I finally croaked.
Sean frowned. “You think I blame you?”
The house was very quiet. “I ran away,” I said, staring at my boots. “If I’d stayed….”
“If you’d stayed, it wouldn’t have made any fucking difference. They wouldn’t have let you be my guardian. You were only a kid yourself.”
I shook my head. “I could have stayed close. I could have stopped that bastard from hurting you.”
Sean gripped my arm hard. I looked down at his hand, then up at his face. “The only person it’s on is my foster dad,” said Sean firmly. “Okay?”
I stared into his eyes for a long time, my own eyes getting hot. Then I nodded and quickly stood. Sean started to get to his
feet too and I reached down, giving him my hand and pulling him up. He stood in front of me and—
Suddenly I was pulling him into a hug. I didn’t say a damn word, just wrapped my arms around him, and held him there like I never wanted to let him go again.
18
Sean
I blinked as I emerged into the sunlight, still reeling from what I’d shared with Carrick. Jesus, the poor fucker had been blaming himself, all these years? Eating himself up inside because he had the good sense to get out when he did? I felt better, though, for telling him. Until now, I’d only ever shared that with Louise. It didn’t solve the other problem, though: we were still stuck in our investigation and the longer we were stalled, the more I felt like a big, dumb lunk.
Then I slowly smiled as I saw the one person who I knew would make me feel better.
She was sitting in the long grass, some of the stalks almost over her head. The sun was low in the sky and it was making her glorious copper hair shine and blaze. She’d put on a loose white blouse and, as I walked up behind her and looked down, I had a view straight down the front of it to that soft, perfect cleavage. Damn! I swore her breasts looked even more fantastic than normal, this week.
Or maybe I was just extra-horny because we’d barely touched each other since everyone had arrived.
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