Brothers

by Helena Newbury

  I understood that. That’s why he and I got on so well, best friends as well as being in love. But as I swung my leg over the bike and nestled up against Carrick’s back, I had another of those momentary panics. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong. It was that everything was so right. I’d been so unhappy, trapped in that house with my step-father for all those years...now that I’d found happiness, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. What if something takes him away from me?

  I tightened my arms around his waist and the press of his muscles against my chest calmed me. Nothing’s going to happen. The engine fired and its roar split the air. It settled down to a steady thump that vibrated through the saddle into both of our bodies. We both sighed at the same instant, then chuckled. We’d missed this.

  We rode through Beverly Hills and along Rodeo Drive, the bike’s vibrations setting off car alarms in the parked Ferraris and Lamborghinis. We drove out to Venice Beach, parked up and walked along the boardwalk, watching the skaters, ballers and the guys lifting weights at Muscle Beach. By the time we got down onto the sand itself, the sun was going down.

  I made straight for the water, letting go of Carrick’s hand so I could hop along and pull my sneakers off one by one. A silly grin spread across my face as I felt the sand under my toes. Even though I’d lived in California my whole life, I hadn’t been to the beach since I was a kid: my step-father had never taken me, after my mom died. I stepped into the water, gloriously warm even in November. In fact, November was perfect for me: I could enjoy the sun without it frazzling my pale skin. I rolled up my jeans and went a little deeper. Paddling and swinging in one day: Los Angeles was giving me back the childhood I’d missed.

  Then my stomach tightened and I flushed. I’m being weird again. All around me, girls with perfect, stick-thin bodies and California tans were prancing around in bikinis and here I was, pale and geeky and acting like I’d never seen the sea before. What if Carrick came to his senses and realized he should be with one of them instead?

  A big, warm hand suddenly enclosed mine. I looked up to see Carrick standing beside me, his leather biker boots in one hand, his jeans rolled up just like mine. He didn’t say anything, just squeezed my hand.

  All my fears dropped away. I slid my arm around his waist and cuddled in closer. We stood there watching the sunset, the waves turning orange and then red as they broke around our ankles, until it was dark. I turned to go but he grabbed me and pulled me back.

  The boardwalk lights threw just enough soft white glow to light up those high cheekbones and strong, stubble-dusted jaw. But most of all, they let me see the blue of his eyes. The tenderness and vulnerability I saw there took my breath away. “Can’t believe I found you,” he rumbled.

  I blinked. He couldn’t believe he found me?

  He gripped both my arms. “Today’s made me think…” He looked away and sighed. “I’m not good at this. But that’s kind of the problem. Today’s made me realize...maybe I need to get better at saying stuff that’s on my mind. Or things can go wrong. Time gets wasted and you can’t get it back.”

  I stared up at him. What had happened between him and Sean? Something had changed. I’d never seen him so open.

  He squeezed my arms and then moved his hands to my cheeks, cradling my face. “I want to make sure you know that I love you, Annabelle.”

  The words went straight to the very center of my heart and I just melted. I tilted my head up just as his mouth came down to meet mine and we were kissing, feet splashing in the water as we shifted position, mouths chasing and exploring, my fingers rasping over his stubble, his hands buried in my hair.

  By the time we arrived back at the house, everyone had headed to bed. We crept in like teenagers out past our curfew. I felt bad about disappearing when we should have been working...but when we walked through the hallway and I glanced at the walls, nothing had changed. Everyone had hit the same brick wall we had. Carrick sighed and his grin disappeared.

  “What if this is as close as we get?” he asked, reaching out to smooth a piece of paper against the wall. “The President tried to look into this, with the help of the FBI. We’re just...us.”

  I put my hand on his. “We’ll do it. We’ll figure it out.” But it didn’t sound convincing, even to me. He turned to me and I saw the stress that had been missing all day come flooding back. And beneath it, something I didn’t fully understand. Something worse, something that chilled me to my core.

  That moment on the beach had laid a lot of things to rest, reassured me about stuff I hadn’t even realized I’d been nervous about. Now I needed to make him feel better. I took his hand and led the way up the stairs.

  In our bedroom, I didn’t turn the light on but I kept the drapes open, too. Bathed in moonlight, breaking for kisses, I slowly stripped him, sliding my hands under his leather cut and pushing it off him, then pulling his t-shirt up over his sculpted abs and kissing my way over each hard ridge as it appeared. By the time I got him topless, he was growling with need. He grabbed my top and almost ripped it getting it off me. My bra followed and then my nipples grazed his naked chest and I went weak, crackling pleasure rolling down through my body.

  We shoved each other’s jeans down our thighs and fell onto the bed in a tangle of legs and denim, racing to see who could get free first. He won and helped me kick mine off my ankles, his eyes lighting up as he saw the flash of copper hair between my thighs. The moon felt like it was right outside our window and, now our eyes had adjusted, it seemed bright as day as he pushed me back on the covers and lowered himself atop me. I moaned as he slid smoothly into me, drawing up my legs and wrapping them around him. He captured my hands, our fingers knitting as he began to thrust.

  For the next hour, neither of us thought about anything but each other. It was slow and smooth, his firm ass flexing as he drove into me again and again. Then it was intense and urgent, me riding him, our eyes locked on each other’s as the sounds of our pants filled the room and the spiraling pleasure whipped us to go faster and faster. And finally it was primal and savage, him behind me as I knelt, back arched and cheek pressed against the bed sheets, our cries rising together to a peak.

  When it was over, he drew me on top of him and we lay there, sated and exhausted. After a while, he dropped off to sleep. I nearly followed...but then I saw the frown creasing his forehead. The sex had been a temporary escape but now the stress was back.

  It was so frustrating. Whatever history he’d finally buried with Sean that morning, it had made him happy. If that part of him could be healed, it meant that the much bigger wound, the one he’d suffered when Bradan was ripped from him, could be healed too...if we could only find him.

  And then I took a closer look at his face, at the deep lines of worry and pain. This was more than just frustration at being stuck. Much more. I frowned, turning it over and over in my mind. When I finally figured it out, my stomach seemed to drop through the floor.

  All these years: the time Carrick had spent in Chicago, the years he’d ridden with the MC... knowing Bradan was out there had been driving him crazy with guilt but at least he’d had hope. If we gave it our best shot and still couldn’t find him, that hope would be gone. And that would freakin’ destroy him. He wouldn’t just not be healed. He’d never be the same again.

  Something new stirred inside me, a steely determination. I had to do something.

  I slid out of bed, pulled on my clothes and padded barefoot down to the hallway. Then I sat cross-legged on the floor, staring up at the paper-covered walls.

  Carrick was right: we’d hit a brick wall. We had all the information from Calahan but, just like him, we couldn’t figure out how to put it together. It just didn’t make any sense. The cult felt like a smooth glass sphere in my mind: the harder I gripped it, the more it slid through my fingers. And I knew part of the problem was me. This stuff was all about people: manipulating them, controlling them. It was precisely the sort of thing I didn’t understand. What hope did I have?

/>   It started as a feeling, a distant drumbeat I could easily crush. We’ve failed. But the longer I sat there, the louder it got. We’ve failed. We’ve failed. I started to feel nauseous, then full on sick. We were going to have to give up, go back to Haywood Falls and accept that the cult had won. And that would crush the brothers forever.

  Tears filled my eyes and I blinked them away. Why am I so stupid? Why can’t I understand this stuff? Carrick had done so much for me, saved my life again and again. All I wanted was to do this one thing for him. The pages blurred in front of me, becoming one amorphous white blob. I wanted to scream and rage but I hugged my knees instead, trying to choke down the sobs so that I didn’t wake anyone—

  And then, as I stared at the blurred, swimming scene, I saw something. Felt it, more than saw it. That same feeling I got in New York when we looked up at the skyscrapers and everyone else saw glass and smoothness and beauty but I saw lift shafts and air conditioning ducts and support beams.

  With my tears smoothing away the surface stuff I didn’t understand, I could see...not a shape, not yet, but the hint that a shape was there. I blinked and it was gone again. But I was sure it had been there.

  I stood up and turned in a slow circle, looking at the mass of information. I didn’t understand people, or psychology, or any of that stuff. But underneath it all, the cult still had to work. And that made it a system. And a system was a machine.

  I thought for a while, wiped my eyes, and padded up the stairs. I softly opened the door to Louise’s room and crept over to the bed. She was lying half on top of Sean, her long copper hair gleaming in the moonlight. I hesitated, not wanting to wake her. But then I saw her twitch in her sleep, and she was mumbling. A nightmare?

  I crept closer and put a hand on her shoulder, intending to shake her awake. But as soon as I touched her, she sat bolt upright. “Mom?” she asked, her voice terrified.

  We stared at each other. My mouth worked for a second without speaking: I didn’t know how to cope with this. Louise was so organized, so mature, but in that second she’d sounded like a scared little girl. I threw my arms around her and she clutched me back even harder. She was sweating and shaking. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s okay. Just a dream.”

  Her breathing gradually slowed. Eventually, she moved back, then slid out of bed and led me over to the doorway so we could talk without waking Sean. “Thanks for waking me,” she said. Her voice was still ragged with fear. Whatever she’d been dreaming, it had been bad. Was she ill? I only ever got nightmares that intense when I was running a fever. And twice that week, I’d heard her being sick in the bathroom. “Did I call out and wake you?” she asked. “Is that why you came in?”

  I shook my head. “No. I needed to ask you for wool.”

  Louise stared at me as if wondering if she’d misheard. “Wool?”

  “Wool.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  I flushed. “Yes. Sorry. It’s an emergency.”

  Anyone else would have told me where to go. But Louise stumbled sleepily downstairs and started rooting through drawers. “I do have some...I had some crazy idea of knitting something for Sean but I never even got started. Ah, here it is.” She handed me a whole bunch of balls of yarn, in different colors.

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem.” She yawned. “Happy knitting.”

  I waited until she’d gone back upstairs. Then I took a deep breath...and began.

  22

  Aedan

  She was so...small.

  It wasn’t often I got to look at her like this. As soon as she realized I was looking at her, she’d ask me what was up, or she’d come over to me, put her hands on my chest, and it would turn into kissing. But now, as she lay there on the bed asleep, sunlight streaming through the window to soak her body in gold, I could just enjoy looking at her.

  She lay on her back, utterly trusting, one arm up above her head and the other out to her side. She looked so fragile, so vulnerable...it reminded me of the first time I’d ever set eyes on her, in The Pit: I’d thought she was fragile then, too. Then I’d learned just how tough she was on the inside. And now I stood there next to the bed, my muscled, scarred body hulking over her. Beauty and the beast.

  I silently crouched down, still watching, my face only a foot from her sleeping one. I’d woken early. Something about California agreed with me: the climate, definitely, but it was more than that. It felt as if there was space to breathe, here. We both had more energy, waking refreshed in a way we never had in Chicago.

  Sylvie’s dark hair was fanned out across the pillow and the tank top she’d slept in had ridden up to expose a slice of smooth skin just above her navel: it was hard to resist the temptation to dive straight back into bed. But I just crouched there, drinking her in. I needed this time. I needed to think.

  I reached carefully under the bed and retrieved the little box I’d hidden there. Popped the top open and looked at the ring. A slender silver band that sort of reminded me of her: slender but strong, graceful and beautiful. And the biggest rock I could afford, gleaming in the morning sunlight and throwing points of light across her sleeping face.

  I’d been meaning to ask her for weeks. But it never felt like the right moment. I’d nearly been ready back in Chicago but then Carrick had showed up. Then I’d been going to do it that night, after we’d sparred, and Kian had shown up. Now we were in LA in a house full of people and….

  And even if I could find the right moment, I didn’t know what to say. I’ve never been good with words. Carrick might be gruff but even he’s better at that stuff than me. The others used to give me hell, in school, because I couldn’t even mumble my way through a chat-up line. How the hell was I going to ask a girl to marry me?

  I loved her. It hurt, actually ached when we were apart. She was the strongest, kindest, most beautiful woman I’d ever met. I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. But what if she wasn’t ready? What if I scared her away? What if she says no?

  She mumbled in her sleep and opened her eyes. Just in time, I jammed the box back under the bed and stood up, then leaned down and kissed her. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “Sleep a little longer. I’ll hit the shower first.”

  I showered and dressed, gave her another kiss and started down the stairs.

  And stopped.

  Alien spiders had come in during the night, trailing colored strands from the bodies, and woven an intricate network that covered the entire hallway. The walls were covered in firework-like spray patterns that connected and shot out again in new colors. Some strands spanned the room, stabbing out diagonally from knee height right up to head height, while others formed tight little patterns you had to get right up close to, in order to make them out. I stood there for long minutes, staring so intently that I barely noticed when Carrick and Sean stacked up behind me.

  Together, we walked slowly down the stairs and plunged into the dense mesh of threads. Crossing the hallway was like trying to negotiate one of those rooms full of lasers you see in heist movies. We climbed, ducked and side-stepped our way to the tree in the middle of the room. Annabelle was sitting astride a branch at head height.

  “What did you do?” asked Carrick, looking up at her, awestruck.

  “Red is influence,” said Annabelle. “Yellow is logistics. Blue is recruitment. Purple is links to front companies. And the garden twine is communications." She glanced at Louise, who’d just appeared at the top of the stairs. "Sorry, I had to raid your gardening supplies. I ran out of colors."

  “You mapped the cult!” breathed Carrick.

  Annabelle looked down at us. "It isn't a cult."

  23

  Louise

  My mind couldn't grasp it, at first. I was still half-asleep and the image of my mom from my nightmare was still there every time I closed my eyes, smiling at me just before she and my dad got into their car, the last time I ever saw them alive. What if that happens to me? What if I have the baby and then�
��. The baby and Kayley would be left on their own. Even without that kind of disaster, I wasn’t sure I could be a mom. Sure, I'd just about coped with Kayley—although I was far from perfect—but she was already twelve when I'd taken over, already shaped into a great kid by our parents. A baby was a blank slate and utterly dependent on me. What if I messed it all up? And how the hell would Sean feel about it all? He'd already welcomed Kayley, becoming like a big brother to her, but he hadn't asked for this. I needed to tell him but I still hadn't found the right moment. With the house so full all the time, there was precious little time alone...or maybe I was just making excuses.

  So it took me a few seconds, after hearing Annabelle say it isn't a cult, to say, "What?!"

  “It isn't a cult,” repeated Annabelle.

  There was silence. Kian had appeared at the top of the stairs just in time to hear her and I could see him exchanging glances with Sean, Aedan and Carrick, trying to figure out a way to tell Annabelle she was wrong. I mean, they'd seen the cult up close, they'd seen what it did to their mom.

  “I know it looks like a cult,” said Annabelle. “But that's the trick. That's what you're meant to think.” She jumped down from her branch. “The techniques they use are straight out of a cult: the close-knit groups of followers, the use of drugs, the isolating of people from their families. But that made everyone assume that it was structured like a cult, too. All of us—Calahan, too—we’ve all been trying to work upwards. That’s how you always break these things open. In a cult, you’d find the priests and they’d lead you to the high priests and they’d lead you to the overall leader.” She turned to face Sean. “Or in a drugs network, the street dealers would lead you to the mid-level dealers who would lead you to the kingpin. Right?”

  Sean nodded.

  Kian had his phone up and was panning it across the scene. “You getting this?” he said, and I realized he was talking to Emily in DC.