Brothers

by Helena Newbury

  When I moved gently back, he tried to speak. That’s when he realized he had an oxygen mask on his face. But I strained my ears and managed to translate the mumbling. “Yes,” I told him firmly. “Everyone’s okay.”

  I filled him in, piecing it together from what the others had told me when I arrived. How his brothers had carried him out of the mansion and stolen a couple of cars to bring him here, the nearest hospital with a trauma unit. How the cops and the FBI were now swarming over the town, freed at last from Pryce’s interference in their investigations. The cult’s greatest strength—that its members were absolutely loyal—had turned out to be its greatest weakness. Without orders, the members who’d wormed their way into law enforcement and the government had gone dormant.

  By the time Louise called me, I was already on my way aboard Air Force One, unable to wait any longer without news. I’d arrived to find Kian still in surgery and I’d been sitting by his bedside, his hand clasped in mine, for three hours since it finished.

  “Laptop,” whispered Kian.

  I blinked at him. “Laptop?”

  Kian licked his lips. “Pryce had a laptop. Important.”

  I nodded. “I’ll tell the cops to keep a look out for it.”

  Finally, reluctantly, after checking on everything else, he croaked, “How am I?”

  I sighed. “The bullet pierced a lung and you lost a lot of blood.” I ran a hand through his hair. “But you’ll live. Don’t ever scare me like that again!”

  He mumbled something else.

  “What?” I leaned closer.

  “Take this damn thing off me,” he croaked.

  I looked over my shoulder to see if the doctor was coming, but he wasn’t. “Just for a second,” I warned. I stretched the elastic straps and lifted the oxygen mask off, the quiet room filling with the sound of its faint hiss.

  “Come here,” he told me. And grabbed the front of my blouse.

  I didn’t need telling twice. My eyes fluttered closed, my lips parted and I kissed him.

  65

  Louise

  I clutched Sean’s hand as Annabelle gently opened Kian’s door and stuck her head round. We’d thought we heard voices from inside and needed an update.

  Annabelle pulled her head back. “He’s awake!” she whispered. “Talking. Kissing.” She poked her head around the door again for another look. Then she pulled it quickly back and closed the door, her cheeks flushing. “He’s definitely okay.”

  We all relaxed...including Miller, Jack and the rest of Emily’s Secret Service detail. They were antsy enough, having one of their charges shot, never mind that they had to share the hallway with the guy who shot him.

  Everyone else seemed to be okay. Sean and the other men had more bruises from all the fighting than I wanted to count and Annabelle had picked up a few from when the Mustang had gone through the window, but otherwise we were fine. And it was over.

  I was sitting on Sean’s lap, his arms around my waist and crossed protectively over my stomach: protecting me and the baby. His chin was resting on the top of my head and he kept leaning down to kiss the top of my head. Carrick was standing alongside Annabelle, his arm snugging her to him, their sides pressed so close from ankle to shoulder that not ever a sliver of wall showed between them. Sylvie and Aedan were sitting cuddled on a couple of chairs, his arms around her and her feet drawn up so that she could nestle sideways into his chest. Alec strolled off down the hallway to call his girlfriend, Jessica, back in Chicago, and tell her the good news.

  That only left Bradan standing on his own. His head was down and he seemed to be lost in his thoughts. We were only now starting to get a sense of what he’d endured, since his mom took him off in the car that day. He’d been lied to, turned into a killer and had his memories sealed away from him. He’d missed out on an entire life. Everything, since being a kid, had been about training, being loyal, protecting the cult. While we’d been waiting for Kian to wake up, I’d thought out loud about getting something to eat and then asked what sort of food he liked.

  He didn’t know. Food was fuel, to him. He ate in whatever restaurant his target was eating in.

  He hadn’t lived...or loved. How do you even go about healing that?

  The doors at the end of the hallway burst open and Kayley came running in, followed by Stacey. I’d called them a few hours ago, when the cops swept into the town and we started trying to explain everything that had happened. I knew that all of us were going to be giving statements for a long, long time and I wanted to give Kayley a hug while I could.

  I jumped up, swept Kayley into my arms and spun around with her. “Tell me it’s over,” whispered Kayley in my ear.

  I squeezed her tight. “It’s over.”

  Sean came up behind me and hugged both of us, then pressed his cheek to mine. Our weird, wonderful little family...soon to be one larger. We stood like that for a long time before I finally remembered I hadn’t even spoken to Stacey, yet, and that I should thank her for taking care of Kayley.

  But when I turned to my friend, she was staring off across the room, her lips parted and an expression I’d never seen before on her face. Stacey, the unstoppable, hyper-organized, empire-building businesswoman, had been...stopped. Her pupils were huge, her cheeks flushed and there was a look of confusion on her face, as if she didn’t quite understand what was happening to her.

  I frowned and turned to follow her gaze. And saw Bradan, leaning against the wall. He’d lifted his head and was looking right at her.

  Epilogue

  Six Weeks Later

  * * *

  Kian

  * * *

  It was the day before the wedding. I was sitting in the long grass—the part of the garden we affectionately called the meadow. Emily was by my side, her head resting on my shoulder. We were watching Aedan’s gull fly in lazy circles around the house, descending each time I threw him a scrap. We’d shipped him here by road, having to pay the pet-moving company extra due to the immense size of the thing. They’d had to use the cage normally reserved for things like buzzards and eagles. So far, the gull seemed just as happy here as it had in Chicago, as long as there were plenty of scraps available. If there weren’t, he’d already learned to voice his disapproval by rapping his beak on our window.

  Aedan and Sylvie had made the decision to move to LA after shuttling back and forth while planning the wedding and finding more and more to keep them in California and less and less to keep them on the East Coast. Both of them had told us how Chicago had never really felt like home and they were in love with the warmer weather. There were gyms and fighting circuits everywhere, so they could easily get jobs out here.

  Sylvie had become firm friends with Louise and Annabelle and Emily and I visited regularly. Aedan got to see his brothers: including Bradan, who for now was living in one of Sean and Louise’s spare rooms. Aedan and Sylvie had moved into the house as well, although their plan was to look for a place of their own close by, once they got settled. With the baby on the way, Louise and Sean were glad of a little extra rent money, so it all worked out pretty well. Alec had chosen to stay in Chicago and was moving in with Jessica: after years of living with his sister, it was about time he had his own space.

  And me? I’d taken some advice from the smartest woman I knew. A woman I intended to make my wife, at some point in the not-too distant future. I’d retired my suit, apart from when I really needed it for a White House function. I’d let my stubble grow back. And now that I’d figured out what Emily needed me to be—me—I’d started to think about what I wanted to do with my time.

  “I’ve been talking to Miller,” I told Emily. “There are opportunities available. Private security.”

  Emily looked worried. “Like Rexortech, Kerrigan’s company? Military contractors?”

  I shook my head firmly. “No. The opposite of Rexortech. Just a small group of people, former military. We’d do things the government can’t do, or isn’t allowed to do.”

  “
Sounds shady,” she said. But she was smiling.

  “I’d be in charge of it,” I told her. “I’d choose the jobs. I’d make sure we were on the right side, working for the right people. We’d be the good guys. Or not the bad guys, at least.”

  She thought about it. “Okay,” she said slowly.

  Now came the difficult part. “I’d be organizing...mostly. But I couldn’t promise...I mean….”

  “It might sometimes be dangerous?” she asked quietly.

  I hesitated. But I couldn’t lie to her. I nodded.

  She looked away, staring out over the city. We sat in silence for a few minutes while I tried to put it into words. Then with a sigh, I said, “I just need to be doing something, you know? What Annabelle and Carrick went through with that Volos guy. And Kerrigan. And that fight promoter Aedan had to deal with, Rick. The human trafficker the Sisters of Invidia are chasing. The cult. There are too many bad guys, not enough good.”

  I leaned forward until I could see her eyes. Dammit! They were huge and scared, exactly what I’d wanted to avoid. I gently took her chin between my finger and thumb and turned her head so she was looking at me. “But,” I said. “If you don’t want me to do it...I understand.”

  She put a hand on my chest then silently ran it down over the place where I was shot. I was healing well, but it would be a while before I was running any marathons and I’d carry the scar for the rest of my life. “You could get hurt,” she said. “Or worse.”

  I wasn’t going to bullshit her. She deserved better than that. “Yeah. I’ll try my best. But yeah.”

  She thought about it for a long time. “It’ll mostly be desk work?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “And you’ll have good people watching your back?”

  “The best,” I said with feeling.

  She took a deep breath. “Then do it,” she said, nodding to herself. She turned to me. “It scares the hell out of me. But seeing you change into something that isn’t you, watching you die inside while you go to another cocktail party...that scares me, too. And knowing those people are out there without people like you to stop them...that scares me even more.”

  I leaned forward and brushed her soft, mahogany hair back from her cheek. God, I loved this woman. “Thank you,” I whispered. And kissed her deep and true.

  We were still kissing when a black Mercedes pulled into the drive. “She’s here,” I said, getting to my feet. “Come on. She’s here for Bradan but I want to be there to back him up.”

  * * *

  Bradan

  I don’t know what I expected the head of the CIA’s Special Activities Division to be like. But Roberta Geiss wasn’t it. She was a small woman in her early fifties with a voice that was both soft and firm, and she seemed to have zero capacity for bullshit.

  She, Kian, Emily, Stacey and I were sitting in the newly-refurbished living room. Roberta had requested it be just me for this debriefing but I’d insisted they be there. I was still too new to this world: I still thought of it as Outside. I needed their experience. Especially Stacey.

  Louise’s best friend had been crucial in helping me to adjust. She’d taken me shopping, to a movie, to the beach...all the fun things I’d missed out on. The cult had taken so much of my life that normalizing me was a huge job, but Stacey’s organizational abilities were legendary. She introduced me to new foods each day, compiled lists of TV I should watch and books I should read and was even talking about helping me to find a job.

  I had no idea why she was helping me but I was grateful. And I loved being around her. Right from the first moment I’d seen her at the hospital, there was something about her that fascinated me. All that ambitious energy, everything so sleek and efficient, from her glossy black hair to the glimpses of long, elegant legs beneath her skirt. She’d shared with me that men found her success intimidating. I couldn’t understand that at all: I thought she was incredible. Sometimes, she’d look at me just so, a smile that was half excited, half nervous, touching her lips, and it was all I could do to stop myself pouncing on her. I didn’t want to start something: I knew I was still messed up. But resisting got harder with every moment I spent with her.

  “Leonard Paul Mackenzie,” said Roberta, tossing a large black and white photo on the table.

  I stared down at a younger version of Mr. Pryce. The man I’d called dad for so many years.

  “He was CIA?” asked Kian at last.

  “Back in the seventies, he was program manager on something we called Songbird.” Roberta looked uncomfortable. “It was researching the use of hypnotic drugs and religious indoctrination techniques to recruit field agents.”

  “The CIA wanted to create its own cult,” said Kian coldly.

  “We did a lot of things back then that I’m not proud of,” said Roberta. “It was long before my time. It was shut down long before my time. Mackenzie quit. A few years later….” She trailed off.

  “A few years later what?” I asked savagely. I could hear the Irish in my voice. The accent the cult had suppressed was gradually coming back.

  She sighed. “There were rumors. Just rumors—”

  “You knew?” Kian looked like he was ready to explode.

  “No!” Roberta shook her head. “I don’t know. Look, I’m trying to piece this thing together, just like you. We’re talking about things that happened decades ago, CIA staff who have long since retired. But yes, I think that back in the eighties, during the Cold War, there were some people who remembered Mackenzie, and they heard about this new cult that was around and...it’s possible that they guessed what was going on.” She swallowed. “It’s possible that they even protected him, a little. Thought that he might create an asset they could later control.” She glanced between us guiltily. “Look, this was the eighties, we were desperate for any edge over the Russians and there was a lot of loyalty between the old guard. They weren’t going to turn him in. Then, later, when the cult grew more powerful, those people started getting scared. It was too big to control, by then, and they started getting worried they’d be held responsible, so they covered it up. And by then the CIA was compromised: the cult had started to turn some of our people.”

  “What about now?” I asked.

  She looked at me levelly. “Truthfully? I don’t know. We’re interviewing everyone, trying to clean house. Taking out Mackenzie threw a big, big spanner in the works: the members are operating on their own, now, without orders. That means it’s harder for them to cover things up or derail investigations. People aren’t scared for their lives anymore if they look into the cult. But these people aren’t robots. They’ll still protect themselves and try to cover their tracks. You stopped the machine working for now, but we can’t guarantee we’ve dismantled every piece...or even most pieces.”

  “What do you mean, for now?” I asked.

  Kian sighed and rubbed his stubbled cheek. “The laptop,” he said bitterly.

  Roberta nodded. “Kian had a theory that that’s how Mackenzie was sending out the orders. Could be email, social media, something else...doesn’t matter. If he’s right, that laptop is like the magic sword that makes the holder king. Whoever has it controls the cult.”

  “Mackenzie—Pryce—he said something, when we first met him,” Kian told me. “He talked about the ones who’ll come after me. I think he wanted the cult to outlive him: Aeternus means everlasting. He was going to pass the laptop onto a successor.”

  “And now we can’t find it,” said Roberta. “We’ve searched every inch of the town. Now it may just be that he stored it in some secret safe, somewhere we haven’t found. But it could be that he had some sort of emergency plan in place. It could be that he had someone with standing orders to spirit that laptop away and pass it on to someone, if anything ever happened to him. And if that happens...the cult’s taken a body blow but it’s not dead. Most of the members are still in place, waiting for orders. And we still don’t know what Pryce was working towards. He saw it as bringing order but we do
n’t know what world he was trying to create.”

  Kian let out a despairing sigh. “Goddammit!”

  “Hey, go easy on yourself,” Roberta told him. “It’s only a theory. The laptop could still show up, safe and sound. And even if it doesn’t, you’ve crippled them. They sure as hell won’t be coming after your family again, and you got your brother back. You freed hundreds of people in that town: we have psychologists working with the police now to rehabilitate all of them. It’s going to be chaos for months: no one’s ever had to deal with anything on this scale before, but we’ll get it done.”

  “I assume the CIA’s involvement isn’t going to make the news,” said Stacey darkly.

  “We’re trying to fix things set in motion by a CIA that no longer exists,” Roberta told her. “Having people mistrust today’s CIA isn’t going to help. But people do know that the town was at the center of a dangerous cult. If they do try to start up again, they won’t be able to recruit as openly. They’ll have to go underground.”

  “That could make them even more dangerous,” muttered Kian.

  “All the more reason to help us,” Roberta said smoothly, turning to me.

  I nodded reluctantly. “What do you want?”

  Roberta leaned forward. “Come to Langley,” she said urgently. “You’ve spent more time in the cult and you were closer to Pryce than anyone. You understand its workings. Let us fully debrief you: give us every detail.”