by Sara Reinke
This is her home, he realized. I must have blacked out in the woods and she brought me here. Bewildered and suspicious, he frowned. Why in the hell would she do that?
“I’ll see,” Naima murmured, and he raised his head, looking over the half-wall, watching as she crossed the living room. Balancing the phone between her shoulder and ear, she pulled a sliding door open and stepped out onto an exterior deck. Through the glass, he watched her stand with her back to him, leaning over the railing, crossing her legs at the ankles in a comfortable posture as her breath plumed in a light haze from her mouth.
Seizing his chance, Aaron started down the stairs, his feet falling lightly, rapidly on the risers. Once he reached the bottom, he again cut his gaze in a wide circumference, trying to get his bearings. To his right, the open living room. To his left, a small kitchen separated only by a breakfast bar, and a door left enough ajar to reveal a bathroom beyond. Straight ahead was another door—this one leading outside.
With a wary glance to make sure Naima remained on the deck, her back in his direction, Aaron slipped into the kitchen. A butcher block rested on the counter beside the sink; from this, he drew a slim, six-inch boning knife. It didn’t have much by way of heft to it, he considered as he curled his fingers around the hilt, but it was better than nothing.
With the knife in hand, he turned, creeping back to the front door. Just as he reached for the knob, however, Naima’s voice drew him short.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
He spun, reflexively shifting his grip on the knife so that he held it in a fight-ready position. Abruptly, it whipped out of his grasp, snatched by Naima’s telekinesis and sent sailing across the room, clattering as it hit the stone hearth.
“I wouldn’t do that, either,” she told him from the doorway to her deck.
Aaron’s brows narrowed as he locked eyes with her. That was the key to honing his telepathic blade—focusing on his target—but she must have figured this out, realized what he was doing, because she added loudly, “Or that, either. You scramble my head, you knock out my telepathy. And right now that’s the only thing protecting you.”
“I don’t need your protection,” he assured her drily.
“You don’t think so?” With a smirk and a nod toward the nearest window, she added, “The woods are crawling with Morins. We’ve rallied the troops—cousins, brothers, nieces, nephews—all combing the forest as we speak. The only reason they can’t sense you is me. I’m shielding you from their telepathy.”
He didn’t avert his gaze. “You’re bluffing.”
At that moment, as if on cue, a loud knock fell against the front door. Aaron whirled, eyes wide, and nearly fell onto his ass as he stumbled back. There was a window in the door, covered by a light canvas shade through which he could clearly make out a silhouetted outline—someone standing outside on Naima’s stoop.
“Naima?” a man called, his voice muffled through the door. “It’s Elliott. You in there?”
Aaron glanced at Naima in wide-eyed alarm, and she folded her arms across her chest, her brow arched. “Bluffing, huh?” she said with a smirk. “Go ahead, then. Open the door. Introduce yourself.”
Another knock, louder, sharper and more insistent this time, and Naima said loudly, “Hang on a minute.” Then, to Aaron, “You might want to duck back upstairs.”
He glared at her but in the end, didn’t argue. Splinting his aching ribs with his hand again, he limped toward the stairs. At the top, back in the bedroom loft once more, he dropped to his knees, struggling to catch his breath. Going up had been harder on him than going down, and he realized—to his rue—that if Naima did intend to hand him off to her visitors, he’d have precious little, if any, by means of strength or stamina to prevent her. Between getting hit by Michel’s truck, and then having Mason beat him, Aaron realized it could take weeks to heal, and probably more—and a day or two at least before he’d be anywhere near well enough to do much more than limp around for short distances.
And I don’t have time for that.
He heard Naima unlatch the door from the main floor, and a sudden flurry of overlapping voices as her guests entered. Pressing himself to the floor, he craned his head, trying to see through the slats of the risers. When he caught sight of two men and a woman—the former pair Brethren, the latter a human, judging by both the scents and sensations of them—in the living room below, all carrying rifles, his breath came to an alarmed standstill. He could feel his heart racing in sudden, mounting anxiety, and he hooked his fingers into the glossy polished grain of the floor board beneath him.
He didn’t have a gun. He no longer had a knife. And despite his earlier confidence, he realized now that his telepathy still wouldn’t be worth a shit in a fight—not against one Brethren alone, never mind Naima and the trio downstairs.
Which meant he had no choice but to trust Naima.
And that was the last fucking thing he wanted to do.
***
“Elliott,” Naima exclaimed with a smile that she hoped would allay any suspicions her delay had roused. “Hey, you!”
“Hey, yourself,” Elliott Morin replied, spreading his arms wide as she stepped forward to embrace him. He was dressed in a heavy down-filled parka, with a wool sock cap pulled low over his brow. A few straggling curls, dark auburn like Michel’s, had worked their way loose from beneath the hat at his brow line and above his ears. “It’s good to see you!”
“You, too,” she said, breathless as he gave her a tight, fervent embrace. The youngest son of Michel’s youngest brother Emile, Elliott had been one of Naima’s favorite playmates in childhood. With a headful of red hair and bright blue eyes that had always seemed to glint with an impish delight, he’d been a charismatic orchestrator of all manner of mischievous adventures on the Morin family farm. When she’d been reunited with her kin, the playful boy had grown, as had she, morphing into the tall, strong-jawed man who stood, virtually unchanged, on her doorstep now.
Over his shoulder, just past the stoop, she saw a human woman approaching the house with a young man in his late teens bringing up the rear. “Hi, Kate,” Naima said to the woman. “It’s been too long. Who’s this with you?”
“You remember our grandson, Ethan?” Kate asked, stepping past Elliott for her turn at a hug.
“Ethan? Wow!” Naima said. The boy trailed behind his mother, looking sheepish and somewhat shy. “You’ve grown since the last time I saw you! How old are you now?”
“Fifteen,” Ethan said, speaking apparently to the toes of his hiking boots.
“He’s a sophomore in high school,” Kate said proudly. “And already taller than Elliott.”
Kate was sixty-three years old. She’d met and married Elliott when she’d been in her twenties. They had four children together, now all grown, as well as nine grandchildren including Ethan. She was the third human wife Naima had known Elliott to take in his lifetime and, she suspected, Kate would be the third he would one day, and to his heartache, bury.
“He’s too damn tall,” Elliott said, with feigned grouchiness. “I don’t know what the hell they’re feeding those kids out there in Illinois.”
“Iowa, Grandpa,” Ethan corrected, as this was apparently where he was from.
“Wherever.” Elliott hooked an arm around his neck, playfully tousling his hair, and visibly embarrassing the boy. Then, with a glance at Naima, he said, “So what’s a guy have to do to get invited in out of the cold around here?”
“Oh,” Naima said, managing a clumsy laugh as she stepped out of the doorway. “Of course. Come on in.”
Although Elliott remained one of her favorite kin, and she’d indeed missed his company, she didn’t really want them tromping around inside her house. All three were armed, each wearing high-powered hunting rifles slung across their backs. Aaron was freaked out enough as it was, and she didn’t know what, if anything, he’d do if he felt threatened. But it would be rude for her not to invite them inside—and worse, it would make them suspicio
us.
Just stay upstairs, she thought, keeping her mind shut tight lest Elliott or Ethan telepathically overhear any messages she’d intended for Aaron. God, just sit tight and keep quiet.
“Let me take your coats,” she offered as they walked ahead of her into the living room.
She nearly breathed an audible sigh of relief when Elliott said, “Thanks, but no. We’re out helping search the woods. Saw smoke coming from your chimney and wanted to make sure everything’s copasetic.”
“I thought you’d be out in the woods, too?” Kate remarked with a puzzled smile.
“Yeah—of all people,” Elliott agreed.
Naima went into the kitchen and pulled some mugs down from a cabinet by her sink. “I was out there most of the night,” she said, her voice steady and unflappable. As she filled each of the cups with steaming portions of tea, she added, “I’m exhausted. Thought I’d get in a couple of hours of sleep. Any word on how Michel’s doing?”
“Mason said he’s stable,” Elliott replied, looking grim and murmuring thanks as she offered him a mug. “The bullet missed his heart, but hit his lung, collapsed it. Mason got the slug out, but he said it will take some time before he’s out of the woods. They’ve got him on chest drains right now, and he’s intubated. He hasn’t come to since the surgery. I think they’re keeping him sedated.”
Kate draped her hand lightly against his sleeve. “He’s going to be okay,” she said, but she cut Naima a worried sort of glance that indicated she didn’t share this optimism necessarily in her heart.
“Of course he is,” Elliott said. As a boy, he’d always harbored a sort of hero-worship adulation toward Michel. It was a fondness and admiration that had lasted into adulthood, even to that day. Naima had always supposed that if you’d asked Elliott, he’d have told you Michel could move mountains were he to take the notion.
Elliott took a sip of tea, scalded his lip and winced. As he set the mug down, he said, “They found the son of a bitch’s car—did you know?”
“No. Really? Where?” Naima asked, feigning surprise.
“Just outside the compound, hidden off the main road,” Kate said.
“Which means he’s still out there somewhere,” Elliott cut in. “He can’t have made it far, not on foot, not beat to shit like Mason said he was.”
“How many are out there searching?” Naima asked.
“Let’s see…” Elliott rubbed at his beard with his gloved fingertips, looking thoughtful. “Maybe forty now? I know all of my boys are here, right, Ethan?” He glanced at his grandson, who nodded. Then, with a slight frown, he added, “And all of Michel’s sons—except Phillip, of course. I guess he couldn’t be bothered.”
Centuries earlier, before the fires had driven the Morins into exile, Phillip Morin had been betrothed to Tristan’s mother, Lisette. However, Phillip was not Tristan’s biological father; his now-deceased brother, Arnaud, had been, with Tristan resulting from an ill-advised tryst between Arnaud and Lisette. Even though Lisette had suffered from debilitating illness in the years since Tristan’s birth and had recently died, Phillip had remained pretty much denounced, and then remained incommunicado with, his entire family.
“Arrogant douchebag,” Elliott muttered, trying once again, and with more success this time, to sip his tea.
“The man who did this,” Kate said. “They found a wallet in his car and a driver’s license. It says his name is Brighton, I think.”
“Broughman,” Elliott corrected. “And I don’t care what it says. He’s a Davenant, that’s for damn sure. The stink of his clan’s all over our woods.” With an exaggerated sniff, he added, “You can even smell it in here.”
Naima stiffened, glancing anxiously over her shoulder toward the loft.“Are you staying long?” she asked, hoping both to change the subject, and that the note of polite cheer in her voice didn’t sound as forced to them as it did to her. “Until the bastard’s caught,” Elliott replied, his mouth turned down in a frown. “Speaking of which...thanks for the tea, Naima, but we’d better head back out.”
“So soon?” Naima followed as they shouldered their rifles and headed for the doors.
“Lock up behind us,” Elliott warned. “This guy is dangerous.”
“I can handle myself,” Naima assured with a smile, returning her embrace.
“Save some for the rest of us if you find him first, then,” Elliott said, managing a laugh as he hooked an arm around her neck and hugged her again. “I’ll show you how we clean a buck in the backcountry.”
“You got it,” Naima said, watching as they tromped down from the front stoop and headed back toward the trees. Elliott unslung his rifle and carried it between his hands while Kate draped her hand affectionately against Ethan’s shoulder, walking alongside the boy.
Naima closed the door, then turned the deadbolt home. For a long moment, she stood motionless, feeling a chilly draft creeping through the seams surrounding the door. When she peeked past the shade, her cousin and his wife had vanished from view, disappearing once more into the forest.
“What do you want from me?”
She hadn’t heard Aaron come down the stairs, even though they normally creaked and groaned at even the lightest footsteps. Damn, he’s quiet, she thought, turning to find him standing behind her, leaning heavily against the bannister. Even beat to hell—he’s so damn quiet!
“You…could have turned me over to them,” he said, and his brows narrowed. Not with anger, she realized, but confusion. “You could have let them take me. Why didn’t you?”
At the genuine bewilderment in his face, Naima felt some of her cool façade crumble. “You don’t remember,” she said at length. “Not about me, or the necklace. Not about anything.”
And I don’t understand how that’s possible, she thought in dismay. No matter how much time’s passed, or what your father has done—I can’t believe you’d forget me, Aaron. I could never forget you.
“No,” he said simply, softly. He met her gaze, his blue eyes round and intensely fierce, and she wished she could peer beyond the veil of his telepathic shields to sense what was going on inside his mind, what he was thinking. “But you do, don’t you? You remember it all.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Someone meant for me to find this woman, Aaron thought. Whoever left that necklace outside my door—they wanted me to remember. Maybe they even knew I’d find her somehow, that she could tell me about my past.
As for who might have done Aaron this seeming favor, he had no idea. Although his list of associates was pretty extensive—he did a lot of work on behalf of both his father and Lamar’s business interests throughout the world—he could count on one hand the number of people who knew about his amnesia. And even then, he’d have fingers to spare when he was finished.
It couldn’t have been his father. On the one occasion Aaron had ever dared to ask Lamar about his past, his father had erupted in violent, furious response. “What difference does it make?” he’d snapped. And then, because he was far too frail to lift his hand against Aaron, never mind his lash, he’d ordered Aaron to punish himself—to use a mallet to smash each of the fingers of his right hand—his dominant hand—in turn, shattering each.
Julien? Aaron wondered—his first guess, in fact, even though it made no sense. Julien knew about Aaron’s past. He’d told him about it, bits and pieces anyway, over the years. Yet he’d also tried diligently to deflect Aaron’s most persistent attempts to pry more information out of him.
“Why do you want to bother with that?” he’d asked. “I keep telling you. There’s nothing for it. And besides, your lost memories make up…what? One-tenth of your life so far? Even less? It’s a drop in the bucket, Az—not even worth remembering. Think of everything that’s happened—all you’ve accomplished—that you can recall.”
Julien might have recognized the Saint Christopher’s medal as having belonged to their mother, but that would have been it; even if what Naima said was true, Julien couldn’t have known.
“The necklace,” he said to Naima. “Tell me what you know about it.”
“I told you—you gave it to me.”
He nodded, frowning. “Yes, I know. Tell me more.”
“I haven’t seen it since the night you gave it to me—the night of the fires,” Naima said, drawing his gaze. “I dropped it by accident. I thought it was lost forever.”
“Fires?”
“Your father set them. He and your brothers, some of the other men from different clans. They burned down my grandfather’s great house. They were trying to kill my family.”
Something about this made his skin suddenly crawl. “When did you say this happened?”
“In 1815,” she said. “On October twelfth.”
Again, an icy shiver stole through him. That had been the date of his accident, when he’d fractured his skull. It had also had been his mother’s birthday. He thought of the memory he’d rediscovered upon receiving the Saint Christopher’s medal—the birthday party, her face flushed with delight as she’d handed him the necklace.
The clasp doesn’t work… Be a dear and put it in your fob, won’t you?
Had it been the same October twelfth that Naima was talking about? He remembered something his mother had told him when she’d come upon him in the crowd of partygoers: Here’s one of you at least! Your father and brothers have all seemed to vanish into the woodwork!
“Did I go somewhere on horseback?” he asked. “That night—October twelfth, 1815. I fell off my horse, hit my head. I can’t remember anything before that night. Do you remember what happened? How I fell?”
She looked at him, her brows lifted with pity he damn sure neither wanted nor needed. “No,” she said. “I don’t know anything about that.”
