Brain

by Candace Blevins

  They let me stay with her while they asked questions and prepped her, and then I was sent off to a room to wait. The doctor told me he expected surgery to take from three to five hours, and then I could sit with her in recovery while she awakened. They’d keep her a few hours to be sure she was stable, and then I could take her home. A nurse would follow us, and stay with us a few days.

  My wolf hated the way this place smelled, but I soothed him without pushing him down, because with his help I could smell Ice, or rather, Harmony, and it comforted me. I could also hear the doctor and nurses, if I listened carefully. I’d planned to spend the time working on my laptop, but instead I focused on what was being said in the surgery suite. At first, their casual conversation about who was dating who, and where they’d gone the night before, as the surgeon asked for scalpels, clamps, and the like bothered me, but at some point I realized this was a normal day for them. Granted, he likely did most of his surgeries in the hospital and not his office, but still, this was his day job.

  I closed my eyes, rested my head on the wall behind my chair, and listened as they started with her chin and worked their way up her face.

  When I was finally taken to her, she looked as if she’d been through ten rounds of a boxing match. My research had prepared me for it, and the doctor let me know the bruising and swelling were normal, but my wolf still wanted to eat the man for doing this to our Buttercup. Our Harmony. I really needed to start thinking of her by her new name.

  She looked nothing like Ice, though she still smelled like her, but the anesthesia made her smell wrong. However, she was still the same Ice I’d chased and caught, fallen for, and finally found again.

  The nurse in recovery introduced herself to me, told me she’d be coming home with us, and said, “I’m told she’s purchased a recliner, which is what she’ll be sleeping in for at least a week. Can I trust you won’t try to convince her to come to bed?”

  I nodded. “She needs her head above her heart, and has to make sure she doesn’t roll to her side or stomach, right?”

  The nurse nodded and I told her, “I’ll likely sleep on the sofa so I can be near her.”

  * * * *

  Harmony slept most of the first two days. She’d awaken long enough to eat something and watch ten or fifteen minutes of a movie, and then fall back to sleep. The nurse decided I was capable of taking care of her and left the third morning after breakfast, saying she’d be back once a day for a check in until it was time to remove the stitches.

  On the fourth day, my Buttercup got cabin fever. We sat outside in the shade a while, and walked around in the yard until the nurse pulled up, asked how long she’d been up and walking, and informed us her patient needed to come inside and sit a while.

  During this time, I touched and handled her in a non-sexual way as often as I could. I gave her foot massages, and I helped her take baths so the shower spray didn’t hit her face.

  No one had my phone number, but I was checking my email, and on day six, Bud sent an email saying they needed me, and asked me to call in, but I didn’t. I’d let him know I’d be out of pocket for up to two months. I’d paid my dues and taken care of everything they needed before I’d left, and gotten the all clear to disappear a while. So, no — I didn’t respond to his email.

  On the seventh day, Gen emailed me with, “We need you, Brain. Please contact me or Bud.”

  “Stay in your recliner,” I told Harmony, as I situated so there were no windows behind me, and nothing else to give away my location, went through some proxies, and called Gen via a secure video chat.

  Gen answered without video, and I heard, “Hang on a sec, Brain. I’m driving, let me get pulled over.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “No.”

  Twenty seconds later, her face came onto the screen. She was sitting in her car, a lot of woods around her.

  “Duke, Bash, Tank, and a few of the new guys are in a jail in Helen, GA. Another MC decided to road trip at the same time, both clubs ended up at the same bar, and things got out of hand. Several members of the other MC are in the hospital.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Night before last. The judge denied bail, but we have another hearing scheduled for tomorrow. I’ve paid the bar owner for damages, and then some, and he’s dropping charges, but the police aren’t. I was there and I saw what happened. The other MC attacked first, our guys started out just defending themselves, but then guns and knives came out, and you know how protective Duke gets of me, plus we had Eric with us without Kendra, and our guys kind of went crazy. I know there’s video, I saw the cameras, but we haven’t been able to get a copy. It should prove our guys acted in self-defense, but then towards the end it might show they went beyond the scope of a self-defense argument.”

  “So, if the end of the video were to disappear, and the beginning were to be leaked to the media…”

  “Right, but how could… wait, are you saying you’ll help?”

  I sighed, looked at the ceiling, and said, “I’m saying I’ll see what I can do from here. Not making any promises, and I’m not coming home. I’m assuming you and Eric are both okay?”

  “Yes. All the humans are fine.”

  I glanced at Harmony, noted she took in the language, and looked back to my laptop. “Good. I don’t want anyone to know where I am, so if you need me, send me an email. No voice or video communication unless we’re using Drake’s encryption app, though.”

  “I know the drill, Brain, and it’s good to see you again. I miss you.”

  “I miss you too, Duchess. Where are you staying?”

  “I’m still in Helen. My assistant is doing what he can to hold things together at home, but I’m working with the attorneys here to try to get Duke and the guys released.”

  “You have protection?”

  “I have my Sig, if that’s what you’re asking. Gonzo was with me until this morning, and he headed back to help hold down the fort in Chattanooga. Dawg is shadowing me today, and Paco is here. I bought Paco a suit since he didn’t have one with him, and he’s been going into meetings with me while Dawg keeps an eye on things from the outside. We can’t be armed when we go in the jail or the courthouse, or pretty much any of the attorney offices, so it works to leave someone outside.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief, as I knew Dawg and Paco would keep her safe. “Okay, Duchess. Give me some time and I’ll get back with you. Might take me a few hours, might be sometime tomorrow. Meanwhile, if anything changes, send me an email. I’m not keeping the app on, so you won’t be able to call me this way.”

  Her face showed a lot of emotion, even for Gen, and she said, “Thanks, Brain. I won’t push you to reconcile with Duke, because I don’t want you to stop talking to me, but you have to know it breaks my heart for the two of you to be at odds. He’d do just about anything to make it up to you.”

  “Goodbye, Duchess. Take care of yourself, and watch your back.”

  I disconnected and looked to Harmony. “Want to help me hack into the Helen, Georgia Police Department, and probably also the White County Sheriff’s Department?”

  “You just happen to know what county Helen is in?”

  I grinned. “Not the first time we’ve had people get arrested there. It’s a nice little town, makes for a good road trip through the mountains on bikes.”

  “If she’s human, what does that make Duke?”

  “Can I ask you to give me another week, and trust me to answer your questions, then?” I couldn’t tell her what Duke is, but once I told her what I am, she’d figure the rest out.

  Her smell wasn’t fear, exactly, but wasn’t far from it, so I added, “You have to know I’ll use whatever superpowers I have to protect you, and would never hurt you with them, right?”

  She shook her head and gave me a smile, winced a little as it pulled sore skin and muscles, and told me, “I have a back door into the Atlanta PD, which gives me side entry into Fulton, Cobb, Gwinnett, and a handful of other c
ounties. Let’s start there, see if White County is patched into their network.”

  She talked as she worked to set up the proxies so she’d stay hidden, and told me, “Detective Appian has a real hard-on for ya’ll. He’s convinced you’re werewolves, and almost lost his badge over trying to prove it. Now, he’s backed off on claiming you’re mythological creatures, but he collects every bit of evidence on the RTMC he can. He has someone in Vegas who sends him every video and file on the RTMC out there, and I’m sure he’s probably working to get the most recent fight video, and may already have it. I’ll check his files, first.” She glanced up, met my gaze a second, and looked back to her laptop monitor. “You’re wanting to release the first part of the video, if you think it’ll put public opinion on the RTMC’s side, aren’t you?”

  “I need to see the video, but yeah, that was my first thought.”

  I made a mental note to let Abbott know about Detective Appian. Humans on a mission needed to be handled before they found proof of us. Abbott was the Master Vampire of the area, and also kind of the top dog of every supernatural in the surrounding four or five states. I didn’t owe him my loyalty or fealty, but I respected him, and knew he’d handle the situation in the most humane way possible.

  “Bingo!” she said with a little happy shake. “I’m gonna copy it to a server in Turkey. It’ll mirror to a Russian server, and I have a tunnel already set up to bring stuff in from there.”

  I grinned at her. “You have the sexiest brain on the planet, Buttercup.”

  Ten minutes later, we were watching the video footage, and the other MC guys were total asses, while Duke had been advocating for everyone to back off and chill out, telling the RTMC members to stand down while they tried to work this out. However, when it became apparent a fight was inevitable, the RTMC had wiped the floor with the other club.

  We watched it a dozen times, and I cycled through it slowly, pausing and rewinding to be sure of some specifics. When I finished scrutinizing it, I paced the floor a few times, debating. Finally, I turned to Ice and said, “I’m doing this for the Duchess, so she’ll have Duke back. But I’ll only do it if you’re okay with my helping the Chattanooga RTMC, after the way they treated you.”

  “Honestly, I still have mixed feelings emotionally, but logically, I know I probably got off easy, considering what I did to the club. I don’t think I could stand being in the same room with Gonzo or Bash, but it makes me sad to think you gave up your friendship with Duke because of me. I mean, if you were still friends with him, I’m not sure I could’ve let you in, but at the same time…” She shrugged. “I don’t know, Brain.”

  “Okay. I won’t leave you alone to help them, but while the nurse is here tomorrow, I’d like to drive into the city and take a bus to a coffee shop with free wi-fi. I have access to a business close enough I can use the coffee shop’s wi-fi signal with my external directional antenna. I’ll upload the edited video to YouTube, send mail to a list I’ve gathered over the years of various decision makers at large news organizations, and then hack into the DOJ in Washington and bring it to the right person’s attention there.” I sighed and scratched the back of my neck. “I’ll be using my family ties to put the kibosh on this, because my dad and brother don’t want the RTMC to make the news, as they’re afraid I’ll suddenly come back onto the radar. They’ll quickly jump into motion to get the judge to make the issue go away here, and then pay off the news organizations to keep them from posting it.”

  “Tell me the personal precautions you’ll take?”

  I nodded. “Besides the obvious cyber security stuff, I have a disguise, plus I know how to avoid the cameras in the area. I’ll have my tablet set to fire everything off in a matter of seconds, before scrubbing the files, and then I’ll leave through a back entrance, my tablet in a bag with no evidence of what I’ve done, just in case I’m picked up. I’ll walk a few blocks to a hotel, go in the back, stop in the bar and buy a drink with cash, and then go out the front, and have a taxi take me to a mall, again using cash. I’ll get in my car and take a circuitous route home.” I sighed and added, “I won’t have a cellphone on me at all, so you won’t be able to reach me while I’m gone.”

  “You’ll set up ineffective proxies, so they’ll trace it to the coffee shop, but it’ll take them a while?”

  I nodded and added, “It’s supposed to be sunny tomorrow, so I can get away with sunglasses, and I have a wig so my hair is longer, and a different color. I’ll dress snappy, and with my leather shoulder bag to hold my tablet, all the gay guys will hit on me.”

  She smiled and said, “I can’t wait to see this.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t normally have my disguise with me, but thought it might be necessary to travel with you incognito at some point, so I brought the wig, shirt, shoes, and shoulder bag just in case.”

  “I’ll be okay for a few hours, Brain. Don’t wait for the nurse — figure out the best schedule for when there’ll be the most people in the coffee shop, the busiest time at the mall, when the bus will be packed with people. Is there anything I can do to help plan?”

  “I think I have it under control. Want me to make you a salad?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Harmony

  Brain and the nurse had called me Harmony every other sentence those first couple of days, and Brain was still overusing it, but it was working.

  When I looked in the mirror, the girl I saw was Harmony. I’d bought purple sparkly fingernail polish, and done my toes and fingers with it, and every time I looked at my hands, I told myself these were Harmony Johnson’s hands. Same with my feet.

  “What did your parents and friends call you, when you were growing up?”

  “My parents called me Thurston — no nicknames for them. Sometime in late middle school, someone figured out Thurston originally meant Thor’s Stone, and my friends started calling me Thor.”

  He’d gone on his adventure earlier that morning, and now we were sitting outside in the shade, eating our lunch. He’d bought a huge assed umbrella, and when he used it in conjunction with the shade trees, we felt confident I wasn’t getting sun on my face, which would be bad while it was healing.

  But I’d have gone crazy if I’d had to stay inside two weeks. Going this long without running or working out was bad enough.

  “In a weird sort of way, Thor fits you. I mean, you’re tall, and muscled, and smart.”

  He shrugged. “My dad hated it, which kind of made me embrace it.”

  “Why did you choose Wulff for your hacker name?”

  He eyed me a few seconds and said, “Not time for the conversation yet, Buttercup. The nurse says you can start wearing makeup in another couple of days, let’s see how that goes, and then we’ll set a time for me to tell you my secrets.”

  “Why do we have to set a time?”

  “Let’s say, hypothetically speaking, I’m really one of the famous superheroes, and there’s a club of us. If one of us is found out, all of us would be at risk, right? If Spiderman exists, the Flash and Batman and Superman are suddenly possible. So, there are rules about who can know, and people who oversee the rules, and I need for you to believe you’re Harmony when I introduce you by the name.”

  I shook my head and told him, “You’ll tell me your secrets by Sunday, or you can pack your shit and go.” I believed him, but at the same time, worried he was stringing me along. He needed to know I was serious. He knew practically everything about me, and there was so much I didn’t know about him.

  “Okay, Harmony. Meanwhile, tell me what you’ve learned about me.”

  “You’re Thurston Silas Alexander, grew up in Chevy Chase Maryland, and your family is so politically connected you could probably be a Senator alongside your brother by now, had you chosen to go that route. You were accepted to all the top colleges, but told your parents you wanted to take a year to travel Europe and live a little, and they financed it. You toured Europe on a motorcycle, and appear to have decided you didn’t want to l
ive the life your family chose for you. They lost track of you, but I found you in Tibet, of all places. When you came back to the States, you started college but took classes they didn’t approve of. When they cut you off, you bought another motorcycle, and seem to have become a beach bum for a while, before you bought a cabin in the mountains. They must’ve thought you’d come back when you ran out of money, but you didn’t, and I’m guessing they sent people after you, and you went into hiding to keep them from dragging you home. I lost track of you until you resurfaced as an RTMC member a few years later.”

  He nodded, and told me, “Your brother is working his way up to Senator? My brother is a senator. My grandfather was a Supreme Court justice, my sister is the head media advisor for the President, and my dad… well, Treasury Secretaries come and go, and are basically the mouthpiece of the treasury. My dad? Isn’t elected or appointed, and he’s the real muscle behind our economy. The President doesn’t do what he wants? The economy takes a dive. The Department of Defense goes off the rails and displeases him? He alters things so their bonds tumble and their funds are short. My dad has more power than the President, and no one knows his name, which is exactly the way he wants it. People may think bikers are scum of the earth, but the people running the governments of the world are the true trash of the planet.”

  Okay, so maybe I did know a lot about him. Still, he had secrets — big honking secrets — and he knew all of my big stuff.

  And yet, he’d taken care of me. I looked down as I told him, “The nurse was more talkative this morning, without you around. She said I’m healing ahead of schedule, and part of it is because I’m eating so healthy, but she says it’s also because of all of the foot massages. She says touch, especially massage with a loving touch, speeds the healing process, and she told me you’re a keeper.” I shook my head, glanced up, then looked back down. “No one’s ever taken care of me like you have, Brain. You’re spoiling me.”