by Tanya Holmes
“I was close to passing out,” Samuel continued, “when I stumbled into an old Polish woman’s house. Her name was Kaja. Kaja Nowakowska. She took me in and raised me as her own. I was blue-eyed, fair, and blond back then, so she passed me off as her grandson. She dropped my first name and called me by the middle one. Uri.” Tears brimmed in his eyes. “None of that would’ve been possible without Ian McBride. He died to save me.”
Emotion flooded Braeden’s heart, but he kept his face impassive. “That…that was a very…touching story, Mr. Nowak, and I’m truly sorry for your loss, but I still don’t know what any of this has to do with—”
“You? Oh, I’m getting to that.” He stuffed the handkerchief away, reached into another pocket, and pulled out a Ziploc bag with a photo. “Years after the war, right before my wedding to my beloved Izabel, I ran into Ian McBride.”
Yes, Braeden remembered the unsettling encounter. Only he wasn’t Ian. He and Xavier had separated by then. “Pardon, but didn’t you say McBride was killed?”
Samuel nodded. The hint of a smile inched across his lips. “Yet I found him on a Parisian street late one night coming out of a bar. It was dark and raining. He said his name was Richard something or other, but it was Ian, all right. I’d know that face anywhere.”
“Like I told you before,” Gita put in, “everyone has a double, Papa.”
“Ian said the same thing,” Samuel remarked, but he was glaring at Braeden. He pulled the photo from the plastic and tossed it on the coffee table. “Please look at it.”
Braeden did as he asked, keeping his expression neutral. He’d recognized the younger versions of Samuel and Ian right off. They were standing in a reception hall surrounded by other guests. Most of the people there were massacred during the uprising.
“That’s me, my sister Hannah, and Marke…er…I mean Ian, at my cousin Yakov’s wedding,” Samuel said. “Hannah took it using a timer. She planned to study photography at university. She was quite good you know.”
Braeden labored to keep his emotions in check. “Obviously you’ve mistaken me for this gentleman. Which is understandable. As your daughter said, everyone has a double. In fact, I have a twin brother who looks exactly like me. Perhaps this man did too.” He cleared his throat. Hard. “You say his name was McBride? Well, I have no McBrides in my family—that I know of anyway—but I can’t deny the resemblance. Maybe he’s a distant relative or—”
Samuel struggled to stand. Gita shot up after him.
“I’ve spent the past several months coming here!” he spat. “Through rain, cold, heat, and storm, I travelled, just to see you. To give thanks, but this is what I get again? Lies?” His face bloomed red. “Six soldiers opened fire on you, Ian. Six. I watched you die right in front of me, your body riddled with bullets. Yet here you are as you were then. Looking but a decade older. And alive. Alive!”
Gita braced his shoulder. “Papa, calm down. Your blood pressure….”
Samuel shrugged her off. “My eyes are as good as ever. So are my ears. Now listen to this!” He softly hummed the first bar of “Jadą Dzieci, Jadą Droga,” an old children’s song. The familiar melody tugged at Braeden’s heartstrings. “You used to sing that to me late at night in the forest when we were on the run. It calmed me. Do you still sing, Ian?”
“My name is Braeden Frost,” he ground out. “And I have no idea who this McBride person is.”
Gita’s gaze batted between them. “I believe we’ve overstayed our welcome, Papa. Thank you, Dr. Frost for giving us your time.”
Samuel wasn’t having it. He became more belligerent. “Do you think I didn’t notice the dazed look you had when you saw my Gita? She favors Hannah. Doesn’t she? Doesn’t she?”
“Papa!”
Braeden’s gaze hit his lap.
“You look ten years older, but it’s the same face.” Samuel pointed at him. “You even have the same mole on your neck! That’s how I knew it was you!”
“We should be off,” Gita said in a rush. She looked at Samuel as she spoke, her eyes glassy with tears. “Now, Papa.”
Braeden got to his feet with his usual grace, but his heart weighed a ton. “I wish I could’ve been of more help to you, Mr. Nowak. Again, please accept my condolences.”
Gita tugged at her father. “Come, Papa.”
Scowling, he wrenched his bony arm away.
Braeden fought to hold himself together and went for the door. “I’ll show you both out.”
“I’m sorry, Ian,” Samuel announced, pulling a gun from his coat, “but you’ve left me no choice.”
* * *
THE FROST ESTATE
DEARBORNE, MARYLAND
Denieve
____________________________
Were it not for Samuel Nowak’s tall tale, I would’ve been obsessing over my latest dustup with Braeden. But the old man had my full attention.
For thirty minutes I sat in my bedroom riveted. Laptop on my lap, eyes closed in concentration, I listened in awe to an insane diatribe that, on the surface, didn’t sound all that insane. Granted, the entire story was outrageous. Nowak was obviously in the last throes of dementia, but damn if the man didn’t appear halfway credibl—
Gita’s piercing scream stabbed my ears. The deafening blast from the gunshot that followed had me ripping the headphones off. I grabbed my weapon, tore from my room, and beat a path to the library as fast as my weary legs could go. Out of breath, I pressed my back to the left door and tried tapping my psychic senses, but once again, I came up empty. So I cracked it open.
Had my gift been working, I would’ve picked up on Samuel’s nefarious intentions the second he walked into the house, but I was bat blind now, damn it. A rash and reckless part of me wanted to storm in there, to shoot first and deal with the consequences later. But an unfamiliar, yet commanding voice within me took a more conservative tack.
Relax, it said. DO NOT come in here.
Wait a darn minute. That was not me. How could it be when I was outside? But it didn’t matter because before I knew it, my body was frozen in place. I sent commands to my useless muscles, but it was as if invisible ropes bound my limbs. Sudden exhaustion poured over me like melted wax. I tried to lift my arms, move my legs, but nothing worked. And the more I resisted, the more intense this strange lethargy became.
Samuel was yelling, but his thick accent combined with Gita’s screaming made it hard to understand anything. Using the nose of my weapon, I managed to crack the door open a little more, enough to see Braeden standing not five feet away, his hands raised in surrender. Had he been shot?
Braeden looked in my direction—to the gun in my hand. Then his fire blue gaze zipped to my face, his expression fraught with alarm.
“Are you okay?” I mouthed.
He gave a faint nod, his eyes saying, Don’t move.
I shook my head hard and whispered, “I’m calling the police!”
No, the voice—his voice—commanded. I said, don’t move! Only the words weren’t audible. He’d spoken them into my mind. It was the same alien voice I’d heard in my head not a minute ago. What the….
My mouth fell open as he made his way toward Samuel, his steps slow but deliberate. The old man stood in front of the leather sofa. The gun trembled in his unsteady hands. Gita was to his immediate right, tears pouring down her face.
Common sense told me to stay put, but Braeden was in there unarmed with a nutjob toting a firearm. I figured the bookcases would give me adequate coverage, but when I tried to take a step I still couldn’t move. It was like my feet were welded to the floor.
* * *
THE FROST ESTATE
DEARBORNE, MARYLAND
BRAEDEN
____________________________
Braeden channeled his preternatural power to the space outside the door. With the speed of thought, he bound Danielle using an unspoken command. This would keep her safe while he dealt with Samuel.
Next, he focused on the gun and Samuel’s trigger finge
r, rendering them useless. Gita’s wailing drowned out the resounding click the safety latch made when he forced it into place with just a thought—something he’d failed to do with Lionel Gubczyk. Both measures took him less than a second.
“Why, Ian?” Samuel demanded. “Do you have any idea how I’ve suffered over the years? All the guilt I carried. I watched you die because of me. Then to see you again in Paris, alive? Only to have you deny everything. If Hannah were still here would you lie to her too? By denying me, you deny her!”
The words hit Braeden like a blow. “Mr. Nowak….”
“Decades pass, and what happens? Your face appears again, but now you’re in the news. You’d taken yet another name, and after all this time, you looked the same.” He shouldered a tear. “Seeing you wasn’t a joy, Ian. It was a torment because you wouldn’t acknowledge me. What made it worse was they were saying such awful things. That you—my rescuer, my savior—killed all those people. Lies! All lies!”
“Papa,” Gita pleaded, “please stop this.”
He scowled at her. “I tried to tell them they were wrong. That you’re a good man.”
“Tried to tell who?” Braeden asked, his voice unruffled.
“The news people…the reporters. But they didn’t believe a word of it. They laughed at me. Can’t you see? I know you’re not the monster they say you are. You couldn’t be. You saved me. You helped my family. There’s nothing but goodness in you—get back!”
Braeden was halfway across the room. “Put the gun down, Mr. Nowak.”
“Listen to him, Papa.”
The man’s eyes shifted to his daughter. “Don’t you understand? If I shoot him, he won’t die. Then you’ll believe me.”
“I will die,” Braeden said. “Everyone does.”
Samuel gave his head a hard wag. “You’ll come back just like before.”
Braeden made a quick deliberation. His denials were only aggravating the situation. He could grab the gun with lightning speed, but he’d expose himself and that wouldn’t be good for either of them. He already had Hannah’s blood on his hands. He’d be damned before he’d be responsible for more deaths in Samuel’s family.
Without a viable choice, he had to go against his own survival instincts. He owed Samuel and Hannah that much. “Yes, you may have a point,” Braeden said with assurance. “I will come back, but if you shoot, you’ll hurt me. And you don’t want to hurt me, do you, Samuel?”
“No.” Tears leapt down the man’s face. “But I want you to admit it all. Tell my Gita what really happened. Tell her!”
Braeden looked at Gita and forced the truth from his tongue. “My name is—was Ian McBride. And I did volunteer with the Polish resistance. When your aunt Hannah was…when she was murdered, I set out to help your father, but the SS ambushed us in the forest. They shot me and Samuel got away.”
“Not shot!” Samuel corrected. “Killed!”
“Yes, killed.”
“And fifteen years later, it was you I saw in Paris. Tell her!”
Braeden nodded. “Yes, it was me.”
The man stared at Braeden wide-eyed and hopeful for a few moments before his face crumpled in despair. “Oh, no, what am I doing?” He dropped the weapon as if it burned him. Tears rushed down his cheeks. “Nobody will ever believe this. Why should they? Me, a crazy old man with a gun.” Weeping, he fell to his knees. “You only said what you knew I wanted to hear.”
Samuel buried his face in his hands just as Danielle burst in.
* * *
BRAEDEN
____________________________
Braeden closed the front door, his gloved hand splayed over the cool teakwood. Through the closed-circuit TV screen attached to the adjacent wall, he watched Gita lead Samuel down the walkway to their car. One by one, the tight muscles in his shoulders loosened the farther away they got.
Sinking his head against the cold wood, he squeezed his eyes shut as the dreadful scene in the library unfolded in his mind again. Even after he gathered Samuel to his feet and stepped back when a tearful Gita rushed to her father’s side, he’d avoided Danielle’s questioning gaze. He’d assured both women he wasn’t shot, that Samuel’s gun had misfired, and that there was no need to alert the police, but deep down he knew Danielle was just biding her time, waiting for the pair to leave.
He’d felt her inquiring eyes on his back while he escorted a contrite Samuel out. She was behind him with her arm curled around Gita, listening as the woman whispered how grateful she was that he’d played along with her father’s delusional story, but he suspected Danielle had questions of her own.
“Braeden?”
His spine stiffened. He squared his shoulders and faced her, making sure not a trace of emotion shone on his face. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.” With that, he strode past her, ignoring the incredulous look in her eyes.
She trailed him. “Can we talk about what just happened?”
“Why?” He headed back to the library. “It’s resolved.”
“Nothing’s resolved. A man fired a gun in your house.”
“As did you.”
“I wasn’t aiming for your head!”
He rounded on her. “All right. You want resolution? Fine. How about this?” He grabbed the gun from her pocket.
“Hey! Give that back!”
He dodged her hands as he checked the safety. “No more firearms in this house. Do you hear me?” He rammed the thing into his waistband and stormed off. “I’m glad we understand each other.”
She tugged him around to face her. “No, we don’t understand each other. Tell me why I couldn’t get in there. I tried, but it was like a force field held me immobile.”
From the moment he’d pulled his power back, causing Samuel to drop the weapon, he knew he’d have to put an immediate kibosh on Danielle’s suspicions, and he would have to be ruthless. It was the only way to protect her.
He shook his head, feigning confusion. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t give me that. One minute I was outside listening to what was going on, and the next, I was frozen. Mr. Nowak was too. In fact, you were the only one who didn’t seem impaired. Everyone else was in some sort of limbo. At least until Nowak let the gun go. Then we all came out of it—at the same time. How do you explain that?”
He knew what he had to do. He’d done it his entire life, and after more than four centuries, he was good at it. Deny. Deny. Deny. Again. It was the Yoreck way.
“I can’t explain it.” He tossed a hand. “Really, I don’t know what you expect me to say. A demented old man had a breakdown, convincing himself that I was some long-lost war buddy—”
“I heard your voice in my head, Braeden. You made me freeze.”
Braeden blinked in shock. He couldn’t help it. His telepathic commands had been subliminal. How was she even aware of this? Gita and Samuel weren’t. Unless…unless…dear God! Hope burned in his heart with the intensity of a sunburst as his gaze dipped briefly before he straightened and looked her square in the eye.
“So,” he said, masking the optimism surging within, “your imaginings are my doing?”
“I am not crazy. I know what I heard.”
“You were bemused. Petrified…”
“And you were cucumber cool.”
He cocked his head and manufactured a droll expression. “What? Should I have run out of there screaming like a little girl?”
She was silent for a time, her lips pressing into a severe line. “We both know something happened in that room, just as we both know you’re lying to me right now.”
He quirked a brow. “So I gather your spidey senses are tingling again.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m only going by what you said the other week, Danielle.”
She squared her shoulders and tore her gaze away.
“You claimed you could detect lies,” he said. “So tell me, am I lying now?”
“Yes! Just lik
e you lied about your experiment and everything else.”
“Everything else? Like what?”
She flashed an index finger. “Number one, we both know that was you speaking in my head—”
“No,” he said, his voice strained, “we most certainly do not.”
Ignoring him, she raised another finger to join the first. “Number two, your experiments had nothing to do with some magic serum.”
“Oh, really? Then how the hell did this happen?” He yanked his sleeve down and waved his unblemished wrist. “Well?”
Her jaw tightened.
“Your silly assertions are as preposterous as Mrs. Higgins and her ghost stories. Now you claim you’re hearing voices. How am I supposed to take any of this seriously?”
Her eyes railed at him as if she were harboring a secret clawing to get out.
“If you’ve something to say, Danielle, please.” He made a grand gesture. “The floor is all yours.”
She opened her mouth, but snapped it shut.
“On second thought, you need not say anything. Given the absurd direction your thoughts are taking, I suppose you actually believe the fake confession I gave to Mr. Nowak. That not only was I alive during World War II, but that I somehow resurrected myself after being gunned down by a squad of German soldiers.” He turned on his heel and stalked away. “I’m done with this.”
“You lied when you said you’d forgiven me!”
That stopped him in his tracks as her words hung between them, heartfelt, mournful, and reproving. He stood in silence, struggling to deny the accusation, and knowing in his heart she was right. Her contrition and shame were so evident he wished he could lighten her burden. However, he was still wrestling with what he’d put into motion. Leaving like he did. Manipulating Xavier into coming here. This was his plan, not theirs. He’d thrown them together, yet jealousy burned within him like hellfire.
