by A. J. Downey
A Brother’s Salvation
The Sacred Brotherhood Book VII
A.J. Downey
Contents
A Brother’s Salvation
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Also by A.J. Downey
About the Author
A Brother’s Salvation
The Sacred Brotherhood Book VII
by A. J. Downey
Copyright
Text Copyright © 2018 by A.J. Downey
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner and are not to be construed as real except where noted and authorized. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or actual events are entirely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or names featured are assumed to be the property of their respective owner, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used.
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Edited by Barbara J. Bailey
Book design by Maggie Kern
Cover art by Dar Albert at Wicked Smart Designs
Dedication
To Carrie, Barbara, Martha and Mary. My personal cheer squad to get me through this book. It wouldn’t be half of what it is without you.
1
Dragon…
I sighed and stretched out along the new spring grass, laying on my back under a wide blue sky, the odd fluffy fat white cloud skating across the pure blue surface. The sun was out, the weather warm, but it wasn’t hot. It was still too early for that. Hell, we were lucky it wasn’t fuckin’ snowing. We’d had some late winters in recent years, so having an actual spring was a real nice change of pace. I breathed in slow, deep, and even, and cleared my throat.
“Hey baby, I missed you. Wanted to get here sooner, but I’m definitely getting older and the cold just ain’t agreeing with me much anymore.”
I smoothed a hand over the tickling fresh green and fought the urge to light up a smoke. She hated that I smoked and so I didn’t do it here, when I was with her like this.
I let my hand rest on the ground, the sun warming me through my leathers, and closed my eyes. If I imagined it hard enough, I could almost feel her hand, under the grass, under all that fuckin’ dirt my misdeeds put her under. If I breathed real slowly, I could almost hear her laugh, hear her talking to me; and even though she was gone, I still lived for those moments. Even all these years later.
“God, I miss you, Tilly,” I murmured. I sniffed, and let out a breath. I wouldn’t cry about it, but sometimes, even now, even years later, it was a near thing.
I rooted in the inside jacket pocket of my coat and pulled out the rumpled picture I’d brought with me.
“Our boy done good, baby. Just look at that little man.” I held up the picture above us, over to the side so that she could see.
“One year old and counting. Strong, just like his Pop-Pop, and strong-willed, just like you. You should see our son with him, baby. He makes such a good dad. Way better ‘n me. Raisin’ Dray, that was all you, sweetheart. I damn sure can’t take credit. That was all you.”
I closed my eyes and stared at the fire on the insides of my eyelids, listening, straining to hear her laugh, her voice, like I sometimes did and instead felt my heart plummet when I heard weeping instead. I was drawing a deep breath to console her when I realized that it didn’t have the same quality as when I heard her the other times. When I heard my Tilly, it came from both nowhere and everywhere at the same time. This weeping, this broken-hearted crying came from behind us… where my brothers were buried.
I frowned, and the light spring breeze carried with it the faint scent of roses and the sound of weeping with it. I smoothed a hand over the grass covering my wife and sighed.
“Sorry, baby. I’ll come back, I promise.”
I pushed up off the ground and stood, my body creaking a little more than it used to, and peered through the wrought-iron bars surrounding the section of cemetery holding my brothers’ plots. I couldn’t see anything around the backs of the standing grave markers, but the heavy, broken sobbing was definitely coming from that direction. I worried for a minute that it was Hayley, but the voice wasn’t quite right; it was unfamiliar to me.
I took a halting step forward, past my wife and towards that back fence and paused. I didn’t want to scare the shit out of anybody, but I didn’t have a name to call out. I scraped my bottom lip between my teeth and settled for a “Hey, yeah, who’s there?”
The sound suddenly ceased, and I caught a flash of copper as a woman stood. I scowled, not because I was pissed or anything that she was there, but on account of the fact I had no clue who she was.
I took a step forward and she took a step back.
“Hey, wait!” I called, but she had turned, mute, and fled. I made strides but there weren’t no back gate to the group of plots, so I had to make my way around. By the time I reached even with the front of the wrought-iron fence, she was ducking into her car.
“I just want to talk to you!” I called, but she started up and took off. I squinted and managed to get a good portion of her plate, but not all of it. Still, with the make, model, and color of the car, it should be enough. I pulled out a worn out notepad from my cut, and a pen, jotting the information down.
I turned, the slight easy wind that rustled the trees sweeping the mild drama away, the cemetery returning to its peaceful silence. I scanned the stones in front of me and picked out the one that she’d popped up from behind. I let myself in the little gate and went to it, squinting at the print. Damn eyes were gettin’ bad. Was lucky I was able to get the numbers and letters off of her plate at the distance that I did. I pulled out my reading glasses and put them on.
“The fuck?” I said aloud, though I kept my tone muted outta respect.
Still, outta all the brothers a broad could get worked up over, Duracell was the last one I expected. Don’t get me wrong. Once a brother, always a brother. You fight for ‘em, you die for ‘em, and they do the same for you or-fucking-else, but Cell? Cell was a different animal from the rest of us. Charming, cunning, but a cold piece of work and a fucking liability. If he’d tried to patch in to my chapter, it never woulda happened, but he hadn’t come from my chapter. He’d come from up yonder and he had brought Blue
with him.
Blue was a good man, and what was done was fucking done. I hadn’t had a good enough reason to pull Cell’s patch, and to lose Cell would have meant losing Blue and I hadn’t wanted that to happen to poor Blue. It’d been a blessin’ in disguise that Cell’d bit it like he did, though you’d probably never hear me admit that shit out loud.
“Well, ain’t you a mystery?” I muttered, thinking back to the woman. She’d been older than Cell by, like, a lot, but younger than me. Probably late forties, early fifties, if I had to guess. Her hair, while copper, had that color of deeper copper that said good salon dye rather than natural, and didn’t have the stiff quality of most natural gingers’ locks. It’d tousled with the wind and had lost, ruffling in the breeze and sparking fire from the glint of the sun on it.
She’d been willowy and light on her feet, dressed like most conservative white women around these parts, in jeans that’d looked like they’d seen an iron and a simple western blouse. She had brown and worn-in cowgirl boots on her feet as she’d dashed across the sweeping drive through the cemetery to her car, a modern Honda CRV.
I stood for a long time staring at the marble gravestone of our most-recently-fallen brother and gave a grunt. I had a feeling I knew who it could have been, but I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions. I let out a gusty sigh and stared over the stones of my brothers, through the wrought-iron fence at the back of the white marble stone that was my wife’s.
I hated that our visit had been cut short, but another, stiffer breeze carried with it a breath of rose scent and I knew she was tellin’ me to go. She knew I loved a good mystery, and this one needed solvin’ before I could let it go completely.
“See you around, boys,” I muttered and went back around, stopping at Tilly’s plot to leave behind the photo of our grandson.
“Be back soon, baby. Promise.”
I went down the back side of the carefully-manicured green hill to my bike, which the terrain had hidden from her, just as her car had been hidden from me. I stepped off the yellow curb and rang up my man, Data.
“What up, D?”
“Need you to break into the DMV for me; got a partial plate, make, model, and color.”
“Gimme what you got.”
I told him, reading off my notepad, and listened to him clack away on his keyboard through the line.
“Got it,” he confirmed. “When you want it by?”
“See if you can beat me, I’m on my way in now.”
“You’re on; loser pours the drinks.”
I grinned and chuckled. “Fair enough.”
I hung up without bothering to say good-bye and got onto the front of my bike. I took my time putting on my helmet and pulling on some gloves. The weather was warm, the sun beating down, sure, but once you got going, the wind still had a bite and some chill to it. Spring had barely sprung and it was a little late doing it this year. A good part of the country still had snow, but for some reason, this pocket of Kentucky was a sunny, lush green paradise.
I enjoyed the waveing bluegrass as I rode out towards the club, and went through a couple of the outlying farms in the area to get there. I went the long way, though even if I’d cut through town, Data would probably still have beat me to it. I wanted him to. Some things in life were just more important than winning all the damn time. I’d learnt that lesson the hard way and I tried like the devil to avoid making the same mistakes twice, let alone over the little things.
I pulled up in front of the club and backed my bike in; Data waited at the door, a sheaf of printouts in one hand, arms crossed over his chest.
“What are yah havin’?” I called out, and he grinned.
“Whatever you’re pourin’, P.”
I chuckled and walked across the gravel, thumping Data on the back as he turned to walk into the barroom with me. He took a seat up on one of the stools at the bar while I lifted the leaf and walked on through to play bartender. I raised my eyebrows at him as he noisily squared the edges of the pages against the scarred bar top. I grinned and figured he was enjoying this a little too much, but what the hell.
“So, what’re you havin’?” I asked, playing the part.
“I think this calls for your finest Kentucky bourbon, P.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Ah, yeah. I got just about everything you could want and then some.”
Color me intrigued. I pulled down the top-shelf bourbon from a local distillery we liked and brought two glasses out from under the bar. Data held up the first sheet of paper and said, “Your mystery woman’s name is Martha Lanham, but she goes by Marcie, according to all her social media posts.”
“Ah-huh.” I slid two fingers of bourbon his direction and without taking his eyes off the page he picked up the glass, breathed deep the aroma, and sipped.
“Mm, she lives at 1403 West Hazelton Avenue in town there, works at the Super Clips as a hairdresser, the one on 152nd, has two daughters, an ex-husband… and the coup de grace?”
He eyed me above the third sheet of paper, two lying discarded facedown on the bartop after he’d read off their information. I took a sip out of my own bourbon glass and swallowed, the bite of the alcohol mellowing out into a smooth burn.
“Don’t leave me hangin’ right before the big finish, boy,” I grumbled.
“There’s a police report filed with her name on it with county. An accident report. Motor vehicle collision with a single rider out on the old highway and Evan’s Lake Road.”
“Which explains why she was all busted up at Duracell’s grave.”
Data shook his head and a look like sympathy crossed his face. he took another sip of bourbon and sighed, heavy, and I told him, “Speak your mind, brother.”
“Cell was one of us, P. By the time he came to us he was already locked and loaded and a member of the club, but if he’d been given another year, I don’t think that’d be the case. He was one of us in name only, and I feel guilty to a degree saying it out loud, but we were all thinking it.”
“Cell was a pain in the ass,” I agreed “But he was our brother when he died.”
Data nodded and huffed out a breath and I knew what he was thinkin’. Hell, I was thinkin’ the same thing. Out of anyone and everyone that woman should feel absolutely no guilt over killin’, Cell was certainly it. Who knew how many untold deaths she may have avenged? Who knows how many more lives she saved?
Data was right. Cell had been headed down a path and none of us were sure we’d be able to rein him in. He was destined for a quick death in a blaze of glory or a lifetime behind bars, and I wasn’t right sure how many of us he meant to take down with him if it suited him. Cell didn’t give a good goddamn about anyone but himself. Certainly not Blue, and definitely not Hayley. He was a born sociopath and we all knew it.
Marcie Lanham had done the world a kindness that day, there just weren’t no telling her that. Of course, that was supposin’ someone had tried. Bein’ that she was a citizen, I had no doubts someone had. The townsfolk had no idea the horrors we’d kept from knockin’ on their doors, they just saw us as the boogey man. They weren’t wrong, but there was a lot worse than us out there, that was for damn sure.
“What cha thinkin’, P?” Data asked me.
“Don’t rightly know just yet,” I told him honestly.
“Oh, come on, something is going on up there,” he said with a wink.
I gathered up the sheets of paper with all her info on them and stacked them, creasing them once down the middle and tucking the pile into the inside pocket of my jacket.
“Shut up and drink your bourbon,” I told him. with a grin to take any of the bite out of the order. He grinned back and nodded, taking another sip.
“Don’t even think about it,” Doc declared without even looking up from the tattered paperback. I dropped into the lounge chair next to his and sighed.
“You don’t even know what I’m about to ask,” I said.
“Oh, yes, I do, and it ain’t happening. This one is all yo
u, Compadre.”
“Shit,” I muttered with a sigh.
Doc looked over his half-moon specs at me and harrumphed, shaking his head.
“You were gonna ask me, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, I figured it was worth a shot.”
He shook his head like he was disappointed I would even think it and I kind of had to admit, he had me there.
“Chandra was the love of my life, same as Tilly was yers, asshole.”
“I know it,” I groused and slid down in the outdoor lounger, resting my chin on my chest and my hands, fingers laced, across my stomach.
“I knew you was gonna hit me up as soon as Data told me about it,” he said with a sigh and I raised an eyebrow in his direction.
“Yeah? How’s that?”
“Because you’re a conniving bastard and for some reason, when that conniving ain’t towards something illegal, you’ve managed to turn your happy ass into some kind of match-making babushka.”
I laughed and it came out a smoker’s laugh, rumbling in my chest and heavy with phlegm. I hocked some up and spat to the side, and just to give the finger to the gods that fuckin’ kept me here, I pulled out a cig, tapping the filter against the side of my pack before sticking it between my lips.
“Because that’ll make it better,” Doc muttered.
“Shut it,” I grumbled.
