Brooding City: Brooding City Series Book 1 (6 page)

Detective Brennan woke
in a hospital.

He was sitting in an uncomfortable leather chair with metal armrests, and his neck twinged from sleeping at an awkward angle. There was very little to be heard going on in the hallway, and a glance at the clock confirmed that it was very early in the morning, hours before dawn. A steady series of beeps toned from a machine. The room was otherwise quiet.

He turned and looked at the pale woman lying prostrate in bed. She had a slender face, gentle lips and early laugh lines around the eyes. Had she been awake, Brennan knew, blue eyes like sapphires would have glimmered back at him. When the two of them had met, she had been a rare kind of beauty. Beyond her pleasant looks, she had borne a steady strength within her. She had a compassionate heart and loved those around her more than seemed possible, and wherever she would go, smiles would appear.

His wife, Mara. She had been the greatest gift to this world, the single saving grace of Arthur’s life. That had been before she Fractured.

Now, the skin clung tightly to her bones, making her fine cheeks stark, almost mountainous protrusions on a light, deeply sloping landscape. Her eyes sunk deep in their sockets, dark as bruises against her ghostly complexion. Her hair grew out long and thin, untended to, sickly. Her gentle lips, so pink and luscious before, were now an ugly purple.

A knock on the door, and a man in a long, white coat entered quietly.

“Mr. Brennan,” he said, “can I speak with you for a moment? Out here, in the hallway, please.”

Arthur rose heavily from the chair and followed the doctor out of the room. He had not recognized the chill before, but he realized that the hallway was considerably warmer than Mara’s room. The nurses’ station was empty except for one, and she was dozing at her desk. The hallway was otherwise deserted.

“Mr. Brennan,” the doctor began solemnly, “I cannot tell you how sorry I am. You have my condolences.”

Brennan leveled a look at the shorter man. “My Mara isn’t dead.”

The doctor nodded sympathetically. “I understand that this is a difficult time for you, but there is nothing more we can do for your wife. She can be kept on life support for a time, but I would not be optimistic for a change in her condition. We can move her to Ridgewood, a long-term care facility, but—”

Brennan shook his head. “She would want me to keep fighting for her. Her body is still here, and I know her mind is in there, somewhere.” Now the doctor shook his head slowly, unconsciously. They were effectively alone, but his voice dropped to a whisper. “A Sleeper could go in, find her, and bring her back—”

“Sleepers are myths, Mr. Brennan,” the doctor said. His eyes screamed concern for Brennan’s mental well-being. “And even if they weren’t, it’s a fool’s errand to go tampering with a Fractured brain. The best thing to do is to let her go peacefully.”

Brennan held back his emotions. They raged against his heart and soul like rapids against a dam; one slip of his control would open the floodgates. He willed away the tears for his lost wife. She wasn’t lost, he reminded himself. He would not allow it.

“Then I will go myself,” he said softly.

“Then you’re a…” The doctor gazed wide-eyed, mouth agape. “That…would be madness.” He shook his head, and his voice regained some vestige of strength. “Even if you could, I would not allow it. It would be suicide.”

Brennan felt numb inside. He knew that what the doctor said was the truth. But while his mind could understand, his heart still rebelled. His thoughts had turned sluggish even as his heart raced. How dare this man presume to know what was best for his wife, what was best for him. But that was it, wasn’t it? He was no longer thinking of Mara, but rather only of himself. He was the one who wasn’t ready for her to go.

Something in the air changed. Maybe it was a pressure shift from an opened door, or perhaps his ears heard something his brain didn’t register, but Brennan was abruptly aware of another presence.

There, over the doctor’s shoulder, he saw a man who had not been there the previous moment. He was slender of build and wore a nurse’s outfit, scrubs of light blue. There was an intensity in his stare that was unnerving.

For a moment, the entire scene held in perfect stillness. The doctor’s mouth hung in mid-air, an unspoken word frozen on his lips. The
beep beep beep
from Mara’s room had gone silent. The newcomer nurse, however, moved with a gentle grace that Brennan was familiar with, once upon a time. Moving with caution, as if any abrupt movements would shatter their reality, the male nurse reached for the back waistband of his scrubs and retrieved a small pistol.

Brennan struggled with his body. Instead of being frozen in place like the doctor, he moved with the alacrity of one wading through chest-deep pudding. A single step took an eternity. A heavy pressure fell upon his chest, stealing the wind from his lungs. He gasped for breath as he tightly closed his fist. Sharp pain shot through his palm, jerking his arm with unexpected speed. The slowing, painful pressure around him vanished.

Brennan leapt to the side as a bullet sped from the gun. He crashed through the door to Mara’s room, the impact accompanied by the sound of breaking glass, not the thud of solid wood he’d expected. He glimpsed her prone form one last time before the entire world shattered around them.

ф ф ф

He woke from
the nightmare to find himself in his apartment. At some point in the afternoon, he had succumbed carelessly to sleep while reclining in the leather chair. From the chair, he had leapt upon the low, glass table in the center of the room and shattered it. Slivers of glass sliced scores of small cuts on his face and arms and made a mess of his shirt, but it was better than staying in the nightmare with the Sleeper for one moment longer.

He stood and brushed some of the glass from his body, taking care not to push any shards in deeper than they already were. Still cradled in one hand was a small, sharp thumbtack, and a slim trail of blood trickled from where it had punctured his palm. It would join the several other dozen such scars.

He stumbled to the kitchen and grabbed his phone from the counter before going into the bathroom. He dialed Sam’s number and told him to meet him at the apartment in fifteen minutes. He caught his reflection in the mirror.

“Better make that twenty minutes.”

“Can do, partner.”

He placed the phone on the sink countertop and shed his clothes. He let the shower run for a few minutes, then winced as he stepped into the steaming-hot water. Red rivulets ran from a dozen minor cuts. He groaned as the warmth spread through his body, relieving tension he hadn’t realized he’d had. The cuts stung, but the pain was manageable.

When he felt ready, he used tweezers to remove any slender pieces of glass that remained in his skin. It was ugly and painful, and at one point he accidentally stepped on one of the fallen shards and had to remove it once more from his foot, but he managed it. Brennan closed his eyes as he let the water flow over his face. After what had seemed to be only seconds, a polite knock came from the front door. It devolved into heavy poundings with a fist by the time Arthur had dried and dressed himself.

“Come on, some people are trying to sleep,” he grumbled, opening the door for Sam.

“No, they aren’t, it’s three in the—Jesus, you look like hell.”

“Is that an improvement from looking like death?”

“Certainly not.” Sam eyed the living room as he entered. “Your furniture giving you trouble?”

“Yeah, table got out of line, acting like it owned the place. I showed it who pays the rent around here.”

Sam nodded. “So, what’s up?”

Brennan grabbed two Cokes from the fridge and passed one to Sam. “Bring me up to speed on the case. What did you and Bishop discuss over brunch?”

He huffed and sat on one of the bar stools. “Never got brunch. Her idea of a date was us going back to where Zachariah Nettle worked and getting a full look at their logbook. Everything in and out of the pharmacy over the past three months.”

“It wasn’t a date,” Brennan corrected.

“Yeah, well, clearly. I guess she’s having trouble admitting her feelings for me.”

“You slept with another woman while you two were dating.”

Sam shrugged. “Women. So territorial. It’s not as if we had agreed to be exclusive—” He caught Brennan’s look. “Right. Getting off topic. Noel flashed her badge and we got everything we asked for. Looked over the logs for about an hour—you wouldn’t
believe
how much traffic a pharmacy gets, these were no quick reads—and we saw some interesting figures.”

“What did you find?”

“Everything in the books was solid except for one product. NicoClean, some kind of prescription nicotine patch for chronic smokers who want to quit. These patches came in huge amounts each month, I’m talking
boxes
of the stuff, and sold out every two weeks like clockwork. Patches come in, patches go out.”

“Patches…” Brennan murmured. It was familiar.

“Now, get this,” Sam continued. “The pharmacy says they weren’t even aware of so many boxes of NicoClean being sold, and the financials match. Their profits only match for a fraction of what the record says was sold. And I bet you can guess who was working each time a large quantity of NicoClean was sold.”

“Zachariah Nettle.”

“Exactamundo!”

“Are NicoClean patches worth that much on the street?”

McCarthy faltered. “Well, that’s the thing…they aren’t. The mesh is a bit thicker, so it can hold more nicotine per patch, and it gets in the bloodstream faster than the generic stuff, but if you’re looking for a quick fix then you’d just light up the old-fashioned way.”

“And nobody would buy nicotine patches in dark alleys and on street corners.”

“Exactamundo,” Sam said, less enthusiastically. “We’ve got nothing.”

“No,” Brennan said. “This is too close to our victim, there has to be something here.”

McCarthy leaned against the counter, a mocking smile on his lips. “You know, as much fun as it is reading pharmaceutical records and looking at your ugly mug, I don’t do this work for free.”

Brennan grunted. “Bishop hired you this time. Look to her for money.”

Sam’s eyes lit up. “Ah, I see. Go collect from the lady for, ah, services rendered.” He winked. “Gotcha.”

“I want you to explain that to her using those exact words. Then we’ll see who has the ugly mug.”

Sam shook his head and hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “So, you going to explain your grievance with the table?”

Brennan frowned. The motion hurt, and he turned away from Sam as he grimaced. “Not yet,” he said. “Perhaps another time.”

Sam gave him a long stare. “Another time, partner.”

It was well
into the afternoon when Jeremy heard the front door open noisily.

The sun was settling in among the mountains, and it would soon disappear from view. For now, light filtered in through the windows of Jeremy’s room, casting a golden hue on the whitewashed walls and solid wood beams. He was sitting up in bed, struggling with a book from his summer reading list, when a bass-like voice bellowed out a greeting from the kitchen.

“Hellooooo!” The absurdly loud roar could only belong to one man. “I brought presents and souvenirs, but I guess there aren’t any kids here.”

He was sixteen and hardly a kid anymore, but Jeremy leapt excitedly to his feet and raced to the kitchen. Ellie had already beaten him there, and she was scooped up by a pair of enormous hands, connected by beefy, hairy forearms to the largest man Jeremy had ever met. His naturally faded jeans were frayed around the ankles, and a spattering of mud stains clung to his pant legs. A weathered plaid shirt strained against his broad chest. A tuft of dark hair reached up through the neck of it, and he had an untrimmed beard of several months’ growth. Ellie writhed in his grasp as he tickled her under her arms and around the waist, and she was breathless when he finally released her.

“Jay!” he boomed. His voice was deep and rumbled through the room like thunder through the sky.

“Uncle Rick!” Jeremy ran into his uncle’s welcoming embrace.

The older man was rocked back on his heels. “Whoa there. When did my nephew get replaced by this giant? Last time I saw you, you were barely this high,” he said, holding a hand by his waist. He smiled as Jeremy laughed and pulled away.

“We weren’t expecting to see you,” Jeremy said.

Ellie grinned and shook her head emphatically. “Where have you been? Where’s Dad?”

“Carrying my little brother’s bags,” Nathaniel grunted as he crossed the threshold of the front door. He heaved a pair of heavy traveling backpacks through the doorway, one strap in each hand. “Because apparently I’m a pack mule. How in the world did you carry those things?”

Uncle Rick grinned and winked at Jeremy and Ellie. “It’s a secret. Only international men of mystery such as myself can know.”

“Fine,” Nathaniel grumbled. “My international brother of mystery can carry it the rest of the way to the guest room.”

“We can help!” Ellie volunteered, rushing over to one of the bags. Her reed-thin body bowed as she heaved at one of the straps, but the bag hardly moved. She settled down on the ground instead and started to unzip one of the larger pockets.

“Hold on there, little lady,” Uncle Rick said, casually lifting the bag away with one hand. “No presents until after dinner. That’s your mother’s rule.”

“And you’ll tell us all about where you’ve been?” Jeremy asked.

Uncle Rick let out his rumbling laugh again. “But of course! There will be jungles with temples, hidden treasure from the bottom of the ocean, bizarre rituals from secluded tribes—”

“You brought us treasure?!” Ellie bounced up and down, her hair flapping madly with each jump.

Uncle Rick winked. “You will see.
After dinner.
” He slung a bag over each massive shoulder and walked away to the ranch’s guest room.

“He’s hiding something good in those bags,” Ellie said greedily.

“After dinner,” Jeremy parroted, and he left her alone in the kitchen as he returned to his room. It was still warm, and red coals smoldered silently in the fireplace. Jeremy felt a sensation of unease that had nothing to do with the heat of the room. He had not expected Uncle Rick’s arrival, but these visits were always a surprise. His father was ordinarily frustrated by them, but he seemed perfectly aware of the arrangement today. Perhaps he had mentioned it in conversation and Jeremy had forgotten about it.

Jeremy reached up and gingerly touched his bandages. His head ached more strongly now, and the assigned reading would do little in the way of distracting him from his pain. He sighed, left the room again, and walked back to the kitchen. Ellie had disappeared, probably off playing with squirrels.

His mother entered as he was reaching for the medicine cabinet. She had a bushel of freshly picked pears from the orchard supported under one arm. “Jay, I saw the car out front. Where is your father?”

“He’s helping Uncle Rick with his bags,” Jeremy said off-hand, reaching for the bottle of painkillers.

His mother froze in place. She looked between the front door and the hall that led to the guest bedroom before settling back on Jeremy. Her face calmed and her features smoothed over. The change had been less than a second long, but he had seen it all the same.

“Is there something wrong?” he asked.

“Not at all,” she replied. “I just wasn’t expecting your uncle, that’s all.”

Jeremy shrugged. He let the tap fill a glass with water, then threw back two of the white tablets. “My head has been bothering me,” he explained, in response to his mother’s inquisitive stare.

She nodded and placed the fruit basket on the counter. “All right, well let me know if it gets worse. We might need to take you to the hospital for a scan.”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” Jeremy said, forcing as much cheer into his voice as he could. He wasn’t sure what else they might find if they scanned his head. Whatever was going on with the memories freaked him out more than he cared to admit.

When his father’s hand had brushed against his during his recovery, Jeremy had thought the world was ending. His head had erupted in searing pain, and the memory came unexpectedly—and it was so
vivid.
He thought back on it and it came as clearly in his head as his own memories of venturing to the Tower, playing with Ellie in the garden, and picking fruit with his mother in summers past. They were more than just a part of his father—they were now a part of
him.
And there was so much to go through.

He left his mother and returned to his room. The infernal book from his summer reading list was still open to the first page, which was as far as he had managed to concentrate with the pain in his head. The painkillers would need more time to take effect, so he went to move it away. As he lifted it from the bed, however, a sudden realization came over him. He had not even passed the first page, but he already knew what was going to happen in this chapter. And the second, and third, and so on, all the way to the end of the book. It was a fuzzy memory, but it was there. He flipped to the last page of the book and read it, just to be sure.

He had read this book before.

But it was impossible. The price tag was still on the back cover; they had bought the books on his and Ellie’s summer reading lists at the beginning of summer, but this was the first time it had been opened. The crisp paper still crinkled as the spine flexed in his grip, and Jeremy understood where he had read it before.

It was his father’s memory.

Somehow, more than just that first flash of memory had made the trip into his head. As he thought about it, concentrating, the pain in his head increased tenfold. And he remembered so much more.

None of them were
his
memories, but they belonged to him all the same. Places he had never visited, people he had never met, all flashed through his mind. A rush came over him.

He flipped open a notebook and took a pen in his left hand. He was a righty, but his father was left-handed. He wrote out his signature—
Nathaniel Scott
—on the page. It was an exact copy, except for when he thought about it a little too consciously and marred the double-T at the end of ‘Scott’.

He looked down at the book again.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
—it had been years since he had read it. He opened it to the first page and read, “The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.” The words greeted him like old friends—the passage was made familiar again. He looked around at the changed room in which he found himself.

The cheap linoleum was cold beneath his feet. A foldout table was propped against one wall, with three low stools sitting around it. He held a worn book in his hands, a secondhand copy with a sticker on the back indicating the library’s ownership of it.

The room was small and dank. Mildew crept out from beneath the peeling wallpaper. He studiously ignored the shouting and sounds of crashing glass from the apartment next door. Beyond the mildew was the smell of something else, like warm beer left in the sun for too long. It was late, and he read by the light of the streetlamp filtering in through the dirty window. He didn’t know where his father was, but that was a good thing; better elsewhere than here. His brother was gone, too, which bothered him somewhat more.

“Derrick?” he asked. Empty silence answered him.

He got up and walked into the only other room in the cramped apartment. A queen-sized mattress and a bunk-bed dominated the room, and what little space remained was taken up by a dresser that held clothes for the three of them. The room was dark, and his eyes hadn’t adjusted yet.

“Rick?” he called again, but his words were swallowed in the black.

It wasn’t altogether surprising; Rick often strayed from home, especially when he knew their father wouldn’t find out. He was a wanderer by nature. But it always made it worse for the few times he was missing when their father stumbled home.

Somebody was calling out a name now, but it wasn’t his. The neighbors were still going at it.

He turned back and ducked into the tiny bathroom that he never considered a full room. The shower worked, but irregularly, and even then it ran only cold water. Here, too, the wallpaper was folding in on itself. He washed his hands under the frigid tap in the sink and ran wet fingers through his untidy hair.

His eyes were bright and blue—though he could have sworn they had always been dark gray—and shadows crept in beneath the lids. A messy rag of blond hair sat atop his head. Despite having eaten little for as long as he could remember, his cheeks held a youthful fullness that was unfamiliar to him. There was a gash on his temple, too, from some wound he didn’t remember. It oozed through the bandage he hadn’t felt before.

Somebody was calling his name.

His
name. He remembered all of a sudden that he was Jeremy. Jeremy Scott. Blue eyes, light-blond hair, bleeding head.
Bleeding head
. There was something important about that.

“Jay, hold still,” he heard a woman saying.
Annabelle,
his memory supplied.

“Anna…”

“Jeremy, sweetie, it’s going to be all right.”

“What happened?” It was his brother—no—his
uncle
, Rick.

“I don’t know. I was coming to get him for dinner and he was lying on the floor.”

“How long was he like that?”

“I don’t
know,
” Annabelle said, an edge to her voice. “Here, help me get him up.”

Jeremy felt himself being lifted up by strong arms and cradled against a solid chest, and a moment later he was back in his bed with a
whumph
. They covered him with a heavy comforter that smothered him and he felt like he was in a furnace, but lying on his bed again was like resting on a cloud. He stopped trying to keep his eyes open; it was just too difficult. He fell unconscious.