Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series) (15 page)

“
Is he going somewhere?” she asked drily, turning to face the other woman. Eleanor nodded. The news of Michel’s death had apparently taken a devastating toll on her as well. She was a slim woman by birth, and had come to the compound to receive treatments Michel had engineered to combat a potentially lethal blood disorder. The disease had left her frail, but she somehow seemed even more so now. She wore a white tunic that swallowed her in its voluminous folds; above its scooped neckline, Naima could clearly see the bony prominences in Eleanor’s collar and sternum.

“He’s going to Florida,” Eleanor said. “Brandon’s there.
He texted Augustus a short time ago. It must have been urgent, because Augustus would never leave otherwise. Not after Michel…” Her voice faded, growing momentarily choked. “Something has happened, but Augustus won’t tell me what,” she finished at length.

“Yes, well, Augustus has always been good with secrets,” Naima remarked. “That makes one of you, anyway.”

Eleanor blinked at her, her dark eyes round and wounded. “I
had
to tell him, Naima. Michel is dead.”

“
Aaron didn’t kill him.”

“How do you know that?” Eleanor asked.

“I…I just do,” Naima said, catching herself before she admitted too much too readily.

Eleanor studied her for a long moment.
The Davenants have severed their ties to the clans
, she said at length, her voice quiet in Naima’s mind.
Auguste’s brother Benoît told him this only days ago. It was a revelation that troubled Auguste deeply—and your grandfather as well.

Puzzled by the unexpected turn in conversation, Naima frowned.
What do you mean?
she asked.

Lamar is no longer operating under the oversight of the Elders or Council,
Eleanor said.
Augustus underestimated his continued influence—his control over his clan. He always believed Lamar’s son, Allistair, to be his biggest adversary among the Davenant clan. But he was wrong. He’s only now beginning to realize the true breadth of his error.

But
Lamar needs the Brethren clans,
Naima said.
That’s where his money comes from, isn’t it? Without the clans, he has nothing.

That’s the way it
should
be, yes,
Eleanor said. Grim-faced, she stepped closer to Naima and reached out, brushing the cuff of her hand lightly against Naima’s cheek.
But I overheard Augustus and your grandfather speaking. They had reason to suspect that Lamar has plenty wealth of his own, resources neither of them could have imagined possible.

“What do you mean?” Naima whispered aloud.

When Tessa ran away from the Davenants, she brought a ledger she’d taken from her husband, Martin,
Eleanor said.
It detailed countless transactions made over the course of more than ten years—payments in excess of three million dollars, all made payable to a company called Broughman and Associates. When Allistair Davenant seized dominance over the clans, he brought Augustus before the Council and used this same ledger to claim Augustus had embezzled the money instead, that there was no Broughman and Associates.

You think Allistair stole
the money instead?
Naima asked.

Augustus did, yes.
Eleanor nodded.
At first, anyway. But now he thinks Lamar made Allistair, Allistair’s son Martin, and several other close kin—those he most trusted—to act in his stead, to steal for him the money he’d need to seed his own enterprises, his own financial gain.

Like what?
Naima asked.

Eleanor
shook her head.
I don’t know.
Michel and Auguste were looking into it together, even before Tristan was attacked last night. I’ve heard them talking about it for weeks now. I overheard Michel say he’d traced that name, Broughman, to some kind of government security contractor called Diadem Global.

There was something familiar about that name,
Broughman,
but Naima couldn’t remember what. At least not until Eleanor reached into the hip pocket of her jeans and pulled something out she then pressed surreptitiously into Naima’s hand; a business card. “I found this on the floor this morning,” she whispered. “It must have fallen out of Augustus’ pocket, maybe his wallet…”

Naima looked at the name that had been printed on the card.
Aaron Broughman,
it read.
Chief Networking Officer and Senior Vice President of Social Capital Development for Diadem Global.

Now Naima remembered.
“Aaron Broughman—I saw that name on Aaron’s driver’s license. I found his wallet in his car. There was a rental agreement under that name in the glove box, too.”

Then
there’s your starting point, I think,
Eleanor said.

Naima looked at her for a long moment, torn between being grateful to her for this unexpected help, and still
pissed at her for blabbing to Augustus. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because
you’re angry with me,” Eleanor replied, with a soft, tired smile. “And perhaps rightly so. I did what I felt I needed to. But I’m sorry that it compromised your trust.”

Stepping forward, she wrapped her arms around Naima, giving her a hug. She felt so slight and thin when Naima returned the embrace, her fragile body little more than bones beneath her clothing.

“I know you loved him once, and that you likely love him still,” Eleanor breathed in her ear, giving her a quick kiss. “Just be careful. I’m begging you. Augustus says he’s dangerous. Even if he didn’t kill Michel…”

“He didn’t,” Naima insisted.

“…then he would have if he’d been given half the chance,” Eleanor finished. “He’s not the boy you knew. He disappeared off the clan registries for a reason—Augustus said Lamar Davenant needs him for something. And whatever that may be, he would never have trusted Aaron to it if he didn’t feel he could implicitly.”

As she drew away, Eleanor cradled Naima’s face briefly between her hands, her eyes glossy with tears.
They’ll kill him when they find him,
she said telepathically, her voice gentle and pointed in Naima’s mind.
You know that, don’t you? Maybe if Michel was here, he might have found some mercy, made them see reason, but now…?
Her brows lifted sorrowfully.
You can’t protect him much longer.

“That’s why I was thinking you could give Augustus a ride to the airport
in Carson City later on,” she said aloud, her voice strangely loud and bright, given the quiet undertones and telepathic exchanges they’d had to that moment.

And then Naima got it—Eleanor was dropping her a hint.
I can get Aaron off the compound. I can bring him someplace safe where he can recuperate. No one will be suspicious if Augustus is in the car with me. And maybe I’ll buy a little bit of time, so I can find out who
really
killed Michel before Phillip and the others find Aaron.

“I think that’s an excellent idea, Eleanor,” she said.

“I thought you’d might,” Eleanor remarked with a smile.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Memory was a fragile thing. Aaron had learned this the hard way. Because of his accident, the first thing he really remembered about his life was opening his eyes and looking up to see someone he would later come to know as his older brother, Julien. At the time, his face had summoned no pangs of familiarity; had in essence, meant nothing to him—as had the word
brother,
in fact, or any other word for that matter.

Two hundred years later and shortly after he’d received the anonymous package on his doorstep, the one with the St. Christopher’s medal enclosed
, he’d undergone a CT scan without letting either Julien or his father know.

“You can see punctate foci evident in this slide, along left bilateral infero-medial frontal lobe
,” his doctor, a human neurologist named Andrea Coleman, had told him, showing him a black and white film from his procedure, a cross-section of his cranium. “They indicate areas of past capillary hemorrhage.” She walked over to the examination table where he sat, and lifted his chart in hand. Flipping through it, she glanced at him and asked, “Have you ever sustained any kind of head injury?”

“I fell off a horse when I was a kid,” he’d offered, and
when her brows had risen in an “a-ha” sort of way, he added, “Sometimes I have trouble with things, faces and names, that sort of stuff from my past.”

This was
the closest he would come to admitting why he’d wanted the CT scan in the first place. He didn’t mention that he had no memory whatsoever of the first thirty years of his life, or that the fifteen years immediately following had gone by in a sort of mental blur, as well.

“
Retrograde amnesia of the sort you’re describing is very common among head injury patients,” she remarked with a nod.

“In other words, I’m brain damaged,” he said, making her laugh.

“No, in other words you may think you’ve lost memories, but you haven’t. Your brain just can’t get to them the way it would normally.” Returning to the examination table, Dr. Coleman reached out, drawing her fingertips lightly through his hair just above his ear. “The frontal lobe processes memories, but they aren’t stored there. That’s the job of your temporal lobe, here.. Every time your brain creates a memory, it’s because of chemical activity causing cells called neurons to interact with one another. It binds them together so they all work like an electrical circuit. The trigger for recalling the memory is here…”

She tapped her fingertip against his forehead. “…in your frontal lobe. But the memory itself is here…”

Another tap, this time on his temple. “…in the temporal part of your brain. If the circuit between the frontal and temporal lobes gets disrupted or broken somehow, such as in the case of an injury to your brain, it doesn’t mean the storehouse of memories is gone. It means the old triggers don’t work anymore because the circuit has been broken. So you have to try and rewire them.”

“You mean I could still get them back? My memories?” he asked, surprised, and with a smile, she nodded.

“It’s possible. Sometimes patients who have suffered traumatic brain injuries in the same region of the left frontal lobe have been able to regain lost memories by establishing new triggers. They’re all still there.” With another smile, Dr. Coleman tapped his temple with her forefinger again. “Right where you left them. It’s just that your head injury messed up the neural wiring, so to speak.”

***

The demands of Aaron’s accelerated healing left precious little, if any energy reserves, and despite being cramped and uncomfortable in Naima’s bathtub, he also found himself completed exhausted. He tried to stay awake—telling himself the last thing he needed was for one of the Morin clan to come tromping through Naima’s house and find him passed out in the tub—but his poor battered, aching body had other plans.

He
slept so hard, when he awoke again, for a long moment, he had no idea where he was, or what had happened to him. He wasn’t even sure what had roused him at first; not until he heard the soft patter of light footsteps and a softer voice—a woman’s—calling for him did her remember.

Naima.

He flexed his mind experimentally, extending his telepathy with caution. To his pleased surprise, it no longer felt taxing to do this, and he was easily able to sweep his immediate surroundings. He sensed Naima even as she hurried into the bathroom; her mind was cluttered with fast-moving, overlapping thoughts, as if she was excited or anxious.

“Aaron
?” She yanked open the shower curtain framing the tub and looked down at him, visibly surprised. “Why are you still in here?”

“I fell asleep,” he mumbled. As he sat up, he felt a nasty crick seize in his neck and with a frown, he rubbed at the knotted muscles bridging to his shoulder with his hand. Already he could tell his body had
recuperated more as he’d. Even though moving caused his broken ribs to ache, the stabbing pain he’d felt only hours earlier was gone, and he was once again able to draw in a full, deep breath without grimacing or gasping. His eyes no longer felt swollen from where Mason had pummeled him; neither did his lips, and when he touched his nose tentatively, it no longer felt like he was handling a grotesquely swollen, lopsided, overripe tomato.

“We have to go.” Naima stepped back from the tub, a clear but unspoken indication she meant for him to climb out. “Come on.”

“Where?” he asked, bracing himself with one hand against the tub rim, and the nearest wall with the other while he unfurled the rusted hinges of his knees and stumbled to his feet.

“
Carson City. I’m driving Augustus Noble to the airport. It’s the only way I can smuggle you off the compound.”

“Augustus?” He raised his brow as he stepped out over the side of the tub. “Is he aware of this arrangement?”

She shot him a withering glare. It occurred to him that her eyes looked puffy, her corneas glassy and reddened, as if she’d been crying. And then he remembered why she had to go in the first place.