Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN



Aaron drove the Escalade to South Lake Tahoe, while Naima sat in the front passenger seat and focused on manipulating the brake calipers along the way, controlling both their speed and the truck’s ability to safely stop. Once back in the town proper, she directed him to pull into the parking lot of a Tudor-themed motel called the Heavenly Motor Lodge, where a neon sign that read VACANCY flickered uncertainly by the office door.l

Craning his head, he looked out the windshield at the low-slung building with its white-washed trim.

“It’s not the Ritz Carlton or anything,” Naima said somewhat sheepishly.

Turning the key, he killed the engine, then reached for the door handle. “I’ve stayed in worse.”

Naima been to the motel not long ago, when she and Eleanor had parked in pretty much that same spot. Tessa, Rene and Lina Jones, a human woman traveling in the company of Eleanor’s grandson, Brandon Noble had been staying there and the pair had been spying on them surreptitiously. It had been a dump then, in Naima’s estimation, and remained a dump now. But it was cheap, and it was a roof under which Aaron could hide for awhile, so she forced a smile at the manager and gave him a week’s worth of rental fees upfront in cash.

“You kids have fun,” the manager told her with a toothy sort of leer as he passed her a plastic key fob shaped to look like a pine tree. The number 112 had been stamped on it in chipped gold paint, and a solitary key dangled from the ring.

“Yeah, right,” Aaron muttered, still fidgeting to adjust his sore balls.

Before they reached the room, he snagged the key out of her hand.

“Excuse me,” she said with a frown, as he walked on ahead of her and unlocked the door.

“Wait,” he said, his hand shooting out like a crossing guard’s, staying her in midstride. Annoyed, yet curious, she did as he instructed, watching as he stepped cautiously into the room. The first thing he did was draw the curtains all of the way closed. Next, he switched on a desk lamp, then crossed to the bed, flipped back the comforter and looked underneath. Seeming satisfied to find nothing amiss, he disappeared into the bathroom. She heard a rustle as he drew the shower curtain aside.

Is he checking out the tub? she wondered. What the hell is he up to?

“I think we’re alone,” she said as he stepped out of the bathroom.

“Never a bad idea to make sure,” he said, heading back toward the doorway. “You go on and get settled. I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“There’s a payphone outside,” he said. “I need to make a call.”

***

Julien wouldn’t recognize the unfamiliar telephone number on his caller I.D., and thus Aaron had to call him several times, impatiently letting it ring through to his brother’s voice mail, thenhanging up and trying again, before Julien got fed up and answered.

“Hello, sunshine,” he growled.

Julien liked to say this, if only in passing, to those people he would eventually kill. He’d told Aaron once that he’d called this out to the rapper he’d shot to save Aaron’s ass in their father’s regard, so that the rapper would turn his head to better face him.

“It’s about damn time you picked up,” Aaron groused back. He’d pulled the hood of his jacket up and stood with his free hand crammed in his pocket, his shoulders hunched against the cold night air.

“Az,” Julien exclaimed, sounding pleased. “I didn’t realize it was you! Why aren’t you using your cell phone?”

“Long story,” Aaron said. “Any chance you’re in the Lake Tahoe area?”

Julien was the only person he could think of beside himself who could have maneuvered past the alarm systems of the Morin clinic once they’d been armed, as well as cut the brake lines to Naima’s truck. He’d thrown all that bullshit out to Naima about the animal-rights activist group, yeah, but he didn’t give them that much credit. He also knew their leader, Daniel Del Rosa, he of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted, was safely squirreled away in Jaramillo, Mexico, which didn’t leave him at the top of Aaron’s suspect list.

He couldn’t figure out why in the hell Julien would be deliberately interfering in a job Lamar had assigned to Aaron, unless he thought he was helping his younger brother in some way, as he had with the rapper.

“What?” Julien laughed. “Are you kidding? No, I’m in Miami. Father sent me down here on some business with that Cervantes fellow—what’s his name? Tejano? Anyway, at the moment, I’m kicked back in my own private poolside cabana at the Acqualina Resort and Spa in South Beach, with my own little cabana boy named Enrique rubbing me down with eucalyptus and peppermint essential oils.” Julien laughed out loud. “I don’t know how essential they really are, but damn, I smell delicious! I’m hoping in a little bit, I can use a couple of Benjamins to persuade my little no-hablo-ingles amigo here to lay his hands on something a little more essential in my opinion.”

One of the few memories Aaron had regained from his childhood was that of walking into the stables one sweltering summer afternoon and finding Julien in a back corner stall, leaning against a wall while Mason Morin had knelt on the ground in front of him. Julien’s pants had been open, his eyes closed, his head tipped back as he’d gasped, his fingers coiled in Mason’s hair. Aaron had never known if this had been Julien’s first homosexual encounter—because he’d never summoned the courage to ask—but he’d known and accepted ever since that it hadn’t been the last.

“Anyway,” Julien said. “What’s up? You sound funny. Not in a funny ha-ha kind of way, either.”

“I’m alright,” Aaron said.

“Didn’t Father send you to Lake Tahoe?” Julien asked. “He’s had his Depends all in a twist over Jean Luc. Aren’t you supposed to be…wreaking his vengeance or something like that?”

Aaron imagined Julien using finger quotes as he said this last and managed a smile. “Something like that, yeah.”

“Everything okay? I told him I didn’t like the idea of you going up against them all by yourself, even if there’s only a handful of them out there. He kept insisting I take care of this Cervantes thing, though why it’s so urgent, I have no f*cking clue.”

“It’s alright,” Aaron said. “I’ve got it under control.”

If by ‘under control’ you mean I had the shit beat out of me by your ex-boyfriend, and I’ve gone from a handful of pissed off Morins running through the woods for my ass to more than forty, all of them armed and able to move shit with their minds, he added to himself. Not to mention the matter of Naima.

He closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingertips.

Naima.

Kissing her had been… He struggled to even find the words to describe it. Amazing, yes; arousing, most definitely. But it was more than that.

It was familiar to me, he thought. Like something I’ve been missing, longing for…incomplete without somehow…and I hadn’t even realized until that moment.

“When you get done, come down here and join me,” Julien said, cutting into his thoughts. “It’s been too long since I’ve seen you more than in passing, frérot. We need to hang out more, enjoy a good old-fashioned, shit-faced, staggering drunk together on Father’s dime.”

“Sounds good,” Aaron said. But as he hung up the payphone, his thoughts were not on shots of Cuervo Gold with his brother on the pristine white beaches of Miami, but instead on the beautiful, infuriating, enigmatic woman in the motel room behind him—one he’d known before, and one he found himself increasingly, with each passing moment, wanting to know again.

***

Naima sat at a small table in front of the motel room windows, peering through a slim part in the drapes. The payphone was close to the motel office, and she could only see Aaron from behind as he stood, hunkered against the weather with his hood up, using the phone.

Who’s he calling? she wondered. Had it been anyone else, she’d have simply opened her mind, eavesdropped on the conversation and found out. As it was, she was tempted to try. But the memory of those dagger-like psionic bolts Aaron had hit her with remained fresh yet, and she bit back the urge, albeit begrudgingly.

She’d carried her cell phone in from the truck and jumped in surprise when it began to vibrate, shimmying loudly against the formica table-top. She looked down and groaned. Davone again.

Jesus Christ, can’t he take a hint?

With a frown, she answered, little more than a growl: “Hello.”

“Damn, girl, I didn’t think you was ever going to answer the damn phone,” he said, and just as she’d fought the temptation to pry into Aaron’s mind, so too did Naima struggle not to correct his lack of noun/verb agreement.

“I’ve been busy, Davone,” she said with a sigh. And a glance out the window again to make sure Aaron was still at the payphone. “I told you, my grandfather…” Her voice faltered as she realized just how long she’d been putting off talking to Davone. She sighed again, then leaned over the table, cradling her forehead in her hand. “Look, my grandfather died, okay? I’m sorry I didn’t call you, but I just…” All at once, the strain in her voice wasn’t forced or feigned. “I’ve had a lot to deal with, you know?”

“Man,” Davone said after a long, awkward pause. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. You said he was wrecked but I didn’t think he’d be through like that. That shit’s deep, boo. You doing okay? You need me to be there? I can leave right now…”

“No.” She cut him off. “No, you stay in Reno. I’m alright. I’m good. Really. You’ve got the exhibition games coming up so you’ll be traveling all during the off-season…” Her voice faded when she noticed Aaron was no longer standing at the pay phone.

“It ain’t no thing,” Davone said. “They’ll understand. They’ll be good with it. My shorty needs me now. I can be there in a couple hours…”

Where’d he go?

“…get out the baby oil, strip you down…” Davone continued, because he was twenty-two and everything, even the death of a loved one, came around to sex in one way or another. “…start at your shoulders and rub you down…”

Scooting her chair back, Naima leaned forward, trying to see better out the window.

“…get that p-ssy good and wet…” Davone was saying. “Bend you over and slide on in…”

She heard the jingle of the key as the door to the motel room unlocked, and jerked in surprise when Aaron walked in.

“I need a gun,” he told her, pulling off his hood and closing the door loudly behind him.

At this, Davone fell silent. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly. Aaron noticed she was on the phone and held up his hands in half-assed apology. “It…was nothing. Just a door closing.”

“I thought I heard somebody,” Davone said. “You got someone there with you, boo?”

“My…uncle,” she said. “You know Mason. He’s pretty shook up about all of this. I’d better go…”

“Hey,” Davone said, seemingly unbothered. “I ain’t mad atcha, girl. You do what you got to. You need me, you call.”

“Yeah. Okay. Sure. Thanks.” Nodding like a bobble-headed doll, Naima disconnected the call. Then, heaving a sigh, she slapped the phone down on the table.

“I need a gun,” Aaron said again.

She glared at him. “No, you don’t.” Pushing her chair back, she rose to her feet. “I’m going back to the compound. My family will be expecting me and with everything that’s happened, they’ll worry if I’m not back from Carson City soon.”

“Who was that on the phone?” he asked, folding his arms across his chest and looking slightly amused.

“None of your business.”

“‘Get that p-ssy good and wet?’” Aaron arched an eyebrow. “‘Bend you over and—’”

“How dare you listen in on my conversation!” Naima exclaimed, as much—if not more—mortified than outraged at his obvious intrusion.

“Like you weren’t tempted to listen to mine,” he said with a chuckle. Unzipping the front of his hoodie, he shrugged it off and tossed it onto the bed.

“I didn’t listen to yours.”

“I know you didn’t.” He dropped her a wink, then stripped off his shirt, startling her. “But you thought about. I just went a step further.”

“You’re an a*shole,” she said, deliberately focusing her furious glare at the wall just past his shoulder, the ceiling just about his head, one specific flower on the colorful bedspread—anyplace but on his chest, which she was loathe to admit, was well-muscled and lacking any visible hint of body fat.

“I admitted that about an hour ago, after you tried to crush my balls with your bare hand, yes.”

“What are you doing?” she demanded, feeling a bright mix of panic-stricken alarm and sudden, undeniable excitement when he reached for his belt and began to unbuckle it.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he replied. Another wink, and he added: “In case you want to call your boo back or anything there, shorty.”

The excitement withered.

“He’s not my boo,” she told him, glowering, snatching her phone in one hand and the Cadillac keys in another. “And I’m leaving now.”

“You can’t,” Aaron told her pointedly. “The brakes are out on the truck. You can’t drive while trying to focus on controlling the brake calipers at the same time. It’s too much.”

Her brows furrowed even more. “Want to bet?”

“Look, just give me a few minutes. Let me get a shower. I’ll go with you. I told you—I need to get my gun out of my rental car.”

“I told you—I’m not letting you anywhere near my family. And I’m sure as hell not letting you get your hands on a weapon.”

With a sigh, he crossed his arms again. “If you try to drive that truck into the mountains by yourself, you’re going to get yourself killed.”

He was right and she knew it. Worse, he knew it. And worst of all—he knew that she knew it.

Goddamn it, she thought with a scowl. But just when she couldn’t think of a way out the conundrum without admitting defeat, an idea occurred to her.

She called Eleanor.

“Something’s wrong with Mason’s truck,” she told Eleanor on the phone. “I think the brakes are going out.”

“Oh, no!” Eleanor sounded genuinely distressed, and Naima felt bad for worrying her.

“It’s alright. I was able to drop Augustus off without any problems and get back to town from Carson City. But I’m afraid to take it up to the compound, especially in the dark. I’m at the Heavenly Motor Lodge, do you remember?”

“Where we first found Tessa and Rene? Yes, of course.”

“Would you mind to come and pick me up in the morning? You can use my car. I left the keys hanging on a little hook right inside my front door.”

“I’d be glad to, darling,” Eleanor said. Then, after a moment—because she knew damn good and well that Naima wasn’t at the motel alone—she added tactfully: “I can come tonight, if you need me. I overheard Phillip saying something about going through Michel’s will as soon as possible tomorrow. You should be here for that.”

Michel’s will. The thought of it—even the sound of it—seemed heartbreaking and strange. And Naima knew that Eleanor didn’t need to be out driving in the dark, especially on the winding, curving roads leading from the compound into town. The blood-borne illness from which she suffered had left her, among other things, chronically anemic—and perpetually weak, prone to spells of vertigo and fainting as a result. It probably wasn’t a good idea to ask her to drive in the broad light of day—especially considering Naima couldn’t remember an occasion in which she’d actually seen Eleanor drive anywhere.

“Augustus would kill me if something happened to you,” she said. “So, no. But thank you. I’ll call you when I’m up in the morning. Tell Phillip he’ll just have to wait.”