Patient Darkness: Brooding City Series Book 2 (25 page)

Ask the question that’s on your mind, Detective Brennan.

Brennan breathed out slowly.
Kellogg didn’t kill your mother.

That wasn’t a question.

Maybe that’s because I already know the answer. Why did you do it?

Today is a win, Detective. A murderer is going behind bars, and you get to live another day.

Brennan bristled at her words.
So you want me to just let you go?

Alex’s response was swift and cutting.
You don’t have a choice.

Alex severed the
connection and looked over to Heinrich.

The thick, bald man was disassembling a high-powered sniper rifle and stowing it away in a hard plastic case. His eyes met hers for a moment, and a shadowed look passed over his features. She couldn’t read his thoughts, but there was resentment plain on his face. The other men, a half dozen in total, seemed impassive about her presence.

Behind him, James Brüding stroked his chin thoughtfully. “If I didn’t know any better,” her father said, “I would have guessed you were aiming for the detective, with Kellogg merely being an obstacle in your way.”

Heinrich continued stowing his gear. “Two birds with one stone,” his deep voice rumbled.

“One of those birds killed my wife,” James said, his tone darker than Alex had ever heard before. “And your gambit didn’t pay off. That shot was hardly fatal.”

“Then we’ll take him out during the transfer back to Washington,” Heinrich said, sounding unconcerned.

James pursed his lips before responding. “We will,” he said. “You won’t.”

With a two-fingered wave, he motioned to one of Heinrich’s lieutenants, who promptly stepped forward with a silenced pistol. The sound barely registered louder than a hoarse cough, and the command of Leviathan shifted to the gunman himself. A jagged crescent tattoo wrapped around one ear, and he couldn’t have been much older than Alex. However, his rigid bearing spoke of previous military training, and he turned now to receive his orders from her father.

“Very good,” James murmured quietly. “Take care of the body and then get set up for the inevitable transfer.” To the group at large, he said, “Matheson is your leader now. If you have a problem with that, feel free to step forward.”

Not surprisingly, the men found little issue respecting the new chain of command.

ф ф ф

“What was that
about back there?”

Kern was driving them each home, starting with dropping Alex back at her apartment in midtown. It would be a slower drive with rush hour traffic, which afforded her the time to voice the question she had been muffling since the exchange of power on the rooftop.

“Why don’t you just read me and find out?” her father asked. He sounded genuinely curious about why she wasn’t employing her powers.

She knew now that he could deceive her, if not hide the truth entirely. “I want to hear it from you,” she said. “Talk to me.”

James shifted in his seat, cradling a glass of champagne poured from one of the towncar’s resident bottles. “Leviathan is mine, Alexis, and their leadership lost sight of that. Independence from government oversight is one thing, but independence from
me
is something else entirely, an aberration that I will not tolerate. Your mother’s death—” He broke off for a moment, and Alex could hear the pain in his voice as it cracked with emotion. “Her passing struck me hard, and I wanted vengeance, I’ll freely admit it. Life has been unfair as of late. SymbioTech’s acquisition of my company, in addition your mother’s...decline, has worn heavily on my soul. To think that her killer yet breathes pains me in ways you cannot imagine.”

His speech had dipped into the formal parlance of his upbringing—whenever that had been—and Alex trembled at how the words affected her. This was a man with power and purpose. Her mother’s passing—an event which long preceded her body’s death—had been her father’s crucible, and he had emerged all the stronger for surviving it.

James clenched one hand into a fist as he lifted the champagne glass with the other, draining it in one ambitious gulp. “I was wrong about our purpose here, Alexis,” he said, gazing meaningfully into her eyes. “We are not silent observers, nor should we be humble in the face of danger. There are more men like Kellogg out there. Those who would wish us harm simply for being born the way we are. This city is dying—” He reached out and grasped her hand. “—but we are the cure.”

Alex smiled at her father, and another question came to mind. “Don’t you think it’s a coincidence that Kellogg was at SymbioTech tonight? Who do you think he was meeting with?”

“You couldn’t read in on them?” James asked, sounding both surprised and disapproving.

She shook her head. “Something about the place was throwing off my ability. It’s like they were using a psychic radio jammer.”

James frowned, but he squeezed her hand encouragingly. “Whoever it was, I intend to find them.”

“And then what will you do?”

“Discover the nature of their meeting, and take back my city by any means necessary.”

Greg’s body was
becoming a patchwork of burn scars.

The chemical burn on his arm from the patch was healing more slowly than the singed remnants of his electrical torturing. While those marks were fading fast, the square patch on his arm looked like the deep tan that followed a severe sunburn.

Emotional scars from that night were going to take a little longer to get over.

Brennan sat on the couch with a half-empty glass bottle of Coke in his hand and something mindlessly playing on the TV. Greg was paying attention, but Brennan was lost deep within his own thoughts. Two weeks had passed, and no more stabbings or bombings had occurred. Kellogg was in the custody of Agents Jun and Pascale, and Alexis “Alex” Brüding had made herself scarce, as promised.

He knew where she lived, both inside and outside the city. It would be a simple matter to march up to her door and slap handcuffs around her wrists.

And then what?

The infernal question reared its ugly head each time his thoughts ran around this circle, and there was no good answer. Lacking any evidence to the contrary, her mother’s death had been framed perfectly as the final murder of the now-infamous Levi Kellogg. Psychic conversations aside, she had never admitted to committing the murder. Approaching her now and bringing her into the station would only open the chance for her to play the tortured victim. Her mother just died, and now a detective who was known for being unstable wanted to pin her as an opportunistic copycat killer?

Brennan’s badge would be on Bishop’s desk within the hour.

He gulped down the rest of his Coke and contemplated opening another. At least his drinking problem was less expensive than most, and with significantly less damage to his liver.

A knock at the door startled both Brennan and Greg out of their reveries.

Brennan took a moment to peek through the peephole, and he sighed as the worst of his fears were confirmed. He opened the door to find Agent Pascale standing on the other side. Jun was positioned to his left, outside of the peephole’s frame of view.

“Detective,” Pascale said by way of greeting. His eyes scanned the interior of the apartment in one quick sweep. “It seems you’re off the hook.”

“Excuse me?”

Agent Jun coughed and pushed his way forward. “With regards to the busting-up of the Leviathan drug ring, you have been cleared of all possible wrongdoing,” he said, frowning at Pascale.

The older agent didn’t back down. “A half dozen men lost, and more drugs on the street than ever—”

“That’s enough,” Jun said firmly.

“So I’m still a detective?” Brennan asked.

Agent Jun nodded. “Lieutenant Bishop will reassign you to active duty, and you won’t be barred from any cases going forward.”

“That’s great news and all, but why was I kept off this one for so long in the first place?”

Pascale stepped across the threshold and jabbed a finger in Brennan’s chest. “Because you’re a dirty son of a—”

“That’s enough!” Agent Jun repeated, pulling his partner back into the hall.

“He’s just as bad as his father,” Pascale continued. He turned to Brennan. “We
know
you were in that building the night of Kellogg’s explosives, just before we arrived.”

“He also cornered Kellogg when nobody else was even close,” Jun reasoned quietly.

“Because he was in on it!” Pascale’s attention was fully focused on Brennan, who expected fists to start flying at any second. “You and Kellogg were working together, admit it!”

Jun ignored him. “When a significant number of officers are wounded or killed in action, an independent inquiry is organized to investigate any suspicions of misconduct.”

Brennan eyed him with suspicion. “They called in the FBI for an Internal Affairs matter?”

“The situation had…extenuating circumstances, where you were concerned.”

He put more pieces together. “Because of my father.”

Jun nodded. “Your family’s history on the wrong side of the law has caused certain parties to have reservations concerning your right to carry a badge.”

“So the inquiry was less about the actual case and more about me,” Brennan grumbled, displeased.

“We were wrong to be suspicious of you.”

Pascale scowled. “Speak for yourself.”

“There’s, uh, one other thing we have to tell you,” Jun said. He coughed self-consciously and produced a small plastic bag from within his jacket. “This entered into our investigation as evidence after the death of your sister.”

Brennan accepted the bag and looked through the clear, flimsy plastic to see a shaped lump of metal inside. A key, one which he vaguely recognized. Jun took it back and coughed again, his cheeks an even deeper red.

“You are your sister’s next-of-kin, so ordinarily all of her possessions would be transferred over to you,” Jun continued. “However, her living will was very specific about this key in particular. Is your nephew here?”

Greg shot up from the couch. “My mom left me something?” He sidled his way past Brennan and took the bag from Jun. He looked down at the key and frowned. “What does it go to?”

Brennan glanced between his nephew and the key before turning to the agents and smiling. “Is that everything, Agent Jun?” he asked, purposely ignoring Pascale.

Jun nodded and stepped back. “Enjoy the rest of your day, Detective.”

The door closed quickly behind the men in black, and Greg gave him a curious look. “So what’s the big deal with the key?”

“It belonged to my parents, your grandparents,” Brennan explained. “I didn’t know that Maddy had the key, though I guess it would make sense that she did.”

“And the lock it opens…?”

Brennan shrugged off the sudden discomfort. “That’s the key to the, err…mansion.”

Greg’s jaw visibly dropped a few inches. “I don’t think I heard you properly. Did you just say you’re living in a cheap apartment in the city when you could be living in a freaking
mansion
?”

“Hey, this apartment isn’t cheap!”

“Compared to a house that has
wings
?” Greg countered.

“It’s a long story, but I wasn’t exactly the golden boy of the family. I couldn’t have moved back even if I wanted to.” Brennan helped himself to another Coke before sitting back down on the couch.

Greg sat beside him, and a silent moment passed between them, during which a wide smile spread slowly across his face. “So,” he started, drawing out the word. “Now that I legally own a mansion, I guess I don’t have to live here anymore.”

“I guess not.”

“So when can we move me in?”

Brennan grinned. “We? You’re a grown man now, obviously.”

“Well, I just need a ride there, since I don’t know where it is. After that, it’ll be full independence living in the lap of luxury.”

“Uh-huh,” Brennan said dubiously. “And how will you buy groceries? Or pay the utilities? I’d be surprised if the old place is even furnished anymore, so you’ll have to get a bed, too…”

Greg held up his hands in surrender. “All right, fine. I will
allow
you to be a paying tenant in my mansion.” He paused to consider something. “Since when did our family have a mansion?”

“That’s another long story,” Brennan sighed. “What makes you think I’d want to move? This place has to be a thousand times easier to maintain in terms of upkeep, not to mention rent.”

“Are you crazy? The rent here is insane, and whatever nest egg you saved up from being a Sleeper can’t last forever. Also—
lest we forget
—there’s now an organized gang of thugs
and
a homicidal psychic who know where you live.”

Brennan rubbed his chin. “You think Leviathan knows about this place specifically?”

“They would have to, right? You killed a half dozen of their men while rescuing Bishop, and then you escaped again from their ambush the other night. Wait, we’re sure it was Leviathan, right?”

“I haven’t pissed off any other gangs, to my knowledge.”

“Right. So odds are good that they’ll have this apartment on their hit list soon enough.”

Brennan sighed and looked around the room. It wasn’t much, but this place had been his home since before his and Mara’s wedding. The commute to work couldn’t be better, and despite Greg’s earlier argument, the rent was lower than a lot of places in center city. Not by much, but enough that it afforded an extra pizza or two each month.

Before long, he was thinking about where they could pick up boxes for packing, and Brennan knew that the battle was lost. He didn’t want to return to the home of his youth, the birthplace of some of his darkest memories and deepest regrets, but it simply wasn’t safe for them to remain here. While taking refuge in a Scottage in the valley had been a pipe dream, the family mansion was a very real and imminent future for them.

The only thing left now was to recognize the gift fate had given them and to accept it.