Page 3 of A Brother's Secret

“My dad picked this place and I think he took this secret to the grave like so many others, damnhim.”

“Shit. Sorry he’s gone,” he grunted and went for a ladder and climbed it. He threw open a trap door and stuck his head through and checked. Satisfied, he leaned down with a hand out and lifted my bag. I let him take it. He shoved it through.

“I’m not,” I said, after snorting derisively. He looked at me with surprise so I added, “Suppose you want an explanation.”

“Later, right now I want us alive and out of the city. We need to go to ground and find a place to regroup.”

He heaved himself out of the trap door and reached down for me and lifted me cleanly through. Kyle wasn’t the sixteen-year-old lean and wimpy kid I remembered. He’d filled out by quite a bit in the last seventeen years.

I helped him shut the trap door and to move several heavy crates of what looked like liquor over it to hold itdown.

“What now?” I asked, taking my bag and lifting it back over my head, settling its weight on my shoulder and guiding the thick padded strap between my breasts. The adrenaline was still surging through my veins and I could feel every throb of my heartbeat in my head and the side of my neck. Kyle held his gun low against the side of his leg and thrust his chin at mine in myhand.

“First off, you can put thataway.”

“What? Why? You haveone.”

“Yeah, and I’m taking point and know how to shoot, doyou?”

“Yeah, how do you think I got here?” I demanded harshly. “I killed somebody.”

“Killing somebody doesn’t mean you know how to shoot, Mali. You got any practice hours in at a range or anything?”

I swallowed hard, “No.”

“Then do me a favor and put itaway.”

“You do?” I asked, shoving the gun into my waistband.

“Tell you later,” he said and I scoffed. “Now is not the time to be stubborn, ‘k?” he bitback.

“I guess not,” I agreed, and it was totally bizarre. It was like there hadn’t been any kind of gap in time, like we’d picked up right where we’d left off. It was both comforting and disquieting.

I stayed close on Kyle’s tail as we surged across the basement floor, carefully working our way past shelving units and unused cookware to another set of steep stairs. Kyle went up to them, listened, and threw back a well-oiled hatch.

Diffuse light filtered down and he turned to motion me forward. He went up the steps and I followed him out, finding that we were up behind a gleaming bar in a restaurant that was closed for the day. He shut the trap and I watched him; the racking of a shotgun caused us both to whirl, handsup.

“What are you doing in my bar?” a man demanded.

“Just passing through, no harm meant, no harm done,” Kyle answered quickly.

The man was in his fifties maybe, and fit through the arms and chest, but a bit soft in the middle. His iron gray hair and beard were kept neat and he was pretty much the epitome of a silver fox. Keen blue eyes moved over us, narrowed and calculating.

“No harm meant? Then why are you both armed?”

“Running,” I squeezedout.

“Yeah, fromwho?”

“Don’t know,” Kyle said. “Mali, you got an answer for the man?” I shook my head and I heard Kyle behind me let out a sigh, “Seriously? Now would be a really good time to be honest.” The man looked at Kyle and lowered his shotgun slightly.

“I seriously don’t know!” I snapped defensively. “My dad got me into this mess then he fucking died, okay? I don’t know who’s after me. If I did, I probably wouldn’t be running fromthem.”

The man’s shotgun had come back up at my outburst, and he looked at Kyle, then me, then back to Kyle again. Those gaping black barrels lowered again as he said, “Against my better judgment, I just want you the fuck out of here. I’ll be calling the cops, though, so you bettergit.”

“Appreciated,” Kyle said and moved to go past me. I could feel him at my back and the man raised the shotgun and pointed it at us once more. A byproduct of Kyle’s sudden movement. I didn’t blame the guy, I would be as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

“Keep your hands where I can see ‘em and your finger off that trigger, son.”

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