Beth Kery - Because We Belong

He looked mad enough to bite through a chain-link fence. She stood her ground, but something in his blue eyes made it difficult to do.

“You’re here now. Come inside. It’s freezing in this foyer,” Lucien added from behind her, and she knew he was trying to give Ian time to cool down and see reason. Ian made a savage, furious sound in his throat and stalked out of the foyer ahead of them without another word.

“I had to come,” she whispered to Lucien desperately. “It’s crazy, him being here of all places. Is it true Ian has bought this place?”

“He owns it, yes,” Lucien said succinctly, his tight mouth telling her he shared in her disquietude. “Are you going to come in? We were just sitting down to eat in the parlor. It’s one of the only livable rooms in the house . . . one of the only warm ones as well,” he added drolly.

“When did you get here?” she asked Lucien as they walked.

“Late last night, at around the same time as Ian.”

She followed him into a firelit, shadowed room filled with heavy, ornate furniture covered in dingy, once-luxurious fabrics. An unpleasant odor of dampness and mold seemed to pervade the entire place. Ian sat on a deep couch facing the gigantic fireplace, eating a plate of food mechanically without acknowledging her arrival in the room.

“Are you hungry, Francesca?” Lucien asked politely. “It’s just chicken, potatoes, and fruit, but we’ve got plenty of it.”

“Yes, please,” Francesca replied, realizing for the first time how hollow her stomach felt. She hadn’t eaten all day. When Ian still refused to speak or look at her after Lucien left the room, she sighed and fell onto the couch next to him. The heat from the fire felt good. A wave of exhaustion hit her.

“Are you just going to ignore me?” she asked tiredly after a moment.

His whiskered jaw hardened. He swallowed and shoved his plate onto the coffee table before him. “How can I possibly ignore you when you’ve shown up here uninvited?” he said, anger simmering in his deep voice. “I don’t want you staying here, Francesca. This place is . . . tainted. Poison. I don’t believe in ghosts, but if I were ever to think a place was haunted, I’d think it was Aurore. It’s not a place where I want you to be.”

“Well it’s not a place where I want you to be, either. Come with me, and we’ll both be happy.” Her flash of indignation faded almost as fast as it came. She peered around the shadowed room, making out the dark, depressing paintings of pale-skinned, hollow-eyed people and the massive, hulking furniture, some of which was covered in stained sheets. She could almost feel the dust and mold accumulating in her lungs as she breathed. “What an awful place.”

Ian’s irritated grunt seemed to say, Didn’t I tell you? He leaned back on the couch, his profile rigid. Francesca wanted to demand that he tell her what specifically he was looking for on Trevor Gaines’s property, but was worried he’d get up and refuse to speak to her further. Knowing him as well as she did, she understood that the majority of his anger at her presence came from helplessness. And perhaps shame at her seeing this dark part of his past.

As she was quickly learning, his shame wasn’t logical. But that didn’t mean he could shake it just because she wanted it.

Eager to change the topic that would sidestep his discomfort and fury, she landed on the disconcerting vision she’d seen as she drove onto the property.

“I can well believe you’d imagine this place is haunted. You won’t believe what I saw just now in the woods,” she said as Lucien walked into the room carrying a plate of food and a glass. “Thank you,” she said gratefully as Lucien placed her dinner in front of her on the table.

“What?” Ian asked, turning toward her slightly, his brows knitted together.

“Half a man disappearing into the ground,” Francesca replied matter-of-factly, picking up her plate and settling it in her lap. She took a bite. The chicken was moist and flavorful. “This is good. Did you get it in town?”

“Forget about the food,” Ian said impatiently, peering at her. “What do you mean, half a man?” Lucien, too, was listening intently from where he sat in an armchair near the couch.

She paused to explain what she’d seen. When she finished, Ian shared a significant look with Lucien.

“It’s him. Kam Reardon,” Ian said to Lucien. “He must have some kind of hideout underground. It’s what I suspected. I’m convinced there’s a tunnel entrance into this house. He gets in, but I can’t figure out how. If he’s underground, that’s why I haven’t been able to find him when I search the grounds.”

“Who’s Kam Reardon?” Francesca asked. She quirked her eyebrows up in an expectant gesture when neither man spoke. “Well?”

“He’s a wild man who lives on the estate,” Ian answered flatly.

“He’s our half brother,” Lucien added.

Francesca froze in the process of chewing some potato. Ian stood abruptly, startling her. He was such a big man, but he moved with fast, razor precision at times. “I’m going to look for the underground entrance. I’m dead set to talk to Reardon. He’s got to know plenty about Gaines, if he lived here his whole life. There’s still a little light left to search,” he told Lucien.

Lucien stood as well. “I’m coming with you. Reardon doesn’t sound like the type to be too thrilled at the idea of anyone poking into his den.”

Francesca set down her plate and got up. “I’m going, too.” She ignored Ian’s fiery, furious glance. “I’m the one who saw where the entrance was,” she said. “It’ll be tomorrow morning if you go looking for it by stomping up and down every square inch of land at the side of the road.”

She headed toward the front door, praying Ian would cooperate for once in his life and follow her.

It took a little doing to find the spot. Darkness was falling, especially under the cover of the trees, even as skeletal as the limbs were with winter upon them. Thankfully, Ian had grabbed a powerful flashlight on the way out. Francesca led them to the general vicinity of where she thought she’d seen the “half man,” recalling a singularly shaped stump of a tree that she’d almost run into in her shock upon seeing the unlikely vision.

There was barely any light left by the time Ian paused, pushing his foot down several times on the ground. Francesca heard a hollow, thumping noise.

“This is it,” Ian said, his gruff voice in the cold, still air causing a shiver to course down her spine. She and Lucien drew near the flashlight and Ian’s shadowed form. He knelt and moved his hand over the dead leaves, his gloved fingers seeming to stick on something.

“Back up a bit,” he instructed. Lucien and she stepped back, and he lifted. The forest floor opened like a two-by-three-foot lid. Ian pointed the flashlight downward, revealing a dark hole and a wooden ladder. Francesca could barely make out his shadowed face as he peered downward, but she saw that he was scowling. He flashed a glance at her, and she knew he was deliberating on how best to proceed . . . undoubtedly wishing she wasn’t there so he didn’t have to worry about her.

“I’ll go first, and call up to you if I think the coast is clear,” he told Lucien.

“We’re going with you, Ian. We’re not going to stand up here in the freezing cold with no light,” Francesca stated.

Ian gave her a repressive glance. Without another word, he shoved the flashlight in Lucien’s direction and lowered into the hole.

* * *

“Holy Jesus,” Lucien muttered in awe several minutes later. The three of them stood at the mouth of a large underground chamber that was lit by electrical lamps. The room had been at the end of a long tunnel, the floor earthen, the walls reinforced by wooden timbers. After only several seconds of being underground, they’d been able to see the light in the far distance and follow it unerringly.

“What is it all?” Francesca muttered dubiously, staring at table after table filled with odd, intricate mechanical devices, computers, and scattered tools. Many of the devices were moving, tiny metal cogs spinning, pendulums swinging. The sound of dozens of muted ticking noises resounded in the silence. Some of the mechanisms were large, but one table near them held tiny metal objects and delicate tools along with an electrical magnifying-type lens that reminded Francesca of something she’d seen in an eye doctor’s office.

“They’re all clockwork mechanisms, aren’t they?” Lucien asked, approaching one of the tables and examining its contents in fascination.

“Different types of escapements,” Ian said. Francesca looked at him in bewilderment. “The basic mechanism of a clock or watch. There are different kinds,” Ian said, peering around the room. “Gaines was considered to be a mechanical genius. He patented several electronic and mechanical devices, many of them associated with clockworks. Reardon has stolen a lot of this from Gaines’s workshop, I think. But I don’t understand some of these things. It’s like something I’ve never seen before—”

“I didn’t steal anything!” Francesca jumped at the harsh male shout. “He left it to me. Left me that house you say belongs to you, too, only I didn’t have the tax money and they took it from me,” a deep, rough voice rang out from the shadows at the far end of the room. Francesca started at the vision of a tall, broad-shouldered figure coming at them with alarming speed. He was carrying a shotgun. Ian moved in front of Francesca, so that she had to look around his arm to see. She heard the innocuous, cheerful sound of eager paws and tinkling metal. She glanced down in amazement when a beautiful, well-groomed golden retriever approached her and Ian’s legs and sniffed at them with friendly interest. There was a small, sophisticated-looking electronic device strapped on the dog’s right leg. It looked, oddly enough, like a very expensive watch.

“Get back Angus,” the man bellowed, startling Francesca. Kam Reardon’s face was twisted in a fury. He paused when he noticed her peering around Ian, his frown fading. His light gray eyes ran over her face. Ian seemed to sense him studying her, because he put his hand back on her hip and pushed, urging her farther behind him.

Kam Reardon had Lucien’s eyes. She leaned out again, her curiosity trumping her fear.

The man’s frightening scowled returned. “Get the hell out of here,” he growled.

“I’m sorry for trespassing,” Ian said levelly. “We don’t mean any harm, Kam. I came to talk to you. So did Lucien, here,” he said, nodding at Lucien, who looked very wary eyeing Kam’s pointed shotgun. “Lucien is our . . . brother as well,” Ian said, seeming to hesitate at saying the word.

“And her?” Gaines said, nodding in the direction behind Ian. “Is she one of us?”

“No,” Ian said harshly. Kam’s gaze lowered to where Ian palmed the side of her hip.

“I said to get the hell out,” Kam yelled suddenly, white teeth flashing in his dark beard. He cocked the gun.

“Go on,” Ian said tersely, turning and pushing Francesca in front of him. Lucien followed. Ian handed her the flashlight. “Lead the way. Hurry,” he ordered.

Francesca jogged down the dark tunnel, her heart pounding in her chest, highly aware that it wasn’t just Lucien and Ian who were behind her. Kam Reardon was bringing up the rear. She could hear his footsteps grinding in the stony dirt, but imagined she could feel his simmering anger behind them as he followed, assuring himself they well and truly left his underground territory. The dog Angus frolicked next to them, an unlikely escort to such a tense eviction.

* * *

After they returned to the manor, Ian insisted upon searching for the suspected underground entrance where Reardon entered Aurore. Francesca went with them into the gloomy, musty basement that seemed to stretch forever in each direction. Ian and Lucien did, indeed, after much searching, discover a hidden door that led to a tunnel.

“It looks like it was built fairly recently, at least in comparison to the house,” Lucien observed, running his hand over the wood timbers that enforced a different branch of the tunnel system than the one they’d been in earlier.

“I’m thinking it might have been constructed during World War II, during the German occupation. There was fighting in this vicinity. The owners might have wanted an escape route or a hideout if troops ever tried to occupy. Look at this,” Ian said, running the flashlight along a plastic tube that contained multiple electrical wires. “Bloody bastard has me paying for his electricity,” Ian said, his tone a strange mixture of annoyance, amusement, and respect.