Ward turned out to be a plethora of information, so much so that Elliott spent way more time in the archives than he’d spent in a library, collectively, in his entire life. By the time he left, he had dozens of pages of notes—all photo snippets pasted together in his IAC, rather than actual handwritten notes—and plenty of reason to think he was just as indestructible as he’d thought before, unless of course he found himself back inside of the Blood Moon Portal.
By the time he headed home, he was starving, and it was well past midnight. He intended to go in, eat something, watch some ESPN, and then let Aaron know what he’d found out. But the TV was on when he walked in the door, and he found his son sitting in front of it, not even watching but staring at his phone instead. These sorts of meetings were getting a little old.
“Hey, Brandon. How’s it going?” His first instinct had been to ask why he still wasn’t hanging out with his friends, but he already knew the answer to that.
“Okay.”
“Good.” He glanced at the TV and saw that it was an old episode of I Love Lucy. He watched the woman’s antics for a moment, laughing at her stuffing chocolates down her face. “This is a good one.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah.” Brandon chuckled slightly, but he wasn’t really paying any attention to the show.
Sitting down on the couch, Elliott asked, “You wanna talk about it?” They’d talked about it before, several times, but maybe Brandon was in a different place now and was ready to listen. A quick glance at his son’s phone let Elliott know he was looking at pictures of Cassidy on social media.
“Not really. Nothing’s changed.”
Nodding, Elliot said, “She was at the meeting we had earlier. She is really busy right now. Aaron gave her a whole list of things to do.”
“Yeah, well, she can do stuff no one else can. Except maybe Heather. But she doesn’t really know what she’s doing yet.”
“True. True. Anyway, we might be going to Europe soon. Not sure if you’re coming, though. This is going to be dangerous.”
Brandon dropped his phone onto the couch cushion between them. “Is Cass going?”
Elliott nodded. It hadn’t been discussed, but she was too valuable of a weapon to leave behind.
“Dad, if Cass is going, you have to let me come. Even if it is dangerous. Especially if it’s dangerous. I can’t let anything happen to her.”
“Brandon, right now, the two of y’all might be more of a distraction than anything else. The last thing we need is two more broken up people fightin’ all the damn time.” He thought back to how he’d let Aurora get under his skin and grimaced. That whole ordeal had been such a huge mistake, and boy was he paying for it now.
“We won’t, Dad. Don’t worry. She doesn’t want to talk to me at all.”
“You don’t know that, and believe me, things change. Aurora was all sweet when I first came back from the portal, but when she realized I was still done with her, she became a major bitch. She can’t even look at me without narrowing her eyes now.”
“You shouldn’t have gone to that strip club.”
“Don’t you start with me. I’m a grown ass man. I can do whatever the hell I want. It ain’t like she was my girl or anything.”
Brandon clearly didn’t want to argue about that. He was back on Europe. “I wanna go, Dad. You gotta let me go.”
“I’ll talk to the boss man. I’m not even sure when we’re leaving. He wants to wait for Christian to get back. Can you believe that? Aaron, same guy Christian was hoping to knock out of the picture, wants to wait until his ass gets back here.”
“Why?” Brandon asked.
“Hell if I know.”
“No, I mean, why did Aaron say he wanted Christian to come back first? Maybe he’s setting him up. Maybe that’s why I saw Cassidy talking to Christian in the coffee shop last week. Maybe she’s working with Aaron to take Christian over there and get him killed.” Brandon’s eyebrows were dancing like caterpillars at a hoedown.
“Got it all figured out there, do ya, son? Sorry to burst your bubble, but Cass said plain as day she don’t wanna wait for Major Henry. So I doubt that’s it.” Even though Elliott thought Brandon was way off with his theory about Aaron wanting to sabotage Christian and get him killed, something else he said seemed odd. “You did see Cass talking to Christian, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. So? You told me not to worry about it, remember? Do you think they’re seeing each other?” The anger seemed to be welling up inside of him before he could even get the question out.
“No, no. But....” Elliott scratched his head. Something about that just didn’t compute. He’d thought it was really odd the first time Brandon had mentioned it, but now that he knew what he knew—Christian’s IAC wasn’t working, he had new secret weapons, he wasn’t answering his cell phone, and Cassidy didn’t want to wait for him to get back... something was way off. Before he even thought about it, Elliott was up off of the couch.
“Where are you going?” Brandon asked, his forehead crinkled.
“I gotta go talk to Aaron about something. I can’t put my finger on it, but something is weird.”
“Does it have to do with Cass?” Brandon asked, his eyes looking like a sad puppy dog’s.
“Not exactly. Maybe. I don’t know. I’ll be back.”
Brandon called after him, but Elliott was out the door already. He needed help sorting this out before it slipped his mind why he even thought this was weird to begin with. Hopefully, the smartest person he’d ever met would help him figure it out.
