David stepped out into the fresh, cold air and took a deep breath. The air inside the hospital got thick sometimes, and it hurt his lungs. It was probably just his imagination, caused by the stress he was feeling. He hated thinking about Kat being cut open, even if it was for a good reason and by professionals.

“Hey, bro.” David looked up at the sound of the voice. The sun was in his eyes so Kyle was shrouded by a halo-like image.

“Kyle?”

His brother walked in closer and his large frame blocked the sun from David’s eyes. “Yeah, it’s me. I guess it’s been too long since you’ve seen me if you didn’t recognize me,” Kyle said with a grin.

David smiled back. “The sun was giving you a halo…so at first I was sure it wasn’t you.”

Kyle laughed. “True story. If any of us have a halo following us around, it’s you. How’s Katrina?”

“Did you really come here to check on her?”

“I’m not a monster. I care about you and you care about her…so yeah, I came to see how she was doing and if you needed anything.”

David was touched. Maybe there was hope for Kyle after all. “Thanks, that means a lot. She just went into surgery. They tell me it will take five or six hours and another two in recovery before I can see her. It’s going to be a long eight hours.”

“You want to get a beer?”

“I’d rather get lunch. I’m starving.”

“Cool, me too. I have my bike, want to take your car?”

“Sure.” As they walked toward the garage where David’s car was parked he said, “You think you could teach me how to ride?”

Kyle chuckled. “I’m sure I could—what makes you want to learn suddenly? I tried to teach you years ago, and you weren’t interested. Trying to impress Hurricane?”

“Shut up. No. I don’t need to impress Kat. She loves me the way I am.” Kyle rolled his eyes. “I’ve just been thinking about it lately. Maybe it’s time I learned so I can keep up with the rest of this family.”

They reached the car and David unlocked it. Once they were both inside Kyle said, “Let me know when you have some time. We’ll go out to the ranch and…”

“I don’t want to learn how to ride in front of a bunch of bikers. If I wanted that, I would have asked Dax.”

Kyle laughed again. “You worry too much about what other people think, little brother. But okay. We’ll find another place. Speaking of the ranch, have you talked to our sister lately?”

“Not for a few days,” David said. “But I’ve been preoccupied with what’s been going on around here. Why? She’s okay, right? I saw Dax today, and he didn’t say anything.”

“You saw Dax today?”

“Yeah. Is Angel okay?”

“Yeah, she’s okay…I guess. She just seems stressed, and I was hoping she and Dax weren’t having problems.”

David chuckled. “Really? It wouldn’t make your year if she and Dax split up?” David looked over at his brother as he came to a stop at the garage exit. Kyle gave him a wounded look.

“You really do think I’m a monster. I want Angel to be happy. For some reason, Dax does that for her. I’m over it, so no, her leaving him would not make me happy…unless of course it made her happy.”

David shook his head and pulled the car out into the slow traffic. “It won’t happen. She’s crazy about him and they’re in the process of adopting Susie. Angel loves her life. If she’s been stressed out, maybe it’s about work…or something else.”

“What’s going on with the Skulls and Chaos?”

David shrugged. “I have no idea. I’m not privy to that kind of information. I thought you kept tabs on that kind of thing.” David almost threw in, “Even though you’re not a cop any longer, and it’s none of your business,” but he decided he’d rather forego the argument.

“Something is going on; I can feel it…I just haven’t been able to put my finger on it.”

It suddenly occurred to David why his brother suddenly wanted to join him for a beer…or lunch. “So…you thought you’d see what I might know. Damn, Kyle, every time I think you’re trying to be a decent human being…”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I came by to check on you. Katrina is not my favorite person, I admit that. Even though Angel told me about the baby and I feel shitty about that, I still think you can do better, okay? But you’re my brother and I care about you, so I hope she’s okay because I know it will hurt you if she’s not. Shit, David, the other stuff was just me making conversation. I don’t know what the fuck else to talk about.”

David was pulling up in front of a sandwich shop down the street from the hospital. He parked the car and then turned to his brother and said, “Look, if I was wrong, I’m sorry. You have to admit that you haven’t given me much to go on over the years.”

Kyle sighed. “Mom died, Dad worked sixteen-hour shifts, Angel cooked and cleaned like a grown-ass woman and Mickey and Sam checked out a long time before the rest of us even had this life shit figured out…it made me overprotective and people interpret that as me being an asshole. How do you think I feel about letting Angel spend so much time with Micah? That man was pure evil and I didn’t fucking see it. I don’t want the same thing to happen to her again…or you.”

“Kyle, you can’t see evil no matter how hard you look. But if you love us and want us to be happy as much as you say you do, you’re going to have to learn to trust us. Angel made a mistake by falling for Micah. But in her defense he had everyone fooled, and I believe the reason she didn’t marry him was because something in her gut told her things weren’t what they seemed. But Dax is different. You and I might not agree with how he chooses to live his life…but I can see how he feels about our sister when he looks at her and even when he just mentions her name. He’s not perfect, but he has a good heart and I believe that he would die before he’d ever hurt her. Trying to dig things up that make him or his club look bad is only going to upset our sister, so please stop.” Kyle nodded and although David knew he wouldn’t give in that easily, he went on, “And as far as Kat is concerned, you never took the time to get to know her. She’s a good person too. She’s made mistakes, but which one of us hasn’t? I love her, Kyle, and as much as I love my family, I won’t make the mistake of giving her up again because they don’t approve.” Kyle nodded again and then he said:

“I’m hungry. You want to hug this shit out and get something to eat or what?”

David rolled his eyes at him and laughed. He did love his brother, asshole or not.

* * *

David and Kyle just finished having what was a surprisingly nice meal together when David’s phone rang. He looked at the face of it and then at his brother. “I’m going to take this really quick,” he said. Kyle looked curious, but he nodded. David walked a few paces away and then put the phone to his ear and said:

“Hello, Detective.”

“Mr. Brady, hello. I’m sorry to disturb you—I know your friend and her father are having surgery today. How are they?”

“So far, so good. Kat just went in a while ago.”

“Well, I wish them both the best,” he said. “I have some news. I finally tracked down the true identity of the woman in the photographs. Her name was Marta DuBois.”

“Was?”

“Yes. She died two years ago in a car accident in Lafayette. I found a niece and daughter, however, and got quite a story. I’m not sure if you have time to hear it now?”

David looked over his shoulder at Kyle. He wasn’t sure he wanted his brother to know about any of this. Kyle would get pushy and try to take the whole thing over, or he’d tell David he was stupid and wasting his time. David didn’t want to put up with either. “I don’t, really, I’m sorry. But can I give you a call back in an hour or so?”

“Of course.”

David thanked him and ended the call. When he turned around again, Kyle was standing behind him. “Who was that?”

“Damn, you’re nosy. None of your business.”

Kyle grinned. “You know, if I wanted to find out badly enough I could just make a few calls and have that one traced and…”

“And when are you going to realize I’m not fucking twelve years old? Why don’t you get your own life and stop trying to choreograph everyone else’s?” David felt bad as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Kyle thought he had a life when he fell in love with Hannah. As it turned out, Hannah wanted to be Harley, and Cody Miller was the man she wanted to have babies and spend the rest of her life with. Kyle had been broken since that happened although he’d deny it to the death. “I’m sorry,” David said, before Kyle responded.

“No, you’re right,” Kyle said, surprising David. “Being a cop for so long and now an investigator has made me bad at minding my own business. Especially since I don’t have much business of my own to mind.”

David sighed and said, “I wouldn’t mind bouncing something off you, but I need your word that you won’t try to talk me out of it and you won’t try to take it over and be the boss.”

Kyle chuckled. “Can I give you my word that I’ll try on both counts?” David rolled his eyes, picked up the check, and went to the counter to pay it. When he’d finished paying the bill, he found Kyle waiting out front for him. “I’m sorry,” his brother said again. Two apologies in one day was a record, David wished he’d recorded it for posterity. “If you need to talk to me, I promise to only offer you whatever help you’re looking for and I won’t try to talk you out of whatever it is, okay?”

“Okay, thanks. It’s about Kat’s mother.”

Kyle cocked an eyebrow. He knew that David had been looking into her mother’s murder when they were together years before, and at that time he had tried to talk David out of it. They’d argued about it then and eventually both had just stopped talking about it. “Did you find something new?”

“I’m not sure.” David told Kyle about the other woman and the detective and the tattoo. He finished with, “That was him on the phone. He says the Haitian woman is dead, but he was able to contact some of her relatives. He wants to talk to me about that.”

“Let’s go to your place before we go back to the hospital and hear what he has to say,” Kyle told him. David was still hesitant to trust that his brother wouldn’t interfere and make things worse…but he was more curious to hear what Detective Munroe had to say.

They drove over to David’s apartment, both lost in their own thoughts. Once they were there, David dialed the detective and put the phone on speaker. He told him Kyle was in the room and they both listened as the detective began to talk.

“Marta DuBois was fifty-six years old when she died. She was thirty-eight when Victoria Brown died. My first question to her family was why she used an alias at both jobs. The niece’s response was automatic: ‘Because she didn’t want people to know who she really was.’ It seems that Marta was the daughter of Geraldine and Francis DuBois.”

David looked at Kyle who shrugged. “I’m sorry, Detective, I don’t know who that is.”

“In 1976 when Marta was fifteen years old, her father Francis murdered his wife, Geraldine. It was a newsworthy case for a lot of reasons. First, Francis had murdered his wife in front of both of his children. Marta had a brother named Lewis who committed suicide a few years after the incident. Marta, however, was on her father’s side and even testified for him in court. It seems that her father believed her mother was possessed by a ‘dark spirit.’ Marta claimed she’d seen it in her mother’s eyes. Her father was sentenced to life in a psychiatric facility, and Marta was remanded to child services and they required her to have intensive therapy until she was eighteen. Her cousin said that as soon as she got out of the facility, she opened a business at the family home. She called herself ‘Madam DuBois’ and she did Tarot card readings and palm readings…and she taught people about the religion of Voodoo, which apparently she and her father had begun studying together when she was still a pre-adolescent. She claimed to her neighbors and her clients that she could ‘see’ dark spirits and evil souls.”

“She sounds a little unstable,” David said, “But from what I’ve seen of the police reports, unless this was a very large woman, she couldn’t have been the killer. The person that strangled Victoria…and forgive me, your wife…had to have big hands and be very strong.”

“I agree,” the detective said, “But that doesn’t mean she didn’t have help. The ladies both had the same tattoo, and they both got that tattoo from the same artist, a man named Olden Tanis. Olden and Marta were good friends, and neighbors growing up. Marta DuBois was the connection between him and both of the women.”

“So we need to find this tattoo artist.”

“Yep.”

“Did that artist own either of the parlors he worked at?” Kyle asked.

A shuffle of papers and the detective said, “Yes, he owned the first parlor. It was called, appropriately, Voodoo City Tattoo.”

“So he was registered with the state and county.”

“Yes, I have copies of all that. But once he closed that place down and moved on, he wasn’t required to register because he wasn’t the owner.”

“Right,” Kyle said. “But wouldn’t that mean his fingerprints are on file?”

“I’ll be damned, I didn’t think about that. I’ll call the hall of records as soon as we hang up; they didn’t send those over.”

“I think you have to request those through D.O.J.,” Kyle said. “And…doesn’t Louisiana require First Aid, CPR, and blood-borne pathogen courses for artists?”

“I’ve already requested a list of those from all the parishes in Louisiana. It’s going to take a while to go through them all.”

“Email them to me when you get them,” David said. “I can put them through a program I have in the lab that will recognize a match within a matter of hours, sometimes minutes, depending.”

“Fantastic. I should have that list by tomorrow and I’ll send it right over.” David thanked the detective and ended the call. “Thanks,” he said to Kyle after the detective had hung up. “I appreciate your input.”

“No problem,” Kyle said. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.”

David wasn’t sure where his brother’s sudden desire to help had come from, but it was nice. He hated arguing with his siblings, even Kyle. He was excited about the new breaks in the case too. He’d love to be able to hand Kat some closure, even though nothing could ever bring her mother back. If the detective was right and this tattoo artist and Marta were killing women because of some religious notion Marta had in her head, then it would also mean Victoria hadn’t gone to the hotel that night to meet a lover. David was sure Dillon would be happy to hear that. Even eighteen years later, David could still see how much Dillon loved her when he talked about her. He knew if he were Kat, he’d want to know for sure.