Raven (Kindred #1) (32 page)

Chilled by the idea that Grant could be describing her position, she began to try to figure out why Brodie was not more determined to find and interrogate the person or persons responsible for the attack in Quebec. The stories she had been told of their tight knit group and never letting anyone inside could be just that: stories. Tuck and Art were soldiers in arms and the three could convince a person of anything. Like that she was the only woman to have set foot in the house for twenty years.

Pondering this, she noted that Grant had turned to look at her. “If we’re going, we should probably get back to the office,” she said, having faced as many truths as she could handle for the moment. “You have meetings this afternoon.”

“Yes, of course, you’re right,” he said, shaking off his tumultuous mood.

“But we could have dinner,” she said, in need of time to process this before she probed further. “Once I’ve had a chance to look over the paperwork, I would appreciate an opportunity for us to talk about it.”

“Excellent idea,” he said, curling a hand around the ball of her shoulder. “Will you let me drive you to the office? I can bring you back after we’ve eaten.”

Her smile was her assent. After a quick change of clothes, Grant took her to work. She would have questions for her boss after reading his notes, but the questions she had for her boyfriend were stacking up too, only she had no idea when she might have a chance to ask them.

Working at CI gave her a grounding that she needed. Grant let her peruse the Game Time paperwork, but as soon as she opened the file, she wished she hadn’t. She was only wading deeper into a mess she couldn’t clean up. Distracting herself with the documents, Zara chose not to focus on the unknowns, but to focus instead on learning as much as she could.

Dinner with Grant filled in plenty of blanks about uses and applications. But she still speculated about the motives of each prospective buyer while her mind kept wandering back to the possibility of Brodie’s involvement in Quebec. Grant seemed adamant that Brodie was the only one who would be motivated to do such a thing.

Internally admitting that she’d been swept into the fantasy of Brodie, she chastised herself for being drawn into the allure of his mystery and letting it blind her. Brodie was dangerous, but his capability wasn’t what upset her. It was the lie. Zara had bought into his assurances that she was a part of the team, now she had to face the possibility they’d been dishonest with her.

Grant took her home after their meal. Although he made a not-so-discreet play to invite himself up for coffee, she declined and excused herself, blaming the hectic day. When she got inside, she dumped her purse on the kitchen table, took the combs out of her hair, and began to strip on her way to her bedroom.

What she really wanted was a shower and a good shake, but she was too tired to follow through. So she went into the bedroom, crawled onto the bed, and closed her eyes with hope that the new day would bring clarity.

“Still walking into the room buck naked without turning on the light, baby.”

He called her “baby” except his words weren’t familiar. She might be face down on her own bed and have no impetus to cover herself up, but he sounded like the stranger who had surprised her on the night Tim was shot.

With a ball of dread tangled in her gut, she had to ask him straight, without teasing or games confusing the matter. “Did you do it?” she asked, rolling onto her back and taking the blanket with her to protect her modesty, which seemed sort of ridiculous given all they’d done with each other.

“One night with Saint Grant and he’s got you back under his spell. He’s good.”

Sitting up in the middle of the bed, she crossed her legs and held the sheet to her chest. “And how good are you?” she asked, anger enflamed her. “It didn’t take you long to turn me… and you still haven’t answered the question. Did you do it? Did you kill the men at the Quebec plant?”

“Yeah,” he drawled without urgency or apology. “I did.”

Falling back onto the bed, she stared at the ceiling, letting her hands lose themselves in her hair. “I knew it,” she murmured. “As soon as he said it... It just made sense.”

“Saint Grant, there to save you from the big, bad wolf.”

Bolting upright, she tucked in the sheet so that she could gesture with her hands. “You can’t turn this around on him. This was all you. When was it? The night of the out of town job, right? The night you promised me you weren’t up there.”

“I didn’t promise nothing. You’d already threatened to tell Grant. We had to get it done before you could rat us out to your boss. Tuck and I left soon as Art and me left here.”

“I didn’t go to Grant! I didn’t—”

He flew up out of the chair. “We didn’t know that then, did we? If there’s one thing you should learn from me, it’s to never make empty threats!”

“But false promises are ok?” she asked, rearing up high on her knees to mirror his position at the end of her bed. “You said I was one of the team!”

“We don’t take chances when—”

“What was the one bullet thing about? If you killed them then how did you come back with one bullet? How did you kill three men without firing your only shot?”

Looming closer, he held up both hands. “With my bare hands,” he growled and she didn’t like the shadows in his blank eyes.

“Why would you do that?” she asked, wondering if he got some sort of perverse pleasure from an up close kill that he wouldn’t get with a rifle from far away.

“I never leave evidence unless I have to,” he said. “Those guys weren’t expecting us. We were in and out, but the device was already gone. We walked in on them destroying evidence.”

“All this time,” she whispered, understanding that his discrete manner and tone signified the end of the trust she’d thought they were building. “You went in there and killed those men—”

“Back to the murderer bullshit, are we, sweetheart?” he asked, strolling into the light of the window to project his silhouette over her on the bed as she sank back to sit on her heels.

“I’m not pissed that you killed them,” she said, without the ability to garner anger in the face of such heavy sorrow. “I’m upset that you lied. All this time and you didn’t trust me. Even after all I told you, after Saturday night and letting me play a part… asking me to risk my life, to put my life in your hands, and all the time it was a lie.”

Her heart pumped so hard that her throat began to close. She wanted to cry for her stupidity and at his for wrecking what could have been a good thing for both of them. “I told you on the first night that getting you into bed was the easiest way to get information from you,” he said. “I was honest.”

“No, you weren’t,” she said, shaking her head, her focus sunk to the mattress. “If you cared about me at all and were any kind of man... You would be honest now that you’ve been caught. You had a chance to tell me the truth and you chose to lie to me.”

“It was only a matter of time before this went to shit,” he said, sliding his hands into his jeans pockets. “So now you know… that’s it.”

“I guess so,” she said, exhausted, but wondering why neither of them sounded particularly angry.

He was so deadpan, she couldn’t work out how he really felt about the conclusion of their association or if he’d invested his heart in their union at all. “Maybe next time you won’t be so quick to trust a guy with your secrets or to open your legs for him.”

“Oh thanks, you’re such a pal,” she said, more snide than angry.

He went toward the door and she expected him to leave, but he paused just before he went out. “Were you gonna tell me?” he asked.

“Tell you what?”

Pivoting, he stalked to the side of the bed. “You give me shit for lying and then you do it yourself.”

“I’m not lying,” she said. Locating her rage, she levered back onto her knees and walked on them to the side of the bed where he stood. “I have always been honest with you!”

“Honest about what you were doing today?” he sneered, wearing only disgust. Moving in until his knees touched the mattress, his trained aloofness slipped. It was his anger that made him violate her personal space, using his height to tower over her.

“I know enough about your practice to know that you knew I was with Grant at CI,” she said, refusing to be intimidated by him. “Don’t even pretend to be jealous about dinner. You couldn’t care less about me, so who I eat with is nothing to you!”

His voice dropped an octave, and the rumble made her swallow and reconsider her emboldened position, though not enough to make her back down. “I don’t give a fuck that you ate with him, I give a fuck what you spent your afternoon doing. He gave you free access to everything we’ve been trying to get our hands on for months.”

The files. He was pissed about Game Time, not about her lack of devotion to him. “Yeah, because Grant trusts me! I understand how that kind of fidelity is alien to you.”

Rage made him raise his voice and her guts trembled in reaction to his threatening conduct. “You bounce from one guy to the next! What did I tell you about allegiances in this game? How could you think I’d trust you? I trust my men, men who have proved themselves capable! Not some chick in a skirt who doesn’t have the cojones to hold her nerve. What could you possibly offer to the Kindred except a pair of tits for the guys to shake during down time!”

Lashing out at her, showing his anger, verified that his control had gone. For the first time, she got a sense that his need to hurt her demonstrated how his heart had gotten involved, except it was clear to her that he resented her for making him vulnerable.

“This is not a game! And you can’t ask for my allegiance to remain true to you when I find out you’ve been lying to me all along. That day was the first that we started working together and it was a lie! All along, everything was a lie!” The fact that he’d fallen for her, if he had, was incidental, and an accident, and Brodie didn’t like to be out of control.

Tracing a curled finger down her cheek, he bowed closer to her mouth but she recoiled. “Breaks your fucking heart, doesn’t it, baby?”

“Get your filthy hands off me,” she grumbled and reared up to shove him. “Get out of my apartment! I mean it, get lost and don’t you dare come back here, Brodie. Stay the fuck away from me!”

He scoffed in a mix of amusement and disgust. “I’ve taken all I need from you,” he said, sauntering backwards and opening his hands at his sides. “Why the fuck would I come back?”

Turning his back on her was so easy for him. Zara couldn’t so easily switch herself off. She wanted to scream, wanted to throw something at his thick head to see if she could make a dent. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

Listening to him leave, as she had that first night they met, she breathed into the silence and then flipped herself over to bury her face in her pillow. Oblivion was a long way away. As much as she tried to deafen and blind herself in the sanctuary of her pillow, Zara knew it was a fool’s errand.

She needed freedom from her thoughts, freedom from her stupidity, and freedom from her analytical mind that wanted to poke holes in every genuine moment she thought she’d shared with Brodie.

Visions of him were imprinted on the inside of her eyelids. There was no escaping him. But it wasn’t shame or anger that dominated her mood. The sickness in her gut and the weight in her chest was heartache. There was no other term for it.

A week went by and life returned to normal. Attending meetings with Grant in CI and taking her work home with her was so normal that it was bizarre. When staring at herself in the mirror, Zara questioned whether or not Brodie, the terrorists, and the device had ever actually been a part of her life or if she’d imagined the whole thing.

The two-week deadline would be up on the next Saturday. So if she expected to affect the decision she would have to find a way to bring up Game Time with Grant soon.

After working much later than she should have in her home office, Zara took a shower. While drying her hair, she anticipated getting some sleep and waking up with a better perspective. She left her bedroom to turn off the lights and check the door only to discover that someone had already killed the lights in the living room.

Brodie usually commandeered her in her bedroom. The figure she noticed sitting on her couch now was more respectful of her private space, but still hadn’t gone to the trouble of knocking and requesting entry as a normal person would. But Art did teach Brodie everything he knew, so she shouldn’t be surprised that the uncle took such liberties too.

“Well,” she said, pausing to take a deep breath. “I expected one of you sooner than this.”

“Rave?”

She folded her arms. “No, I figured it would be you or Swift. I know how stubborn Rave is and he made his feelings about coming back pretty clear.”

“The boy is an idiot,” Art said, shifting forward and resting his elbows on his knees to clasp his hands.

“An idiot who you trained,” she said, maintaining her distance. “What do you want?”

In many ways, Art’s betrayal was more hurtful than Brodie’s. He portrayed himself as a sage individual who knew the ways of the world. Yet, he had chosen to talk to her about his nephew and Zara’s relationship as though he was trying to form a bond with her and she’d bought it.

At least when Brodie spoke of their relationship he was vague and non-committal, seemingly, as confused as she was about what they had and where it was going.

“I told him to tell you the truth from the start.”

“At the start you wanted him to dump me,” she said, not relenting her high ground. “Or was that a lie too? Was it all an elaborate ruse to make me believe I meant more to you all than I actually did?”

Even saying the words made her feel foolish because she had believed it, every word of it. Before meeting Brodie, she would never have classified herself as a desperate woman. Looking back she would assert herself as being happy without a man, she didn’t need a relationship for validation.

But she had been desperate for adventure and being a part of the Kindred for however short a time, made her feel that she was a part of something bigger. Grant’s inferiority complex was starting to make sense to her.

“At the beginning I didn’t know what you were. I knew he was caught up in you, infatuated. But after that first night, when we had dinner in here together, I knew it was something more. Because even in spite of your shitty mood, you glowed when Rave came near you.”

“Then you left here and decided to start bullshitting me. Sorry if I don’t buy your story.” Art got up and she glanced toward the window then sidestepped to move herself into the shadow of one of her columns. “Is he out there?” she asked.

Art stopped and glanced at the window. “What?”

“Is Rave out there? Setup beside one of your illegal cameras ready to tie up loose ends? Where is it you’re supposed to have me stand so he can get a clean shot?”

“He wouldn’t,” Art said, losing his contrition and replacing it with anger. “He’s in love with you. I don’t think he’s ever been in love. He could no more hurt you than you could take a shot at him.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I wouldn’t test your theory at this point. Are they watching? Are they in your ear? What is it you want me to say? I’m not interested in helping any of you anymore. You’ve lied to me for so long—”

“The only lie was that we weren’t responsible for Quebec. Everything else was genuine.”

Except she had no reason to trust him. “Why would you lie when—”

“Because when you first heard us discussing the plans, you panicked and had a fit then claimed you were going to tell Grant. Rave, Swift, and me, we’ve been doing this a long time and we’re of one mind when it comes to what needs to be done. We made a decision and we acted. Rave said he didn’t want to burden you, but I… Calling him a murderer like you did—”

“Yeah, I know, it cut him deep. You said that already.”

She could be facetious and try in vain to hold onto her anger but the truth was that she had more anger toward herself than toward anyone else. She wanted to believe Art’s declaration of Brodie’s love, despite all the evidence contradicting that assertion, and that gullibility just took her back to self-loathing.

“It did,” Art said.

“Tell me why you’re here tonight. Going over the past serves no purpose. It’s just a waste of your time and mine… and the time of your buddies listening in.”

“No one’s listening in,” he said, opening his hands wide enough to spread his jacket to show that he had no weapons. No weapons didn’t mean he was alone. He was part of a flock who hunted and hid together. Each knew the other and she’d been taught that their priority mission was to watch each other’s backs, so it was doubtful that he was out alone.

“I don’t believe you,” she said, dropping a shoulder to the column and rolling her eyes upward. “Just say your piece.”

He gnashed his teeth before snapping. “Rave told us not to come near you again. Told us you were unviable and off-limits. It’s unlike him to be so protective of—”

“Rave,” she muttered and peered at him as she shifted her weight to her feet again. “Why do you keep using his alias? You don’t trust me? You think I’m recording—”

“When we’re away from base, we always use aliases,” Art said, closing the space left between them while lowering his volume. “Anyone could be listening.”

Making eye contact helped her find clarity. “You’ve bugged this place too, you or him. You heard my conversation with Grant?”

“More is the point that Rave heard it,” Art whispered and she brought a hand up to cover her dry mouth. “You said some hurtful things, girlie.” 

“I was making a point,” she exhaled. “If your goal tonight is to make me feel sorry for him then you’re underestimating how your audience feels.” Fortifying her confidence, she wouldn’t let her compassion overwhelm her sense.

But he wasn’t deterred by her statement. “I know exactly how you feel, girlie, and you’re as sunk as he is. You won’t get me to believe anything else. You’re not angry with him, you’re hurt, and that’s why you’re acting this way. Your pride was bruised when you thought maybe he used you. Your heart too.”

Vicious in her retort, she wanted to scream. “He did use me,” she said, setting her jaw and averting her attention.

With a curled finger on her cheekbone, he brought her eyes back to his. “He loves you, button. Trust me on that.”

When she blinked two tears skittered down her face and on an inhale, she lifted her head out of his reach and stepped back. The touch was too reminiscent of Brodie’s, and she didn’t need that now, not when Art’s words were so close to home.

“You should go,” she said. “I need you to leave now or I’ll have to call the authorities.”

“You wouldn’t call them on either of my boys,” Art said, not doing the gentlemanly thing and departing at her request.

“Please,” she said, pleading with him to let this be.

“Our mutual friend went to great lengths to conceal his association with you. While we had regular access to your apartment, we scanned the environment to preclude any chance of being surveyed. But make no mistake, not all threats were neutralized. I came here to let you know there may be others who know you’re playing both sides.”

“Playing…” Believing it was his intention to rile her, Zara chose not to rise to the bait. “You can be assured that my loyalty is not split. I have been with Grant McCormack for half a decade and he has never endangered me.”

“Never?” he asked, proceeding his word with a gentle nod. “Like putting you in a room with terrorists?”

“He wasn’t the one with the gun pointed at my head,” she said, letting her vehemence speak for itself. “I won’t be drawn in by your kind anymore. I don’t need advice. I don’t need assistance. I need to be left alone.”

She glared into his soft expression and tried to imagine how he had trained Brodie to kill. This man had two faces: one was kind and unthreatening but the other had the capability to cut down a man without a blink. The trick to surviving the Kindred’s gauntlet was not to be drawn in by that first face.

Zara would only survive this ordeal by not blinking first. Taught by these men not to show weakness, she remained steadfast until Art retreated and eventually left her apartment.

Only when she was alone did she let herself sag. Though she hadn’t admitted it to him, she was disturbed by the idea of being listened to in her own home. It had been bad enough to think people were watching her, to think of them hearing her as well was just too much. It was one violation too many.

Going into her bedroom, she got dressed and packed a bag. An interested party may follow or trace her location, but she would still be out of the web that was closing around her and for one night, that would have to be enough for her.

A night in a hotel didn’t settle her. Zara woke up at frequent intervals and had to remind herself that she wasn’t at the manor.

Brodie had broken into her psyche and she’d come to expect him at her side or in her periphery at least. Getting over the treachery of his actual motivation for coming into her bed meant also accepting that she was now in a precarious situation without a safety net.

At work, this reality played itself over again in her mind until she resolved herself to do something about it. So marching into Grant’s office without declaring herself, she was seated in the guest chair before he diverted his concentration away from his computer.

“I don’t think you should do this.”

Placing a hand on the lid of his laptop, he pushed it down, then locked his fingers together on top of the machine. “I have just sent an encrypted message to all parties. Sutcliffe was the successful bidder. His bid was actually the lowest, so you can be assured that this was not about the money.”

Mortified that she hadn’t had any influence over the progression, the inevitability of what would happen next took her fear to a new level. “I thought you were going to consult with me,” she said, having not expected him to have acted in such haste without due notice.

“I didn’t want you to have the burden of this decision.”

“The burden of being an accessory to mass murder? Is that what you meant? Because it’s what we both are.” Rising from her seat, she leaned over the desk. “Brodie wouldn’t want this. He wouldn’t want you to… to collaborate with these people. Please… he… you said that he killed the men in your lab… did you think about why he did that? Maybe it was a warning.”

His eyes widened. “You think he was threatening me?” Grant asked, sounding more annoyed than intimidated and she could practically see his competitive hackles rising.

“No, I meant warning you that this isn’t a good idea.” As much as she didn’t want to give Brodie any points for personality, she did want to get through to Grant. “He could’ve come for you if he wanted to hurt you, to defeat or outmaneuver you. He could have attacked you, but he didn’t. He tried to take away your opportunity to make this deal, to do harm. In effect, he intended to take away your ability to harm yourself.” Stepping back from the desk, she sank back into her chair. “Maybe that’s what he was trying to do.”

Saving people from themselves seemed to be a specialty of Brodie McCormack’s. The burden of living with complicity was heavy enough to slow a person. Art had told her that Brodie believed he’d lost his humanity, at least some of it, and Brodie had told her that he hid his darkness from her. With his deception followed by his rejection, he had saved her from him. Just like he’d tried to save Grant from making this deal.

“What do you know of his intentions?” Grant asked, dismissing her. “You don’t know how coarse and uneducated he is. Brodie fights dirty and he has never intended to help me in his life. All he cares about is himself and winning.”

Except if that were true he’d have taken Grant out of the picture and coaxed her back into his bed for sport. But she had no way to convey that to Grant without betraying her own association with the brother Grant loathed.

“Delivery is to be made within the week,” Grant said. “I’ll need you to make plans to ensure the secrecy of the handover.”

And after that statement, he opened his laptop and went back to work. She wasn’t going to start an argument, because she could tell she wasn’t getting through to him, but she had bought herself a clue as to who might.