“And that’s what you get with Sutcliffe?” she asked because playing dumb and asking him to spell it out served no purpose. She wanted him to believe that she was astute, it made her a greater asset to Albert Sutcliffe. “You think that because you all frequent the same green field that you’re part of a hive? There is no community anymore, certainly not in big cities.”
His vehement excitement made him sway closer to her. “Albert gives us community and we’re teaching the children how important it is to look out for your neighbors,” he said and she nodded. “We have the same ideals that you do. We are part of something larger, and we know it will take time, we don’t expect instant results. But small changes will eventually make a difference to the big picture. We’re a group that wants to make a difference in the world and that have plans to do just that.”
She maintained some skepticism. “With Albert Sutcliffe as your messiah?”
“No,” he said and looked at the label on his bottle. “We’re not trying to save anyone’s soul. We’re more interested in saving the culture and freedom of future generations.”
“Sounds wonderful, but unbelievable,” she said, which was true. Many people wanted a safer, kinder world. But it wasn’t as simple as taking up residence on some green space and singing “Kumbayah.” “How did you get mixed up with him?”
“He was my patient. We met a couple of months ago. His leg was broken in an accident. We worked together to build up his balance and strength again. At first, he was just a patient. Then he started to open up to me and I was surprised by what he said.”
Leaning closer, she did her best to seem as intrigued as possible. “What did he tell you?” Not the whole truth if he was claiming his leg was broken in a regular accident.
“That he was going to do something about the condition of the world. He wanted to ensure the safety of our citizens. The government won’t do anything. They’re too interested in protecting their political capital. But Mr. Sutcliffe wants to take control of our future. We can’t be passive anymore. This is a new world. We live in an information and technology age. It’s not enough to plead ignorance. No one can get away with that. We have the ability to take control of our own destiny.”
He was passionate about what he was saying and she started to feel sorry for him because he couldn’t understand what kind of person Albert Sutcliffe was. No doubt Sutcliffe portrayed himself as harmless and seduced followers into taking on his cause before they realized what they were getting involved in.
She sighed. “I don’t know what to say,” she said, keeping her interest piqued on him. “It sounds too good to be true and you know what they say about that.”
“That’s what I thought at first as well,” he said. “But I’ve seen what he’s building, I’m a part of it now, and it’s wonderful. All he wants is to keep people safe.”
“So he let you join the group? What did you have to do?”
“There’s no initiation or hazing,” he said with an easy laugh. “I didn’t have to take a life or drink blood if that’s what you think. I started by visiting, taking supplies, and sitting in on some meetings.”
He was open to answering her questions and didn’t seem suspicious of why she was asking them. “So there’s no pressure to just jump straight in and make a commitment?”
“No. We have a vast amount of land and we’re largely self-sufficient. Imagine being able to live such a pure existence. Each person is vital to the community and we all look after each other.”
Getting inside would give them the chance to bug the house. Having succeeded so far, her confidence was growing, and the prospect of venturing onto Sutcliffe land alone wasn’t as daunting anymore. “It would be great to talk to more of the people there,” she said.
He frowned. “I can’t take you in without Mr. Sutcliffe’s permission, and he’s out of the country at the moment.”
“Will he be back soon?”
His gaze narrowed and she widened her smile in reaction to what might have been suspicion on his face. “Are you interested?”
She nodded. “If it is a place where everyone has a vital role and lives in a society untouched by cynicism. What have you got to hide?”
“I’ll talk to some people, if you want me to, and maybe we can go there together soon.”
She nodded again and went back to her wine. Ben relaxed, and she was so relieved that they’d overcome a major obstacle. She wanted to find out what Ben knew about Sutcliffe’s claims that he planned to protect the world.
But Tuck had already told her that Ben wasn’t in the uppermost tiers of Sutcliffe’s hierarchy, so it was unlikely he had specifics. Getting inside the farmhouse would let her plant the bugs and then maybe they could uncover Sutcliffe’s true agenda.
NINETEEN
She left the bar after making plans with Ben to talk again later in the week. He tried to get her to stay longer, but she decided that two glasses of wine was her limit when she was undercover after the second glass began to make her feel lightheaded. She gave Ben a story about being tired from the trip that involved a commercial plane rather than a luxury chopper. After that joke, he was more understanding. He walked her outside and put her in a taxi.
He seemed to be a nice enough guy, if not for his whacked out ideas about Sutcliffe. Anyone who idolized a person who gave them promises of saving the world had to have a screw loose. Yet, she had sat there and listened like an innocent lapping up every word.
The motel room was empty when she got back, and she stripped off to climb into the shower with intentions of being out and ready for bed by the time the men came back for the debrief. She had just finished washing her hair when the shower curtain flew back and the shock of the intrusion made her scream.
Brodie was there, as tense as thunder before it delivered its deafening crash. She shivered in the draft stemming from the open bathroom door. He barked at her while she stood there wet with the last of the conditioner sliding off her skin. “I told you about the alarm sensors, didn’t I?” Brodie’s anger didn’t make it any easier for her to catch up with what was happening or why he was in such a tense mood. “You’re supposed to come in and set the alarm, then the rest of us knock and you let us in.”
She had been told about that. Whoever was back first was supposed to set up the trigger on the door and anyone else could only get in if the person inside opened the door. “I didn’t set them,” she said.
There was no impediment to him or the others getting into the room, so she didn’t know why he was so uptight. She hadn’t locked them out then come in here to pamper herself.
He didn’t loosen. “Which is why I’m pissed,” he said, reaching past her to turn off the water.
She squawked and reached for the shower knob. “I’m not finished,” she said, but he threw a towel at her, which she had to catch with her outstretched arm.
“Now you are,” he said. “Get out here.”
Pissing Brodie off wasn’t going to lead to a happy fun debrief. His bad mood meant they’d catch more jibes from him than useful opinions. She squeezed the water out of her hair and dried herself before wrapping her body in the towel and departing the bathroom as per his request. Tuck and Zave were there with pizza, and she went over with intentions of pilfering a slice, but Brodie grabbed her hand and whirled her around.
“You have to call your boss,” Brodie demanded.
The pizza smelled amazing and now that her anxiety was gone, she was starved. But Brodie was focused on something other than feeding her. “My boss,” she said, aware that his scowl was a reflection of the pent-up rage he was doing such a terrible job of suppressing.
She had to stay calm. She couldn’t be seen to be provoking him in any way. When Brodie was wound this tight, someone could get permanently hurt. If he was just a little bit annoyed or the root of his problem came from something inconsequential, she could play with him until he released his rage in a frenzied fuck. But from the tick in his jaw and each of his huffing breaths tha
t seemed less patient than the last, she could tell he wasn’t in the mood to be played with.
“You have to tell him that you saw Ben,” Brodie snapped. “He’ll find out anyway if he’s close buds with Sutcliffe now. If we want this to work, it has to come from you.”
“My boss,” she said, wondering if his refusal to say Grant’s name or identify their fraternal relationship was protection or if Grant was the cause of Brodie’s crappy mood. “Are we being watched or listened to?”
Turning to seek out Zave and Tuck, who were both eating pizza, she waited for Tuck to swallow and respond. “No, we did a bug sweep,” he said. “We’re clear.”
If they weren’t being listened to then that suggested Brodie was pissed at his brother. She wanted to know more, but wouldn’t push for specifics while Brodie was still fuming. “I’ll call Grant,” she said. “Should I ask for time off? I can work from here and—“
Brodie grabbed her arm and forced her around to face him again. “He can live without you for a few weeks.”
“Weeks?” she said, unable to disguise her shock. “I’m going to be dating Ben for weeks? If I keep seeing him… If I see too much of him…”
Brodie’s snarling expression descended. “What? If you see too much of him, what?”
If she wasn’t honest, she’d just infuriate Brodie further. Her reservations would have the same effect, but she couldn’t conceal them. “He’ll expect something,” she said.
Brodie was probably pissed because she’d been on a date with another man and that was why he’d been quiet for most of the evening. But she couldn’t feel guilty about it because he had sent her there and told her that this was her job. Less probable was that Grant had somehow influenced his brother’s mood, given that no one had heard from the CEO as far as she knew.
“Let him,” Brodie growled.
Some of her anxiety came back. Going on a date in a public place was one thing, as was going on two or three of them. But if she ended up having a long-term association with Ben, she’d only be able to dance around getting physical for so long.
“You’re not the one standing there,” she said. “What am I supposed to do if he tries to kiss me? Or worse?”
“It won’t come to that,” Tuck said, hurrying around the table to get in between the couple. “We won’t let it come to that. We’ll give you ways to get out of it. You probably won’t have to see him that often. But if it becomes a possibility, one of us will step in… we’ll tell him we’re your overprotective brother.”
Her focus switched to Brodie and she almost laughed. If someone had to step in as her brother, then it couldn’t be her lover because he would be the most unconvincing brother alive. Especially since he enjoyed touching her with such propriety so often.
Returning to their first request, she sought clarification. “So why am I talking to Grant?” she said, looking at Tuck again while Brodie stormed away to revel in his frustrated fury. “If you need me to stay down here, I can tell him and he’ll give me time off. But he might be suspicious if I tell him I’m seeing Ben. He already knows that Brodie is out of state, so he’s suspicious about—“
“How does he know that?” Brodie snapped, whirling around to pin her in his sights. “Saint Grant been working to convert you to his cause again?”
Her own hackles were rising and she cared less about irritating her love as he seemed intent on irritating her. “He has admitted being worried about me, yes. And he has vocalized how he doesn’t believe that we’re right for each other.”
“I told you that,” Brodie murmured then regained his tension. “You had your chance to be done with me.”
She wanted to scream but balled her fists instead. “I’m only telling you what he said because you told me to be honest with you.”
He considered this for a couple of seconds. “You shouldn’t be telling him about our movements,” Brodie said, coming over to stand shoulder to shoulder with Tuck.
Tuck’s head was bobbing in a loose nod. “He’s right about that,” Tuck said. “You have to keep the secrets of the Kindred. We never know when it’s going to be important for us to surprise someone or move in secret.”
Now there were two of them talking to her like she was a fool, her adrenaline amped up. “I didn’t tell him,” she said. That they were pissed at her for something she didn’t do was bad enough. But for them to believe she would endanger them was even more frustrating.
Brodie sneered and resorted to cheap sarcasm. “So he just guessed?”
Zara tried her absolute best to maintain her cool. “Caine told him.”
Tuck and Brodie were startled, but it was Zave behind her who exclaimed it. “Caine?”
Only with Zave’s involvement did Brodie begin to calm and that pissed her off. The almighty Falcon kept his cool and that rubbed off on her love. She tried to take some subtle breaths to cleanse the anger from her system.
“He’s been a pain in the ass recently,” Brodie said. “He became a bigger problem when Zara came into our lives.”
“He wants to use her to get to you,” Zave muttered as he came into her periphery.
“Why didn’t you tell me he’d approached you?” Brodie demanded of her, finding some residual annoyance.
Through steady breathing, she’d managed to lower her heart rate. Following Zave’s example, she hoped being reasonable would help Brodie to reciprocate. “It was on Monday, after you left,” she said. “And he didn’t approach me, you know he’s working security for Grant. Caine only got involved when he approached Grant after Purdy’s, by the way, and fed him a story about being security who wanted to offer protection. Grant fell for it and being that it was so soon after Purdy’s, he was eager to hire someone.”
“Caine’s been protecting you?” Tuck asked and almost staggered when he backed away and drove his fingers through his hair.
“Of course not! I told him to go to hell,” she said, hauling her towel up and tucking it in again. “I told Grant to go to hell too and that’s when he reminded me how bad we were for each other. Caine already knew that you were out of the city.”
All of the men prickled. “Which means he knows you were at the manor alone,” Tuck said and she didn’t like the way he and Brodie looked at each other.
Zara hadn’t thought about that fact. But Brodie had assured her that she was safe at the manor. So even if she had thought about Caine being aware of her isolation, she probably wouldn’t have worried too much about it.
“What does that mean?” she asked them, but neither responded. So she got closer. “You told me I was safe in the manor.”
“You are,” Brodie said. “He can’t get in.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said and his glare snapped around to fixate on her. “Why would you and Tuck be looking at each other like that if that were true?”
Bending lower to pin his glower on her up close, he snagged her chin. “The manor is impenetrable. Our security isn’t the weak link, you are.”
That was a shock, but she wouldn’t let him imply she was a liability who would endanger the Kindred… again. “Am I?” she asked, mirroring his glare. She wouldn’t blink first and he should know by now that she wasn’t going to wilt just because he was in a bad mood. She would only make allowances for his pissy mood for so long. Sharing a motel room left them at a disadvantage as a couple, but that wouldn’t save him from the domestic. “Come here.” She marched back toward the bathroom and threw open the door only to turn and see he was where she’d left him. “Get over here.”
“Or what?” he shouted.
Taking the top of her towel, she raised her brows. “Or I’ll drop my towel right here and then the Kindred will have no secrets, will they?”
His jaw tensed, but she didn’t care that he was pissed because she was pissed. When he strode into the bathroom, she stormed after him and slammed the door, making damn clear to every unit in their block that she was mad.
Facing his fury, they stood three feet apart and hi
s size made her feel insignificant, threatened even. But this was Brodie and she had to call him out—she was the only one left in his life who could.
“Listen to me,” she said, without lowering her volume. “You and Tuck and Zave, you asked me to go out there, you asked me to go out with Ben. Nothing happened. You saw the whole thing, every minute of it. Do you want to tell me why you’re pissed off when there’s no way in hell you’re jealous!”
“No way in hell,” he repeated and ground his teeth before bending to get closer to her. Except in this tiny room, they were already in close quarters. “I can’t do it!”
“You can’t do what?”
“I can fuck you six ways from Sunday. You’ll never have a better lover. I don’t doubt for a fucking second that when it comes to sex, this is as good as it’s gonna get,” he said, swinging his index finger between their bodies to indicate them both. “But the talking and the laughing and the dating… I can’t do it, Zar. You’re never gonna get that with me.”
Some of her anger dissipated and she was reminded of what he’d said about her friendship with Grant and other fights they’d had. “We’ve had this conversation,” she said, softening in the face of the rage she knew he used as a mask for his insecurities. “I don’t want normal. I don’t want you to take me to bars, to ask me to dance… If we dance, we do it naked in our bedroom, in our house, where we’re safe and secure. I don’t want to be out in the world when I can have you all to myself. You told me that your land was my playground. We own our own tiny part of the world. It’s a place where we can be ourselves and be happy. The world has nothing to offer me that I don’t get from you.”
He was quick to respond. “I don’t know if I believe that,” he muttered, backing away to sit on the edge of the bath.
She was just as fast to reassure him. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to find somewhere to belong, trying to find somewhere that I can be important,” she said, crossing to lower herself onto the floor between his feet. She rested her forearms on his thighs and gazed up at him, wearing a smile that she could only pray conveyed her devotion to this man. “The woman I am when you look at me, she’s important. I am the most important thing in your whole world and you have no idea how special that makes me feel.”
Swallow (Kindred Book 2) Page 23
