This was her commitment to the Kindred. None of the men she’d met would request rescue on being given the chance to experience the inside of the enemy lair. Sticking close to Game Time might be the only way to keep track of it.
“You want me to?” Grant asked and she nodded. She didn’t mean with her, like with her, but if he stayed on the compound too, then at least she’d have one person to voice her concerns to if she had them.
Making it clear she didn’t mean anything intimate, she managed a demure smile. “If Albert has enough rooms?” she asked and turned to Sutcliffe, who was peering at her. He wasn’t convinced of her allegiance, and that made her wary. But until he gave her cause to believe she was being setup, she wouldn’t show her hand. “What about the product?”
Blinking innocent eyes at the two men looming over her in this dark stairway with its grey walls and steel staircase, she couldn’t let them think that she was worried about her safety. She had to make them think that she trusted them. After Brodie’s confession that he could tell she was nervous even when she tried to hide it, she was doubting the strength of her game face.
“You want us to kill it?” Brodie asked in her ear. She was struggling to blank her expression while listening to the Kindred’s Chief, who had to be rearranging priorities and plans fast.
She was getting better at holding two conversations at once. She didn’t get the sense that Grant or Sutcliffe thought she was talking to someone other than them. “We can’t leave something so valuable on the street,” she said.
“We’ll have men pick it up and bring it to our storage facility.”
“Good,” Brodie said.
Grant took her hand and Sutcliffe began to head down the stairs with her. Grant wasn’t too far behind. The limp that had made Sutcliffe seem impaired was lessened today. There was no stick. Although he favored leaning on the banister, she would guess that he could move if he wanted to. The severity of his injury had been another illusion.
“We’re not gonna kill it until we know where it’s going,” Brodie said in her ear.
She could no longer respond, but read between the lines. While she hadn’t been privy to the particulars, she knew that Swift and Falcon had taken the thing apart and she’d been told that they could destroy the device remotely. But if they did that it would also destroy the tracking technology that the Kindred had secreted into the device.
“Your limp is better,” she declared to Sutcliffe because she wanted Brodie to know that Sutcliffe had more ability than he’d revealed. “Did Ben help you with that?”
“Ben has been my physical therapist for months,” Sutcliffe said, taking them out of a door and along a corridor that led to a rear entrance. There was nothing fancy about this escape route, and she would guess it was a functional space meant as a fire escape or staff access.
A car was idling in the alley they emerged in and she was put inside. Grant and Sutcliffe remained outside for a few seconds and when Grant came in the first thing she saw was that he was no longer holding the van keys. They had to have been handed off to someone who would take the device to where Sutcliffe wanted it.
“How long will the drive take?” she asked Sutcliffe when he and Grant got into the back of the town car with her.
“Less than an hour,” Sutcliffe said. “We’re going to take the chopper from CI, the same as the last time.”
Well at least it was a journey she knew. It would take Raven and Swift some time to follow her, but she wasn’t as nervous as before. She had a weapon, and Sutcliffe had proved he wanted her alive as he hadn’t taken advantage of the many previous opportunities he’d had to kill her.
Spending the night at the Sutcliffe compound hadn’t been as horrendous as she thought. She was given a private room and left alone. Once settled, she had tried her best to sneak out and listen to the meeting going on in the kitchen, but she’d only been on the stairs for a few seconds before she was happened upon by a Sutcliffeite and had to claim to be looking for a bathroom.
All night she’d listened in hope of getting something in her earpiece. At some point, she’d fallen asleep and when she woke up, she was dismayed to see that the earpiece had come out of her ear and begun to disintegrate. But by then the sun was streaming through the window and someone was knocking on her door.
Breakfast was had outside with dozens of people coming and going. The sheer number of people meant there was a lot of food, but there was plenty to go around. Having committed robberies to fund the operation, Zara wasn’t surprised that they were well-supplied. Although everyone was smiling and laughing, she counted a disproportionate number of men to women, the army was out of uniform, but no less obvious.
“Do you want to change clothes?” Grant asked, coming over to sit beside her.
The sunshine was pleasant, but she was suspicious of everyone and struggled to relax and think of this as an average picnic. “Clothes?” she asked. She’d poured coffee for herself and refused food, and had only drunk the coffee after witnessing several other people pour from the same pot and drink without issue. She’d even gone so far as to switch her mug with someone else’s, just in case the mug itself was somehow tainted.
Grant was smiling, which in itself made her uneasy. “Albert and I want to show you something today.”
“You want to show me something,” she said. She was unable to pass up the chance to gather intel, but she didn’t want to wander too far from here because the Kindred would have expended all of their resources trying to get to her. They’d be tired, and she needed them at their peak because there was a chance she’d need them in a hurry.
“Where?” she asked.
“Not far, it should only take an hour or so.”
“Ok,” she said. Her fingertips touched the warm white gold of her chain and she wondered where Raven and Swift were at this moment.
“That’s beautiful,” Grant said, picking up her pendant.
Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t want him touching her or her accessories, but her reluctance was heightened as he examined the piece. She was terrified he might notice the camera secreted beneath the stone.
“Thank you,” she said and took it from his fingertips to look at it herself. She’d looked and never seen the camera, but that wasn’t the point, she needed to get it out of his grasp because the longer he held it the more anxious she got.
“It’s the same as one my mother used to wear. Did he give it to you?”
The unexpected question brought her up short. “Why do you want to talk about him?” she whispered, putting the necklace back in place then folding her hands over the purse in her lap.
“It’s important that I know,” he said. “He could have planted something in it or—“
That might sound sensible, but she knew it wasn’t the whole truth. “Is that the reason?” she asked.
“I know you have a gun,” Grant said, glancing down at her bag. “I know he gave you that… Are you having second thoughts?”
“No,” she said. It was disconcerting how convincing she was, but the single word was said with such conviction that she had the confidence to frown as she looked him in the eye. “Why am I here if you don’t trust me? Why would he plant devices in gifts he gave me?”
“To know where you are at all times.”
“Even if that’s true,” she said. “Sutcliffe said that this land was his and that knowledge was public. If Raven wanted to know where this place was all it would take was an internet search, wouldn’t it?”
“You’re still defending him,” Grant said, peering closer.
Sliding down the bench of the long picnic table, she began to bring her legs out from beneath it. “I’m not defending him. I’m offended that you doubt me. You told me to think about joining Sutcliffe. You asked me to give you the benefit of the doubt. I do it, and now you’re trying to poke holes.”
“I’m worried about you,” Grant said. “Not about Sutcliffe. He can take on anyone who tries to come after him.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about,” she said and stood up, but he grabbed her arm before she could get away.
“Do you still love him?”
The question was proof Grant wasn’t interested in her motivation for practical reasons. “Grant,” she said, hunkering down into a crouch. “You’re the one who told me how bad he was for me. You’re the one who wanted me to walk away from him because you said I could never get what I needed from him… But if you’re asking me if I hate him, no, I don’t. What I’m doing here, I’m doing because it’s smart. It makes sense to be on the side that’s going to win. Like it or not, Sutcliffe is a clever man with the ability to talk others into believing his sermons. That gives him power.”
“And you’re attracted to that?”
“I’m not attracted to Sutcliffe. But being part of something bigger, something epic, yeah, I’m attracted to that.”
Apparently that was what Grant wanted to hear, because he relaxed and nodded. “Ok. Back to my original question, do you want something new to wear?”
“No,” she said as much because she didn’t want to get naked in a place filled with people she didn’t trust, she couldn’t be sure that there wasn’t a camera in her room watching her every move. “If there’s something I need to see then I want to get there. I want to see it. I want to prove to you and to Albert that I can be trusted.”
“Ok,” Grant said, coming out from the picnic bench to stand by her side and once again take her hand. “Let’s go.”
TWENTY-FOUR
The journey took less than an hour, just as Grant had said. She’d been given the option of showering and changing, but she didn’t take it. She kept fidgeting with her necklace, which gave Grant and Sutcliffe an excuse to look at it, so she tried to leave it alone.
Swift should be tracking her position. The camera wouldn’t function if the Kindred were too far away from it. But the GPS tracker was patched into Swift’s computer and should work no matter the distance. She hoped.
While getting ready to leave the compound, she’d dragged her heels to give more time to the Kindred. They wouldn’t be able to get into position until after she arrived because they weren’t sure where they were going. But this was it, this was what they wanted, to know where the arsenal was. It had to be destroyed before they could think about attacking the compound.
Sutcliffe and his people had had a lot of time to practice maneuvers and to stockpile munitions. The Kindred needed to even the odds if they wanted to take Sutcliffe and his people out of the game for good.
Zara had expected a storage facility like any other. But when they drove off-road and bumped along a dirt track before hitting gravel, she grew nervous. There were no overlooking buildings. There were no buildings at all. Even the trees had thinned out to practically nothing. The gravel and exposed scene meant it would be hard for anyone to sneak up. A large concrete bunker with a corrugated roof appeared behind the rise of a hill. This was a custom-built place and probably private land too. It might even be booby-trapped.
A chill of awareness made her concentrate on her breathing. She would be out here. Alone. With Sutcliffe and Grant. Brodie had told her murder was best committed in private and she’d just become the calf at the slaughterhouse.
“Why did you choose somewhere so remote for storage,” she asked. “How will you be able to make it here in a hurry if you have to?”
“Our concern is not protecting the estate,” Sutcliffe said from the driver’s seat. “We don’t expect to fight a war on our own soil. This is separate from our compound because it’s safer. There are some dangerous things here, and we wouldn’t want any accidents to harm our people.”
So he was worried about the children playing with guns and bombs. She’d be more understanding of that if he hadn’t shown a blatant disregard for civilians in other places. He’d said he was going to use Game Time against those who wanted to harm western society. But had no finesse about doing it. Sutcliffe had no concern about taking out innocent women and children after planting the Game Time device and running away.
The practicality of his plan stumped her. “You’re going to take these things overseas?” she asked.
Sutcliffe pulled the truck up to the bunker, facing the door, and he left the engine running. “Why don’t you have a look for yourself?”
If she looked, she might be able to ascertain just how big Sutcliffe’s war was going to be. But that information wouldn’t help her if he intended to let her see and then to put a bullet in her. Clarity would join her in her grave and she would never be able to report back to the others.
Grant put a hand on her purse, he’d let her keep it close so far, but now he held out his other hand, and she knew he was asking for her weapon. As opposed to handing it over, she lifted the strap of her purse over her head and put it on the seat. Whether Sutcliffe knew she had a gun or not, she wasn’t going to take the gun out of its hiding place and give it to someone who might use it against her. She put it on the farthest side away from Grant and he nodded, indicating that he was satisfied.
They all got out, and Sutcliffe gave Grant a key, which he moved forward to use on the bunker. Sutcliffe stayed behind her, setting her more on edge. Either he was going to kill her or he wanted her to think that he was going to. Neither option screamed trust.
Grant bent to unlock the door, which was little more than a padlock on a strip of steel, though there were sliding bolts at the top and bottom too. “No one knows this place is here,” Sutcliffe said. “Our property is safe.”
She hadn’t asked, but he was probably just making sure she knew how alone they were out here. Grant took the padlock out of its loop and pocketed it before lifting the door up. The shutter rattled loudly as it rolled into place above their heads and Sutcliffe nudged her forward with a hand on her shoulder until she was inside.
The space was large enough for them to stand in, but specifics were hard to see in this darkened place. There were wooden crates, metal boxes, and army green tarps covering larger items in a corner. So much for getting a look at their capabilities, she couldn’t see one specific item.
“It’s all packed ready for shipping. We have our own transport planes and access to a private airstrip at both ends of the journey,” Sutcliffe said. “You can see that we’re well-equipped. Our war is going to—”
A sharp rush of concentrated air preceded Sutcliffe’s silence. She recognized the sound of death meeting concrete from when Tim had fallen on the pavement in front of her. Whirling around, she saw Brodie coming out of the shadows by the door, inside the unit.
“Thank God you shut him up.”
This came from behind her and Grant sauntered up at her side. “One down, one to go,” Brodie said, switching his aim to Grant.
Letting her eyes fall to Albert Sutcliffe’s lifeless form on the floor, Zara wanted to breathe a sigh of relief but had no idea what his death would mean to the others at the compound. Would they disband? Or would this just strengthen their resolve?
Still looking at Sutcliffe, she decided that death was never pretty, even when it was deserved. “You killed him?” she said.
This hadn’t been a part of the plan, but there had been no plan for this. The Kindred hadn’t known she was going to Sutcliffe’s compound after the meeting. Yet, they’d regrouped and somehow got to this bunker before she, Grant, and Sutcliffe did.
Brodie had been lying in wait inside, he couldn’t have been outside because there was nowhere to hide out there and no one had come in behind them. She was so grateful that he was here. She felt better being close to his watchful eye. But because there was no plan, she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to receive him. As a lover? Should she pretend to be caught betraying him?
“Thank God, somebody had to,” Grant said, and she turned to frown at him.
He’d been kissing Sutcliffe’s ass, singing his praises, and now his idol lay on the floor of his own secret bunker bleeding onto the concrete, yet he was smiling as if al
l was right with the world. Could Grant have sized up the situation and switched allegiances so quickly? If he had, then he was much more tactically minded than she’d believed him to be.
“You’re happy that he’s dead?” she asked.
“Sure, it’s all part of the plan, right?”
What plan? She had no idea what he was talking about. “Plan?”
Coming to her side, Grant squeezed his fingers between hers. Anytime he’d held her hand in the past, it was never in such a familiar way. It was impossible that he just happened to do something so familiar when they were standing in front of her lover.
She frowned at their linked fingers. “What are you doing?” she asked, but when she tried to free her hand, he constricted his hold.
“She’s chosen me, not you,” Grant muttered, losing his smile as he faced Brodie.
Oh, so he was going to gloat that she’d abandoned the Kindred. She assumed that this would be when the truth came out because Brodie knew she hadn’t chosen Grant. But she waited for Brodie to tell Grant that. He was obviously here as part of a plan and she didn’t know what it was, or what her role was yet.
“Do you think so?” Brodie asked and his fixed black stare remained on his brother.
“Yes,” Grant said. “You showed up right on time, right when she said you would.”
Zara was confused. She hadn’t said any such thing to Grant. Brodie didn’t say a word and his stoic expression gave little away. His arm remained straight, and his aim at Grant was true.
Brodie wasn’t playing, that gun with its silencer was no toy. “Let her go.”
“Do you think I forced her to be here? I didn’t. She’s chosen my side. You abandoned her, so she abandoned you.”
His triumph was odd given that Sutcliffe had just been killed. Even if it was true that she’d chosen Sutcliffe, he was no more. “I didn’t—“
Swallow (Kindred Book 2) Page 28
