Raven (Kindred #1)

by Scarlett Finn

  Staying close to him, she basked in the fresh autumn air, the susurration of the city streets, and the strength of the hand locked in hers. It was an incredible feeling to relax and just exist in time and space with her new friend.

  Acknowledging that she was probably tipsy, her coy veneer was gone, and she didn’t mind showing her amusement. “Displays of wealth won’t get you into my underwear, Tim.”

  His shining teeth and glittering blue eyes looked as gleeful as she felt. “Any tips on what will?” he asked.

  Twisting herself into his body, she began to walk him backward into the shadow of the building beside them. When it came to men and sex, she had never been shy, but the alcohol certainly gave her confidence a boost. Urging Tim’s substantial form against the concrete, she got her first real feel of what was beneath the expensive fabric of his suit and she was impressed.

  Taking hold of his tie in one hand, she slid the other upward. “Strong women turn you on?” she whispered.

  “You turn me on, Zara.”

  “Good,” she said. “Just one more thing we have to check.”

  Pulling on his tie, he put up no opposition when she joined their mouths. Fatigue fled in the face of arousal and intoxication. Although she was the one in front, the strength of his kiss erased any hint that he was a reluctant participant in this exchange.

  Reminding herself to unwind and bask in the rush of hormones that had been dormant in her for too long, she was further emboldened when Tim flipped their positions to press her back into the wall. By taking control of the kiss, he had fueled her arousal. Her private fantasies always featured a rough, powerful man who exerted authority over her.

  But Zara had no chance to surrender to the moment because an instant later, her companion’s mouth left hers and the shelter of his form vanished too. In sync with her eyes opening, she heard the thud of a body hitting the pavement.

  Blinking into the empty space Tim had occupied, she dropped her focus to see the man she’d been kissing seconds before sprawled face down on the concrete at her feet. The dry sidewalk was stained with the sticky ooze spilling from a hole in his head. There was no way that the fluid discoloring his hair could be anything except blood.

  Her reactive scream was so loud that it echoed through the cavern of this deserted street and even her hands over her mouth didn’t muffle it. Alone, she gasped for air, and tried not to shriek again because she had to be smart, to keep her wits about her. Dropping down to her knees, she fumbled for a pulse, but found none. Her heart was beating hard enough for two bodies, but she couldn’t share her pulse with Tim’s prone form.

  He was dead, shot, and with that clarity came the realization that she might not be as alone as she thought. Glancing around for signs of an assailant, she scrambled into the nearby alley and hunkered down behind the dumpster to hunt for her phone in her bag.

  She had never seen a person shot before and certainly never murdered. Tears blurred her vision and keeping her head was difficult. Panic, screaming, and wailing wouldn’t bring Tim back and her survival instinct seemed to suck the alcohol and exhaustion from her system.

  Replaying their walk from Purdy’s, Zara tried to visualize any possible attackers. She couldn’t remember seeing another soul, but that knowledge didn’t reassure her. While standing on the sidewalk before Tim was killed, Zara would’ve said that they were by themselves. Given that she’d been wrong then, there was a good chance she was wrong now. The murderer could be closing in on her.

  Phoning the police, she begged them to hurry because she was too scared to venture out into the open until they arrived. She was given assurances that they would be quick, but it wouldn’t be quick enough. Hoping she’d be safe if she just stayed hidden, Zara remained where she was, alone and crouched, until the cavalry arrived.

  “And you’d never seen him before?”

  Zara had already answered all of Officer Kraft’s questions. The whole area was roped off and the scene was swarming with cops and other relevant professionals. Timothy was dead and there wasn’t any amount of talking that would change that.

  Her thoughts were meandering around in her mind in their own haunted bubbles. Floating and sinking, they tried to arrange themselves in some sort of order that made sense. But she was struggling to remember what she’d said a few seconds ago, so it was unlikely she’d be able to remember the course of the night with any kind of clarity, certainly not while her fatigue was making it harder to think.

  “No, he approached me at Purdy’s,” she said and her head moved in a haphazard shake. “We talked and when the bar closed, he walked me down here. We were just standing here. We kissed and then, boom, he was gone.”

  The cop’s lip twitched. “You were very lucky. This professional had his target in sight. You could easily have been hurt.”

  “A professional?” she asked, letting her gaze fall to Tim’s sheet covered form.

  While hiding in the alley she had been in fear for her life. But it hadn’t occurred to her that this was any kind of professional hit. Her fear had been for a mugger, an opportunistic robber who had seen them on the corner and hoped to steal himself a few bucks after eliminating Tim who might have been a threat to the criminal’s safety.

  If it was a professional job, then Tim was something more than he’d portrayed himself as. She could’ve been caught in the crossfire, been collateral damage in a battle she hadn’t even known was going on. Considering this made some of her melancholy give way to anger and confusion. Those emotions were easier to get a handle on than grief.

  “You’re certain you didn’t hear anything?” the detective asked. “Or see anything?”

  “No,” she said, still languishing in the near miss and the idea that she could have lost her life tonight. In a single instant, she could’ve been snuffed out and suddenly her work at CI didn’t seem quite so significant. “I didn’t see anything. There was no one on the street. Aren’t there security cameras on any of the buildings around here?”

  CI was on the perpendicular street. It was a couple of blocks over so it was too far away to reveal anything about this crime, which frustrated her because it was the only video footage she’d have direct access to or the authority to release to the cops.

  “We’ll be checking that out, Miss Bandini. Would you like an officer to take you home?”

  Snapping out of her semi-daze, she made eye contact with the detective. “Are we finished?”

  “Yes, we’re finished,” Kraft said and retrieved a card from his breast pocket to hand her. “If you think of anything else…”

  “I’ll call you,” Zara said, snatching the business card and slipping it into the front of her purse.

  Glad to be dismissed, Zara was escorted away from the scene and past the barricades. She refused the offer of a ride from the cops and instead hailed a passing cab. Shock was still vibrating through her, so it took her a couple of tries to give the driver her address. When they were on the way, she relaxed and told herself that the safety of her apartment and her uneventful life was just one car ride away and that when she got there everything would go back to normal.

  TWO

  Zara’s fourth floor apartment had beautiful arched windows with wide window seats. On purchasing the place, she’d had visions of sitting in them to read her fiction books. It hadn’t worked out that way. Most of her time at home was spent holed up in the second bedroom turned office, rather than in the fifty-foot long studio space of her living room, kitchen, and dining area with its twelve-foot columns holding up the ceiling.

  Working for Grant McCormack might take up all of her time and eat into her social life, but it paid well, as her apartment evidenced. Though no amount of money or space could comfort Zara after what she’d gone through with Tim and the police tonight.

  Without turning on any lights, she dragged her exhausted body into her bedroom. Looping the strap of her purse up over her head, she removed it from across her body and laid it on the end of the bed, before slipp
ing her feet out of her shoes.

  She would give anything to discover a twenty-four hour pedicure service that would come to her home in the middle of the night because she doubted she would sleep much, despite her tiredness, and her feet could use the relief.

  There was no requirement for her to be at CI this weekend because Grant was in New York. But, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be going into work tomorrow. There was plenty to do even when the boss was out of town. Life would carry on as normal, giving her no time to stop and think about Tim and his demise, which would probably be a blessing. She was trying to convince herself that she could slip into her professional skin, adopt her office persona, and that somehow that would save her from reality.

  A man she had been attracted to and known for such a short period was dead in a possible professional hit. At times like this, she regretted not spending more time cultivating friendships. CI was her shield. She didn’t have to think about her horrible relationship with her father when she was there. Didn’t have to spend time on romances that never went anywhere. She could just sit at her desk and work. At CI she was useful, and she loved to feel useful, it made her feel important.

  After watching Tim die, she didn’t feel useful or important. She could use a strong shoulder to cry on tonight, one that might hold her close and promise to protect her from the evils of the world. But men didn’t like how outspoken she could be and women seemed to be threatened by her independence. Zara had gotten where she was through hard work and dedication to her goal. No one handed her anything for free and she was proud of her ability to fight through adversity.

  Trying to quiet her thoughts, because she knew they wouldn’t help her sleep, she unzipped her dress and hung it in a dry cleaning bag. Going through the motions, she propped her foot on the bed to unroll her stocking.

  “Leave them on.”

  The bassy male voice came from the corner of her bedroom and it made her leap back onto her feet in time to see her floor lamp switch on. The identity of the speaker remained a mystery because whoever this intruder was, he had angled the light toward his legs so that his face was shrouded in shadow. He wore black cargo pants, and one boot was resting on its side on his opposite knee showing how relaxed this stranger was in her home.

  The sight made her gasp in for a scream, but her throat gave out under the strain. Her body had no doubt lost its ability to produce hormones. After the night she’d had her well of anxiety was bone dry and she floundered in her attempts to identify how to react to this development. Her river of panic had evaporated and her nerve-endings had fizzled to a smoldering, smoking death leaving her unable to conjure anger.

  He spoke before she’d had a chance to make sense of anything. “The phone is disconnected, and by my calculations there isn’t enough juice left in your cell phone for a second emergency call tonight,” he said with ease, like a man here for leisure and not harassment.

  Twitchy and bewildered, she struggled to cope with a new injection of concentrated adrenaline. “Who are you? What are you doing in my home?” Zara demanded, trying her best to sound authoritative, which was tough for a woman wearing only her underwear. In the name of modesty, she backed up to retrieve her kimono from the hook on the door and pulled it on before edging in the direction of her nightstand where she knew there was a weapon.

  “Don’t bother,” he said, sounding more fed up than concerned. “The only thing left in there is your vibrator, and I’m not afraid of that. But feel free to use it yourself if you need the stress relief.”

  Ceasing her journey, she wasn’t sure how to act and had no idea if he was armed or intended to harm her. But he’d obviously removed the knife she kept in her drawer for protection, meaning she was defenseless.

  “Who are you?” she asked again. Unsure if she should be terrified or start looking for a candid camera, Zara was having the most surreal night of her life bar none. The fatigue caused by these adrenaline spikes made her space out a bit.

  “That doesn’t matter,” he said.

  Indignation overtook her confusion and she starched her spine. It was bad enough that he’d taken the liberty of letting himself into her house and into her bedroom. Now he was telling her what mattered and what didn’t. Her father was a bully, her brother too, so she knew what it was to be pushed around. As a grown woman, she didn’t have to tolerate that kind of behavior.

  “It matters to me,” she asserted, finding her grounding in outrage. “How dare you come in here like this! I can plug in my cell and call the cops, you know? So if I were you, I’d get out of here now!”

  Her threat didn’t concern him and neither did her tantrum because his tone remained unchanged. “I’m much faster than you, Ms. Bandini,” he exhaled and his tone morphed into more of a growl. “You’re gonna listen to me. If you don’t, I’ll take extreme measures and you really don’t want me to do that. I’m supposed to protect you. I’d hate to have to mess you up just to make you behave.”

  Calling the cops for a second time tonight wasn’t on her agenda, and it was obvious that this person could hurt her before she got near her charger. Either he’d kill her or he’d bolt, and the cops couldn’t do anything about a phantom who left no trace of himself. Rolling with it, Zara hoped listening to him might get her answers or would at least get him out of here faster.

  “Protect me from what?” she asked.

  “Many of your dates end up dead at the end of the evening?”

  Somehow finding out that the events were related rather than this being the mother of all coincidences reassured her. Statistics would suggest that two such bizarre events occurring on the same night were astronomical and she didn’t want to face the possibility that she was having some sort of aneurysm and this was all a psychotic delusion.

  “How do you know about that?” she asked, tightening the belt on her robe, which just grazed the top of her thighs.

  “I know everything about you, Zara. And you’re gonna know everything about me…you just don’t know it yet.”

  His cryptic confidence served to frustrate her and her hold on her patience began to slip. “I don’t have a clue who you are. You’re trespassing until you identify yourself and I grant you permission to be here, so I ask again: who are you?”

  Nothing that she said or did seemed to faze him. “I’m not ready to answer that yet,” he murmured.

  His audacity kept her off kilter. Breaking into women’s apartments must be a norm for this guy because there was no urgency to his words and he wasn’t at all concerned with her threats about the cops or her assertion that he was going to get in trouble for this infringement. “You’re not ready to—”

  “I don’t trust you, and if you mentioned my name to anyone, there could be trouble for both of us,” he said. “You’re not ready to hear the full story or prepared to deal with the consequences of our association.”

  Feeling like she’d walked onto a movie set as opposed to into her own apartment, Zara tried to remain calm. This man in her bedroom was a person, just the same as her, so she chose to treat him like one rather than a threat. Making friends with the hostage taker was the best way to stay alive.

  “So if you’re not here to hurt me or rob me and you don’t want to talk, why are you here?” she asked.

  He didn’t move. Nothing about what she could see of him suggested he was even talking, but his words were throaty and certain. “I’m here to tell you that you’ve stepped into the middle of a war. Now that they know who you are, they’re gonna try to get to you. Timothy was just the beginning.”

  “You know why they killed Tim?” she asked, taking a step in his direction. Her hope vanished as clarity slapped her. “Wait, who is they?”

  “You’re not ready to know that yet either.” This person was so frustrating that her hands balled into fists. Screaming at him might provoke him into hurting her and she didn’t want that. But she did want to know if Tim would get any justice and who might be interested in her now that she was associated with
a murder victim. “What you need to know is that anybody new in your life is a potential threat. Keep your secrets. Reveal nothing.”

  “Does that include you?” she asked, bothered by his nonchalance.

  “Especially me.”

  Disbelieving any altruistic motive, Zara hoped to get a straight answer as to the motivation for this intrusion. The stranger had broken into her bedroom for a reason and she didn’t like the idea that he, or someone else, might choose to invade her privacy again.

  “So you came here to warn me out of the goodness of your heart?” she asked. By being indirect she hoped to provoke him into giving details beyond what she’d get with a closed question.

  “No,” he said. “I’m a player in the war and I want your trust. You’re vital and that makes you vulnerable. I’ve been watching you and I’m not the only one.”

  If he wanted to hurt her, he could have done it before she knew he was present. Taking him at his word that he was here to protect her, she softened because if what happened to Tim was anything to go by, she might need an ally. And the truth was, she was too tired to think of a cunning way out of this situation. Asking for help, might encourage him into helping her form a plan. “What do I do? Should I go to the cops or—”

  “You do nothing. You carry on with your life as you normally do. Keep note of anything strange or suspicious. If there’s any danger, don’t play the hero. Stay away from it and don’t answer questions.”

  That was the sum total of his advice? Do nothing. Zara had never been great at sitting on her hands when a task had to be accomplished and after what had happened to Tim, she felt like a sitting duck.

  “Why is this so important to you?” she asked. “You said that you want my trust, but why?”

  “I’m not the only one. Tim wanted your trust too. He thought fucking you was the way to get it.”

  He swore with the same ease as he spoke every other word. Kraft’s assertion that Tim had been killed by a professional seemed certain now. Embarrassed by her willingness to believe Tim had been genuinely interested in her, she couldn’t believe how quickly she’d been drawn in by the man who seemed too good to be true.