Raven (Kindred #1)
Page 13
“How do you know what a window treatment is?” she asked, putting aside her knife to bite into her toast.
His gaze flicked to her. “Window treatments save lives, trust me. They’re a pain in the fucking ass for a guy like me… and a life saver.”
“I never would’ve expected you to say anything like that, beau,” she said, picking up her coffee in the hand that wasn’t occupied by her toast.
His sneer stuck to the windows. “The light shines clear in this window too,” he said. “You’re at a serious disadvantage in this place.”
Having had similar thoughts about the sniper who took out Tim, she glanced at the windows then back to Raven before offering an explanation. “I love my windows and I love the light.”
“You can love it when I’m not here,” he said, pushing his mug onto the table and springing to his feet. “Do you have a hammer?”
“A hammer?” she asked, lowering her toast before she bit into it.
“Yeah, you know, bang, bang, nails, wall… I’ll use the butt of my gun if I have to, but if I shoot a hole in your ceiling in the process… Do you have upstairs neighbors?”
Shoving away from the table, she put aside her toast and mug. Retrieving her toolbox from under the sink, she brought it into the living room and his expression lit when he took it from her and dropped it onto the floor. Falling onto his knees to scrape around in the haphazard arrangement of tools, Raven muttered something to himself. Eventually he rose with a hammer in one hand and a couple of loose nails in the other. He snagged the throw from the back of the couch and went to the window.
Zara sat back down and continued with her breakfast, catching an occasional glance over her shoulder at him as he nailed her throw to the wall in order to cover two of her windows.
“Better?” she asked when he was finished and was discarding the tools.
“The material isn’t thick enough to provide complete cover,” he said, backing away to admire his work. “Not with full sun working against us… But it will have to do.”
Grabbing his coffee mug, he didn’t sit opposite her, he came around and sat at the place beside her, but he pulled his chair closer to hers and sat side on again, still facing the windows.
“You hate windows,” she said. This was the worst place in the world for him to be if he had a window or sunlight phobia.
“I just want to be closer to you, baby,” he said, but he wasn’t even looking at her, he was studying the uncovered windows further down the wall. He closed one eye and she touched his forehead, sweeping her hand in a crescent around his face to his chin.
Hoping to alleviate his concern, she made a suggestion. “Do you want to go back into the bedroom? There’s only one window and it has a curtain. The sunlight won’t bother you.”
“If we go in there, we’ll fuck, and we don’t have time for that,” he said. He removed her hand from his face and held it in both of his to kiss the back of her fingers. “Fuck it. Now is as good a time as any.”
Further perplexed, she frowned. “For what?” she asked, her toast now forgotten.
“Death,” he said and his eyes bounced to hers where he must have read her surprise. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually…”
She smiled, not worried about danger while Raven was around. “Awake in the daylight, I get it.”
He dropped her hand and shunted his chair back so that they could no longer touch. “Who threatened you?”
His words were as clear and determined as his eyes and it was as if his previous agitation had never existed. Apparently, once he decided he was ready to die, everything else became irrelevant.
That he remembered what she’d said about being threatened surprised her, but again it hinted at the prospect of him caring for her. “Grant,” she said, brushing crumbs from her hands. If this was it and they were going to be honest then they both had to answer some questions, so she wasn’t going to play around.
“Why did he do that?”
“Because I asked him about the product.”
“What do you know about it?” he asked.
“What do you know?” Zara wasn’t going to be the only one answering questions and she wanted to make sure he knew that.
“You’re sure you want to do this? You make this decision, you come inside, and there’s no getting back out. You belong to me… Are you ready to be mine?”
If this was his way of asking her to choose him over Grant then he wasn’t exactly being subtle about it, but she had to be impressed with how steadfast he was.
“Who was on the phone?”
“The chief. A man named Art,” he said. “He was pretty surprised I spent the night here. I told him it would be worth it.”
“Is that what this is? What the sex is for? Your way to buy the information you need?”
“I need an inside man,” he said, bounding to the edge of his chair and resting his forearm on the table. “I need to know who Grant is selling the device to and then I need to take that person down before they can use it.”
“They’re terrorists?” she whispered, bringing her attention from his hand—which hung loose over the edge of the table—up to his eyes.
“That’s right.”
“Kahlil’s boss, he’s a prospective buyer and a man named Sutcliffe is too.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding slowly as if trying to ease her into revealing more. “Albert Sutcliffe.”
“I spoke to him,” she said, moistening her drying lips.
“What did he say?” Raven asked.
She could give him the details, but she was still basking in astonishment that a conversation like this was a part of her life at all. Except they had to make progress, leaving her no time to deal with the bombshell that terrorists were now part of her breakfast conversation.
Eager to know what she was up against, she made eye contact. “Tell me what it is,” she asked, mimicking his composed demeanor.
Exhaling, he sat back, widening his stance with his feet flat on the floor and his hands linked on the top of his head. Conceding that this wasn’t a time for a face-off, he loosened and dropped his hands.
“It started in the seventies,” he said, touching a teaspoon next to the sugar bowl, which neither of them had used. “Research and Development at Cormack Industries filed a patent because that’s what R&D Departments do. Someone had an idea and patented it. But technology wasn’t up to speed with the minds of the engineers. It was put in a file and forgotten about. Periodically, it was brought back out and some work was done through the years. It wasn’t until the nineties when miniaturization became more efficient that the possibilities grew. Finding appropriate software was difficult and wireless technology wasn’t then what it is now.”
“I still don’t know what it is,” she said.
Disregarding the spoon, he slid his forearm onto the table. “The original idea was benign enough. Doctors were spread thinly then as they are now and couldn’t be in various places at once. It was theorized that a device could be built that could be preloaded with medications. Then, based upon measurements taken by qualified nurses and medics, doctors could administer the drugs from a remote location.”
“What’s wrong with that?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said. Shifting to the edge of his chair, he opened his hands to gesture. “In theory, there is nothing wrong with that and that’s why they patented their ideas. It was in the eighties when remote access became a possibility that other uses were considered and then twenty years ago…”
“What?” All of this might be old news for him, but she was amazed at the breadth of what she didn’t know.
“The connection was made to incorporate forms of medicine that could be aerosolized, preventing the need for needles, and that was when Grant McCormack Senior put a stop to it. He shut down the project, fired anyone who disagreed with him and demanded that the files be shredded.”
She squinted, not understanding why he would make that decision. “Why would he…”
Amazed, she wanted to hear more. “Oh my God,” she exhaled.
“Protecting a system like that from hacking and other abuses would be a full-time job. So engineers offered suggestions of a kill switch hardwired to shut down the device… but that’s incorporating an inherent weakness, right? ‘Cause what’s to stop the hackers getting to the kill switch and taking out all of the patients in the institution with the click of a mouse?”
Ok, so she could understand how someone wouldn’t want to be a part of that. “So why wasn’t it over after that? If McCormack Senior was so against—“
His brows rose a fraction. “Because twenty years ago, before his orders could be carried out, something happened to Grant McCormack Senior.”
“What—” Her mouth opened as her eyes crept around to him. “The accident.”
“If you want to call it that,” he said, sitting back again. “Accident, murder, whatever, McCormack wasn’t breathing anymore. The company went through an appropriate mourning period and Frank Mitchell took over in lieu of Grant Junior coming of age.”
Processing the epic possibilities that could become realities if this device fell into the wrong hands, Zara tried to be pragmatic instead of emotional. Taking a breath, she brought them to the present. “So why is this an issue now?” she asked. “If everything was destroyed…”
“It wasn’t,” he said. “About five years ago, after the discovery of ultra-thin aluminum batteries, Grant Junior was digging around in the CI archives trying to figure out where the innovation could be applied to defunct ideas. That’s when he found this old dusty project and brought it to Frank.
“Grant thought it was the right time to develop it. Miniaturization was possible. We had the software for remote access and wireless is about as good as it could get. It wouldn’t work over thousands of miles, but it would do for a single hospital. Frank vetoed it and flew into a rage about this being why his best friend Grant Senior had died. Frank demanded that it never be mentioned again.”
“A year,” she murmured, making some mental connections. She pushed out her chair enough to turn toward him. The timeline coincided with the death of Grant’s guardian. Had he waited until Frank had died and then gone against his mentor’s express wishes? “Grant told me he’d been working on this product for almost a year. He said he was doing what his father and Frank failed to do.” All the pieces fit and she couldn’t doubt that Raven was telling the truth. “But, why terrorists?”
His shoulder rose in a slack shrug. “I don’t know. The right minds would have to be on the development of the technology to bring it into the twenty-first century. The last we know it was worked on was before Grant Senior died. Maybe Grant can’t get the tech up to standard without drawing attention to what he’s doing. But as for Grant’s motives for doing this… I haven’t figured that out yet.”
“The original patent was filed March third 1974,” she said.
“How do you know that?”
“I saw the paperwork.”
“He let you see it?” he asked, either impressed or incredulous.
“I…” Squirming in her seat, she righted the spoon he’d been toying with. “I might have snuck into Grant’s office when he was out and uh… maybe, uh… broken into his desk. Though it’s not breaking into something if you find the secret key and unlock it, is it?”
Any hope she had that he would reassure her vanished when she lifted her attention and discerned the hint of amusement in his expression. “You’re a good girl, Zara.”
Her mouth fell open and the air rushed out of her lungs as though she’d just been punched in the chest. Rising up, she wanted to put space between them. In the act of backing away, the chair she’d been sitting on clattered to the floor on its side, but Zara didn’t think to right it. Still retreating until her shoulders hit the wall beside the throw he’d pinned to the wall, she couldn’t breathe.
Raven was on his feet in a crouch, reaching for her as he approached. But, as one of her hands ascended to close over her gaping mouth, the other flew out in front of her and he stopped. It was obvious from his expression that he didn’t know what to do about this unexpected development. From the strength of her abrupt action, he had to think she’d just flipped her crazy switch.
Except she hadn’t. Zara wished it were that easy. She’d just figured out who he was and the jolt of that revelation made her forget how to breathe and about every danger in their lives. When her fingers did eventually descend from her mouth, she still couldn’t close it. The shock was just too much.
“Fuck,” she murmured.
“What? What is it, baby? Talk to me.”
Her hands were shaking. She’d never experienced such instant cold, but then she’d never had a surprise as profound as this one. “You’re… you’re Brodie,” she whispered and he staggered back wearing his own stunned expression. “That’s how you know so much about this device and the company. And why you know about Grant Senior and Frank. That’s how you know where Grant was on the night of his parents’ death… You were there. You’re… you’re Grant’s little brother.”
After a brief pause, his arm swung out and up to press the back of his fingers to his mouth. Rubbing them back and forth, Raven took his time to absorb what she’d discovered. Then, rising to full height, his shoulders went back.
“I guess I got the right girl,” he said. “You’re a helluva detective. How did you figure that out?”
Explaining it to him helped her to make sense of her clarity. “You said those words to me last night and I don’t know… there was something familiar in your voice. I didn’t think much about it. But now, looking at you when you said it… Grant said the same thing to me, he called me a good girl, and you used the same inflection. It just… You’re his brother, aren’t you?”
Good humor was gone and his harsh expression matched the steel reinforcing his stance. “That’s right… What are you gonna do about it?”
This new piece of information only caused more questions and confusion. “Why can’t you…? Why can’t you just go to him and ask what’s going on?”
Averting his eyes, he took his time, no doubt trying to figure out how to explain himself. “I haven’t spoken to my brother in”—his bottom lip came out at the same time one of his shoulders popped up and down in a shrug meant to dismiss what he was thinking—“ten years, maybe fifteen… Yeah, fifteen,” he said as though he had just figured that out. “I was eighteen.”
Feeling more connected to him now that she knew the truth, Zara tried to locate her composure. “He never talks about his family,” she said.
Holding himself at a distance from his emotions, he kept his gaze fixed on her. “That’s one thing we have in common then.”
“But after your parents died…”
Reconnecting with the emotions he usually tried to hide, anger bled into his words. “After my parents died, he refused to go back to the house and I refused to have anything to do with the company that killed my father. Frank took Grant and I went with Art, my mother’s brother… and that was it.”
Mystified, she couldn’t believe it was so simple. “That was it?” she asked, keeping her distance. “You’re brothers.”
The man who had been looking afte
r her, the man she had kissed and had sex with… he was her boss’ brother, she still couldn’t believe this was true.
“By blood only,” he said. “Grant got the company and I got the estate. We have nothing to do with each other’s lives.”
Brodie McCormack hadn’t been heard of for years and Grant had never ever mentioned a brother. Replaying her experiences with Brodie, she realized he’d revealed more of himself to her than she’d given him credit for. Taking her to White Falls to show her his childhood home, the land he had to still own, that was about more than discrediting Grant. He was trusting her with his location. Grant wouldn’t have been the only one to see his parents die on that water beneath them. Brodie knew Grant had witnessed the atrocity because he’d seen it too.
Now she knew who he was, knew his family, and his upbringing, which helped her to understand the glimmers of polish beneath the tarnish he used as a mask. “You’re a myth. You vanished when you were a teenager. People think you’re dead. You took me to White Falls and showed me that light… The McCormack land is a myth, just like the youngest McCormack son. The light on the water, on the peninsula, is that where you live?”
“When I’m in the country, yeah,” he said, audibly displeased at the turn of this conversation. He wasn’t happy that she’d figured out his identity. “We’ve got some pretty nasty security though, so I wouldn’t think about coming trick or treating.”
“Don’t joke, Rave—” Except now she knew his full name and it wasn’t Raven. As many questions sprung up as she had answers. Now that she knew his lineage, it made sense why he cared so much about this specific case. But she didn’t understand how he’d become so hard, where he’d learned to fight and shoot. How had one brother become so coarse while the other was so refined?
“Are you gonna tell him?”
Zara hadn’t realized she’d been absorbed in examining her floor until he spoke. Lifting her chin to focus on him, she couldn’t answer his question, because she didn’t know why his anonymity was so important. But his mind had gone to Grant and to his own secret, proving how concealing his identity was his predominant concern.