“You’re fucking married?” he asked.
Zara held up a hand. “That was my bad; I thought he knew.”
Rig pinned a glare on her. “Yeah, why would she think that, Von?” he asked. “What the fuck? I thought you were safe and being looked after. The whole time you were being fucked by him!” Rig transferred his anger to the man behind her. “You were supposed to go in and save her. If you wanted some kind of fucking payment, you should’ve come to me instead of bullying my baby sister into—”
“He didn’t bully me! In fact, I seduced him and it was hard fucking work!”
It wasn’t until Zara barked out a laugh that Devon realized she may have shared too much. “Who’s wanton now, beau?”
Sheepish, Devon glanced at her lord and tucked herself beneath his arm. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Zave rested a hand on her crown. “I married your sister because I love her,” Zave said. “You’re entitled to have a problem with that. But if you’re going to shout, shout at me.”
The last thing she wanted was a row, especially one that was just for performance sake. “He’s not going to shout at anyone,” Devon said. “He’s taking the clichéd big brother position because it’s a good act, it’s what righteous big brothers do. If he stopped to think about it for half a minute, he’d put his ego aside and realize I couldn’t do any better than you.”
“She has a point there,” Zara said. “Zave’s a stand-up guy. He’s solvent. Sane—”
“For the most part,” Raven murmured.
Zara continued, “And he’s not a rapist or a serial killer. He’s a decent guy with a house ten times bigger than yours, and he can protect her better than you can.”
“She was kidnapped on his watch!” Rigor exclaimed.
“And do you think he’ll ever let that happen again?” Zara asked, getting up to join them. “This guy builds all the Kindred tech, and I guarantee he’s already cooking up ways to make sure she can never go missing again. He’ll find a way to keep track of her even if she’s naked.”
Zara wasn’t wrong. Zave had just told her in the washroom that he was going to implant something in her for that reason. Something chimed and Raven stood up to pull a device from his pocket.
He read it and then tucked the phone away. “Swift needs us.”
Zara didn’t hesitate. “Rigor, you’re with us… Unless you want to stay here to keep fighting with your brother-in-law,” she said. “But he has a chopper, I’m not sure you’d be able to keep up.”
That Rigor had been closer to her and arrived after the Kindred was a testament to flying commercial and it proved Zara’s point.
“Is he in trouble?” Devon asked Zave. “They said they were going for Kadie’s cousin. They didn’t say they would hurt anyone. Why would they change their plans?”
“They probably didn’t,” Brodie said, showing remarkably good hearing. “They wouldn’t have gone in hot. They’d have been watching to learn his routine and probably saw Swift there.”
“And that’s when the trouble would start,” Zara said.
So, Swift’s arrival was provoking a Syn reaction and forcing them to take action before they were fully prepared. That might make them sloppy, either giving the Kindred a chance to get in and out without hindrance or putting them in more danger because Syn were frantic and less organized.
“What kind of trouble?” Devon asked.
“He didn’t specify,” Brodie said but wasn’t intimidated by the unknown. “We just have to get there.”
Brodie headed for the door with Rigor in his wake. Zara stopped to address them. “You two stay here.”
“Stay?” Devon asked, and Zave gave her shoulders a squeeze.
“You’re back-up,” Zara said. “You guys have to get to Bess to explain to her what happened. You have to get Jennifer out of your house. And Zave, you have to spend some time helping Devon get over what happened.”
“I’m over it,” Devon said, almost resenting being regarded as a burden.
Zara shook her head. “You took one for the team. You were kidnapped. Yeah, they let you go, but it’s a psychological injury. So you’re benched from the field until you’ve had some R&R.”
Devon wasn’t going to argue. She’d just told Zave that they had to focus on their marriage and on him. From how she understood Zave’s role in the Kindred, he only acted as physical back-up when needed. His full-time role was to problem-solve and provide the gadgets that helped the group, not to be in the field taking action on every mission.
When they were needed, the Kindred would be in touch. But Zave needed some grounding in his lab, and with all that had gone on and this new development about Syn, he probably had all kinds of ideas about things he could build to aid the Kindred.
Zara wasn’t done. “But your primary mission, both of you, is to uphold the façade. The business community is watching the progression of this merger like a hawk. If Syn is going to create trouble for us then we need you guys out there, showing everyone that this family is doing business as usual.”
Kindred business would’ve just jumped up Zara’s priority list, and she wouldn’t be able to be as hands-on as she wanted to be. Zave wouldn’t want to be dealing with the corporations either, but Kindred needed cover if Syn was going to be coming for them. There was no better way for Zave to build an alibi than by being in the office, working hard.
“Do the smiling, do the glad-handing. I know you hate it,” Zara said, cutting Zave off before he could object. “You can have your assistants do most of the work. But you have to show up, you have to know what’s going on.”
Maybe working on the merger would help Devon keep Zave out of a funk. “We’ll do what we can,” Devon said when Zave said nothing, and she accepted a farewell hug from Zara.
Rig didn’t even bother to say goodbye, which didn’t surprise Devon because he wasn’t big on emotions. His quick departure proved his outrage about her marriage was bullshit. Zara’s points had been compelling and might have won him round, but she doubted it.
Rig enjoyed getting dirty and being in the thick of the action. Being next to Raven probably exhilarated him, just as it did Zara.
When the door closed, Devon wrapped her arms around Zave and let out a long breath. “I’m ready to go home,” she said.
Talking to Bess wouldn’t be easy, but they couldn’t keep her in the dark any longer. The sooner she knew the truth, the sooner they could all begin to recover from the psychological injury Zara had mentioned.
Syn had a plan to execute, and the Kindred were playing catch-up. But if there was any group of people in the world equipped to take on this new threat, it was them.
SEVEN
With a hand on her hip, Zave ushered Devon out of the dining room and closed the door when they were both in the hallway. “I’m going to stay with her for a while,” he said.
Devon had tried her best not to shed tears, but it was difficult when she saw the spirit drain out of Bess as she and Zave recounted what had happened on the mission. Zave had sent men ahead of them to come to the island to remove Jennifer, which meant by the time he and Devon got back, the threat was gone.
Bess was frantic. They hadn’t given any information to her about what was going on, just given the men instructions to take Jennifer out and away. Bess would’ve led the men to the girl but wouldn’t have known why she was being removed in such a way. But there were contingencies and passwords that made it go smoothly.
Just as Devon had thought, Bess was beside herself when she noticed that Thad wasn’t with them. At first, maybe with wishful thinking, she asked if he’d stayed on the mainland in his own apartment.
Devon and Zave had taken her into the dining room to sit down with her, and for the past three hours, they’d watched her go through a spectrum of emotions from denial, to anger, to upset. Guilt, confusion, and regret were in there too.
Devon clutched Bess’ hand through all of them, trying her best to absorb some of the melancholy in hope
she could lessen this good woman’s trouble.
Bess had asked for a few moments by herself, and that’s how they found themselves here, alone in the hallway.
“I wish we could make her feel better,” Devon said, holding her hands together at her chest. “She doesn’t deserve this.”
“We’ll get her through it. She’ll always have a place here.”
It was comments like that which boosted her love for this man. “I know.”
Raising her arms, she kept her hands clasped, and he dipped to accept them over his head, and when he smoothed his thumb across her cheek, she felt the distance between them. “You should get some rest,” he said.
He was acting like he was looking after her, but Devon got the sense he wanted his own alone time, just like Bess. “I slept all day in your office,” she said.
But he wasn’t confronting his need for solitude, he was hiding it from himself just like he was hiding his frustrated confusion from her. “Just the same, put your head down for a while. There’s no one here but the three of us now. I know I promised you before that you were safe, but this time—”
“I feel safe here. I know I’m safe. Everyone keeps telling me that this wasn’t my fault, but has anyone said that to you yet?”
He never liked to talk about himself and avoided the subject whenever he could, this time being no exception. Zave spoke again without responding to her question. “You should stay in your own room tonight. I doubt I’ll make it to bed.”
Dejected, she lowered from her tiptoes to let her heels touch the floor, and her hands drifted down as a result. When she’d thought he wanted solitude, she expected him to need a few minutes, not a whole night. “Oh. My room.”
“Yeah, it just makes things easier.”
Easier on who, she didn’t know. They’d made promises to each other, and she’d thought their days of separate bedrooms were in the past. Whether he made it to bed or not, she would still like to know she was welcome in his.
“I can sleep in your bed, in case you do—”
“Do we have to do this now?” he snapped, on the edge of losing his patience. Using her elbows to push her back a step, he strode away to turn his back on her.
“No,” she said. “We don’t.”
He rubbed a hand over his mouth and turned, thrusting his arm to the side. “I have Bess to worry about. Thad. The Kindred. I have one cousin who’s going to go to jail for life for doing what the rest of us couldn’t. Brodie saved our asses, we all sanctioned those jobs, and he’s going to pay for it. I have another cousin who wants to blow a hole in the Earth, just to prove he has bigger balls than the rest of us. I have KC merging with a company I don’t even want, and there’s no one overseeing it right now. And to top it off, I just sent away a woman whose first stop could be the first police department she finds, so she can accuse me of God knows what kind of depravity. Do I really have to worry about you pouting because I won’t fuck you on demand?”
Devon was impressed, actually impressed. She’d learned throughout her time with him that he was great at bottling everything up. Zave was a genius when it came to being stoic and silent. Playing the dark, mysterious stranger in the corner, saying nothing and intimidating everyone was his forte. He was practiced at hearing new information and not letting any reaction show in his expression.
Indifference was his default. Apathy, his aura. And aloof was his natural state.
But when he did this with her, with no one else but her, she was allowed to see that things did get to him, that he did have the emotion, he just refused to show it.
“No, you don’t,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about that. Fucking is the last thing I’m thinking about. I’m thinking that we said, ‘I do.’ I’m thinking that we lay in bed and promised each other we were gonna work on lowering these barriers. I’m not demanding that you get your dick out for my amusement. I’m demanding that if you lie down tonight, it be beside me. But you’re right, there’s far too much going on for us to be worried about arguing with each other as well.”
From here, she knew the way to her room because it was almost directly above them. Devon left the covered hallway through the open, pointed arch. But before she got to the stairs, Zave grabbed her arm and spun her around.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Zave had never apologized to her before, and it was funny to hear such sincere words come in such a deadpan delivery. “You’re worried about everyone else,” she said. “You haven’t figured out that it’s your wife’s job to worry about you. I’m worried about the Kindred, and I don’t want Syn to get away with this thing they have. And I wish that Bess wasn’t going through this shit. But these people only mean something to me because I love you.”
Bess might be the exception, but they’d been forging a relationship since before Devon had even met Zave. But tonight, Devon wasn’t injecting herself into that situation because this was a time for family, so she’d hung back to provide moral support as it was needed.
Zave knew how Bess worked. He was great at observing people and if Bess had a problem, he’d find a way to fix it, just as if she demanded to leave the island and never come back again, he’d find a way to talk her out of it.
Devon would be too emotional to be objective and make a reasoned argument. Zave’s hand fell from her arm and rubbed his lips together. “I have to be with Bess.”
Stepping backwards onto the bottom stair, Devon got enough height to cradle his face. “You know where I’ll be if you need me.” He accepted this and turned to go back to the dining room. But just before he went through the arch into the shadow, she called out. “Lord.” He stopped. “Your emotions don’t offend me.”
They offended him, and that was why he got so worked up whenever they slipped out. Devon knew him well enough now that it would probably take him another day or two before he’d think about speaking to her again.
It hurt that he didn’t want to share a bed with her, just as it hurt that he was pushing her away. The timing was unfortunate. She knew him well enough to understand that he’d have reacted this way whether they’d been married for six minutes or six years, because isolating himself, blaming himself, were the things he always did.
Zave took on the responsibility of the world. He’d done it after his parents died. When Bronwyn was lost. Now he was doing it again.
Devon would stick by him, and they’d come out the other side of this together and stronger.
Despite claiming that she didn’t need rest because she’d slept in the office all day, Devon must have fallen asleep at some point because she woke up alone in the bed she’d spent most of her nights in over the past few months. Stretching her limbs until she pointed her toes, she rolled onto her back and wasn’t even surprised, or offended, to see Bess standing at the end of the bed.
In fact, the view made Devon smile and sit up.
“There’s something wrong,” Bess said.
Oh, her smile fell. Devon pulled the sheet to her chest and crossed her legs as she sat up and began to panic. “What? Is it Zave? What time is it?”
“Somewhere around ten o’clock,” Bess said, her eyes were bloodshot, the bags beneath them heavy. But it didn’t surprise Devon that Bess had struggled to sleep given what she was dealing with.
“What’s wrong?”
“Yes, it’s Zave and it’s you,” Bess said, coming around to sit on the end of the bed. “What are you doing in here alone?”
Well if that was the only problem, they didn’t have one. Devon stood her pillow up behind her back and rested on it while yawning. “Nothing’s wrong,” she said.
Bess’ brow went up. “Don’t you lie to me, dearie. You two spent all those hours talking to me and you didn’t even tell me about the wedding.”
It was unbelievable that Bess could be so selfless. Devon was so shocked that she almost laughed. This woman had been told that her only son had betrayed the people she cared about, and here Bess was worried and asking about Devon’s w
edding.
“It was quick. You know it was just at the courthouse,” Devon said, leaning forward to show her the ring.
Bess smiled. “Oh, it’s beautiful. Just what you deserve. How do you feel about being married?”
“Now?” Devon asked, gazing toward the window.
How could she answer that question? Zave had listed all of the things going on in his life, and she was worried about him. She couldn’t understand Thad’s motivation, and although Brodie was strong, it couldn’t be easy learning that your brother had come back from the dead.
Then there was her brother trying to throw his weight around, telling her what to do, pissing her off. But he was out there too, possibly in a room right now with Syn, who wouldn’t hesitate to hurt him. Rig was a pain, but he was the only family she had.
“You should be leaning on each other,” Bess said. “Not moving into separate rooms.”
“It’s been a lot for him to take in,” Devon said but was wary about putting too much onto Bess who was dealing with her own grief. “We’ll be fine once he’s processed everything. If he was planning to dump me, he’d have found an excuse to leave me in the city. He wouldn’t have brought me back to the island.”
“He loves you so much and I’m sorry that my son…”
Devon couldn’t bear to see Bess broken like this. She shuffled down the bed. Hooking the sheet beneath her arms to keep her breasts covered, she took Bess’ hand. “I wish there was something I could do. I said to Zave I wish we could take this pain away for you.”
“I just don’t understand,” Bess exhaled. “I don’t understand how he could’ve felt this way and never told me.”
It was good that Bess was getting to a place that she could talk. “What about Frank?” Devon asked. “Did you know that Thad knew about his father?”
“I had no idea. He never came to me. I spoke to him every day. Why would he not have told me that he knew? Maybe if he’d trusted me and spoken to me about it, I’d have been able to talk him out of this.”
Finch (Kindred #6) Page 8
