Wanting to put him at ease, she smiled, but it felt like she’d heard that a lot. There was always one more bad guy chasing them down or some con where no one knew quite where they stood. “I know,” she said, but the words weren’t quite as hearty as he needed them to be because he frowned again.
“You want me to stay?” he asked. “If you want to call this whole thing off and split town now we—”
“And what? Leave Cuckoo in charge of the company? It’s a race now to see who’ll find Winter Chill first. If we win, we control everything. But if she wins…”
He nodded, understanding without her having to finish. “Then I better get going,” he said and kissed her before easing away from her.
“Wait,” she said, grabbing for him again.
Making love had kept her from getting her own answers. She hadn’t been updated with the full details of Brodie’s morning with Tuck chasing Kahlil, and they still had to make plans for when to do the Game Time deal.
“What?”
“How long did you tail Kahlil for this morning?” she asked.
“From when we left the hotel right up to your meeting with him. You took a risk.”
“I knew you’d be there,” she said, the tension seeped out of her body. Being this close to the man she loved did that, it kept her focused.
Running two fingers down from the hair at her temple, he tucked the lock in the scissor of his fingers behind her ear. “I think you should wear an earpiece permanently.”
She couldn’t tell if he was being serious or teasing her again. “So that when you’re stalking me, you can whisper sweet nothings?”
“So I can tell you when it’s a stupid decision to go to a meeting with a known criminal without backup.”
Sagging forward, she rested both forearms on his chest. “Kahlil called me right before my meeting with Cuckoo—”
“Which was another non-sanctioned decision.”
This sounded like he was on the verge of pulling rank. Difficult to believe that just a few minutes ago he’d been eating her out. “It was CI. In the middle of the day. I already asked Tuck to make sure my security credentials were in place. Even if they thought they got rid of me from the system, they wouldn’t have. I knew she couldn’t trap me. Also, unlike some members of the Kindred, who we won’t name now, I have a cell phone with GPS that I answer when it rings. You will always know where I am.”
“I will always know where your phone is,” he said, stroking the same two fingers through the hair resting on the back of her shoulder. “If some bastard picks you up and abducts you, chances are that your phone is the first thing he’s gonna toss.”
“Wearing an earpiece all the time won’t prevent me from making decisions like I did today. I have to weigh the risks, and today there was virtually none. I know the business district better than Cuckoo and Kahlil. I know the secrets of the CI building better than most of security, and Purdy’s is where I killed a man, so I know I can defend myself there if I need to. Besides, I took into consideration that you and Tuck were probably still tailing him, so I guessed you would be close and you’ve just confirmed I was right.”
Her broad smile made him shake his head. “Proud of yourself, aren’t you?”
“We have to be clear about something,” she said because now wasn’t the time to crow. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be stolen by crazy criminals, and I sure as hell don’t want to hang out and make friends with your ex-girlfriend. I do the things I do because I’m Kindred, and progressing towards our end goal is my job. I don’t take unnecessary risks. I do what needs to be done, and if you coddle me and strap me down here at the manor, I’m useless to you.”
“And we both know how that turns out for all of us.”
“We do,” she said, glad that he was understanding her perspective. Feeling useless contributed to depression and feelings of melancholy. She needed to be doing something, staying busy, or her own thoughts drove her crazy. “I told Kahlil that we would exchange Game Time. That we were going to accept his offer.”
Any affection in his gaze or touch evaporated, and he stepped away. “What the fuck did you do that for?”
“Because it makes sense,” she said, curling her fingers around the edge of the counter to steady herself.
“To give a crazy criminal a dangerous weapon? Explain to me how the fuck that makes sense.”
He was getting angry, and she knew him well enough to recognize his fury was nothing to do with Game Time and everything to do with the story that Kahlil was dangling in front of them. “Beau—”
“No!” he said. The bass of that single declaration shook the foundations of the manor, and of her soul too. Stunned static, her bugged eyes spoke for her in the silence because she was unsure of how else to react to that burst of anger. “You don’t fucking get it! This is my family! My past! My decision!” His anger reddened his skin and clenched his fists so tight that his muscles bulged.
“I’m sorry, I—”
“No! You don’t decide something like that. You don’t decide it alone,” he said with a sneering scowl that belittled her. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re a rookie. You don’t hand over dangerous technology to a bastard whose goal is power. You don’t do that! You don’t decide in the name of the Kindred!”
For all the love they’d shared on this day to this distant, angry stranger before her now was quite a turn around. The shock of his metamorphosis put her in a trance, like she was frozen in time, unable to speak up.
Bending an arm, he pointed at her. “You don’t decide. You do what you’re told! Don’t take initiative! You follow my rules! You’ve got some fucking nerve.” Backing to the door in a final stride, he pulled it open and stormed away. When the door clattered into the frame, she jumped but could still only sit there and stare.
EIGHTEEN
“We got it!”
For most of the night, she and Tuck had been sitting together going through the accounts that Julian had sent them. She had to trace almost every transaction because even the smallest ones turned out to be relevant. Grant had worked hard to cover his tracks and to be discreet. Tuck took her information and followed the digital trails.
He and Zave had pulled apart one of the Game Time devices a while ago and knew what it took to put the thing together. Armed with that knowledge, he sought every part and tool needed to build Game Time. After matching cash payments to those parts, they built a picture of where Winter Chill was located.
Having traced the last component, all that was left now was for Tuck to go in through the CI system, or Grant’s private network, and shut down every level. The information would take time to filter down, but they’d done it, they had made sure no one would be able to put together another Game Time device.
“That’s great,” she said, moving her hand over the stack of papers in front of her.
“In a day or so I’ll go into the individual computers of the engineers and erase any schematics or reports,” Tuck said, tapping away on his keyboard.
“You can do that?” she asked because in spite of her mood, she still had to be impressed by his ability.
“It’s not that difficult, I’ll get a program to do it for me.”
It might not sound difficult to him, but not many people would have the skills to do that. Tuck often played down his ability, sometimes he was the Kindred silent partner. His work was integral to their success, but he didn’t boast or demand recognition. For fear she might make him self-conscious, she stroked her palm over the texture of the paper beneath it and didn’t stress any overt praise. “It’s all worth it. The quicker we can wipe Game Time from the face of the earth, the better.”
“It helps that almost everyone who knows what Game Time is, is either dead or so far outside the loop they’ll never find it.”
She nodded. Brodie had been gone for hours. She hadn’t heard a peep. They hadn’t set up a webcam, he was just out there alone. The Kindred had positioned a camera to watch her
apartment, she wished she’d done the same thing at Kahlil’s place. She understood the need to be close, to listen in and watch what might happen in real time, and it made sense for them to be close in case he took off again, like he had that morning.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened in the kitchen earlier. She should never have spoken out like she did. Brodie was right that she shouldn’t make unilateral decisions for the whole group. Even Brodie rarely did that, he usually took the time to listen to all points of view and reached a consensus. But she hadn’t had time to do that.
Kahlil wanted the meeting, and she wasn’t in contact with Brodie or Tuck. The alternative was to turn him down flat, but that didn’t make sense to her. Then he’d just be a threat and out in the world pissed at them while holding onto a valuable piece of information about Brodie’s past.
They had to agree to sell Game Time to Kahlil, doing that would give them answers about Future’s Hope. They might even get the chance to see Sikorski up close. If they did, and they were in a remote enough location, all of their enemies could be taken out in one fail swoop.
“You know I broke up with my girlfriend,” Tuck said.
She snapped out of her daze to see him peering over the top of his laptop at her. The glow from the screen lit up his face in this darkened space, and she wondered what time it was. There were no windows in the security room, hence how it stayed so secure and was always so dark. Light from the monitors and a muted blue light above the door were the only sources of illumination. There were florescent overheads, but she’d never seen them on.
“Hmm?” she asked because she hadn’t been following. He could have been talking this whole time, and she wouldn’t have the first clue what he’d said because she’d been so caught up thinking about Brodie.
“Kadie,” he said. “God, even saying her name hurts.” He didn’t sound hurt, a bit wistful maybe, but she guessed he was trying to make a point from his shrewd look. “I was in love with her. I am in love with her. But I broke up with her because it was best for her. Giving up on what I wanted was the only way to make sure that she could have a happy future. That she could have any future.”
Not so long ago, she had told Tuck if he wanted to talk that she would be an available ear for him. They were alone now, in a dark room without any threats around, so she guessed that he was taking advantage of the offer. She’d been slouched down in her chair with her legs stretched out beneath the table. But she sat up straight to show she was interested and listening.
“And now you regret that decision?” she asked. “You know where she is, go and get her. Even if she’s dating some other guy, I guarantee he won’t be better than you. She’ll dump his ass on the side of the road if you come riding up the street beside her on your bike.” She shrugged and tried a smile. “If not, there’s always Maverick.”
He whispered out a sort of laugh and put his elbows on the table. “That wasn’t my point. I’m talking about you and Rave.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t gleaned that. For most of the night, her head had felt like it was filled with water. To understand what she’d been reading, she’d had to read it several times before the information filtered in. Scrunching her brow, she tried her best to focus. “You think I should dump him so he can have a future? Or he should dump me?”
He smiled. “No one should dump anyone. I’m saying, I had to make a choice. And it’s not a choice you two have to make. I envy you guys.”
They were lucky, and it broke her heart that Tuck had to sacrifice his chance of happiness to stay true to the Kindred. “You could’ve brought Kadie inside,” Zara said. “Brodie would let her stay here with us. You already have your own bedroom, and she’d be safe here.”
“I don’t think Brodie will let anyone else into the manor,” Tuck said, projecting a flavor of amusement. “Sometimes I think he’d kick you and me out if he could.”
Except he wouldn’t because he’d allowed them both to maintain their role and their clearance for all things manor related when he was languishing in a pit of grievous despair. If they got through that, then they would get through anything. She was about to say that she’d persuade Brodie to let Kadie live at the manor if that was what Tuck wanted. But flashes from their encounter in the kitchen before he left came back to her and dejection swamped her.
“You’re right,” she said. “We shouldn’t make decisions about this house. It’s nothing to do with either of us.”
“I knew it,” he muttered. “I knew there was something wrong. You women, you just get this air about you. I don’t know why you can’t come out and say it.”
“Say what?”
“That something’s pissing you off,” Tuck said.
“Nothing is pissing me off.”
“Sure it is. You’ve got that same look on your face that you did when I yelled at you in the hotel. Is it Brodie? Did you guys fight?”
There was no point in lying about it because he would hear what happened eventually, if not from her then from Brodie. She didn’t know when or how they did it, but the two men managed to convey vital information to each other, even in times she’d swear they hadn’t seen or spoken to each other. Maybe they did it by email… but that would leave a trail both of them were smart enough to avoid.
“I don’t even know what happened,” she said, cupping her forehead in her hands. “I told Kahlil that we would do the deal, that we would trade Game Time for the money and the story. I know I shouldn’t have made the decision just like that, but I thought we were halfway there anyway. Brodie had been so shut off about it, and then we had that party outside and talked about it in here. I thought we were going to do it and I mean, why shouldn’t we?” She got up and Tuck didn’t even try to respond, just folded his arms and twisted his chair to watch her walk toward the monitor bank and back to him. “Kahlil isn’t going to give up easily, and the last thing we need is him going to crazy Cuckoo. If we can get him and his boss out in the open then Raven and Maverick can take care of business, right?”
“It’s not quite as easy as that,” Tuck said. “If Kahlil’s alone, sure, but if he’s working for Sikorski, you can’t just kill a crazy Russian mob boss and not expect to draw attention to yourself. We don’t want his people on our asses, they have a long fucking memory.”
That took some of her gusto, she put her hands on her hips. “Did I fuck up? Are we considering not using Game Time as a lure?”
“We discussed it. Even if we can’t take out Kahlil or his boss, we could put a tracker in the device and let the rats take it back to their maze.”
“We talked about that before with Sutcliffe. It’s dangerous. To do that, we’d have to risk them arming Game Time and if anything went wrong…”
“You think there would be a problem with my software?”
“No,” she said, typical that a man would get defensive about his skills. “I mean, we thought that Sutcliffe would lead us to his den, and then he told me that they were planning an overseas war. You’ve no idea how scared I was then, he could have taken Game Time to an airfield and put it on a plane… What kind of range does your tech have? And if they have their own tech people who take it apart or look for trackers, we’re doomed.”
“We can give them a dummy device,” he said. Leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, he put his plan together. “We take out the guts of the machine. Leave in the tracker and the kill switch. We’ll pack in some explosives, a fuse, turn Game Time into a good old-fashioned bomb.”
“A bomb?”
“Sure,” he said, sitting back again. “It has the added advantage of a built-in gas dispenser. We can increase the intensity of the explosion if we fill the canisters with flammable gas and put the valves on a manual or automatic release. Then when the gas leaks into the air and mixes with the oxygen… All it needs is a spark and boom.”
If he wasn’t talking about something so devastating, she would probably laugh at how proud he sounded. But his great plan had one major
flaw. “That’s an excellent idea.” Going back to her chair, she slumped down again. “Except Brodie took my head off when I told him I’d agreed to Kahlil’s terms.”
“It’s the story,” Tuck said, turning to the table. “You can’t take it personal. He’s not pissed at you. He’s pissed about his parents.”
“I know,” she said, putting her arms on the tabletop. “I do know that. He’s lost Art and Grant, I know he claims not to care about his brother, but it has to hit him somewhere, right? Since Future’s Hope exploded, he’s suspected there were other forces at play. He never believed it was an accident.”
“It’s one thing to believe it. It’s another to have your suspicions confirmed.”
Yeah, but she couldn’t give him the time and space he needed to work it out like she’d done after Art’s death. They didn’t have the same window to let him adjust and to come to terms with this revelation because Kahlil wouldn’t wait around forever. “Kahlil is impatient. He wants the deal done. I don’t know if it’s Sikorski or Leatt or whoever he was recording the message for, but something has him spooked. He told me that he wants to leave town.”
“So let him leave.”
She took a deep breath. “I’m worried that if we let this slip through our fingers now, we won’t get another chance. Kahlil has kept this secret for a long time because of his loyalty to the man he used to work for. If that man hears somehow that he’s trying to sell the secret or that he’s working for Sikorski to obtain Game Time…”
“The previous employer might stop the leak.”
“Permanently,” she said. “If we let Kahlil go and something happens to him, there’s no one else alive who will tell us the truth.”
“But there is a truth and if Raven decides he wants it, then he’ll find a way to get it. No matter who he has to put a bullet into.”
She shook her head. “Bullets won’t work this time,” she said. “It was so long ago that the circle of people who know the details is probably getting smaller every day. How long will it take Brodie to decide? Six months? A year? Ten years? This will eat him up inside, and he’ll resent himself and probably us for not taking the opportunity when it landed in our lap.”
Cuckoo (Kindred Book 3) Page 22
