Swift (Kindred Book 4)

by Scarlett Finn

  Sikorski had entered moments later, and headed straight for the decanter. Now he sipped high quality whiskey with the man responsible for Kadie’s predicament.

  “We have business,” Sikorski said.

  Eliminating the driver and bodyguard had three goals. The first was divide and conquer. Sikorski liked to be safe, but he didn’t trust many people, which meant the number of guards he kept around was low. Picking them off in minimal numbers, so as not to arouse suspicion, kept their options open for future moves they might have to make that could lead to more obvious confrontation.

  The second purpose, was to give Sikorski a scare, to remind him that there were people out there capable of hurting him when he least expected it. The Kindred needed information about some of those people, not because they wanted to protect Sikorski, but because they wanted to protect themselves and the general population.

  Some of Sikorski’s enemies were their enemies too and some of those people wanted power, which they planned to get by hurting others. The Kindred had no intention of letting that happen, especially not with the device they’d been keeping out of circulation for months.

  As he’d told Kadie outside the limo, the third reason was to put Sikorski in a position of debt. Tuck had risked his life before, so often that he thought nothing of letting his friend and colleague kill the man driving the vehicle he was riding in. The suggestion was so mundane that he hadn’t given it much thought. He hadn’t factored in just how difficult it would be to see Kadie scared or how his own adrenaline would react in his desire to protect her.

  If they’d thought Sikorski would be slowed by an attempt on his life, they were wrong. He was sitting in the office, with his newest associate, drinking liquor like nothing had happened and he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “You want to do this tonight?” Tuck asked, appreciating that he was capable of conducting business.

  “I think tonight’s events prove that there is no time like the present.”

  Fair point, and one Tuck wouldn’t refute. It wasn’t like he enjoyed being in the company of this man, so anything that would get him out of it sooner was fine by him. “Ok,” Tuck said, discarding the glass on a side table. “You have something I want.”

  Sikorski wasn’t moved, in fact, he scoffed. “You think you can make demands of me?”

  Sikorski was still acting like he had the upper hand. If he wasn’t so used to arrogance like this, Tuck would be amazed. The mansion that they were in didn’t belong to Sikorski, Swallow had whispered that in his ear not long after he’d arrived.

  Knowing that his people were on the periphery, doing the background and still close enough to check in with him, was reassuring and meant that his own confidence wouldn’t take any kind of knock just because Sikorski acted like he was the big man.

  “I think I saved your life tonight,” Tuck said. Sikorski had frozen when the car went out of control. Tuck assumed that was what came with always expecting someone else to pick up after you. Sikorski had a staff that he liked to order around. Without them, he was paralyzed and didn’t know how to act for himself. “I think you might owe me one.”

  “You did,” Sikorski said. Tuck gave him a point for not arguing or trying to rewrite what had happened by implying he’d somehow had it under control himself. “How do I know it wasn’t orchestrated by you?”

  “You think I want to kill myself? I was in that car too and I work alone,” Tuck said. In their industry, everyone was suspicious of everyone else because almost everything was a setup. What it came down to was who played the game better, and Tuck planned on that being him. “Except in circumstances of mutual benefit.”

  “And this is one of those occasions?”

  If Sikorski gave him what he wanted then Tuck would let the Russian believe he’d get something back. “It might be,” Tuck said.

  Since being a part of the Kindred, he hadn’t ever had to work alone. When dealing with legitimate business, he’d had Kadie and her cousin there with him. When doing his not-so-legitimate work he had Brodie and Art with him, and now Zara too. Working without a net didn’t scare him and he always pulled his weight on the team. But all of them had to be able to walk into any scenario and bluff, Tuck knew how to play whatever role was required of him.

  “Very well,” Sikorski said. “I will see that you are compensated for your actions tonight. But, that is separate to our deal.”

  Sikorski didn’t like to be indebted to anyone, few men did. Tuck would take the guy’s money, if that was what he was talking about, but he didn’t care about financial compensation. What he wanted was information. It made sense to let Sikorski take the lead so that Tuck could feel out his opponent’s expectations. Tipping his hand first would be a mistake. “What deal?”

  “Game Time,” Sikorski said. “What do you know about it?”

  Definitely eager, which played into the Kindred’s hands, Tuck noted how Sikorski tried to quell his desperation. For months the man had been trying to get his hands on the device created by Cormack Industries, a company connected to the Kindred. Just when Sikorski had probably given up hope of ever obtaining the tech, here was Tuck, just in time to dangle it in front of him again.

  Superiority felt good, but he had to be careful about being too cocky. To get what he wanted from Sikorski, he had to portray himself as a worthy associate, which meant he had to be confident, a man Sikorski wanted to deal with through respect. That would make the whole process easier. But if he took it too far, Sikorski would push back and they’d never get out of this pissing contest.

  “What do you want to know?” Tuck asked, stretching his arms the length of the couch.

  Sikorski took his time, he must have sensed his own zeal and been trying to pull it back. “Where is it? Do you have it?”

  The Kindred had had it since the day Art died. They’d been protecting it and trying to erase evidence of it from everywhere it still existed. But Sikorski didn’t know about his links to the Kindred. If he believed that Tuck was a third party with access, maybe to steal or rebuild the device, then they’d be in business and the Russian wouldn’t see the long-term agenda that put his remaining days of mortality on a countdown timer.

  Tuck got comfortable on the couch. “I know where it is, and yes, I do have it… in a manner of speaking.”

  “You better know who you’re dealing with,” Sikorski snapped, slamming his own glass down. “Give it to me.”

  “You’re not the only one who wants it.”

  Except, he sort of was. All of the original Game Time bidders were dead, sort of. But there were two people still out there in the world who did know about it. Two beyond the Kindred. One, Griffin Caine, couldn’t care less about the device or its capabilities. The other, Benedict Leatt, they weren’t too sure about and it was him that kept the Kindred on edge because he was a wild card.

  “It’s a myth,” Sikorski said, perhaps testing Tuck’s knowledge. “Everyone wants it, no one has it. No one’s seen it.”

  “I have,” Tuck said, glancing towards the window.

  Though he couldn’t blame Sikorski for being skeptical. Anyone who had contact with Game Time tended to end up dead, which left any concrete proof of its capabilities as nothing more than stories. Being one of the few people to have deconstructed the device, Tuck knew more about it than most and if his hand was forced, he could throw something together that could get the Game Time job done.

  But his hand wasn’t being forced and he wouldn’t allow it to be. The Kindred wanted Game Time erased from the face of the earth because their key founding member had died to keep it from falling into nefarious hands. Game Time wouldn’t take a life, they couldn’t let it, or Art would have given up his life in vain.

  “Why should I believe you? I don’t know a thing about you. You can’t expect me to believe that scum like you would have witnessed such a thing.”

  Sikorski should know better than to make assumptions. His willingness to do so, however, worked in Tuck’s f
avor. That was the thing about haughty men surrounded by money and sycophants, they grew to believe themselves superior and invincible. Both qualities that the Kindred could exploit.

  “Scum like me,” Tuck said, looking back at his host. “You don’t know what I am.” Raising that question mark would play with the Russian’s head.

  His opponent wasn’t so easily dissuaded from his presumptive assertion. “You hang out in that disgusting, repulsive hole of a—”

  “I was looking for you,” he said.

  The bar they’d met in might be disgusting, he wouldn’t argue against that point, but it had been the place Sikorski chose to do business for that very reason. No one would look for people like them in that pit, and the people there had so little credibility that no one would believe stories of what they said went on if they ever did choose to speak out.

  “Why?”

  Tuck wouldn’t give out too much before making it clear that his offer was conditional. “You have something I want.”

  Sikorski was trying again to temper his mood. “So you’ve said. But, you get nothing from me. Nothing. This is baseless information, nothing but vague references, hearsay and—”

  “No hearsay,” Tuck said. “I’ve seen it.”

  “How? How could you have seen it? It doesn’t exist, you said it yourself.”

  “It exists.”

  “How do you know that?” Sikorski asked.

  The corner of Tuck’s mouth turned upward knowing he was about to deliver the body blow Sikorski would never have suspected in a million years. “Because I have built it,” Tuck murmured.

  Sikorski blinked, absorbing this news and the possibilities it revealed to him. “You’ve been that close to it?”

  “Close as you can get,” Tuck said, and although Sikorski would never say it, he was excited.

  Tuck didn’t get it. Something about being close to powerful things got a lot of men off. He could identify with a good piece of hardware as much as the next guy. But people like this, who were aroused by mass destruction, he didn’t get it.

  From their background checks, they knew that Sikorski was working alone in his quest to acquire Game Time. His goal was to get the device, cause havoc, and impress his bosses back home. Maybe that would work and get him the respect he wanted from others in his organizations. Still, Tuck didn’t get it. Anyone who placed that high a premium on destroying innocent lives was a mystery to him.

  “If you have it, if you have those skills, why deliver them to me? Why not use them for your own gain?”

  Typical that this man would think that way. “I don’t have the drive for it,” Tuck shrugged. “Why would I need something like that?”

  “So why get involved? Why build the device?”

  “Professional curiosity,” he said and in part, that was the truth.

  Taking something apart to figure out how it worked had been a favorite pastime of his since he was a kid. By his teenage years he’d gravitated more towards software, and computers were his comfort zone now.

  Working with the Kindred meant working with Xavier Knight, who was one of the smartest inventors on the planet and had been heading into the stratosphere of innovation when his parents were killed and his whole life changed. Little got the reticent billionaire excited and fewer people got to see him when he was. Tuck was one of the lucky ones.

  Any problem that cropped up, it was their job to solve, Zave built and Tuck programmed. They’d been doing it for so long now that they knew each other’s quirks and building or reverse engineering was their idea of a good time on a Saturday night. Few understood it and Tuck might not have been so exuberant about it if working with Zave hadn’t been so inspiring.

  It took time for both of them to relax with each other, to trust each other. These days, they discussed every minute technicality and brainstormed any time one had a glimmer of an idea. Zave was so stand-offish that they could go months without hearing from him. Then Tuck would get a call at three in the morning that would pull him out of his bed and they’d be speculating and taking notes on how they might overcome a technical hitch. Zave had taught him a lot about hardware and he was proud to say he’d returned the favor on the software side.

  “What do you want?” Sikorski asked. “What do you need from me?”

  Given that this opportunity had fallen into Sikorski’s lap, it was no surprise that the Russian wanted to close the deal as quickly as possible. Tuck might have tried to conclude their business tonight, except with Kadie somewhere on the premises, somewhere he didn’t know, he couldn’t rush this through too quickly.

  “A couple of things,” Tuck said, reaching for his glass again. “First thing is, this meeting never happened. This exchange never took place. If we do this, that’s it, no further contact and you never mention me to anyone.” That was a kind of standard Kindred contract. “Because I don’t exist either.”

  “If you have these skills then I must have heard of you.”

  “You’ll have heard of my work, just as I’ve heard of yours. Software is my day job, I can get into any system. This was sort of a… side project. Sport.”

  “Software,” Sikorski said, raising a brow. “You’re a hacker?”

  “Well that’s crude,” Tuck said with a slight side nod. “But, yeah, I guess you could call it that.” Now he got to tell another secret, one he’d wanted to boast about for a while. “I’m the guy who zeroed your bosses’ bank accounts back in the day.” That had been about two years ago and man was it fun to watch the carnage as the Bratva began to implode. They recovered too quickly, many crooks lost their lives, while more lost their livelihoods. But that’s what happened when the Kindred got pissed off.

  Sikorski froze, he frowned and rocked back in his seat before flying to his feet. “You... you’re...”

  His work was known to many people. Some of it because of the Kindred, some because of the business, and another group were aware of other jobs he did on his own time. Keeping himself free-moving, never sticking to one handle or IP, he did his best to hide his signature, especially when he was working under his own steam.

  But when he did reveal himself to people, they were always so amazed, he was used to extreme reactions from people who were impressed or angered by what he did to them or their associates.

  “Let the chips fall where they may,” Tuck muttered because now that Sikorski knew not only did Tuck have his respect, but he had his undivided attention.

  “You’re The Anomaly.”

  “Also known as... Also known as,” Tuck said. More often than not, it was the victims of his work that gave him a title. The only ones he recognized were his real name and his Kindred moniker.

  Sikorski wasn’t done educating him on his own identity. The shock of the revelation erased the Russian’s perfected game face. It was funny to see just how disconnected he’d become from the game they’d been playing a few minutes ago. “The Prodigy, The Marvel. The Creator… I don’t believe it.”

  With stupid names like that neither did he. “Believe what you want,” Tuck said, sipping his liquor. “I couldn’t care less if you know my resume. It means nothing to this deal.”

  In opposition to what he had just said, Sikorski carried on in a way that implied he did in fact believe that Tuck was who he said he was. “The Poet,” Sikorski said, edging closer. “They call you that too.”

  Most of the names he ignored, but he’d been stumped the times he’d heard that one. Brodie still needled him about it when the chance arose. “That one always confused me,” Tuck said. “There’s no brevity in what I do.”

  “You’re a myth,” Sikorski said, drifting toward him and sitting on the couch beside him staring like a child in wonder at a mist that would disappear at any moment. Everything was a myth because leaving a trail got people in their line killed or arrested. Too quickly, Sikorski snapped from his daze. “This is… with this new information—”

  “Let me stop you there,” Tuck said, having heard the spiel from others be
fore. “You’re going to make an offer to put me on your payroll. I’m not interested. Not in the long-term.”

  “And in the short-term?”

  Until he had what he wanted, he’d dance with this bastard, but not for a second longer than he had to. “That’s what we have to discuss,” Tuck said.

  “Yes,” Sikorski said. “Yes, we should. But, it’s late we should continue this discussion tomorrow.”

  Spinning on a dime, suddenly Sikorski wanted him to hang around. Tuck had seen this play before too. Crooks who wanted to exploit his skills, especially ones with means, like to flaunt a lavish lifestyle in their attempt to tempt Tuck onto payroll, meaning they’d have access to him and his brain on demand. With his skills, he could have gotten a legit job and made a ton of money. But he did what he did because it was important and he could affect change that others couldn’t.

  The Kindred had been there for him when he needed a crutch. Art had pulled him from drunken brawls and week-long parties and got his head screwed on. The Kindred were the only family he’d ever known and nothing would seduce him into turning his back on them.

  Trying not to sneer or ridicule, Tuck wanted to point out the shift in power without being explicit. “Minutes ago you wanted to talk it out, get it over with.”

  “Yes,” Sikorski said, now glowing in the ecstasy of his discovery. “But I think a friendship could be mutually beneficial to us, and your actions tonight demand our gratitude.”

  “Now you’re rolling out the red carpet?”

  Until Tuck agreed to be Sikorski’s employee, he’d get the special treatment. If he did agree to work for Sikorski all of that would go away in a hurry and he’d be treated the same as every other scum-sucking lowlife around here, it didn’t matter that he had a tangible ability that would aid Sikorski’s organization, the man wouldn’t have anyone rising above him in the ranks and so Tuck would be reminded of where he was on the food chain.

  But the seduction was relevant, needed to make him believe that he would be important and revered around here. Maybe he would be in lower ranks, if it came to it, but he’d never be allowed to get ideas above his station, which was another reason he’d avoided joining any kind of criminal enterprise. The Kindred allowed him freedom to pursue his own interests, any of them were allowed to say no if they disagreed with the plan of action, and everyone was encouraged to participate in decision making.