Kahlil had seen Art’s death at the Atlas warehouse when the Kindred had taken control of Game Time, commandeering it before the injured Albert Sutcliffe could make off with it. The story Sikorski told was the same one Kahlil had fed Zara. All they needed was the confirmation that Sikorski didn’t know details of the Kindred.
“Yet, you backed out. Lose your nerve? Don’t want that happening to me.”
“I told you,” Sikorski said, enjoying his smirk. “A woman always screws up the deal.”
“You think it was Zara Bandini’s fault?”
“I know it was, but she wasn’t the woman I was referring to.” Now he was lost and his squint must have conveyed that. “After the death of Grant McCormack, Mischa Corvi was brought in to take over at Cormack Industries.”
Tuck was aware of that and the friction it had caused in Raven’s relationship with Swallow. “So?”
The door opened, interrupting them before Sikorski could respond. Kadie came in and from the way she came up short, he’d say she wasn’t expecting them to be here. The rush of color to her cheeks wasn’t caused by him, not by what they’d done last night anyway. Reading her tension and her reluctance to look at him, Tuck frowned. Something was wrong.
Sikorski was smiling, but Kadie didn’t want to look at him either. “You wanted to see me?” she asked Sikorski, holding the door handle and using the wood as a shield for everything but her head and shoulders.
“Yes, I thought you should join us,” Sikorski said. “Our new friend has taken an interest in you. You won’t mind her sitting with us while we talk business. Will you, Swift?”
Clenching his jaw, he could only shake his head. “No,” he said, though his head was screaming yes. Whatever Kadie heard might change her opinion on him and with this audience, he couldn’t offer explanations. In the bar, she’d proved that she could play a part and keep her cool when she had to. Whether her acceptance would carry beyond this room, he couldn’t yet tell.
EIGHTEEN
Sikorski couldn’t possibly understand what he’d done by bringing Kadie into the room. Tuck didn’t know why she had to bear witness to this conversation, she had no choice except to comply with what Sikorski ordered her to do and Tuck couldn’t object. Although he didn’t want her to hear the gory details of the Kindred’s past dealings in this setting, he had to look on the bright side. As long as she was in the room with him, he could protect her.
Sikorski gestured for her to sit on the same couch that he occupied and she tiptoed forward, closing the office door and sitting at the end, as far away from her boss as she could. Warning bells began to fade up in his hearing. Although Sikorski didn’t seem to notice that she was reluctant to be near him because the Russian was more interested in examining his newest business associate, Tuck saw it.
A flare of dismay colored her face when she caught Tuck frowning at her. Her reluctance to have his attention betrayed that she’d choose to be invisible in this moment if she could wish it. Except she should know better than to assume he’d ignore her when he could tell that she was unsettled.
Concern for the Kindred and moving forward lessened in light of Kadie’s meek expression and awkward body language. Something was wrong and he had to know what it was before he could fix it.
“Mischa Corvi,” Sikorski said, and Tuck drew his attention around to the other man in the room. “We were not acquainted as such, but I’d heard of her, of course. She is famed in Europe for her resilience in business.”
Tuck wasn’t saying anything, his scowl was chiseled so deep that he began to get a headache. It amazed him how affected he was by seeing Kadie so close to this man he despised. Laughing with the warm, relaxed woman she was last night was a brutal contrast to the tense, nervous woman he was watching now. This woman was keeping to herself, trying to make her body as small as she could, desperate to be excused.
“I know who she is,” Tuck said. “And I know she was involved with CI, briefly.” Not anymore, Zara drove Corvi out before she got too cozy.
“Something happened,” Sikorski said. “I don’t know what it was, I didn’t care. She called me on the morning the deal was about to go down. Told me that she could get the device to me and it wouldn’t cost me a penny.”
Damn, Cuckoo. Sikorski had pulled out, leaving Kahlil exposed, because Cuckoo had told him she could deliver the device. Without her connections to CI, she couldn’t do it legitimately. He’d already shut down Winter Chill by then, the project that built the Game Time devices. Game Time only existed in the Kindred arsenal and the way she’d chosen to get it was to send in Griffin Caine to hold them all hostage while she took off with the device they’d brought for Kahlil.
Cuckoo was a woman scorned. She’d been cast out and humiliated by Raven in front of Swallow and it had been too much for her to handle. All of them had considered it odd that she’d gone so quietly. Knowing now what had gone down after she’d been evicted, her demure reaction made more sense. The crafty woman was concocting a plan, probably from before she left Swallow’s apartment.
Caine hadn’t told them that. He’d told them that Cuckoo was taking the device to a buyer, but not who that buyer was. He’d claimed not to know, and given how Cuckoo liked to tease and keep him at heel, they’d concluded she probably had kept her puppy in the dark about what she planned to do. If she and Sikorski had connected, their allegiance would’ve given the Kindred a much larger problem. Disaster averted. Wow, and it was so rare for them to catch any kind of break.
“What happened?” Tuck asked, because it made sense to. He knew exactly what had happened.
“She didn’t make the rendezvous,” Sikorski said, squeezing his fingers around his knees. “Stupid woman left herself open to attack. The whole place was up in smoke by the time we got there.”
The explosion that left Zara near death. “She’s dead?” The Kindred had no confirmation on that either way.
Sikorski shrugged. “We didn’t bother to dock, saw an explosion, maneuvered round and saw the building filled with smoke. When we saw Bandini on the ground, we took off. It was a setup.”
“Always a woman,” Tuck said, glancing at Kadie who was focused on the floor.
Sikorski paid no attention to the woman he’d summoned to sit at his side. “Bandini doesn’t know when to quit. Grant McCormack told me that.”
Many people had told Zara that, too. Didn’t slow her down. “So Bandini’s dead?”
At least if he thought that, Sikorski wouldn’t be going after her. The Russian just shrugged again. “I assume not if you have all of this information and access to the device.”
“Didn’t say any of it came from her.”
Sikorski’s gaze shrank. “He was working with a partner. Kahlil Samara, he brought in a man he said had been watching Sutcliffe for him. I could tell they weren’t close, but there was a history between them. The partner was the one who got my men into Sutcliffe’s compound after Grant McCormack’s death there. That was the start of my association with Kahlil Samara. We found nothing.”
So the fleet of vehicles and men who poured into Sutcliffe’s compound after them were Sikorski’s men. “Must have pissed you off,” Tuck said.
His brows went up in slow assent. “That was when Kahlil revealed he had secondary information that could get us the device from those who had stolen it. I don’t know if his partner knew the information, but he certainly knew it existed. His partner took off on the same morning I told Kahlil our association was over, when I thought Corvi was going to deliver Game Time.”
Sikorski was right. Kahlil should never have come to the Kindred meeting. But he was out of options, believing he could hoodwink them was his last hope. “Interesting.”
Taking a breath, Sikorski became impatient. “I have been forthcoming. Will you tell me now how you obtained the device?”
“You haven’t told me anything I didn’t already know.”
“You didn’t know about Kahlil’s partner,” Sikorski said, believing that he’
d triumphed.
Tuck released a whispered laugh. “Benedict Leatt? I know all about him.”
It wasn’t easy for Sikorski to disguise being impressed. “You do know your stuff,” Sikorski said, spoiling Tuck with more condescension. “Then I must assume Ms. Bandini is alive or Mr. Leatt is your source.”
Tuck would rather that Sikorski believed the second, except tracking down the latter was part of his reason for being here. “Assume what you want… Have you seen Leatt since?”
“Not since the morning he left Kahlil. He got a call, a more important or lucrative job I’d assume. Then he was gone.”
Kahlil had told them that Leatt was watching his back from a distance. Quite a distance if Leatt had taken off earlier in the day. Another lie. “Got to look out for number one.”
“How is Ms. Bandini, I trust her injuries weren’t too great.”
If he confessed to knowing Zara, Sikorski might suspect he had nefarious motives for being here. But he did. “She’s alive. She doesn’t know I’m here.”
Tuck didn’t need this guy to think that he was trustworthy. So it didn’t matter if he believed Tuck was double-crossing Zara. Sikorski’s laugh took him aback. “Anyone who wants to screw over Zara Bandini rates highly with me.”
Kadie glimpsed him, but he didn’t look at her. “Got to watch your ass though, heard her boyfriend isn’t the forgiving type.”
Tuck’s shoulders rose. “That’s not my problem if you’re the one bringing the device to me.”
Sikorski was happy for him to risk his life to bring Game Time here. If Tuck was the one doing it, Sikorski’s name didn’t have to come up and he’d be the one facing down Raven if Zara sicced her lover on the threat.
“Ok,” Tuck said, ready to round up proceedings now that he had Kadie in his eye line. “I want three things from you, two million dollars and the current location of Benedict Leatt.”
Sikorski leaned forward. “Two million? You’re seriously lowballing it.”
“That’s how much I want Leatt,” Tuck said, because it was the truth.
“What’s the third?” Sikorski asked.
Raising his attention, he fixated on Kadie. “Her.”
They’d talked about not making it obvious to Sikorski that he cared about her. But this was the deal. His chance to ensure there wouldn’t be a stream of bullets following her when he busted her out of here.
Sikorski looked over his shoulder then back at Tuck. “Why her?”
“I like what she did for me last night.”
“You weren’t the only one,” Sikorski muttered as he sat back. Alarm straightened Tuck. What the fuck did that mean? Tuck knew what it sounded like and that would explain why Kadie was so nervous and shifty this morning. Without jumping to conclusions, or blowing his stack without all the facts, he clenched his hand to a fist and reminded himself to breathe. “Take her, she means nothing to me.”
Good. So Sikorski wasn’t going to put up a fight. “I’m leaving now and I’m taking her with me.” Sikorski was suspicious. Tuck had to get out of here, there was no need for him to stay another minute and there wasn’t a chance in hell he was leaving Kadie. For one thing, he wanted to know what was wrong with her and what Sikorski was implying. “Think of it as a gesture of goodwill. I don’t want to share… I have uses for her.”
Taking a moment, Sikorski narrowed his gaze. “I’ll give you Leatt.”
Sikorski had resources and his network extended to back streets and alleyways across the globe. That kind of intelligence would take time for the Kindred to collate, Sikorski could get it done faster. “And my money?” Tuck asked.
The Kindred didn’t care about money, but it was expected that they would demand a fee, so they did. Most missions entailed a similar requirement when property or information was being exchanged.
“You’ll get that too,” Sikorski said. “In fact, I’ll give you ten.”
“Why would you do that?” If he was increasing the price then this negotiation wasn’t as over as he’d thought.
Sikorski thought about it a minute, like he was measuring him, either because what he was about to ask was extreme or because it mattered to him so much that he didn’t want Tuck to say no.
“Bring Zara Bandini to me. You have access. I want her. Bring her to me.”
Swallow. Sikorski really hated the Kindred’s only gal. Kadie’s chin was down, but her eyes were high in her sockets, monitoring him. Her scrutiny didn’t prevent his smile. “Done.”
NINETEEN
“I can’t believe that you just agreed to give up your friend,” Kadie said. “Just like that, no fight, no nothing. This is the same Zara you spoke to on the way to Gwen’s party?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said and tried to reach for her hand, but she pulled it away.
Sikorski had offered them a vehicle and Tuck had practically laughed in his face. To her it was odd that Tuck found that offer so ridiculous, but when it came to trading up a woman he was supposed to care about, Zara, he hadn’t blinked.
They’d been told there would be a car waiting on the road to take them into town and Tuck accepted that. Walking all the way back down the mountain would be insane, especially when she was wearing kitten heels.
“How can I not worry?” she asked, traipsing down the driveway beside him. The house was getting smaller the farther away from it they went and her dread grew. “Why rescue me just to betray her?”
“It’s not a betrayal,” Tuck said. “Swallow has been itching to get into the field.”
“Into the field? Are you going to try and make me believe that a sane woman agreed to go into that house, to be with that man, out of desire?”
“Not sexual desire, but yeah, Swallow has an appetite for retribution.”
Some of the things he said were enough to make her pause. “Retribution?”
“Do I need to get some of my own?” he asked, and she forgot about Swallow for a second.
“Some what?”
Turning around, he stopped walking to match his focus to hers. “What the fuck did Sikorski mean, I wasn’t the only one who liked what you did last night?”
Oh God, she didn’t want to be having this conversation on a driveway. Glancing back at the distant house, she hoped no one could see or hear them. “Last night, I woke up with you, but I couldn’t stay, so I went down to the basement where I was supposed to be.”
“And?” He didn’t apologize for letting her fall asleep when she’d been explicit about not sleeping with him.
She couldn’t soften the truth or lie to him. “Madame sent me to his bed, to Nicky’s bed”—Tuck’s mouth opened, but she rushed to explain—“Nothing happened, he was already asleep. It was a power play, it had to be. I left at first light, went back to the basement. He and I didn’t even speak.”
“That motherfucker,” Tuck snarled. “I said exclusive and he screwed me over.”
Was he pissed that he’d been lied to or that she’d been in another man’s bed. “Are you pissed at me or at him?”
“Him,” Tuck snapped, and grabbed her to shove her down the driveway in front of him.
Maybe this walk would end up being a good thing, it would give him a chance to cool off because she didn’t need him acting on foolish impulse.
They kept on going, all the way to the end, and got out onto the street where there was a jeep and a driver waiting, just as Sikorski had promised. Choosing a diner about five miles from the bar, she and Tuck said nothing to each other on the journey. But she was obsessing about her own problem.
Since Tuck came back into the picture, she’d been worried that their relationship would be uncovered and they’d be exposed as vulnerabilities for the other. Tuck moved faster than she’d bargained for, she hadn’t had the time to explain to him why it was important for her to stay in the house. If she’d put up too much of a fight, she’d have drawn attention to the second fact that she didn’t want known. Her association with Howie.
Getting away fro
m the oppressive reign of Nykiel Sikorski was a relief. But she couldn’t do it at the expense of a youngster’s life. She hadn’t seen Howie for a few days. He was still in there. He had to be. And she had to get him out.
Once they were dropped off at the diner, Tuck offered to buy her breakfast, she refused, but he got takeout anyway. It seemed like he was killing time as opposed to feeding his hunger. Keeping note of everything in their surroundings, he was twitchy enough to make her aware too.
Much to her surprise, he took her a few blocks over to where he had a car parked, like he’d planned for this. On their next journey, there wasn’t much conversation, they drank the coffee he’d bought and ignored the food, and the only thing she could come up with to do next was be honest with him.
When they pulled in to a motel, she figured he’d just found somewhere convenient to stop. They parked, she grabbed her food and her purse and climbed out after him, expecting him to head for the office. That he’d chosen the farthest corner of the lot to park in meant they’d have a walk, so she just hoped there were rooms.
“Wait here,” he said, snagging her hand and pulling her into the covered porch that ran around the lower level of the double-story structure.
Wait here for what, she wondered, but she didn’t have to wait long. Going to the penultimate door, he crouched and slid something metallic into the lock, he fiddled with it for a second, then the door popped open. “What are you doing?” she hissed, because it looked damn like he was breaking and entering.
“Wait,” he said, opening the door just enough for him to squeeze in and twist around it.
Creeping closer, she didn’t want to leave any fingerprints or place herself at the scene of a crime. But, loitering out here might be obvious to anyone peeking through their curtains, so she plastered her back to the wall and kept look out, begging that no one would catch Tuck in the act of anything illegal.
About twelve seconds later, the door swung back, and Tuck hung out to gesture her in. “Safe now, come on.”
Swift (Kindred Book 4) Page 21
