Yes, she’d heard Tuck use the names, but it still felt odd for her to think of him by another name. “Where is he?”
“They’re doing a supply run, they’ll be back soon.”
Sitting up, Kadie saw that the light was fading beyond the partially closed curtains. She’d slept longer than she’d intended to. The stress of clipped sleep and ominous orders hadn’t allowed her to get a full night since she’d joined Sikorski. Before that, she’d been so concerned with finding Tuck that sleep hadn’t been a priority.
“You’re Swallow, right?”
Zara nodded and left her seat to go over to the couch that was still covered up. “That’s right.”
“You’re in love with Raven.”
“Sure am,” she said, sliding a hand under the cover to pull something out that Kadie didn’t see.
Strength and confidence bled from Zara, but she didn’t seem superhuman. Raven was trained to kill, and yet the woman he took to bed every night wasn’t hard and didn’t come across as evil. There was so much that Kadie didn’t understand.
In the duration of her sleep, Tuck would have given the others a report on what happened at Sikorski’s. Mortified by the idea that she’d been drooling into her pillow while the Kindred Circle had an intimate debrief, Kadie wasn’t confident she’d made a great first impression.
Zara might have been left here to look after her and talk her out of doing anything stupid, but Kadie was glad of the opportunity to talk to the woman alone because the chances were, she was the only one who might understand.
“I have to go back,” she said.
Only half-listening, Zara was doing something with whatever she’d retrieved from beneath the couch cover. “Swift and I will handle it,” Zara said, keeping her back to Kadie.
It wasn’t going to be that simple. Tuck knew what Howie looked like, at least they had met once, she didn’t know if Tuck was paying attention enough to recognize the boy if he saw him again. But he wouldn’t know the layout of the house like she’d been learning since she figured she and Howie might have to make a dash for freedom.
“No, I can’t let you do that. I have a friend. A man in there who I can’t abandon.”
Twisting around in her crouch, Zara laid a level gaze on her. “You have an asset on the inside?” Kadie nodded. “Did you tell Swift?” She shook her head. Zara’s chin fell. “Shit,” she whispered, and that was when a knock on the door brought her onto her feet.
Zara went to the door and pressed a code into a panel mounted beside the frame that Kadie hadn’t noticed before. She unhooked the wire attached to it and touched something on the underside of the doorknob before whirling around to look at her again.
“Before I open the door I should tell you, Raven’s in a bad mood,” Zara said, pointing at her then turning her hand in a short calming sweep. “But it’s nothing to do with you. It’s to do with me and a joke I laughed at. It’s nothing.” Her nervous smile didn’t reassure Kadie. “The Kindred guys can all be scary… well, except Wren. But the others, yeah, they have their harsher edge. But you’re Swift’s girl so, you know, you should be fine.”
The knock came again and Zara spun to yank open the door. “Quit your yapping,” the first guy who came in said as he shoved Zara aside and stormed into the room.
Kadie held her breath. Large and scowling, she was terrified to make eye contact and yet couldn’t tear her gaze away from the fearsome scowl plastered on his face.
“How you doing?” Tuck was next in and she was the only thing in his sights, he came right over and sat beside her. “Swallow look after you?”
For the five minutes she’d been awake, yeah, Swallow was great. Kadie nodded, letting her eyes flick to the first man who’d entered. She was quickly distracted when another came in. This guy had blue eyes so bright they chilled her from across the room. He wasn’t frowning as the first man had been, but the bump in his nose and the scar on his neck indicated he’d been messed with in a serious way and had lived to tell the tale.
Zara closed the door and twisted her arm around the latest entrant’s arm. “This here is Griffin Caine. He owes me his life.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, shoving her away and stomping to the corner where he propped a foot on the wall and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
No alias for that guy and he didn’t look happy to be here, but none of them did. Zara was the only one whose expression was relaxed. At least it was until it landed on her. They hadn’t finished talking about her revelation that Howie was trapped with Sikorski.
“That’s Raven,” Tuck said, tipping his chin toward the first man who’d come in.
Raven shed his coat and went on his way to the couch. After hunkering down, he pulled up the sheet, and she squeaked when she registered the weapons laid out. The sheet on the couch had struck her when she’d first seen it, but she could never have guessed what it hid.
The guy didn’t even turn around, but something else was on his mind because he reached over to where Zara had been crouched before the knock and picked something up. Only when he held it out to Zara did Kadie see it was a gun.
“What do you need this for?” he asked his girlfriend. “What have I told you about shooting people?”
Did Zara have a penchant for murder too? She seemed so normal. Kadie couldn’t envision her being trigger-happy. Zara tiptoed over to him and snatched the gun away. “It’s mine.”
“Actually it’s mine,” he said, and Kadie relaxed when she saw his form loosen now that it was in proximity to Zara’s. “It’s Kindred property just like you, baby.”
“You gave it to me as a gift.” Zara hugged the weapon to her chest.
“For protection,” Raven said, pushing up to full height and towering over the woman he’d just been beneath. “That’s obsolete. You don’t need to carry a gun. I am your weapon.”
“You don’t need a weapon to kill someone,” Zara sneered at her partner.
He opened his arms. “Neither do you. I’m right here.”
“You weren’t a minute ago.”
“Did someone threaten you?” Raven asked, glancing at her for the first time, compelling Kadie to snatch for Tuck’s arm.
Instead of reassuring her, Tuck laughed. “He didn’t mean you. If someone threatened Zara then they threatened you. You can trust Rave. He’s a good guy.”
Her wide eyes weren’t as sure. Tuck toed off his boots and kissed her, although his mouth wasn’t a sufficient distraction for her to blink her eyes away from Raven, who’d just seized the back of Zara’s neck to haul her against him. They were a couple with a lot of passion sparking between them and volatile tempers, she could read that those fueled their dispositions.
“We have a variable that we haven’t factored in,” Zara said, glimpsing all the men. “Swift, your girl has an asset on the inside.”
Her mouth fell open. No finesse. No breaking the news gently. There it was thrust out there into the open in front of these lethal strangers. Tuck whipped around to her. “What? Who?”
On the way over here she’d chastised Tuck for making decisions for Zara without consultation. For a while, Kadie thought he was really going to hand his colleague over to Sikorski in order to obtain what he wanted. What she saw now was that this group was open with each other to the point of blunt. Zara had information therefore she was obliged to share it without delay.
“Howie,” she said, choosing to look at Tuck because she couldn’t deal with everyone all at once. “He followed me. I went to Sikorski looking for you. I got his name from your computer, well, Howie did.”
Tuck stood, horror and disappointment tensed his shoulders. “You’re with that fucker for me?”
“I wasn’t with him for you. I intended to talk to him and walk away. Howie got involved. I didn’t ask him to, he just showed up. But when he was stupid enough to tell Sikorski what he could do…”
“What can he do?” Zara asked, coming up behind Tuck.
“He’s a software e
ngineer,” Kadie said. “Not up to par with… Swift.” She forced herself to use his alias because if she had any plans to hang around, she’d have to get used to it. “But Sikorski’s been using him for low-level stuff. Howie’s a good kid. He wouldn’t do anything wrong if he wasn’t scared. I can’t just leave him in there.”
“No, you can’t,” Zara said, squeezing Tuck’s arm then turning, presumably to seek out Raven.
Waiting for a reaction from Tuck seemed to take an age, yet, when it did come, she was relieved. “If you want to get this Howie kid out, then we get him out.” Kadie hadn’t expected Tuck to leave the kid there. Taking into account that Howie knew Tuck’s real name, it wouldn’t make sense to abandon him.
“Thank you,” she said. “I should’ve told you.”
“Yeah, you should’ve,” he said, and from the brief scowl she read that he wasn’t over the deception just yet. “You should never have gone near Sikorski. He’d never have led you to me.”
But she couldn’t agree. Clutching him closer, she pulled herself out from under the covers. “But he did. Whatever we have to do, it will be worth it because we’re together again.”
“Say that to me again when we’re all splitting town alive.”
Losing him, losing any of these people, would be a high price. Zara told her to prepare herself for it, but Kadie wasn’t sure how to go about that. If Tuck was hurt, she’d be alone with these strangers and it would be her fault.
Howie made a mistake in following her to the meeting with Sikorski, but she couldn’t fault his intentions. He’d thought he was doing the right thing by watching her back. Maybe if he’d had some of Tuck’s experiences he’d have known to hang back and observe from a distance. One good intentioned mistake shouldn’t sentence a man to death.
Although she didn’t enjoy disappointing Tuck, she’d rather do that than forget about Howie just to win her boyfriend’s good favor. “You don’t have to endanger your people,” she said, because she had to give him an out. “I can—”
“What? What was your plan? Wait until you got him alone then make a run for it?”
Effectively, yes, she had considered distractions and how they might get some time to themselves that would give them a window for slipping out. But she couldn’t do either until she got eyes on Howie and the chance to talk to him alone, which she hadn’t since the night they’d arrived at Sikorski’s mansion.
“I couldn’t just leave him there,” she muttered.
Maybe she wasn’t the world’s best strategist, and she knew nothing about weapons or killing, but she’d been brought up in rough neighborhoods around delinquent kids, so she wasn’t starry eyed.
Tuck slipped a hand up to her face, his stroking reassured her, lifting her mood a fraction. “I told you not to get attached to him. Pets can cause a lot of mess.”
It didn’t seem like an appropriate time to tease, but maybe it was gallows humor. Making light of a bad situation no doubt made it easier for these cynical veterans to push through the mission.
For years they’d been doing this. Tuck had known these people from before he’d known her. Eager, almost to the point of desperation, she wanted to get to know them all and to find out if their experiences with Tuck complemented hers. He couldn’t be that different around them personality-wise. Yet, the tasks he was required to complete in the disparate extremes of his two lives were so contradictory that he quite possibly had to compartmentalize his qualities.
The man who made love to her, cooked dinner with her, took her to the movies, he had no place in this weary world where he had to be detached and battle-hardened. If what Swallow said about losing people was true, Kadie couldn’t imagine what Tuck had gone through, and alone no less. He didn’t ever come home to her to say that he’d had a hard day at the office, let alone to confess the loss of a trusted colleague.
Finding out about the loss of the chief had shocked her. Witnessing these people together, their efficiency, their bonds, Kadie figured what she knew so far was just the tip of the iceberg.
TWENTY-ONE
“Swift, I want the board meeting minutes,” Zara declared, laying her hands on the table on either side of the laptop she’d been using for a couple of hours.
Tuck hooked a leg around his chair and leaned over to snatch the computer so he could slide it down beside the one he was using. “You know that you don’t work there anymore, right?” he asked, without hesitating to accommodate her request. “Your obsession is unhealthy.”
Kadie had been watching them all interact and it was fascinating. Spending the night with the group was a daunting concept, until she experienced it. For the most part, they worked quietly, their focus was so intent that Kadie craved a task of her own.
When they did talk, they often joked or jibed, especially Zara. Raven wasn’t much of a jokester but his wit was dry, and although it took her longer to get the joke when he delivered it, Kadie was beginning to see Raven wasn’t as scary as she’d thought.
Tuck tapped away on Zara’s laptop as Zara drummed her fingernails on the table. “It’s my obsession that keeps the Kindred interesting.”
“Which is her way of saying, they get into shit because she can’t keep her beak out,” Caine explained.
Kadie had noticed him watching her. He didn’t say much. Wasn’t as involved as the others. She wasn’t sure why he didn’t have a codename or why he was here. But he liked to watch. For hours. Sometimes he did nothing but look at everyone else doing something. He watched Tuck work. Watched her as she went through the clothes Zara had offered her. His favorite thing to watch was Zara and Raven together, but Kadie couldn’t judge him for that, she was sort of mesmerized by the couple too.
Zara leaned back in her chair to look past Tuck’s back to Caine who was slouched on the couch with his legs stretched out in front of him. Raven had moved all the weapons and was cleaning them on the table opposite where Zara and Tuck were working on their computers.
“You do know all I have to do is give Rave the nod and he’ll rip out your tongue for me,” Zara retorted.
“He’ll do more than that,” Raven muttered.
Caine didn’t react, and it was odd that Zara delivered such a threat with a broad smile on her face. If Kadie was going to get to know these people, she had to start somewhere. “Why does he owe you his life?” she asked.
No one had expected her to say anything, maybe they’d forgotten she was there, because everyone in the room spared her a glance. Tuck smiled and went back to his typing. “I warned him about a concealed weapon an enemy was carrying,” Zara said. “Smart guy turned it around on the fucker.”
“What a change of tune,” Tuck said, pausing. “You liked Kahlil.”
“Not as much as she liked me,” Caine said, and winked at Zara.
Zara laughed, but Raven’s head rose. His back was to her so she couldn’t read his expression, but she could gather he wasn’t smiling. “You move on her one more time and I won’t wait for a nod,” Raven snarled.
“I’ve been telling you to make something of it for three months,” Caine said, crossing his ankles and stretching his hands to the back of his head. “You’re the only guy in the room who’s stolen another guy’s girl.”
Oh, that was interesting, confounding, but interesting. “You and Zara used to…?”
Tuck shook his head fast. “Not Zara, previous girlfriend.”
“She’s dead now,” Zara said, stretching over the table to pick up a piece of the weapon Raven had just dismantled. She only had it for a second before Raven took the piece from her and in profile, Kadie saw him growl at his girlfriend, who rolled her eyes.
“We think,” Caine said.
“Still holding out hope?” Tuck asked, shunting the computer to Zara who pulled it towards her with glee. Tuck twisted to look at Caine. “If she’s alive, she’s pissed.”
“If she’s alive and I find her, she won’t stay that way for long,” Caine snarled.
Venom inspired hatred, yet
no one else blinked an eye. Kadie was confused. If Caine had once loved the woman, and Raven had seduced her away, it was a wonder that Caine didn’t want to kill Raven when it was clear he held a grudge against the female.
“You would kill the woman for cheating on you but not the man who tempted her?” Kadie asked.
Tuck turned, showing her concern. “I wouldn’t push on that particular button, Toots.”
Right. Probably best not to incite a riot in the room that was supposed to be a safe house. “Right, sorry,” she said. “None of my business.”
“If you’re Kindred it’s all your business,” Zara said, peering closer at her computer, still reading as she contributed. “These guys like to drip feed information. I’ll clue you in… Do you drink wine?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“You’re not getting drunk, Swallow,” Raven said, stern like a boss rather than a boyfriend. “When you drink too much, you flirt, and I end up shooting people.”
“You shoot people anyway, no matter how much alcohol I have in my system,” Zara said, glancing at her then at Raven. “One is not related to the other.”
“Sutcliffe’s kid was.”
Zara didn’t buy it and folded her hands in front of her keyboard. “Tim was Sutcliffe’s nephew, and you didn’t shoot him for kissing me, you did it so he couldn’t get close and manipulate me into handing over the device because that was going to be your play. Dove should know what she’s getting into.”
“Dove?” Raven asked, and the others looked at a proud Zara.
“Sure, it fits,” Zara said. “Swift said he liked her innocent of this stuff.”
“But she’s not anymore. She’s here,” Raven said.
Zara shrugged. “You don’t fuck random women for information anymore, but we still call you Raven.”
“That’s more to do with the angel of death stuff now,” Tuck said, lifting one shoulder. “I’d agree that the name fits, ‘cept we don’t know if she’s hanging around with the Kindred yet. She has a cousin she can go back to, a safe life.”
Swift (Kindred Book 4) Page 23
