The back door shut and she glanced in the mirror to see that Zara had got in. The driver’s door opened at her side and Kadie gasped, but it was Tuck who shoved her across to the passenger side and took her place at the wheel.
“Buckle up,” he said. The truck was already spinning backwards in a fast, efficient arc. He slammed on the brakes, jolting her forward, and then suddenly they were racing ahead. “None of it’s here. But we have bought some time. We’re going to the house.”
“Meet you there,” Raven said in their ears, sounding as aloof and withdrawn as ever.
The house, they were going to Sikorski’s mansion. Tuck was focused on the road, hunched over the wheel. Despite their galloping speed up the mountain, he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt and she didn’t feel the need to fumble for hers because they were almost there and she was still frozen in time. Tuck was driving, she was safe.
“What the hell just happened?” she gasped.
Sikorski was dead. His men were dead. And they were racing towards the house to find Howie? To get the information on this Leatt guy that the Kindred wanted? Kadie wasn’t sure what their objective was, maybe both, maybe neither. Whatever it was, they were on a clock. Sikorski had been stupid enough to bring the majority of his security force to the meet. Chances were, they wouldn’t come across any at the gates.
As they sped through them, she saw that she was right. They got there, raced up the driveway, then Tuck spun the car in an almost handbrake turn to face it down the path they’d just come, probably to facilitate and easy escape.
“Wait here,” he said, but she was already out of the car, racing around it toward him.
“Not a chance. I have to find him and he might not come if it’s only you.”
Tuck wasn’t putting up much of a fight because he was running up the stairs instead of trying to force her back into the vehicle. Kadie followed, not keeping pace with his fit physique, but she did her best. “Oh he’ll fucking come with me, even if I have to knock him unconscious,” Tuck said.
Going in the front door, he darted through the hallways, he was searching rooms, opening doors. Clattering around the place, knocking things over in his haste, without a care for the noise he was making. Kadie knew the layout of the house. Grabbing his arm to stall him, she needed to give him focus.
“Stop it,” she said. “They’ll hear you and they’ll come for us.” Sikorski had brought his best men to the meet, but there were still staff here who would note their odd behavior and call up those who might be left. “Take a breath. I know where he’ll be.”
The first thing she had to do was avoid the basement because if she didn’t do that, Madame would see her and she would ask questions. Madame was the only one on the premises who’d probably been told Kadie wouldn’t be coming back, that she’d been bargained away.
There were offices in the rear part of the building that linked to the basement. She knew this because Howie had been kept in the basement for a while near to, but not with, the girls who she trained with. It was these offices she was heading for.
The trouble was, she also knew that there were sometimes other people in those rooms. Sometimes they were overcrowded, sometimes they were empty; it just depended on what work was being done and where Sikorski had allocated his resources. But there was nothing she could do to change what they’d find, they had to take the risk, this could be their last chance to extract Howie.
Zara wasn’t with them and Kadie wasn’t sure where she was. But Howie consumed her concentration now. They had to get Howie and get out. As far as Kadie was concerned, he was the most important thing.
Keeping hold of Tuck’s hand, she led him through the house, through corridors, down stairs, and into passages that were almost invisible to those who didn’t know they were there. Because she’d lived in this house for a month, she knew her way around. But she’d never had the free reign to run where she wanted to go.
While Sikorski wasn’t on the premises, the security men usually congregated in their own part of the house, which was in the other wing. They were supposed to do rounds, and probably would eventually, but there was complacency around here because Sikorski projected an air of being untouchable—despite incidents like the supposed attempt on his life in the limo.
Usually being chaperoned by security, Madame, or Sikorski, she’d always been under someone’s watchful eye. Now she had the run of the house. On getting to the office door, she stopped and turned, forcing Tuck to crash into her under his momentum. She grabbed on to him so as not to fall flat on her ass.
“Listen,” she said in a discreet whisper. “Sometimes there are people in here, sometimes there are not. Howie will be here or in his bedroom. I haven’t spent much time in here, but one of the times we managed to talk for a minute at a party when I was being shown how things work, Howie told me this is where they make him work.”
“It’s ok,” he said, twisting his arm around his back, he pulled a gun from his waistband that she hadn’t noticed until this moment.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, not because she didn’t trust him with the weapon or because he might have to kill to protect her and Howie, but because his weapon meant others might go for theirs and put his life in jeopardy. “I love you.” Consumed by the desperate need to make sure he knew how she felt before they walked into what could be their end, the words tumbled from her.
“I love you too,” he said. Grabbing her head, he gave her a quick, hard kiss and then he turned her around to push her against the wall next to the door. “Wait here.”
He pressed himself against her, out of the line of sight of whoever might be on the other side of that door and she hoped this wasn’t the last time their bodies were so close. After turning the handle, he moved fast to burst into the room with his gun outstretched, ready to aim and fire at anyone who might be in their way.
She couldn’t breathe, she gnawed on her lip and clasped her hands together at her chest praying that there was no one else in that room. One beat then two, there couldn’t be anyone in there, there was no fighting or shouting. Suddenly, as if all of her prayers had been answered, Howie burst out of the room like he’d been shot from a cannon.
Taking one hard step before bouncing forward to clatter against the opposite wall of the hallway. Kadie went over, right on his tail. “Oh, my God,” she said, grabbing him and giving him a shake. “Oh my God, you’re alive.”
Pulling him into a tight hug, she wanted to apologize for everything that had happened, wanted to ask what he’d been through. They’d had so little time to talk during their forced stay, there was so much to share, but this was no time for stories.
Tuck grabbed both of them by the back of their necks and began to throw them down the corridor. “Wait!” she called. “Wait! Wait!”
“No,” Tuck said, gruff and impatient. “You’re going with Zara.”
“But the girls,” she said. “We have to let them go. We have to get their passports and—”
“No!” Tuck was insistent.
Zara appeared at the end of the hall, but didn’t come towards them, just gestured for them to follow. Somehow she’d found them, maybe they had GPS, maybe there was something in the earpiece that helped them track each other, Kadie didn’t know.
Zara was a lifeline, the reprieve of support that she needed. “Go with her,” Kadie said, pushing Howie towards Zara who was positioned at the end of the corridor, gesturing for them to hurry. Kadie stayed with Tuck to beseech him. “We have to get the girls. They weren’t part of the mission, but we’re here and—”
“No,” he said. “I know that you made friends down there. We can’t mess with this. They’ll be freed after Sikorski doesn’t come back. They’ll know something is wrong and they’ll have their chance to run.”
“But we have to get their passports,” she said, knowing that Sikorski confiscated them to keep the women compliant.
Tuck exhaled his irritation. “You’ll have to go through the Madame and security too,”
Tuck said. “Are you willing for me to hurt those people to get you what you want? I’ll do it, but I’m telling you, it could get bloody.”
Madame didn’t deserve to die. But then, Kadie didn’t know much about the security agents, perhaps most of them didn’t deserve to either. Although, they may have been mass murderers and psychopaths, she had no way to know specifics.
Nodding, she came to terms with what being Kindred meant and it meant making hard choices. “Ok,” he said, just as Raven appeared beside Zara. “Ok, Zara will get you and Howie out. Rave and I will take care of it.”
Kadie stepped back. “You expect me to leave you here, in this place? Alone?”
“He’s not alone,” Raven said, coming up behind her to move past and grab hold of Tuck. “We have limited time and you have to find Leatt.”
Tuck shook his head. “Anything Sikorski had on the system I have already. We can trawl through the data back at the manor. No point in tapping the network now.”
“I’ll get the girls out,” Raven said. “If there’s a private network…”
“If there was, I’d have found it. But I can check if anything on Leatt was picked up in the last couple of days.”
So Raven was going to free the girls and Tuck was supposed to hack the computer to find out what the Kindred needed to know. Sikorski hadn’t delivered and tracking down this Leatt guy was important to them.
“Good,” Raven said. “Copy everything, you guys can analyze it at base.”
“Agreed,” Tuck said and whirled to her. “Where are the passports?”
Paling, fear of failure chilled her. “I don’t know, in the office, in a safe. I don’t know.”
From the background, a usually timid voice became strong. “I know,” Howie said. “They’re under the carpet, beneath the window. There’s a safe in the floor. It’s just a four digit combination: two, four, zero, one. You’ll find them in there, but it won’t be easy to hand them out.”
“Easy is relative,” Zara said, with unwavering confidence in Raven and Tuck.
Going to Tuck, Kadie rested her arms on his chest. “You have to try. Please, Hotshot.”
It was a risk, but if she walked away, those women could end up on street corners across the globe being used by depraved men to satisfy their perverted desires. A fate that could have been hers if Tuck hadn’t returned to her life. “Please. Just give them their passports, get them outside, and then it’s up to them. Sikorski’s not coming back here. Trust me, most of them are desperate enough to run and those who aren’t, let them stay.”
“She’s right,” Zara called. “You have to do your best. Think about Falcon and Wren.”
Kadie didn’t have a clue what that meant, but she appreciated Zara’s support.
“You’ve got to get out of here, Swallow,” Raven said with encroaching urgency. “Get Dove and the squirt and go.”
Raven gave Kadie a shove that was stronger than she’d anticipated, so she staggered the first few steps toward Zara. The marksman was already pulling Tuck into the office, Kadie just managed to make brief eye contact with her love before he disappeared. The moment the connection was broken, she turned and fled to Zara.
“I’ll get you out,” Kadie said, because she knew the routes better than them.
“We regroup at the safe house,” Zara said, following Kadie as she retraced the trip she’d taken with Tuck.
This warren of a house was meant to disorientate those who didn’t know it. Her impetus grew now that they had Howie and were so close to success. They were going to get out of here. She was sure of it. They had to.
Just then, from a narrow facing stairway, two security men descended into the corridor they’d just reached. Clearly, they hadn’t expected to see Kadie, Zara, and Howie. All five of them paused, frozen as they processed and tried to decide what to do next.
Zara had a weapon in her hand, but there were two men opposing them, both of whom had weapons on their hips. Zara might get a shot off and be able to kill one, but the other would most likely get to his gun and off one of them before Zara could take the second shot.
Kadie couldn’t breathe. Her heart raced. Howie began to sweat. Grabbing for his hand to reassure him, she was glad when he squeezed to reciprocate. Zara had to be assessing the situation, but she wasn’t as experienced as Tuck and Raven, so it took her time to come to a conclusion. Before Swallow could get there, there was a bang and one man fell, then another shot exploded and the second was gone from their vision.
Whipping around, Kadie didn’t know what they would see because they’d left Tuck and Raven in the corridor behind and those shots came from the left. To her surprise, she could see a figure standing in the shadows at the end of the hallway that could only be Griffin Caine.
He stepped forward into the light, looking only at Zara while ignoring the other two that were there, and said in a rumbling monotone, “We’re even.”
Without saying anything else, or waiting for a response, he let his gun fall to his side, turned around, and walked away the way he’d come. They hadn’t seen him since the day of the fight and she didn’t know how he knew where they were or what was happening.
Zara grabbed Kadie’s free hand and began to pull her along the hall towards the exit. By the time they got to the end and turned the corner, Caine was already gone.
“What?” Kadie asked. “What happened? How did he—”
“He watches,” Zara said, her words as hurried as her steps. “I don’t know how he knows. But he does. Watching Raven is. What he did. For a long time. And then. He started watching me.” The quick words and abrupt cutoffs matched the twists and turns their trailing snake took. Zara was still holding Kadie’s hand, and she was holding onto Howie at the rear. “I guess he needed closure. And he just got it.”
Zara was through thinking about it, or through talking about it, because that was the last she said about Caine. They got to the main doors, then outside, and ran down the exterior stairs and across the drive to dive into the truck they’d arrived in.
Kadie gasped when Zara began to drive away. “What are you doing?” she shrieked, desperate to know why they were leaving Raven and Tuck behind.
“Raven has transport,” Zara explained. “We regroup at the motel. Those are the rules. We stick with the plan. I don’t like it any more than you do.” They bumped down the road at a great speed. “I hate it when he goes off on his own. I hate it when he kicks me off the job. I hate it when he gives me instructions that are contrary to what I want to do.”
“So how do you put up with it,” Kadie asked, holding her seat and the dash to steady herself on this uneven road.
“I have to because there’s times I do things that he doesn’t want me to do,” Zara said. “He doesn’t want me on missions and doesn’t want me going out on my own. And the only way that I get to do those things is by trusting him to do his job right. If they need us, we’ll get back to them, don’t worry about that. But when those two are together…” Zara paused to take a breath and another smile formed on her face before she made brief eye contact with Kadie. “They’d never leave each other behind, they’re capable of anything, and capable of getting out of every jam.”
Driving away from Tuck while he could still be in danger felt alien. But she had to get used to this, just as Zara had explained. Kadie had to get used to letting Tuck work as he had for all the years that they were together. Just like when he left her to go off on jobs while she was sitting at home running their legitimate business, this is what he’d been doing all that time, every day, and she’d been oblivious to the risks he took.
He would be ok, Raven would watch out for him. But Zara had told her that she may lose the man she loved, and Tuck had told her there were risks. This could all go wrong, but she couldn’t ask him to trust her if she wasn’t willing to trust him, just as Zara had stated.
So with a single breath, she sat back and turned to glimpse at Howie. Kadie had completed her mission of getting him out safely. God o
nly knew what he’d been through or how long it would take him to recover. But he was out and so was she. Now all they could do was go back to the motel and wait for Raven, for Swift. Only when they were all back together could they start to figure out what came next.
TWENTY-FIVE
Waiting wasn’t her forte. She probably had other strengths, waiting wasn’t one of them.
Howie had been grateful at the motel and Zara had settled them in and then gone out for food. Kadie didn’t know how she could think of such a thing because the adrenaline made it difficult for Kadie to even sit down let alone think about putting something heavy or greasy in her stomach. But Zara said it was tradition.
Kadie read a brief glimmer of worry in Zara’s countenance and she speculated that doing something, even if it was just retrieving food, gave Zara a distraction. Keeping busy stopped her from thinking about Raven and the danger he might be facing.
Howie was buzzing too and was full of stories that he tried to share all at once, barely managing to finish one thought before he bounced to the next. It didn’t matter because she wasn’t really listening. Once they were away from here and back in their lives, there would be time to look back and commiserate. As far as she was concerned, the two men who were still in the field were central to her thoughts and they’d stay there until they came back.
Trying not to think about how she would cope if they didn’t reappear, or even what kind of rescue mission she and Zara could mount on their own, Kadie tidied up the room and sent Howie into the shower.
It was while the youngster was in there that Zara came back. Kadie was full of questions and she took over Howie’s role of bombarding the listener.
“What will we do?” Kadie asked, wringing her hands and watching Zara set out food on the blanket she’d laid on the floor.
Swift (Kindred Book 4) Page 27
