Raven (Kindred #1)

by Scarlett Finn

  Brodie flashed his growling gaze to her again and then whipped around to follow his uncle, who grabbed his tools and opened the door to depart. Once they were gone and she could no longer hear them in the stairwell, she began to clean up.

  Her stomach grumbled so Zara sat down to fork a couple of pieces of chicken into her mouth. The food was good, incredible in fact, but her appetite wasn’t up to finishing anything. She boxed up the remaining food and washed the dishes, trying to lose herself in mundane tasks.

  In need of a distraction, she went into her office and the first thing she did was look for her file on Game Time. It was gone. Flopping into her chair, Zara closed her eyes and let her head fall back. She’d been played. Even though she’d wanted to believe Brodie was righteous, she had been conned, probably as hundreds of women had been before her.

  ELEVEN

  Purdy’s was crowded the following evening when she went in for her usual Friday drink after work. Zara liked that the buzz of conversation filling the establishment muffled some of her thoughts. One glass of wine didn’t manage to numb her, so she had a second. Her life was a mess. She’d betrayed her boss and fallen for his brother, who it turned out would rather jump head first into a hazardous, possibly life-threatening situation, than admit to her his true feelings on any subject.

  After being handed her third drink, she began to gulp, and only stopped drinking when someone sat on the stool beside hers. Having managed to snag a table in the corner, she hadn’t expected company. Being social was the last thing on her mind, and probably beyond her capability with the volume of alcohol pulsating through her bloodstream.

  “It’s busy,” the man said.

  His dashing smile and lingering gaze made her sigh and plonk her glass down on the table. “If you’re looking to get laid, I’m really not in the mood,” she said, glad of the gumption that the wine gave her.

  His head jerked an inch as though he hadn’t been expecting such a direct statement. “How about a little conversation,” he said, laying his arms around his bourbon glass.

  She was past the point of objecting to his presumption and she planned to go home as soon as she finished her wine. So if the guy wanted to sit and babble for the next ten minutes, she wasn’t going to fight with him. Most men did what the hell they wanted to; one berating conversation wouldn’t affect the arrogance of his gender.

  “You are a looker,” he said and she picked up her wine to avoid focusing on his leer. “I’m glad I came to see for myself.”

  That sounded sinister enough that she lowered her glass from her mouth to examine his cold expression. His eyes were iceberg blue. His nose was crooked, indicating it had probably been broken in the past. A scar on his neck attracted her scrutiny. It looked to be deep enough that it was a wonder he survived the initial wound.

  “Excuse me?” she asked.

  “Routine is a godsend,” he said. “And you are a creature of habit, Zara. Guys like me appreciate that.” Scanning the room, he nodded and smiled at her again. “This is a nice place.”

  Not interested in the details of the setting, she kept her eyes locked onto him. If he knew who she was, then he wanted something. Intoxication began to decrease and she moved her leg to confirm her purse—containing Brodie’s Sig—was on her lap. “Who are you and what do you want?” she asked.

  “You want to watch the company you keep,” he said. Edging even closer, his smile began to fade. “You wouldn’t want to be standing too close to Raven when I put a bullet between his eyes, would you? Brain matter doesn’t come out of silk, honestly, that shit stains.”

  “Who are you?” she asked and the haze of intoxication lifted. “Are you a buyer?”

  With a brief laugh, the corner of his mouth twisted. “A buyer? No,” he said. “I don’t give a damn about the device he’s chasing or who it kills. I care about Raven and watching him die. I’m here to ask you to pass on a message.” Getting closer, his arm brushed hers. “You tell him that payback’s a bitch and I have my eyes on his prize… Canada is lovely this time of year.”

  “What does that—” He shifted back to his original position, downed his drink and then got up and left as quickly as he’d appeared. Fixing her eyes on her wine glass, Zara second-guessed whether any of that had really just happened or if she’d imagined the whole thing.

  Deciding that the potential threat was too serious to dismiss, she abandoned the rest of her wine and sped out of the bar in search of a cab.

  Brodie had warned her about security at is house, but Zara assumed that the place wasn’t impenetrable. She got the cab to drop her off half a mile from her destination, for three reasons. One, folklore around here said that no one lived on this piece of land. As a woman on her own, she would look odd strutting up to a derelict property. The cab driver would likely remember her as a nut and might tell someone about the peculiar fare.

  The second reason was she didn’t know exactly where the front entrance was. Having never been here before and with Grant never mentioning it, the layout had been something she had failed to commit to memory.

  The third reason, which some might say was juvenile, was she didn’t want those inside to see her coming. They were supposed to be on her side, but she feared making a target of herself.

  The cab driver dropped her off at an address near a club she used to frequent. It was the only nearby address she could deliver to him with confidence because she didn’t know the area well and the point was to make this trip as forgettable as possible. Brodie couldn’t object to her showing up if she proved she’d taken precautions to safeguard his obscurity.

  On arrival, she paid her money, got out of the car, and loitered on the sidewalk like she might be meeting someone. It was only when the cab was out of sight that she began her journey.

  Her shoes pinched, and if she’d known that this trek was on her agenda, Zara would have put on different footwear that morning. But these shoes went well with the black suit dress and jacket she wore to the office. The discomfort in her feet did make her consider aborting this job a couple of times. But the mental picture of the man in the bar kept her moving forward.

  Brodie wouldn’t be watching her any more, not now that he had the information he wanted. If it hadn’t been for the development in Purdy’s, Zara would have had no reason to see him again. Despite her anger at being used, she couldn’t dismiss the new player who was threatening Brodie’s life.

  Just because she was pissed, didn’t mean that she wanted him dead, so she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t heard the warning. No doubt Brodie would argue that he could take care of himself and she knew that to be true—if he knew the threat was coming at him.

  The walk took much longer than she’d anticipated. The gates to the property were further away than she’d assumed they would be. There were no lights to illuminate her route anymore; she’d passed the last streetlight on the block the cab had left her on. The closer she got to her destination, the more daunting the environment became.

  A brick wall stood ten feet high and had iron railings above that with razor wire coiled around it, revealing that Brodie’s parents had been the paranoid sort. That they had been so uneasy about strangers made Zara uneasy too. The boundary of the McCormack property stretched the full width of this peninsula and although she couldn’t see the house, she knew it was there somewhere.

  Nothing about this picture was inviting. Trees and bushes crowded around the wall, indicating the land had been left to ruin. Yet, the wall was in top shape, betraying that someone had maintained the perimeter. She ran her fingers along the rough grey stone as she looked for an opening.

  Her hope for a nice wrought iron gate she could slip through unnoticed began to dwindle. When she did find the way in she was shocked to see a huge metal beast of a gate painted as black as the night around it.

  There was no handle to open it. Figuring there must be some way to operate it, she searched for a good ten minutes before standing back and admitting defeat. Brodie had told he
r not to just show up and now she knew why, because it was nothing more than a big fat waste of time.

  Taking another step back, Zara considered how she could get the message to him. But she couldn’t hack into anyone’s computer, and if he wasn’t watching her then the light in her apartment window would be useless.

  As she was about to turn and go home, there was a thud and then an electrical whirring sound. Less than five seconds later, the gate began to slide to the left. It was opening. Brodie had been telling the truth about security because she hadn’t made an intrusive approach that could have drawn someone’s attention. Yet, they’d known she was here.

  Another thud signaled the end of the gate’s movement. It had only opened a couple of feet, but that was enough space for her to get through. Edging closer, Zara swallowed away her apprehension and proceeded forward. This could be a trap. A security system might be programmed to let people in only to decapitate them with a huge swinging axe or something. But having come this far, she ventured forth.

  The ambient light faded further when she inched through the gate. Taking a step forward, she was overwhelmed by how overgrown the grounds were. They were reminiscent of a fairy tale forest where the unsuspecting heroine was gobbled up by the hungry wolf.

  Another thud sounded and the gate began to roll back. She watched it close and with that, her chance of escape was lost. Light suddenly blared on and she whipped around to see the headlights of a jeep illuminating her and the flora all around her. Holding up a hand to shield her eyes, she saw someone move across the beam of light and come closer.

  “He said you were tenacious.” The voice belonged to Art and her hand lowered a little. “You’ve got a set on you girl, showing up here after threatening us.”

  “How did you know I was here?” she called. “Or are you going to tell me it’s a coincidence that you were just driving by?”

  “Recognizing a coincidence is the first step to solving a mystery,” he said as though he’d said the words a thousand times before. “What are you doing here?”

  He sounded more impressed than peeved, so she stepped in his direction. “I have a message for Brodie.”

  “He’s not home. You’re lucky about that. He never would’ve let you in. Only five people have been in his house in the last twenty years.”

  Zara assumed she was about to be flung off the property. It was probable he’d let her in just to tell her not to draw attention to the place by snooping around. “Well, I—“

  “How would you like to be the sixth?” he asked and was close enough now to hold out a hand.

  Dropping her shielding hand into his, she knew this wasn’t going to be as simple as delivering a message.

  Art said nothing in the jeep on the way to the house, which was much further from the gates than she’d thought it would be. After driving for around two miles, the house emerged from the darkness when she had given up looking for it.

  Three floors high, it was constructed with a dark grey stone that made the gothic towers appear even more ominous. Art drove to the side of the building and down a ramp through an open garage door into an underground parking area. When he turned off the engine and got out of the vehicle, she did the same, though she wasn’t quite sure what was going to come next or why he’d allowed her inside when Brodie wasn’t even here.

  “I just—”

  “Upstairs,” Art said, already moving away from her.

  Zara hurried to catch him up to him. He pressed his thumb to a dull blue pad next to a door, and she recognized the CI fingerprint recognition tech. He took her up a spiral staircase and through a set of doors. One wall of this space was open in a series of pointed arches. Stepping out from beneath the standard-height ceiling, Zara had to re-inhale the oxygen taken from her lungs at the sight of the cavernous entryway, floored with the most incredible wood that she had to stop and admire it.

  “It’s Macassar ebony,” he said. “The house is gothic revival.” Moving through a pointed arch behind her, he took her hand to bring her into the main space. The double wide stone staircase drew her eye up to the vaulted ceiling three stories above.

  “It’s incredible,” she said, almost unable to believe it. The pointed arch windows high above them were made up of smaller rectangles. Some were clear glass, some were textured, and others were colored.

  “It has a twin,” he said.

  “A what?” she asked, absorbing the features of this incredible space with wide eyes filled with wonder. There were a series of black doors forty feet from the foot of the stairs, which she assumed were the front doors.

  “Two identical homes were built simultaneously by Grant Senior in the seventies. This one on the east coast and the other on an island off the coast of Washington state.”

  Still open-mouthed, she drank in the atmosphere of this echoing marvel. “Why?”

  “Because my sister had her husband wrapped around her little finger,” he said and this got her attention. Art’s sister was Brodie’s mother and Grant Senior’s wife. “My family was originally from the West Coast and my sister didn’t like to be away from our mother back then. Grant Senior built the other house for our mother.”

  Taking on one project like this would’ve been a challenge. Two could be considered insanity. “That must have cost a fortune.”

  “Yes, it did,” he said with a half-smile and a nod. “He was showing off and my mother, Brodie’s grandmother, was a very difficult woman to please. Come through to the kitchen.”

  Art guided her through a series of doors and passages. Eventually they came out in a large kitchen set at the side of the house. It had a twenty-five foot ceiling and the same style of windows as the entry way did. These were high above as well, stretching across the wall above the stove at the height of the second story.

  The room was huge and in addition to the wraparound units and the double-width stove, there was a dual height island, and a den area with a couch, and a couple of armchairs around a coffee table, which sat beneath a wall-mounted TV.

  “I just made coffee, would you like some?” he asked. “Or there’s wine in the cellar if you’d—”

  She held up a hand and waved it in time with her shaking head. “I’ve already had two and a half glasses.”

  “If this is a drunken booty call, you really should’ve called first,” Art said, skirting the kitchen island to reach the coffee pot. “Brodie isn’t home.”

  “You said that already. Forgive me for asking,” she said, putting her purse on the lower portion of the center island and curling her fingers around it.

  He glanced over his shoulder as he poured black coffee into two mugs. “What?”

  “Why did you let me in? I got the impression last night that you didn’t think much of me.”

  “I was the black sheep of my family,” he said, carrying the mugs down the opposite side of the island and indicating with an eye roll that she should follow him. When they got to the couches, he sat and put the mugs down on the low coffee table. “Brodie and me spend most of our time in here, in our bedrooms, or using the facilities downstairs. The houses were built structurally the same but the boys have remodeled in their own ways over the years.”

  She wasn’t sure who “the boys” were, but she wanted to know where Art’s story was going before she asked about anything else. “You were saying,” she said, attempting to get the conversation back to where it had been. “About being the black sheep?”

  Opening his mouth, he took a large lungful of air before continuing. “I was the second of four children. There was eight years between me and my eldest sister, Melinda, that’s Brodie and Grant’s mom.”

  “Why did you take Brodie after she died? Do you have a wife and kids of your own?”

  “Neither,” he said, reaching for his mug. “I lived here with Melinda when I was in the country. Brodie idolized me. I spent my life traveling, learning from indigenous people, backpacking, trekking, and mountaineering. He loved to hear my stories. After our mother died
, Brodie’s grandmother, Melinda didn’t see much of our younger sisters. One of whom was a single mom and the other had serious issues with her problem child. After Melinda died, we found out it had been written into her will that I should become guardian of the boys.”

  Intrigued, she speculated. “But you didn’t want to be tied down?”

  “I wouldn’t say that, but… Grant Junior took to business; he idolized his father and trotted into work with him as often as he could. He was fifteen when his parents died, it had been his birthright, and his lifelong ambition to take over at CI… no one thought it would be so soon. Brodie wanted nothing to do with the company. That was when Frank and I sat down with the boys and they made their decisions. It was never our intention to keep them apart, but… Brodie started traveling with me, Grant went to college, and our paths rarely crossed… especially since Grant refused to come here to the manor.”

  “This is fascinating, but…”

  He smiled. “What has it got to do with my reaction to you last night?” he asked.

  Nodding while freeing her feet from her shoes, Zara retrieved her mug from the coffee table and cradled it with both hands as she brought it close to her body. Then twisting herself to face Art, she drew her legs up onto the couch and tucked them beneath herself. “I thought you didn’t like me.”

  “When I was young, I was a bit of a crusader. I thought myself a bit of a… hero, I guess. We built homes for those who had lost them in natural disasters and fought injustice as we found it. I had more than a few contacts myself and I made money by tracking people down or getting information. Over the years, one thing led to another and we found ourselves going after bigger and bigger fish. Brodie took to fighting and shooting like a tiger takes to his stripes. Eventually I was obsolete. Support staff for this tower of a man who really was a hero. Brodie has killed dozens of men, hundreds of them, and I guess he’s lost a bit of his humanity because of that. But everyone he’s killed, he’s killed for a reason.”