The four men, Brodie, Tuck, Zave, and Rig, were at the bottom of the stairs, with Zara standing at the top of the stairs that faced the door, on the mid-landing before the stairs took a quarter turn to the mezzanine. Devon, Kadie, and Bess had elected to stay on the mezzanine in front of where Devon’s bedroom was. They would come down when everyone was settled. Kadie wanted to be present to reassure Howie, and Bess was eager to talk to her son. She still wanted a chance to try to break through to him, and Devon had spoken to her again last night during their wine conversation.
Once she’d retired with Zave for the night, she’d pled Bess’ case. The mother wanted a chance to talk to her son alone if the opportunity presented itself. There was a question mark over whether it would.
Right now, all Devon was worried about was that everyone in the Kindred made it out alive. She couldn’t think about the relationships between Kindred and Syn members. Everyone was watching the same black door at the front of the property.
The Kindred had locked the manor up tight, ensuring that they would funnel Syn to exactly where they wanted them to be. The only way inside was through that door.
Although there was no clock in this space, Devon was sure she could hear ticking, each thumping second echoing faster, matching the pace of her heart. The swing of the imaginary pendulum whooshed like the blood in her ears. The nothingness was driving her crazy.
The rotors slowed and the sound died. Syn had landed. It could be that they were looking for another way in or they were planning to blow the whole building to smithereens, anything was possible.
Movement in her peripheral vision made her turn. Tuck was wearing a watch that displayed video feed from the new cameras the Kindred had mounted on the outside of the manor so they could watch Syn’s progress and ensure they didn’t get up to anything sinister out there.
“Leatt, Mitchell, Caine,” Tuck said. “They’re pulling a black chest out the back of the chopper, looks heavy… Oh, and there’s Thad.”
Maybe the doctor was spared manual labor as he’d have flown them here. “Are they bringing it in?” Brodie asked.
Tuck shook his head. “They’re just leaving it there… idiot, fucking rookies,” he murmured. “Either bring the product inside or leave it in the getaway vehicle. Now if they want to make a break for it, they’ll have to load it again.”
Hazarding a guess, Brodie muttered, “Could be explosives.”
“Nah,” Tuck said. “They’re leaving it right there, by the chopper. They try to detonate and they’ll be blowing up their only way out.”
Zave had deliberately put his plane in its hanger and moved the chopper that was on the island to the airstrip. Thad might tell Syn that he could take any craft Zave had, but that would be difficult if the vehicle was the whole length of the island away. Listening to the men converse gave her something to focus on beyond the tingling anxiety crawling beneath her skin.
Kadie was as alert as she was, though she had more reason to be anxious than Devon did, and she was reminded of this when Kadie asked, “Howie? Can you see him?”
Lifting his gaze to the upper floor where the trio of women were gathered, Tuck soothed his woman with a gentle tone. “Not yet, Toots. Doesn’t mean he’s not there. We’ll get him back.”
Devon could appreciate the comfort of the exchange between this veteran couple. Even when they weren’t on the same floor, they managed to consider each other’s feelings. Her understanding of how that worked grew when she noticed that Zave was looking at her, and she was hit by her own dose of love. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t as tender as Tuck. Just seeing his determination was encouraging enough to make her frantic heart began to calm.
Knowing that he wouldn’t want her to say it aloud, Devon mouthed, “I love you.” The twitch at the corner of his mouth was enough to remind her that he felt the same.
In these last moments of guaranteed safety, they weren’t the only couple who wanted to express their feelings. “Beau,” Zara said, shattering the intimacy of their moment of peace. “If you get yourself hurt today, I’ll beat the crap out of you, and don’t think you’ll be getting laid for a year.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled like she was a nagging wife. “You put yourself in harm’s way again and I’ll build a damn dungeon for you.”
That couple didn’t look at each other. Tuck was smiling and Rig laughed. The humorous exchange calmed them all and just in time because half a second later, the front door opened.
Caine came in first, probably full of gumption, or as Mitchell’s human shield, because with his hands up, he moved forward and Mitchell entered behind.
Mitchell didn’t close the door, but no one else came inside. He didn’t put his hands up either, not that it would’ve made a difference if Brodie had chosen to shoot before asking questions. “We said everyone,” Brodie said, foregoing pleasantries. “That means Thad and Leatt, too, you fuckers.”
Wandering forward, Caine was as loose as ever. “Thad is doing some chopper stuff,” Caine said. “Mitch here left Leatt watching the door… Don’t know what the fuck for, this place is at the end of the Earth. There’s no cunt sneaking up on this joint.”
Caine’s advice made no difference to Brodie’s position. “Then we wait,” Brodie said.
As usual, Caine resorted to teasing. “Miss your little cousin?” he asked.
Devon would never understand this guy. Here he was in the middle of two factions who hated each other and he’d played both sides, yet he was still cocky enough to pop jibes into every exchange he had.
“Thad is older than him, you prick,” Zara said. “Keep your shitty comments to yourself.”
Up until now, Mitchell had been admiring the space, but now he chose to lay his focus on the woman on the mid-landing above the men. “Zara Bandini, you are more beautiful than I remember.”
Proving that he intended to rebel against Zara’s order, Caine maintained his mood. “That’s the just-fucked look,” Caine declared. Zara trusted this guy, and Devon had to believe their attitude towards each other was part of a show rather than something more sinister. “Were you two going at it before we came in? If you wanna carry on, we’ll wait… don’t forget to pass her on when you’re through, Raven. I heard this place was orgy heaven few years back.”
“You wish,” Zara snarled.
Caine surveyed the room, taking his time to examine every woman, even the ones on the mezzanine, letting them know that they’d been spotted. “I say we’ve got plenty to share, boys… you’ve got them trained to do what they’re told, right?”
Thad came in, without half as much confidence as the other two had displayed, and when Bess gasped, he paused. “Thaddeus!” Bess called out. Her whimpering tone was as angry as it was upset.
“Aww, it’s your mommy,” Caine said, sauntering over to grab Thad so he could throw him forward toward the stairs. “Go give her a kiss.”
Maybe he was working for the Kindred, after all. Separating Syn from each other and getting Thad out of harm’s way was just what the Kindred wanted. Unfortunately, Mitchell was too impatient and controlling to let it happen.
“Nobody’s moving,” Mitchell said. “We’re not here to play games. Where’s Grant?”
Kadie began to stride away from Devon and Bess, which wasn’t part of the plan as she knew it. “Where’s Howie?” Kadie asked, and the pent-up anger in her voice made Devon think she was being motivated by emotion, instead of the agreed strategy. The hacker’s girl kept on going and only paused when she got to Zara’s side on the mid-landing. “You don’t get Grant before we lay eyes on Howie. You know we have him.”
Devon had to give kudos to Kadie for her gumption. “We don’t know he’s alive,” Mitchell said. “You bring him out here.”
“Not a chance,” Tuck said, backing up his girl. “You show us the kid… You talked to Grant yesterday, and you know he’s our chip, we wouldn’t kill him. Show us Howie.”
Mitchell didn’t want to be the one who budged first
, but somebody had to. They’d come all this way and yes, this was technically Kindred property, but there was something hungry in the way Mitchell had been looking around the place since he came in. If he had been a part of Grant McCormack Senior’s life and that man had been close to his brother-in-law, Owen Knight, then there was every chance that Frank Mitchell had been here before.
She hadn’t considered how this place was absolutely perfect for Syn until what Zave said in her room yesterday. Coming here may be a rookie mistake or it may be part of their game plan. They couldn’t have intended for Grant to be kidnapped, but they were adaptable, which was a strength, and they could turn this situation to their advantage if they could pick off, or overpower, the Kindred.
Devon was no combat veteran and sometimes the things she was told to do didn’t make sense to her, or she didn’t understand their significance. But now she got why the women had been positioned where they were because it was the women who Syn wanted to use against the Kindred men. All of them would give up this island to Syn to protect any one of the women, and by putting them behind the barrier of men, up the stairs, nearer escape, they were being offered protection.
The houses may have been modeled differently, but their structures were the same. Zara and Kadie knew this house because they knew their own. Bess practically lived here, and Devon did, too. The confusing layout was their secret weapon. But they didn’t want to scramble because splitting up made them weak.
Motion sensors would allow the men to find, not only where their women were, but where the enemy was too. There had to be forty feet between the bottom of the stairs and the front door. Watching the men size each other up from such a distance apart, she recognized that this was a good old-fashioned showdown.
Someone had to break first, and it wasn’t the Kindred. “Caine tell Leatt to get the kid,” Mitchell said.
From above, she couldn’t quite tell which of the Kindred men were in his focus. Brodie slapped a hand onto Rig’s back and shoved him forward a step. “Go with him.”
This would be the test. Caine didn’t want to miss the action any more than Rig did. Brodie was asking Rig to step outside, to keep an eye on a man no one was sure they could trust. Tension crackled in the air, and it made her nervous.
She had to trust the Kindred, she couldn’t let irrational, juvenile fears about her brother’s safety make her cause a scene. The Circle had been right the last time she’d been worried, they had to be right this time too.
Zara trusted Caine, so Brodie trusted him, and that had to filter through to the others or they’d never be as efficient as they were. But her heart began to speed up again as Rig strode forward without showing an ounce of fear. She was proud of him because he had to be apprehensive, but he didn’t let it show.
Caine lumbered backwards in four slow paces, waiting for Rig to catch up. That interlude gave Caine a chance to scrutinize Zara with an air of mistrust that was either an act for Mitchell to prove he wasn’t on the Kindred side or was a positive sign that he was just as worried about Rig doing something to take him down.
All they had to do was go to Leatt and get Howie and that was what Brodie was really asking her brother to do: to go and rescue the kid who meant so much to Kadie. Those men slipped out, and silence echoed for a moment.
“This house is just as I remember it,” Mitchell said. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? A wonder of architecture that two houses so far apart can share so much in common.”
Mitchell must have a problem with silence, or he had a need to be holding court, because he always had to be saying something. It wasn’t a need anyone in the Kindred shared. “We don’t need a history lesson,” Brodie said without patience. “And we don’t need to listen to your monologue. You think you’re better, you underestimate us. We’re pathetic at what we do, and you plan to do it better, blah, blah, blah.”
“Brodie, you’ve grown into your arrogance,” Mitchell said. “I liked you better when you were a brooding teenager with nothing to say. Xavier, you were always the one who liked to be heard. You were always so determined to make your point and be the center of attention. But, my boy tells me that all that changed after you lost your parents. Such a tragedy.”
Mitchell held an arm out toward Thad, who was still a few feet behind him. Scurrying forward, Thad let his father put a hand to his shoulder. But when pride warmed the elder man’s expression, Devon didn’t believe it was for his offspring because it was focused on the Kindred men.
“You tried to make your cousin believe you pulled yourself out of that depression for him when he lost his beautiful girl because of your carelessness.” Mitchell was going to talk about Bronwyn, and it seemed insensitive to do that in such a public forum when the woman had been so important to Thad. “I don’t have to tell you that we’re better. We’ll prove it when we take down the bastards who hurt her.”
“You don’t know who hurt her,” Brodie said. “Zave and Thad spent years trying to figure out what happened. No one knows what went down.”
“Zave told me he didn’t know when she left the island,” Thad said with bitter resentment rippling through him, vibrating in his words. “That was a lie, cousin, wasn’t it? You know exactly when she left.”
Bronwyn hadn’t been discussed during strategy as far as Devon knew. This was emotional warfare orchestrated by Mitchell; he was far more cunning than she’d thought. “I don’t,” Zave said. “But you’re right that I know more than I told you.”
“See!” Mitchell exclaimed, slapping his hand on his son’s back. “He’s a liar! Just like I told you!”
With his father’s support nearby, Thad wasn’t afraid of confrontation. “What do you know?” he barked, pouncing forward. In his eagerness to know, though his anger didn’t lessen, he edged away from the shelter of his father.
“She made a move on me,” Zave said and he wasn’t recounting the story to be hurtful. Maybe telling her the truth had been cathartic because since then she’d seen him progress. He wanted to be better, for himself, for his family, for his company, for the Kindred. And she hoped he’d learned that bottling up those emotions didn’t make him better. Getting them out freed him.
“You’re lying,” Thad spat. “She called me from the city. She said that you went to her bed, that you slept together.”
Zave was so calm, but Devon was stunned by the lie. “We didn’t have sex.”
“Oh, God,” Bess whispered at her side.
Devon was shocked that Thad had been holding this secret of his own while Bronwyn had been spreading lies about Zave. She wanted to slap the woman for being dishonest, to shake her and tell her she was signing her own death warrant by pitting the men against each other.
“She lied to you,” Zave said.
“And that was what I told her,” Thad said. “We fought. I told her I didn’t believe her. I told her you wouldn’t do it. She got pissed off and said she didn’t love me anyway. She said our family was fucked up.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this?” Bess asked, but when she tried to leave Devon’s side, Devon caught her hand and held her in place.
Thad kept his eyes on Zave. “Because at the time I didn’t believe it, I thought she was a liar. I thought she was a bitch, trying to drive a wedge between me and my cousin. When she lashed out at me, I assumed I was right, she broke up with me and I thought that was it. I was pissed off and upset and I didn’t tell anyone… I called her the next day, she told me she was in a bar, getting drunk, and she was going to find herself a real man. I didn’t care. I told her to go to hell, I thought she was a crazy, game-playing bitch… When everyone started to panic that she was no longer at the manor, I couldn’t bear to tell you all the truth, I thought we’d find her with another guy and that would be it.”
“But she wasn’t at her apartment,” Bess muttered, and Devon didn’t know if it was meant for the group or just herself. “She wasn’t going to work. Her friends hadn’t heard anything. She was missing.”
Thad carried o
n without acknowledging his mother’s mutterings, whether he heard them or not. “I was terrified because I believed that she was fine and that she wasn’t answering my calls because she was punishing me for making her tell the truth. When we found out what happened…”
“You felt guilty,” Kadie said. “And you lied because you didn’t want to admit that you knew she was in trouble.”
“I didn’t know she was in trouble,” Thad said. “Last I spoke to her, she was in a bar, getting drunk, hitting on guys. How do I know what happened next? Maybe it wasn’t that night she was taken, maybe it was, who knows? I didn’t want to admit we broke up, didn’t want to admit that I’d fallen in love with a slut… But when I found out she was dead, it seemed like such a stupid argument. She just wanted my attention. The love was still there; it was just a lover’s tiff and I wanted to hurt the people who hurt her and our quest made sense.”
Which didn’t explain how they ended up here like this. “Then why betray us?”
“He didn’t betray you,” Mitchell declared. “You all betrayed him, stringing him along, using him, and sidelining his needs, his mission. If any of your women had been taken, you’d have torn the world apart to find the culprit, but you didn’t care about him or his pain.”
“That’s bullshit!” Devon cried out. The words overwhelmed her and burst out without thought for whether it was smart to antagonize their enemy.
“Watch your tongue!” Mitchell barked. “Don’t forget what I did to the last Mrs. Knight.”
TWENTY-TWO
Devon wasn’t afraid, though she felt the tension rise in the men at the foot of the stairs. “This is my house, you will listen to what I have to say,” she said. “The Kindred care, and Zave put his life and his reputation on the line to go down there and hold these men to account. There are a dozen cartels with a hundred men in their ranks, maybe a thousand. Figuring out which one hurt Bronwyn is impossible. They don’t keep records, they don’t care about names and descriptions.”
Finch (Kindred #6) Page 26