“We have to consider that Kahlil might be bullshitting us.”
“How does he know who Raven is if he doesn’t know McCormack history? Do you think Grant told him? I doubt it. Grant was in bed with Sutcliffe practically from day one. I think he just strung out the negotiations because he enjoyed toying with the interested parties. It made him feel important that they were clamoring for something only he had.”
She hated to talk ill of the dead, but in retrospect and given how Grant was at the end, there was a deeper pathology at work. One that had probably been ignited on the same day Brodie had first seen the darkness—on the day their parents died.
“It’s tough. You can’t force Brodie to do something that he doesn’t want to do.”
“No,” she said. “I know.”
“I can call Zave, see if he has any thoughts on it,” Tuck said.
“Thad said that Brodie and Zave were close. Do you think Brodie’s opened up to him about it?”
“They were closer back in the day, but yeah,” Tuck said. “Zave lost his parents too. He was an adult when they died, but I think talking to Brodie helped him to process. Talking to someone who had been through it gave him some perspective.”
“How did his parents die?” she asked and a slow frown began to creep to his face.
“Hold on, his parents are dead too,” Tuck said and flew up out of his chair to rush out of the room.
There might be logic in what he was doing, but it offered her no explanation. She didn’t want to be left behind. Departing the desk and the room, she rushed to the stairwell door that was still closing. She could hear him running up the stairs and knew she’d never catch up because he was faster and had longer legs. But she did her best and navigated the warren of a house to get to the kitchen where he was sitting at the head of the coffee table opening a laptop when she joined him.
“How many of those things do you have?” she asked, wondering why one laptop wasn’t like the next as she dropped onto the couch and lay down to catch her breath. Her cardio workout always got her blood pumping, but she was used to having some kind of a warm up first.
“Zave’s parents were killed when he was in his twenties,” Tuck murmured and began to type. “Speak to me, pet.” Computers were his pets, it seemed to be his universal name for all programs, like he believed the vast interconnected consciousness of the global digital network was a living, breathing creature.
“You’re trying to find out specifics?”
“I can’t remember the date, but I remember going to the funeral… Well not going, I was on over-watch.”
Of course he was. It didn’t surprise her that the Kindred—if they even were that back then—were paranoid even on somber occasions. “Over-watch for what?” she asked, but he was still typing.
“I have to call him and find out why—” Something caught his eye and he looked up at the door then sat back. “Your boy’s on his way up.”
She glanced from him to the door and back again. Art could do that, he could look at the door and tell that Brodie was coming in. She still didn’t know how it worked. But then she’d only found out after living in the house for more than three months that there were cameras watching her in her bedroom.
The first time she’d been in this house, she’d been on this couch when Brodie came in and found her with Art. Lying down, she let her hands fall into her hair, considering what Brodie’s mood might be when he got here.
“Why did he leave the stakeout?” she asked Tuck.
The hacker was typing. “Don’t know,” he muttered. His attentiveness level fell to a one as he scowled at his computer screen. “I have to talk to Zave.”
He stood up, balancing the laptop on his forearm. “Where are you going?” she asked. A surge of panic made her roll onto her side and stretch her arm to the coffee table, thus blocking his route. “Wait for Brodie.”
“You’re not scared to talk to your own boyfriend,” he said. “He might not come in here; he might go upstairs.”
“If he has something to report then he’ll be coming to find us.”
“Look out the window, Zar, it’s dawn. He probably thinks we’re asleep.”
“He knows we were working,” she said and he had, except he hadn’t commanded that they stay up all night. Their work could have been finished fast, or they could have abandoned it to refresh themselves with a nap. “I should make coffee.”
“I think it’s time for us to hit the hay,” Tuck said when she stood up in front of him and his laptop.
The door opened and she turned to see Brodie come inside and remain by the door. The tension in his body and the glare on his face made her hold her breath. Tuck was right, she wasn’t afraid of Brodie, but she was afraid of him putting up more roadblocks to something which just made sense.
“Tomorrow at noon,” Brodie said.
“For what?” she asked. Had he bought plane tickets and made a unilateral decision that they were going to leave the country? He needed to be more specific.
“Our meet with Kahlil. Gives us about thirty hours to make plans.”
She hadn’t expected him to come in and announce that. “Do you want me to call him and set it up?”
“What happened to the stakeout?” Tuck asked, his voice suggesting he’d deciphered something that she hadn’t.
“It’s done,” Brodie said. “And I already set it up.”
Her love was full of surprises this morning. “You spoke to Kahlil?”
“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” Brodie asked.
“I have to talk to Zave, then I’m getting some shut eye,” Tuck said, moving her aside to pass the couch and exit.
“I guess we should all get some sleep,” she said, but when she walked Tuck’s route, Brodie moved into her path to block her way. While he examined her, he said nothing. She gave him the time he needed to find his words.
“I’m an asshole.”
An excellent start, in her opinion. “I know,” she said, folding her arms.
“You’re the first person who’s made me feel bad about that… You’re doing it right now, and you’re not even saying a word.”
She didn’t want to punish or belittle him. “I’m not here to make you feel bad. I… I push because I love you. I won’t let you take the easy path just because it’s easier,” she said.
“Usually I don’t give a fuck about hurting someone’s feelings, but what I said to you… I’ve been thinking about it all night. I couldn’t focus.”
She couldn’t deny that she’d been hurt, and that he’d said such things when she was just getting over her own insecurity about not having a place here was the worst timing ever. “I ended up being the distraction you were aiming to avoid,” she said, expanding her lungs and slipping her arms around him. “I didn’t mean to step out of line. I’m not trying to—”
He scooped her head into his hands. “I gave you the floor. I put you in charge, and then the first time you did something I didn’t like, I threw my weight around. I stand by what I said about the meetings. You should never go into a place that could be unsafe without the rest of us behind you. But you’re the most qualified to coordinate us, to make plans and decisions.”
She didn’t feel like that, these men were trained and experienced, she was still a newbie. “How do you figure that out? I don’t know what I’m doing. I have no experience. I’m still learning and I—”
“There is no book on how to handle this shit. We’ll have meetings like the one downstairs where people throw ideas into the ring. But one person has to coordinate the effort, ask the questions that will inspire us to think and problem solve.”
“Art used to do that,” she said, because she’d seen it in the limited time she’d known the man. Art didn’t go out into the field, he’d told her that, which was another reason him showing up in the Atlas warehouse had been so unexpected. But she couldn’t compare herself to the chief he was, Art was worldly, and she had never left the country. “He had a lifeti
me of experience.”
“I don’t know shit about hacking, and Tuck shoots like there’s a bug in his ear. Think any of us know how to build the crap Zave comes up with? And Thad, he’s an optimistic, upbeat little fucker with zero combat experience. But he’s pulled bullets out of all of us. Stitched us up. Given us meds we’d have had to jack if it wasn’t for his prescription pad. We can’t even say the shit he brings, but he’s got a drug for every day of the week.”
“You all bring something to the team.”
“And so do you,” he said and carried on before she could interject. “You ran a goddamn billion-dollar corporation. You sat in on strategy meetings, stood up to arrogant fucking business men who tried to dismiss you. How many fucking staff did you oversee? Five? Ten? Twenty?”
“It varied through the years.”
“You know about shit the rest of us have never seen. You can read accounts and legal contracts that are foreign to us. You know where the boss hides the money. You broke into Saint’s office, and with one look at a file, you did what it took us six months to achieve. You know how to work people. And fuck, baby, you killed a man for threatening to reduce you to an irrelevant object he could fuck around with.”
“Why are you saying all of this?” she asked. It was nice to know that she was appreciated, but she hadn’t voiced any more doubts about her place in the Kindred.
“Because I can’t run this shit, you can. Combat decisions will be made as a group, but I need someone to keep this shit together, someone who is used to juggling a whole bunch of balls all at once.”
Being a sniper, he was used to having a singular focus with Art telling him what to pin it on. Sometimes he probably didn’t know why, he would never question Art’s decisions. Just like her. He’d declared himself and his rifle as dedicated to her. Raven had killed on her command before, and now he was handing her his sword.
“You want me to run the Kindred?”
“The logistical stuff, yeah. You’ve been doing it for months, since we lost Art. He always dealt with supplies, he cooked, looked after us all, called us on our bullshit. You’ve been doing that.”
Running the manor was Art’s job before it was hers. She hadn’t realized that she’d fallen into the supporting role Art had once occupied. Brodie and the others didn’t have the time to deal with bullshit like paying bills or grocery shopping.
Her head fell when his hands dropped. Zara tried to step away, but he caught her waist to haul her back. “I’m not sure how I feel about this,” she said. “It’s too much responsibility for me to take on.”
“You’re doing it already, and responsibility is more your thing than mine.”
“What if I make the wrong choice?” she asked. “What if I send you into danger?”
“You won’t,” he said. “We consult on ops, Art always did. But he had to sign off, if you say yes or no, we’ll find a way to make it work.”
This wasn’t like working under Grant, she wasn’t going to be disciplining anyone for acting on impulse. But coordination, she’d done that at CI, delegating tasks that Grant needed done to work efficiently.
“Ok,” she said, nodding. “We’ll do it together.”
“We’ve already been doing it together,” he said, and although there was no lust in his eyes, she smiled. “Not that.”
Brodie needed support, and he was calling her his constant. “Art meant the world to you, and I know it’s important to you to honor his memory. But I know he took care of things for you so that you would be better in the field, rested. I can’t make decisions about missions, but I can make sure that you all have everything you need to complete your work.”
“There’s one thing that we will have to deal with together today.”
“What?”
“Cuckoo.”
He hadn’t been calling Mischa that when she first came to bail him out at CI. Finding out the truth of what she was up to with Caine and what she’d been responsible for all of these years must have sullied his opinion of her.
“You can deal with her alone,” Zara said because she didn’t covet standing between the old lovers. “I don’t want to be in a room with you and her together. It will be too… weird and difficult.”
He frowned. “Why would it be difficult?”
She sighed and balled her fists on his diaphragm. “Because you used to fuck her, beau. I don’t want to see you interacting with her. It will just make me think about… the things you did with her and the things you do with me. She’ll rub my face in it and…”
“Rub your face in what? You’re the one who gets access now, the only one. And what I had with her is nothing like this.”
“You didn’t love her?”
“I didn’t know what love was,” he said. “I think I thought I was in love with her… maybe.”
“I knew you weren’t when Art told me you left her on his recommendation. I knew if you loved her, you wouldn’t have given her up easily. But I don’t know how long Art spent persuading you.”
“He didn’t like Cuckoo from the start,” Brodie said, and she thought about her conversation with Art in this room when he’d first told her about Cuckoo. “But he didn’t put up major objections to me sleeping with her until a month or so after we started.”
“Art didn’t like me at the start either,” she said, though it wasn’t that Art didn’t like her, he was just wary of what a woman could do to Brodie if she chose to take advantage of his skills.
“Art wanted us to be together,” Brodie said. “He didn’t say it like that, but I got the gist.”
“He said it to me,” she said. “He was pretty upfront and forceful about it to be honest.”
“He did?” Brodie asked, and instead of getting defensive, she sensed his want to know more. After losing someone, she guessed it was nice to get new information about them, even if it was second hand.
“Yeah,” she said, taking his hand to lead him over to the couch, where she sat and pulled him down with her, just where Art had once sat. “We were sitting right here, and he told me that I was good for you. I told him not to push, then you and Tuck walked in.”
“I remember that morning, I knew something was going on.”
“He wanted what was best for you. He wanted you to be happy. To find your normal.”
That was how he’d said it when he was dying and his blood stained all of their hands. Thinking about that day made the memory bittersweet. It was reassuring that she’d gotten Art’s seal of approval before he died, for her and for Brodie too. But she couldn’t help but wonder how it all might have been different if he’d lived.
“Do you think we’d still be here?” she asked. “If he was still with us?”
“That we would be together?” Brodie asked. “Way you’re telling it, the old man was damn sure about forcing us together whether we wanted to be or not.”
“You don’t feel forced,” she said, with a wave of concern that made her recall other things Art had said while he was dying. “He said that you loved me, that I loved you, that’s not the reason that… that’s not why you picked me or let me hang around while you were grieving.”
Cupping her face, he grazed his thumb over her cheek. “Art had a way of knowing what I was thinking before I did. You’re sort of the same in that way. He knew that I loved you, I just couldn’t say it because… I don’t know, because I just couldn’t.”
“You say it now,” she said. Though she could count on one hand the number of times he had said it, she still liked to hear it. “I wonder what Art would think about this, about us finding our way together, about how the Kindred has changed without him.”
“We haven’t changed that much,” Brodie said. “He’d be pissed at me for dropping the ball for so long.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, leaning against the high arm of the couch and lifting her legs over his lap. “He wouldn’t want your grief to consume you. But I think he would appreciate you grieving him, it showed how much you cared… it sh
owed me a lot about who you are, and that his death affected you in the way it did was endearing.”
He blinked. “Endearing?”
“I was flying in the dark. I could barely find my way to the garage, and it’s right at the bottom of the stairs. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing or how to run this place.”
“I let you down.”
“No,” she said, sitting up and holding the back of the couch to help her keep her balance while his strong hands rested on her legs to give her an anchor. “I liked looking after you and that you let me… I appreciated it. Seeing you affected like that, it made me hope that you could one day love me… and now you do. Being thrown in at the deep end was the only way I’d have learned. Otherwise, it would’ve been too easy for me to let you or Art do everything. This place, and you, it’s home to me now. I don’t feel like just a guest when I’m here. I just wish we didn’t have to lose Art for us both to learn our lessons.”
When his gaze left hers and he started to caress her legs, she worried that she’d pushed too far. In speaking about Art and that dark time in their lives after losing him, she was reawakening demons that Brodie had barely managed to put back in their box. Sliding a hand to his face, she pulled him closer to kiss his cheek then nuzzled near his ear.
“I love you and I will always be here. I will always be beside you… no matter what we face.”
He didn’t respond in words. His hands stopped on her flesh and he breathed for a few seconds. Then in a quick action, he scooped his arms beneath her body and stood up, carrying her off.
“Even when I’m being a jerk, I’d never walk away from you,” he said, taking her to the door.
It was nice to get that assurance and to know that even if one was out of line, it wouldn’t jeopardize their love. “Where are we going?” she asked because with Brodie, she could never be sure what he had planned.
“Time to go to bed, partner.”
“Sleep is for the weak,” she responded and opened the kitchen door to let them out of the room.
Cuckoo (Kindred Book 3) Page 23