Zara knew how protective a man could be of his weapon, and Caine was no exception. He listened to the recording all the way to the end. When it was finished, he just sat there staring down at it.
Seeing him broken didn’t make her feel good. Her sorrow over his heartache was limited though, because Zara was more interested in where Cuckoo was and how she could intercept her. While he sat there holding her watch, staring at the concrete, she crept over and he didn’t lift the gun to threaten her. Crouching at his side, she used what strength she had to rip the shoulder seam of his long-sleeved tee shirt. Looping it around his thigh, above the wound, she tied it as tight as she could then sat back.
“I’m sorry,” Zara said, because it seemed like an appropriate response. “She’s a bitch.”
“Yeah, but she’s good,” he muttered. “I’ve been working for her for so long, I thought we had something. But this time, being with her again, in the same room, I knew something wasn’t right.”
Just as she’d suspected, Caine was questioning his partner and the job they were doing. “She left you here, I would guess that’s proof enough that she doesn’t care in the way you thought she did.”
Zara couldn’t be outright cruel, mocking him would piss him off. Not only was he holding a gun, but she was trying to win his favor. “Yeah,” he mumbled.
Testing the chance of his betrayal, she softened her voice. “Was there a plan beyond her taking what she wanted and abandoning you here?”
“Yeah, she’s got a contact coming with a boat to pick up the product from the docks. She told me to watch you, to make sure you didn’t get away.”
That wasn’t what Zara would classify as a plan. That was Cuckoo getting away without a scratch and Caine staying here to carry on reporting like a good errand boy. “Which docks?” Zara asked, treading carefully, she kept her tone gentle. “If you tell me I can—”
“She’s not carrying her cellphone, not the one you people have the number for. That one was scrambled to send you on a wild goose chase if anything went wrong. It will take you guys all day to track her, and your boys are probably miles off course.”
These words were no longer cocky, but that was understandable given that he’d just been told what he thought was fact was fiction. Cuckoo had used him and made a fool of him for years, and he was being confronted by this fact while in an enemy camp.
Resting a hand on his arm, she made the connection before she pushed. “Tell me where she is, Caine, show her that you’re not her bitch anymore.”
“You won’t be able to stop her alone,” he said. Being shot meant he wouldn’t be going anywhere with her.
That would be the next concern, getting the location was number one. “Tell me where.”
Drawing in a breath, he lifted his chin and although he wasn’t smug, he was certainly sure of betraying the woman that had led him on. “Atlas.”
“I’ll call an ambulance,” she said as she strode toward him. “They’ll take care of you and Kahlil.”
Caine wasn’t bothered. “If he’s not already dead, I’ll deal with him. We’ve got a car in the street, blue sedan, take it, the keys are in it,” Caine said. “I’ll look after myself, you just stop that bitch from winning.”
Caine’s venom had a new target, and Zara knew he held a grudge. There was no time to tend to anyone, but he was right about Kahlil, it seemed, because when she dashed out into the alley, there he was lying on his face, unmoving.
Running to the end of the alley, she sought out the car and jumped in to get moving. It was fitting that they were going back to where they started, and that could be why Cuckoo chose this spot. She’d hated Art and what he’d done to her relationship with Brodie.
Triumphing on the site of Art’s demise would please Cuckoo. It was also a functional space, abandoned, far from anything, and with direct access to the water. If she had someone picking up her and the product, they could do it there and have no interference.
Calling Brodie got her diverted to voicemail, as he was probably driving, or in a battle with Cuckoo already. Zara left a message to tell him what had happened and where she was going. She couldn’t waste time by waiting, so she left Tuck a similar message and just hoped that the guys picked up their messages before they went to whatever bogus site Cuckoo’s scrambled phone sent them to.
One positive thing about Cuckoo picking this spot was that she knew it and the others would too. Because there was nothing else around, the sound of a car would announce her arrival, so Zara parked on the docks, away from the warehouse and made her way to Atlas on foot, doing her best to stay out of the way.
Atlas was there, just as it had been before, with its large, faded and peeling sign above the door. If she hadn’t known it was here, it would have taken her a long time to pinpoint this warehouse as Cuckoo’s location.
But Cuckoo was here. Zara pressed herself into the wall outside the warehouse and glanced inside. The van was parked in the middle of the space. Cuckoo was at the rear of the vehicle and was oblivious to Zara. As she twisted herself to face away again, she caught sight of the stain on the concrete floor, the stain Art had left there, the site of his demise.
She had to get inside, to get to the van and either steal it or disable the device. Game Time wasn’t small enough that it could be carried by a single person. Unless Zara could drive the whole lot away, the other option was to take advantage of the destructive force Tuck had built into it.
As soon as she saw that Cuckoo’s back was turned, Zara had to take her chance to make a move. There was no room for hesitation. She had to be decisive. Creeping into the warehouse, she did her best not to make any sound that might draw attention to her.
Cuckoo was on the phone, sauntering away from the vehicle that was parked almost in the same spot she and Grant had parked their van in. It was just farther from the wall it faced this time. Funny how things came full circle, but she couldn’t be distracted by irony.
Cuckoo was ranting about her success to whoever was on the other end of the phone. Zara knew this shipment would never reach its destination. She wouldn’t let it happen. The rear doors of the van were wide open, and closing them would draw attention to her presence. But she couldn’t risk the cargo tumbling out if she did manage to start the vehicle and drive out.
Her speculation turned out to be moot because when she got to the cab and boosted onto her tiptoes, she saw that the ignition was empty. Tiptoeing to the back of the van, she paused to examine Cuckoo, who had stopped walking, but was still talking. The woman had the keys, looped around her middle finger on the hand she was holding the phone with. No chance Zara was going to snatch and run with those.
Glancing into the cargo-hold of the van, she saw it. Game Time was here. While Cuckoo carried on her conversation with her back to the van, Zara crept inside to see if she could disable the device. The electronic kill switch would fry the circuits, and the explosives the Kindred had added would make sure that this device was nothing but smithereens of scrap metal after it was triggered.
Except the side panel of the device was open, and wires were pulled out. Caine had admitted to frying the circuits. Zara located the small black box that she knew was connected to the kill switch, but the red wire that gave it power was pulled out and she had no tools to open the panel. She was no electronics whizz either, so even if she did get it open, she was as likely to blast herself to high heaven as she was to achieve her goal.
The remote kill switch was dead. But she couldn’t just give up and go home, she could be the last line of defense, the last person to lay eyes on this machine before it was put to purpose. Exploring further, she found frayed wires and dead circuits. Cuckoo didn’t seem to have located the explosives. From what Tuck had said, they were built into the frame with a fuse connected to… hope. The gas canisters in the machine had been loaded with flammable gas, and there was a traditional fuse deliberately built in as their backup. But she’d still need a spark.
Considering how to achieve
ignition, Zara slid up the panel that hid the gas bottles, and when it was off, inspiration struck her. Pulling her cell phone from her pocket, she squashed it between the two canisters then gripped the closest. Clenching her teeth, she turned the manual valve to release the gas into the air. There was no needle for her to watch to check it was working; the machine was built to be covert.
A gunshot blasted just a second before she heard the ting of metal on metal. Spinning around, she leapt out of the van to see Cuckoo slinking toward her with a gun in her hand. The first shot hadn’t hit her, so it was a warning, or the woman was a bad aim.
Turning to grab each door, Zara slammed the van doors knowing that she was concentrating the gas. She didn’t have a lot of time and needed to know that when she ordered the spark, it would be enough to combust the gas, which should ignite the explosives.
Backing away from the van, Zara’s awareness wasn’t on Cuckoo or getting shot, it was on getting away from the unstable device. With every backwards step, every second, that van was becoming a more powerful, more destructive, more lethal bomb.
Eyeing the van meant Zara wasn’t giving Cuckoo the attention she craved, but she got it when the next shot sounded, and the force of an impact threw Zara backwards onto the floor. It was pressure not pain that made her fall, but Cuckoo’s perverse laugh helped Zara understand what had happened.
The van was rigged, she had to get out of here, but pain burst through her body, and her hand moved to the source. When she looked down at her reddened hand and the expanding stain on her top, she began to panic. Blood. She was bleeding. She was shot.
Panting through the pain that grew with every drop of blood that dripped from the gunshot beneath her ribs, Zara rolled onto her front and crawled the last of the distance to the wall. Using a pipe that ran upwards, she pulled herself onto her feet.
“You just won’t quit,” Cuckoo said, leveling her gun at Zara again.
Zara wasn’t ready to concede. “It’s like you said about American women,” Zara said and coughed as her chest tightened. “We’re peppy.”
“And not too smart.” Cuckoo said, taking one stride toward her, which brought her nearer to the van. “Do you want to die? It’s such a shame he’s not here to see it.”
“Kill me,” Zara said, taking her weight away from the wall and squaring the pendant to make sure the camera was lined up. If she was going to die here, she wanted to make sure the Kindred knew who to make pay for her murder.
“Any final words?” Cuckoo said, pulling back the hammer of her gun.
It didn’t take too much thought for her to come up with a reply. “Two,” Zara said and raised her voice to call out as loud as she could in this echoing space. “Treason terminate!”
Cuckoo frowned at her seeming insanity, and Zara took the chance to dash the remaining few feet to the door, where she slipped around to the other side of the concrete wall. Less than a second later, the deafening blast of an explosion burst in her ears. She fell forward, despite being protected from the blast, the wound in her torso was sapping her energy.
Rolling to her back, she took her hand from the bloody mass of her shirt. The manor was so close, but there was no way she was going to make it there on foot, and she had no vehicle nearby. If Cuckoo was still alive, she was injured, so neither of them would be in a fit state to initiate another battle.
Still, Zara tried to stand and got up into a kind of staggering crouch to hurry as fast as she could to hide behind a stack of crates at the corner of the building. They might not be up for another battle, but Cuckoo had been armed, and she wouldn’t be pleased now that her product had been destroyed.
The building was burning in a brilliant fire, and as she collapsed, Zara saw smoke darken the sky. It was fitting, she thought as she closed her eyes. Game Time cursed them all and in succeeding to destroy the device that had stolen so many lives, it had claimed one last victim.
Her eyes were heavy and her body ached. There was no getting out of this one. She would die here alone, and all she could think about was Brodie. Would he go into mourning again? She couldn’t allow it. But she’d made no plans for her own demise, hadn’t added her final instructions to the script with the others.
Closing her eyes, the smell of burning debris and heavy smoke polluted the air. But she’d completed her mission, she wasn’t a failure, and she’d made a difference in the world.
She could have been lying on the dirty ground for a minute or a month. Her concept of time was lost with her consciousness. Sure that the sensation of his fingertips on her cheekbone was an illusion, she turned toward the touch, appreciating the dream while it lasted.
“Come on, baby, let me see those beautiful browns, open up.”
Swallowing the bitter taste from her mouth, Zara did her best to part her eyelids, and that was when she realized she wasn’t lying on the cold ground anymore. Her body was up, not all the way because her feet were still touching asphalt, but her upper body was on something warm, something solid, something familiar.
“Brodie,” she said, immediately recognizing her mistake. “Uh… Raven. I—”
“Open your eyes for me, baby,” he said, and she didn’t like the concern in his voice. He must have reached the same conclusion she had about her prognosis. “Atta girl.”
Sorrow welled up when she blinked and read the fear in his gaze. “I’m sorry, beau,” she whispered because suddenly she was, sorry for all the things they hadn’t done. Sorry that she’d come here alone. Sorry that she hadn’t agreed to his suggestion that they say to hell with everything and leave town.
“What were you thinking?” he demanded, and for some reason, his anger was easier for her to absorb than confronting their pain.
Hot tears leaked from her eyes and ran quickly to her ears with others following in their tracks. “I love you. Please don’t close yourself off again,” she said. If she was on a clock, she didn’t want to waste time on an argument. Being practical, taking action, was something she did well, and she’d rather focus on that than saying goodbye. “I didn’t make plans. Put me beside Art. You won’t be able to explain this to the cops and—”
“Hush,” he said, stroking her hair away from her face with a flat palm. “You’re not going anywhere.”
His other arm was around her, but it was only when he pushed harder that she felt the crushing weight of pressure he was applying to her wound to try and stem the bleeding. “I feel numb.”
“You’re in shock,” he said. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“I love you.”
“You’ve said that already,” he said, and she took her hand to his face when he looked away. He seemed impatient, like he was waiting for something, and it wasn’t for her death. Her vision was too blurred to focus on specifics, she felt his mood in her heart, and the grief made her whimper.
He’d thought Art was going to be ok, and his uncle was dead a minute later. Brodie wasn’t great at accepting being out of control. But she didn’t have the wherewithal to decipher what was going on in his mind. Her body was getting heavier, and it was harder to keep her eyes open.
She heard a car before she loosened. Brodie stood, taking her dead weight with him in his arms. There was movement and sound, but she lost track of it all, and when she next heard his voice they were in a vehicle, in the back seat with her head in his lap and his heavy hand pushing on her injury.
“Wake up, Swallow! I didn’t tell you to sleep. Keep those big browns on me.”
But every time she opened her eyes, they closed again. “Where are…” she whispered. “Where are we going?”
“Base,” Brodie said, resting a hand on her forehead. “Thad’s there waiting to patch you up.”
“No,” she mumbled, shaking her head. “Can’t… can’t open the gate. Art will—”
“Hush.”
“Art will be mad. You can’t open the gates… Art will…”
“We make exceptions when our hottest member is bleeding out.”
Her mouth was dry, but she couldn’t feel her body, just intense heat at the top of her head that seemed to be mangling her thoughts. “Tuck... Tuck’s hot.”
“She’s delirious.”
“She better be.” She wasn’t sure who was talking or what they were talking about. Invasive white noise faded in and out, making her ears buzz.
“Brodie,” she muttered, hoping her love was nearby. “Brodie.”
“Stay with me, pretty baby. Keep those eyes open, keep talking.”
Her eyes were glued shut. Tears still managed to escape though. Brodie had been right. She hadn’t realized it because with him she’d felt invincible, and she’d let him down. “One day,” she murmured. Her body rocked with the motion of the car, and she was glad to be here, in his arms, with the chance to say what she needed to. “I let you down, baby.”
“Yeah, you did,” he said, his voice was harsh, stern, like her chief giving her orders. “You’re not gonna do it again! Open your fucking eyes, Swallow.”
“Fuck, man, she’s blue,” Tuck said.
“Just shut the fuck up and drive,” Brodie demanded. Their voices were fading, and she wanted to sleep, just for a little while before the end, before she said goodbye. Something bit into her body, and she was shaken so hard, her head snapped back. “Open your fucking eyes, Zar, stay with me!”
“Got to go,” she whispered, words were getting more difficult as moisture left her mouth. “Too tired. One day… you were right, beau… one day.”
“No! You fucking listen to me, you’re not going anywhere. You stay with me, Zara! I can’t do this alone! Open your fucking eyes.”
But she couldn’t, couldn’t open her eyes, couldn’t feel her body, couldn’t breathe. “Have to…” she whispered, parting her lips to pull in one last heavy breath. “Close the door.”
Her thoughts faded to black. The last thing she remembered was craving Brodie’s kiss one last time.
Cuckoo (Kindred Book 3) Page 27