Cuckoo (Kindred Book 3) (14 page)

“Baby?”

Spinning around, Zara saw Brodie at the top of the alley in the same spot she’d been waiting for him before Caine had drawn her deeper into the darkness.

Her ears were ringing with the shock of Caine’s revelation that had blasted her like roving shrapnel. “You looking for a date?” she asked. The tease she’d meant to accompany those words was absent.

Brodie noticed her stupor, but she couldn’t shake it. “What is it?” he asked, furrowing his brow. “You sound like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Not my ghost, yours,” she said. The ghost of Brodie’s Christmas past. If Caine’s admission was meant to throw up more questions, he’d succeeded. Instead of going on the offensive out here in the open where Caine could still be watching, Zara chose to focus on the chore Brodie had been doing before this new need arose. “Are they in league?”

The answer to this question was important. Learning whether or not Kahlil and Cuckoo were in cahoots would affect their strategy going forward.

“No,” he said. “Talking can come after we get off the street.”

If he was a john, they wouldn’t chitchat, he’d proposition, there would be a price, and then they’d go somewhere private. “Come on. I know somewhere we can go.”

Getting cozy with her lover wasn’t as appealing as it usually was, not while she was still processing the new information Caine had delivered. But for display purposes, she let Brodie loll his arm around her and curled her fingers around his wrist while pasting a smile on her face. That he walked on the curbside gave her protection from the building opposite when they turned the corner. As they ambled into the hotel, she laughed and tipped her head back so onlookers would believe she was trying to tempt her client.

Checking in with Brodie was different to checking in with Tuck. For one thing, Brodie never tried to smile, and he grew rigid when the guy on the other side of the plastic window checked her out again. The proprietor winked to indicate that he recognized her, but he didn’t ask any questions. Her second client of the night might not appreciate that her first customer was still in occupancy upstairs. The hotel owner wouldn’t mention that because as long as she brought clients here to ply her trade, his pockets were being lined. And in a place like this, he was probably used to all sorts of shenanigans.

Room thirteen was more expensive, apparently it had its own bathroom and a couch. It was the highest caliber of room this dump had, though the owner at the desk didn’t put it like that. Zara kept up the pretense of whispering flirtatiously as they traversed the stairs and the hallway to the room that Brodie had requested. But as soon as they got inside, she dropped the act and put some distance between their bodies.

The room was indeed bigger but not by a whole lot. The bathroom was to the left of the narrow space they entered. Leaving the confined entryway, the accommodation opened out with the bed to the left and the couch to the right on the same wall as the desk and chair that were perpendicular to the long narrow window opposite where she was standing now. The couch was covered in stains that made her bypass it and head for the bed, choosing that as the safer bet.

“I’ll text Tuck to tell him we’re here,” Brodie said, taking his phone from his jacket pocket. “He’ll pack up the gear downstairs and bring it up. After that, I’ll get Zave to come get you and take you home.”

“I’m not going,” she said, sitting on the end of the bed to unzip her boots.

“You’re not—”

“We have to talk,” she said. She hadn’t gotten as far as taking her boots off her feet, though she’d unzipped them both. Leaning back on her hands, Zara looked up at him. “Us this time.”

“Talk about what?”

He wasn’t that dumb and try as he might to clear his expression of guilt, she was sure that she read it on his face. Until now, she’d trusted that he had his reasons for acting shady about Cuckoo, but it turned out she had a limit to how much freedom she would give him when it came to keeping secrets from her and Caine had just taken her to it.

“I can’t cry on your shoulder about being useless to the Kindred because I miss all the pertinent signs and then ignore them when I do recognize them just because you’re the guilty one,” she said.

Affront smacked him. “Guilty? What the fuck?”

Kicking off her boots, she clambered to her knees on the end of the bed because it gave her more height than standing on the floor would. “Why did you bring her in to take over at CI? You thought she was great at business, fine, I didn’t like it, but it made sense. But that doesn’t explain why you turned off the camera in my apartment after telling me you put her there to keep an eye on her.”

He didn’t need to hear a name to know whom Zara was talking about. “I did, we had the hardware set up—”

“You turned it off,” she said, demanding the truth while she still held onto the trust he’d worked so hard to gain from her.

“What makes you think I turned it off?”

“I was talking to Bess, one of the screens came up blank. I thought it was broken so I checked it out. The data log shows it’s not broken, it’s off, and you were the one to turn it off.” His hands went to the back of his head, and she could tell he was cursing the day she was taught how to use the manor security system. “Why would you do that unless you wanted to…” She couldn’t bring herself to make the accusation.

“Unless I wanted to what?” he barked, storming to the end of the bed and grabbing her shoulders to haul her to the absolute edge. “Don’t stop there, lay it out for me. What do you think I’ve got cooking? You think I’m screwing around on you?”

“Are you?” she asked, sorry that Caine had managed to get in her head. Too many things were stacking up that suggested she should be suspicious. Maybe she wasn’t great at the mission stuff, but as a woman, she could tell when her boyfriend was hiding something from her.

He gritted his teeth behind the pinch of his narrow lips. Praying he’d say something to alleviate her worries that could explain the inconsistencies, her heart bounced from her throat to her gut, but she made herself seal her lips and wait.

Brodie tightened his grip on her shoulders until she winced at the pain of his power. Opening her lips to release the gasp of pain, she tried to twist herself out of his hands, but he was too strong. With a brutal thrust, he threw her body away from his, tossing her so far that she landed on the pillows.

Striding away from the bed, he went to the window. “If that’s what you think then yeah, I am,” he said. Grabbing the chair from the desk, he turned it around to straddle it, leaning on the back so he could look out the window across to Kahlil’s location.

Releasing the tension in her body, her arms fell and she straightened her legs. That didn’t sound right. Brodie’s sulk was infuriating and it solved nothing. Caine might not have her best interests at heart, but he’d posed a possibility she couldn’t ignore. She had every right to question her love on it.

If something else was going on here, she deserved to know. The Kindred deserved to know. He had enough integrity that if he wanted to end his relationship with her Brodie would have revoked her clearance for the manor and told her to clear out. He wouldn’t have given her the floor to direct their latest mission.

Except Brodie hadn’t been forthcoming about why he’d involved Cuckoo in their lives and this latest development was too significant for her to allow him to continue being evasive.

Setting him in her sights, she pulled her legs up to cross them as she took her weight off the headboard. “You turn around and look me in the eye when you lie to me,” she asserted and awaited his next move.

Slowly, he turned until only one of his forearms was left on the chair back. “What makes you think I’m lying?”

Without expression or nuance, she matched his intensity. “I’m pretty much all the woman you can handle, Rave,” she said. “I keep you plenty busy.” His brow rose before he returned his stare to the window. “She was the woman, the one who got between you and Caine.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbled.

“Art told me there was a woman…” Zara braced for his reaction to the next truth. “Caine told me it was her.”

Brodie had to be wondering if there was any person who didn’t reveal the secrets of his past to her, but he didn’t react as strongly as she’d anticipated. “He tell you that in front of Saint or when he had the gun on you?” he muttered like he didn’t care which of the answers were correct.

“No,” she said, because neither of them were true and she wouldn’t hide her encounter with his foe. “Five minutes ago in the alley downstairs.”

This time when he turned to glimpse her, he wasn’t passive or casual and despite her heart being on overdrive again, she didn’t blink. “Motherfuck,” he grumbled. In one fluid motion, he stood up, hooked the back of the chair in one hand, and spun to hurl it across the room into the opposite wall where it splintered in a thunderous crash before its pieces scattered on the floor. “Motherfuck!”

“Calm down,” she said, soothing with open hands as she climbed onto her knees. “Nothing happened.”

“Nothing?” Flying at the bed, he grabbed her to haul her off and up against him. “We didn’t even know if the motherfucker was still alive. Now we know he’s alive and tailing you again!”

“Rather me than you,” she said.

She didn’t want Caine around to rile her lover because that was what he wanted, and he was managing to do it by using her as the conduit. Questioning whether she should have confessed, Zara knew she could only be honest. She couldn’t ask for it and not return it.

“Where the fuck you come up with that logic?” he asked, shaking her. “If he’s on you, then you’re in danger. And when you’re in danger and I’m not there…”

“What?” she asked. His long fingers dug into her upper arms, and he held her so close and so high that her forearms were squashed between their two bodies. Opening her hands, she stretched her fingers to stroke what she could reach of his jaw. “It pisses you off?” That much was obvious from the shattered furniture.

For the longest time, he searched her, but she didn’t know what to give him, didn’t know what would relieve his torture. He came lower. “I’m doing this because of him,” he hissed. “I called her in to take over at CI because of him.”

“I don’t understand.”

He exhaled. “I’m sick of him on my tail, on your tail. Before you, it didn’t matter, he was just a bug on the windshield that I could flick off if he got too annoying. But he’s a sick fuck, baby, and as long as he’s around, I can’t let you out of my sight. I’ve been stupid to think I could, and tonight proved that.”

There was pain in his words, though it was difficult to decipher from the anger that crackled in them. “We didn’t know if he was alive, just like you said. We could never have predicted—”

“The guy has more lives than a cat. We didn’t have confirmation, but I was sure he was still fucking out there, waiting to cause shit. I can’t have that. I can’t have him on our backs. It puts you in danger. I wanted it done, over. Meesh is a surefire way to force his hand.”

“You’re using Cuckoo to draw him out?”

“The fucker doesn’t come for me like a man, he’s resorted to stalking my woman because he knows you’re the way to get to me. All I need is ten seconds with eyes on. One if I have my weapon in my hand.”

“So, the next time I see him, I should shoot him?”

“Oh no,” he exhaled and perverse amusement twisted his features. “I want that pleasure all to myself.”

“Does that mean you want him to think you’re sleeping with Cuckoo? Is that how you’ll tempt him out?” The plan had sort of backfired if she was the one curious about the relationship and Caine was still on her tail.

“This is my problem, and I’m gonna deal with it my fucking way. The camera isn’t off, it’s routed to my phone because these crazies are my problem.”

So he’d been keeping things from her, saying nothing to the others, because he was embarrassed or carrying some kind of guilt about what had gone on with Caine and Cuckoo in the past. “You don’t have to deal with anything alone. You’re Kindred,” she soothed. “How long have you been thinking this way about Caine?”

A knock on the door saved him from answering the question. It was the same combination of knocks used on their motel room door during the last mission, so she knew the person on the other side would be Tuck. Brodie went to the door, the men exchanged mumbles, and she sat on the bed expecting both men to come in.

But when the door closed, Brodie came back alone. “Where’s Swift?” she asked.

Brodie took the large black bag to the window and hunkered down to open it and pull out the kit. Laying the scope and other pieces out, he zipped it and kicked the bag under the desk, though it wasn’t empty.

Next, he pulled the couch out and across the worn carpet to the window, which was high enough that the couch wouldn’t be visible from outside on its own. Once he had the scope setup, he closed the curtains over the window, just letting the lens peek through the other side. Pulling off his jacket, he tossed it onto the desk beside the couch and sat down to put his eye to the scope.

Swift wasn’t here and she didn’t know if he was coming back. Brodie didn’t want to answer more questions about Caine and Cuckoo, so she’d give him time to calm down. The furniture wouldn’t withstand another outburst. Leaving the bed, she went to the couch, staying behind it to reach over and squeeze his shoulders. Bending lower, she massaged his neck and down his arms. On their return, she curled her fingers to scrape her nails upward.