Raven (Kindred #1) (27 page)

Sikorski was unsatisfied. “If an unhappy customer did not cause the damage, was it an industrial accident?”

“We are investigating,” Grant said. “CI is a multinational with a superb health and safety record. I lost good men at that facility and I assure you that I will find out what happened to them… exactly what happened.”

Being at the foot of the table, she couldn’t see the expressions on each of the bidder’s faces, which were turned to Grant at the opposite end of the table. Grant looked at every man individually with a stern frown that almost accused them of knowing more than they were revealing.

Sikorski was the first to rise, with Kahlil and Sutcliffe not too far behind. Once on their feet their goons joined them. They waited half a beat and then departed in one drove with Grant bidding the three main men farewell with a handshake.

Watching him treat this like any other business meeting and these men like clients who should be respected, flummoxed her to the point of putting her in a daze. These men were terrorists with nefarious intentions. Grant was not only supporting those intentions, but he was facilitating and accelerating them.

Disregarding the support crew she had in her ear, when the door to the conference room closed, she and Grant were alone, but the atmosphere crowded the place until she almost choked with claustrophobia.

“Well, that didn’t go as badly as I expected,” Grant said and touched his palm to his temple for a brief moment. “I thought they’d push for a delivery date. But until I find out what happened… I don’t know what we can salvage or how long it will take us to produce more devices. With limited resources… Anyway… sorry, that’s not your concern. What do you think?”

When he turned, she got her first good look at him. The wide set of his hopeful brows and the looseness in his jaw baffled her. Taking a moment to process, Zara curled her lip over her teeth to bite out her frustration.

“What do I think? What do I think?” Her outrage gained momentum. “I can’t support this,” Zara said, thrusting away from the table to storm over to him.

His brows fell until the harsh slices altered his expression into anger, indicating he hadn’t expected her to have this reaction. Grant didn’t shrink or apologize. “Zara, you have to understand—”

“I can’t,” she said, stopping a couple of feet from him. “You’re talking about murder on a huge scale. Why would you believe that this is a good idea? How could you have instigated—”

“The technology could be used for so many purposes,” he said, gesturing with his hands. “People have died for this. People have to see what it’s capable of. It’s the only way anyone will take it seriously.”

She couldn’t believe these excuses anymore. “You’re trying to downplay what just happened, but I was here, Grant. You’re going to be party to murder and for what? Money? Is that what this is about?”

“No!” he objected and stormed past her toward the top of the table. “We have always been a pioneering firm and forward planning is key to keeping us on top. The world is changing, Zara. We’re becoming segregated by ideology. In the future, countries won’t exist as we recognize them today. We at CI have to align ourselves with a purpose.”

Unable to believe her ears, she dipped her chin forward. “Align ourselves with a purpose,” she murmured, in disbelief. “You mean you want to get into bed with these people? This is about more than money and investment in the future… you want to get into the war game.”

Still adamant, he gestured with a stern hand. “I want us to be decisive. I want people to know what CI stands for. I don’t want polished soundbites and politically correct ad campaigns. I want to take action and after this, no one will doubt that the CI giant can make changes in the world on a grand scale.”

Shaking her head, some of her gusto dispersed into disappointment. There was a time she would have walked through fire for this man. She had built him up, respected him, believed in him. “I can’t believe you’re saying this,” she whispered.

He softened his posture and his expression but his words were as vehement. “I have to prove that this will work. All my father cared about was his damn company and his misguided morals.”

“Misguided?” she said, finding some starch to bolster her. This was not a time to be shocked and meek, this was a time to stand up and push back against a harmful force. It had just never occurred to her that she could be working under a man who was so unethical. “Your father wanted to protect people. He wanted to build machines that would help people, not hurt them.”

“And I will not be limited by his lack of vision. The world is changing, Zara, and if you can’t see that then you’re as narrow-minded as he was. People like Sutcliffe and Kahlil or Sikorski are the future customers of our company. Have you seen the state of our economy, of the global economy? Governments can’t afford our products and they’re cutting the budgets of those who can. We have to look at reality and stop pretending that we live in this utopian world that doesn’t exist!”

“Is this their ideology? Or yours?” she asked, approaching the table again. “You sound like… this kind of rhetoric… Grant, the security services hunt down people like you.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head and slamming a hand to the laptop. “I want to work for the benefit of the world and no one can deny that there are people who need to be stopped before they come for us. How will you feel if you walk away from this and next month a hundred people die in a horrific attack?”

Widening her eyes, she lifted her hands. “That’s exactly what I’m worried about!” He didn’t appear to understand her perspective. With her hands opened towards herself at shoulder height, she beseeched him as she walked closer. “People will die, Grant, civilians will die. If you put something like that out into the world, you can’t take it back. If you give it to these people then they will use it and you can’t direct how they do that.”

“You don’t understand,” he muttered like he was disappointed by her lack of foresight. “I want to hurt those who call us infidels and disrespect any religion except their own. We have to fight back. Our government’s hands are tied. We’re fighting an inferno with a bucket and spade. We need the ocean, Zara. I want to be the ocean.”

“The ocean,” she sighed.

Western nations had been attacked without notice and their civilians killed in unwarranted attacks. Few would argue that those transgressions weren’t atrocious. The world was facing a new age where individuals could operate under their own volition in acts of war without the support of their governments. But those misdeeds didn’t justify others taking the law into their own hands.

“You don’t understand,” he murmured again and his shoulders sagged until his hands landed on the table.

Releasing the tension in her shoulders, her arms fell to her sides. “No, I don’t. You have to stop this, Grant and until you do…”

Rising from his position bent over the table, his scowl intensified. “What?” he asked. “Until I do, what?”

Shaking her head, she was surprised at how emotional she felt about what she was going to say. “Until you do, I’m not coming back… if you want someone to fuel this insanity then you better keep looking. It’s not going to be me.”

“Now, Zara, just wait a minute.”

“No,” she said, backing toward the door when he started to come toward her. “I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t be a part of this.”

Turning around, she hurried to the door and got out of there as fast as she could without looking back. Her reaction hadn’t been a part of any plan and she hadn’t expected to end this day by quitting her job. Putting one foot in front of the other, she concentrated on the deep carpet that wasn’t conducive to an upset person who was walking in high heels. She got to the elevator and pressed the call button about five times.

Those in her ear were silent. At least she couldn’t hear them through the noise ringing in her ears. She felt like she was listening to a car alarm while submerged in water and she just couldn’t focus. The elevator came and she went inside, but she had to blink at the buttons for a few seconds before registering which one to press.

When the doors closed, she let herself relax on an exhale, and opened her arms to support herself on the rail at the back of the elevator. Closing her eyes, Zara couldn’t remember the plan. There had been talk of what to do if everything went wrong, but none of what to do if everything went right.

Though she couldn’t fathom how what had happened could be construed as right by any measure. What she really needed to do was to go into the restroom, wash her face, and give herself a good shake. But she didn’t want her audience to know how rattled she was, so she kept going.

On getting out of the hotel, she stormed down the block while fishing in her ear to remove the tiny piece of tech linking her to the team. Tipping her head to make sure it didn’t get lost, she peeled the thin transparent film from her ear and pressed it into her palm. Quelling her urge to toss it aside, she kept it because she didn’t know how much it was worth or if it could be traced.

Replaying what had gone on tonight, she got mad when she came out of her daze and began planning her next move. Grant wasn’t willing to listen to her and she would be no use to the Kindred now that she’d quit her job. But that didn’t mean she was going to bow her head and forget what she’d learned.

Half a dozen blocks away from the hotel, she began to think about hailing a cab. Her daze was wearing off and sense was coming back, if she walked the couple of miles to her apartment, her shoes would end up hurting her feet, and she didn’t need pain on top of everything else.

Just before she stepped off the sidewalk to cross an alley, the roar of a motorcycle sounded. But paying little heed to it, she kept on moving, that was until the vehicle came in to her peripheral vision. It roared forward and stopped right in front of her. Taking her gaze from the front tire blocking her route, she saw that Brodie was the rider, and this encounter was no accident.

“Baby, you’re a natural,” he said with a lopsided smile that made her want to slap him.

Finding that her anger had not entirely receded, she growled. “Get your bike out of my way.”

Either he ignored her mood or he didn’t care, because he carried on without addressing it. “The guys are heading back. We have a debrief. It’s time to go home.”

“I am going home, back to my apartment,” she said and tried to back off.

But while still straddling the bike, he lunged toward her to hook his solid arm around her waist. He hauled her close and held her against his thigh so she was near enough for a kiss.

His breath heated her cheek. “That place isn’t safe for you tonight. Only one place you’ll be safe tonight, baby, and that’s on your back under me.”

Grinding her teeth, Zara didn’t want her fury to explode in this public arena. “Let go of me,” she murmured.

“You’re pissed,” he said and his smugness wasn’t concerned. “Atta girl… use it.”

Bending forward, he pressed his face into her hair and tried to kiss her neck. But she tilted her head toward him to refuse his mouth access. Slapping her palms onto his leather jacket, Zara shoved at him enough that his arms and expression loosened, but he didn’t actually let her go.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” she demanded, using the anger as he’d suggested. “I can’t believe I ever listened to anything you had to say. You were there tonight. Did you hear the same thing I did? Those men are dangerous and they plan to level the world. How dare you expect me to go anywhere with you! You want to know where I’m going? To the cops! As soon as I heard what this was about I should’ve gone to the authorities to let them deal with it. But I didn’t, I got swept up by you and by this idea of vigilantism and adventure, like I could make some kind of goddamn difference. People have already died and maybe—”

“What?” he snapped, echoing her mood. “The cops could’ve saved them? Those guys were crooks, all of ‘em. You go to the cops now and what are you gonna tell them? You have no evidence, not one shred, and you won’t have anyone to back up your story. You’ll sound like a nut!”

Undeterred, she pushed her shoulders back. “Better a nut with a clean conscience than a crook with a guilty one.”

With his own anger, Brodie argued with her. “You go to the cops now and that’s it, you’re out. Grant won’t take you back. You’ll lose our protection. And you’ll become enemy number one to every man you met tonight. How long do you think you’ll last out there by yourself?”

“Better dead than useless,” she said, smacking the earpiece onto his leg then reaching around to unfasten the diamonds. He flicked the earpiece away but stuffed the diamonds into his pocket after she handed them over.

“The ear piece begins to breakdown once it’s deactivated,” he said. “It uses your body heat as a power source.”

She didn’t care about how anything worked anymore. Zara just wanted to go back to her mundane life. “You can take down the cameras you have watching my apartment too.”

Narrowing his eyes, the snarl returned to his voice. “We’re a little busy trying to save civilization,” he said. “Call your cable guy for tech support.”

Shaking her head, she refused to feel guilty. “You have no right to be angry at me. I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do,” she said.

“I didn’t ask you to abandon the team,” he said, his voice growing huskier.

Distraught and disoriented, she didn’t know what to think anymore. “Your team… they’re your team, not mine. When you’re through and I’m useless to you, you’ll move on… they’re your team,” she said and let her gaze fall to the thick breadth of his thigh wrapped in dark blue denim.