| |
––––––––
Sunday wasn’t a day off at McCormack Manor. Zara woke up alone and after getting lost, stumbling into a couple of guest bedrooms and a poolroom, she managed to find her way to the kitchen. There she found a stream of coffee. Art kept filling her with the caffeine while teaching her how to make his spaghetti sauce that he was preparing in bulk to freeze.
Art took her down a set of stone stairs at the back of the kitchen behind a false wall, which led to a walk-in freezer, a wine cellar, and a dry store. Art loved to educate her about the house and Brodie’s history and it was obvious that he doted on his nephew.
Once Tuck was finished working out with Brodie, he swept her into the basement to give her a brief tutorial of the security system and took her fingerprints to give her clearance for the house, cars, and systems. Art ventured in to give them coffee and food before taking her on a tour of the building. There were parts of the house they didn’t venture into and he made no comment on those, so she didn’t ask.
Tuck and Art were entertaining her in the control room when Brodie stuck his head in the door and demanded that she go with him. She expected sex and was surprised when he took her to a shooting range located on the premises and proceeded to teach her how to shoot. Much as she tried to flirt, he was all business... at least until she asked him to prove his own skills, at which point she dropped to her knees. If blowing a guy while he was unloading an automatic weapon didn’t show trust, she didn’t know what would.
Waking up on Monday, she panicked when she fumbled on the bedside and read Brodie’s watch. Zara was already in the shower before she remembered that she didn’t have a job anymore.
Reality fatigued her, but she couldn’t go back to bed. Dressing in her outfit from Saturday night, she found Art in the kitchen, and wasn’t surprised to find him already pouring coffee for her when she walked in.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the mug to slurp down the bitter roast that warmed her insides.
“All dressed up, are you leaving us?” Art asked.
“I have to find a job,” she said, bending to snag her shoes from the floor behind the couch where they’d been since Saturday night. Taking them and her coffee around to the coffee table, she sat down, gulped more coffee, then put it down to bend and put her feet into her shoes.
Art came over, drying his hands, and sat in the armchair at the head of the coffee table. “Tuck and me were talking,” Art said. Curving both hands around her mug, she raised her brows in question as she drank. “You’re a good girl, smart, capable, and social, which is something the rest of us lack.”
“You do ok,” she said, finishing off the coffee then rising to head for the pot. “And you make great coffee.”
Filling her cup, she drank some more. “You’re young and beautiful, I’m not much of an inside man at my age.”
Art wasn’t disguising his flattery and she was suspicious about what he was trying to sweet talk her into. “I’m sure you’ve seduced your share of assets,” she said, coming over to sit on the couch again, feigning ignorance to his fawning because she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what he wanted.
But it turned out that Art got to the point fast. “We want you on the inside, permanently,” Art said and she put the cup on the table because she couldn’t refuse to acknowledge his request, she had to face it.
Art might want her on the inside, maybe Tuck did too. But that Brodie wasn’t the one asking her made her suspicious. “What does Brodie say to that?” she asked, wondering if Brodie knew Art was talking to her about this. “You’re talking about future missions.” Which was something Brodie had been reticent to commit to.
He softened. “You’re good for him,” Art said and moved over to sit with her on the couch to take her hand. This was about more than the job, Art was asking her to be with Brodie. “Do you like staying here?”
Withdrawing her hand, she squirmed. “Don’t pressure him,” she whispered.
“I’m not press—”
Her night in Brodie’s bed, talking to him and being with him, affirmed her desire. She wanted to pursue their connection, to further explore her growing feelings. But Brodie was accustomed to being an island, so it would take time to ease him into a relationship, she would have to be patient, which meant Art would have to be patient too.
“If you push him, I’ll lose him,” she admitted, glancing over her shoulder toward the door in fear that they’d be caught having this clandestine conversation.
Art wasn’t as nervous. “I know how to handle my nephew,” he said. “And I don’t want to pressure you, ‘cause I don’t want him to lose you... I don’t want you to underestimate how important you are, do you hear me?”
Acknowledging, and appreciating, his honesty, she nodded. “I hear you,” she muttered with a blush of discomfort.
He caught her hand again. “He needs you and he does care—”
“Art,” she said then the door opened and Brodie came in with Tuck. The two of them stopped talking to examine her and Art as their sudden silence was conspicuous.
“All good?” Tuck asked, but she didn’t look at him as he examined everyone.
“Ok,” she said, grabbing another swig of coffee. “I have to go.” Leaping up from the couch, she bypassed the furniture and snagged the back of Brodie’s neck to drag him down for a kiss.
He caught her waist and hauled her close. “Where you going?”
“I’m going home,” she said, balling her fists on his chest. “I have to get changed, haven’t you noticed that I’ve been wearing your clothes all weekend?”
“No,” he said, leaving her to go to Tuck, who was retrieving water from the fridge.
Spinning to rest her hands on the back of the couch, Zara addressed Art, but spoke so everyone could hear. “The guy who is supposed to have super keen awareness doesn’t notice when I’m wearing clothes that are ten sizes too big for me.”
Art smiled, but Brodie replied when he and Tuck were on their way back to the couch. “That’s because whenever I look at you, I see you naked. Your clothes don’t matter a fuck to me.”
Brodie rested his body weight on her, so she was forced against the back of the couch. Tuck lowered himself into the armchair.
“Women are weird about that shit, man,” Tuck said. “You should probably let her pick up a few things.”
With the permission of the other men granted, Brodie grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her in the direction of the exit. “Then I guess we’re going out. I’ve got shit to do anyway.”
Guiding her down to the garage, he pulled out the helmets for the bike then went to a second cabinet to retrieve a firearm. She had no idea what shit he had to do that involved a gun, but she was quickly learning not to ask the obvious questions because they often led to obvious answers like that he intended to harm someone.
He got on the bike and pulled her on behind him then handed over a helmet. “What should I say if the cops ever come to question me about what it is that you do?” she asked.
“We have cyanide capsules for that eventuality,” he said. “Remind me to get you one when we get back.”
Holding the helmet in front of her, ready to pull it on, she gazed down into the abyss inside it. “Oh my God,” she said.
“I’m kidding,” he said and rose to kick the bike into action. “If I go to jail one day, I go to jail... It’ll boost my street cred.”
She pulled on her helmet only seconds before he fired out of the garage. Being mixed up with men who lived on the wrong side of the law could never end well, but that didn’t put her off. The longer she hung around with them, the greater her chance of being pulled in and getting herself into trouble. They might exist in a grey area, but these were the good guys, and she was proud to be a part of this team.
––––––––
Brodie left her at her apartment without any promises of returning. Zara wasn’t worried. Their paths never diverged for long and sure enough after less than an hour of being back at home there was a knock on her front door.
With a smile, she shook her head and left the dinner table where she’d been sitting with her computer, and crossed to open the door.
“You chose not to pick—“ But her words stopped when she saw Grant McCormack on her doorstep instead of Brodie. “Grant, hi.”
“Hello, Zara. Can I come in?” Grant asked, standing as tall as ever, yet wearing a more humble expression than she’d ever seen him wear.
Hurrying back a step, she widened the gap to allow him inside. “Sure,” she said, hoping that someone at the manor was watching the camera and would prevent Brodie from coming back, or that Brodie would take a while to do whatever he was doing, so he wouldn’t walk in on this encounter.
“What can I do for you?” she asked, directing him into the kitchen. “I wasn’t expecting to see you, well... ever.”
“I came to offer you your job back. I hoped this morning when I came in that I would see you... that maybe...”
“That I had changed my mind?” she asked, pouring each of them a coffee then leading him to the dining table, where she closed her laptop and sat down. “You’re right. I was angry on Saturday night... but you have to see this situation from my perspective.”
“I do,” he said, taking the seat beside hers and lunging forward to scoop her hand into his. “But I also know you didn’t do anything rash after we parted ways.”
“Like going to the police?” she asked and almost wanted to tell him that he had his younger brother to thank for that. “I thought about it...”
“Why didn’t you go?” he asked, flattening his hand on top of hers on the table. “Was it because you thought that maybe... that you started to understand my position?”
Not even close, but she couldn’t tell him that. If she had been brought into this by Grant having never met Brodie, then she would be freaking out. She would have gone to the cops and probably been laughed out of the room because as Brodie said, she had no proof and no witnesses.
Grant would never admit the truth. She had no way to track down Sutcliffe and the others, and if Tuck was having trouble collecting evidence with his superior skills then the cops would have no chance of finding anything.
By this point in proceedings, she would have been collecting bottled water and canned food and probably buying herself a plot of land in Montana to dig herself a bunker. But meeting Brodie had changed her outlook on so much and she could see now that being close to Grant was their ticket.
Gaining inside information had been her purpose since the beginning of this. The opportunity that Grant was presenting her with served the means of the Kindred and that was where her loyalty was now. Lying to Grant was still difficult, but being honest and respectful toward him was an engrained behavior, one that she’d have to shirk if she wanted to foil the deal.
Trying to think like a Kindred member rather than a CI employee, she projected empathy as best she could. “I understand what you’re trying to do,” she said, sweeping her hand around to bring it closer to her chest trying to be subtle about putting a barrier between them. “But I don’t trust the men you’re associating with. They’re dangerous... I could tell that just by standing in front of them. Are you sure you want to deal with these men?”
“I have little choice,” Grant said. “This is not something that I... I’m no criminal mastermind.”
Taking the opportunity to separate herself from him, she slid her hand out from under his and sat back, bringing her coffee mug to her chest at the same time. “Well, at least you admit that what you’re doing is illegal. I’m glad to hear that you understand that.”
His disposition unfurled with optimistic honesty. “I want to be a part of something bigger, a part of history.”
Ensuring not to be too hasty about insinuating herself back into his confidence, she questioned him. “And you think you can right all the wrongs of the world with a device made to kill people?”
“The right people,” he said, shuffling his chair closer to hers. “You have to understand that with this device we can pinpoint its use.”
He was bullshitting her. Stating the truth, she tilted her head. “You were talking about hospitals and airports.”
“That’s grandstanding,” he said, waving a blithe hand and leaning in with his eyes intent on hers. “This could be placed in a room where we know certain people are going to be. With the press of a button, those people could be infected and they’d carry that disease back to their nests... It’s like killing termites or ants. Have you seen how exterminators work?”
“But you’re talking about people,” she said. “And you can’t guarantee that there won’t be civilian casualties.”
“In war, there is always collateral damage.”
“This isn’t war, you’re talking about execution.”
Something in his dismissive air reminded her of Brodie. They could both talk about the potential for suffering with a complete disconnection to their humanity. Brodie she could understand, he’d taken dozens of lives. As far as she knew, Grant was a stuffed shirt who had never seen any form of combat firsthand. “And haven’t governments been assassinating hostiles for decades? For centuries? We can be a part of that.”
Now she had a chance to harvest information that could prove useful to the Kindred. “What do you know about these men you’re dealing with? How did you get connected with them?”
“Kahlil is a senior member of a petrochemical company that CI has done business with for years,” Grant said. “It was during a conversation with him at a conference years ago that I learned of the existence of this device. Apparently, his superior had been in negotiations with my father regarding it. During those negotiations, my father ordered the destruction of all documentation and shut down the project. I brought it up with Frank and he had a reaction which intrigued me.”
His story pretty much matched Brodie’s, so she was confident they were both telling the truth. But it was interesting that while the older brother had seen opportunity, the younger one had seen only danger. Brodie respected his father’s reticence while Grant resented it. “If your father wanted no one to have this device, then how can you disrespect his memory—”
“I have reason to believe he died for this device.”
Brodie had made similar overtures about his parents’ boating accident not actually being an accident. “Your parents died in your father’s boat.”
“It didn’t explode on its own,” Grant said. “Certain people believed my father was the barrier to selling the device. If he was out of the picture, they thought they would get their hands on it.”
It turned out that those people were right, it had just taken longer than they might have hoped. “Shouldn’t that be enough to put you off selling it?”
Shaking his head, Grant’s lip curled and disgust consumed his expression. “I think it’s ridiculous that he left us, that he jeopardized all of our lives for a product. He and my mother paid the ultimate price. Yet, I’m the one left picking up the pieces. I had to live my life without their guidance and with the notion that my father prioritized misguided ideals over his own family...” His anger was visceral, he’d been carrying it for so long and yet it lurked just under the surface of his preened exterior.
“Grant—“
“I want to prove that his sacrifice was for nothing, that all it took was a different point of view,” he said with an insistence that clouded his decorum. “I can sell this item and make the world a better place. He lacked vision, but I can conceive of a future where CI leads the way in eradicating threats to our fundamental freedoms.”
“And then you’ll prove that you’re a better man than him, is that it?
“You think this is about pride?” he asked, leaping up out of his chair. “Maybe it is, maybe it’s about pride in myself and my ability. Pride that my father should have displayed. He could have made the negotiations work and if he had, he would be here.”
“So you’re punishing him,” she said, putting her mug down and resting her elbows on the table. “You’re never going to get even with him, Grant, he’s dead. You want to punish him because you’re angry, because you’re hurting, and I guess all of those emotions were stirred up again when you lost Frank last year.”
“My motives are irrelevant,” he said, putting a stop to her analysis and resuming his starched company stance. “I want you to come back to CI, to return to your previous role. We will never have to discuss this again.”
Pretending to consider this, she left her coffee and rose to move toward him. “With the knowledge that I have, I’m already complicit in whatever happens.” There was no avoiding her role in this charade. Grant wanted to sell Game Time and the Kindred still didn’t know where it was. They had to know when the exchange was happening so they could put a stop to it.
“You have no need to fear criminal prosecution,” Grant said. “I’ve ensured that we will be insulated.”
She didn’t doubt his skill when it came to writing up contracts. No doubt they had been written in language that implied CI was selling the device for sanctioned medical use, but she knew its intended purpose and she knew that Grant knew it too.
Spending the weekend with Brodie at the manor had given her time to process what had happened on Saturday night. She was still scared for her own safety, but was under Brodie’s protection. Without her inside at CI, near Grant, there was a chance the Kindred could be ignorant to the successful bidder’s identity and miss the exchange. They had only gotten as far as they had because she had been able to do research and report back.
The Kindred still needed someone watching Grant who had access to the information they needed to save lives. When she thought about it in terms of the potential loss of life, she saw that she had no choice and had to take the opportunity that Grant was presenting to her.
“I’ll come back,” she said, implying that she was unsure of her decision. “But I want to be a part of these negotiations. I want to see this through to the end. You need someone to be your conscience. If I’m not happy, I’m going to make sure you know it. I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret.”
“Zara,” he murmured, closing the final stretch of space to place a hand on her cheek. “It would be my honor to have you at my side. But you need to know, this is going to happen and I won’t let anyone get in my way.”
Smiling, she didn’t shrink in the face of his veiled threat. “You’re not going to let anyone hurt me and you certainly couldn’t hurt me yourself. Why don’t you let me look through the paperwork you have, maybe seeing the files on this device and your progress, will help me to understand.”
His chin rose a fraction, but he was distracted by his fingers, which began to stroke her face. “I’ll let you see everything that I have... because I trust you, Zara. And you’re right, I couldn’t hurt you... just as I believe you wouldn’t hurt me. You won’t go to the authorities because if you were going to, you would’ve done it already.”
That was true in a physical sense. But she was betraying him and he’d be hurt when that was revealed. “Did you go to Quebec yesterday?” He nodded. “What did you find?”
“Not much of anything,” he said, still caressing her face.
“There are forensic teams you could hire to look into what happened if—”
“I’ve thought about it. The circle of people who know about this deal is small. The circle of people who know and are capable of murder and destruction is smaller. I don’t need forensic technicians to tell me who did this.”
“You know who it was?” she asked and his simple smile made her shiver. “Who?”
“My brother.”
Shock hit her so hard that she had to spin away from him to hide her reaction. Returning to the table, she sat down and hooked her fingers into the handle of her mug to bring it close to her body so she could use it as a shield again, only this time it was an emotional one. “Your brother,” she whispered.
Grant came back to the table too and brought his chair to hers before he sat down. “You weren’t expecting me to say that.”
“No,” she said with a slight shake of her head. “I can honestly say that I wasn’t expecting you to say that.” Captivated by the liquid in her mug, she tried to think of how to handle this development. Brodie had promised he wasn’t culpable for the destruction in Quebec.
His forearm aligned with hers and he linked their fingers, palm to palm. “I don’t talk about him that much... I don’t talk about him at all,” Grant said while they both fixated on their joined hands. The heat of guilt made her want to silence him and confess all. But her selfish curiosity wanted to know if Grant would reveal more of the relationship that Brodie kept so secret. “I haven’t seen him for years. Once in a while I hear a whisper and I figure he’s still out there, doing what he does.”
“Which is what?” she asked, maintaining their physical link and trying not to hasten her anxious breathing.
“My father was ruled by my mother. Anything she wanted, she got. He was deeply in love with her. After they passed, we found out that it was my mother’s wish for us to live with our Uncle Arthur, her brother. I had never gotten along with the man. He was wild and intense,” he said, toying with her fingers. “But my younger brother was seduced by the adventures our uncle sold. Frank fought for me and I was left under his guardianship. My brother and uncle left the country and it was a number of years before they came back. By then, Brodie was as wild as my uncle, wilder even. He carried so much anger and I thought I understood it. I thought it was about losing our parents.”
“But it wasn’t?”
Grant breathed into the nothingness between their flush bodies and she was sure the chance for an answer had passed... then he spoke. “I think he blamed me for not going with them. I was in college by then. I was getting my MBA and was running CI almost full time as well. I was polished and educated, Brodie was... unrecognizable to me. I tried to talk to him, but we had nothing in common. We argued and... Well, Brodie had forgotten how to articulate, he was like an animal. Arthur ruined him.”
Torn between her want to comfort and her want to question, Zara remained still. “Your paths diverged.”
“Yes, exactly,” he said, sliding his fingers deeper between hers.
Unable to decide if Grant’s accusation was true or not, she had to figure out how he’d concluded that Brodie was the perpetrator. “Why would you think he would return now? Or attack you this way?”
“Because he’s become something of a vigilante. Frank and Art kept in vague touch through the years, though they kept that a secret and Frank only made the occasional cryptic reference about it. But from my understanding, Brodie learned to hunt, to fight and to kill. He’s worked in many countries and thwarted many plots. I don’t know the precise details, but I got the general sense that Frank was proud of Brodie’s life. Although I would presume it was a vicarious pleasure because Frank was as straight-laced as they come.”
She wondered if Art told Brodie about what Frank felt or if Brodie too was kept in the dark about the particulars of those conversations. “Wait a minute,” she said, having another thought. “Is that why you’re so determined to do this? So determined to make some grand mark on the world, because you believe Brodie is doing that?”
His thought about his answer before he gave it. “His life is an adventure and I would be lying if I told you I didn’t wonder what my life would’ve been like if I had gone with Art.” Parting their linked digits, he got up to stroll toward her window. “I look at my life and realize I’ve done everything as I was supposed to, everything that was expected of me. Growing up, the other kids called me ‘Saint,’ because I never misbehaved. I’ve always toed the line.”
“That’s a good thing... isn’t it?” Before Brodie, Zara had been a company gal too, but he had opened her eyes and changed her perspective on the way she lived her life.
“I think I thought that if I was the best then I could somehow match up to my father and make him proud. But he’s gone and I know now that I don't want to be like him. I don’t want to live my life buttoned up and righteous. He prioritized his ethics over the family he was supposed to love.”
Twisting in her chair to observe him looking out of her window, she rested her cheek on her hand. Grant craved adventure, just like she did for so long. It made her realize just how easy it was for a person to conceal the truth of their desires
“So you want to be like Brodie?” she asked. “You think his life is so great?”
“I think he does what he wants and doesn’t live his life constrained by rules. He does the daring things that others won’t. Art turned him into a killer. But he’s a hero as well.”
“Whose hero?” she asked. Pushing up out of her chair, she gave into the urge to go to his side and offer comfort. But with the idea that her lover could have deceived her rattling around in her mind, she needed some comfort of her own. Hurt and angry, she wanted to give Brodie the benefit of the doubt. She wouldn’t be appeased until she heard the truth and by the strength of Grant’s certainty, somehow she doubted Brodie would be making the denial she wanted to hear. “You’re building him up as this idol and yet you’ve admitted you haven’t seen him for years. He could be a villain. He could be a criminal out to serve his own agenda. Don’t do this because you’re trying to match all of your brother’s deeds with one swing. You don’t know the man he is.”
Slipping a hand onto his arm, she received no response to her proximity. “I know he’s the type of man with the means to find our secret plant. I know he works with a band of highly skilled men. And I know he would rather stop me than see me succeed. Just as I know he would rather use covert means than to face me man to man,” he said, clasping his hands at his back and staring out of her window, probably straight into the camera that fed into Brodie’s control room.
“You’re sure it’s him?” she asked.
Brodie had been out of town on a job when she’d gone over there on Friday night. He’d asserted it wasn’t in Quebec. When he and Art were making plans for the operation here, he’d said the job would be done on Saturday and they’d led her to believe he had a mission on Saturday before Grant called and revealed what had happened in Canada. If Brodie had done it, then he’d known the truth before Grant’s call to her, he’d known it all through the first night they spent together.
“You’re right about one thing, Zara. He is a ruthless man without conscience. I know that from our last meeting fifteen years ago. He lies and he deceives. There is nothing and no one who can sway him from his objectives. He would seduce and discard a person once they have served their purpose. He’s incapable of love. Incapable of delivering truth. Art trained him to follow orders and to treat people as temporary assets to be used as long as they serve his needs. Brodie will be whatever he needs to be in order to complete his task and then he vanishes into the night without so much as glancing back.”
Chilled by the idea that Grant could be describing her position, she began to try to figure out why Brodie was not more determined to find and interrogate the person or persons responsible for the attack in Quebec. The stories she had been told of their tight knit group and never letting anyone inside could be just that: stories. Tuck and Art were soldiers in arms and the three could convince a person of anything. Like that she was the only woman to have set foot in the house for twenty years.
Pondering this, she noted that Grant had turned to look at her. “If we’re going, we should probably get back to the office,” she said, having faced as many truths as she could handle for the moment. “You have meetings this afternoon.”
“Yes, of course, you’re right,” he said, shaking off his tumultuous mood.
“But we could have dinner,” she said, in need of time to process this before she probed further. “Once I’ve had a chance to look over the paperwork, I would appreciate an opportunity for us to talk about it.”
“Excellent idea,” he said, curling a hand around the ball of her shoulder. “Will you let me drive you to the office? I can bring you back after we’ve eaten.”
Her smile was her assent. After a quick change of clothes, Grant took her to work. She would have questions for her boss after reading his notes, but the questions she had for her boyfriend were stacking up too, only she had no idea when she might have a chance to ask them.
