Page 73 of Cuckoo (Kindred)

Hissing through her teeth at the pain of his fingers tugging on her locks, she watched Brodie’s dark determination taint his features. “You’re a dead man,” Brodie growled.

“We need the device,” she said, still holding onto Kahlil’s hand on top of her head. “You need to get it back from that bitch. We can’t trust her with it.”

“Swift,” Brodie said over his shoulder, but Tuck was already moving forward.

Tuck pulled his phone from his pocket. Caine began to laugh. Kahlil’s grip was so tight that she couldn’t lower her head to see Caine, but the sound came from the floor and with pain in his tone, he sucked in a breath.

Caine’s proud satisfaction made her sick. “You won’t find her with that damn thing,” he said. “You think we didn’t know that you’d use a tracker? Used one of your own devices I stole from you, that thing with the button that sends out a pulse.”

“The EM pulse,” Tuck murmured. “Damn, it will have fried all the circuits.”

Screwing them over pleased Caine. “Swiped it from you a while ago, knew it would come in handy.”

“They’ll have to rebuild the chips before they can use it,” Tuck said, though the Kindred knew the device was lacking key components and carrying a few additions. “I can go back to base, hack her cellphone, we can trace her signal—”

“She’ll be long gone by then,” Caine said, still pleased with himself, which showed a new level of arrogance after he’d just been shot by his own gun.

“Tick, tock,” Kahlil said. “Both of you go, find that woman, bring me my product.”

“Go,” Zara said. “He can’t hurt me or he’ll lose his leverage.”

“I’ll snap his neck now,” Brodie said, and the precision of his focus rivaled Maverick’s sight.

“I’ll shoot her and when she hits the deck, I’ll kill you,” Kahlil said. “Maybe your other lady friend wants to do business.”

Cuckoo wanted to do business that would suit her andonlyher. Knowing that Kahlil would be unsuccessful in coercing Cuckoo was little consolation to Zara because he’d only find that out after killing all the present Kindred members.

“Go,” Zara said. “Find her. Bring her ass here.”

Kahlil backed away from the door until they were at the bottom of the stairs. “You’ve got one hour. If I don’t hear from you, this woman dies.”

TWENTY-ONE

Tuck went out the door so fast, onlookers may have believed the building was on fire. Brodie was slower, much slower, and seemed pained to take his eyes from her. But they couldn’t say goodbye or reassure each other, Zara just had to hope that they would succeed.

Tuck’s bike started as Brodie crossed the threshold and entered the alley. No one inside said anything else until both bikes sped away.

“You can let me go now,” Zara said to Kahlil. “Caine doesn’t have a weapon, and he wouldn’t risk his life for me.”

Kahlil’s grip did loosen and after a few more seconds of considering it, he shoved her at the bottom stair and marched to the door. “You stay there,” he said to her and took up position against the doorframe.

Caine was lying on the floor in front of the door. It was his body that prevented it from closing. The dark stain on his thigh wasn’t huge, so she guessed Kahlil had missed hitting anything important, but the trickling stain did indicate that the wound was still open.

“You’re some kind of idiot, Caine, you know,” Zara said, rubbing the back of her head and trying to finger comb her matted locks.

“You shut your mouth,” Caine said, pressing a hand to his leg while he tried to better his position by shuffling on the floor.

Zara wasn’t going to let it go. Cutting in on a deal going down was one thing, doing it for a woman who ridiculed you was another. “She’s using you. You think that you’re some kind of team? She took what she wanted and left you here to get shot. What does that say about how much she cares about you?”

The squint of pain he wore didn’t lessen, and he pressed harder on his wound. “She cares. If she knew—”

“What?” Zara asked, pulling her legs up and wrapping her arms around them. “She would come back for you? She would care for you? No, she wouldn’t. She wants what you can give her, she thinks you’re an idiot. She thinks you’re pathetic.”

Pissing him off and telling him the truth were favors. Caine should be more grateful. “No, she—”

“Don’t believe me?” Zara asked. “She told me everything, about how you and she were a thing, but she dumped you for Raven. She told me how you got your scar and how she didn’t care about you until Raven left her. She’s using you to monitor him, and she laughs about your dedication to her.”

His focus rose from his wound, and the squint became a scowl. “No, you’re wrong,” Caine said.

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