Page 33 of Cuckoo (Kindred)

It was her turn to laugh. If Brodie walked into this alley and saw that, Caine’s life would be over before either of them knew he was there. “You think I’m that desperate to know? The only thing that would get you is suicide by Raven.”

He began moving again and got closer than she’d like him to, but he kept on coming until he was in her personal space. “I’d prefer it by Swallow,” he murmured.

Intimidation was his dominant field, and he knew how to exploit any situation. She was dressed like a whore and so he treated her like one. Sex wasn’t something he’d requested from her before. He took the setup and used it to his advantage, probably banking that she would feel uncomfortable in her appearance, so he promoted her self-consciousness to increase her discomfort.

She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “What do you want, Caine?” she asked, matching his assured stare with her own. “You pop up when it’s inconvenient, but you also pop up when you want something. What is it this time?”

“Just wanted to let you know I was around. I’m sure you were worried about me.”

“Beside myself,” she said, but she hadn’t given him a second thought after leaving him in Sutcliffe’s place with Leatt.

“And I wanted to tell you that…” She’d never seen him hesitate, but he did it now. For half a beat, there was something human in the way he averted his eyes.

“Tell me what?” she asked and took a hand to his elbow, which snapped him out of whatever held him back.

Ripping his arm away, he retreated. “You’ll never match up to her in his eyes,” he said and smiled just before he stepped into the shadow that had delivered him. “Just like I could never match up to him.”

Searching for meaning in what he said, it took her a few seconds to put the pieces together, and when she looked up, she couldn’t see any flicker of movement. Cuckoo. Art had told her that Caine’s feud with Raven was rooted in a situation involving a woman. Caine wanted her, but she didn’t want him. Cuckoo.

The woman, who Brodie had just brought into their lives, was the whole reason that these men hated each other. If there was ever a time for Caine to snap, this was it. Brodie was happy with a new woman but had still managed to get the old girlfriend to jump on his command—the old girlfriend Caine no doubt still pined for.

The situation was already complicated enough, but Caine was a grenade with its pin pulled. He had to know that Cuckoo was back in their lives and his warning was either in sympathy or in hate. Either way, another explosive variable had just been added to this mission’s unbalanced equation.

ELEVEN

“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?”

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