Page 71 of Cuckoo (Kindred)

“You’ll want to let me go before Raven sees you.”

Kahlil didn’t argue, just appreciated the reminder, and let her go. Kahlil was usually cool, confident to the point of cocky, but he wasn’t as assured today.

“We agreed no weapons,” Kahlil hissed, pushing open the door that had swung shut behind them.

“He is a weapon,” she mumbled before stepping inside behind him.

Brodie and Tuck were still there against the far wall, except now there was distance between the two Kindred members. The suitcase hadn’t moved, but that didn’t surprise her. They didn’t care about the money.

“I’m satisfied,” Kahlil said.

She wasn’t sure if she should join her faction or stay with Kahlil. Weighing the advantage, she concluded that she would rather be near the door to ensure escape for her side if the need arose. Instead of backing toward the door, she took a few steps forward, deciding that she wasn’t going to give Kahlil the chance to grab her again.

So far, no one had pulled a weapon or gotten too aggressive. This was a business transaction, though not like any she’d been party to at CI. It didn’t seem to matter how often she reminded herself that these men were professionals. The image of losing Art and losing Grant kept replaying. They couldn’t afford to lose anyone else. It would devastate the team and would be the end of the Kindred. She didn’t know how they could possibly rebound from another tragedy.

“Tell us what we want to know,” she said because she wouldn’t make Brodie ask.

Kahlil took another look at each of them and began to move backwards toward the door. She feared that he planned to take off, but instead of going out, he planted his back on the wall near the doorframe.

“Your father was a stubborn man,” Kahlil said. “I was still a kid, running errands for the boss, desperate for his praise. I was working low-level security. I was a nobody. But I kept my mouth shut. I was there in the room, but not in the room. I was invisible to anyone who mattered. The boss was angry, he wanted the device, and your father said he was shutting down the project.”

“The project,” Zara said and didn’t mind turning her back on her cohorts to examine Kahlil. “You mean Game Time.”

Kahlil nodded. “Threatened the family and everything, nothing worked. Your old man was happy to let his family die, let you and your brother die, before he would let go of the device.”

If Kahlil wanted to piss Brodie off, he had to have a death wish. Brodie and Grant had a bust up over their father, and it ended their fraternal relationship. At that point, Brodie had chosen to let Grant live, but that was his brother, he wouldn’t be so kind to a non-relative.

“Watch yourself,” Zara warned, though she imagined Brodie’s expression was doing the same thing. “You’re outnumbered.”

Assessing the scene, she began to think, and Brodie must have noticed her frown when she twisted enough that he could see her profile. When Kahlil spoke, he was quickly interrupted. “I—”

“What?” Brodie asked. “Baby, what is it?”

So much for being colleagues. “He’s alone, and I think the suitcase is empty,” she said. This was wrong, Leatt wasn’t supporting him, and Kahlil wanted them to deliver Game Time for the story alone. Something smelled off.

“It is not!”

Kahlil was adamant, but when her eyes met Brodie’s, she knew who he trusted. “You lost your banker,” Brodie said, coming to the same conclusion she had. Her love became rigid in the way that always made him look like a man out of patience. “You fucking with us?”

“I’m not!” Kahlil insisted and threw a glare at her. “I wouldn’t be telling you the story if the deal was off.”

“So far I haven’t heard shit,” Brodie said. “We knew my father shut down the project and ordered everything shredded.”

“But it was Frank Mitchell!” Kahlil said, maybe as a distraction technique. “He agreed terms, he said if we got rid of your father then he would control the company.”

Shit, that was a shock that would increase Brodie’s volatility. “No,” she said, thinking about what Grant had told her about Frank’s reaction to the loss of his best friend. “Frank Mitchell was against selling Game Time in any form.”

“Not always,” Kahlil said. “He was the one who opened negotiations, and he did it in secret for months. He was convinced that he would be able to talk his friend into selling. I think that Frank’s continued pressure was what caused McCormack to snap and order all evidence of the device destroyed. That was when my boss and Frank Mitchell panicked. McCormack was putting the order through, and if the schematics were destroyed, we would have had no way to develop the device. Mitchell grabbed what he could, put a physical file together and everything digital was destroyed.”

Which explained why Tuck found nothing on the CI system when he went looking. The computer files were already obsolete, but they’d been erased several times through the years. It also explained where Grant had gotten the Game Time file from. He inherited all of Frank’s personal belongings after his death, which would’ve included the physical file.

That betrayal would’ve cut Grant deeper than it would Brodie. But it wasn’t pleasant to know one friend had betrayed another. The Kindred valued loyalty. “So, they killed McCormack Senior and his wife because… they wanted to do the deal with Frank?” she asked.

“Frank was the one who gave my people access to the boat,” Kahlil said. “He was the one who encouraged McCormack Senior to go out on the water that day. He wasn’t supposed to take his wife, Melinda, but her presence didn’t stop them from following through.”

How horrific to know that McCormack Senior’s best friend and confidante had been the one to set him up. Game Time poisoned every person and relationship it touched. Brodie was fixated on Kahlil, and his set expression told its own story. This wasn’t easy for him to hear, but these answers were going to give him closure.

Their relationship had withstood the Game Time curse, at least it had until now. With the revelations of today, they would face their biggest test yet. She had been the one to encourage him to listen to Kahlil, and depending on how he absorbed this news, they could face turbulent times ahead.

---