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Kahlil wanted the meeting, and she wasn’t in contact with Brodie or Tuck. The alternative was to turn him down flat, but that didn’t make sense to her. Then he’d just be a threat and out in the world pissed at them while holding onto a valuable piece of information about Brodie’s past.
They had to agree to sell Game Time to Kahlil, doing that would give them answers about Future’s Hope. They might even get the chance to see Sikorski up close. If they did, and they were in a remote enough location, all of their enemies could be taken out in one fail swoop.
“You know I broke up with my girlfriend,” Tuck said.
She snapped out of her daze to see him peering over the top of his laptop at her. The glow from the screen lit up his face in this darkened space, and she wondered what time it was. There were no windows in the security room, hence how it stayed so secure and was always so dark. Light from the monitors and a muted blue light above the door were the only sources of illumination. There were florescent overheads, but she’d never seen them on.
“Hmm?” she asked because she hadn’t been following. He could have been talking this whole time, and she wouldn’t have the first clue what he’d said because she’d been so caught up thinking about Brodie.
“Kadie,” he said. “God, even saying her name hurts.” He didn’t sound hurt, a bit wistful maybe, but she guessed he was trying to make a point from his shrewd look. “I was in love with her. I am in love with her. But I broke up with her because it was best for her. Giving up on what I wanted was the only way to make sure that she could have a happy future. That she could have any future.”
Not so long ago, she had told Tuck if he wanted to talk that she would be an available ear for him. They were alone now, in a dark room without any threats around, so she guessed that he was taking advantage of the offer. She’d been slouched down in her chair with her legs stretched out beneath the table. But she sat up straight to show she was interested and listening.
“And now you regret that decision?” she asked. “You know where she is, go and get her. Even if she’s dating some other guy, I guarantee he won’t be better than you. She’ll dump his ass on the side of the road if you come riding up the street beside her on your bike.” She shrugged and tried a smile. “If not, there’s always Maverick.”
He whispered out a sort of laugh and put his elbows on the table. “That wasn’t my point. I’m talking about you and Rave.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t gleaned that. For most of the night, her head had felt like it was filled with water. To understand what she’d been reading, she’d had to read it several times before the information filtered in. Scrunching her brow, she tried her best to focus. “You think I should dump him so he can have a future? Or he should dump me?”
He smiled. “No one should dump anyone. I’m saying, I had to make a choice. And it’s not a choice you two have to make. I envy you guys.”
They were lucky, and it broke her heart that Tuck had to sacrifice his chance of happiness to stay true to the Kindred. “You could’ve brought Kadie inside,” Zara said. “Brodie would let her stay here with us. You already have your own bedroom, and she’d be safe here.”
“I don’t think Brodie will let anyone else into the manor,” Tuck said, projecting a flavor of amusement. “Sometimes I think he’d kick you and me out if he could.”
Except he wouldn’t because he’d allowed them both to maintain their role and their clearance for all things manor related when he was languishing in a pit of grievous despair. If they got through that, then they would get through anything. She was about to say that she’d persuade Brodie to let Kadie live at the manor if that was what Tuck wanted. But flashes from their encounter in the kitchen before he left came back to her and dejection swamped her.
“You’re right,” she said. “We shouldn’t make decisions about this house. It’s nothing to do with either of us.”
“I knew it,” he muttered. “I knew there was something wrong. You women, you just get this air about you. I don’t know why you can’t come out and say it.”
“Say what?”
“That something’s pissing you off,” Tuck said.
“Nothing is pissing me off.”
“Sure it is. You’ve got that same look on your face that you did when I yelled at you in the hotel. Is it Brodie? Did you guys fight?”
There was no point in lying about it because he would hear what happened eventually, if not from her then from Brodie. She didn’t know when or how they did it, but the two men managed to convey vital information to each other, even in times she’d swear they hadn’t seen or spoken to each other. Maybe they did it by email… but that would leave a trail both of them were smart enough to avoid.
“I don’t even know what happened,” she said, cupping her forehead in her hands. “I told Kahlil that we would do the deal, that we would trade Game Time for the money and the story. I know I shouldn’t have made the decision just like that, but I thought we were halfway there anyway. Brodie had been so shut off about it, and then we had that party outside and talked about it in here. I thought we were going to do it and I mean, why shouldn’t we?” She got up and Tuck didn’t even try to respond, just folded his arms and twisted his chair to watch her walk toward the monitor bank and back to him. “Kahlil isn’t going to give up easily, and the last thing we need is him going to crazy Cuckoo. If we can get him and his boss out in the open then Raven and Maverick can take care of business, right?”
“It’s not quite as easy as that,” Tuck said. “If Kahlil’s alone, sure, but if he’s working for Sikorski, you can’t just kill a crazy Russian mob boss and not expect to draw attention to yourself. We don’t want his people on our asses, they have a long fucking memory.”
That took some of her gusto, she put her hands on her hips. “Did I fuck up? Are we consideringnotusing Game Time as a lure?”
“We discussed it. Even if we can’t take out Kahlil or his boss, we could put a tracker in the device and let the rats take it back to their maze.”
“We talked about that before with Sutcliffe. It’s dangerous. To do that, we’d have to risk them arming Game Time and if anything went wrong…”
“You think there would be a problem with my software?”
“No,” she said, typical that a man would get defensive about his skills. “I mean, we thought that Sutcliffe would lead us to his den, and then he told me that they were planning an overseas war. You’ve no idea how scared I was then, he could have taken Game Time to an airfield and put it on a plane… What kind of range does your tech have? And if they have their own tech people who take it apart or look for trackers, we’re doomed.”
“We can give them a dummy device,” he said. Leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, he put his plan together. “We take out the guts of the machine. Leave in the tracker and the kill switch. We’ll pack in some explosives, a fuse, turn Game Time into a good old-fashioned bomb.”
“A bomb?”
