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“Am I?” Zara asked, turning her wrist toward him to display her watch. “If you don’t believe me, you can believe her.”
Pressing play on her watch, she let Cuckoo’s words fill the room. “And he’s pathetic, serious self-esteem issues. He believes that I think more of him for being so ridiculous. He honestly thinks we have some kind of relationship, that I value him.”
Zara’s response was on the audio too. “But you don’t. He’s worthless to you.”
“His worth is what he tells me about Raven’s life…” Zara pressed stop and waited for Caine’s reaction. Some of his arrogance receded, and his frown grew deeper.
“Let me see that,” he said, holding out a hand.
They were half a room apart and Kahlil had told her not to move, so after she unfastened the watch, she held it toward him. “It doesn’t serve my purpose to run your errands,” Kahlil said, the gun loose in his hand at his side as he peeked out the door.
“Yes, it does,” Zara said. “If we can make Caine see that the woman who stole your product is not the woman he believes she is, he’ll be more inclined to be helpful. He knows where Cuckoo is going.”
“Why do you call her Cuckoo?” Kahlil asked, and he must have seen her point of view because he came to her and took the proffered timepiece.
“Because she’s insane,” Zara said, moving down from the stair to sit on the dirty floor with her spine against the wall and her legs stretched out in front of her pointing at Kahlil and Caine. “And because she tries to steal the nests of others.” She might not have tried that when she was given the name, but she had McCormack Manor in her sights these days, and that was Zara’s nest, not hers.
Kahlil bent to give Caine her watch. The stalker reached up, but instead of grabbing the watch, he grabbed Kahlil’s gun hand and drove something into Kahlil’s leg that made him scream and release the weapon. Kahlil staggered back and holding one ankle, he hopped then fell to his ass.
“What did you…?” she exclaimed. Caine’s smug smile was back, and he held up two watches, hers and Kahlil’s. She gasped. “You stole his watch.”
“You saved my life. I let him get the gun so I could get the watch,” Caine said and turned Kahlil’s watch to show that the crown was missing. “You were right, there was a needle in there.”
A needle loaded with poison that was now coursing through Kahlil. Panic and desperation flitted over Kahlil, but there was nothing any of them could do. She had a cell phone and could call a hospital, but she would have to make a break for it first. Surging onto her feet, she was planning to make a run for it when Caine pulled himself up to sit against the door, with the gun pointed at her.
She stopped. Kahlil didn’t care about the gun now that he knew he was dying. “We’ve been here before,” she said, familiar with being at this end of Caine’s barrel. “You’re not going to shoot me.”
The pain must have numbed because Caine’s smile reached pleased. “You’re my hostage now.”
“But you want Cuckoo to get away, you don’t need me. If I go, Raven’s not coming back here. You can get yourself help, go to a hospital. There’s no reason for you to keep me—”
“I have to keep you. But you have a reason to stay,” Caine said.
At first, she was unsure what he meant, and then he threw Kahlil’s watch to the other side of the room away from them all and turned his attention to hers. If he played that recording and believed Zara’s version, then he might be willing to help her track down Cuckoo. She did have to stay.
As he rewound and began to listen, she observed anger and frustration and shame as they crossed his face. He had to already have suspicions about Cuckoo’s motives for maintaining her relationship with him to be this open about the chance he’d betray her. That Zara had warned him about the poison was another bonus.
Kahlil tried to get up, fumbled, then fell, rolling onto his stomach. He wretched, but used his elbows to drag himself forward and out the door. Caine didn’t even look up, but Kahlil didn’t matter to him. Caine had wanted his gun back, and now that he had it, Kahlil was no threat.
Zara knew how protective a man could be of his weapon, and Caine was no exception. He listened to the recording all the way to the end. When it was finished, he just sat there staring down at it.
Seeing him broken didn’t make her feel good. Her sorrow over his heartache was limited though, because Zara was more interested in where Cuckoo was and how she could intercept her. While he sat there holding her watch, staring at the concrete, she crept over and he didn’t lift the gun to threaten her. Crouching at his side, she used what strength she had to rip the shoulder seam of his long-sleeved tee shirt. Looping it around his thigh, above the wound, she tied it as tight as she could then sat back.
“I’m sorry,” Zara said, because it seemed like an appropriate response. “She’s a bitch.”
“Yeah, but she’s good,” he muttered. “I’ve been working for her for so long, I thought we had something. But this time, being with her again, in the same room, I knew something wasn’t right.”
Just as she’d suspected, Caine was questioning his partner and the job they were doing. “She left you here, I would guess that’s proof enough that she doesn’t care in the way you thought she did.”
Zara couldn’t be outright cruel, mocking him would piss him off. Not only was he holding a gun, but she was trying to win his favor. “Yeah,” he mumbled.
Testing the chance of his betrayal, she softened her voice. “Was there a plan beyond her taking what she wanted and abandoning you here?”
“Yeah, she’s got a contact coming with a boat to pick up the product from the docks. She told me to watch you, to make sure you didn’t get away.”
That wasn’t what Zara would classify as a plan. That was Cuckoo getting away without a scratch and Caine staying here to carry on reporting like a good errand boy. “Which docks?” Zara asked, treading carefully, she kept her tone gentle. “If you tell me I can—”
“She’s not carrying her cellphone, not the one you people have the number for. That one was scrambled to send you on a wild goose chase if anything went wrong. It will take you guys all day to track her, and your boys are probably miles off course.”
