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These words were no longer cocky, but that was understandable given that he’d just been told what he thought was fact was fiction. Cuckoo had used him and made a fool of him for years, and he was being confronted by this fact while in an enemy camp.
Resting a hand on his arm, she made the connection before she pushed. “Tell me where she is, Caine, show her that you’re not her bitch anymore.”
“You won’t be able to stop her alone,” he said. Being shot meant he wouldn’t be going anywhere with her.
That would be the next concern, getting the location was number one. “Tell me where.”
Drawing in a breath, he lifted his chin and although he wasn’t smug, he was certainly sure of betraying the woman that had led him on. “Atlas.”
“I’ll call an ambulance,” she said as she strode toward him. “They’ll take care of you and Kahlil.”
Caine wasn’t bothered. “If he’s not already dead, I’ll deal with him. We’ve got a car in the street, blue sedan, take it, the keys are in it,” Caine said. “I’ll look after myself, you just stop that bitch from winning.”
Caine’s venom had a new target, and Zara knew he held a grudge. There was no time to tend to anyone, but he was right about Kahlil, it seemed, because when she dashed out into the alley, there he was lying on his face, unmoving.
Running to the end of the alley, she sought out the car and jumped in to get moving. It was fitting that they were going back to where they started, and that could be why Cuckoo chose this spot. She’d hated Art and what he’d done to her relationship with Brodie.
Triumphing on the site of Art’s demise would please Cuckoo. It was also a functional space, abandoned, far from anything, and with direct access to the water. If she had someone picking up her and the product, they could do it there and have no interference.
Calling Brodie got her diverted to voicemail, as he was probably driving, or in a battle with Cuckoo already. Zara left a message to tell him what had happened and where she was going. She couldn’t waste time by waiting, so she left Tuck a similar message and just hoped that the guys picked up their messages before they went to whatever bogus site Cuckoo’s scrambled phone sent them to.
One positive thing about Cuckoo picking this spot was that she knew it and the others would too. Because there was nothing else around, the sound of a car would announce her arrival, so Zara parked on the docks, away from the warehouse and made her way to Atlas on foot, doing her best to stay out of the way.
Atlas was there, just as it had been before, with its large, faded and peeling sign above the door. If she hadn’t known it was here, it would have taken her a long time to pinpoint this warehouse as Cuckoo’s location.
But Cuckoo was here. Zara pressed herself into the wall outside the warehouse and glanced inside. The van was parked in the middle of the space. Cuckoo was at the rear of the vehicle and was oblivious to Zara. As she twisted herself to face away again, she caught sight of the stain on the concrete floor, the stain Art had left there, the site of his demise.
She had to get inside, to get to the van and either steal it or disable the device. Game Time wasn’t small enough that it could be carried by a single person. Unless Zara could drive the whole lot away, the other option was to take advantage of the destructive force Tuck had built into it.
As soon as she saw that Cuckoo’s back was turned, Zara had to take her chance to make a move. There was no room for hesitation. She had to be decisive. Creeping into the warehouse, she did her best not to make any sound that might draw attention to her.
Cuckoo was on the phone, sauntering away from the vehicle that was parked almost in the same spot she and Grant had parked their van in. It was just farther from the wall it faced this time. Funny how things came full circle, but she couldn’t be distracted by irony.
Cuckoo was ranting about her success to whoever was on the other end of the phone. Zara knew this shipment would never reach its destination. She wouldn’t let it happen. The rear doors of the van were wide open, and closing them would draw attention to her presence. But she couldn’t risk the cargo tumbling out if she did manage to start the vehicle and drive out.
Her speculation turned out to be moot because when she got to the cab and boosted onto her tiptoes, she saw that the ignition was empty. Tiptoeing to the back of the van, she paused to examine Cuckoo, who had stopped walking, but was still talking. The woman had the keys, looped around her middle finger on the hand she was holding the phone with. No chance Zara was going to snatch and run with those.
Glancing into the cargo-hold of the van, she saw it. Game Time was here. While Cuckoo carried on her conversation with her back to the van, Zara crept inside to see if she could disable the device. The electronic kill switch would fry the circuits, and the explosives the Kindred had added would make sure that this device was nothing but smithereens of scrap metal after it was triggered.
Except the side panel of the device was open, and wires were pulled out. Caine had admitted to frying the circuits. Zara located the small black box that she knew was connected to the kill switch, but the red wire that gave it power was pulled out and she had no tools to open the panel. She was no electronics whizz either, so even if she did get it open, she was as likely to blast herself to high heaven as she was to achieve her goal.
The remote kill switch was dead. But she couldn’t just give up and go home, she could be the last line of defense, the last person to lay eyes on this machine before it was put to purpose. Exploring further, she found frayed wires and dead circuits. Cuckoo didn’t seem to have located the explosives. From what Tuck had said, they were built into the frame with a fuse connected to… hope. The gas canisters in the machine had been loaded with flammable gas, and there was a traditional fuse deliberately built in as their backup. But she’d still need a spark.
Considering how to achieve ignition, Zara slid up the panel that hid the gas bottles, and when it was off, inspiration struck her. Pulling her cell phone from her pocket, she squashed it between the two canisters then gripped the closest. Clenching her teeth, she turned the manual valve to release the gas into the air. There was no needle for her to watch to check it was working; the machine was built to be covert.
A gunshot blasted just a second before she heard the ting of metal on metal. Spinning around, she leapt out of the van to see Cuckoo slinking toward her with a gun in her hand. The first shot hadn’t hit her, so it was a warning, or the woman was a bad aim.
Turning to grab each door, Zara slammed the van doors knowing that she was concentrating the gas. She didn’t have a lot of time and needed to know that when she ordered the spark, it would be enough to combust the gas, which should ignite the explosives.
Backing away from the van, Zara’s awareness wasn’t on Cuckoo or getting shot, it was on getting away from the unstable device. With every backwards step, every second, that van was becoming a more powerful, more destructive, more lethal bomb.
Eyeing the van meant Zara wasn’t giving Cuckoo the attention she craved, but she got it when the next shot sounded, and the force of an impact threw Zara backwards onto the floor. It was pressure not pain that made her fall, but Cuckoo’s perverse laugh helped Zara understand what had happened.
The van was rigged, she had to get out of here, but pain burst through her body, and her hand moved to the source. When she looked down at her reddened hand and the expanding stain on her top, she began to panic. Blood. She was bleeding. She was shot.
Panting through the pain that grew with every drop of blood that dripped from the gunshot beneath her ribs, Zara rolled onto her front and crawled the last of the distance to the wall. Using a pipe that ran upwards, she pulled herself onto her feet.
“You just won’t quit,” Cuckoo said, leveling her gun at Zara again.
