Cuckoo (Kindred Book 3) (18 page)

Zara smiled. “You asked him last night, didn’t you? At the meeting you’re so desperate to pretend was something more than it was. You asked him about Game Time, and he didn’t tell you anything, did he?”

“Why would you think that I—”

“Because you would never ask me for a favor, and that’s what this is,” Zara said. “You’d rather rip off every one of those acrylic fingernails and set your hair on fire than admit you needed something from me.”

From the tension radiating up to Cuckoo’s jaw, Zara knew she was right. Resting back in her chair, she crossed her legs. The power was shifting. Zara could take her time and enjoy erasing the smugness from Cuckoo’s aura. Tilting her head, she was going to recount the play-by-play of what she envisioned had happened last night.

“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” Zara continued. “You hear those two words somewhere, I don’t know, maybe you hacked a computer or someone came in asking about it. Then just as you get interested, you’re intrigued, Raven shows up. Wow, you think you’ve scored, he’ll tell you everything, right? He resisted, maybe reacted the way I did and laughed in your face. So you offered a little incentive, you got on your knees, maybe did a bit of rubbing, batted those sultry eyes at him, it always worked before, didn’t it? This time was different. He shut you down or he had no reaction to you. He wouldn’t be manipulated. Not only did he refuse to give you answers, but he refused to screw you too. It’s driving you crazy that he won’t give you what you want.” Zara smiled but furious fury was building in her adversary. “Isn’t it? Cuckoo?”

“Do not call me that!” Cuckoo exclaimed, flying up from her seat and smacking a hand on the desk as she lunged over toward Zara.

Zara took her time to breathe and admire the beauty with her feathers ruffled. “Art was right about you all along. You are a complete nut job. You agreed to come here, to manage CI, because you thought Raven would come back to you. That he’d owe you one, so maybe he’d take you along for the ride when he was working. But it’s not working out, because he has me and we have something real. Something that involves actual emotion.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cuckoo said, lowering herself back into her chair and smoothing her blouse. But she’d already cracked, the damage was done, Zara had seen her true jealous, erratic nature.

“Don’t I?” Zara asked. “Which part? The part where I said he loves me or when I said he couldn’t get it up for you?”

It took a bit of time, but Cuckoo surrendered a smile. “I should feel sorry for you. He might be interested in you now, but it won’t last. We’re a part of a vast web of darkness that you don’t understand. Our paths intersect and then we fade from each other’s lives, but we always come back.”

Zara had not gotten specifics on the last time Raven had been with Cuckoo, but she knew not to trust this woman. After letting Caine get into her head, she wouldn’t fall for the same ploy again. “Like you and Griffin Caine?” Zara asked. Bringing him up startled Cuckoo, which was the response she was going for. “You fucked him before you fucked Raven. How many times have you come back to him?”

“You think my not getting back together with Caine somehow proves that Raven and I won’t reconnect?”

Yes, that was Zara’s point. Raven had said his feud with Caine had started because of Cuckoo. The temptress had chosen Raven, and Zara couldn’t blame her for that, but it had left Caine vengeful and obsessed with his rival.

“I don’t think that you and Raven are destined to be together,” Zara said. “He won’t come back to you.”

Cuckoo wasn’t discouraged. “Do you know where Caine got the scar on his neck?” she asked, stroking her throat in the place Caine’s scar was. Zara didn’t but said nothing and let Cuckoo continue. “He got it from Raven. Caine walked in on us having sex in his bed, and the lunatic lost his mind. He tried to attack us, tried to attack me, and Raven got between me and Caine’s blade. He took the knife from him and in the struggle… he cut Caine’s throat.”

Her words slowed as the story progressed, not out of disgust or regret, her smile grew in time with her satisfaction. Cuckoo was enjoying this. Zara’s sixth sense twitched, warning her of danger. She might not have liked the woman before this story, but watching the pleasure Cuckoo experienced while recounting it revealed to Zara what Art had seen in this woman. Mischa was cold. Unable to feel remorse for getting between the two men. She saw nothing wrong in what had happened and rejoiced in retelling the tale like it was something to be proud of.

“Caine loved you,” Zara said. Although he hadn’t gone the right way about expressing it, she did feel sympathy for Caine in that moment. Walking into your own safe space and finding your girlfriend wrapped around your idol’s idol must have split Caine’s heart in two.

In much the same way as she imagined Brodie would react if he walked in on her screwing another guy, Caine lashed out. It probably hadn’t been Brodie’s intention, but the scar he’d left on Caine’s neck was a constant reminder of that day, of that betrayal. One that Caine would see every single day in his reflection. It was no wonder the man had been driven half mad. Every time he looked in the mirror, he probably replayed that experience. Remembering how he felt when he opened that door and absorbed the sight before him.

“Men often do fall in love with me,” Cuckoo said, lifting a hand to comb her long digits through her luscious locks.

“How terrible for you,” Zara muttered, quite at a loss as to how one person could love themselves so much.

“You’re wrong though, unfortunately.”

“Wrong about what?”

“Caine and I did not separate forever… after Raven left me, we reconnected,” she said, appreciating her own symmetry.

“Caine and you did not separate forever,” Zara repeated, not believing the beauty for one second.

“No, we didn’t. He’s a dutiful little puppy dog. He sits and stays and begs on command. Whenever I have use for Griffin Caine, all I have to do is snap my fingers. I haven’t even had to demean myself by having sex with him for the last three years. He just does my bidding if I pout, it’s entertaining. He’s desperate to please me and drools all over himself until I give him a command.” Cuckoo laughed and swung forward and back like they were gal pals exchanging salacious gossip. “At first, I had to force myself into his bed, I had to make up some of that ground to get him back to the land of the living. After losing me, he turned into a hopeless disgusting drunk who just whimpered and moaned and cried. There’s nothing manly about him, nothing attractive.”

Zara began to listen. She’d been listening before, but Cuckoo’s ranting was giving Zara the chance to make connections. “Why would you go back to him if you weren’t attracted to him anymore?”

“I was never attracted to him,” she insisted. “I needed to find someone, someone who could do what needed to be done. I needed the best and once I heard Caine was the closest follower of the man I needed… Sleeping with him was just the easiest way to get what I wanted.” So a relationship that Caine thought was real had just been a ruse on Cuckoo’s part to tempt out Raven. “The plan worked perfectly, Raven came to me and we… came together.” She smiled as her focus drifted, and Zara told herself not to yak all over Grant’s carpet.

“Caine walked in on the two of you, got his throat slit, managed somehow to survive, but lost the will to live and so turned to despair. While you and Raven were cozy, you didn’t think about Caine again. You didn’t care about him… until Raven left you.”

Cuckoo picked up a letter opener and squeezed her hand around the handle. “It was his ridiculous chief. I know it was. We were happy. Then suddenly, poof, he was gone. On another job he said, but he never came back. The bastard.”

Zara wasn’t sure if she meant Art was the bastard or Raven. But admitting that Raven didn’t return to her contradicted what she’d said earlier about them always coming back to each other.

“That’s when you went looking for Caine?”

“Found him lying in a pool of his own vomit, it was foul.”

And from the sneer on her face, Zara would guess that Cuckoo didn’t enjoy the memory, which was odd given how she’d enjoyed recounting the story of her infidelity. “Why did you go looking for him?”

“Caine had skills. A unique skillset that I needed. He had experience that no one else could boast.”

Zara’s mouth opened a good three seconds before she managed to talk. “He could track Raven,” she whispered in a single slow breath.

After learning who Raven was, Caine had followed his work, both Art and Brodie had told her that. At the time, he’d probably been young, impressionable, and over-eager. But having been Raven’s groupie once gave him the knowledge that Cuckoo needed to track the man who’d scorned her.

“Yes,” Cuckoo said and she was smiling again.

“How long have you had him on a leash?” Zara asked, bouncing to the front of her chair. Cuckoo didn’t answer, but the proud jut of her chin that enhanced her cleavage told Zara all she needed to know. “It’s you. Caine isn’t following Raven because he’s waiting for his time to strike. He’s following Raven because you’ve got him wrapped tight. It’s you… isn’t it? You’ve had him watching Raven, reporting back to you with everything. You told him to come into Purdy’s and threaten Raven in front of me because, why? You wanted to see what I was like? Wanted to see what I would do?”

“I assumed that you would whimper and hide under the bed. You can’t imagine how annoyed I was when it brought you closer to my man.”

“Your man,” Zara said and almost wanted to laugh, but she settled for slouching instead. “Yes, he’s your man, if the qualification is the duration of obsession. My God, you’re so narcissistic that you wouldn’t even stalk him yourself. Why waste your own time when you can waste someone else’s? You’ve got Caine putting his own life on hold to do what you’re too lazy or busy to do. How the hell do you get a guy to do something like that and for years no less?”

“He has an obsessive personality,” Cuckoo said. “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.”

“But you don’t. He’s worthless to you.”

“His worth is what he tells me about Raven’s life. You can’t imagine how overjoyed I was when I found out his absurd keeper was dead,” Cuckoo gasped in joy and opened her hands on the arm of the chair that rocked in motion with her excitement. Zara bit back her own fury. Art’s death wasn’t something to be happy about, except for Cuckoo who’d seen it as an opportunity. “The stage was set… but you just wouldn’t go away.”

“You sent Caine to me every time. You told him to call Grant and offer protection after the Purdy’s raid. You sent him to that bar to pick me up. It wasn’t Grant that wanted me in Sutcliffe’s house. It was you. You’ve been watching us since the beginning.”

Coming close to the desk, Cuckoo bent over and decreased her volume. “I have been watching Raven since long before either of you knew the other existed.”

“And Caine just follows your orders.”

“The best part about it is, I don’t have to be in his physical company,” Cuckoo boasted. “He does his work and reports to me by email or telephone. He has to be where Raven is.”

“And that’s nowhere near you,” Zara said, her jibe earning an eye roll. Cuckoo was an even more despicable person than she’d initially thought.

“A few sexy words, a quick flash on a webcam, he’s putty. He has no mind of his own; he’s a drone who does as he’s told.”

“You told him to come to me last night, to cause friction between Raven and me.”

“Raven and I haven’t had much alone time recently. I didn’t want Caine around, so I made sure he stayed on you. Caine’s loathing of Raven is real. I don’t want them in the same room together with me, it would become a pissing contest. Caine doesn’t know how to control himself, he’s a lunatic when it comes to Raven.”

Sure because the guy had been conditioned by this wench who used sex to take over his existence. “You’ve had Caine watch me when he can’t get to Raven. Why? Wouldn’t it have been easier to kill me?”

“It may have come to that, but watching Raven destroy you would have been much more fun. He will leave you eventually, and I plan to be there to see it. Caine had to stay close, I had to know when Raven was ready. Without his uncle to restrain him, it was only a matter of time before he emerged. Once he returned to missions, I knew that would be our time to be together. I’m sorry, Zara. You can’t get between us.”

She wasn’t sorry, but Zara wasn’t dubious about Cuckoo’s delusions. They would never come true. “You think that I’ll be Caine, that one day I’m going to walk in on you two fucking in my bed?”

“He did put me in your apartment. It’s poetic. I had hoped that last night would be the night, that’s why I sent Caine to watch that blasted house of his.”

The manor would put a kink in any stalker’s plans because the best they could do was watch from a distance, and it would be quite a distance because the manor was covered by heat detectors, motion sensors. Every toy Falcon had ever built was guarding their home.

“But Raven left you unsatisfied,” Zara said, pleased that she’d been the one to receive his satisfaction. “So you sent Caine in to stir up the pot.”

“He will leave you—”

“You keep saying that and yet here I am, completely unconvinced.”

“I love him and he loves me,” Cuckoo said.