Raven (Kindred #1) (31 page)

“Kahlil is a senior member of a petrochemical company that CI has done business with for years,” Grant said. “It was during a conversation with him at a conference years ago that I learned of the existence of this device. Apparently, his superior had been in negotiations with my father regarding it. During those negotiations, my father ordered the destruction of all documentation and shut down the project. I brought it up with Frank and he had a reaction which intrigued me.”

His story pretty much matched Brodie’s, so she was confident they were both telling the truth. But it was interesting that while the older brother had seen opportunity, the younger one had seen only danger. Brodie respected his father’s reticence while Grant resented it. “If your father wanted no one to have this device, then how can you disrespect his memory—”

“I have reason to believe he died for this device.”

Brodie had made similar overtures about his parents’ boating accident not actually being an accident. “Your parents died in your father’s boat.”

“It didn’t explode on its own,” Grant said. “Certain people believed my father was the barrier to selling the device. If he was out of the picture, they thought they would get their hands on it.”

It turned out that those people were right, it had just taken longer than they might have hoped. “Shouldn’t that be enough to put you off selling it?”

Shaking his head, Grant’s lip curled and disgust consumed his expression. “I think it’s ridiculous that he left us, that he jeopardized all of our lives for a product. He and my mother paid the ultimate price. Yet, I’m the one left picking up the pieces. I had to live my life without their guidance and with the notion that my father prioritized misguided ideals over his own family…” His anger was visceral, he’d been carrying it for so long and yet it lurked just under the surface of his preened exterior.

“Grant—“

“I want to prove that his sacrifice was for nothing, that all it took was a different point of view,” he said with an insistence that clouded his decorum. “I can sell this item and make the world a better place. He lacked vision, but I can conceive of a future where CI leads the way in eradicating threats to our fundamental freedoms.”

“And then you’ll prove that you’re a better man than him, is that it?

“You think this is about pride?” he asked, leaping up out of his chair. “Maybe it is, maybe it’s about pride in myself and my ability. Pride that my father should have displayed. He could have made the negotiations work and if he had, he would be here.”

“So you’re punishing him,” she said, putting her mug down and resting her elbows on the table. “You’re never going to get even with him, Grant, he’s dead. You want to punish him because you’re angry, because you’re hurting, and I guess all of those emotions were stirred up again when you lost Frank last year.”

“My motives are irrelevant,” he said, putting a stop to her analysis and resuming his starched company stance. “I want you to come back to CI, to return to your previous role. We will never have to discuss this again.”

Pretending to consider this, she left her coffee and rose to move toward him. “With the knowledge that I have, I’m already complicit in whatever happens.” There was no avoiding her role in this charade. Grant wanted to sell Game Time and the Kindred still didn’t know where it was. They had to know when the exchange was happening so they could put a stop to it.

“You have no need to fear criminal prosecution,” Grant said. “I’ve ensured that we will be insulated.”

She didn’t doubt his skill when it came to writing up contracts. No doubt they had been written in language that implied CI was selling the device for sanctioned medical use, but she knew its intended purpose and she knew that Grant knew it too.

Spending the weekend with Brodie at the manor had given her time to process what had happened on Saturday night. She was still scared for her own safety, but was under Brodie’s protection. Without her inside at CI, near Grant, there was a chance the Kindred could be ignorant to the successful bidder’s identity and miss the exchange. They had only gotten as far as they had because she had been able to do research and report back.

The Kindred still needed someone watching Grant who had access to the information they needed to save lives. When she thought about it in terms of the potential loss of life, she saw that she had no choice and had to take the opportunity that Grant was presenting to her.

“I’ll come back,” she said, implying that she was unsure of her decision. “But I want to be a part of these negotiations. I want to see this through to the end. You need someone to be your conscience. If I’m not happy, I’m going to make sure you know it. I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret.”

“Zara,” he murmured, closing the final stretch of space to place a hand on her cheek. “It would be my honor to have you at my side. But you need to know, this is going to happen and I won’t let anyone get in my way.”

Smiling, she didn’t shrink in the face of his veiled threat. “You’re not going to let anyone hurt me and you certainly couldn’t hurt me yourself. Why don’t you let me look through the paperwork you have, maybe seeing the files on this device and your progress, will help me to understand.”

His chin rose a fraction, but he was distracted by his fingers, which began to stroke her face. “I’ll let you see everything that I have… because I trust you, Zara. And you’re right, I couldn’t hurt you… just as I believe you wouldn’t hurt me. You won’t go to the authorities because if you were going to, you would’ve done it already.”

That was true in a physical sense. But she was betraying him and he’d be hurt when that was revealed. “Did you go to Quebec yesterday?” He nodded. “What did you find?”

“Not much of anything,” he said, still caressing her face.

“There are forensic teams you could hire to look into what happened if—”

“I’ve thought about it. The circle of people who know about this deal is small. The circle of people who know and are capable of murder and destruction is smaller. I don’t need forensic technicians to tell me who did this.”

“You know who it was?” she asked and his simple smile made her shiver. “Who?”

“My brother.”

Shock hit her so hard that she had to spin away from him to hide her reaction. Returning to the table, she sat down and hooked her fingers into the handle of her mug to bring it close to her body so she could use it as a shield again, only this time it was an emotional one. “Your brother,” she whispered.

Grant came back to the table too and brought his chair to hers before he sat down. “You weren’t expecting me to say that.”

“No,” she said with a slight shake of her head. “I can honestly say that I wasn’t expecting you to say that.” Captivated by the liquid in her mug, she tried to think of how to handle this development. Brodie had promised he wasn’t culpable for the destruction in Quebec.

His forearm aligned with hers and he linked their fingers, palm to palm. “I don’t talk about him that much… I don’t talk about him at all,” Grant said while they both fixated on their joined hands. The heat of guilt made her want to silence him and confess all. But her selfish curiosity wanted to know if Grant would reveal more of the relationship that Brodie kept so secret. “I haven’t seen him for years. Once in a while I hear a whisper and I figure he’s still out there, doing what he does.”

“Which is what?” she asked, maintaining their physical link and trying not to hasten her anxious breathing.

“My father was ruled by my mother. Anything she wanted, she got. He was deeply in love with her. After they passed, we found out that it was my mother’s wish for us to live with our Uncle Arthur, her brother. I had never gotten along with the man. He was wild and intense,” he said, toying with her fingers. “But my younger brother was seduced by the adventures our uncle sold. Frank fought for me and I was left under his guardianship. My brother and uncle left the country and it was a number of years before they came back. By then, Brodie was as wild as my uncle, wilder even. He carried so much anger and I thought I understood it. I thought it was about losing our parents.”

“But it wasn’t?”

Grant breathed into the nothingness between their flush bodies and she was sure the chance for an answer had passed… then he spoke. “I think he blamed me for not going with them. I was in college by then. I was getting my MBA and was running CI almost full time as well. I was polished and educated, Brodie was… unrecognizable to me. I tried to talk to him, but we had nothing in common. We argued and… Well, Brodie had forgotten how to articulate, he was like an animal. Arthur ruined him.”

Torn between her want to comfort and her want to question, Zara remained still. “Your paths diverged.”

“Yes, exactly,” he said, sliding his fingers deeper between hers.

Unable to decide if Grant’s accusation was true or not, she had to figure out how he’d concluded that Brodie was the perpetrator. “Why would you think he would return now? Or attack you this way?”

“Because he’s become something of a vigilante. Frank and Art kept in vague touch through the years, though they kept that a secret and Frank only made the occasional cryptic reference about it. But from my understanding, Brodie learned to hunt, to fight and to kill. He’s worked in many countries and thwarted many plots. I don’t know the precise details, but I got the general sense that Frank was proud of Brodie’s life. Although I would presume it was a vicarious pleasure because Frank was as straight-laced as they come.”

She wondered if Art told Brodie about what Frank felt or if Brodie too was kept in the dark about the particulars of those conversations. “Wait a minute,” she said, having another thought. “Is that why you’re so determined to do this? So determined to make some grand mark on the world, because you believe Brodie is doing that?”

His thought about his answer before he gave it. “His life is an adventure and I would be lying if I told you I didn’t wonder what my life would’ve been like if I had gone with Art.” Parting their linked digits, he got up to stroll toward her window. “I look at my life and realize I’ve done everything as I was supposed to, everything that was expected of me. Growing up, the other kids called me ‘Saint,’ because I never misbehaved. I’ve always toed the line.”

“That’s a good thing… isn’t it?” Before Brodie, Zara had been a company gal too, but he had opened her eyes and changed her perspective on the way she lived her life.

“I think I thought that if I was the best then I could somehow match up to my father and make him proud. But he’s gone and I know now that I don't want to be like him. I don’t want to live my life buttoned up and righteous. He prioritized his ethics over the family he was supposed to love.”

Twisting in her chair to observe him looking out of her window, she rested her cheek on her hand. Grant craved adventure, just like she did for so long. It made her realize just how easy it was for a person to conceal the truth of their desires

“So you want to be like Brodie?” she asked. “You think his life is so great?”

“I think he does what he wants and doesn’t live his life constrained by rules. He does the daring things that others won’t. Art turned him into a killer. But he’s a hero as well.”

“Whose hero?” she asked. Pushing up out of her chair, she gave into the urge to go to his side and offer comfort. But with the idea that her lover could have deceived her rattling around in her mind, she needed some comfort of her own. Hurt and angry, she wanted to give Brodie the benefit of the doubt. She wouldn’t be appeased until she heard the truth and by the strength of Grant’s certainty, somehow she doubted Brodie would be making the denial she wanted to hear. “You’re building him up as this idol and yet you’ve admitted you haven’t seen him for years. He could be a villain. He could be a criminal out to serve his own agenda. Don’t do this because you’re trying to match all of your brother’s deeds with one swing. You don’t know the man he is.”

Slipping a hand onto his arm, she received no response to her proximity. “I know he’s the type of man with the means to find our secret plant. I know he works with a band of highly skilled men. And I know he would rather stop me than see me succeed. Just as I know he would rather use covert means than to face me man to man,” he said, clasping his hands at his back and staring out of her window, probably straight into the camera that fed into Brodie’s control room.

“You’re sure it’s him?” she asked.

Brodie had been out of town on a job when she’d gone over there on Friday night. He’d asserted it wasn’t in Quebec. When he and Art were making plans for the operation here, he’d said the job would be done on Saturday and they’d led her to believe he had a mission on Saturday before Grant called and revealed what had happened in Canada. If Brodie had done it, then he’d known the truth before Grant’s call to her, he’d known it all through the first night they spent together.

“You’re right about one thing, Zara. He is a ruthless man without conscience. I know that from our last meeting fifteen years ago. He lies and he deceives. There is nothing and no one who can sway him from his objectives. He would seduce and discard a person once they have served their purpose. He’s incapable of love. Incapable of delivering truth. Art trained him to follow orders and to treat people as temporary assets to be used as long as they serve his needs. Brodie will be whatever he needs to be in order to complete his task and then he vanishes into the night without so much as glancing back.”