Darken (Siege #1) (20 page)

“Nah, I gotta drive home,” he said as he sank onto the couch. “I’ll take a water, though.”

The suggestion that he spend the night was on the tip of her tongue, but she knew better than to offer. If he’d wanted to stay, he wouldn’t have left the bed. She went to the small kitchen and grabbed two water bottles. Setting them down, she picked up her cell phone. There was a missed call from her mom and a bunch of text messages from Keeley encouraging Cora to join her and Sky at a country bar two towns over.

Cora texted Keeley that she was in for the night and placed the cell back down. She’d call her parents in the morning. Grabbing the waters, she turned around, only to find Gavin standing on the other side of the breakfast bar, watching her with narrowed eyes. She jerked, upright, fumbling with the bottles.

“Holy shit, you scared the crap out of me.” She took a deep breath and held out one of the bottles.

He took the water. “Anything you need to tell me?”

“No,” she said, her forehead wrinkled in confusion.

“Really? You’re not looking for a new job?”

Over his shoulder, she saw her open laptop, the bright white of her resume lighting up the screen.

“Were you spying on me?” Offense seemed like the best idea.

“Your computer was open and on. If you want to hide things, you should set up your screen saver and require a password when it restarts.”

“Good idea. I’ll do that before I go to bed.” She walked around to the couch and gently closed the laptop as she sat down. She’d gotten rid of the screensaver and password protection because she had a bad habit of getting frequently distracted, and it was a pain in the butt to continually enter it in.

“So?” He crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned back on the counter.

“Okay, yes I was planning on getting a new job.”

“I figured that already. Why hide it?” His head tipped to the side. “You can’t think I’d be upset about you not working at the bar, or that I’d tell my brothers before you had a chance.”

“No, I talked to Noah earlier today.”

“So?”

“I’ve got something lined up for after Christmas.”

“You’re a master at stalling,” he said cracking a smile. “What’s the job?”

“At the museum. In Denver.”

“Denver.”

How could one little word have so much power? Yet, there it was, ripping at the delicate threads that held them together.

She rubbed her hands along the top of her thighs then stood and paced to the window. She nudged the pale blue curtains to the side and stared down at the street below.

“Lela’s always here, isn’t she?” she asked, not sure if the question was directed at him or herself.

“She was a big part of my life and yours.”

Cora glanced over her shoulder at Gavin and realized that as much she wanted him to heal and move on, that might never happen.

“
No. She is part of yours. You wo
n’
t let her go. I want a future with you, but not if it means always come in second. You keep clutching at her memory, dragging her back from the grave
.
”

Anger reddened his face and he shoved away from the counter, taking a menacing step toward her. The muscles along his jaw ticked.

“You don’t know shit. Fuck you,” he said.

She tried to hear something in his words other than the raging fury that flashed in his eyes, but there was nothing. How quickly the last remaining pillars of her fragile hope crumbled around her.

“Fuck me,” she said, nodding. “Because that all this ever was. Fucking.
Não sou nada para você
. I am nothing.”

Chapter Twenty-One

REGRET WAS A SICKENING feeling, or maybe it was shame. Hearing those words thrown at him, knowing she’d understood him each and every time left Gavin speechless.

What could he say to fix things between them? For three days, he’d been trying to figure out what to say, but anything he came up with only seemed like it would make things worse. If he was honest, he didn’t know if he wanted to fix them.

He hadn’t asked Cora to love him. He didn’t want her to, and he sure as fuck never promised her anything other than sex.

From across the room, he watched as she unloaded a tray of drinks at a table, chatting and laughing at whatever the group of guys was saying. His eye twitched, and he turned his attention back to the keg he was supposed to be hooking up.

“Dude, I got this,” Josh said, hovering behind Gavin. “Aren’t you off?”

“Yeah, I just wanted to get this hooked up.”

Gavin stood and wiped his hands on the top of his thighs. He couldn’t have cared less about the beer. He only stuck around after his shift because of Cora.

“You need to spend less time here,” Josh said. “Go to the gym, go shopping with Mom.”

A snort burst forth from Gavin. “Did you actually just suggest that?”

“Okay, so skip the shopping. You get the point.” Josh pulled a rack of glasses toward him. “Now piss off.”

Gavin walked out from behind the bar and went into the staff area. Normally, he’d have sat at a table and had a beer, but that meant sitting in either Cora or Keeley’s sections, and neither appealed to him. He and Cora had resorted to communicating through his brothers, and every time Keeley looked his way she gave him the stink eye.

Rather than have guilt heaped on him, he strolled back to the manager office. Noah and Logan were both off for the day so the room was empty. He sat behind the desk and turned on the computer, listening to the muffled sounds of the bar drift around him. When it finished loading, he opened a secured file that contained scanned images of Cora’s journal along with all of the other pictures, footage, and data they’d been collecting on Sinclair.

Despite his and Caleb’s confidence in their ability to find a pattern in the glimpses Cora had of Sinclair’s actions, they had yet to find anything. When she’d described them as sporadic and general, she hadn’t been downplaying the visions. There really was no pattern he could find.

Splitting the screen, he created a spreadsheet and began diagramming each of her visions, working backward from the most recent. After an hour, he had a colorful data mine that would be absolutely useless in terms of finding Sinclair.

What was Sinclair doing?
It frustrated Gavin to hell and back that he couldn’t get ahead of Sinclair. Craning his head to the side, he squeezed his shoulder blades together, arching his back, and let out a deep sigh at the satisfying pops it made as his spine realigned.

From the kitchen, he heard his brother’s voice and resigned himself to the loss of solitude. Caleb would want an update on Sinclair and the plan.

“You figure it out yet?” Caleb asked when he appeared in the doorway.

“Other than the fact that Cora and I are together in all of the recent ones, there’s nothing.” Gavin pushed the laptop across the desk, turning for his brother to see the color-coded spreadsheet. “I’ve been over these so many times and still haven’t found anything. Different dates, different times. Sometimes he has a gun, sometimes he’s taking pictures or making notes. I don’t get it.”

Caleb sat down and rested his elbows on the desk, linking his fingers together. Leaning forward, he took a moment to study the data Gavin had organized.

“It’s there,” Caleb said as he shut the computer down.

“The fuck it is.”

“Sinclair’s a scientist. Everything he’s doing has been thought out, planned for the purpose of gathering data. There’s a pattern. The problem is all we have is what Cora sees, and they’re only pieces.”

As much as Gavin hated it, Caleb was right. They didn’t have everything and that meant their plan might not be the wisest choice.

Gavin leaned back in his chair, tipping his head to stare at the ceiling. They needed to think like Sinclair. Objective, plan, implement, observe. He’d obviously moved to the observation part of his process. Sinclair was methodical in every piece of data he collected. There was no way he would be as random as the visions suggested.

“What’s the pattern? What’s the pattern?” Gavin murmured as he rubbed a hand over his mouth. Abruptly he sat up and looked at Caleb with a smile. “What we need is a pattern.”

“Ya think?” Caleb gave him a curious look. “That’s what we’ve been looking for.”

“No. We need to
make
one. We’ve been so busy filling in these details Sinclair is letting us see that we missed the opportunity to fill them in with what we want.” Gavin grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper from the printer then started drawing boxes in a circular arrangement. “What are the details Cora’s visions provide that would help us figure out when Sinclair will strike?”

“Location, people, time, clothing,” Caleb listed. “And what Sinclair does.”

Gavin wrote each item in a separate box, separating the location into one for him and one for Sinclair.

“We can’t control everything, but if we manipulate the pieces we want, Sinclair won’t have any choice but to follow along.”

Nodding in understanding, Caleb slid the paper toward himself, looking at the six boxes.

“So what do we do? And how?”

“He shifted from watching just me to it being Cora and me so we give him that.” Gavin jotted down his and Cora’s names in the box marked people.

“The time is always different,” Caleb noted. “So we control that. Same goes with location.”

“Exactly, but where?”

“The old Cattlemen’s club,” Caleb suggested. “It’s on the edge of town, no street lights, so it’s dark by nine. It’ll be harder for him to hide in a vehicle and for him to spot us.”

Gavin nodded and wrote their chosen location in the box and then added ten as for the time. The club was the logical choice and not just because of the reasons Caleb gave. The abandoned building was the furthest away from any houses. It would give them a place to do what needed doing, and the time would give them the cover of darkness.

“What about clothes?” Caleb asked.

“If we make the time and setting the same then clothing becomes the marker of time. We would create a schedule of clothing choices so we would know which day it was.”

The two of them spent the next half hour going over minute details, working out a plan. From the get-go, including Cora had been a risky plan, and it still was. The difference now was that Gavin felt there was something he could do to shift the odds to their side.

“So, do I get the pleasure of sharing this with Cora?” Caleb pushed his chair back from the desk. “Or are you going to eat crow and do it?”

“I’ll do it,” Gavin agreed reluctantly. “She’s off in twenty minutes.”

“You want to talk about what’s going on with you two?”

“Fuck no.” He picked up the papers, folding them before shoving them in his pocket. “Shit. I didn’t make any promises. She knew what this was before it even started.”

“All right,” Caleb said, holding up his hands. “Just keep in mind if the two of you aren’t on the same page with this plan, it’s beyond worthless. It’ll put both of you right out in the open for Sinclair.”

“I know. It’s all good.”

Caleb’s hard stare had Gavin squirming in his seat. He didn’t blame his brother for the obvious doubt. Hell, things between him and Cora were about as far from good as possible.

“I’ll fill the others in, and we can start setting up some sort of schedule rotation.” Caleb stood to leave and paused in the door to look back at Gavin. “That cheap ass laptop is enough for Noah and Logan, but if you’re going to be working on the Sinclair case, at least have the decency to pick up one of your old computers from the storage unit.”

Gavin grunted as Caleb left. It was a tempting idea, though, after almost a year of sitting in a dusty storage locker, they’d be in need of some updates.

Staring up at the clock suspended above the filing cabinet, he watched as the seconds, then minutes, ticked by. His mind swirled with thoughts of Cora, Sinclair, Lela, and how much he was willing to sacrifice.

A few weeks ago, it had been almost easy to admit ending Sinclair was more important to him than keeping Cora safe. It hadn’t been a pretty thought, but it had been honest. Now, the idea of putting Cora in Sinclair’s line of fire made him sick to his stomach. Yet, he couldn’t walk away. He couldn’t let Lela’s killer go free.

The clock hit the hour, and Gavin let out a long sigh. He needed to talk with Cora before she left for home, but he wasn’t going to try to talk in the locker room. Confining himself in that small space with her, with only the folding screen separating them, was far from a good idea. Noah and Logan seriously needed to get their asses in gear and create separate changing areas.

Ten minutes after her shift, Cora walked past the office door, her purse slung over her shoulder and wearing her leather jacket. Gavin quickly rose from the desk and went after her.

“Cora,” he called as she pushed open the side exit.

She turned back around, but there was a hesitation as if she had to consider her options before talking to him.

“Do you have a minute?”

“Not really,” she answered, and the tone in her voice told him he was pushing his luck. “I’m meeting up with Eve.”

“Where?”

She closed her eyes and tipped her head back until it thumped against the door. “What do you want, Gavin?”

“To talk. We figured out what to do about Sinclair.”

“Fine, you can talk while we walk.”

“I can drive,” he offered, then held up a hand as she scowled. “Or we can walk. That’s fine.”

He followed her outside, and they walked through the parking lot in silence. When they reached the sidewalk, he launched into a description of the plan. She didn’t say much, simply nodding and making the occasional humming noise. It was unnerving to not have any clue as to what she was thinking.

“We can go over the details tonight,” he said as they arrived at her building.

She moved to the side so a couple could pass by. “I told you, I’m busy.”

He gritted his teeth, pushing back the familiar searing in his muscles.
How could this not be more important than going out with Eve?

“Sinclair is out there. We need to do everything we can to stop him.”

“I understand that, Gavin, but I’m not doing it now. We can talk about …” Her words trailed off as she gazed past him, staring at someone walking along the other side of the street.

Gavin twisted to see who she was looking at, but despite the bright street lights overhead, he didn’t recognize the guy.

“That’s him,” she said, her hand lifting to point at the man.

“Who?”

“The guy who ran me off the road.”

The tension within him exploded and a furious roar burst from him, echoing along the quiet street. The man turned at the sound, and across the street, Gavin saw his eyes widen right before he took off running.

Gavin ached to give chase, but his body was beyond his control as he underwent the shifting from man to monster. Adrenaline pumped through him and he heard the sound of his shirt tears at the seams. A fierce growl erupted from him as his muscles settled and with a last twitch gave way to fury.

He surged forward, running after the man and rapidly closing the distance. Feet pounding the concrete, he ignored the curious looks from the few people he raced by. He was dimly aware of Cora calling his name, but it did nothing to quench the hunger inside him. The only thing that mattered was catching Sinclair’s henchman.

The sidewalk ended, and the man stumbled over the uneven ground. Gavin reached out and gripped the back of his shirt, pulling him back up. The man spun around, his arm swinging toward Gavin.

Gavin let the feeble punch fall, and it glanced off his jaw, little more than the pawing of a puppy. It was enough, though, to prod what little humanity Gavin had left to step back and give the monster full rein.

His fist smashed into the soft belly of the man, causing him to double over and placing his face in the path of Gavin’s other fist. He flew backward, landing on the ground and then attempted to scurry back. Gavin pounced, falling to his knees, and punched the man’s face.

“Where’s Sinclair?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about!” the man cried out.

Gavin hammered his face once, twice.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.” The words were garbled as blood trickled from his mouth.

With a hand wrapped around the guy’s neck, close to the jaw, Gavin lifted until only an inch separated them.

“You work for Sinclair. So where the fuck is he?”

He hit the man again and was rewarded with a satisfying crunch of a broken nose. His arm drew back, intent on delivering another blow, but hands grabbed his biceps, yanking at him. He refused to be stopped so easily and tried to yank away from the hold.