Raven (Kindred #1) (8 page)

Raven had told her on night one that Detective Kraft wouldn’t be back in touch with her and he’d been right. Grabbing for her purse, she began to search for the detective’s business card. Witnessing the death of a man should give her the right to follow-up on the investigation. Her fingers were working furiously when the phone on her desk began to ring.

Startled by the noise, it took her a few seconds to register the change in pitch. This wasn’t her standard business line or the internal intercom; this was a call on the second line, the private line.

Licking her lips, she shifted her purse from her lap onto the desk and reached for the phone. Picking up the handset, she brought it to her ear with excruciating slowness because she wasn’t sure she wanted to be any more entangled in this than she already was.

“Hello,” she said. “Grant McCormack’s executive assistant speaking.”

“It’s Sutcliffe,” said an abrupt male voice. “Tell Grant we’re on. Saturday at midnight, the Grand Hotel.”

“The Grand… ok,” she said. There was nothing threatening in that message and she actually smiled in relief as she stroked her fingertips on her upper arm and tried to relax herself.

“This demonstration better be successful or he’s going to have a lot of pissed off terrorists on his hands.”

Shock. The line died, but she didn’t hear the buzz signaling it had disconnected. Frozen in her chair, the snarl in Sutcliffe’s voice stayed with her and with each passing second, her insides got colder. ‘Terrorists.’ The word stuck in her head. What demonstration could be happening in a high-end hotel that terrorists would want to be successful?

This was no joke. She couldn’t believe that Grant had been so casual while talking about this kind of product. CI didn’t make weapons. They were inventors and investors in tech that could be adapted for medical and scientific use. They created hardware that helped people, not hardware that hurt people.

Shooting up from her desk, she abandoned her purse and headed for the door. She couldn’t even remember if she had hung up the phone or not, getting to Grant was the most important thing. Knocking on his door, she went inside to see that he was on the telephone. When he saw her, he held up a finger while he finished off his call.

“Back already,” he said after putting the phone back on its base. “What can I do for you?”

Her nerves were making it difficult for her to stand still, so she sort of swayed and forgot to blink. “Sutcliffe called,” she said, gesturing with her hands, and his smile vanished. Waving her inside, he came across the room in a rush and closed the door behind her.

“What did he say?”

She tried to catch a glimpse of his facial expression, to see if he was experiencing guilt or fear. “That you were on for the Grand Hotel, Saturday at midnight.”

Nodding, his eyes slunk away. “That was it?”

Still trying to read his emotion, she couldn’t decipher panic. “What else should he have said?” she asked, hoping that he would be honest and explain Sutcliffe’s declaration without her prompting.

“Nothing,” he said, curling his fingers around her shoulders. He smiled again, but this time it was forced, and so it didn’t serve to relax her. “There is a fundraising event in the hotel on Saturday night. Would you be so kind as to accompany me?”

“To the event?”

“Yes.”

“At midnight?” she asked because that was much later than most corporate events.

“I wanted as few people as possible to be present,” he said. “By that time of night there will only be a few people left in the public areas.”

“The public areas?” she asked. “Should I be worried about—“

“You have nothing to worry about,” he said, giving her shoulder a belittling pat. “I will have to meet with Sutcliffe and the other potential buyers. But I will need someone on my arm for appearances and to cover for me if anyone at the party asks questions about my whereabouts.”

The idea of being present in a place where terrorists could be conducting demonstrations made her hands begin to shake. Knowing what she did, Zara began to fear she could be classified as an accessory to whatever crime may, or may not, be taking place.

When she didn’t respond, he spoke again. “You said that you were available for anything that I needed. I don’t need to be bogged down with polite civilities with a blind date and I don’t have the time to conjure up a woman who won’t require entertainment.”

Zara had gone to corporate events with Grant before. Most of the time there were other CI colleagues there with them. But if this was a secret meeting in reference to a secret deal then he couldn’t very well ask anyone else from CI to go with him, so she nodded.

“Great,” Grant said. “I’ll send a car for you around ten PM? We can enjoy the party for a while before the meeting.”

“Yes,” she said, and he opened the door for her again.

“Remember, not a word to anyone.”

Shaking her head, she let herself be pushed over the threshold and heard the door close behind her. Grant was involved in something far more serious than she’d comprehended. Unable to believe he would volunteer to plot with such people, she speculated that he could be in over his head and need help of his own. Except he displayed no signs of being fearful, preoccupied maybe, but not nervous.

Zara began to get a feeling that Raven might be right about this impending doom and with Grant choosing not to be forthcoming, she set her mind to doing some investigating of her own.

The feeling of foreboding never left her. For the rest of the day, Zara did as much research as she could in CI, trying to obtain details about older projects that had been rekindled. What she did find out didn’t make her predicament any easier.

Having been under the misconception that she had the highest possible security clearance, she was surprised when she hit her first digital brick wall. Re-routing to a different system, she tried again, but got the same warning about her lack of security clearance. But she was learning how to convert frustration into determination—she wouldn’t be beaten.

If she couldn’t access the R&D systems that she needed to see, she had to take a different approach. Just like they did in the movies, she decided to follow the money. With each new file she opened and each new entry she read, Zara’s sense of impending doom increased.

At the end of the day, other employees went home, leaving her to continue with the investigation that engrossed her. Even Grant came into her office to say goodnight, but Zara kept typing, kept printing, kept trying to put the pieces together, but still she couldn’t find out what this damned product actually was.

Money was being moved, routed to strange areas and obscure labs giving her a rough idea of where the work was happening and who was doing it. The details on what they were actually doing were vague, so much so that she concluded they’d been concealed on purpose.

The lights outside her office went out and her attention sprang up from the glare of her computer screen to focus on the black abyss beyond this room. On Saturday night, she had gone to the parking garage after everyone else had left and she’d gotten herself in trouble. Raven had told her that she was on her own now, so she wasn’t going to take any risks of walking into danger alone. The people who Grant was dealing with were serious individuals who wouldn’t take kindly to her poking around in their business.

Throwing her things together, she shut down her computer, grabbed her purse and document folder, and then went for the door.

She got to the street and into a cab without encountering any unsavory characters and Zara knew she should be relieved. Instead, tears began to blur her vision. They weren’t tears of fear or sadness, they were tears of frustration and regret.

Raven had been honest about his motivation for helping her and she had failed to see how he could help her—beyond the physical. The man could handle himself in a fight. But, he was wily too and knew far more about her boss and his extracurricular friendships than she did.

At home, she skipped dinner and instead took an unused notebook from her stationery box and spread out on her desk to try to put the pieces together. There were holes in what Grant had told her. The more she studied, the more she realized that this had been going on for a while. He’d been lying to her for months.

This was not a new product and there was clear financial evidence to suggest that her boss had been working on this project for almost a year. Grant, who she had claimed to trust, the man she had believed to be harmless, had deceived her and all of their colleagues. Unsatisfied and angry, Zara couldn’t decide if she was naïve, blinded by admiration, or if Grant was just more conniving than she could ever have fathomed.

A creak in her living room made her lift her head. Prickling awareness kept her on ready alert, she was attuned to every whisper. Sliding her glasses from her face, Zara watched her office door and held her breath. If there was someone out there then she had no way to protect herself.

“Rave,” she muttered, wondering if maybe her protector had come back to see her.

Dropping her pencil and her glasses, she pushed away from the desk and hurried to the door to peek out into the darkness of her living room. The space had never appeared ominous before, but the arched windows that stretched the length of one wall made her feel exposed.

Anyone in the building opposite could see into her apartment. Tim had been taken out by a sniper. There was no way for her to know if that same shooter had their crosshairs on her, as she stood there defenseless.

The columns in this open plan space had always been one of her favorite things about the apartment. Now they were in the way, a threat, providing cover for any assassins who could be loitering behind them waiting for their chance to take her down.

Convincing herself to be strong and that she could do this alone, Zara tried not to be paralyzed by fear. Except each of her breaths punched the air until she could hear her own panting. Her lungs burned as though they weren’t getting enough oxygen.

Raven wasn’t out there; he’d have shown himself by now if he was. The noise could have come from anywhere or anyone—a foe rather than a friend—and feelings of vulnerability held her immobile. These crazy people knew who she was and knew how close she was to Grant. Sutcliffe had assumed that she knew about this deal going down at the Grand hotel. Raven had told her that others were watching her.

Under the illusion she might see them appear, Zara didn’t want to blink for fear an enemy would materialize like a teleporting demon. Except these people were humans, evil, despicable humans, but humans nonetheless.

Backing into her office, she slammed the door and planted both hands on it. There were no guns in the house and a kitchen knife would be a poor substitute if her attackers were packing hardware. Cursing Grant for putting her in this position, she couldn’t believe that he wanted to keep her in the dark and to placate her, like her ignorance would be some kind of protection against those who might want to hurt or manipulate her.

Grant didn’t trust her or maybe he just thought she was dumb enough not to see what was right in front of her. Except she hadn’t seen it, not until Raven had given her the respect of warning her about the danger. Grant, she couldn’t figure out. Raven had come to mean safety, his presence meant protection.

He was capable and at least some part of him cared about her, he wouldn’t have tended to her injury and kissed her if that wasn’t the case. She needed him now. Needed the security of his proximity because if she just let herself rely on him, to trust him, he’d be able to keep her safe.

Rushing back to her stationery box, she pulled it out and tossed the lid aside to root around inside. She yanked out all of the blue plastic filing folders then tipped the box upside down to empty it. Putting the blue folders and a roll of Scotch tape in the box, she opened a closet and added a box of matches to her cache along with all of her stored candles.

Ignoring her nagging hesitation about venturing out of the office, she marched into the living room and went to the central window to swipe aside all of the window seat pillows. Using the Scotch tape, she stuck the transparent blue folders to the window to create a blue stained glass effect. Once that was done, she spread out the candles on the solid window seat surface and began to light them. When she was done with those, she went around her house collecting every candle that she owned.

Cramming the candles onto the seat, she lit them all and then stood back to admire her work. The floor was a mess with scattered cushions and used matches, but the light was brilliant. It illuminated the vast space she was standing in. But that wasn’t the point. From outside that light would be a brilliant blue, just like the light Raven had shown her on the water.

Sucking her bottom lip into her mouth, Zara backed off to sit on the couch. He might ignore her. He might not even be watching anymore. But she needed answers. Not that her need for information had been the catalyst for this act. No, that had been her fear. If she was facing significant threats with lethal intentions then there was only one man who she knew could take on those threats and fight them with equal determination.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she brought her legs onto the couch to lie on her side. Her ankle began to throb again, signaling that her adrenaline was wearing off. Closing her eyes, she sent out a silent plea for Raven to see her signal. He had to come to her because if he didn’t, she would never make it out of this alive.