Free Swallow (Kindred Book 2) by Scarlett Finn

adopting healthy outlets for grief, so they could hardly judge Sutcliffe for being the same way.
    One glaring fact cast doubt on Grant’s assumption. “If it was payback for Tim,” Zara said, “Sutcliffe wouldn’t be coming after you. You didn’t kill him.”
    Brodie killed Tim Sutcliffe, and he’d declared it in the Atlas warehouse within earshot of Sutcliffe. But getting to Brodie posed more of a challenge than getting to Grant did. Grant was active in public every day, as was she, Brodie was inside a security protected mansion.
    “Sutcliffe uses his people to do the dirty work,” Grant said. “I paid back the money he gave me for the product, but it wasn’t enough. He’s still angry, and his people are pissed off. I don’t know what they’re planning. But it’s all linked, I can feel it.”
    Being on the outside must be unsettling for Grant. He’d been in control when he was selling Game Time, now he was being hunted and he didn’t have the skills to defend himself. Neither did she, but she tried to get into Sutcliffe’s head to play the sequence of events in the Atlas warehouse from his perspective.
    He’d arrived full of optimism because he expected to get his hands on the device he’d paid for, his plans were all coming together. Except he’d walked away with nothing, meaning his subsequent plan was shot to shit. He probably thought Game Time had been a ruse to get him into a vulnerable position so that Raven could take him out.
    “They think it was a setup,” she muttered to herself.
    Grant reacted to her musing with annoyance. “It was a setup,” he snapped. “I didn’t know it. I was just duped like Sutcliffe was. But he doesn’t believe me. You could’ve told me—“
    “I couldn’t have warned you,” she said, though she probably wouldn’t have even if she had known Brodie and the others were around. But technicalities mattered in subterfuge. “I didn’t know what the Kindred were planning. I wasn’t on the inside.”
    She might have walked away with the Kindred at the end, but she hadn’t arrived in the warehouse with them. Raven’s kill shots were as much of a surprise to her as they were to everyone else.
    “Why not?”
    Again, she did not intend to reveal the inner workings of her intimate relationship, or of the group they were affiliated to. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, unmoved by his annoyance because she still carried so much of her own toward him. “I did try to reason with you. I told you that selling Game Time wasn’t a good idea, that the results would be disastrous. But you weren’t listening. You were blinded by your reaction to Frank’s death and so determined to rebel against your father.” The offense in Grant’s eyes made her retreat from her attacking position because she didn’t need conflict in their relationship now, not when she needed him for information. “Sorry.” It wasn’t in her nature to condemn a person when the past couldn’t be changed anyway. “Your motivation, your family… none of it is my business.”
    “Isn’t it?” Grant asked and reached for his mug, probably as a distraction because she could tell by his pique that he was pissed. “If you marry my brother…”
    “Even if I do marry your brother, it’s not like you and he have a conventional relationship, is it?”
    Marriage was improbable when she couldn’t get Brodie to sleep in the same bed as her most nights. But their relationship issues weren’t high priority. Sure, she was hurt that Brodie had ignored her call and she was angry that he was busy wallowing while the rest of them were being attacked. But she loved him and she’d made her peace with being patient. Raven had taken his time to come clean with her when they first met. Brodie would get there. He would come back to her, in his own time.
    “What else did Sutcliffe say when you spoke to him?” she asked. “Did he give you any indication of what he meant about giving you a chance to make it