Free Cuckoo (Kindred Book 3) by Scarlett Finn Page A

lives. “Are you threatening me?”
    “No. I’m offering you a chaser. Give Game Time to me, you’ll get a fortune in cash and the truth of what happened on that boat twenty years ago.”
    Her lips were stuck together, but they unglued when her shock weighed down her jaw. “The boat.”
    “Future’s Hope, that’s what it was called,” he said.
    That was the name of the boat Brodie and Grant’s parents were killed on as the boys watched on from shore. Zara had been focused on what Kahlil knew about the present. She could never have guessed that he could solve a twenty-year-old mystery. But that did explain how he knew who Raven was. If he’d known for twenty years and kept the secret to himself then there was no reason to assume he’d betray it to anyone now. But he had kept another secret all this time, and she couldn’t begin to guess how he’d been involved in a boating accident that occurred two decades before.
    “How could you possibly know that?” she whispered and there was no way she could disguise her amazement.
    Kahlil was in no rush to satisfy her curiosity. “Do we have a deal?” he asked, straightening in his seat to meet her eye.
    All joviality was gone and she saw nothing but a ruthless businessman in front of her now. Just as she’d suspected, the charming, stylish friend was a cover.
    Sliding her hands together, one went over the other until she was covering the watch on her wrist. Touching it was acknowledging the link to her Kindred colleagues, and she needed a buoy while under Kahlil’s scrutiny.
    Kahlil knew his opponent. Teasing her with the truth of Future’s Hope was a prime weakness he could exploit. Money wouldn’t tempt them to release Game Time. “You’ll tell me what happened to Future’s Hope?”
    “You give me what I want and I’ll tell you who you’re looking for.”
    Who. The person responsible for taking down Brodie’s parents could still be alive. “If you know,” she said, curling her fingers around the watch face. “Did Grant tell you?”
    Could her boss have known something so profound and always kept it to himself? If Grant had kept the secret, she could think of no reason that he’d confide it in Kahlil. There was no affection between the men, and Grant had dismissed Kahlil’s original bid for Game Time suggesting no loyalty.
    “No,” he said. “Nothing as simple as that.”
    Both Grant and Brodie had told her they had suspicions about what had happened on the day their parents were killed, rather they’d expressed doubts about whether or not it was an accident. Now she had the concrete confirmation Brodie had never had.
    They’d lost Art to keep Game Time from falling into the wrong hands. Grant died trying to steal its power from the one he’d sold it to. She couldn’t make promises to surrender it without getting authorization from her chief. But she questioned whether she should bring this development to his attention. Was he so desperate to know what had happened to his parents that he would damn innocent souls? Or would he be pissed that Kahlil was manipulating him and go on a crusade to find the truth another way after damning Kahlil to his grave?
    Before establishing what she would do with this information, she had to find out what course it had already taken. “If you offered this to Grant, why weren’t you the successful bidder?”
    In the end, Grant had proved himself selfish enough that if Kahlil had something extra that interested him, he’d give the man an advantage to gain what he wanted.
    “He was never offered this information,” Kahlil said. “The man I used to work for was involved in the demise of Future’s Hope. He had kept the secret for many years, two decades. He ordered me to keep the secret too. At the time, he had my loyalty, so I did what he said.”
    “Your boss was involved?” she asked.
    “Yes, and honestly, if Grant McCormack found out about his involvement then, our Game Time bid would never have been