Книга - Shadow Bound

Shadow Bound
Rachel Vincent


IF ALL YOU KNOW IS SHADOWS, YOU BEGIN TO FORGET THE LIGHT… Shadow-walker Kori, able to travel from one human shadow to another, keeps her powers hidden from the world. Until supernatural crime lord Tower imprisons her and suppresses her magic. Freedom for her, and her magician sister Kenley, now comes at price. The job? Recruit Ian Holt, a man who can manipulate darkness – or kill him.Yet Ian has a mission of his own: assassinate Kenley, whose unique powers give Tower a deadly advantage in their underworld. Fighting for two different sides, Kori and Ian can’t deny the desperate magnetic pull that draws them together. But in a world of black and white, of good and evil, can their love survive in the shadows? A MUST-READ for fans of KELLEY ARMSTRONG












Praise for the novels of New York Times bestselling author


RACHEL VINCENT

‘I liked the character and loved the action. I look forward to reading the next book in the series.’

Charlaine Harris



‘Vincent is a welcome addition to the genre!’

Kelley Armstrong



‘Compelling and edgy, dark and evocative, Stray is a must read! I loved it from beginning to end.’ Gena Showalter

‘I had trouble putting this book down. Every time I said I was going to read just one more chapter, I’d find myself three chapters later.’

—Bitten by Books on Stray

‘Vincent continues to impress with the freshness of her approach and voice. Action and intrigue abound.’

—RT Book Reviews


Find out more about Rachel Vincent by visiting

mirabooks.co.uk/rachelvincent

and read Rachel’s blog at urbanfantasy.blogspot.com



Also available fromRachel Vincent

The Shifters series STRAY ROGUE PRIDE PREY SHIFT ALPHA

Soul Screamers series MY SOUL TO TAKE MY SOUL TO SAVE MY SOUL TO KEEP MY SOUL TO STEAL IF I DIE

And look for the thrilling third instalment in

Rachel’s new Unbound series

OATH BOUND



coming soon






Shadow Bound

Rachel Vincent
























www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)






This one is dedicated to my editor, Mary-Theresa

Hussey, who seems to see what I envision for a story

even before I’m able to make that clear in the

manuscript. This book was tough. Shadow Bound is the most difficult book I’ve ever written and there were days when living in Kori’s head put me in a very scary place. My editor reminded me that shadows cannot exist without the sun. Kori needed balance. She needed Ian. And Mary-Theresa helped me find the man Ian needed to be, both for Kori and for their story.

I learned a lot with this book. Thank you.




Acknowledgments


Thanks, as always, to my critique partner, Rinda Elliott, the first to read everything I write. Thanks most of all for your willingness to tell me when I suck. The truth is greatly appreciated.

Thanks to #1, my husband, for endless patience. This book and the subsequent revisions took up a crazy three and a half months of our lives and I may not have been the most pleasant person during that time.

A huge thank-you to the MIRA Art department for the SHADOW BOUND cover art. The models are perfect. The colors are beautiful. The tone is dead-on. I love it.

And, of course, thanks to all the readers willing to give this dark and twisted world a chance. I promise, there is a light at the end of the tunnel….




One


Kori

If you live in the dark long enough, you start to forget what light looks like. What it feels like. You may remember it in an academic sense. Illumination. A possible source of heat. But after a while those abstract memories are all you have left, and they’re worth less than the memory of water to a man dying of thirst.

I didn’t know how long I’d been in the dark. Long enough for most of the pain to fade into dull aches, though the latest batch of bruises would still have been visible, if anything had been visible. Long enough that I couldn’t remember what shade of gray the walls were. Long enough that when the light came on without warning, it blinded me, even through my closed eyelids.

I’d lost all sense of time. I didn’t know when I’d last showered, or eaten, or needed the toilet in the corner of my cell. I didn’t know when I’d last heard a human voice, but I remembered the last voice I’d heard, and I knew what the sudden light meant.

Light meant a visitor.

And visitors meant pain.

The door creaked open, and my pulse leaped painfully—fear like a bolt of lightning straight to my heart. I clung to that one erratic heartbeat, riding the flow of adrenaline because I hadn’t felt anything but the ache of my own wounds in days.

If not for the pain, I couldn’t have sworn I was still alive.

“Kori Daniels, rise and shine.” Milligan was on duty, which meant it was daytime—outside, anyway. In the basement, it was always night. There were no exterior windows, and no light until someone flipped a switch.

The dark and I used to be friends. No, lovers. When I was alone, I walked around naked just to feel it on my skin, cool and calm, and more intimate than any hand that had ever touched me. The dark was alive, and it was seductive. We used to slide in and out of one another, the shadows and I, always touching, caressing. Sometimes I couldn’t tell where the dark ended and I began, and at some point I’d decided that division didn’t really exist. I was the dark, and the dark was me.

But the darkness in the basement was different. It was false. Broken. Weakened by infrared lights I couldn’t see, but I could feel blazing down on me. Caging me. Draining me. The shadows were dead, and touching them was like touching the stiff limbs of a lover’s corpse.

“Kori,” Milligan said again, and I struggled to focus on him. On my own name.

The guard shift change had become the ticking of my mental clock—the only method I had of measuring time. But my clock skipped beats. Hell, sometimes it skipped entire days. If there was a pattern to the granting of meals, and showers, and company, I hadn’t figured it out. They came when they came. But mostly, they didn’t.

I didn’t sit up when Milligan came in. I didn’t even open my eyes, because I didn’t have to. I hadn’t sworn an oath to him, and I hadn’t been ordered to obey him, so participation was at my discretion. And I wasn’t feeling very discretionary.

I rolled onto my stomach on my mattress, eyes still squeezed shut, trying not to imagine how I must look after all this time. Skinny, bruised, tangled and dirty. Clad only in the same underwear I’d been wearing for days, at least, because humiliation was a large part of my sentence and I hadn’t been granted the privilege of real clothing. My period hadn’t come, which meant I wasn’t imagining not being fed regularly, and water came rarely enough that I’d decided I wasn’t being kept alive, so much as I was being slowly killed.

I’d been a bad, bad girl.

“Kori, did you hear me?” Milligan asked.

I’d had no problem with him on the outside. He’d respected me. At least, he’d respected the fact that the boss valued me. Milligan had never gotten grabby and he’d only leered when he thought I wasn’t looking. That was practically chivalry, on the west side of the city.

Now, I hated him. Milligan hadn’t put me in the basement, in that rotten fucking cell of a room. But he’d kept me there, and that was enough. If I got the chance—if I ever got out and regained my strength—I’d put a bullet in him. I’d have to, just to show Jake Tower that I was down, but not out. Beaten, but not broken.

Milligan would be expecting it, just like I would, in his position.

The door creaked open wider and I buried my face in the crook of my arm, nose pressed into the dirty mattress, braced for whatever would come. Prepared to turn myself off and make the world go away. That was the only way to survive in the basement. Convince yourself that whatever they do to you doesn’t matter. And really, it doesn’t. How can it, if you can’t stop it and no one else wants to? So I dug down deep, to a place where there was no pain and no thought. Not my happy place. Thinking of a happy place—any happy place—only reminded me that I wasn’t really there. That I never would be again.

I went to my empty place.

“Tower’s on his way,” Milligan said. “I think you’re getting out.”

My heart leaped into my throat, but I didn’t move. Surely I’d only heard what I wanted to hear. If I wasn’t careful, I sometimes imagined things, and there’s nothing more dangerous in the dark than unwarranted hope.

“Kori?” he said, and that time my eyes opened. “You’re getting out today.”

I sat up slowly, blinking furiously in the light, wincing over the residual pain from the gunshot wound in my shoulder. I’d heard him, but it took forever for the words to sink in, and even once they had, I didn’t let myself believe it. It could be a trick. Jonah Tower—Jake’s brother—had told me I was getting out before, but he only said it so he could watch me suffer when I realized it wasn’t true.

“If you’re lying, I’ll fucking kill you,” I croaked, my mouth and throat so dry my tongue felt like it had corners.

“I’m not—” Milligan glanced down a hallway I couldn’t see as a set of firm, even footsteps echoed toward us. “Here he comes.”

I swallowed a sob. I’d expected to die alone in this false dark. In these dead shadows.

Milligan stepped back, and Jake Tower replaced him in the doorway, a steel-spined symbol of power and authority in his white button-up shirt and suit jacket, sans tie. I hated myself for how relieved I was to see him, when he was the one who’d locked me up. I hated his clean clothes, and combed hair, and tanned skin. I hated the apple wood smoke clinging to his clothes from the grill, making my stomach rumble and cramp. I hated the slight flush in his cheeks that told me he’d had two glasses of red wine with his steak—never more, never less, because Tower was in control. Of everything. Always.

Jake Tower was the heart of the Tower syndicate. We—the initiates—were the lifeblood of the organization, but Tower was the pump that kept us flowing through the veins and arteries of this living machine. He pushed the buttons and pulled the strings, and we belonged to him, all of us, bound into service, sealed in flesh, by blood and by name. We lived and died according to his will. And we obeyed because obedience was a physical mandate. Even when our minds resisted, our bodies complied, helpless in the face of a direct order.

But I’d found a loophole. I’d disobeyed the spirit of an order, if not the order itself, and as punishment, Tower had thrown open the gates of hell and shoved me inside. He’d locked me up and given Jonah free rein, and for all I knew, Jake had forgotten I even existed until …

Until what?

Until he needed me. Why else would he be here? Why else had he let me live, if my current state could even be called living?

Tower’s nose wrinkled—I didn’t smell good—then he closed the door at his back and sat on the edge of the bare foam mattress covering the raised concrete slab that was my bed. He grabbed my chin and tilted my face toward the light, studying me. I knew what he saw, though there was no mirror in my cell. Bruises. Dark circles and sharp cheek bones. Split lips. And the damage didn’t end with my face. I looked like hell and I felt worse.

Tower looked … satisfied. “Does it hurt?”

“You fucking know it hurts.” Everywhere. That was the whole point. With my existence reduced to fear, and pain, and dead shadows, surely I would never even consider another betrayal. “The lights?” I didn’t want to ask, but I had to know. “Your idea?” Jonah wasn’t smart enough to think of something like that.

Tower’s lips curled up in a small smile, like he’d just remembered some distant childhood pleasure. “An irony I hope you fully appreciate. Absolute, inescapable darkness for the shadow-walker. Imprisoned by the source of your own abilities. How did that feel?”

I am a Traveler. A shadow-walker. I can step into a shadow in one room, then out of a shadow anywhere else I want to go, within my range. I can see better in the dark than most people. Sometimes I can look into one shadow and see through another one, somewhere else, like looking through a periscope, or one of those paper-towel-roll telescopes we used to play with as kids.

But the basement darkness was anemic, thanks to a grid of infrared lights, too high up for me to reach. So while my cell looked absolutely, claustrophobically dark to the naked eye, that darkness was too shallow for me to travel through. The shadows were dead. I was trapped in the element that had always been my ally. My escape.

How did that make me feel?

Like I’d been betrayed by my own body. Like I was lost to the rest of the world. Like I no longer existed at all, which would have been easy to believe, if not for the pain anchoring me to the reality of my own miserable existence. But I wasn’t going to tell Tower that.

“It sucked, on ice. Happy?”

He said nothing. Whatever he wanted to tell me would come on his terms, and making me wait for it was just another way of making me suffer.

“Why?” I demanded, pissed off that my voice was as weak as the rest of me. “Why didn’t you just kill me?” He’d killed others for far less than what I’d done.

“You needed to pay for your crimes, and others needed to know you were paying.” He said it like he might explain that grass is green, as if it should have been obvious, and the emptiness in his voice was the scariest thing I’d ever heard.

“You told them?”

“You were an object lesson, Korinne. I showed them.” He glanced at the slab of one-way glass in the top half of the interior wall, and my blood froze in my veins. I started to shake, and I couldn’t stop.

“You let them watch?” He’d invited an audience to see me beaten, and broken, and humiliated, and … I closed my eyes against this new layer of humiliation.

“Only those who needed to see.”

“Kenley?” No. Please no. I didn’t want her touched by this. I didn’t want her to know. If Tower was void of human emotion, Kenley was made of it, and she couldn’t defend herself. That was my job.

Tower shook his head. “Your sister only knows that you’re alive. She’s anxious to see you.”

I exhaled slowly and blinked back tears that would never fall, using them as fuel for the rage burning deep in my gut. Fury that would have no outlet for four more years. Anger that would fester and burn as I planned for the day when I’d be the one throwing punches and spilling blood. Jake Tower would pay. Jonah would pay. Milligan and the other guards would pay. Everyone who’d watched would fucking pay.

I would listen to them beg while they bled out on the floor.

But I’d have to survive to get revenge, and to survive, I’d have to play Jake’s game. It was always his game, always his rules, and the only cards he dealt me were penitence and obedience. So I would play the shit out of penitence and obedience—anything to get out of the basement—and keep the cards I’d dealt myself up my sleeve. Until it was my turn to deal.

“I have an assignment for you, Korinne,” Jake said. “A chance to redeem yourself.”

I said nothing, because nothing was required, but my pulse raced so fast I had to lean against the wall to steady myself. Milligan was right. I was getting out of the basement.

“Ian Holt.”

“Who?” I licked my lips, but my tongue was too dry to wet them, and now that I knew I was getting out, I found it hard to concentrate on the details, rather than the promise of regular meals, and showers, and relative freedom.

“He’s a Blinder of extraordinary skill.”

“You want him killed?” I’d never heard of him, which meant he wasn’t ours. And if he could be used against us, he was a target.

“I want him whole. Preferably unharmed.”

“Another acquisition?” In the weeks before I was locked up, I’d done quite a few of them, collecting whoever Tower wanted for his pet project.

“Only as a last resort. I want him on staff. Willingly.” Because forced bindings were never as strong as those entered into freely. “Holt hasn’t signed with anyone yet. In fact, he managed to stay completely off the radar until two days ago, when the JumboTron at an NHL hockey game caught him darkening the entire arena during a riot on the ice.”

“How do you know it wasn’t just a power outage?”

“Because he blinded the arena from the outside in, starting at the perimeter and moving toward the ice from all sides equally. The general public thinks he’s just some idiot who saw the first lights go out before the camera did and pretended to be doing a magic trick. But I know what I saw, and I’m not the only one. Now that he’s been exposed, everyone wants him. I’ve officially extended an invitation, and he’s agreed to come to town as my guest and hear our pitch. You will be his liaison. You will show him the advantages of joining the Tower syndicate and make sure that he signs with us, or with no one.”

“I’m not a fucking recruiter, Jake.” I’d been part of Tower’s personal security team. I’d killed for him. I’d kidnapped for him. I’d done other things I desperately wished I could forget, but recruiting was a specialized skill—one I didn’t have. “I’m a soldier, and you need a salesman.”

“You are whatever I say you are, and when Ian Holt gets here, you will be his recruiter. You will be his girlfriend, his best friend, his therapist, his mother, or his dog trainer, if need be. You will do whatever it takes to put a chain link on his arm.” For emphasis, Tower glanced at the two black interlocking chain links tattooed on my own arm—the flesh-and-blood binding tying me to him until my term was up. “Whatever it takes, Korinne. Do you understand?”

I understood. “You want me to fuck him.” And if I refused—if I refused anything Jake told me to do—resistance pain from violating my oath to him would shut my organs down one at a time until I died screaming.

“I want you to give him whatever he wants. And if he wants you, then yes, you will bed him, and you better be the best he’s ever had, because if he refuses my mark, you will have to bring him in by force so I can drain him. And if that happens, I will kill you, and your sister will pay for your failure as you’ve paid for your latest mistake. She will serve out the years remaining on her contract in this room, under the same conditions.”

My blood ran cold, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. “No one touches Kenley. You swore it when I signed on.” My little sister would be untouchable, in exchange for my service.

“And you swore that you would guard my life and my interests with your own.” Tower unbuttoned his shirt slowly, and I knew what he was going to do even before he pulled back the left half of the material to show me the fresh pink scar. “Your key card let the enemy into my house. Into my home, where my wife and children sleep. Your gun faltered where it should have fired, and I was shot in my own home, by my greatest enemy.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“You failed,” Tower insisted. “You broke your word, and I have no reason to keep mine. If Ian Holt does not sign with me voluntarily by the end of his visit, I will have you executed, and your sister will pay the pound of flesh you still owe.”

Nausea rolled over me, and if I’d had anything to vomit, it would have landed in his lap.

“You have two weeks to get back in shape and make yourself presentable. This is your last chance, Korinne. Save yourself. Protect your sister. Get me Ian Holt.”

After Tower left, the lights stayed on, and I had several minutes to see the emaciated ruin my body had become. And to think. And to hate Jake Tower like I’d never hated anyone in my life. Then the door opened again, and my sister stepped into the room, a younger, softer reflection of the woman I’d been until Tower locked me up.

Kenley gasped. Her hand flew to her mouth, then she spoke from behind it. “What did you bastards do to her?”

Milligan stood behind her, staring at the floor. “I never touched her. I just work here.”

“Where the hell are her clothes?”

Milligan shrugged. “This is how he sent her. You’ve got fifteen minutes to get her cleaned up.” He backed out of the room and shut the door.

Kenley crossed the small space and set a canvas bag on the floor, then dropped onto her knees in front of me, brushing hair back from my forehead.

“How long?” I asked, staring at the mattress while she dug in her bag.

She pulled out a bottle of water and handed it to me. “Almost six weeks,” she said, and I could hear the sob in her voice, though she tried to hold it back.

“I’m fine.” I cracked the top on the bottle, scared by how much effort that took, then unscrewed the lid. I’d gulped half of it before I remembered I should go slow.

“You’re not fine. I thought you were dead. Jake kept saying you were alive, but he wouldn’t let me see you. I was sure he was lying, just to keep me working.” Tears formed in her eyes and when she blinked, they rolled down her cheeks.

“No. Don’t cry, Kenni,” I whispered, because they were listening. They were always listening, and they were probably watching through the one-way glass. I licked the moisture from my lips. “Don’t ever let those steel-hearted sons of bitches see you cry. If they know you can be broken, they’ll fuckin’ break you just for sport.”

Like they’d tried to break me.

She nodded, jaw clenched against sobs she was visibly choking back.

I opened my mouth to tell her it would be okay. I would make it okay. But then my stomach revolted, and I lurched for the toilet. I retched hard enough to wrench my injured shoulder, and the water came up. It was too much, too fast. I should have known better. I’d been sipping half handfuls of clean water from the back of the toilet tank since the bottles had stopped coming, but that was different from gulping half a bottle, ice-cold.

Kenley pulled my hair from my face and I sat up, wiping my mouth with the back of one bare arm. My stomach was still pitching, but there was nothing left to lose.

“No one knew where you were.” She handed me the bottle again, and I rinsed my mouth, then spit into the toilet, thinking about how wrong she was. Some people knew where I was. Some of them had seen me, through the one-way glass. “Tower was shot, and you were shot, then he woke up and you disappeared. What happened, Kori? No one knows what really happened.”

What happened? I’d been buried in the basement, at the mercy of the monsters. But that wasn’t what she was asking.

“Liv said she needed my help, so I went. But it was a trap. They were waiting for me. They took my key and used it to break in.” I was the breach in security that got one of our men killed, two more shot, and Tower’s prize blood donor—my murdered friend Noelle’s only daughter—taken. “Ruben Cavazos shot us both.” I ran my fingers over the dirty bandage on my shoulder.

I should have run, regardless of the risk. I would have run, if not for Kenley. I couldn’t leave her alone with Tower. Alone in the syndicate. My sister and I were a package deal, from start to finish.

“You’re lucky he didn’t have you killed,” she said, but I shook my head.

“He can’t. He still needs me.” I had no clue why I had to be the one to recruit Ian Holt, but if Jake didn’t need me, I would be dead.

“Let’s get you cleaned up.” She stood and headed for the canvas bag, but her shoulders were shaking and it took me a minute to realize why.

“Kenley, this isn’t your fault.” I used the edge of the toilet to push myself to my feet.

“Of course it’s my fault.” She dug in the bag and pulled out a bottle of shampoo, then crossed the room toward the narrow, curtainless shower stall in one corner. “I sealed the binding between you and Liv, so you have to do what she asks. Because of me.”

Kenley was a Binder. A scary-good Binder. She was so good Jake hid her from the world, to protect her and every contract she’d ever sealed for him. He kept her under twenty-four-hour guard, and he threatened me to control her, just like he threatened her to control me.

“It wasn’t like that this time,” I insisted, as she turned on the shower—it only worked when they wanted it to. “Liv didn’t officially ask and I wasn’t compelled. I went to help her on my own.” Because it was the right thing to do. I was sure of that, even after everything that had come since.

“It’s my fault you’re here in the first place, Kori.” Kenley aimed the shower spray at the opposite wall, then turned to look at me, arms crossed over her chest, and I sighed. I’d never been able to effectively argue with that one. But again, I had to try.

“I make my own decisions. We came into the syndicate together, and we’ll leave together.” Or not at all. “Four years,” I whispered leaning with my forehead against her shoulder, while stray droplets of water sprayed us both. “We can do four more years, right?”

She nodded, but she looked far from sure. I’d been shot, starved, abused and locked in the dark for almost six weeks, but she was the one I worried about. Kenley was fragile, so I had to be strong enough for both of us. And Jake knew it. He knew what cards we held—what mattered to us—so he always won the game.

“Let me see your shoulder.” Kenley blinked away more tears, and I leaned against the wall for balance while she peeled medical tape and gauze from my gunshot wound. I’d done my best to keep it clean, and I’d taken all the antibiotics Jonah had brought in the first couple of weeks, back when I was being fed and showered regularly, because he was the bulk of my punishment. But then Jake had figured out that his brother wasn’t enough to break me, and that’s when the darkness and isolation had dropped into place around me.

“It could be worse.” Kenley wadded up the bandage and dropped it on the floor. “The stitches have dissolved and it’s only a little red.” Which kind of figured, because the rest of me was black and blue. “Get cleaned up. He’s sending an escort for us in a few minutes,” she said, while I stepped out of my underwear and dropped my grimy bra on the floor. Kenley kicked them into the opposite corner, then stuck one hand under the water and grimaced. “They could at least make it warm.”

But they wouldn’t. The basement cells weren’t built for comfort. They were built for isolation and torture. They were built for hour after hour of darkness and silence, because when you can’t see anything and you can’t hear anything, you have no choice but to think about what you did, and how you would never, ever do it again.

But here’s the thing. I would do it all over again, if I had the chance. I would take the gunshot wound, and the silence, and the darkness, and the worst Jonah could throw at me, if it meant sending Noelle’s kid back home where she belonged.

I stepped into the shower and gasped as freezing water poured over my face and body. I let it soak my hair, then I opened my mouth and drank just a little, one hand propped on the tile wall for balance, because I hadn’t eaten in days, and the room was starting to spin.

While I washed my hair slowly, shocked wide-awake by the cold water, my sister pounded on the one-way glass. “She’s gonna need something clean to wear. Actual clothes, this time! And a towel!”

I lathered the cracked bar of soap while water and shampoo suds ran down my body to swirl through the drain at my feet. It felt good to be clean on the outside, even if I might never be truly clean on the inside, ever again.

Five minutes later, clean and still damp, my hair dripping on clothes that weren’t mine and didn’t quite fit, I stepped out of the cell I’d spent almost six weeks in with one arm around my sister, as she half held me up. Milligan didn’t look at me, and neither did either of the grunts Tower had sent to escort us to Kenley’s apartment. But as the door swung shut behind me, literally closing on a chapter of my life I never wanted to reread, a man stepped out of the shadows in the hallway and crossed beefy arms over a barrel chest.

“Won’t be the same around here without you, Kori,” Jonah Tower said, cruel laughter echoing behind every syllable, and at the sound of his voice, my heart thumped painfully, pumping remembered pain and fear along with the blood in my veins. He stepped closer and whispered into my ear, too softly for Kenley to hear. “But I think you’ll be back. And if you can’t give Jake what he wants, I get to end you. Then the younger Miss Daniels and I are gonna get to know each other real well.”

Kenley shied away from the hand he laid on her shoulder, and I stepped between them, close enough that I could smell the beer on his breath. “I’ll be back all right, but you’re not gonna see me coming. And if you’ve laid a finger on my sister, I’m going to tear them off one at a time and shove them down your throat until you choke on your own sins.”




Two


Ian

“Have I told you you’re an idiot?” Aaron asked, staring through the windshield at the tall iron gate and the even taller house behind it. If such a monstrosity could even be called a house. It was more like a modern fortress.

“About twenty times since my plane landed.” I flipped down the driver’s-side sunshade and checked my tie in the mirror.

“Has it sunk in yet?”

I glanced at him in the thick shadows of the car’s interior, lit only by the green numbers scrolling across the radio’s display in the dashboard. “Your puny verbal barbs are no match for my thick skull.”

“You do have a freakishly thick skull,” Aaron said, flipping through the stations on my rental car’s radio. “But that won’t stop a bullet. They may look civilized in tuxedos and sequins, but they’re really monsters in men’s clothing, every single one of them. They’re going to eat you alive in there, Ian.”

“Then may they choke on my corpse.”

Aaron punched the button to turn off the radio, uncharacteristically serious in concession to the job at hand. “Eight years since you left, and nothing’s changed. You’re still ready to charge in half-cocked and make the world bend to your will, consequences be damned.”

“That’s not true.” The kid I’d been back then was idealistic but soft. Smart but naive. That kid had been burned by the real world—roasted alive—and I’d risen from his ashes, ready to breathe fire of my own. “Now I’m fully cocked, and well aware of the consequences. As are you.”

He nodded at the somber reminder. “You sure you don’t want me to go in with you? I could grab a monkey suit and be back in a second.” Aaron was a Traveler, which meant he could step into the shadow of a tree outside my car and into his own bedroom in the space of a single breath, and be back just as fast. “You’re gonna need someone you trust at your back.”

Unfortunately for Aaron—or fortunately, depending on your perspective—traveling was one of the most common Skills in the world. Aaron’s range was a little above average, but his accuracy was questionable at best, and unless his motivation was personal, no one would ever call him punctual. Which meant he had no value whatsoever to the Skilled syndicates.

That fact had kept him safe from their interest for years. So safe, in fact, I’d often wondered if he was faking his own incompetence for that very reason. He wouldn’t be the first to try it. Hell, I’d tried it. But that wasn’t why I couldn’t use his help.

“Thanks, but no. If you show your face in Tower’s house, within an hour they’ll know you’re an Independent.”

They’d also know that Aaron was as good with a computer as he was bad with women, that he was late on the rent and quick with a punch line, and that he was addicted to those little melt-away mints people serve at weddings. His life was an open book, available to anyone who cared to read it. As were most people’s lives. Which was why I was the only one who could do this job.

Because I had no life. No past. Officially, I didn’t even exist, and if they ever figured that out, being seen with me could get Aaron killed.

“I need you to stay off their radar so you can be my emergency bailout, if this ends badly.”

“Fair enough.” Aaron sounded half relieved, half disappointed. He wanted to play badass assassin, but he didn’t really want the risk that came with it. “Give me a call if you need a quick escape.”

“I will,” I said, as he pushed open the passenger-side door. But we both knew I wouldn’t. There was nothing he could do to help me, if I couldn’t get out of Tower’s house on my own. The infrared lighting grid guaranteed that trespassers couldn’t gain entrance through the shadows. His heavily guarded exits made sure no one got in the traditional way, either. Once inside, I would be on my own.

“If you survive this kamikaze mission, we should get dinner. And beer.”

“Absolutely.” But that was another lie. I had every intention of surviving, but wouldn’t get the chance to hang out afterward, and I’d probably never be able to come back into the country at all, much less this particular city. If I accomplished what I’d set out to do, the price on my head would be high enough that preachers and Boy Scouts would fight one another for the chance to profit from my death.

“Good luck, man.” Aaron stuck his hand out and I shook it, then he stepped out of my rental car and closed the door. I watched as he walked into the patch of woods at the side of the road. One step. Two. Three. Then he was gone, not just hidden by the shadows, but transported by them. Through them.

I took a deep breath and checked my tie in the mirror again—I hadn’t worn a tux in years, and my distaste for formal wear had not faded. Then I shifted the car into Drive and pulled onto the street at the end of a procession of cars all headed the same place I was.

The queue of vehicles moved quickly, greased by proper planning and a well-trained workforce. When I rolled to a stop in front of the house, feet from the curved, formal steps, a man was waiting to take my keys while another spoke into his handheld radio, his steady but unobtrusive gaze taking in every detail of my clothes and bearing. They knew my face.

Before I’d even rounded the front of the car, a brunette in a long, formfitting peach-colored dress came down the steps toward me. She smiled like a pageant contestant and moved like a waitress, quick and eager to please.

“Mr. Holt.” She threaded her arm through mine and guided me smoothly up the steps, without ever faltering in either smile or stride. “We would have sent a car for you,” she said, leading me through a door held open by a man in service dress. She was smooth, and polished, and poised—an experienced people handler and a beautiful woman.

But she was not what I’d requested.

“Unnecessary. I wanted to see the city a bit on my own.” I stopped in the foyer, and she had no choice but to stop with me, because I still held her arm. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“I’m Nina. Mr. Tower’s personal assistant.”

“And you’re my escort for the evening?”

Her smile faltered a bit over my implication, and the dissatisfaction echoing intentionally within the question. But then she rallied from the insult and her smile beamed brighter than ever, if a little brittle now. “No, I’m afraid Mr. Tower has chosen someone else to keep you company during your stay. I’m just here to make the introductions this evening.”

Nina led me through the wide foyer, generically ostentatious with its soaring ceiling and gold-veined marble tile. Even in his absence, Jake Tower exhibited his own affluence and power like a peacock displaying plumage. Wealth was evident in the expensive furnishings and decor, while his power was even more obvious in the stream of well-dressed guests, several of whom I recognized from political pieces on the nightly news.

At the base of each curved staircase, dressed in black and carrying handheld radios, stood a member of Tower’s security team, monitoring the party in general and me in particular. I was unbound—I’d taken no oath of loyalty or service to Jake Tower—thus untrusted. They would watch me, prepared to intercept or incapacitate, until the day I bore Tower’s chain link on my arm, marking me as his to command.

And that wasn’t going to happen.

Once those milling in the entry had their chance to see me, Nina guided me into the main event. Into the snake pit, where every hiss would feel like praise and every bite like a deep, hot kiss. The venom would flow like honey, too thick to swallow, but too sweet to entirely resist.

I knew how extravagant and generous the syndicates could seem when they wanted something. I also knew it was all a lie. The party was an illusion, from every plunging neckline to each glass of chilled champagne. It was a show. A seduction. I was being courted by the Tower syndicate because I had something they wanted. And I would play along because they had something I wanted.

Heads turned to look when we entered the party. Hands shook mine and voices called out greetings, but the faces all blurred together. The names were a jumble of syllables I didn’t bother to untangle. These weren’t the important names. Not the important faces. Remembering would be a waste of effort.

So I smiled and nodded in the right places, agreeing when it was convenient, changing the subject when it wasn’t. I sipped from the glass placed in my hand and ate the hors d’oeuvres Nina insisted I try. But I tasted nothing and hardly heard the words that came out of my own mouth. I was too busy scanning the crowd for the faces I’d studied. The names I’d memorized. The important ones, not necessarily in power circles, but vital to my purpose.

And finally, nearly half an hour after I arrived, a soft buzz spread through the crowd and I looked up to find Jake Tower coming down the main staircase with his wife on his arm and two black-clothed bodyguards at his back. The host had arrived, late enough to demonstrate that he lived life on his own schedule, but not so tardy as to be truly rude to his guests.

“Let me introduce you to Mr. Tower,” Nina said, taking my arm again. She led me through the crowd toward the stairs as Tower and his small entourage descended into our midst.

At the base of the stairs, a glass of champagne was pressed into Tower’s hand, but he handed it to his wife before accepting another for himself. A heartbeat later, his gaze landed on Nina, then slid to me, and I swallowed a lump of eager rage before it could shine through my eyes and give me away. Tower wasn’t my target, but that didn’t mean I’d cry at his funeral. When the time came, I’d be raising my glass to whoever finally put the vicious, arrogant bastard in the ground, as would everyone else he’d ever tried to put his mark on.

“Mr. Holt, may I introduce Jake Tower and his lovely wife, Lynne. Mr. Tower, this is Ian Holt, your guest of honor.”

Tower offered me his empty right hand and I shook it, making eye contact for the first time. Trying not to show that I knew more than I should.

I shouldn’t know that Tower’s first name was actually Jacob and one of his middle names was David. His wife was really Gwendolyn, and before she married, she’d been a Pierce, a great beauty by all accounts, but not burdened with enough brains or initiative to ever get in her husband’s way.

“Mr. Holt, so glad you could join us. I hope you’re enjoying yourself so far?” Tower’s brows rose, and I nodded in reply.

“Of course. You have a lovely home, and an even lovelier wife.” I took Lynne Tower’s hand briefly, and she smiled, then silently sipped from her glass.

Over their shoulders, the bodyguards watched me, and their surnames filtered through my memory, triggered by faces matching the photographs and notes Aaron had fed me for days. The taller, darker man was Clifton, and the shorter, paler, broader one was Garrett. Their Skills, like their first names, were unknown, but based on their size alone, either could break a man in half.

The group around me shifted to accept a new couple into our power circle, and I realized with one glance at the newcomers that they weren’t a couple at all.

“Mr. Holt, this is my brother, Jonah, and our sister, Julia.”

“My pleasure,” I said, shaking their hands in turn, and Julia’s left eyebrow quirked over one deep brown eye, like something in my reply amused her.

Jonah only scowled. He was dressed like one of the guests, but even if I hadn’t known from my research, I would have known from his bearing alone that Jonah would have been more comfortable wearing all black like the rest of Tower’s muscle. He didn’t like dressing up, and he didn’t like playing nice. And he didn’t like me—that much was obvious in his first glance my way.

Almost as obvious was the fact that his dislike of me would be very much mutual.

“Mr. Holt, if I may say so, that was quite an impressive show you put on at the arena a couple of months ago.” Julia—Lia—raised her glass just a little, offering her own personal toast to my Skill.

“Oh, thank you, but it wasn’t intended as a show at all.” Lie. “I was just trying to help out where I could.” That part was true, but intentionally misleading. I was trying to help myself into Tower’s power circle.

“Still, you made quite an impression,” Tower insisted. “Lynne and I were impressed, anyway.”

“Unfortunately you weren’t the only ones. The news clip got quite a bit of airtime, and it’s been viewed on the internet ad nauseam. If I’d known there were cameras aimed at me, I might have done things a little differently.”

Another lie, and a big one that time. I knew there were cameras. The arena was chosen for that very reason. For my Skilled coming-out party. For the exposure that would bring me to Jake Tower’s notice, during his favorite sport.

“And you’re uncomfortable in the spotlight?” Julia asked.

“Or maybe scared of it?” Jonah added. “Darkness is more your thing, right?”

“I’m most comfortable in the absence of both light and attention, but scared of neither.” I faked a nervous laugh. “However, I will admit to being unnerved a bit at first by interest from organizations like this one.”

“You’ve had offers from other syndicates?” Tower’s frown was small, but telling.

“Let’s just say I’m keeping my options open for now. Though no one else has gone to quite this much trouble to impress me before.” I gestured one-armed at the entire party.

“Obviously we don’t stand around drinking and talking every day, but I thought a party would be the best way to introduce you to the syndicate as a whole.”

“And what an introduction it is,” I said, as one waiter took my empty glass while another replaced it.

“This is only the beginning.” Julia smiled, dark straight hair framing a pretty face I couldn’t quite read. “By the end of the week, you’ll understand that no one else can offer you the benefits, security and career advancement potential that the Tower syndicate can.”

“And here is the woman for the job.” Tower smiled coolly at someone over my shoulder and I turned as he waved two more women into our widening circle. The first was a small, delicate-looking woman in light blue, her platinum curls tumbling over pale, bare shoulders. She was smaller and fairer than my personal tastes ran, but I’d requested an escort of her exact description, and when her brown-eyed gaze met mine, some small bit of tension inside me eased.

“Mr. Holt, this is Kenley Daniels.”

I took her hand to shake it and couldn’t help smiling in relief. There she was, my target, hand delivered to me by one of the most dangerous and powerful men in the country, though he had no idea that he’d played the very card I wanted most. All I needed now was to get her away from Tower and his security team, and …

“And this,” he continued, before my hand had more than grazed Kenley’s, “is her sister, Korinne. Kori will be keeping you company this week.”

I blinked, confused, and glanced from Kenley Daniels to her sister, whose coloring matched Kenley’s exactly—same platinum hair, pale skin, and deep brown eyes. Korinne was only an inch or so taller. She was a virtual match to the description I’d given Tower when he asked what I’d desire most in a liaison—the description of her sister.

“A pleasure,” I said on autopilot, as I released Kenley’s hand in favor of Kori’s, still reeling from the bait-and-switch. Only it couldn’t be a bait-and-switch, because Tower didn’t know I’d had anyone specific in mind as my liaison.

And I hadn’t known his mistake was possible, because Kori Daniels wasn’t possible. She was dead. Every single one of Aaron’s sources had said the same thing. She’d been a fixture at Tower’s side for years—a strategically visible threat—then she’d disappeared several weeks ago. Gone, with no trace and no explanation.

In the syndicate, that can only mean one thing.

Yet there she stood, clearly alive and breathing, and waiting for me to shake the hand she held out. So I did.

She let go of my hand almost the instant we touched.

“Kori will be your tour guide,” Tower continued. “She will also be your assistant, your chauffeur and your personal security while you are here. Anything you want, Kori will provide.”

But Kori looked like she’d rather perform CPR on a leper than ever touch me again, even if only to hand me a cup of coffee.

My thoughts raced while I struggled to recover from surprise and frustration, without showing either. “You have security experience?” I said as if I didn’t already know the answer, grasping at the only reasonable excuse I might have to reject her services. There had to be a reason she was no longer guarding the boss, and if he didn’t trust her, why should I?

“Six years on my personal security detail,” Tower said, and I was starting to wonder if my new liaison even had a tongue. “I assure you, Kori is everything you requested, and more.”

Something silent and angry passed between Tower and the taller, older Daniels sister as her jaw clenched visibly and his gaze went hard. Kenley Daniels stared at her feet in the awkward silence, and Jonah Tower smirked when Kori flinched first, and looked away from her boss.

“Well, then, Mr. Holt, I believe we’re scheduled to discuss business later, but tonight is for drinking, and dancing, and mingling. I have some other guests to greet, so I’m going to leave you in Korinne’s capable hands for the moment. Please make yourself at home in my home.”

With that, Tower guided his wife toward a couple I vaguely recognized from the cover of some financial magazine, and the rest of his entourage followed. Leaving me alone with Korinne Daniels, who held an untouched flute of champagne but showed no sign of sipping from it. Or of acknowledging my presence.

How could she be alive? Where the hell had she been for the past few weeks? I’d made sure that none of the other women photographed with Tower recently had pale blond hair, specifically to avoid this kind of mistake.

Weeks of research and study, down the drain.

“So …” I said, watching Kori watch the rest of the room, trying not to let frustration leak into my voice. “You’re one of Tower’s bodyguards?”

“Was,” she said, and her posture tensed almost imperceptibly as she stared at something over my shoulder. I twisted to see Jonah Tower guiding her sister through the crowd with one hand at her lower back, and when I turned back to Kori, I found her eyes narrowed, one fist clenched at her side.

Were Jonah and Kenley involved? If so, Kori clearly didn’t approve. Neither did I. Jonah Tower didn’t like me, which could make it very hard for me to get close to Kenley if they were together. Unless her sister trusted me …

I studied Kori as she watched them wind their way through the crowd, trying to assess her more clearly now that I was over my initial surprise at being saddled with the wrong Daniels sister.

Korinne was slightly taller than her sister, but much thinner. Too thin, really. Her hip bones showed through the material of her dress and the points of her collarbone looked like they might pierce her skin at the slightest pressure. Her makeup was expertly applied, but couldn’t quite cover the dark circles under her eyes or skin that looked sickly pale, in contrast to her sister’s naturally fair complexion.

Still, she was pretty, in a hard-edged, angry kind of way.

Kori glanced up and caught me staring, and I held her gaze. “What do you do now?” I asked, trying to pick up the thread of a conversation that already seemed destined to unravel.

“Now I babysit you,” she snapped, and I blinked in the face of such candor. Then almost laughed out loud. I’d expected Tower’s people to be overaccommodating and ingratiatingly polite. Perhaps even sycophantic. Unvarnished honesty was a surprise.

“I meant, what do you do for Tower? What’s your role in his organization?” When my question produced only a blank, half-puzzled look, like she wasn’t sure she even knew the answer, I tried again from another angle. “Would it be impolite of me to ask about your Skill, considering you already know mine?”

“Hell yes.” She flinched and rubbed her temple with one hand. Then she rolled her eyes at nothing. “I’m a Traveler.”

A shadow-walker, just like Aaron.

“I assume you’re good with a gun, since you used to be a bodyguard. Any other special skills?” But I could tell with one look at her closed-off expression that I’d picked the wrong approach.

Kori Daniels didn’t want to talk about herself. She didn’t want to talk to me. And she certainly didn’t want to relax. She looked a little like she wanted to rip my head off and spit down my throat. “A special skill?”

I nodded, and too late I realized she’d found innuendo where I hadn’t intended it.

I shook my head and tried to rephrase the question, but then she stepped closer, until she was in my personal space, not quite touching me, but so close air couldn’t have flowed between us. She went up on her toes, like she might nibble on my ear, or share some dirty little secret. Then she whispered, so softly no one else could have heard.

“I do have a special skill,” she murmured, her breath warm on my neck, her voice soft and low-pitched, with that hot, gravelly quality some women get when they’re really turned on, and my pulse raced a little in spite of my very clear objective. “I’m pretty good with knives. I’m so good, in fact, that I could sever your testicles with one hand and slice open your throat with the other, and you’d go into shock so fast you’d die without ever knowing you’d spilled a fucking drop of blood.”

Korinne settled back onto her heels and smiled up at me like she’d just promised to fulfill my dirtiest, most secret desire, and I felt the blood drain from my face.

This was not the woman I’d ordered.




Three


Kori

I sipped from my glass and enjoyed Holt’s shocked expression so much that I’d taken two more sips before I remembered I hate champagne. And for the first time since I’d woken up in the basement eight weeks before, I felt a little better. A little more like myself. Until I saw Jake watching me from across the room, fury dancing in his eyes. He couldn’t have heard me, but he could see that I’d scared his guest of honor—disturbed him, at the very least—and he was pissed. Jake tossed his head toward an alcove mostly hidden by the curve in the staircase, and I had no choice but to obey the silent summons.

“Be right back …” I mumbled to Holt, and cursed myself silently all the way across the room. I’d known better. I’d fucking known better, and I gave in to temptation anyway. I couldn’t afford to scare off Holt or piss off Tower—Kenley couldn’t afford my mistakes—yet I’d managed to do both after less than five minutes alone with the man whose Skill Tower valued more than he valued my life.

“What the hell did you just do?” Jake growled, hauling me into the alcove by one arm. I tripped over the stupid stilettos Kenley had insisted I wear and would have gone down on my face if Tower wasn’t holding me up.

“He asked if I have any ‘special skills.’ He said it just like that.” Like special meant depraved or perverted.

“Was I not clear before?” Jake’s eyes flashed with anger. “I only pulled you out of the basement two weeks ago for this job. For him. I don’t care what he says, or what he does, or what he wants,” he growled into my ear, squeezing my arm hard enough to bruise, though I’d die before I complained. “You will answer him with a smile, and the answer is always yes. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I snapped, and it felt good to throw the word back in his face, even if it tasted bitter on my tongue.

He let go of my arm, but didn’t back down. “I’m not going to bother listing all the things you are not allowed to say or do, because I recognize that while unsophisticated and often crass, your mannerisms have a certain crude charm, and for all I know, Holt might actually want to play ‘tame the beast.’ That’s up to you to determine. But however this plays out, I swear on every beat of my wife’s heart that if you don’t have Ian Holt eating out of your hand in forty-eight hours, you will pay for it with your life. And your sister will pay for it with the balance of hers. Do you understand what I’m saying, Korinne?” he demanded, and I nodded, but that evidently wasn’t enough, because he repeated the question.

“Yes. I fucking understand,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Good.” He stepped back and eyed me from head to toe without a hint of desire. Tower, for all his faults, worshipped his wife like she shit gold and bled wine, and I’d never once seen him even glance at another woman with any real interest. “You look like a lady for once. Now go pretend to be one,” he said. “And try to remember that though a sledgehammer may be the most prominent weapon in your verbal arsenal, it is seldom the most appropriate.”

“Jake, please,” I whispered, swallowing the lump of bitter pride in my throat. “I’m not the best woman for this job. If you really want him, you need a recruiter.” Someone who was used to wining, and dining, and kissing arrogant ass. Someone who was good at it. “Don’t you think Monica would be better suited to this? Or Erica?”

Tower’s gaze went hard, and I knew I’d overstepped. Again. “Without a doubt. But he doesn’t want Monica or Erica. The only other person in my employ who fits Holt’s description of his ideal physical type is your sister, and even if you were willing to let her wander all over town alone with a man she just met, I am not. I need her here, doing her job, where I know no one else can get to her.”

I wanted to protect my sister from the realities of life in the syndicate. He wanted to protect a very valuable asset from being poached or exterminated. Still, in the end, our goals were the same, so I couldn’t argue.

“Now take the man a fresh drink and apologize like you mean it. And do not give me a reason to have to repeat this conversation. That’s an order.” With that, Tower stepped out of the alcove and back into his party, smiling at acquaintances like he’d never had a sour thought in his life.

I started to make my way back to Holt so I could publicly choke on the crow Jake had shoved down my throat, but when I scanned the crowd, checking on Kenley out of habit, I found her with Jonah Tower, who smirked at me silently while he rubbed her bare back with one hand, until she shrugged out from under his touch.

And suddenly I wanted to vomit.

I backed into the alcove again and stayed there for another minute, fighting the flashes of memory that played behind my eyelids—a montage of pain and humiliation, overlaid with the terrifying certainty that if I failed, it would all happen again, this time to my little sister.

I swallowed compulsively to keep my dinner down, breathing deeply, like Kenley had showed me. So far, when the basement resurfaced in my head, the only thing able to beat it back when I couldn’t take out my rage on the nearest boxing dummy was steady, measured breathing. Balancing each inhalation with an exhalation.

Kenley said I was imposing calm on everything else by instituting order in the most basic of involuntary functions. Or some shit like that.

I didn’t care how it worked. All I cared about was that it did work. Usually.

When I opened my eyes again, the buzz of conversation and laughter roared back into focus and the looming darkness of the basement was gone, at least for the moment.

Remember who you were before, Kori. I had to remember and become her again, or I might die without the chance to claim vengeance or reclaim the woman I’d been.

I straightened my dress—stupid fucking sequins—and squared my shoulders, then took one more deep breath and stepped back into the fray.

That was the only way I could think of this night and hope to succeed. The party was a battle to be fought, not with bullets, but with pointless social gestures and small talk. I could do this. Every polite smile would find its mark. Every swallowed curse would block a blow. And every bitter concession made to polite society would bring me one step closer to the goal. To signing Ian Holt and protecting my sister.

If the party was a brawl, then Holt was my enemy, but he couldn’t be beaten with fists or knives. He could only be lulled into submission—into lowering his guard—with subterfuge. With careful answers and gestures of compliance.

I could play that part. I’d have to play that part. Starting now.

I watched him as I closed in on my target, dodging hits from other combatants—Jake would call them guests—even as I armed myself with two fresh glasses of champagne from a tray carried by a passing waiter, an unwitting accomplice in my campaign.

Holt wasn’t bad-looking. In fact, he was actually kind of hot, blessed with broad shoulders, a strong chin, and the smooth, dark complexion only mixed parentage could give. Or maybe that was the champagne talking. I could toss back vodka all day long, but I’d never been able to think clearly on anything fancy. Probably from lack of practice.

While I was still several feet away, two familiar silhouettes stepped between me and my goal. They were both brunette and curvy, and less than two years bound, yet eager to make names for themselves. They were also on Jake’s shit list for refusing to believe after one crack at him that he could not be tempted to stray from his wife, even for a double dose of sin served hot and ready.

Within seconds of their arrival, Holt looked ready to flee the premises. I exhaled slowly and donned my mental armor, then stepped back onto the front lines, right between the two brash sluts, who gaped at me like I’d just insulted their strappy footwear.

“You’ll have to excuse us,” I said, handing Holt one of the glasses so I could link my arm through his. I couldn’t come up with a believable reason why they’d have to excuse us, so I didn’t bother. I just steered him away from the wild hyena women and through the crowd, half enjoying the angry looks they shot my way.

A victory is a victory. The venue is irrelevant.

“Not that I don’t appreciate the rescue,” Holt said. “But I’m forced to ask, in the interest of self-preservation … exactly how well armed are you right now?”

I laughed, and it wasn’t even forced. Probably because even with the smile hovering on the edge of his expression, his joke wasn’t really a joke—he was actually asking.

“Guns leave unsightly bulges in an evening gown.” Which I was only wearing under direct orders. “Tonight, what you see is what you get.” Jake had made it clear that I had not yet earned back the privilege of carrying weapons in his territory, after letting him get shot. “But don’t worry, there’s enough security in here to rival the U.S. Mint. No one could possibly get an unauthorized gun through the door.”

“I wasn’t worried about getting shot,” Holt said, as we wound our way through the crowd. “Perhaps ritualistically castrated and dismembered …”

“Okay, I’m sorry about the threat,” I said, though that wasn’t really true. “But they say you can’t underestimate the value of a good first impression.”

He stopped walking to frown at me. “Your idea of a good first impression is to threaten a man’s groin and his life in one breath?”

I shrugged. “Why? Would taking a breath in between improve the delivery?”

“I suppose not.” He drained the last inch of champagne from his glass, then set it on an empty tray as a waiter passed. Then he turned back to me, his expression caught somewhere between confusion and amusement. “You’re not what I expected from Jake Tower’s envoy.”

“What did you expect?” I was honestly curious.

“Someone like her.” Holt nodded at something over my shoulder, and I turned to find Nina, Jake’s personal assistant, schmoozing with the lieutenant governor, one hand on his arm, her gaze locked with his as she laughed at whatever asinine story he’d just told. I’d heard every story he had. They were all asinine.

I started to ask Holt if he’d rather have Nina show him around—surely Jake wouldn’t make me play recruiter if the recruit didn’t want me around after all—but he was already speaking again, this time watching a group clustered near the windows on the west wall. “Or someone like your sister.”

I glanced at him in surprise, then followed his line of sight again to where Kenley stood against the wall, Jonah hovering near her like a kid eager to show off his prom date, and I realized Jake had probably told his brother to stick close to her, to remind me of what was at stake with this job.

Everything. That’s what was at stake.

Kenley and our brother, Kris, were all I had left, and Kris had his hands full with our grandmother. Kenley was my responsibility, and I couldn’t let her down. Even if that meant conning some clueless asshole into service at Tower’s whims.

“Kenley would make a terrible tour guide,” I said, more to myself than to him, still watching my sister play the wallflower. She wouldn’t give Jonah any excuse to touch her. “She doesn’t get out much.”

“Out of what?” Holt asked, and I forced my mind back to the conversation at hand.

“Outside. Jake keeps her close at hand. Because of the nature of her work.” And too late I realized how that probably sounded.

“Your sister lives here? In Tower’s house? Do they …? Um …?”

I scowled. “No, my sister isn’t screwing the boss.” Nothing could be further from the truth. “She’s his top Binder—the only one he really uses anymore—so he keeps her close to keep her safe. She has a small apartment near here.” And she was always under guard.

“Oh.” Holt looked relieved, and briefly I wondered why he cared who Jake was screwing. Was he a prude or a perv?

“I used to live here, though,” I said, picking at the seams of his reaction. “In this house.”

“You used to …?” He glanced from me to Jake and back, and I could practically see the gears turning behind his eyes as he tried to puzzle out a polite way to ask a crude question.

I rarely bother with polite. Makes things much simpler.

“Were you and he …?” Holt let the question trail off to its obvious conclusion.

“Do you ever finish a sentence?” I asked, and his cheeks darkened slightly as his brows rose in challenge.

“Do you ever think before you speak?”

I blinked, surprised. Jake said impulse control was my biggest character flaw. I’d always assumed he meant my tendency to hit first, then survey the situation as an after thought, but Holt was clearly caught off guard by the verbal version of that.

“That’s your problem.” I backed slowly toward the foyer, leaving him to follow. “You think too much.”

“I don’t consider caution and forethought a problem.”

“It takes you forever to order at a restaurant, doesn’t it? And to pick out a tie?” I stepped closer and flicked his obnoxious little bow tie, then turned and stepped into the foyer, desperately hoping Kenley’s stupid stilettos didn’t seize that moment to betray me on the slick marble. Why do women insist on crippling themselves with footwear obviously designed by sadists?

Holt caught up with me, his mouth open to reply, but I spoke over him. “I tell you what. If you can dig up enough nerve to ask what you really want to know, I’ll answer the question.”

“Nerve isn’t the issue.” He stared straight into my eyes, practically daring me to argue. “What makes you think I care, one way or another?”

“The fact that you think too much. You overanalyze everything, like life’s one big puzzle you can solve, if you can just find the pattern, and now you’re thinking that neurotic tendency will help you figure out where you stand with one of the most powerful men in the country. You asked for a blonde liaison, and he gave you a blonde, so you’re thinking—correctly—that that means he really wants you.”

“You’re on track so far,” he admitted, amusement peeking around the edges of his skepticism.

“I know.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re a Reader now?”

I almost laughed. “Hell no, I’m still just a Traveler.” Readers, like Julia Tower, read the truth in a person’s words. I read people. Their posture. Their expressions. The things their brains didn’t even know their bodies were saying. That was the one quality I had that might actually come in handy for a recruiter.

Holt looked relieved, and I wasn’t surprised. Readers make people nervous. Everyone lies, and no one wants to be called on it.

“So what else am I thinking?” he asked, and his grin said this had become a game.

I was not a fan of games, but when I played, I liked to win. So I swallowed my trepidation over the direction the discussion was headed and pressed forward, wearing my game face.

“You know Jake wants you. But now it’s a little more complicated than that, right? If I’m Jake’s sloppy seconds and you take a big bite, it’s gonna look like you’re satisfied with his leftovers. And that’s going to lower your value. But on the other hand, he’s given you what you asked for, and turning your nose up at a gift from Jake Tower could look like a massive insult. And you wanna play hard-to-get, not difficult-to-stomach, right?”

Holt’s green eyes were huge. “And you think I overanalyze things?”

But I was right. I could see that much in the irritated way he crossed both arms over his chest, wrinkling his expensive jacket. He’d expected to study Jake, and his offer, and his people, but he hadn’t expected a common escort to study him back. Much less be good at it.

I shrugged and smiled, then turned away from him and started across the foyer, calling softly over one shoulder, “Fine. Then don’t ask.”

His shoes squeaked after me on the marble, and I knew I had him. “Okay, I give up,” he called, grabbing my arm from behind. I froze at his touch and had to remind myself that it meant nothing. I was flirting with him—albeit under orders to seduce him on behalf of the entire syndicate—so I couldn’t justify freaking out over evidence that I was getting the job done.

But neither could I stop myself from pulling my arm from his grip, though I tried to disguise the movement by ducking into an alcove, drawing us both out of view from most of the rest of the party. “I admit it,” he said, stepping close enough that I wanted to back up, but there was nowhere left to go. “I want to know.”

With the wall at my back and Holt blocking my path, I felt like the world was closing in on me. My pulse raced with encroaching panic. But I’d brought us here, out of sight, and I was still in control of this little word game.

“Then grow some balls and ask,” I said, staring straight up into his eyes, silently daring him.

One eyebrow arched in response to my challenge. “Were you sleeping with your boss?”

I shook my head solemnly. “I have never once fallen asleep in Jake Tower’s company.” In fact, it was tempting to try to blink one eye at a time when he was around, so I could keep the other one on him at all times.

Holt rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“I know what you asked.” I couldn’t tell if he was adorably old-fashioned, hopelessly shy, or simply reluctant to offend a syndicate representative with a question about a very powerful man’s personal life. “If that’s not what you wanted to hear, then say what you mean.”

“You’re bossy.”

I laughed. “And you’re nosy, so get it over with. No more euphemisms. Bite the bullet, or I’m gonna have to tell Jake you don’t have the balls for this job.” That was a total bluff, of course. Jake would like him better with neither a mouth, nor the balls to use it.

That time when Holt frowned, I couldn’t tell if he was pissed off or intrigued. Until he stepped closer, leaving no room between us at all, and I realized he was a little of both. “Did you fuck your boss?” he demanded, his voice lower and grittier than it’d been a moment before.

“Hell no.” I slid along the wall, sidestepping him, and my heart didn’t slow to normal speed until I’d regained personal space, and both flight and fight seemed possible again. Just in case. “Jake doesn’t screw around on his wife.” He wouldn’t, even if he weren’t contractually prohibited from touching another woman. At least, that was the rumor. “And FYI, he’ll have you shot for looking at her for more than a few seconds at a time, unless she’s talking directly to you.”

“That’s crazy.”

I shrugged. “That’s love.”

That hint of a grin was back. “Isn’t that what I said?”

“Ah, a cynic.” I sank onto a gold-padded bench against one wall of the foyer. “You may fit in here after all.”

Holt sat next to me. “So, why did you live here, if you weren’t … with him?”

And, the euphemisms were back. “Jake used to keep a small staff on hand at all times. But he moved everyone out a few weeks ago.” The day after I’d accidentally punched a hole in his home defense system and gotten him shot. “Now it’s just his family, the nanny, and whichever guards are currently on duty.”

“Smart.” Holt nodded thoughtfully. “And he really doesn’t cheat on his wife? At all?”

“Nope. Not once, that I know of. Why?”

“I want to know who I’ll be working for. If I sign on.” He glanced to his right, toward the party still going on in the main part of the house. “A man like that, with plenty of money, in a position of extreme power over dozens of beautiful women …” He glanced at me, as if to say I was one of those beautiful women. Or maybe he was pointing out that I was powerless. “It has to be tempting to sample the goods. It’d be easy to get away with. In certain circles, it’s practically expected, right?” he said, and I could only nod. “But Tower’s loyal to his wife. That says something, doesn’t it? Something about him, as a man?” Holt watched me closely, studying my reaction, and an uneasy feeling churned deep in my stomach.

Most syndicate employees didn’t have the luxury of caring what kind of man Tower was, or what kind of business he did. They signed on because they were desperate for something they couldn’t get for themselves. Usually money, protection or services only a syndicate could provide. Why else would you sign over even part of your free will to someone who doesn’t give a damn whether you live or die, so long as you do both in service to the syndicate?

But Holt was different. He actually gave a damn. Which could make him very hard to recruit.

“Doesn’t that also say something about the way Tower runs his organization?” He waited for my answer, staring into my eyes like he wanted to see past them and into my thoughts, and suddenly I recognized the ploy, and my teeth ground together.

Ian Holt wasn’t naive enough to believe that a man with Jake’s power and breadth of influence had climbed to the top of the hill without stepping on a few heads. Or that fidelity to his wife translated into any kind of integrity in business. He knew what the Tower syndicate was like—at least, he thought he knew—and this was a test to see which I would choose: loyalty to my boss or honesty to the potential recruit.

Assuming I had any choice in the matter. And he had no way of knowing whether or not I did.

He’d see through a lie—he seemed to be expecting one anyway—but I couldn’t exactly tell him the truth about Jake and the syndicate, even if he already knew most of it. Or even some of it. Which brought up an even bigger problem.

If Holt already knew what kind of man Tower was and what kind of business he ran, why did he accept Jake’s invitation in the first place? I could only think of two possible reasons. First, Holt had no moral qualms about syndicate business or lifestyle. Or, second, he couldn’t afford the luxury of indulging whatever moral qualms he did have. Which meant he was either corrupt or desperate.

But then a third, even worse possibility occurred to me and that uneasy feeling in my stomach swelled into a roiling discomfort. What if Holt was neither of those? What if he was just some curious, greedy asshole looking to get everything he could out of Jake before politely turning down our offer and walking away with his free will intact?

If that happened, I would have to harvest Holt’s blood instead. And if I handed over nothing but blood from a venture this expensive, when what Tower really wanted was Holt’s service, Jake would kill me. But first he’d give Kenley to Jonah, down in the basement, so that the last thing I ever heard would be my sister screaming.

Bile rose in my throat, and I swallowed a sip of warm champagne to keep it down. And when I looked up, I realized that Holt was still waiting for my answer to a question I’d almost forgotten.

“Does Jake’s fidelity to his wife say something about how he runs the organization?” I said, rephrasing the original question, and Holt nodded. “Yeah, I guess it does. There’s nothing Jake wouldn’t do for his wife, and even less he wouldn’t do for the syndicate.”

Including kill me and torture my sister.

The thought of damning someone else to the hell I was living in made me want to light my own hair on fire and take a bath in gasoline. But I would do it. I’d do whatever it took to make Holt sign.

I had no other choice.




Four


Ian

“Which is it you dislike, parties or champagne?” I asked, nodding pointedly at the virtually untouched flute in her right hand, as the party buzzed on without us.

Kori blinked, obviously struggling to refocus her attention, and twisted to face me on the ornate gold couch, both an expensive eyesore and an uncomfortable perch. “It’s parties with champagne. And food served in bites too small to taste.”

I laughed. “You’d rather drink from a trough and eat from a bucket?”

“I’d rather eat from a paper wrapper and drink from the fuckin’ bottle.”

“And your bottle of choice?” She had yet to say anything I’d expected to hear, and I couldn’t help wondering what would come out of her mouth if we got a chance to talk about something more meaningful than appetizers.

“Vodka.”

Any of the waiters could probably have gotten her whatever she wanted to drink, but I couldn’t really talk to her surrounded by two hundred other partygoers, and if I couldn’t talk to her, I couldn’t make her trust me.

“And since you used to live here, you’d probably know where Tower might keep a bottle of vodka …?”

“I might.”

“So maybe we could grab that and go for a walk on the grounds, free from the intrusion of pointless small talk as well as bite-size snacks.”

Kori hesitated, and for a second, I was certain that she didn’t want to be alone with me. Then she glanced at the guard stationed on either side of the front entrance. “They’re never going to let you wander around the property without an escort from security.”

“Aren’t you an escort from security?”

She huffed, and I wondered what I was missing. “It’s complicated. I protect you, but they protect Jake and his interests, which would not be served by giving an unbound man free access to the grounds. We could sneak out, but the patrol would probably find us.”

“Then it sounds to me like we have two options. We can ditch the party entirely and forage for a bottle of vodka elsewhere—”

“Jake would be pissed if we leave without telling him …” she said, and I nodded, not surprised.

“Or we could go upstairs, which—I’m willing to bet—isn’t being patrolled.”

She gave me a conspiratorial grin. “That’s because no one’s allowed upstairs. Jake’s kids are asleep in the family wing, so there’s a guard at the foot of both staircases.” She glanced over her shoulder, and I followed her gaze to the closer of two mirror-image staircases, where a huge man dressed all in black stood directly in front of the bottom step, arms clasped at his back. He was obviously armed, and if his expression was any indication, he suffered from a severe lack of personality.

“But you used to be a guard, so you could take one of them, couldn’t you?” I teased. “If I were to snatch a butter knife from the kitchen, you could bisect him from neck to groin in a single stroke, right?”

Her smile spread slowly, and her brown eyes practically sparkled. “Hell yeah. But Kenley will kill me if I get arterial spray on her dress.” She slid one hand over her own hip to where the dress ended above her crossed knees, and my gaze traced the path, before I realized what I was doing.

Oh, hell no.

Don’t believe a word they say. Don’t let your guard down. And do not make friends.

I’d heard it over and over, from Aaron. Hell, I’d said it over and over to myself. I couldn’t get personally involved. I couldn’t afford to see any of them as real people. They were a means to an end. Tools for me to use, like a wrench, or a hammer. Kori Daniels was the hammer I’d have to swing to smash through Jake Tower’s defenses and gain access to his prized possession, and you couldn’t be attracted to a hammer. Right?

But she’d have to think I liked her, or she’d never trust me. And if she didn’t trust me, she’d never let me near her sister. Kenley Daniels. The woman whose blood had the power to ruin lives—or end them.

“Okay, blood splatter is a problem,” I admitted. “But you’re a Traveler, right? So, you could just walk us both through a shadow down here and out of one up there, couldn’t you?” I glanced at what I could see of the second floor for emphasis.

Kori shook her head. “Infrared grid. There isn’t a true shadow in this entire house, except for the darkroom. None deep enough for me to step through, anyway.”

“What if there was?” I glanced around to make sure no one was listening, then I stood and started to tug her into the alcove she’d led me to minutes earlier. But she stiffened before I could touch her, and I realized I hadn’t imagined her pulling away from me before. But I didn’t understand it.

She was just a hammer to me, and I was just a job to her. An assignment. Korinne was the bait sent to reel me in, and for all I knew, she did this on a weekly basis. She flirted and cajoled, in a teasing, I-dare-you kind of way, clearly gauging my interest, and she probably knew far better than I did how to stay detached. How to attract without being attracted. How to engage without engaging your emotions, or even your desires.

So why the physical distance?

Was that part of Tower’s pitch? Show me the menu, but don’t let me order until I’d officially signed on? Or was Kori defining her own boundaries between work and play?

I was almost jealous of how well she played the game. And I was more determined than ever to keep in mind the fact that this was a game. A charade, of sorts. The woman, the party, the champagne and fancy clothes—they were nothing but a pretty mask covering an ugly beast that, behind its beguiling smile, waited to devour me.

“What if there was what?” she asked, standing without my help, and I had to drag my thoughts back on topic. Again.

“What if there was a true shadow upstairs? What if I could make a shadow? A real one? There’s no way we could both get past the guard, but if you distract him, I could sneak up and make a shadow for you to walk through. Then you could find that bottle, and we could both forget about the crowd for an hour or so.”

Because that part was real. She hated the party and the champagne, and the more comfortable—and less sober—I could make her, the better my chances of conning classified information from her. Like how well guarded her sister was at various times of the day. Or better yet, how to get into and out of Kenley’s apartment in the middle of the night.

Her pale brows rose in surprise. “You can black out infrared light?”

I leaned closer and put one finger over my lips. “Shh. I’m pretty sure that’s most of why Tower wants me. So yes, if you can get me upstairs, I can open a hole in the infrared grid, through which you could then join me.”

“A cynic and a rule breaker. I like it.” Her smile widened just a bit, and too late I realized I was returning it with one of my own. “And if we get caught?”

I shrugged. “I’ll say I was giving you a demonstration of my Skill, for recruiting purposes.” But she looked uncertain, so I tried again. “Tower told you to keep me happy, right?” No one had actually come out and said that, but it was no stretch of the imagination. Kori nodded, her smile fading fast. “So he can’t get mad at you for doing your job, can he?”

She frowned, like she wanted to argue, but wouldn’t. Or couldn’t.

I arched one brow at her. “Never mind. If you’re too scared …”

“Motherfucker …” she mumbled, rolling her eyes over my dare, and I couldn’t resist another smile. “Fine. But it’ll have to be the far staircase, and you’ll have to be quick. And make sure no one else is watching.”

“No problem.”

“You ready?” she asked, and I could tell from the curve at the edge of her mouth that she was getting into the spirit of the adventure.

“Almost.” I took the champagne flute from her hand and drained it with one gulp, then set it on the floor next to the wall. “What’s your plan?” I asked, glancing at the guard on the far side of the foyer. “Flirt? Take him a drink?”

She shook her head. “He wouldn’t buy either of those, coming from me. Don’t worry about it. Just wait until he steps away from the stairs, then haul ass. And be quiet.” Then she turned and headed across the foyer without so much as a glance back.

I tried not to watch her walk away, but failed miserably, and by the time I realized I was staring, she was in position. She walked right past the guard without a word, and I thought she’d changed her mind about the whole thing until he called out to her, though I couldn’t make out more than her name, from across the large foyer.

I started across the floor, my hands in my pockets, prepared to claim I was looking for the restroom if I were accosted. The guard in front of the near staircase eyed me as I passed him, but when I didn’t try to race up the stairs at his back, he turned to stare into the party again, obviously disappointed that his post wasn’t closer to the action.

There was a broad expanse of floor between the two sets of stairs, and in the center of that, opposite the double front doors, was a smaller set of doors leading to a courtyard in the middle of the house. Several couples milled outside, sitting on benches, drinking and nibbling from plates of those hors d’oeuvres Kori hated. I stood near the door, blocked from sight by the curve of stairs, listening to her conversation with the second guard. Which turned out to be less conversation than argument.

“Look who’s playin’ dress up …” the guard said, but his tone was neither friendly nor flirty. “I’ve never seen you in a dress before.”

“And you never will again, if I have any say.”

“You don’t, though, do you?” he said, and when she tried to keep walking, he grabbed her arm, hauling her close, his back to me and the staircase. And in that moment, I understood why she’d pulled away from me when I’d held her arm. “You don’t have a say in anything anymore, do you?”

“Fuck off, David,” Kori snapped, and I started to step in, thinking that her plan had gone awry. Then she jerked free from his grip and walked off. When he took several steps after her, I realized this was how she’d planned to distract him. Not by flirting, but by pissing him off. She’d known he’d follow. Maybe they had some kind of history. A grudge, or a former fling.

“I caught the show, you know,” the guard said softly, like he didn’t want anyone else to hear. Which meant he had no idea I was there.

I started to slip up the stairs, but then I noticed through the railing that Kori had gone still again, this time staring at the floor, fists clenched at her sides. “Shut up,” she whispered.

The guard stepped closer, so close his chest almost touched her back, and I could see her tense when he leaned down to whisper into her ear, words so soft I had to strain to hear them. “All this time, turning your nose up at everyone who wanted a taste, busting balls and splitting skulls with impunity because Tower liked you. But look at you now. My, how the mighty have fallen …”

“I’m pretty sure that’s a misquote,” she mumbled, as he circled her slowly, and I ducked behind the staircase again, out of sight, unless the guard on the other side of the foyer turned to look.

“Fits, though, doesn’t it. The taller the pedestal, the harder the bitch on it crashes to the ground. Do you want to know what we saw?”

“I want you to back the fuck off before I decide you’d look better with your nose on one side of your face.”

“That was some messed up shit, Kori,” he continued, like she hadn’t even spoken. “I mean, I wanted to see you taken down a peg or two, but that was hard to watch, even for me. How you doin’ in the aftermath? Need a shoulder to—”

The guard’s voice ended with the thunk of flesh against flesh, and I came forward until I could see him through the railing, lying flat on the floor, bleeding from his nose. Kori stood over him, feet spread in those stupid stilettos, bloodied fist still clenched from the blow.

She thought I was already upstairs—I could tell by the look of pure rage on her face, something she wouldn’t have intentionally shown a recruit. She didn’t know what I’d seen or what I’d heard. Hell, I didn’t know what I’d heard. But it made my stomach churn.

Aaron was right—they were monsters in human masks, and those masks were less convincing with every second I spent staring at them.

The guard coughed at Kori’s feet and started to sit up, but she planted one pointy heel in his crotch to stop him. I glanced across the foyer at the other guard to make sure he wasn’t watching, and when I saw that he was staring at the party still going strong in the main part of the house, out of sight from my current position, I jogged silently up the stairs—hunched over so she wouldn’t see me—and into the first open, dark room I saw.

Faintly, from below, I heard Kori’s heels click on marble, fading with each step as she headed for the front door.

For one long moment, I stood frozen, listening for anything that would indicate the west wing—the employee wing, where Kori’d once lived—was currently populated. But I heard nothing. So I pressed my back against the wall with the door still open to the hall and closed my eyes, slowly drawing darkness toward me from every shadowed corner and shaded nook in the room. I called to it, from every darkened crack beneath every door in the hall. And the shadows began to coalesce around my feet, curling around my shins, wisps of pure darkness rolling over me.

I lifted my hands, and the shadows rose with them, roiling around me, an inky oblivion, deeper and more satisfying than the shallow dark rendered useless by the infrared lighting grid I could feel overhead, blazing beyond the visible spectrum.

The darkness was cool and quiet. It was peace given form and function. I could feel it with every cell in my body, deep into the marrow of my bones. Into my soul. The darkness was mine to command.

Until half a minute later, when Kori Daniels stepped out of it and onto my right foot.

“Ow!” I laughed as the pointed toe of her dress shoe ground into my foot, and she stepped back immediately.

“Sorry!” she whispered, and I felt rather than saw her trip over her own shoes in the absolute darkness. I reached out for her instinctively, but let go as soon as she’d regained balance. “You did this?” she whispered again, from inches away, and I realized that if I couldn’t see her, she couldn’t see me.

“Yeah.”

“Holy shit, that’s incredible,” she breathed. Something moved between us, and it took me a moment to realize she was spreading her arms in the shadow I’d made, like a child in the rain. “It’s like finding a watering hole in the desert. A shadow on the sun.”

“Yeah, except I didn’t find it. I made it.” Couldn’t hurt to remind her how valuable I was.

I began to let the darkness go, a little at a time, and slowly light filtered in again from the hallway, feeling much brighter than it should have, after the absolute darkness. “That was impressive,” she said, when she could see well enough that her gaze met mine in the shadows. “No wonder Jake wants you.”

“He’s not the only one,” I said, and her brows rose in interest as she stepped back and glanced around at the unoccupied bedroom.

“Oh? Who else is courting you, Mr. Holt?”

“Ruben Cavazos, most notably,” I whispered, following her toward the door. “Along with a couple of the smaller syndicates on the West Coast.”

“Cavazos.” She practically spit his name, stepping out of the first of her shoes. “You don’t want anything to do with him.”

I laughed softly and tried not to notice the shape of her calves as she took off the second shoe. “I’d hardly expect you to endorse the competition.”

Kori straightened, holding both shoes by the straps in one hand. “He fucking shot me.”

“Cavazos shot you?” I could hear the surprise in my own voice.

Instead of answering, she pulled the left shoulder strap of her dress down to expose a puckered scar on her shoulder, still pink and fresh. “Two months ago.”

“What happened?”

“Clash of the titans.” Barefoot, she peeked into the hall, then gestured for me to follow her. “Everyone fights for one side or the other.”

“Are we sneaking?” I whispered, nodding at her shoes, wondering if I should take my own off.

“Nah. There’s no one in this wing. I just hate heels.”

I followed her down the hall and around the corner to the right. Three doors later, she turned left into a room with a billiard table in the center of the floor and a full-size bar along one wall. “Close the door,” she said over one shoulder as she dropped her shoes on the floor and headed for the bar.

I pushed the door closed softly, then crossed the room and took a seat on the center bar stool while she took up the position of bartender.

“What’ll it be?” She leaned forward with her elbows on the polished dark wood surface of the bar.

“Scotch?”

Kori rolled her eyes. “Of course you drink Scotch.”

“Are you calling me a stereotype?”

“Not yet, but if you don’t pull some surprises out of your hat soon, I suspect that moment is coming.” She dug beneath the bar and came up with a single short glass while I tried to decide how to respond to such a challenge. She wasn’t ready for any of my real surprises, and she never would be. Which was why I couldn’t get emotionally involved. Why I had to keep telling myself that she was just a hammer. A hammer with really nice legs, and eyes the color of good caramel, and …

Focus.

“Creating darkness wasn’t enough of a surprise?”

She laughed. “It was a start. Ice?”

“Four cubes.”

Kori scooped ice into the glass and set a half-full bottle of very expensive Scotch in front of me. I held it up, examining the label, reluctantly impressed with Tower’s taste. “How much trouble will we be in if we get caught?”

“We’re not going to get caught. If we hear footsteps, you make it dark, and I’ll make us disappear.” She produced a bottle of Grey Goose from beneath the counter, then circled the bar to sit on the stool next to mine. “There’s snack mix if you want, but you’re gonna have to serve yourself.”

“What are you going to do?”

“This.” She twisted the lid off the bottle and gulped from it once, twice, three times, without flinching.

“Rough night?” I asked, thinking about what I’d overheard.

“Any night that sees me in three-inch heels and sequins is a rough night.” She set the bottle on the bar, the cork stopper still clasped in one hand. “But I’ve certainly seen worse.”

I watched her, and after nearly a minute of staring off into space, she turned to face me. “What?”

“You drink like a man.”

She shrugged and glanced at the bottle I had yet to pour from. “One of us should.”

I wanted to ask, but at the same time, I didn’t want to know. Whatever the guard—David—had seen done to her was none of my business, and it wasn’t relevant to the job at hand. I already knew Tower was the scum of the earth, without having to hear the specifics.

And for no reason I could have explained, I didn’t want her to know I’d heard.

“So, what do you think so far?” She tilted her bottle up again as I poured from mine, then she wiped her mouth with the back of one hand. “Seen anything yet worth signing over your soul for?”

“Is that what I’d be signing away? My soul?” I happened to agree, but I was surprised to hear it from her.

Kori blinked, like she’d just realized she’d said too much—that pesky honesty getting in the way again. But she recovered quickly. “Nah. Just five years of your life. The standard term of service for most syndicates.”

“How close are you to the five-year mark?” I picked up my glass and sipped from it, savoring a liquor I could never personally afford, trying not to think about the fact that if I were alone with the other Daniels sister, this whole thing could be over in a matter of seconds. My objective hadn’t changed, but the strategy certainly had. Use one sister to get to the other. And to do that, I’d have to pretend to be recruitable.

“Five years came and went nearly a year and a half ago.” She twisted to show me her left arm, and the two interlocking chain links tattooed there. Marks of service. “One for each term.”

I’d already seen them, of course, and I already knew what they meant. She was six and a half years into a ten-year commitment to serve Jake Tower and his syndicate. Her oath had been sealed with two linking tattoos, each containing a tiny bit of his blood—a flesh binding. Until the day her commitment expired and her tattoos faded into the dull gray of dead marks, she would be compelled to follow his orders, or she would die fighting the compulsion.

Syndicate service was a miserable way to live. And often a miserable way to die. Only three kinds of people joined voluntarily: the ignorant, the ambitious and the desperate.

Which category did Kori fit into? Which would be most believable for me?

“You must like it here, then, if you signed on for another term,” I said, trying to embrace the part I had to play.

Kori blinked, then took another swig of vodka, straight. Then she shoved the corked lid back into the bottle and pushed the Goose away, like it might be to blame for whatever she was about to say. “This is my home.”

I frowned. It felt like she was starting a new conversation, rather than continuing the one already in progress. “No, this is your job.”

“You really don’t understand, do you?” she asked, and I let my frown deepen, so she would explain what I already knew, and I would listen and respond, and ask all the right questions, and with every minute that passed she would trust me a little more, because she would know I was no threat. She had all the power, because she had all the knowledge.

And because she thought she could cut my balls off with one hand while slicing my throat open with the other.

Kori exhaled slowly, and a brief glimpse of guilt flickered across her face, like she was already regretting the pitch she was about to throw at me. That told me she was neither ambitious nor ignorant—at least, not after more than six years of service, which came as no surprise, after what I’d overheard on the stairs.

And that only left desperate.

“When you sign on with a syndicate—any syndicate, not just this one—you’re not just taking a job, you’re becoming part of a community. Like an extended family. You’re getting job security, medical care, personal protection and virtually limitless resources. The syndicate isn’t just employment—it’s a way of life. A very stable, secure way of life.”

“Sounds awesome.” It also sounded like a very well-rehearsed speech. “What’s the catch? Is it all the following orders? Because honestly, that’s what I balk at.” To say the very, very least.

“There’s some of that, of course. But that’s not really so different from any other job, is it?” she asked, and I couldn’t help noting that now that I’d pointed out a flaw in the system, she was referring to it as a mere job again. “Any workplace is a hierarchy, right? There’s a CEO, management, and the rest of the employees. Everyone has a boss, except whoever’s at the top. That’s how we operate, too.”

“Yes, but in any other job, you can quit if you don’t like the orders.”

“That’s not true.” She smiled, like she’d caught me in a lie. “You can’t just quit military service if you don’t like the orders.”

“So, would you say service to the Tower syndicate is more like military service than like a civilian job?”

She had to think about that for a minute. “Yeah, I guess, only without the patriotism and gratitude from your fellow citizens. Large community. Great benefits. They even get chevrons for time in service.” She twisted to show me her arm again, to emphasize the parallel.

But I knew what she wasn’t saying—in the military, you can take the chevrons off at the end of the day, but the syndicate owns you for the life of the mark, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You’re never off the clock. And the word no has no meaning. I couldn’t understand why anyone would ever sign on for that.

“Okay, obviously following orders is what’s bothering you, and I can understand that. So why don’t we just lay the truth out on the table?”

“The truth?” I watched her in interest. The truth was a rarity in life in general and even more so in the syndicate. Only the fearless and the foolish wielded it so boldly, and I already knew Kori Daniels was no fool.

“Blinders are rare, and you’re the best I’ve ever seen. That makes you very valuable, and I’d bet my best knife that we’re not the only ones who’ve made you an offer?” Her sentence ended on a question, and I could only nod. “Right now, everyone’s playing nice and pulling out the best china because you’re being recruited. But if that doesn’t work, you’ll be hunted. And eventually you will be caught, and when that happens, you’ll be all out of choices. It’s a winner-takes-all kind of game.”

“I’m assuming there’s a silver lining to this cloud of doom?” The cloud that had been hanging over me since I was twelve years old, when my mother explained how the rarity and power of my Skill would shape the rest of my life. As a kid, I’d thought she was being paranoid. As an adult, I’d learned better.

“The silver lining is that at this stage in the game, you can still decide what mark you want to bear. Who you want to serve. Because you will wind up serving someone.” Kori shrugged and glanced longingly at the corked bottle of vodka. “Hell, I’m not sure how you went unnoticed as long as you did.”

Flying below the syndicates’ radar hadn’t been easy, and dipping beneath it again once this was over would no doubt be even harder.

“That’s a rather ominous bit of truth,” I said, committing to nothing.

Kori shrugged again. “It can’t be changed, so you might as well understand your options.”

“And those would be …?”

“The Tower syndicate, or some other, inferior organization.”

Or … door number three, the option she either didn’t know existed or didn’t believe possible: hide.

“And the others are inferior because …?”

“Because we have the best of everything.” She leaned closer, and I expected to smell vodka on her breath, but I couldn’t, and suddenly I wanted to kiss her, to see if I could taste it. Or maybe just to taste her.

I blinked in surprise at the thought, but Kori didn’t seem to notice. She was still talking.

“Jake wants you,” she said, staring straight into my eyes. “I mean he really fucking wants you, which gives you more power going into negotiations than most people have. You could get just about whatever you want out of him.”

Was it my imagination, or did she seem a little pleased at the idea of me taking Tower for all he was worth? More than pleased. She looked … excited. Her lips parted and her eyes shone with eagerness. She looked fierce, like the chain links on her arm could restrain her, but never truly tame her.

And as she watched me, probably waiting to see the gleam of greed that would tell her I was interested, I had a sudden, dangerous, treacherous thought. What would Tower give me, if I asked? Would he give me her?

I hated the thought as soon as I’d had it. People can’t be given as gifts. They shouldn’t be, anyway. Especially people like Kori Daniels, whose nature obviously couldn’t be suppressed, even by direct orders. Giving her to someone else would be like caging a wild bird, only to see the bright, beautiful feathers you loved fall out and fade at the bottom of the cage.

But with that one lecherous thought, and the momentary failure of my own moral compass, I suddenly understood why someone might join a syndicate. Someone who wanted or needed something badly. Something he had no chance of getting on his own.

Everyone has a price. Tower’s advantage in life was that he knew that and had no problem exploiting it.

“What is it you think I should ask for?” I turned my glass up and drank until the ice cubes bumped my lip, Scotch scorching its way down my throat, where I wished it could purge that lascivious thought from me. I couldn’t afford to want the bait dangled in front of me. “What could I possibly ask for that would make it easier to take orders?”

“An extra chain link.” She poured more Scotch into my glass, and I watched her light up with excitement over an idea I obviously didn’t understand. She was beautiful in that moment. Intense, and dangerous.

“If I don’t want the orders that come with signing on for five years, why the hell would I sign on for ten?”

“You wouldn’t.” Kori smiled and pushed the glass toward me. “You’d ask—no, you’d demand a second mark for free. A five-year commitment, with the seniority of a second-tier initiate. With two chain links, there are fewer people who can boss you around, thus fewer orders to follow.”

“Why stop there? Why not ask for three or four links?”

Kori’s expression darkened, and that spark in her eyes died. She leaned over the bar to grope for something and when she sat down again, she had a plastic jar of snack mix in one hand. “Seniority comes with responsibility. The more you ask him for, the more he’ll want from you in return.”

Things I wasn’t going to want to do, obviously.

“Two is the perfect number.” She unscrewed the lid on the snack mix and offered me the jar. “You have enough rank to avoid static from the bottom two rungs, but not enough seniority to obligate you to do … things above your pay grade.”

I took a handful of pretzels and peanuts. “Things like what?”

Kori just scrounged up a small smile and shook her head. “Even if I knew what my superiors’ duties were, I couldn’t tell you. Some things—many things—you can’t know until you bear his mark.”

I wanted to pursue the issue. I wanted to ask her if Tower had ever given her an order she didn’t want to follow. If he’d ever made her do something that made her skin crawl or rotted a bit of her soul. But picking at her emotional scabs—making her talk about things she obviously didn’t want to remember—seemed cruel. Too cruel, considering what else I had to do. I hadn’t come into Tower’s territory to be recruited by Kori Daniels.

I’d come to kill her sister.




Five


Kori

I’d said too much. I could tell from the way he was sipping his second glass of Scotch, looking at me like I was some code he’d already started to crack. Like he could rearrange the words I’d spoken until they said what he needed to hear.

Holt knew what to ask. He knew what not to ask. I wasn’t sure whether I was playing him or being played by him, and that scared the shit out of me. I had to regain the upper hand, or Kenley would pay for my failure.

“You done with that?” he asked, and I followed his focus to the bottle of Goose.

“Almost.” I uncorked the bottle and took another swig, then pushed the cork back in.

“Well, you might as well take it with you,” Jake said, and I turned so fast the room spun around me. He stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame like he’d been there all night. “No one else is going to want any, after your mouth’s been on the bottle.”

I wondered how much he’d seen. How much he’d heard. But I got nothing from his expression, as usual.

“The alcohol will kill any germs,” I said, but I took the bottle with me when I stood. Never let it be said that I turned down good vodka. The shit under my bed at Kenley’s would take paint off a car.

“Are you ready to rejoin the party?” Jake said, as Holt finished his drink, still seated, and evidently unhurried.

Holt set his glass down, the remaining ice cubes small enough to swallow now. “Actually I’m kind of tired from my flight. I think I’m going to call it a night.”

Jake nodded. “Kori will drive you to your hotel. But I’m sure Nina and Julia would like to say goodbye before you go.” He stepped out of the doorway to let Holt pass, and when I started to follow, Tower blocked the doorway with his arm. “Korinne will meet you at the front door.”

Holt glanced at me, then nodded and headed down the hall.

Jake closed the door behind him, and my hand clenched around the neck of the bottle I still held. “Explain,” he ordered.

“You said to do whatever it takes.”

“And recruiting Holt required Scotch from my personal liquor cabinet, in the off-limits portion of my home?”

I shrugged. “He has good taste.”

“Shall I assume the privacy helped you get to know each other?” he asked, and I nodded. “And does he like you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does he want you?”

“I don’t—” I started, and Jake frowned. “Yeah, I think he does.” There’d been this look in his eyes a few minutes ago … “But it’s not personal. Anyone will do. We could send one of the girls to the hotel with him—”

Jake shook his head. “He rented a seventy-five-thousand-dollar car and drank my fifty-year-old Scotch. He’s either putting on airs or living beyond his means, but either way, he doesn’t want a common whore, Korinne. He wants something worth more. Someone with a little class. So dig deep and scrounge some up.”

I didn’t give a damn about the insult. I’d been called much worse than classless. But Holt had already seen me barefoot, drinking straight from the bottle. If classy was what he wanted, I wouldn’t be able to fool him. But I couldn’t tell Jake that, because if he thought I was worthless, I was as good as dead.

“Drive him to his hotel and walk him up to his room. Eat a breath mint, say please and thank you, and don’t trip over the damn heels,” he said, running one finger over the toes of the shoes I still held in my left hand. “Act like you’re worth something, and he might just believe it. And Korinne?”

“Yeah?” My cheeks were flaming now. I could feel it.

“If you ever come upstairs in this house again without my permission, I’ll put you back in the basement and let the guards draw straws. David’s eager to pay you back for the broken nose.”

It took every ounce of willpower I had to keep my hands from shaking. To pretend nothing he said could scare me. Jake didn’t buy it, but that didn’t matter.

What matters is the face you show the world, not the quaking mess behind it.

Twenty minutes later, I pulled up to the entrance of the Westmark Hotel and shifted into Park. The valet was waiting when I stepped out and handed the key to him, and the doorman had Holt’s luggage out of the trunk before I’d even rounded the car. He followed us inside with the bags while I led Holt to the elevator. I’d checked him in and picked up his key cards that afternoon.

Tower had reserved a three-room suite for him. It was nice enough to tell Holt he was valued, but not nice enough to inflate his ego. The suite said “we want you, but not as much as you think we want you.” And that might have worked, if I hadn’t already told him that he could pretty much get whatever he wanted in exchange for his signature—my little fuck-you to the puppet master pulling my own strings. Jake would get Holt in the end, but he would pay out the ass for him, if I had anything to say about it.

On the twenty-third floor, I tipped the bellhop, then closed the door behind him and made a mental note of all the rugs likely to trip me in Kenley’s stilettos. Then I began the tour.

“This is Jake’s favorite hotel,” I said, pulling back the curtains to show off the view. “They have twenty-four-hour room service. If you want something that’s not on the menu, just use Jake’s name. They’ll get you anything you want. And there’s a Jammer on duty ‘round the clock, so you can’t be tracked while you’re here.”

“Wow.” Holt stared out the window at the city, and even I had to admit the view was amazing. You could see the river from his room, and all the boats were lit up, like a string of white Christmas lights. And if you squinted just right, you could see where the river split, dividing the city into three parts: the east side, the west side and the south fork, like the bottom third of a peace sign. I rarely ventured out of the west side—Jake’s territory— because the chain links on my arm could easily get me killed east of the river, on Ruben Cavazos’s side of town.

“There’s no place like home, I know, but you’ll only be roughin’ it for a few nights,” I said, turning away from the window to take in the leather couches, thick rugs and huge flat-screen television. “Think you can manage?”

Holt pulled the curtains closed. “Only if the chocolate on my pillow is Swiss and the bottled water was flown in from France.”

“Hand-collected by crippled orphans from the fountain of youth itself,” I said, and he laughed, while I headed for the bedroom. I pushed open the double doors and sucked in a deep, shaky breath at the sight of the bed against the middle of the far wall. “King-size bed with pillow-top mattress,” I said, crossing the room with quick, efficient steps.

The bathroom was next and I breathed a little easier just being out of the bedroom—until I remembered that the giant whirlpool tub was built for two. As was the walk-in shower with dual showerheads. I stared, frozen, desperately trying to summon words that wouldn’t come, until his footsteps echoed behind me.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” I turned to see Holt in the doorway, blocking my path whether he meant to or not. “This is the bathroom, obviously.” I brushed past him before he could step back and headed straight for the front room, where the exit called to me with singular purpose. But I stopped at the cabinet beneath the television instead. “And the best part is the minibar, fully stocked with overpriced snacks and alcohol.” I pulled open the door to show off the selection. “I recommend … well, all of it. Help yourself. Take everything you can carry, and call down for more if you get the munchies in the middle of the night. It’s all on Jake.”

I looked up from the minibar to find Holt watching me, his expression caught somewhere between amusement and confusion, which I wished I could clear up for him. But I couldn’t. I headed for the door and had one hand on the knob before I spoke. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

The words burned my tongue, and I wanted a drink to put out the flames. Something strong enough to make the next part easier. Bearable. Maybe.

“No, I think I’m good,” he said, and I blinked, sure I’d heard wrong. He didn’t want …?

But I wasn’t going to question my good fortune.

“Okay, then, I’ll see you in the morning for breakfast. Around nine? Or did you want to sleep in?”

“Nine’s fine,” Holt said, and I dropped the key to his rental car on the small table next to the door.

“Good night.” I was in the hall before he could respond. The door closed on whatever he was saying, and I took off down the hall, only pausing long enough to step out of my shoes, half convinced that if I didn’t run, he’d change his mind and call me back.

My heart racing, I jogged past the elevator and into the stairwell, hoping for a shadow deep enough to walk through, but the stairs were lit up like a fucking runway, and I couldn’t reach any of the bulbs to bust them. So I jogged down the first flight, then stopped on the twenty-second floor to use the elevator—no way I was going to walk down twenty-one flights of stairs.

On the first floor, I crossed the lobby like my bare feet were on fire and only breathed easy when I stepped outside, into the night, and spotted the entrance to an alley at the corner of the building.

Unlit alleys are the downfall of many an airheaded horror-movie bimbo, but they were my escape. My own personal transportation system, with free, unlimited rides.

I dashed past the doormen and valet attendants, still holding my sister’s shoes, and ran into the alley, already picturing my room in Kenley’s apartment, kept dark for situations exactly like this. My bare feet pounded from the grass onto the broken pavement, and a rock bruised my foot on my second step. With the third step, my foot landed on carpet, and a step after that, I collided with my own bedroom wall, and the rebound knocked me on my ass.

Dazed, I dropped the shoes and leaned back against the foot of the bed. A second later, my bedroom door flew open and the overhead light flared to life. “What the hell was that?” Kenley demanded, one hand still clutching the doorknob.

“Sorry. I forgot how small this room is.”

“No more running starts, Kori,” she said, letting go of the door to cross her arms over her chest. “You’re gonna break your nose on the wall.”

I half hoped she was right. A broken nose would make me ugly. And if I was ugly, Jake might pull me off the Holt job in favor of a prettier face.

Of course, knowing my luck, he’d kill me as punishment for messing it all up, then carry out his threat against Kenley, even though I wasn’t there to see her abused. It would be just like him to try to make my afterlife miserable, too.

“How’d it go?” Kenley gave me her hand, and I let her pull me up. “Did you have to sleep with him?”

“No.” Not yet, anyway.

She turned me by my shoulders and unzipped my dress. Which was really her dress, loose on me now, where it would have been tight two months earlier. I let the material slide to the floor, and she picked it up when I stepped out of it. “Is it just me, or does he look familiar?” Kenley said.

“It’s you, and half the planet. The whole world saw that news clip.”

“I kind of feel sorry for him,” Kenley said. “They’ll all be after him now.” They, being the rival syndicates, of course.

“Don’t.” I grabbed the T-shirt slung over the end of my bed. The one I’d slept in the night before. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for him. He’s the idiot who revealed his Skill on national television. He’s gonna have to sign with someone. It may as well be Jake.” Holt’s imprisonment may as well keep me alive and keep Kenley out of the basement.

“What’s he like?” she asked.

“He’s fine. Normal. Kinda funny. He doesn’t deserve this.” What I was doing to him. What I had to do to him, to save myself and my sister.

“No one deserves this.” Kenley laid the dress across the bed and pulled a hanger from the closet, then stood staring at it, like she’d forgotten what to do with it. “I’m so sorry, Kori,” she said, and I could hear the unshed tears in her voice.

“No.” I pulled the T-shirt over my head, then lifted her chin, making her look at me. “You have nothing to be sorry for, so don’t start this again. Please.”

Kenley burst into tears and I pulled her into a hug, holding her until the wrenching sobs fractured into smaller cries, then broke down into teary hiccups I could handle. “This is all my fault,” she said, wiping her cheeks when I let her go. “I’m so sorry for getting you into this.”

“You didn’t know. You couldn’t have.”

Six years earlier, at twenty years old, Kenley had still been sheltered and naive, because we’d made her that way. Kris, Gran and I had tried to protect the baby of the family, and instead we’d turned her into a victim, ready-made for a world full of predators. I shouldn’t have been surprised when one found her. And I couldn’t let her serve her time alone. “Besides, I signed on voluntarily. I make my own damn choices.”

“Not anymore,” she insisted. “And that’s my fault.”

“It’s not your fault. But I can’t argue with you about this anymore.” I let go of her, and exhaustion washed over me, pulling me toward sleep with a force I couldn’t resist. “Not tonight, okay, Kenni?”

She nodded and picked the hanger back up. “I’m sorry. You’re not well yet. Two weeks isn’t enough time for anyone to recover from … whatever they did to you. You still look half-starved.”

“Some women do this to themselves on purpose, you know. Others pay to get this look.” I spread my arms, trying not to see how thin I still looked in the mirror.

“Those women are crazy.”

“No argument from me.” I pulled a pair of fuzzy socks from my top drawer and stuffed my feet into them, trying to make up for the abuse they’d endured most of the night.

Kenley slid the straps of her dress into the notches on top of the hanger. “So, do you know what you’re going to do? How you’re going to snag him?”

I followed her with the stilettos when she carried the dress into her own bedroom. “I’m going to snare him with my demure manner and natural charm, of course.”

Kenley laughed.

“I don’t think Jake realizes how much he’s bitten off with this one, and I’ve tried to tell him I’m not a recruiter, but he won’t listen to reason.”

“It could be worse, though, right?” She hooked the hanger over the top of her closet door and knelt to dig through the junk on the floor. “I mean, he could be making you throw yourself at someone hideous, like the Tracker Monica had to reel in last month. He’s truly—” She flinched when she realized what she’d said. I’d been locked up last month. All month. And I had yet to meet whatever ogre Monica had recruited to replace Cameron Caballero, when Cavazos bought out his contract. “Well, trust me, he’s hairier than a gorilla and he smells even worse. At least Holt’s clean. And he’s nice-looking, right?”

I dropped the shoes into the box she held open for me. “He must be, if you noticed.”

Kenley flushed and slid the box onto a stack of others in one corner of her closet. “Like you didn’t.”

I shrugged. We’d never actually talked about her taste in men. Or lack thereof. But I didn’t give a damn whether she slept with men or women, or both at once, so long as it was her choice. So long as she wasn’t being used for anything except the bindings she’d been recruited to seal.

“What the fucking hell is this?” She slid one hand behind the dress still hanging on her closet door and pulled the material closer to her face.

“You sound like a kid playing dress up when you cuss. Give it up. You lack the skill.”

Instead of answering, she held the dress out to me. “How did you manage to get blood on my dress at a formal party, Kori?”

“Shit. Sorry.” I sank onto her bed and folded my legs beneath me. “I thought I avoided the spray.”

“Whose?”

“David’s,” I said, and she waited, obviously expecting more of an explanation, so I rolled my eyes and sighed. “He started it.”

“What’d he do?”

“Doesn’t matter. The point is that if I let the bastard get away with something small now, he’ll try something bigger next time.”

Kenley hung the dress in her closet. “It was about the basement, wasn’t it?” she said, and when I didn’t answer, my sister sighed. “The blood’s dry now, but there may be enough for a decent binding, if I dampen it. I could make him leave you alone.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I fight my own battles.” As well as most of hers.

“What happened in the basement, Kori?” She spoke with her back to me, like she didn’t want to see my face when I answered. Like she already knew I’d lie.

“Nothing.” Some lies between sisters are okay. Some are forgivable. Some are unavoidable.

Mine was all three.

Kenley sighed, but she let it go. “Come on. I’ll make you a sandwich.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You’re skinny. You need to eat.”

“Yes, Gran.” I rolled my eyes again, but followed her into the kitchen and sat at the bar while she made two grilled-cheese-and-tomato sandwiches, both for me. My mouth was watering before she’d finished buttering the bread.

“How bad is this, Kori?” she asked, as she set the first one in front of me on a paper plate.

“Looks good from here.” I picked up the sandwich and Kenley frowned at me—she knew damn well that I knew what she really meant.

“What’s gonna happen if you can’t sign him?” she asked, and I set the sandwich down, my appetite suddenly gone.

“That won’t happen. I’ll get him.”

“But if you can’t? If he’s only here to eat, drink and be merry on Jake’s dime? What’s Jake going to do, Kori? Tell me the truth. You owe it to me.”

She was right about that, but I couldn’t give her all of it.

I exhaled slowly and met her gaze across the counter. “He’ll kill me.” Slowly. Jake wouldn’t want me to die without having time to truly suffer first.

But I couldn’t tell her the rest of it. I couldn’t tell my sister what would happen to her if I failed.

Because I wasn’t going to let that happen.




Six


Ian

After Kori left, I sat on one of the couches in the front room and stared at the door for a solid five minutes, trying to figure out what I’d said to send her fleeing into the night. I couldn’t remember a woman ever running away from me before, and I certainly hadn’t expected that from Tower’s liaison.

Whatever I’d done, I couldn’t afford to do it again. This was my only shot. Tower trusted me—as much as he ever trusted anyone who wasn’t bound to him—because he’d approached me, rather than the other way around. If I got caught, he wouldn’t fall for the same trick again. But it wasn’t just his trust I needed.

I lay in bed half the night, trying to figure out how to get Kori to trust me enough to reintroduce me to her sister. Maybe even take me to Kenley’s house, or leave me alone with her somewhere else. Anywhere else. Because the alternative was too horrible to contemplate.

I didn’t want to kill Kori’s sister in front of her, but I would, if I had to. I’d do it for my brother, and for everyone else who’d ever been bound against his or her will by Kenley Daniels.

Few could have done what Kori’s sister had done to my brother—most Binders weren’t strong enough to make a nonconsensual binding stick. But Kenley wasn’t most Binders. She had an extraordinary amount of power, and as long as she wielded it like a weapon—or let someone else wield her power like a weapon—she was a threat to the general population. As was anyone pulling her strings.

Which was why Kenley Daniels had to die.

Bringing down Jake Tower was a bonus. It was also the carrot I’d dangled in front of Aaron, a die-hard Independent activist, to get him to help with the research and intel.

The plan had been simple, at least in theory. Kill the Binder, and those she’d bound would go free. By Aaron’s estimate, in the six years Kenley Daniels had been working for Tower, she’d sealed bindings not only for most of the new recruits, but for most of the existing employees who’d reenlisted during that time period.

Jake Tower was the king of a castle built around a single, crucial cornerstone—Kenley Daniels. With her death, he would lose the majority of his workforce—the legion of indentured servants blood bound to follow his every order—and with them, his power and influence.

The whole recruitment ruse was intended to put her within my reach. She was supposed to be my liaison to the Tower syndicate; I’d described her in perfect detail.

Kori wasn’t supposed to happen. She’d never even met my brother, and she hadn’t bound anyone to Jake Tower, which made her useless to both me and Aaron. But she was all I had, so I’d have to make it work.

When she knocked on the door the next morning, I was as ready as I was going to get.

“Nice boots,” I said as she stepped past me into the living area. “They should make it even easier to run away.”

“Meaning?” But I could see the truth in the tense line of her shoulders. She knew exactly what I meant.

“You ran out of here last night like the hotel was on fire.” I headed into the bedroom and her quick, angry footsteps followed me.

“I wasn’t running, I was … drunk. Too much vodka. I didn’t want to puke all over your hotel room.”

I glanced at her from the closet doorway. She’d gulped from the bottle like a pro, without even flinching. Kori Daniels might have been a lot of things, but she was not a novice drinker. Yet there was something new and vulnerable in her expression—something fragile and caged—and that surprised me so much I decided not to push the issue.

I selected a tie and stood in front of the mirror to knot it, watching her reflection fidget while she watched mine. She was uncomfortable in silence, and her hands needed something to do.

Interesting.

“So, what do you want for breakfast?” she asked, when the silence became too much for her. “There’s a restaurant in the hotel, or we could try—”

“I ordered room service,” I said, giving the knot a final tug to tighten it. “Should be here in—” A knock came from the suite door. “Right about now.”

She followed me to the living area and stood with her arms crossed over her chest while I signed for the food and the waiter laid it out on the table. “I thought we were going out for breakfast.”

“We were. Now we’re not.” I handed the bill back to the waiter and he left, while she continued to scowl at me. “I ordered a little of everything. Take your pick.” She opened her mouth to complain—I could see it on her face—but I spoke over her. “And don’t tell me you’re not hungry. I hate it when women starve themselves to achieve some stupid physical ideal that only looks natural on a twelve-year-old. Men don’t want women who look like children. Not real men, anyway.”

Her eyes narrowed and I could almost hear her teeth grind together. I crossed my arms over my chest and watched her, waiting to see her head explode. She opened her mouth to start what would surely have been an award-worthy string of expletives. But then she saw my face.

“You’re baiting me,” she accused, hands propped on her bony hips.

“Yes.” I started uncovering plates, stacking the domed covers on the coffee table. “You are the most interesting thing Tower has shown me so far. But I do think you’re too thin. Will you eat with me?” I sat at the table and pushed another chair out for her with my foot.

She stood for a moment, watching me. Considering. Then she glanced at the plates steaming on the hotel table. “Fine. But I call the waffles.”

“I’ll split them with you.”

After another moment of consideration, she nodded.

We rearranged food on the plates, splitting the eggs and bacon as well, unwrapping silverware and passing salt, pepper and tiny bottles of syrup back and forth. When I was full and her plate was empty—Kori ate an entire Belgian waffle in under three minutes—I set my remaining food in front of her and leaned back in my chair, watching her from across the table. Studying her.

Reminding myself that she was a means to an end. A tool. Nothing more. No matter how fast my pulse rushed when she looked up, and I realized I’d never seen eyes with such depth, like everything she’d ever seen was still in there staring back at me, daring me to take a closer look.

One moment she looked vulnerable and bruised, and I wanted to bandage wounds I couldn’t even see. Then a second later, that woman was gone, and in her place stood a fierce hellcat, angry at the world and spitting flames with every word, and I wanted to poke her just to see the sparks fly.

I couldn’t figure her out. But the more time I spent with her, the worse I wanted to, and that was dangerous. Kori was dangerous. Tower knew what he was doing when he sent her. How could anyone spend more than five minutes with her and not be fascinated by her? Not want her?

Focus, Ian. Play to win.

“Okay, this is your moment.” I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back in my chair. “I am rested, fed and as receptive as I’m going to be. Tell me why I should join the Tower syndicate.”

Kori hesitated with her fork halfway to her mouth, egg yolk dripping into a puddle of leftover syrup on her plate. “Right now? Just like that?”

I nodded. “Wow me.”

She lowered her fork slowly and stared at me from across the table. I’d thrown her off balance, and I was a little relieved to realize that was even possible. “Well, obviously there’s a steady paycheck. A nice one, considering the strength and rarity of your Skill.”

I shrugged. “Every job pays. What will I get from the syndicate that I’m not already getting as a systems analyst?”

Kori laughed out loud, and I almost joined her. Then I remembered to pretend that it was perfectly plausible for me to sit behind a desk all day weighing the pros and cons of various software options for a billion-dollar company, when the truth was that I lived more than an hour from the nearest internet connection, connected to my family only by satellite phone.

Too bad that part of my cover story was set in stone.

“What’s so funny?” I demanded, though I could easily have answered that question myself.

“Can I answer in the form of a list?” she asked, and I nodded, curious now. “The fact that you think you’re getting anything out of being a systems analyst is hilarious. The fact that I don’t even know what a systems analyst does is even funnier. Then there’s the fact that you are a systems analyst. I knew that, but now that I’ve met you, I just … can’t see it.”

“People are rarely what they seem to be at first glance,” I said, trying to pretend I didn’t agree with every thing on her list. “It’s my job to analyze systems. It’s your job to tell me why I’d like answering to Jake Tower more.”

Her smile faded, and I wanted to take it all back. But I had a part to play.

“The apartment.” She set the fork down and pushed her plate away. “I know you haven’t seen it yet, but it’s really—”

I shook my head. “Dig deeper. You’re still throwing money at me, but this isn’t about money.”

Kori frowned, and her eyes narrowed like they did when she got irritated—a pattern I was already starting to recognize. “Of course it’s about money. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t need cash.”

“Is that why you joined? For the money?”

Her frown slipped a little. “I don’t give a shit about the money.” But I’d already known that. She hated champagne and hors d’oeuvres. She preferred boots to stilettos. This was not a woman interested in wealth or social visibility. “I had my reasons.”

I wanted to hear her reasons. Badly. But if she’d wanted me to know, she would have told me. “I have my reasons, too.” And that may have been the truest thing I’d said to her so far.

“Does that mean you’re going to join? Or have I fucked this up already?”

There it was again, that vulnerability. That depth in her eyes, and the way she held her breath waiting for my answer.

“That means I’m going to give you another shot. Tomorrow. Maybe by then you’ll have figured out what carrot to dangle in front of me.”

“This isn’t a fucking game, Ian,” she snapped, and I smiled. I couldn’t help it.

“That’s the first time you’ve said my first name. And of course this is a game. Right now, you’re losing.”

She stood, hands flat on the table, eyes flashing in anger. “You can put on a suit and sit in front of a keyboard every day for the rest of your life if you want, but that’s not going to change who and what you are. You’re a Blinder, and a risk-taker. A thrill-seeker.”

I shook my head, ready to deny what I already recognized as truth—words from my own head, falling out of her mouth. But she cut me off before I could speak.

“I saw your face when you let the shadows fade around us last night, and I know that look. Darkness is in you, Ian. It’s part of you. You’re not going to feel whole until you’re free to live in the shadows of your own creation, and that’s not going to happen for you as a fucking systems analyst. But it can happen for you in syndicate service. And if you’re going to join one, you might as well join the best.”

“And do you really think the Tower syndicate is the best?”

Kori blinked, and I glimpsed something she was about to dance around, without actually denying—a trick syndicate employees learned quickly. “You will never find a better financial opportunity than what Jake is offering you. You’ll never find a syndicate with better security or fringe benefits. But if you go into this thinking you can work Jake Tower with a smile and a joke, he will roast you alive, feast on your flesh, then pick his teeth with your fucking bones.”

“That may be the most honest thing you’ve said yet.” But I felt my smile slipping. “Colorful, too.”

Kori sank into her chair again, and I watched her face as understanding bled into fear for a moment before her defenses slammed into place and left me staring at a carefully blank expression. But she couldn’t undo what I’d seen. She’d shown me a glimpse of the gritty reality beneath the shining surface of Tower’s empire, and that wasn’t supposed to happen. At least, not until I had a chain link tattooed on my arm.

“So now what?” She gripped the arms of her chair like it was all that was holding her up.

“Now you take me out on the town. Show me the syndicate in its natural habitat.”

“Why?” she demanded. “Is there anything I can show you that’ll make a damn bit of difference?”

“Why else would I be here?”

Kori sat straighter, eyes flashing again, this time with new understanding. Possibility. “You need something from him.” I could practically see the bulb flare to light over her head, and I wanted to smile. “I’m a bad recruiter. I’m a suck-ass recruiter, but you haven’t even flinched over anything I’ve said or done, and that means you need something bad enough that you don’t care what you’d have to sign to get it.”

I arched one brow at her. “I do care what I’d have to sign over. But I also know that nothing in life is free.”

She frowned, like that cliché meant more than it should have for her, and I wondered what she’d paid for whatever she got out of signing with Tower. “So tell me what you need, and I’ll get it for you.”

I shook my head slowly. “That’s not how the game is played.” Because if she knew that what I needed was her sister’s corpse, she’d try to kill me where I sat. So why was I more disturbed by the thought of being hated by her than of being killed by her?

“Fuck the game. I don’t wanna play.”

“You don’t have any choice,” I said, and fury rolled over her in waves almost thick enough for me to taste.

“Don’t ever say that to me,” she growled, her hands clenched around the chair arms so tightly I was afraid she might break them off.

I exhaled slowly, backing carefully away from whatever psychological land mine I’d nearly stepped on. “That’s not what I meant. You have to play the game because I have to play the game. I want something Tower won’t want to give. Which puts me in a pretty difficult position.”

Kori actually rolled her eyes. “I don’t think you fully appreciate how badly Jake wants to secure your services. There isn’t anything he wouldn’t give you, if you ask nicely and do a little ass kissing. Money. Car. Apartment. Women. Hell, men, if that’s what you like.”

“I don’t—” I started, but she spoke over me.

“Recreational chemicals …” Drugs, of course. “Fine art. Exotic pets. A surrogate mother for your unborn child. He’d give you nearly anything, short of his own wife and kids.” She stopped abruptly, forehead furrowed with a sudden unpleasant thought. “Please tell me you don’t want his wife. Asking for Lynne would get us both killed.”

I scowled, repulsed by the thought. “No, I don’t want his wife.”

“What, then? Tell me, and I’ll get it.”

I arched both brows, trying to hide a grin. “You should be careful what you offer a man you just met. What if I asked you to kill someone for me?”

“You wouldn’t.” She leaned back in her chair, obviously comfortable with her assessment of me.

“You don’t know me, or what I want, or what I’m capable of. But I’m telling you that what I need, Tower’s not going to want to give me. So if you want to make your boss happy you may have to go around him to get it. Are you willing to do whatever that takes?”

Kori watched me, her expression carefully blank, her gaze steady and colder than I’d seen since the moment we met. “Maybe you belong here after all.”




Seven


Kori

“It all begins with the grunts. The foot soldiers, with just one chain link,” I said, when we were far enough from the doormen that they wouldn’t overhear me explaining the inner workings of the Tower syndicate to a man without marks.

“The bottom layer of the pyramid?” Holt said as we crossed the covered hotel entrance and stepped onto the sidewalk, greeted by honking horns, the bite of exhaust, and what little breeze reached downtown from the river.

“Exactly.” I wasn’t sure how much he already knew, so I started from the beginning. “This is the rank I highly suggest you skip, and I don’t think Jake will balk at that, if you ask nicely.”

“What’s he like?”

“Jake? He’s disciplined. Patient.” In the same way a cat is willing to wait as long as it takes for the best shot at its prey. “Jake likes order. Rules. Straight lines and neat little boxes. I couldn’t walk a straight line even stone-cold sober and neat boxes tremble in my presence. Which is probably why I’m constantly in trouble.”

“You? Trouble? I am shocked and appalled.”

I glanced up to see Holt watching me with no hint of a smile. “You may be the most sarcastic man I’ve ever met.”

“It’s a gift.” We stopped at the corner, but only had to wait a second for the light to change so we could cross the street. “So, what is a grunt’s primary duty?” Ian asked as soon as we stepped onto the opposite curb.

“Depends on the color of the mark. Rust is the most common. A rust-colored mark means unSkilled muscle. They’re sentries, on the lookout for anything that doesn’t belong. And they’re everywhere, whether you see them or not. They do much more than the police to keep crime rates down on this side of town.”

Unauthorized crime, anyway. No one intervened when Tower ordered someone found, punished or killed. But that was one of the things we didn’t talk about. One of many.

Ian glanced at the people all around us, carrying shopping bags, having breakfast at the outdoor tables spilling onto the sidewalk from various restaurants, or just rushing to and from wherever they had to be on a Saturday morning. “What’s green?” He nodded toward a woman stepping out of a coffee shop with a cardboard container of steaming paper cups. The two chain links on her arm were the color of tarnished copper.

“Green is for unSkilled service. She’s a secretary, or accountant, or something like that. She’s not muscle, but she’s not Skilled, either.”

“And there are red marks, too, I assume?”

“Yeah. Red for the skin trade, same as for most other syndicates, but they don’t work on the street. Private appointments only. Their clientele is established and wealthy, and unlike Cavazos, Tower marks them on their arm, same as all the other initiates. He doesn’t see the point of either degrading or hiding them by putting the marks on their thighs.”

Holt’s brows rose. “Prostitutes are people, too?”

“It’s just another way to serve.” I couldn’t spit the lie out fast enough. “Of course, whatever you want would be on the house—at least until he marks you.”

Ian scowled, and I wasn’t surprised. Jake was right; Holt didn’t want a whore.

“And your mark?” he asked, glancing at the half sleeve covering the top quarter of my left arm.

“Iron-colored links are for Skilled initiates, no matter what the position. I’m security, obviously, though no longer on Tower’s personal guard.”

“Why not? Did Tower get a splinter on your watch?”

Yeah. A big metal splinter to the chest. “Something like that.”

“So, after you recruit me—assuming you recruit me—what will your job be?”

“I don’t know.” I would never work as Jake’s guard again, nor would I be trusted to protect his wife or kids. “General security, maybe. Like the guards stationed every where at the party.”

Ian grimaced. “That sounds boring as hell.”

But I’d take boring over the basement any day.

“What would I be doing?” he asked, as we turned another corner.

“Whatever Jake needs done. Blinding the opposition. Punching holes in a defensive infrared grid, so his men can get in.”

“But we’re talking about crime, right? Criminal enterprise?”

I hesitated, trying to decide what he wanted to hear, and how best to merge that with the truth. “That sounds a little …”

“True?”

“Yeah.” I frowned. “That sounds a little true. Also, insufficient. Not all of the syndicate’s business is illegal. Some of it’s just highly discouraged by legal, spiritual and political authorities.”

“Semantics.” He brushed off my reply with an ironic grin. “What are we talking about? What’s his bread and butter?”

I hesitated, weighing my options.

“What’s wrong?” Holt glanced at me as we stepped onto another crosswalk. The light changed before we were halfway across the street, but no one bothered walking faster.

“I’m not sure I’m allowed to answer the kind of questions you’re asking now, but I’m supposed to do whatever it takes to keep you interested. Which means I’m walking the line between a couple of conflicting orders.” And if I actually got caught between them, my body would tear itself apart trying to obey both at once.

“I’d never intentionally put you in that position,” Ian said. “So if I ask something you can’t answer, just tell me and I’ll withdraw the question.”

I frowned up at him, trying to decide whether or not he was serious. Nice guys didn’t usually last long in syndicate life. Neither did nice girls, which was why I’d signed on to protect Kenley.

“Have you ever been bound?” I asked, and his sudden, startled look darkened quickly into something I couldn’t interpret.

“No. So, no, I’ve never felt resistance pain, if that’s what you’re getting at. Nor have I been caught between conflicting orders. Have you?” he asked, watching me carefully, and I nodded. “What’s it like?”

“It’s like dying, in slow motion. One piece of you at a time …” But my words faded into silence when a pair of unfamiliar eyes caught my gaze from several feet ahead on the sidewalk. I pretended not to notice, but it took real effort to keep tension from showing in my step. The stranger had glanced at me, but his gaze lingered on Ian, and his casual stance was as false as my grandmother’s teeth.

The would-be poacher was young, which hopefully meant he was inexperienced, but I was unarmed, which automatically put me at a disadvantage.

I prattled on for several more steps without really listening to myself. Waiting. Hoping Holt wouldn’t freak out when the shit hit the fan. You never can tell with civilians. And finally, as we stepped even with a narrow alley, a hand grabbed my right arm from behind and something sharp poked me to the left of my spine, through the thin cotton of my blouse.

“Scream, and I’ll cut you,” a young voice whispered into my ear, and I rolled my eyes as he pulled me into the alley. Ian didn’t even get a chance to look surprised before a second man—this one bald—shoved him after us.

“You okay?” Ian asked me, his voice soft and taut with caution as he backed away from the bald man, who carried a knife no one on the street would be able to see. If anyone noticed us at all. With any luck, no one would.

“I’m good,” I said, stepping carefully as I was tugged steadily backward. “They don’t want me. You feel like being abducted today?”

“Wasn’t on the agenda, no.” Ian stopped with his back to the brick wall, halfway between the bald man and the one holding his knife at my back.

“Plans change,” Baldy said. “Come with us quietly, or he’ll gut your girlfriend.”

I rolled my eyes again. This was a farce of an abduction at best. “First of all, I’m not his girlfriend. Second, it’s kind of hard to gut someone from behind, dumb ass.”

The hand around my arm tightened, and the first fiery threads of anger blazed up my spine. “Anyone ever tell you your mouth is going to get you in trouble one day?”

“Only hourly,” I said, and Ian laughed without taking his attention from the bald man’s knife.

“Last chance,” Baldy said.

Ian glanced at me, brows raised in question. “What do you think?”

I shrugged, in spite of the knife at my back. “Well, they’re not total morons. Knives instead of guns, so no one will hear gunshots. And they’ve got balls, coming after you in broad daylight. That one’s a Traveler,” I said, nodding at the bald man. “I’d bet my last drop of vodka on it.”

Ian frowned. “How do you know?”

“Because the other one can’t drag you through the shadows while he’s threatening my life.”

Baldy scowled, and I gloated silently.

“So should I go with them?” Ian asked, and I could hear the amusement in his voice. He was neither scared nor rattled, and I was pleasantly surprised.

“Nah.” I twisted away from the knife at my back and pulled the man holding my arm off balance. He stumbled, and I jerked my arm from his grip, then faced off against him with my feet spread for balance. “I’d hold out for a better offer.”

Knife guy reached for me, and I kicked his kneecap from the side. He crashed to the concrete on one hip and swung his blade at my leg. I kicked the knife from his grip, then stomped on his hand, satisfied by the crunch of several bones, and even more satisfied by his howl of pain.

Something scuffed against concrete behind me, and I twisted to see Baldy lunge for Ian.

Shit! I started toward them, but stopped, surprised when Ian simply stepped out of his path, then slammed Baldy’s wrist into the corner of the Dumpster. The knife clattered to the concrete at his feet, and Ian kicked it beneath the Dumpster. His motions were smooth and fast, and he hadn’t come close to breaking a sweat.

The man on the ground in front of me pushed himself up with his good hand, and I squatted to snatch his lost knife. When he stood, I stepped up behind him and held his own blade at his throat. He stiffened, good leg holding most of his weight, arms out at his sides, and I almost laughed. “I take it back. You are a complete moron.”

“Who are you?” he asked, in spite of the blade I held.

“Kori Daniels. Why? Were you expecting Little Miss Muffet?”

“Daniels? No shit? That’s just my fuckin’ luck,” he said, and his voice shook, in spite of false bravado. “I bet two hundred dollars they’d find you facedown in the river.”

I shook my head, though I’d had similar thoughts, myself. “So now you’re stupid and poor.”

The bald man grunted, and I looked up to see Ian’s left fist crash into his face. Again. His head slammed into the brick wall—hard—and a cut appeared on his right cheek. Then his eyes closed and he slid down the wall to slump on the ground, unconscious.

Ian stepped out of reach in case the bald man woke up. A hint of a grin rode one corner of his mouth when he saw me gaping at him. “Why do you look so surprised?”

“Because I’m so surprised.” Jake didn’t know Ian could fight; if he had, he would have told me.

I considered that new information for a second, trying to decide how long I could get away with silence on the matter, while the man in front of me breathed shallowly in concession to the knife at his throat. “What’s your name?”

“John Smith,” he spat. And that was exactly the alias I’d expected—a generic fuck-you to the question no one with half a brain would ever voluntarily answer.

I slid the knife beneath the short left sleeve of John’s shirt and he flinched when I split the material with one upward stroke. The cotton flaps parted to reveal a single iron-colored ring. No surprise there. “How much is Cavazos offering for Holt?”

“Hundred grand, unharmed. Seventy-five, if he’s bruised or bleeding.”

I glanced at Ian over John’s shoulder, brows raised in appreciation. “Not bad. But he’ll go higher.” I stepped back from John and shoved him hard enough that he fell to his knees in front of me, facing Ian.

“What are you doing, Kori?” Ian said.

“Showing you what it feels like to suffer conflicting orders.” I squatted and slid the knife across the concrete, and Ian caught it beneath the sole of his boot. “And John’s going to help.” I circled John slowly, and he turned with me to keep me in sight. “To break an oath, you have to first be sealed into one. You give your word, and a Binder like Kenley seals it, with ink, blood or spoken promise. Or some combination of those. A verbal promise is the weakest. A blood binding is the strongest, whether sealed on paper, flesh or any other surface. John, here, has a blood binding sealed in his flesh by Ruben Cavazos.” I glanced pointedly at his exposed biceps. “He’s unSkilled muscle. And I mean unSkilled in every sense of the word,” I said, backing out of reach when John lunged for me.

“Bitch!” he snapped, as I started circling him again, and I could see his bad leg shake.

“Kori, I know what a binding is,” Ian said. “I grew up in the suburbs, not on Mars.”

“But your understanding is theoretical, right? Like how I understand that the better part of valor is discretion, but I can’t truly know what that feels like, since I’ve never tried it.”

“You’ve never tried valor?” Ian’s brows rose.

“No, discretion,” I said, and he looked like he wanted to laugh. “My point is that you can’t truly understand what you’ve never felt. But sometimes a good visual helps.” That, and I really needed to hit something and I wasn’t sure when I’d get another chance. “So watch closely.”

I turned back to John, who still favored his right leg and was edging toward the Dumpster, probably in search of something to use as a weapon.

“When you break your word, you send your body into self-destruct mode. And when you’re given conflicting orders, there’s no way to obey them both, thus there’s no way to avoid pain. First comes a real bitch of a headache.”

I feinted to the right, then slammed a left hook into John’s temple. He grunted and stumbled backward, and I followed while he was still off balance. “Next comes uncontrollable shaking and cramps. Then the loss of bowel and bladder control.” I kicked John low in the gut for emphasis. He hunched over the pain in his stomach and I was already circling again before he stood.

“Then your body begins to shut itself down one organ at a time. Starting with the kidneys, and everything else housed in your gut.” John lurched toward me, fists clenched, and I danced away from him on the balls of my feet. Before he could follow, I twisted into a midlevel kick, and my boot slammed into his right kidney.

John moaned, an inarticulate sound of pain, then fell to his knees.

“And in the case of conflicting orders, if one of them isn’t withdrawn, the breakdown of your body continues until you die in a pool of your own evacuated fluids.”

“Kori,” Ian said, with a glance at the man curled up on the ground. “That’s enough.”

“Is it?” I grabbed a handful of John’s hair and pulled his head back, one knee pressed into his spine. “What were you gonna do after you took me down?” I demanded. “How were you going to stop me from coming after you? Knife to the chest?”

John shook his head, and several of his hairs popped loose in my hand. “Across the throat,” he gasped. “Then I was gonna throw your corpse facedown in the river and cash in on my bet.”

Ian scowled, but didn’t press his position.

I shoved John facedown on the concrete and put one foot on the back of his neck. “Tell Cavazos I consider this a personal insult. If he doesn’t make a serious effort next time, I’m shipping his men back in a series of small boxes.”

Then I stomped on John’s good hand, and his screams followed us as I knelt to pick up the knife I’d taken from them, then followed Ian onto the sidewalk.

The first of the resistance pain hit me as I folded the knife closed and slid it into my pocket—a flash of agony behind my eyes, accompanied by the glare of white light in the center of my field of vision. An instant migraine. And that was only the beginning.

“You okay?” Ian asked, when I staggered on the sidewalk, one hand pressed to my forehead, as if that could stop the pain.





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