Oath Bound (Unbound)

Four



Kris

The closet door opened down the hall as I was rinsing my cuts in the bathroom. I went for my gun out of habit, trailing water across the floor and blood across my arm.

“Kris?” Kori called, and I slid my gun back into its holster and stepped out of the bathroom with a clean white towel pressed to my arm. “What happened? Liv said you went after Kenley, but she lost your scent.”

She meant my psychic scent—the personal energy signature given off by my blood, which blood Trackers, like Olivia and Cam, could use to find people.

“No surprise there. The Towers’ nanny is a Jammer, right?” Being near a Jammer is like being in a psychic dead zone—you can’t be tracked, either by name or by blood. That’s a benefit those who can afford it will gladly pay for, but it comes with a couple of obvious disadvantages, as well.

“You went to Jake’s house?” She lifted the towel from my arm and her pale brows furrowed over eyes as deep a brown as our mother’s had been. “What the hell were you thinking? It’s a miracle you walked out of there with only—”

“Hey!” Sera shouted from Gran’s bedroom—the only one on the first floor.

I groaned. There was no good way to tell Kori about our new guest, but letting Sera deliver the news herself was number one on a long list of bad ways to get the job done.

Kori’s focus shifted from my wounds to the closed bedroom door. She dropped the rag into place on my arm and her hand found the grip of the gun holstered beneath her jacket. “Who the f*ck is that?”

Gran chuckled from the living room, where she was sipping iced tea in front of the muted television. She’d refused to help me with Sera on the grounds that I deserved whatever I got for bringing a stranger back to our hideout, even though she only remembered who we were hiding from about half the time.

“Hey!” Sera shouted again, while I actively regretted not gagging her when I’d had the chance. “Whoever’s out there, if you’re even marginally sane, please consider calling the police. But if you’re as psychologically damaged as Kris and his grandmother, then by all means, carry on with whatever the descendants of Norman Bates do for fun on the weekend. I’m sure I’ll still be here whenever you get around to stabbing me and laughing maniacally over my cooling corpse.”

“That’s Sera.” I pressed the rag tighter against the cuts on my arm. “She’s rational and calm, and just generally pleasant to be around. I think you’re gonna like her.”

“I like her!” Gran called over the wooden creak of her rocker.

Kori took a single, cautious step back and slowly pushed the bedroom door open.

Sera sat in Gran’s rolling desk chair, kind of tilted to the side because I’d used a leather belt to secure her bound arms to the back of the chair.

Kori made a noise deep in her throat. It sounded like an angry mutation of my name. “Who the f*ck is that, and where the hell is Kenley?”

“The short version?” I said, and she nodded without taking her focus from Sera. “I went to Tower’s looking for Kenni, but Julia was more interested in having me shot than in answering my questions, and I didn’t have time for a leisurely search of the compound.” Not that I’d expected her to actually be there. I’d hoped Julia might value her own life enough to order my sister’s return. Or at least tell me where to find her. “I didn’t find Kenley, but I did find Sera, and they seemed willing to shoot through her to get to me, so I figured she wouldn’t mind being removed from immediate danger.” I shrugged. “Turns out they might have had the right idea.”

“F*ck you.” If Sera’s eyes could have shot flames, I would have been nothing but a pile of ash. “Untie me.”

Kori turned to me, both brows raised. “Wait. Julia took our sister, and your brilliant plan was to break into her house and return the favor?”

“No, my intent was to get Kenni back. But Sera was there, and she got between my gun and Julia.” And she was wearing a yellow scarf... “Then they started shooting at us—at both of us—so I had to take her with me.”

“You had to take her?” Kori pushed pale hair back from her face, then crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine. What are you planning to do with her? She’s a bargaining chip? A trade?”

“I’m a hostage,” Sera said.

Kori turned on me, but the anger I expected to find in her eyes was backlit by something more bitter. More personal. “We don’t take hostages, Kris. And we damn sure don’t take prisoners. That’s not how we operate.”

“I’m aware. She’s neither prisoner nor hostage,” I insisted as I lost the battle not to stare at Sera some more. At her scarf. At her eyes. At the tension in her frame, telling me she would fight until the very last breath was forced from her body, if that’s what it took. She didn’t need a reason to fight—she just needed an excuse.

I didn’t want to be her reason or her excuse. Or her jailer. In spite of her sharp knife and her even sharper tongue, I was captivated by the fire inside her and curious about the fuel that fed it.

And I needed to know why Sera had shown up in my notebook, nearly a decade before I met her.

“She’s a guest,” I continued, watching Sera while I spoke to my sister. “She’s a reluctant guest who really shouldn’t be thrown out in the cold until we know whether or not she’s bound to tell Julia Tower about everything she’s said and heard here.”

“Agreed. Although she wouldn’t have seen or heard anything if you hadn’t brought her here.” Kori exhaled and crossed her arms over her shirt. “So...who is she?”

A pang of disappointment unfurled in my chest. “I was hoping you could tell me that.”

“I don’t recognize her. But she could have signed on with Julia after I left the organization.”

Understatement of the decade. Kori hadn’t just “left” the Tower syndicate. She’d fought her way out in an elegant clusterf*ck of a showdown, in which Ian, Olivia and I all kicked ass and fired guns on her behalf.

They say combat is a bonding experience for those who survive. They’re right.

Kori eyed our guest’s awkward tilt. “Why is she tied up?”

“Because he’s psychotic,” Sera spat.

“Because she’s a flight risk,” I corrected, and I got the distinct impression that she was flipping me off behind her back. “Did I mention she’s feisty? Because she’s also stubborn.”

“Fascinating.” Kori glanced at the long sleeve covering Sera’s left arm. “Does she have marks?”

Sera groaned, still glaring up at me. “I told you, I don’t work for Julia Tower!”

I could only shrug. “She keeps saying that, but she won’t prove it.”

“You have to prove it. That’s the way the world works.” Kori studied Sera’s scowl. “Either you know that, and you’re refusing because you’re marked, or you’re naive enough to think you actually have a choice in the matter. That’s adorable, but completely erroneous.”

“She’s not from around here,” I said, while Sera shot rage daggers at us both.

“No shit. Did you ask her nicely?”

“I said please and everything, but remember how I told you she was gentle and pleasant? I lied.”

“So what’s the plan?”

I leaned against the door frame and eyed Kori expectantly. “I was hoping my sweet, gentle little sister could use her charms to verify that our guest doesn’t have any marks.”

Kori huffed, still eyeing Sera as if she were a puzzle she didn’t have the patience to solve. “Kenley’s unavailable at the moment.”

“Then I guess you’ll have to do.”

Kori turned on me. “She’s your problem. You check her for marks.”

I groaned, then tugged Kori into the hall after me, where I lowered my voice. “I’ve already had to catch her, restrain her, catch her again, then tie her up, and after all that, cutting her shirt open just feels like crossing a line.”

Sera huffed from the bedroom, where she could obviously still hear us. “So you’re saying there is a limit to the cruelty and unreasonable demands you’re willing to inflict on the woman who saved you from a future as a human sieve?”

Gran laughed from the living room. “I like her! I think we should keep her!”

“We can’t keep her, Gran. She’s not a kitten!” Kori shouted.

I tried to not to dwell on the fact that way too many of the women in my life communicated at top volume and maximum ridicule. Then I lowered my voice even further. “Wasn’t checking for marks part of your job description? Aren’t you supposed to be good at this?”

My sister shrugged. “I know seven different ways to get a look at her bare arm in the next thirty seconds, but none of them are gentle, and a couple of them would obligate me to marry her in several third-world cultures.” She slapped me on the arm. “You’re on your own. But I will give you a little advice.”

I groaned. “Don’t you need wisdom in order to dispense advice?”

“Nah, just experience. Listen up.” Kori tugged me farther from the half-closed bedroom door. “Don’t force her into showing you her arm. Talk her into it. Otherwise, she’ll never forgive you.”

“What makes you think I want her forgiveness?”

My sister’s eyes narrowed, but the real censure was in the contempt behind them. “Don’t be an a*shole, Kris. We both know you care what she thinks of you.”

“And you’ve drawn that unlikely conclusion based on...”

“Oh, please. You took one of Julia’s pretty young women instead of one of the many fat, balding men bound to her. Though I hope it’s obvious now that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.”

“You think I took her because I wanted her? What am I, a caveman?”

“In her opinion?” Kori shrugged. “Probably.”

“I took her because they were going to kill her to get to me.” And because she was wearing the yellow scarf. But I couldn’t tell my sister that. She didn’t know about the notebook. She didn’t even know about Noelle. “I couldn’t just leave her there.”

Kori rolled her eyes. “Julia would have killed anyone to get to you, or to any one of us, but you will never convince me that you’d have pulled one of her meathead laborers through the shadows to ‘protect’ him.”

There was no use arguing with her when I couldn’t explain myself without mentioning the notebook, and I couldn’t tell her about that because I’d never told anyone about the notebook or about how I’d filled it. About how, for the first time, one of those indecipherable lines had made sense, and I’d pulled Sera through the shadows just in time to prevent us both from being killed.

If the woman in the yellow scarf was real, then everything else I’d written down could be real, too. What had I missed in that notebook? What had I ignored? What other horrible things could I have prevented?

“Go talk to her, Kris. We can’t keep her tied up, but we can’t afford to let her go, and the only other option isn’t going to sit well on my conscience.”

“You have a conscience?” I went for the obvious joke, so I wouldn’t have to think about what she was really saying, because if I thought about that, Kori and I would fight.

I hadn’t fought with Kori in a very long time. For a very good reason.

“I have a conscience and you have a brain, and I suspect they’re both getting rusty, so let’s put them to use. Kenley needs us, and your Sera’s getting in the way.”

“I know.” But if Sera did work for the Towers, she might be able to help us find Kenley. “Did Liv catch Kenni’s scent?”

“Not a trace.” Kori didn’t look surprised. When the Towers wanted someone to disappear, that someone disappeared.

“They won’t kill her,” I whispered, trying to reassure us both. Killing Kenley would release Julia’s remaining employees from their bonds of servitude and obedience, and that was the last thing Julia wanted.

“I know. But the Towers are capable of far worse than death.” Kori shook her head, jarring loose memories I could almost see floating beneath her carefully controlled expression. She nodded once, curtly, then headed back into the bedroom, where she studied Sera’s face again with no sign of recognition. “She’s definitely not one of Jake’s, but if she’s Julia’s, you can’t trust a word she says without third-party verification.”

“You knew him?” Sera’s eyes widened and a little of her hostility melted beneath the curiosity she couldn’t quite hide. It looked genuine, and I was as fascinated by what she didn’t know as I was by what she might be able to tell us. “You actually knew Jake Tower?”

Kori sank onto the bed, which put her at eye level with Sera. “I knew him very well.” She shrugged out of her jacket and pushed up her short left sleeve to reveal two chain links tattooed on her upper arm, now the faded gray of dead marks. “I served him for six years—most of that spent under his direct supervision—which is how I can say with absolute confidence that he was one of the cruelest, most recreationally sadistic men to ever walk this earth.”

Sera shifted uncomfortably in her chair, but didn’t break Kori’s gaze. She looked the way I felt every time a pill I had to swallow got stuck in my throat.

“I knew his brother, too, until I had the privilege of ending the bastard’s cold-blooded existence,” Kori continued. “I know Julia Tower better than anyone should ever have to know Julia Tower, and with every single breath I take, I regret my decision to let her live. Instead of cursing my own foot when I stub my toe, I’ve taken to cursing the foul womb that produced all three of the Tower siblings. Their family tree is rotten all the way to its decayed-ass roots, and I don’t see how Jake’s kids—as innocent as they look now—can possibly rise above the malice and brutality that is their birthright.”

Sera flinched as though she’d been slapped, and Kori frowned.

“You never met him, did you?” she asked. Sera shook her head. “But you know Julia?”

“I just met her today. You...” She blinked and shrugged, as if her shoulders were sore. “You killed Jonah? Jake’s brother?”

“Yes.” Kori’s eyes glittered with the memory, but her gaze was unflinching. “I stabbed him in the throat with a chunk of porcelain from a smashed toilet, and the only regret I have about killing him is that so many people were denied the opportunity to see him die.”

“Damn, Kori,” I said, and my sister glanced up at me for a second, then returned her attention to an obviously shell-shocked Sera.

“Does that bother you?”

Sera stared at her lap, evidently considering the question, and when she finally looked up, her gaze was so sharp it could have drawn blood. “Did he deserve it?”

“Jonah Tower was a rapist, torturer and murderer.” Kori spoke as if the words meant nothing to her, hiding the truth behind a battered stoicism that made my chest ache. “He was a sadist son of a bitch who deserved a much longer, more painful death than he got.”

“Then may he rot in hell for all of eternity.” Sera’s voice hinted at everything my sister’s hid. There was a perilous depth to her conviction, and I wondered just how closely to the edge she was teetering. How little would it take to send her tumbling over the edge? Why did I want so badly to pull her back from that abyss?

I knew nothing about her—not even her last name—but I recognized so much of what I saw in her. There was pain behind her anger. A lot of pain. I may have been a convenient target—I had locked her up in a strange house—but I wasn’t the true cause of either her pain or her anger.

“How did Jake...die?” Sera asked.

“Ian shot him,” I said.

Kori nodded. “It was a clean death. Fast. Better than he deserved.”

“Ian is...” Sera glanced at both of us, in turn.

“He is the other half of my soul. The good half.”

It was amazing to see the change in my sister when she talked about Ian. She was still fierce and dangerous— Korinne would never be anything less. But with his name on her tongue, she looked as if she may not hate the world after all. Not the whole world, anyway.

“But you didn’t kill Julia?”

Kori shook her head slowly, looking as if she was remembering that day, and I remembered it with her. Though the Towers were a huge obstacle in my life’s work, I’d never been in their house before that day. I’d never dealt with any of them face-to-face. “I wanted Julia to suffer. She deserved to suffer,” Kori said. “I changed my mind a second later, when I realized that leaving her alive would really mean making the rest of the world suffer, but by then I’d lost my chance.”

“Why did you hate them?” Sera asked. “I mean, other than the whole ‘birthed from an evil womb’ thing. What did they do to you?”

For a minute, I thought Kori might actually answer. That she might finally talk to someone other than Ian about what woke her up screaming in the middle of most nights. Kenley knew part of it. I think even Vanessa knew more than I did. I’d started to ask, once, but Gran, in a rare moment of absolute lucidity, told me to leave it alone.

I did, because when she’s thinking clearly, Gran is never wrong.

But after nearly half a minute of considering, Kori only stood and glanced at me on her way to the door. “You got this?” she asked, and when I nodded, she disappeared into the hall and pulled the door shut behind her.

“Is she okay?” Sera asked as I sank onto the bed, where my sister had been seconds earlier.

“Kori’s always okay.” Even when she isn’t. “All right. Here’s what I need you to understand. I don’t know you—”

“I understand that.”

I resisted the urge to growl at her. The woman was as infuriating as she was fascinating. “I wasn’t finished. My point is that since I don’t know you, I have no idea whether you’re telling the truth or just acting. I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, and I’d appreciate it if you’d return the favor. I’m not asking to see your arm out of any testosterone-driven need to boss you around or make you do something you obviously don’t want to do. I’m asking to see your arm because that’s what I have to do to protect my friends and family.”

Sera lifted one brow and tossed her head in the direction of the door Kori had just closed. “I don’t think she needs your protection.”

I shrugged. “Maybe she doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to protect her. Either way, Gran and Kenley do need protection, and frankly, I care more about keeping them safe than I do about respecting the modesty of your covered arm. I care more about keeping them safe than I care about anything else in the world. I wish that was something you could understand, but even if it’s not—”

Her eyes widened in surprise, and I realized something I’d said had gotten through to her. “I do understand that.”

“Then give me a look at your arm, Sera. A couple of inches below your shoulder. I won’t touch you. You don’t have to take anything off. Just give me a reason to trust you enough to untie you and let you be in the same room with my family. Okay?”

She frowned. “You don’t trust me? You kidnapped me.”

“Okay, we’re going to have to agree to disagree about that particular descriptor, but I’m very sorry for dragging you out of there. There were guns aimed at us both and I didn’t have time to think it through, but that was my mistake. If I could do it over, I’d do it differently.” Though I wasn’t sure how... “But since I can’t, we have to deal with the situation as it currently stands. That would be a lot easier for me if you’d show me your arm, and it’d be a lot easier for you if you weren’t tied to a chair. You can make both of those things happen. It’s your choice.”

“Are you patronizing me?”

“No. I’m asking you to play nice and I’m giving you my word that I’ll do the same. I’d like to take knives and zip ties out of the equation.”

“After I show you my arm, then what?”

“If it’s unmarked, I’ll let you out of that chair and out of this room. Then we’re going to have a civil drink or a cup of coffee—your choice—while we wait for a friend of Kori’s.”

“What friend?”

“She’s a Reader.” Annika, the human lie detector, who would always owe Kori a favor and would always be owed one from her in return, because of Kenley’s binding. “She’s going to listen while we ask you some questions, and if she likes your answers, we’re going to take you home and you can go on with your life. Which, incidentally, will last much longer if you stay away from Julia Tower.”

The door opened behind me, and Kori appeared in the doorway. “I’ll go get her in a minute,” my sister said, and I realized she’d been listening through the door. And that she’d already called Anne.

Sera frowned. “And if your friend doesn’t like my answers?”

Kori shrugged. “Well, then we’ll all have some difficult decisions to make. But I promise that if we have to kill you, it’ll be a quick death.”

Sera turned to me, suddenly pale. “Is she serious? Is that supposed to be comforting?”

I held her gaze, because that was the least I owed her. “Coming from Kori? Yes.”

“You people are so screwed up!”

Before I could reassure Sera that I wouldn’t let my sister deliver a mercy killing, Kori leaned against the door frame and made a thoughtful sound. “I think the problem here is that you don’t understand the alternative.”

“The alternative, wherein you open the door and I walk out, and we never have to see one another again?”

“Um, no. The alternative that actually bears some resemblance to reality.” Kori looked poised to continue with her typical colorful, disturbing delivery, so I cut her off and stepped into Sera’s line of sight before my sister could make things worse.

“We hope to convince you to talk to us by giving you coffee and deploying a Reader. The Towers would substitute an experienced torturer for our cup of dark roast.”

“Seriously?”

Before I could answer, Kori turned and pulled up the back of her shirt to reveal a canvas of scars I’d only seen once, myself. Thick welts. Mottled burns. And at least two complete sets of bite marks.

Sera gasped and Kori lowered her shirt, then turned, her expression as empty as I’d ever seen it. “They didn’t even want information.”

“What did they want?” Sera whispered.

“To hear me scream.”

Sera looked queasy, and I knew how she felt. The evidence of Kori’s suffering made me sick to my stomach, and the empty way she spoke about it made me want to kill someone. But she’d already taken out one of the men responsible. Ian had killed the other.

Kori had nothing left to battle but her own memories.

“They will want information from Kenley,” I said. “They’ll want to know where we are, and how many of us there are, and how easy it would be to erase us from existence. If we let you go and you are obligated to report to Julia, she won’t have to torture you to get that information. But they will have to torture Kenni for it, and we won’t let that happen.”

Kori continued with the part I didn’t want to verbalize. “If you know anything that could help us get her back, you have to tell us. And if you’re obligated to do or say anything to Julia Tower that would put Kenni in greater danger than she’s already in, I’ll have to kill you to stop that from happening. I’m not going to bullshit you about that. But I promise it won’t hurt, because the difference between us and Julia Tower is that if we kill you, it’ll be a mercy.”

But that wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t sure how I could justify letting her live if she was a threat, but I was determined to do it.

“This is so f*cked up,” Sera mumbled, staring at the floor in shock, and I couldn’t help but believe her. She was horrified by what she was hearing and what Kori had shown her. If she was bound to Julia, she was so newly bound that she hadn’t yet discovered the horrors of syndicate service for herself.

Surely she wasn’t a good enough actress to make us believe such a convincing display of naïveté. Surely no one was that good....

Kori huffed. “You have no idea. You gonna show us your arm?”

Sera tossed her head, throwing long, brown hair back from her face. “Let me up and I’ll show you. I’m not one of them. I’ll never be one of them.” There was something new behind her eyes. Something strong and resolute. “But I’m not convinced you’re much better than they are, so let’s let your Reader friend do her thing, so I can get the hell out of here.”

“We’re not like them,” I insisted as I unbuckled the belt securing her to the chair. “I know you have no reason to believe me, but we’re nothing like them.”

“Right. You kidnapped me and tied me up, and now you’re ready to kill me. From my perspective, the distinction between you psychos and the Tower psychos isn’t exactly glaringly clear.”

“We’re not ready to kill you,” Kori said. “We’re willing to kill you. There’s a big difference.”

Sera sat straighter when I pulled the belt loose and laid it on the bed behind me. “And that difference would be?”

I slid my pocketknife between her wrists and the zip tie, and she stiffened the moment the metal touched her skin. I used my free hand to brace hers, so she wouldn’t get cut.

Her skin was soft and warm. I hesitated for just a second, so I’d have a reason to keep touching her. Then I severed the plastic with my blade and let the cut zip tie fall to the floor. I closed my knife and slid it into my pocket, and when I spun the chair around so that she faced me, she was rubbing the red marks on her wrists. And waiting for my answer.

I gripped the chair seat on either side of her legs and rolled her closer. My gaze met hers from inches away and she gasped at whatever she saw in mine, then bit her lip. “The difference is that if the Towers think you’re a threat, they will have you beaten, raped and tortured in front of an audience—they’ll call it an object lesson—before they finally give you conflicting orders and watch your body tear itself apart trying to follow both commands at once.”

She’d stopped breathing, but her gaze had only intensified. Sharpened. “You’re trying to scare me.”

“Yes. But I’m scaring you with the truth.” I tried not to think about how close she was and how badly I wanted to touch her. And how much she would hate that.

I hated knowing she’d recoil from my touch.

“They are bad people who do bad things for sport and for profit. We are good people who do bad things to protect people who can’t protect themselves from the Julia Towers of the world.” I should have let her go. I should have pushed her chair back so she could stand, but I didn’t want to let her go, and I didn’t feel particularly guilty about that.

“You’ll do bad things, too, eventually,” I said, and when she shifted in the chair, her jeans brushed my thumb. “In our world, there’s no way around that, and the fact that I met you in Julia Tower’s office tells me that you’re in that world now, for better or worse. The only thing you have left to decide is which side you want to fight for. Because you will fight, or you will die.”

Kori shrugged. “Or maybe you’ll fight, then you’ll die. That happens here, too.”

Neither of us acknowledged her. Sera’s gaze was locked in mine. At least, that’s what I thought until I tried to look away and discovered I was as trapped by the look in her eyes as she was by the doors I’d screwed shut.

The difference was that I didn’t want to escape.

I should have moved my hand, but Sera hadn’t moved her leg, so I left my hand where it was and let the heat bleeding through her denim warm one side of my thumb. “Take off your scarf,” I said, and my voice was lower than I’d meant for it to be. Deeper. I didn’t think she’d comply, but her gaze held mine while she unwound the thin material from her neck and shoulders. She handed it to me and I held it for a second, stunned by the realization that the yellow scarf from my notebook weighed nothing.

And that it smelled just like her. Clean, and vaguely sweet and enticing, in a way I could never have put into words, but would never, ever forget.

Kori cleared her throat and I blinked in surprise, then realized I was still staring at Sera from less than a foot away, and now I was fingering her silk scarf like some kind of pervert with an accessories fetish.

I rocked back onto my heels and draped her scarf over the foot of my grandmother’s bed, hoping my face wasn’t as red as it felt.

“We still need to see your arm.” I stood and Sera stared up at me, and I wished I knew her well enough to understand the intense blend of strength, fear and anger warring behind her eyes. “You want me to step outside?”

Her fingers found the hem of her shirt and her gaze hardened. “I don’t care what you do.”

But that was a lie. Women who don’t care what you do have no reason to tell you that.

I started to turn, to give her some privacy, but she turned faster. She pulled her left arm out of its long sleeve, then lifted that side of her shirt to her shoulder, revealing half of a slim, almost delicate waist above the denim clinging to the swell of her hip.

My throat felt tight. I tried not to stare. When that didn’t work, I tried not to look like I was staring. If Kori noticed, I couldn’t tell. She was fixated on Sera’s arm, as I should have been.

With the front of her shirt clutched to her chest, Sera twisted to show us her left arm, and I exhaled in relief before I realized she would hear that, and that she might understand how badly I’d wanted her to be unaffiliated with the Towers, and not just for her own sake. Not just for Kenley’s sake.

For my sake.

Her arm was smooth and pale, and completely unmarked. She was free from obligation not just to the Towers, but to any of the other syndicates who routinely marked their employees in the same spot. And that was most of them.

Sera was unbound.

Based on the lack of dead marks, she’d never been bound, which would explain her incomprehension of just how vile the syndicates really were. But if that was the case—if she didn’t work for Julia Tower—why had my notebook told me to take her? How was she supposed to help us get Kenley back?

Maybe she wasn’t. My head spun with that possibility. Maybe Sera wasn’t supposed to help me. Maybe I was supposed to help her.

Kori shrugged, arms folded over her chest, while Sera slid her arm back into its sleeve. “Well, assuming the rest of her is as spotless as her arm, I’m good with letting her walk around unfettered until Anne gets here.”

“Me, too.” I hadn’t planned to tie her up at all until she tried to climb out the window.

“The rest of me is fine, but I’m not showing you anything else.” When Sera turned to face us, I saw that her resolution was just as firmly back in place as her shirt. “I’m not a prostitute.”

“We know,” I assured her.

Kori shrugged again. “I believe you, but what I believe doesn’t matter. You have to make Anne believe.” She turned to me, already reaching for the doorknob. “I’ll go get her.” Then she stepped into the hall and left the door open behind her back.

“She’s...interesting.” Sera glanced at the bed, as if she was considering sitting, then she sat in the chair instead. “Kinda scary.”

“Yeah. I’d like to say that’s Tower’s fault, but the truth is that Kori’s always been a little scary. I think that’s why he liked her.” Until suddenly he didn’t like her.

“She really worked for him?”

“Yup.” I knew better than to give her any new information, but I could verify what Kori had already said. “And she hated every minute of it.”

“She seemed legitimately surprised to see me.”

I sat on the edge of my grandmother’s desk, trying to look casual, as if I weren’t dying to interrogate her, to figure out how and why she fit into my notebook. And by extension, into my life. “As opposed to what?” Then I understood. “You still think I planned this.”

She shrugged and glanced at the nails I’d driven into the window frame. “You sealed all the exits. It’s kind of hard to believe you didn’t go to the Tower estate intending to take a prisoner.”

“Okay, I know that looks bad, but the doors and windows have been nailed shut for weeks,” I insisted, shoving my hands in my pockets. “I did that to keep everyone else out, not to keep you in.”

She looked like she wanted to believe me, but...

“If you can’t take my word for it, ask Kori when she gets back.” Or any of the others. I’d tell her to ask Gran, but I could never be sure what decade Gran was currently living in.

“If that’s the truth, why do you have such easy access to restraints?” She bent to pick up the severed zip tie.

“Those are for my job.”

“Are you a cop?” She studied me closer, as if that thought made her rethink her original assessment.

I actually laughed. “No. I...um...retrieve things.” That was half the truth. I couldn’t trust her with the other half. Not yet. Although if Gran kept slipping into the past, Sera would figure it out for herself.

“Things?” Sera may have been young, but she was a born skeptic. Not that I’d given her any reason to trust me.

“People, usually,” I admitted, and she opened her mouth to start shouting something that probably included a lot of I-told-you-so’s, so I spoke before she could interrupt. “I know how that sounds, but it’s legit.” Mostly. “I work part-time for a bail bondsman, doing the jobs his unSkilled employees can’t handle.”

Olivia had hooked me up with Adam Rawlinson, the man she’d worked for before Ruben Cavazos—the Towers’ biggest rival for control of the city—had snared her exclusive services via extortion and blood binding. Rawlinson served neither syndicate, and his clientele was mostly those who also wanted to avoid syndicate tangles. And could afford to pay.

“Bail bondsman?” Sera seemed to think about that. “So, you find runaway criminals?”

“No. His Trackers find them. I go get them and turn them in. Thus the zip ties.” I glanced at the one she still held. “But I also do odd jobs for private collectors.” Very odd jobs. For very private collectors.

Her gaze narrowed. “What kind of collectors?”

“Not people collectors, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Not anymore. Not since Micah, and the realization of just what I’d been aiding and abetting. “Just stuff the rich are willing to pay for, but can’t get their hands on through other means.”

“And that’s legal?”

I shrugged. “Not always. But it pays, and it doesn’t hurt anyone, and someone has to keep the lights on and the water flowing around here.”

“What, no one else here works?”

“Everyone here works. But most of that work goes toward accomplishing our higher purpose, rather than actually paying the bills.”

Ian helped me out when he could—the man could make darkness appear in broad daylight—and Kori had taken a couple of Rawlinson’s jobs, but they were both more useful to Kenley’s efforts than I was, so it was my mostly steady, mostly legit income that paid to rent and heat our hideout house while we slowly chipped away at the foundation of Julia Tower’s inherited power.

Sera looked as though she wanted to say something, and as if whatever she wanted to say might not be an insult to my moral fiber; but before she could do more than open her mouth, Ian called out from the hall as the floorboard in front of the empty closet creaked.

“Kori?”

“She went to get Anne,” I said, and a moment later Vanessa appeared in the bedroom doorway, with Ian at her back.

“Kenley?” Van’s forehead was lined in worry. She hardly even glanced at Sera.

“We haven’t found her yet,” I said, and I could see from Van’s wince that she hated hearing the words as badly as I hated saying them. “But we will. They won’t kill her.”

“I’m not worried about them killing her.” Vanessa frowned at our guest. “Who’s this?”

“This is Sera...um...” I shrugged with a glance at her. “That’s all I know so far, except that she almost certainly doesn’t work for the Towers.”

“I don’t,” Sera said.

“And that she may be able to help us find Kenley.”

Sera sighed and slouched in her chair as Van sank onto the bed next to her. “I would if I could, but I honestly know nothing about your sister.”

“What happened?” Ian said with a pointed glance at my arm.

I removed the towel and Vanessa gasped. “Those are going to need stitches. Or a Healer.”

I glanced at the neat line of horizontal scars on her right forearm and I remembered that she spoke from experience.

Sera scowled at my cuts, but she looked more guilty than angry. “I’m sorry, but you brought it on yourself.”

Ian blinked. “You did that?”

She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “He kidnapped me.”

Ian and Vanessa turned to me with matching arched brows.

I glared at Sera. “It’s not like it sounds.”

She snorted. “It’s exactly like it sounds.”

“It’s complicated,” I insisted.

She shrugged. “He may be right about that.”

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Van eyed the severed zip tie on the floor, then the blood finally seeping through the towel on my arm. “Did I miss that part?”

“She blocked my aim at Julia Tower when I went looking for Kenni.”

“But I don’t work for Julia,” Sera repeated. “Or for anyone else.”

Ian lifted the towel for another look at my cuts, then dropped it into place again and turned to Sera. “Then why would you stand between her and a well-deserved bullet?”

She blinked, evidently surprised by the question. “He wasn’t really going to shoot her.” Sera turned to me with a frown. “You weren’t, were you?”

“Not before she told me where Kenni is. But you didn’t know that. Why would you shield her from a bullet, if you’re not bound to her?” Nearly everyone who’d worked for Jake Tower had been contractually obligated to take a bullet for him, but I couldn’t think of anyone who would have done that voluntarily.

“Because I’m a decent person,” Sera said, and I believed that. But I also believed there was more to it. “Beyond that, it’s really none of your business.”

I folded the rag and set it on the desk next to me, then met her gaze again. “You’re actually wrong about that, but you’re welcome to wait for Anne before you start answering questions, unless you want to repeat everything.”

Sera groaned. “Why is everything such a pain in the ass here? And who are you two?”

“Oh, sorry.” Ian stepped forward and offered her his hand. “I’m Ian.”

“Kori’s Ian?”

He chuckled. “Um...yeah. You met her?”

Sera paled. “She offered to kill me, for my own good.”

His grin broke into a full-fledged smile. “Well, then, she must like you.”

“Kori’s an acquired taste.” Vanessa offered her hand next. “I’m Van.”

“And how do you fit in here?”

“Kenley and I are...” Vanessa’s eyes watered, and Ian lightly wrapped one arm around her. When she didn’t object—Van usually didn’t like to be touched—he squeezed her shoulders, and her tears fell.

“She’s part of the family,” I finished for her. Van had spilled blood for us in Tower’s basement, just like Kori had, and that would have made her family even if she and Kenni weren’t in love.

“We have a little time. Julia needs Kenley alive,” I reminded Vanessa, and she finally nodded stiffly.

Sera frowned. “Why? Why does Julia need your sister?”

Van turned to me, brows arched in question. “How much are we telling her?”

“Nothing, until Anne’s had a chance to—”

“Motherf*cker!” my grandmother shouted from the kitchen, and I was up in an instant, my bloody towel forgotten. I pulled the bedroom door open farther, and the scent of cooking beef rolled over me, eliciting dueling waves of dread and hunger.

Gran had found the stove knobs.

I raced down the hall and through the living room into the kitchen, expecting to find flames engulfing the room. Instead, I found my grandmother standing in a crimson pool, in her house shoes.

“What happened? Where are you cut?”

Gran scowled at me. “I’m not cut, I’m just old and clumsy.”

Several sets of footsteps slowed to a stop at my back and Sera laughed as she brushed past me and took the open can my grandmother held. Thin red liquid dripped down the side of the label, over her fingers. “It’s tomato sauce.” She set the can on the counter next to three others lined up there, and took my grandmother’s hand. “Here, let me help you out of that mess.”

Gran stepped out of her house shoes and onto a clean spot on the floor, clutching Sera’s hand for balance. “Thank you, hon.” She shook her head. “I guess that’s what I get for using marinara out of a can, but you don’t leave me much choice when you buy the wrong tomatoes and lose all the chopping knives, Kristopher.”

I’d “lost” all the chopping knives just like I’d “misplaced” the stove knobs. Life and work had both gotten much harder when senility had started to affect Gran’s everyday function, instead of just her perception of time.

“Gran, that’s way too much sauce. There are only five of us now.” Six if I counted Kenley. Or Sera.

Sera shot me a questioning look, but I couldn’t figure out how to explain what reality Gran was living in at that moment without telling her about the kids. And I could not afford to tell her about the kids.

She turned back to my grandmother. “Here, you have a seat, and I’ll get that cleaned up.” She pulled out a chair at the table for my grandmother, then turned toward the mess on the floor and grabbed a roll of paper towels.

“Don’t worry about that, hon. You’re a guest. Kristopher will get it. Kristopher?” Gran glanced at me expectantly and I held up my arm, silently pleading my bloody hardship.

Gran rolled her eyes. “Oh, fine, bring me my sewing kit, and I’ll stitch you up.”

Ian noticed my panic as I tried to come up with a reason to refuse my grandmother’s offer—some reason other than the fact that she could no longer see well enough to cross-stitch, much less repair my open, bleeding wounds—and he stepped in.

“I got it, Gran.” Everyone called her Gran. That’s the only way she’d have it. “I need the practice, but maybe you wouldn’t mind giving me some pointers while I work?” Ian pulled out a chair for me and I sank into it, grateful both for the rescue and for his tact.

“Be glad to, hon.” Gran scowled at me as she spoke. “Anything for a man not ashamed to admit when he needs help.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t need help. I need stitches.”

Ian chuckled as he pulled the first aid kit from the top of the fridge.

Sera turned off the stove, then knelt to help Vanessa clean up the spilled sauce. When she gasped, I turned to find her staring at the series of straight, thin scars climbing Vanessa’s bare forearm. “What happened?”

Van scooped up a sloppy handful of sauce with a paper towel, then dropped it into the trash can. “Jake Tower had me tortured to get to Kenley.” She shrugged as if the memory meant nothing to her. And maybe it didn’t. She’d certainly been through worse. “It happens.”

Sauce dripped from the napkin Sera clutched. She looked sick. “No, it doesn’t. Torture doesn’t just happen.”

Vanessa blinked at her with round, sad eyes, as if she pitied Sera’s naïveté. But I remembered the warring pain and anger I’d seen in in her earlier, and I wondered if we weren’t seeing naïveté at all, but the memory of some trauma of her own.

“Let’s see that arm.” Ian sat on the edge of the chair next to mine and opened the first aid kit on the tabletop, while I laid my forearm on a clean white dish towel.

Sera stood and dropped her soggy napkin into the trash, then plucked a bottle of rubbing alcohol from the kit and handed it to Ian, who burst out laughing. Too stubborn to ask for the hydrogen peroxide instead, I glared at her and clenched my teeth while he poured alcohol over my forearm.

“Clean and shallow,” he said after a close look at the cuts, while they continued to sizzle in sterile liquid. “How did this happen?”

“She sliced my arm open.”

“I was going for something lower,” Sera said, and my own grandmother laughed out loud.

“That would have made this moment much more awkward.” Ian popped the cap from a tube of liquid bandage. “You want this, or sutures?”

I studied the two two-inch cuts. Then the wickedly curved suture needle. “Liquid bandage.”

He sealed my cuts while Sera and Van mopped up the spilled sauce, and my grandmother made a production of directing both operations. As Ian was packing up the first aid kit, the closet door opened once again.

I stood so quickly my chair scraped the floor, and Sera backed away in surprise. Ian put one hand on the butt of his gun and Vanessa grabbed a knife from the butcher block beside the stove. Gran’s knuckles went white as she grasped the edge of the table.

We had no reason to suspect that Julia had found our hideout yet, so we kept the closet dark, for ease of use. But there was no stopping that moment of tense silence, waiting to see who would step out into the hall. Especially since Julia had sprung a trap for us at Meghan’s house.

“It’s us,” Kori called as the door creaked open.

Gran exhaled softly, Van put her knife back and Ian let go of his gun and stood.

“Hey.” Kori glanced at Sera, then went straight into the arms Ian held open. Behind her, Annika and her daughter, Hadley, stood in the living room. Only Hadley wasn’t really Annika’s. She was Noelle’s.

For a while, when we were young, and stupid, and unfettered by the bitter obligations of our adult realities, I’d loved Noelle, and she’d been mine. But her baby was not.

Hadley could have been mine, if the cards had fallen another way, and maybe that would have changed Elle’s fate. I’d never really thought about being a parent, but I would have done it for Elle. There was a time when I would have done anything for her, if she’d asked. Anything.

Instead, she carried, delivered and let herself die to protect Ruben Cavazos’s secret baby.

There were days I still hated her for that. Though, mostly I hated her for not telling me. For never once telling me that she was pregnant, and that the father was the head of a f*cking Skilled mafia family. The married head of the Skilled mafia.

I’d found out about Hadley less than six months earlier, when Anne was finally forced to admit that her child wasn’t really hers and Olivia figured out who the father was.

The child looked like Cavazos, in a certain light. But mostly, she looked like Noelle.

“Hey, Hadley!” Vanessa called as my grandmother wrapped the little girl in a hug and Ian scruffed her hair. Everyone loved Hadley the same way everyone had loved Elle. And not just because—like her mother—she was beautiful.

Hadley harvested love like it was a plant in her garden. She tended it with hugs and watered it with sweet smiles, and I, too, loved her, even though looking at her hurt.

She had no idea I’d ever known her birth mother beyond the occasional hello.

There were days when that still broke my heart.

I could have helped Noelle. I could have protected her. I could have saved her, and kept her little family together. If I’d been able to interpret the lines scribbled in that damned notebook.

But I’d failed Noelle, and although I didn’t know it at the time, I’d failed Hadley. And I’d put my notebook away, convinced after Noelle’s disappearance that I would never be able to interpret enough of fate’s Rosetta stone in time to truly make a difference for anyone referenced in it.

I’d remained convinced of that until the moment I saw Sera and recognized her scarf from a line written with my own hand.

In the kitchen, I ran one finger over my sealed cuts, then I looked up and found Sera watching while everyone else fussed over Hadley. A ghost of a smile haunted her lips—her mouth was beautiful, now that she’d stopped scowling—and some private pain shone in her damp eyes.

The window she’d broken hadn’t been repaired, yet she wasn’t running. Maybe she knew there were more than enough of us to stop her. Maybe she finally understood that she was safer with us than on her own, if Julia Tower was willing to kill her.

But ultimately, she was there because she was supposed to be with us. Sera was there to help us get Kenley back. Or maybe I was supposed to help her with whatever accounted for that battered determination—that visceral need to fight—that echoed in every word she said. Or maybe both.

Either way, in the hour since I’d met her, Sera had frightened, fascinated and fought me. She’d drawn my grandmother’s amusement, Kori’s compassion and my blood. Even if I’d wanted to let her go, deep down I knew it was too late. Like Van and Ian, she’d already been caught by the Daniels’ family snare, snagged not just by my interest, but by everyone else’s, as well.

And like the Towers—perhaps the only thing our families had in common—once the Daniels get a good grip, they don’t let go.