Twenty-One
Kori
Ian was up to something. I could tell from the way he kept glancing at me out of the corner of his eye as he stacked dirty plates beneath a silver room service tray cover.
“Don’t tell me,” I said from the couch. I was trying desperately to hang on to the rare, vague sense of contentment I got from watching him clean up, like we were some normal couple staying in a hotel on vacation. Like our lives weren’t both at serious risk. But that look in his eyes was making me nervous.
“Don’t tell you what?”
“Whatever you’re planning. If you tell me, I’ll have to tell Jake. So don’t tell me. And stop plotting.”
“Even if I’m plotting to whisk you away to some isolated homestead in the middle of the Australian outback, where we can forever live in peace and privacy, far from the meddling hands of both egomaniacal mob bosses and the IRS?”
He said it like it might actually be possible.
“Especially if that’s the plan.”
Ian rounded the couch toward me. I should have backed away, but I couldn’t do it. I let him sit and wrap his arms around me and I cursed myself silently when my hands slid over his stomach and around his back, feeling hard planes and solid ridges. I couldn’t help that, either. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to be touched by him.
And that thought terrified me.
He kissed me, and I kissed him back, and for that minute, with his arms around me, the taste of him on my lips, I forgot all the reasons this was a very bad idea.
I forgot that I was dooming him to serve a human monster. I forgot that my life and my sister’s well-being depended on his compliance. I forgot about everything except how good he felt, and how much I liked the version of myself I saw reflected in his eyes.
Then he pulled away with a satisfied moan, his eyes still closed, and reality came crashing down around me again, the pain sharper, the aching hopelessness deeper than ever after the brief distraction.
“You know we can’t do this,” I whispered, clutching his shirt in both fists, my forehead resting on his collarbone. I wanted to hold him, but I needed to push him away, because the longer this went on, the harder it would be for both of us, when Jake ripped him from my grasp.
Jake might actually agree not to mess with Ian’s personal life, but he could still do whatever he wanted with me. How would Ian react if Jake sent me to recruit someone else, under the same circumstances? Jake would do that—and worse—just to prove he could. To punish me. And maybe to punish Ian for trying to protect me.
“We can’t do what?” Ian’s hands slid up my back, touch demanding nothing. Offering everything. I’d never met anyone like him. I could step back, and he would give me space, but he’d still be there, ready to accept more whenever I was ready to give it.
“This. We can’t do this. It won’t last. It can’t.”
“I don’t like how easily you toss that word around.” He frowned, his green-eyed gaze narrowed on me. “Why is everything ‘can’t’ with you?”
“I speak from experience.”
“Not this time, you don’t. If this had ever happened before, it couldn’t be happening now. That’s what they mean by ‘once in a lifetime.’”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But that was only half-true. I might not have followed whatever convoluted logic his words mapped out, but I knew what he meant. I could feel it, too.
“I’m talking about you. Us. You can’t possibly know how this is going to end, because this doesn’t fit into the boxes you shove all your other issues into. This is bigger than that. This is bigger than you, and bigger than me, and it’s sure as hell bigger than Jake Tower.” He ducked, drawing my gaze back up with his, and the look in his eyes was so intense my pulse started whooshing in my ears almost loud enough to drown out his words. “Kori, I—”
“Don’t.” I stood and backed across the room in mounting panic, trying to hold myself together by pushing everything else out. “Don’t tell me how you feel, and whatever you do, don’t tell Jake. But don’t lie about it, either, because he has Readers, and he’ll know the moment you tell an outright lie. And he’ll know you’re hiding something even if you only think about lying. It’s a trap. The whole thing is one great big trap and we’re flies flapping our wings, trying to pull free from the sticky paper. But the harder we flap, the tighter we’re caught.”
Ian frowned and came closer, but I backed away again. “You’re starting to sound paranoid, Kori.”
“I am paranoid.” The bitter laughter that bubbled up my throat actually burned. “But that doesn’t mean he isn’t out to get me.”
“Okay, calm down.”
I shook my head and backed around the glass coffee table, but he followed me slowly. Persistently. “You don’t understand. You don’t know what happened. I can’t come back from what I did, and even if I could, I don’t think I want to.”
“I know what happened.” Ian reached for me, but I backed away again. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to let him hold me, and that’s how I knew I should keep distance between us instead.
Wanting things is dangerous—it gives people power over you.
Wanting things you can’t have is even worse.
But giving in to desire just because you want something is weakness. Inexcusable weakness of character and will. I didn’t get many opportunities to exercise my own will, and I wasn’t going to let any of it slip between my fingers just because his arms felt strong. Just because it felt good to let someone else stand guard for once. I wasn’t that weak.
I couldn’t be.
“How do you know?” I didn’t want to believe him. If he knew what I’d done, he might also know how I’d paid for my crimes. And I desperately didn’t want him to know that.
“People talk and I listen even when they’re not talking to me.”
That was the truth, and part of me was glad he respected me enough to give it to me without the sugarcoating. But the rest of me… The rest of me was…
I don’t know what I was.
Something crawled beneath my skin, fighting to get out, and I wanted to scratch, but that would bring no relief. My throat ached from holding back words I couldn’t say. My eyes burned from holding back tears I couldn’t let fall. And in my head, one word played over and over, and I couldn’t make it stop.
Nonononono…
“Kori…”
“No! Stay there.” I backed toward the short hall, instinctively pulled toward the dark bedroom. Toward escape.
“Okay. I’ll stay here.” Ian stopped in the middle of the living room, reaching for me with his palms out. Unarmed. Unsure. “But you stay, too. Don’t go, Kori. Please.”
“I got him shot.” The room blurred beneath my tears. “I was supposed to protect him with my own life, and I let Jake get shot instead. His kids could have been killed. He hates me now, and even though I’m out of the basement, I’m still being punished, and that’s never going to stop. I’m poison, Ian.” I looked right into his eyes, trying to make him understand how serious my predicament really was, because the words alone weren’t enough. I wasn’t overreacting. I wasn’t unreasonably paranoid. My fear was justified, for us both. “I’m the most dangerous thing that could ever have happened to you.”
“No. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Doesn’t matter.” I shook my head, and I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t make my hands stop shaking, and my breaths were coming too fast again. “If you try to stay with me after you sign, you’ll piss him off, and you’ll go down with me.”
“You’re not going down, and neither am I. No one can hold a grudge forever, and you were one of his favorites, right?” Ian asked, and I nodded, trying to see whatever possibility he was seeing for my future. I needed that light at the end of the tunnel. “When you bring me into the fold, all will be forgiven, and you’ll get your place back. You’ll get your job back. It’ll be just like it was before.”
I couldn’t tell whether he meant that or was just trying to calm me down. I could feel panic building beneath me, a spiral of dread and alarm waiting for me to take that final step over the edge. And once I lost control, I wasn’t sure I could ever regain it.
But that didn’t really matter. None of it mattered anymore, because of the truth I hadn’t been able to voice before. The truth I shouldn’t have voiced, even then.
“I don’t want it back, Ian. I hate him, and I’m scared that if he gives me my job back, the next time I have a chance to protect him, I just…won’t. I’ll just let the bullet fly right past me, or I’ll pull him through the shadows a second too slow.”
Pain exploded in my head, in reaction to thoughts I had no contractual right to speak, but I kept going because the pain in my head could never hurt worse than my memories. Than the gnawing deep in my gut as the nightmares and flashbacks ate at me slowly, devouring the me I’d been to make way for this new me—a whimpering coward I didn’t want to face in the mirror.
“It’ll hurt, but it’s a terminal breach, so if I can ride out the initial pain, I’ll survive, and that’s too much temptation for me to resist. I want to kill him, but I can’t. Letting him die is the best I can do.”
“So let him die.” Ian reached for me again, and again I backed away, and the walls of the narrow hallway closed in on me.
“I can’t.” I shook my head, trying to clear it. Trying to slow my breaths like Kenley had shown me. “I mean I can, but if Jake dies, everything’ll be worse. So much worse. There are clauses in place. If he dies, every contract and piece of property not already in his wife’s name automatically transfers to his heir, and we’ll be so much worse off then.”
“Who’s the heir?” Ian asked, and I almost missed the note of quiet danger his voice held. He’d stopped advancing, so I’d stopped retreating, but I couldn’t let him come any closer. This wasn’t the kind of problem a little cuddling and some vodka could fix. “Do you know who it is?”
“I know, but I can’t tell you. No one can. We’re all sworn to silence.”
“So, killing Jake Tower wouldn’t free you?”
I shook my head slowly, watching him through narrowed eyes. I could see what he was thinking. Hell, he’d practically said it. “That wouldn’t free me or anyone else. You can’t kill Jake. And I can’t let him die. And we can never, ever have this conversation again.”
Ian
Kori sat in the hallway for almost an hour, one bare foot stretched into the unlit bedroom, like just the touch of darkness soothed her.
I wanted to touch her—to hold her—so badly my arms ached from emptiness. But I was afraid to get any closer for fear that she’d bolt into the bedroom and out of the shadows before I could even call her name.
I didn’t know how to fix what was wrong with her, and it killed me to see her sitting in the corner—both literally and figuratively—when an hour before, she’d been ready to spit nails at anyone who crossed her path. I didn’t know what had triggered this meltdown, and at first I thought it was me. I thought kissing her—or maybe touching her—had triggered some memory she couldn’t conquer. And maybe that was part of it.
But when I replayed everything she’d said, I realized there was more than that. She wasn’t afraid of me. She was afraid for me. Afraid that being with her would put me in danger. And because that wasn’t a logical fear, she couldn’t be reasoned out of it. So I didn’t even try. Instead, I sat at the other end of the short hall, leaning with my back against the wall, my legs stretched out in front of me. And I talked to her.
“There are things I wish I could tell you,” I said, and she glanced up, a cautious arch of curiosity in her eyebrows.
“There are things I wish I could hear. But it’s probably better if we don’t even start down that road.”
I nodded reluctantly, and for several more minutes, we sat in silence. Then I tried again. “Do you remember much about your parents?” I didn’t think she’d answer, so when she started to speak, it took every bit of self-control I possessed to keep from cheering over my minor success.
“Mostly my mom. My dad was gone a lot.”
“Was your mom a Traveler like you?”
She exhaled in a small huff, like there was some humor in my question. “She was a Traveler, but not like me. She only walked the shadows in emergencies, and I only know that because my grandmother told me. My parents were totally paranoid about exposing us as Skilled. I didn’t even know I could travel until after they died. One day I got in trouble for using the ground beef my grandmother thawed out for dinner as viscera for my brother’s army men when I blew them up.”
“You blew them up?” I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cringe.
Kori shrugged. “With Black Cats. They’re more noise than anything, and Kris didn’t care. My grandmother was pissed, though. She grounded me, and I stomped into my room, thinking about how I’d rather be with my mom and dad, and the next thing I knew, I was in the cemetery, three feet from their graves. Twelve miles from home.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. But the real bitch was that I didn’t know how I’d gotten there, so I didn’t know how to get back. And that was way before I had a cell phone. I had to walk a mile and a half to a pay phone and call my grandmother collect. I thought she’d be pissed, but she looked kind of relieved. I guess because she didn’t have to keep the secret anymore. And maybe because I didn’t get my dad’s Skill instead.”
“What was his Skill?”
“He was a Silencer. I think she was afraid I’d suck all the sound out of a room when I got mad and nothing pissed my grandmother off worse than not being heard.”
I laughed, and she relaxed a little more.
“What about your parents?” Kori asked. Then she frowned and seemed to reconsider. “Not their Skills. Don’t tell me anything Jake could use. Just…what were they like?”
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall, remembering. “They were good parents. More in love with me and my brother than with each other, but they held it together. My dad died when I was in college, and my mom followed him five years ago.”
“I’m sorry.” Kori pulled her foot out of the bedroom and folded it beneath her, and I took that as a good sign. Like she was literally stepping out of the darkness. To be with me.
“I want to tell you something,” I said, trying to hold her gaze in the shadows. Kori had trusted me with everything she had, and I owed her something in return. Something real and personal. Something that meant as much to me as the things she’d told me about herself.
“Maybe you shouldn’t.”
“You’re probably right. But I’m going to say it anyway, and it would mean a lot to me if you’d listen.”
“Okay.” She turned to face me, giving me her full attention, though she still sat inches from the bedroom and the dark escape it represented.
“My brother’s still alive.”
“Steven?” Kori whispered, and I frowned. Then I realized his first and last names were public record, and of course Tower had done his research. “But he was killed in action. I saw the obituary. There was a funeral.”
“It was a memorial,” I said, trying not to outright lie to her, even as I let her believe her own misassumptions. Because this one truth was all I could give her at the moment, and I shouldn’t even have done that. “Because there was no body. Because he didn’t really die.”
“He faked his death?” she said, and I was grateful that she didn’t really expect an answer to that. “Why would he do that?”
“To avoid this,” I said, spreading my arms to indicate not the suite around us, but interest from the organization that had paid for it. “We knew from the time our Skills manifested that they’d attract the wrong kind of attention from the wrong kind of people. Our mom was paranoid, but she was right about that.”
“So he thought it’d be easier to fake his own death than to avoid notice from the syndicates?”
I scooted closer, praying she wouldn’t back away from me. “Faking death was to avoid notice from the syndicates.”
“So, that picture of him with Meghan? That’s not really seven years old?”
“Probably not,” I admitted, and it felt good to voice even that little bit of truth.
“What’s his skill?”
“I can’t tell you that. I shouldn’t have even told you he’s alive—that wasn’t really mine to tell—but you’ve told me so much…”
“You don’t owe me anything, Ian. And I won’t tell Jake about your brother. Even if he asks.” I started to object, but she spoke over me. “If he wants me to suffer, I’ll suffer. The question I refuse to answer is irrelevant.”
I stared at her, awed by her strength and determination. She’d done time in a hell I could only imagine, and come out intact. “I feel sorry for all the people who will die without ever meeting you, Kori. But the selfish part of me is happy, because I don’t even want to share you with the people you already know. Most of them don’t deserve you.”
Tears shone in her eyes, and my heart cracked within my chest. “You okay?” I asked, aching to move close enough to touch her. “I didn’t mean to make it worse.”
“You didn’t. I just… I need you to understand that whatever this is between us, it can’t last once you’re bound. I think we need to keep that in mind.” The words came out slowly, like she wanted to pull them back in before they’d even fallen.
“Why can’t it last?” I scooted closer across the floor, and she didn’t back up. “Jake can’t take this away, Kori,” I said, scooting another foot closer to her, wishing I could explain that I wasn’t going to be bound to Tower, and soon neither would she. He would have no power over us.
“He’ll try. He’ll renege on the apartment, and the car, and he’ll take back any privileges he offers, unless you get them down in writing. I wouldn’t blame you for bailing.”
“I don’t care about any of that. And I’m not bailing.”
“He’ll throw women at you. Beautiful women. Women who wear nice dresses, and drink champagne, and don’t cuss.”
“I don’t want those women. I want you.”
Kori shook her head slowly. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough to know I want to know more. I know I want to kill everyone who had anything to do with whatever happened in that fucking basement.”
She sucked in a deep breath, and the next few came quicker, like she couldn’t get enough air. “I don’t need a knight, Ian. I can fight for myself.”
I nodded. “And everyone else around you. I know. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to help.”
Kori glanced at the floor and spoke while she picked at the hem of her jeans. “I don’t…I don’t know how to do this. I’ve never really done the relationship thing, unless you count a few three- or four-night-stands.”
“The only thing you learn from any relationship is how to be in that specific relationship. So even if you’d been married a dozen times, this would still be new. It’s new for me, too. It’s supposed to be.”
She looked up then and met my gaze. “I’m kind of a wreck right now, and I can’t promise that’ll get any better.”
“We’re all messed up, Kori. We all have secrets. We all have problems. Part of the process is figuring those things out. One at a time.”
“What if I scare you off?”
I scooted closer, and we were only two feet apart now. “You couldn’t possibly. I know what I want.” I leaned forward and hooked one hand behind each of her calves, where her legs were bent at the knee. When she didn’t object, I pulled her closer, until our knees were touching. “I want you. I want only you. I want all of you. But I’ll take whatever you’re ready to give.”