Twenty-Nine
Kori
I walked us out of Meghan’s bathroom and back into Kenley’s living room, and neither of us bothered with the light. “I need to be gone before Jake’s men get here, and it’ll look better if you go in voluntarily.”
“Where will you be?” Ian asked.
“Recruiting backup.”
“You know, if you hadn’t broken Aaron’s arm, we could have used him as backup.”
I huffed. “If he was that easy to disarm, he wouldn’t have done us any good.”
“So who are you calling?” Ian asked as I dug my phone from my pocket.
“My brother. And Olivia. I trust them both at my back.”
“Olivia Warren?” I could hardly see his frown in the deep shadows. “Cavazos’s Olivia?”
“She was my Olivia before she was his, and I know how to avoid his claim to her.” I glanced at the microwave clock. It had been seventy-five minutes since Jake called Kenley’s phone. In the basement, Vanessa was being cut again. I couldn’t hear her scream, but I could almost feel it.
I dialed Liv’s number from memory, then pressed the speaker button and my phone rang out into the room. After four electronic bleats, Olivia answered, her voice thick with suspicion. “Hello?”
“Will you help me?” I said, in lieu of a greeting.
“Kori?” Liv was pissed. I could hear it in her voice, in the way she bit my name off at the edges. But she was also worried; she knew I wouldn’t call unless I was in trouble. “What’s wrong?”
“I need sanctuary. Are you at your office?”
“Yeah.”
“Turn off the light. I’m coming over.”
Olivia sighed. “Fine.”
I hung up and turned to Ian. “I’ll see you in the basement.”
“Be careful.” He pulled me close for a kiss, and I didn’t want to let him go. Ever. But this wouldn’t be over until Van and Kenley were free. Hell, it might never be over. And Van was running out of time.
I took a deep breath, then made myself let him go and step into the shadows.
The moment I stepped into the darkened bathroom in Olivia’s tiny two-room office, I could see her. And hear her. She sat on the couch opposite her desk, fully visible in the well-lit main room.
“Kori’s here,” she said into her phone as I rounded the desk toward her. “Yeah, I’ll let you know when—”
“You still bound to Cavazos?” I asked, and she nodded, scowling at the interruption.
I snatched the phone before she could finish the aborted sentence and threw it at the ground as hard as I could, where it broke into several large plastic pieces.
“Damn it, Kori! Do you have any idea how many phones I go through in a good year?”
“Sorry,” I lied, shoving her stapler over so I could sit on her desk. “I can’t chance Cavazos calling you while I’m here.” He’d use her against me.
“That was Cam, not Ruben.”
“He’ll understand. Text him from my phone.” I tossed my cell to her and she started typing with both thumbs, pausing frequently to glare at me.
“What’s this about?” she said as she handed my phone back.
“As of about an hour ago, I am a free woman, and the best part is that Jake doesn’t know yet.”
Olivia reached over and pushed up my left sleeve. “Your marks aren’t dead.”
“Black permanent marker.” I sat next to her on the couch. “Take a closer look.”
She leaned down, squinting at my arm from two inches away. “Wow. How’d it happen?”
“Ian taught Kenley how to break her seal. It’s no piece of cake, but she pulled it off.”
“Is she still bound?”
“Yes, and she’s in a lot of pain, but a friend of Ian’s is a Healer, so she’s in good hands, at least until I can kill the Binder that sealed her to Jake.”
“If you’re killing Tower’s men, I’m in.”
I grinned without bothering to hide my relief. “I was hoping you’d say that. But first I have to bust Kenley’s girlfriend out of Jake’s basement.”
“Her girlfriend?”
“Yeah.” I stood and shoved my phone into my pocket. “She was a friend of Cam’s. You two might have met.”
“Van?” Olivia sounded horrified, and I nodded from the bathroom doorway. “Why would Tower torture her?” Cam had obviously told her what goes on down in Jake’s basement.
“To get to Kenley. And by extension, me and Ian.”
“How are you going to get her out?”
“I sent Ian in to bust a hole in Jake’s infrared grid. Once he has, I’m gonna walk in alone, and walk out with Vanessa. Then we’re going after Barker, Tower’s secondary Binder.”
“Want some help in the basement?”
“Thanks, but I’ll have Ian and Van on the way out.” And if she got too close to Ian, she’d be obligated to try to take him from me. “I do need another favor, though. Are you under any standing orders to give Kenley to Cavazos?”
“Nope.” She smiled, and I welcomed the sight. “Obviously he knows Tower has a Binder, but he doesn’t know who that is, to my knowledge. Or that I have any connection to her.”
“Good. If you can do it, I need you to call Kris, so he can get both Van and Kenley somewhere safe, as soon as we’re done with Barker.” Because Jake was probably already tracking Kenley, and the farther away she was, the harder that would be for him. And she couldn’t stay with Liv, because if Cavazos got his hands on my sister, the mess we were already in would be infinitely worse. And bloodier.
“No problem,” Olivia said.
I thanked her, then closed my eyes and mentally reached out toward Jake’s house, ignoring all the other pockets of darkness between. As usual, his house was an inferno of infrared light burning beyond the visible spectrum, except for the cool, dark sanctuary of the darkroom. But I reached deeper, lower, hoping against all hope that Ian had already found his way to the basement, and that I wasn’t too late to take advantage of it. Because once he’d created darkness, they’d realize what he was doing and they’d try to stop him.
So when I actually found that spot of true dark in the basement, I nearly choked on my own surprise. We’d caught another break.
“Hopefully this won’t take long,” I said, backing into the bathroom. Then I took another step backward, and this time my shoe landed not on cheap, faded linoleum, but on gritty concrete.
The basement.
“Ian?” I whispered, because I’d need him to let go of the dark long enough for us to find Vanessa and take care of whoever was with her. I was close. My bindings were dead and I’d broken into the impenetrable Tower fortress. I was minutes from true freedom.
I might just survive the day after all.
A footstep whispered on the concrete behind me and I started to turn, my heart thumping. Then something slammed into the side of my head and the world spun around me, unseen in the dark. The floor crashed into my back and the lights came on overhead. Stunned and out of breath, I could only blink as a foot pressed into my neck and someone pulled my guns from their holsters.
I blinked again, and a face came into focus against the glare of the lights overhead. Jonah.
“Welcome home, Kori. We’ve missed you.”