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.