Eleven
“Why would he stay?” I asked, as Cam flicked on his left blinker. At the moment, the pull of Hunter’s name was stronger than the pull from his blood, so I was letting him take the lead in tracking, so long as his path didn’t contradict the pull I felt. And so far, it hadn’t.
“If he were an initiate, I’d say he’s being shielded— Tower put the word out that he’s not to be touched. Or maybe he put Hunter in a safe house. But he’s not a member, and I would have heard about him being shielded. Thanks to Nick, the organization knows you and I are working together, and that we’re looking for Hunter. If the syndicate had any problem with us killing him, they’d have already stopped us.”
We were still on the west side, but headed east now. Huh. Hunter was on the move.
“So, what, they don’t care if we kill him, because then they don’t have to drop the second half of his payment?”
“Maybe.” Cam shrugged and took another left, and I verified our direction privately with another feel of the stiffening bandage in my pocket. “Also, whoever hired him is probably happy to have us clean up loose ends for him.”
I would have been much more comfortable if those loose ends weren’t winding through the center of Jake Tower’s territory. The blood pull of Hunter’s energy signature was very strong now, and based on the confidence with which Cam navigated the streets, the name pull was even stronger. Which didn’t make much sense. Even if he’d died in the three hours since we’d found blood in his apartment, the blood pull should have been just as strong.
“Do you know this neighborhood?” I asked, as Cam slowed the car to a crawl and the setting sun blinded me in the side-view mirror. We were close now. Close enough that we’d overshoot it if we weren’t careful.
“Yeah, and so do you. We were here this afternoon.”
We were? I sat straighter, glancing around for something I recognized, but saw only a narrow backstreet—an urban alley bordered by rear garage entrances and tiny backyards fenced with chain link. “This doesn’t look familiar.”
“The back of his building’s about half a mile ahead. We’re coming at it from another direction. I know this way better.”
His sudden glance out the driver’s side window told me there was something he wasn’t saying. So, of course, I asked. “Why are you familiar with a residential neighborhood backstreet, when you live in an apartment on the main drag?”
“I used to know a girl who lived in that house.” He pointed to a small, run-down, white-sided house with a big dog fenced into a small yard. “But I don’t think she lives there anymore.”
I swallowed the bitter taste on the back of my tongue at the thought of him with someone else. It was inevitable. Six years is a long time, and Cam…he wore it very, very well. Of course other women would want him.
“Was she syndicate?” I asked, and he glanced at me with a look I couldn’t quite interpret. Was he surprised that I’d ask? Or that I cared? Or that I thought he might go out with someone outside of the organization? Or the opposite?
“No. I don’t…socialize with coworkers. That’s too complicated. And dangerous.”
“You’d give up on a relationship because it’s dangerous?” Maybe he would understand why I’d left…
But he mistook my hope for a criticism.
“Not a relationship,” he clarified. “Sex. No momentary pleasure is worth the risk that she might be looking to sleep her way up the tiers. Or that she might think I am. Or that she may be bound to someone who outranks me, but she’s unhappy with his performance. And it’s even worse if she outranks me, because then I’m tiptoeing through a minefield where orders and requests get confused.”
My stomach churned. “It sounds like you’ve learned through experience.”
“Six years is a long time.” He turned left onto one of the major streets, then met my gaze. “Are you jealous?”
“No,” I answered too fast.
“You never used to lie to me.”
Speaking of minefields… I exhaled slowly and made myself hold his gaze. “I shouldn’t have asked. It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m jealous. Do I like thinking about you with other women? Of course not—”
“Then why’d you ask?”
“Because…” I’m an idiot. A masochist. “I don’t know why I asked.”
“I do.” He exhaled, then shifted into Park right there in the street, sitting idle at a stoplight. “Would it help to know that I tracked down and beat the shit out of the asshole you moved in with a couple of years ago? The one who stole your car.”
I felt my jaw drop open, but words wouldn’t come. I could only gape at him. “Are you serious?” I asked at last and he nodded solemnly. “Over a car?”
He blinked, but his gaze held mine captive. “It had nothing to do with the car, Liv.”
“Did you… Is he…?”
“He lived.” Cam shifted into Drive again when the light changed and we rolled through the intersection. “But I don’t think he’ll be looking either of us up again anytime soon.”
“I can beat up my own exes, thank you.”
He laughed. “Not like I can.”
“That’s not the point.”
“You’re right.” We cruised slowly past two more buildings, headed for the next traffic light. “The point is that I was jealous, just like you were jealous. And you were jealous because you still want me.”
“No…” I said through clenched teeth. “The point is that we have a job to do, and that job has nothing to do with who either of us has slept with or pounded on since we broke up.”
“We didn’t break up, Liv. You ran out on me, right before…” He stopped, staring out the windshield at the city as we rolled through it slowly enough to annoy the cars trapped behind us.
“I’m sorry.” I glanced at him, but his gaze never left the road. “I don’t think I’ve actually said that yet, but I’m sorry for…the way it happened. But none of that matters anymore. What matters is that for some reason, Eric Richard Hunter went home again, and we need to make sure he never leaves.”
I could see his building now, and for a second, I worried that I might be tracking the same cold trail that had led me there earlier—the pull of his spilled blood. But then I remembered that I’d destroyed what he left. And that the name pull Cam was tracking could only lead to the man himself.
Cam parked in the unlit lot behind Hunter’s building. As the engine cooled and ticked, he watched me in the last dying rays of light, painting his dashboard red. “Sorry isn’t good enough.”
“What?” I frowned, trying to ignore the discomfort buzzing beneath my skin, now that we were so close to the goal, yet not actively pursuing it. “Good enough for what?”
“Not good enough for me. Not good enough for us. For what we still have, even if you’re too damn stubborn to admit it. You owe us better than a half-assed apology, six years too late.”
“I owe you…?” My words expired on a cloud of disbelief.
“No, you owe us.”
Itching to get going, I pulled my 9mm from the holster and released the clip to check it, though I already knew it was full. “There is no us, Cam. Not anymore.”
“The hell there isn’t.” He twisted in his seat to face me. “You can keep saying that if you want. You might even convince Anne. But you’re not going to convince me, and you’re sure as hell not going to convince yourself. You’ve had years to forget about me and move on, but you haven’t done it.”
“Yes, I…”
“No, you haven’t!” he thundered. His anger seemed to echo in the confines of the car, and that time, I didn’t bother arguing. “If you had, this wouldn’t be so hard for you. And I can see that it’s hard. I don’t know why you’re still trying to push me away, but it obviously isn’t because you want to.”
My next breath hurt. It ached in my lungs, as if my heart was bruised. “You’re right,” I admitted, but the truth didn’t set me free. It felt like a whole new set of chains. “This isn’t how I want it, but this is how it has to be.”
“Why?” he demanded. “Why are you doing this? I need to know, Liv. You owe me that much.”
He was right. Hiding what I knew when I could just walk away from him was one thing, but now that we were stuck together? Keeping my secrets—this one, anyway—was too much for us both. “Fine. But it’s a little complicated, and we need to move on Hunter now.” Before the buzzing beneath my skin ushered in full-scale resistance pain. Before Hunter stepped through a shadow and we lost his trail again.
“You swear?” Cam wasn’t happy, but was obviously willing to delay full satisfaction if he had my word.
“On my life. When this is over, I’ll explain why I left. Why I had to.”
“Fine. For now. But don’t think you can just disappear on me again. I know how to find you, and there’s nothing stopping me from showing up everywhere you go, until you tell me what I want to know.”
Actually, Cavazos would have been happy to stop Cam from showing up everywhere I went. But that was one secret I couldn’t give up. What little self-respect I still had would bleed into humiliation if Cam found out I was bound to Ruben. I didn’t want him to know what I’d agreed to. I didn’t want him to know about the things I couldn’t say no to, or how much worse it would be if—when—I couldn’t fulfill my contract.
I didn’t want him to know that the words on my back were just that: words. An ideal I’d failed to live up to.
“Are you ready?” I asked, one hand on the door handle. He nodded stiffly, and I pushed the door open and stepped into the parking lot. It wasn’t fully dark yet, which meant my gun would have to stay holstered for the moment. People on the west side almost never spoke to the police, but their silence wasn’t my license for carelessness.
Cam followed me across the lot and through the rear door, which opened into the opposite end of the long, dark hallway we’d entered from the front earlier. After a second to check the pull from Hunter’s blood, I pointed to the rear staircase with my brows raised in question. Cam nodded, confirming that the target’s name was pulling him upstairs, too.
We took the steps quickly and quietly, and I let him lead. This was his neighborhood and the residents would be less likely to interfere with or report us if they recognized him. But both the stairs and the hallway were deserted, either because it was dinnertime, or because the occupants sensed that something was going down. TV applause and canned laughter rang out from behind some of the doors, and muffled conversation from others, but no one came out to investigate our soft footsteps.
On either side of Hunter’s door, we drew our guns, and I attached the silencer Cam had lent me. A seam of light showed around three sides of the frame—it was still broken from when Cam had kicked it in. I heard movement from inside. A scrape of something against the floor. Light footsteps. A quiet curse.
Hunter was alone, and he wasn’t happy.
I lifted one brow at Cam, and he nodded. So I knocked on the door frame.
Silence from inside. Then two more footsteps, and the floor creaked. I could practically hear his heart beating. His brain racing. Should he answer? Or just wait? Would he have time to go out the fire escape? Or simply step into a shadow and disappear?
Cam nodded, and I nudged the door open with one foot while he knelt in the open doorway, below typical firing height, gun aimed and ready. He held that pose for a single breath, then rose smoothly to his feet.
I peeked into the apartment. The living room was empty. But Hunter was still in there. I could feel the pull of his blood, stronger than ever. Yet somehow different than it had felt before.
Cam stepped inside and I followed him, then pushed the door closed. Or, as close to closed as I could get it, because of the broken door frame. I checked the right half of the room while he checked the left, silently clearing the possible hiding places and turning on lights to banish the shadows one by one. You can never be too careful about shadows when tracking a Traveler.
The living room and kitchen were both clear, the only remaining shadows too small for a man to fit through. The bathroom was open, the shower curtain pulled to one side to reveal the empty tub. That only left the bedroom. But surely Hunter wasn’t in there. Why would he be, when a Traveler can leave a room just by stepping into a shadow?
Yet his blood pulled me toward the closed bedroom door.
I tossed my head toward the door and gave Cam a questioning look. He closed his eyes for a second, meditating on Hunter’s full name, then nodded. Every tracking instinct we had said that, in apparent defiance of logic, Hunter was still in his room.
Possible explanations ran through my head while fear and doubt prickled my skin. Was this a trap? Had Tower found out about my mark and hired Hunter to kill me? If so, this would be the easiest hit in history— I’d actually tracked the man contracted to shoot me.
And what about Cam? Did Tower consider him a traitor? Was he on the chopping block, too?
Or was there a simpler explanation for why a Traveler would stay in an apartment with two people intent on killing him? Was his bedroom somehow devoid of shadows? Was he too weak from blood loss to travel? Could that have something to do with why the level of Skill in his blood had dropped between the sample Anne had provided and the one I’d found in his bathroom?
We took positions on either side of the bedroom door, and again, I knocked on the frame. “Eric, come on out,” I said.
Harsh laughter from the other side of the door, followed by a man’s voice. “They sent a girl. I’m not sure if that’s insult to injury, or a gift from above.”
I glanced at Cam. Hunter thought I was alone, which gave us the element of surprise. I chose to ignore his misogynistic underestimation of my abilities, but who were the “they,” who’d supposedly sent me? “I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”
Yes, I was lying. But considering I was about to commit vigilante murder, a half-truth felt pretty insignificant.
“Yeah, right.” Hunter laughed again, but this time sarcasm exposed his nerves. “Because you guys are known for asking questions first.”
You guys? I mouthed to Cam. Who did he think I was?
Cam pushed up his left sleeve and tapped the chain links on his upper bicep.
Oh, shit. Hunter thought the Tower syndicate had sent someone to kill him. But why? Had he assumed that our break-in earlier meant the syndicate would rather kill him than pay him? Or had he actually given Tower a reason to come after him?
Was he running his mouth? Demanding more money? Threatening to turn state’s witness?
“So you know why I’m here?” I said, playing along, hoping for more information.
“Unless they’re sending singing telegrams now instead of mercenaries—in which case you should start warming up—I’m gonna have to assume you’re here to kill me.”
Funny. We might have been friends, if he weren’t a hired killer. But then, considering I was standing outside his door with a loaded gun, maybe we had more than sarcasm in common.
“Look, I know you got your orders, and I know I fucked this up. But how ’bout, instead of killing me, you take him a message from me instead?”
Cam and I shared a look of mild surprise. The killer had messed up? “And what would that message be?” I called through the door.
“Tell him that if he kills me, he’s just going to have to hire someone else to clean things up. Or he can let me fix my own mistake—at no additional charge, of course.”
The man had balls—I had to give him that. But if I were under orders to kill him—and I was—going back to beg for mercy on his behalf wouldn’t even be a possibility. I’d be physically incapable of leaving until I’d done my best to kill him. Did Hunter really not know that, or was he speaking from desperation?
Cam looked as puzzled as I was.
“Why the hell should I put my ass on the line for you?” I asked.
“Because it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do the recon,” Hunter insisted. “Your guy did that. How was I supposed to know she wasn’t going to be there?”
She?
With that, my mental fog lifted, revealing the truth in stark, devastating clarity. Hunter wasn’t after Shen. He was after Annika. He thought Tower wanted him dead because he’d missed his target. Which might well be the case—was that why the syndicate seemed content to let us go after Hunter? Because we were saving them the trouble?
“You should have known exactly who was in the house before you went in,” I said, the facts and implications still tumbling around in my head.
“Fuck you, I did my job,” Hunter snapped. “I’m not gonna pay for someone else’s mistake. You come in here, and you won’t go back out.”
I tossed my head toward the door. Cam stood and kicked it.
Wood splintered—as usual, the door frame was weaker than the lock—and Cam lurched out of the line of fire as the door swung open. A bullet split the air between us and I dropped into a squat, peeking carefully around the door frame. A suitcase lay open on the bed, already too full to close. Hunter was going to run.
So why was he still there?
“Okay,” I said, scanning what I could see of the bedroom for any sign of movement. “You have a valid point. Why should you be held responsible for someone else’s screwup?”
I waited out the quiet that followed; I couldn’t pinpoint his location until he moved or spoke. And finally, he gave in to the urge to fill the silence—most people can’t stand a vacuum.
“Especially when I’m offering to repair the damage for free,” he said, and my gaze found the narrow space between the bed and the dresser, just a few feet away from the window and the fire escape he could have climbed down—if the window weren’t obviously painted shut, a fire-code violation he was probably kicking himself for now.
Except that a Traveler shouldn’t be bothered by a window that won’t open.
The sun was down and Hunter’s bedroom faced an alley. Very little light shone through his window, and the room was lit only by a single dim bulb overhead. There were small shadows everywhere, and the floor beneath his bed should have been an endless, gaping void for a Traveler. He should have been able to roll into the darkness and roll out of another shadow somewhere else. Anywhere else he wanted to be, depending on how strong his Skill was.
So why the hell was Hunter cowering on the floor with nothing but a couple of mattresses between him and the barrel of my gun?
I was missing something. I had to be.
Careful not to compromise my aim, I slid one hand into my pocket. I took a silent breath, touching the stiff bandage in my pocket, and concentrated on the pull of Hunter’s blood. Every single drop of it called to me, drawing me like a magnet as long as I touched the sample in my pocket. The closer I got to him, the stronger the attraction.
And suddenly I realized what was wrong. I wasn’t the one missing something; he was. Hunter’s blood—the part still flowing in his veins—had no power at all. Somehow, incredibly, he was completely without Skill, though he’d been a Traveler only hours before. The blood sample in my pocket proved that, as did the one Anne had brought.
“So what’s the plan, Eric?” I let go of the bandage and aimed with both hands again, still squatting. “You were just going to…what? Get on a bus?”
Cam raised one eyebrow at me in question, but I couldn’t explain about Hunter’s mysteriously disappearing Skill. Not even if I wanted to—it made no sense.
“That was the plan.”
“So which is it going to be? Run, or fix what you messed up?”
“Does that mean you’ll deliver my message?”
I pretended to think about that for a moment. “Fortunately for you, I like your idea. And I really like the part where I get to be the bearer of good news. So why don’t you come out and tell me who really screwed the pooch. That way you can go work on damage control and I can go make a very powerful man smile.”
A second or two of silence passed while he thought about my offer, and I held my breath, waiting. Surely he wasn’t stupid enough to fall for that—my karma wasn’t that good.
“Aren’t you under orders to kill me?” he asked at last, and I was almost relieved. If he’d given in that easily, I’d have assumed it was a trick. “That means you don’t have any choice, right?”
“Smart man,” I said, hoping he was unfamiliar with verbal irony. “But actually, I was ordered to kill the one responsible for the fuckup. If that turns out not to be you, then killing you would put me in breach of my contract, wouldn’t it?”
Another moment of silence, and I measured his ignorance with each second that passed. With each mistake I could tick off on mental fingers. He’d left viable blood in the trash can. He’d gone to a civilian hospital. He’d put his real middle name on government documents. He’d trapped himself in his bedroom rather than escaping into the shadows. These were not the actions of a man who understood my world.
“Yeah, I guess it would. But I’m gonna need some kind of reassurance. A guarantee.”
“Such as…?” I shot Cam a questioning glance, but he looked even more confused than I felt—he didn’t know about the powerless pull of Hunter’s blood yet.
“Your word. If you promise you won’t kill me, you’ll be bound to that, right?”
Was that a trap? Was he using something he knew to be false to test my honesty? Or was he really that ignorant? The blood in the trash can suggested the latter, but I flavored my lie with a little truth, just in case.
“That’s not the only way to bind someone.” And unless the person swearing was a Binder it was about as reliable as crossing your fingers and making a wish. “But yes, a verbal oath is certainly one kind of binding.”
“Swear, then,” he said, too quickly to be anything but eager impulse. Which meant he believed it, right? “Swear you’re not going to kill me, and I’ll come out.”
I glanced at Cam for an opinion. He shrugged, leaving it up to me, but looked far from convinced. But the standoff couldn’t last forever. My thighs were on fire from squatting, and my arms were already aching, which would soon compromise my aim. Did Hunter know that? Was he counting on it? Or was he just trying to get out of this alive?
Cover me? I mouthed to Cam, and he nodded, a silent vow of ironclad support. “Okay, I swear,” I called into the bedroom. “You can come out now.”
“Be more specific,” Hunter insisted, and I had to admit he wasn’t a total moron. “Swear you’re not going to shoot me. Or kill me in any other way,” he amended.
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I swear I will in no way harm you. Now grow some balls and stand the hell up. If I have to track someone else down tonight, I’d like to get going.”
That last bit did it—that touch of authentic weariness and impatience convinced him I had no more time to waste on him. Hunter stood slowly, and I stood with him, each of us still aiming at the other.
“Put the gun down, Eric,” I said. Cam waited on the opposite side of the door, gun pointed at the ground, a fraction of a second from taking the kill shot. But he wouldn’t do it while Hunter still had me in his sights.
“You first.” Hunter had a wide stance and a steady, two-handed grip on a Beretta 9mm, and I couldn’t tell whether or not the safety was engaged. But I was betting it wasn’t. He may not know how to destroy blood or walk through shadows, but he knew his way around a gun.
“I can’t shoot,” I insisted. “I just swore I wouldn’t.”
“Then you shouldn’t mind putting the gun down.”
Too late it occurred to me that I should have made him swear the same oath. If he believed it would work on me, he’d believe it would work on him, too, right? Had I just been played?
Shit. If I didn’t lower my gun, he’d know I wasn’t bound, and he’d shoot me. But if I lowered my gun, he’d shoot me anyway.
Sometimes having no good choices brings things into crisp, clear focus.
I lurched to one side and squeezed the trigger. The gun thwupped loudly and the recoil threw my arms up, because I was already in motion. I stumbled. Blood sprayed from Hunter’s right shoulder. His gun flashed in the dim room. Something slammed into my left arm, throwing me off balance again. My knees crashed into the ground.
Cam’s silencer thwupped from behind me. Hunter fell against the wall at his back, then slid to sit on the floor, gurgling with each breath. A thick trail of blood led up the wall behind him.
Cam stepped over me and fired twice more. Hunter’s gurgling stopped.
“Damn it!” I twisted to sit on the floor, but the impact ache in my knees was still vicious as I glared up at Cam. “You couldn’t let him make a dying confession? I had more questions for him!”
Cam thumbed the safety, then dropped the gun, silencer and all, into his custom holster. “I just saved your ass. You’re welcome.”
“Thanks.” I flicked the safety on my own pistol, then tried to unscrew the silencer, but stopped at the sudden sharp, hot pain in my left arm. “But he wasn’t after Shen, he was after Anne, and we need to know why.” I tried to push myself to my feet, but my left arm was reluctant to move. In fact, my fingers were oddly numb. But the rest of me felt fine. Better than ever in fact. With Hunter dead, the geas from Anne was gone, and I was once more free from compulsion.
“Well, we’re not going to find out from him. But on the upside, you’re still breathing.” Cam knelt next to me and gently peeled my fingers from the gun, then set it to the side.
“If Tower—or whoever—sent one man after her, he’ll send another,” I insisted. We’d have to hide her somewhere. Would Cam even be able to help me protect her, or would that mean breaching his contract to Tower? Should I let him help me, even if he could? If he knew where she was, he could be forced to tell Tower. Why the hell would Jake Tower want Anne dead, anyway?
“I know. And as soon as we get you taken care of, we’ll call and warn her. But right now, I need you to stand up and try not to move your arm.”
I frowned, irritated by his lack of concern. “Cam, your boss is trying to kill one of my best friends.” Or former best friends. Or whatever. “Couldn’t you act like that bothers you, just a little bit?”
Cam blinked at me, blatant surprise brightening his eyes. “Of course it bothers me. But right now, I’m a little more worried about this.” He lifted my left arm by my bent elbow, and pain shot through my bicep. When I looked down, I was surprised to see blood staining my shirt and welling through a hole in the material. “You’ve been shot, Liv.”
Oh. How the hell had I missed that?