Fourteen
“Did you know about this?” Liv watched carefully for my reaction, obviously fully aware that my body language might say things my mouth wasn’t allowed to.
But this time, I had nothing to hide. “Nope. Whatever Tower’s up to, it’s above my pay grade.”
She looked as if she wanted to believe me. As if she was working really hard to convince herself that I could be trusted. But we both knew I couldn’t be. Not so long as my enforced loyalty to Tower trumped everything else in my life. Including her.
But I was telling the truth.
Frustrated, I set my butcher knife on the counter and met her suspicious gaze with an open one of my own. “Liv, if there’s something I can’t tell you, I just won’t say it. But I’m not going to outright lie to you.” That much, at least, hadn’t changed.
“Unless Tower tells you to. You’d have to lie then, right?” Her brows rose in challenge, and suddenly I hated Jake Tower more than I’d ever hated anyone in my life. Including previous incarnations of my own hatred for him.
“Yes. If he told me to lie to you, I’d have to. But unless he got really creative with the orders, I wouldn’t have to make you believe it. I’m not going to go out of my way to make him happy, after what he’s done to Anne and her family.”
She almost smiled, and some small bit of tension inside me eased. “So, you’re working under protest now?”
“Silent protest. But yes.” Because open protest would only get both of us killed. “And anyway, I haven’t had any communication from Tower directly or indirectly all day.” Which was interesting, considering the fact that I’d been seen all over the west side of town with her.
“What do you think that means?”
I shrugged and resumed chopping. “I think it means that we were allowed to track and kill Hunter because that benefited the syndicate—we were cleaning up their mess. But if we step over whatever line they’ve drawn for us, they will redirect my attention to something Tower considers more worthy. More syndicate-spirited.” And Liv’s interest in syndicate business would be noted. And monitored.
Nothing good ever comes from being monitored by the Tower syndicate.
“That means we’ve hit a dead end on the money trail for now, then?” she said. “Because if we keep digging into their involvement, they’re going to hit your manual reset button.”
I laughed. “Pretty much.” And the reset button, for the record, was the back of my skull. I set the spatula down and met Liv’s gaze, letting her see that I was serious. “But I’m not saying we should give up on the money trail or the transfusions. I’m just saying that if we dig for clues directly beneath the syndicate, we’re going to come up right under Tower’s feet. And he’s going to stomp on us.”
“So we should approach them both from another angle? Pursue leads that don’t originate within the syndicate?”
“Exactly.” While the skillet sizzled behind me, I picked up Hunter’s phone. He hadn’t gotten a single call since his fortunate demise, which was no shock, considering he’d only been dead a couple of hours. “I suggest we start with this. Maybe someone he knows can tell us where he got the transfusions, or who actually hired him. Even if they don’t know what they’re really telling us.”
I slid the phone across the counter to Liv and plugged my food processor in on the peninsula as she scrolled through the entries on the phone.
“He only got eight calls in the last week, two of them from the same number. And he only made three calls. Not exactly a social butterfly.” She pulled my laptop closer and started typing. “With your computer, my credit card and an online reverse phone book, I should be able to put a name with most of these numbers.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to just call them?”
“Definitely.” She glanced at me over the screen. “And calling his friends, relatives and ‘professional’ associates would also be the easier, cheaper way to raise a bunch of red flags, put Tower’s men on our tail and get us both shot for our troubles.” I stared at her, and Liv laughed. “New to this part of the game, huh?”
“Yeah.” I dug three tomatoes from the vegetable drawer and rinsed them in the sink. “Most of my work involves name-tracking, not computer snooping. I usually call in Van for that kind of thing.”
Liv’s fingers attacked the keyboard, rapid-fire clacking, as if she could pound the answers from the internet by force. “I think we should leave Van out of this, for her own safety.”
“Agreed.” I cored the tomatoes on the cutting board, then dropped them into the food processor and started on the cilantro. “Any luck?”
“Yeah.” More clacking, then she picked up the notepad and spoke as she scribbled. “One of the outgoing calls was to his bank, on the day of the big deposit. I assume he was calling to make sure the money landed safely.”
I nodded and scooped the leftover onion into the food processor with the cilantro and tomatoes.
“The second call went to a man named Gavin Payne, no address listed.” Liv glanced up when I started chopping again. “I hate jalapeños. They’re all heat but no flavor.”
I kept chopping. “This is a smoked poblano. You’ll like it. Trust me.”
She looked skeptical, but went back to her typing with no complaint. I ran the food processor, and a few minutes later, I poured fresh salsa into a bowl shaped like a hollowed-out red pepper.
Liv looked up when I pushed the bowl toward her. “Okay, I can’t find anything on the third number, even on four different sites claiming to have access to unlisted landlines and cell-phone numbers.” She picked up a corn chip from another bowl and dipped it into the salsa. “Wow.” She finished the chip and dipped a second. “When we were together, it was all takeout, all the time.”
“I’ve had some free time lately.”
“Well, it’s paid off.” She turned back to the screen, crunching into another chip. “Of the numbers that called Hunter’s phone, two look like they’re from his mother, calling once from her home phone and once from her cell. I wonder if Mrs. Hunter has any idea that her little boy grew up to be an attempted murderer of small children?”
I shrugged and turned off the stove. “I blame the parents.”
“Me, too.” Liv snagged another chip while I pulled the steak from the skillet to slice on a fresh cutting board. “The repeated incoming number was Gavin Payne, and the one that called most recently was the same unidentifiable number Hunter dialed last night. The other three incoming calls were from his building superintendent, his pharmacy and a telephone survey company.”
“Bastards. They always call during dinner.”
Liv laughed as I slid the sliced steak onto a platter and topped it with the sautéed vegetables. “Forget crime lords and corrupt politicians—telemarketers are the root of all evil.”
“Now you’re getting it.” I took a twist tie off a bag of flour tortillas and set a clean plate in front of her. “So, unless he’s in cahoots with Walgreens or his landlord, the only real possibilities are this Gavin Payne and the unknown number.”
“Yeah. But I still have to check his texts.”
“Let me.” I took the phone from her and replaced it with her empty plate. “You eat.”
Liv hesitated, then reached for a tortilla.
Hunter hadn’t sent any texts in the past week, and he’d only received one, a couple of days earlier. An address. “Shit.”
“What?” Liv looked up from her empty fajita, and I turned the phone around for her to see.
“That’s Anne’s address,” I said, when she showed no recognition. “I was there with her this morning when she gathered the blood samples.” Was that really less than a day ago? It felt like a week.
Liv took the phone from me and compared it to the notes she’d taken. “It’s from that same unidentified number. Let me see your cell,” she said, her dinner already forgotten.
“Why?”
“Because I know you’re not allowed to tell me if you know whose number that is. But if you do, it might be in your phone. Right?”
Smart girl. “In theory. But I actually don’t know that number.”
“And you won’t care if I verify that, right?”
I handed her my phone. “Do you mind if I eat while you openly distrust me and invade my privacy?”
“I’m sorry, Cam.” But she pressed a button to wake my phone up, without hesitation. Not that I could blame her. “Password?” she said, eyeing me expectantly.
I piled steak and peppers onto a tortilla and answered without looking up. “Zero-one-zero-four.”
Her finger hovered over the last digit, and I could practically feel her gaze on me. “That’s my birthday.”
“Huh. Weird.” I dropped a glob of sour cream on my fajita, then folded the tortilla over its contents and took a bite without waiting for her response. Not that she had one, other than a slight flush not caused by the spicy food.
I watched as Liv navigated her way through my phone menus. She never looked up at me, which was how I knew she really wanted to.
After less than a minute, she held my phone up so I could see my own contacts list, and the only number listed there. “How the hell did you get my personal number?”
I took another bite, then spoke around it. “It’s listed.”
“No, it isn’t. And I change it every year, to make sure it isn’t just floating around out there, through random people I called years ago.”
I shrugged. “It’s listed somewhere, or how else could I have it?” Of course, it wasn’t in any public listing I’d found, but I knew people—like Van—who knew how to get things.
Liv frowned. “Is that it? What about all your syndicate buddies? What about Van?”
I slid the meat platter toward her, and she finally picked up the tongs. “We’re not allowed to program syndicate numbers. They all have to be memorized. And we delete the recent-calls list daily.” All to keep from incriminating one another, of course. It was part of my nightly routine.
Set alarm. Brush teeth. Purge the call lists from my phone…
“And you’re sure you don’t recognize this one?” Liv spun the notepad around so I could see the unidentified number she’d jotted down. The one that had called Hunter, been called by Hunter and later had texted Anne’s address to him.
“Nope.” I took the tongs from her and loaded her tortilla myself, since she obviously wasn’t going to. “But that doesn’t mean anything. I don’t have the personal phone numbers of every initiate in the city.” Thank goodness. And since most of my work was done at Tower’s personal request, very few of the other initiates had my number, either. “Check my recent calls, if you don’t trust me.”
I tried not to be hurt when she only hesitated a second before taking me up on my offer. Then she slid the phone back to me, having obviously learned what I already knew, that in the past twenty hours—as far back as my current call list went—I’d only called Van and Anne.
“Do you know Jake Tower’s personal number?” she asked, picking up the fajita I’d rolled for her.
“One of them—and that’s not it. But I’m sure he has at least a couple. There’s no way the number his wife and kids call is the same one his employees use. And that probably goes for anyone in the top tiers.”
“Great. Another dead end.”
“What about Payne?” I said while she chewed. “It sounds like he’s either a professional associate or Hunter’s only friend.”
Liv wiped her mouth with a paper towel—I rarely wasted time, thought or money on napkins. “I did a search for him, but all I’m finding is an announcement of his arrest in one of the local papers.”
“What was he arrested for? Is there a picture?” I may not know the personal phone numbers of every syndicate initiate, but I’d recognize most of them on sight.
She stared at the screen again, scrolling with the mouse pad while she chewed. “Armed robbery.” More scrolling. “The police pulled him over for a traffic violation and smelled pot, so they searched the car and found twelve thousand dollars worth of jewelry in the trunk, all taken during a B and E reported the night before.”
“How much time did he get?”
Liv read a little further, then her eyes widened. “None. He was found innocent, when nearly twenty different people claimed to see him at a party eighty miles away at the time of the robbery.”
“He’s a Traveler?” If that were the case, he could step into one shadow at the party and out of another one anywhere else within his range—including the jewelry owner’s house—in less than a second. Then he’d be back in no time, establishing his own alibi.
Liv shrugged. “Or maybe he had a transfusion, too. Maybe that’s how he and Hunter know each other.” She set down her half-eaten fajita. “I’m going to call him. From Hunter’s phone. Maybe he doesn’t know Hunter’s dead yet.”
“And you think he’s just going to confess to robbery, and perjury, and the use of black-market superpower injections?”
Liv smiled, and my pulse raced a little faster. “This ain’t my first rodeo, cowboy.”
She returned Payne’s last call while I dribbled salsa onto a fresh tortilla, and he answered on the third ring. Liv pushed the button for speakerphone and warned me to be quiet with a shh finger against her lips.
“Who the hell is this?” Payne barked over the line. His voice was low, but not unusually so, and had no discernible accent. I’m pretty good with voices, and I’d never heard his before.
“Hey. Um…my name is Grace,” Liv said, and I was amused to see that even her mannerisms changed with the character she was playing. “I found this phone on the sidewalk and I’m trying to find the owner. Your number was in the recent-calls list, so can you, like, tell me whose number I’m calling from?”
It was everything I could do not to laugh.
“Where’d you find the phone?” Payne asked. Which meant he either wasn’t buying her Good Samaritan act or he wasn’t willing to give out his friend or coworker’s name to a stranger. Either way, he was smarter than I’d hoped.
“In front of the deli on Fourth.” Which was right next to Hunter’s apartment building. “Why? Do you know the guy it belongs to?”
“How did you know it was a guy?” Payne demanded, and Liv rolled her eyes over the obvious suspicion in his voice, still in character.
“It’s in a gunmetal-gray case and the wallpaper is a picture of muddy girls in bikinis playing soccer. Let’s just call it a good guess.” She waited, but Payne made no reply. “So, do you know the guy or not?”
“Did you call any of the other numbers?” he demanded, and I lifted one brow in interest. Payne obviously knew something, and he obviously wasn’t going to give details to some random chick from the block.
Liv seemed to debate her answer for a second, then she shrugged, though only I could see her. “No, yours was the first one listed.” She huffed in feigned frustration, then let a little impatience leak into her voice. “Look, I lost my cell last month and this guy down the street returned it instead of running up my bill, so I was just tryin’ to pay it forward, you know? But if it’s gonna be some big hassle, I’m just gonna—”
“Now hold on!” Payne snapped, and Liv grinned at me. Now we were getting somewhere. “If you bring the phone to the deli, I can get it back to its owner.” Someone knocked on a door in the background—three short, sharp taps—and the ambient noise changed as Payne crossed the room, presumably to answer the door. “Just a minute.”
Hinges creaked over the line and unease flared in my chest like heartburn. Those knocks meant business. Something was wrong.
“No, wait!” Payne cried, and Liv obviously thought he was talking to her until her eyes went wide at the familiar thwup of a silencer over the line—the term is a bit of a misnomer; it still makes noise. Then there was a loud crash and a thud that could only be a body hitting the floor. Payne’s body, almost certainly.
I stretched for the phone, but Liv pulled it out of reach. She looked shocked by the lethal development, but determined to hear it out. Something scraped against the phone softly, then we heard nothing but the deep, steady breathing of whoever had picked up Payne’s phone.
Liv opened her mouth, probably to ask Payne if he was okay—the reaction you’d expect from a clueless Good Samaritan—but I shook my head. I didn’t want whoever’d killed Payne to hear her speak.
“Who is this?” a new voice demanded, and I closed my eyes. Shit. I knew that voice.
That time when I reached for the phone, Liv let me have it. I flipped it closed and dropped it on the counter, and Liv stared at it as if it might bite her fingers off if she got too close.
“You recognized that voice, didn’t you?” she asked, watching me closely. “Who was it?”
“Adler.” I ran one hand over my face, then through my hair. “My direct superior.”
“So what does this mean?”
“It means they’re cleaning up. Clipping all the loose threads. Payne obviously knew something, and whatever he knew just died with him. But now they know someone has Hunter’s phone, and they’ll trace it.”
“They can do that?”
“You can do anything with enough money and the right connections. It’ll probably take a couple of hours, but as long as Hunter’s phone is transmitting a signal, they can trace it.”
Liv sank onto a bar stool and leaned with her good arm on the counter. “Okay, but does that really matter? They already knew we killed him. And by now, they probably know Anne hired us.”
“Yes, but when they trace the phone back to us, they’ll know our involvement didn’t end with Hunter’s death, and they’ll know we’re looking into the syndicate’s involvement.”
Liv shrugged. “So we destroy the phone. We already have everything we can get out of it anyway. Got a hammer?”
“Even better.” I opened the drawer to my left and took out a two-pound stainless-steel meat mallet, hefting it to get a feel for the weight. Then I wrapped Hunter’s phone in a hand towel and set the bundle on the counter. I could have just snapped the SIM card, but swinging the meat mallet felt great—a cathartic release of primal rage at Tower, for targeting a child. At myself for signing with him in the first place. At Olivia, for running off to the city for no reason I could fathom, leaving bloody bits of my own heart like a bread-crumb trail for me to follow.
The crunch of plastic was muted by the towel, which kept electronic shards from raining down on our dinner, but the destruction was obvious, and so satisfying that I did it again. And again, grunting with each release of pent-up fury.
After several swings, I couldn’t even see lumps beneath the top layer of towel. I unfolded it and searched through the debris for remnants of the SIM card—it was in several pieces—then shook the towel over the trash can. The pieces that tumbled out were too small to even identify, much less trace.
“Wow,” Liv said, when I dropped the mallet back into the drawer. “That looked like fun. I call dibs on the next over-the-top destruction of evidence.” She tried on a smile, but couldn’t quite pull it off.
I didn’t even try. “Obviously that won’t keep them from suspecting we took the phone, but at least now they can’t confirm that with a trace.”
Liv stared into the bowl of salsa, slowly stirring it with a corn chip. “How much trouble are you going to be in?” Because it wasn’t a question of whether or not Tower would find out what we were doing, but a question of when he’d find out.
I shrugged, but she wasn’t buying my nonchalance. “I haven’t actually broken any of the rules yet.” Which meant precisely nothing. Exploiting the loopholes would only piss off Tower, and we both knew it.
“What’s the drill, Cam?” She dropped the soggy chip onto her plate and eyed me steadily. “What would he do to someone else in your position?”
I exhaled, long and slow. “You don’t want to know.” And neither did I.
“Okay.” Liv nodded decisively, as if she’d come to some sort of decision. Then she closed both the laptops and slid off of her stool. “I want you to take me back to my office, then I need you to come straight back here and forget about all of this.”
“Liv, wait…” I said, but she was already gathering her things.
“Every second I stay here is another second you are closer to death, or dismemberment, or whatever torture Tower saves for employees who plot against him.”
“Olivia.” She’d misunderstood the true threat.
I rounded the counter and grabbed her good arm before she could zip up her satchel, and she turned on me, ready to pull free from my grip. But she stopped with one look at my face. “Tower still needs me. He’s not going to kill me or do anything else that’ll affect my ability to do my job.” I hesitated, dreading the part I had yet to say.
“What does that mean?” Liv asked softly, and suddenly I was hyperaware of her arm in my hand, and of the warm smoothness of her skin. But that time, even touching her couldn’t distract me from the brutal truth—she needed to understand what was at stake.
“If he finds out what we’re doing, he’ll punish me by hurting the people I care about. And the only people in the world he’s going to be able to connect to me are you, Van and Annika.”
Liv’s face paled, and her eyes narrowed in protective rage. She was thinking of the risk to Anne, but had yet to consider the danger to herself. Cavalier heroism was as much a part of her as her thick brown hair or bright blue eyes.
“I can take care of myself, Cam,” she said, finally pulling her arm gently from my grip. “And I can take care of Anne and Hadley, too. So you worry about yourself and Van, and we’ll all be fine.” She frowned, as if something new had just occurred to her. “If I leave now, Tower may never know you were involved in this beyond helping me find Hunter. Especially if I take what’s left of his phone with me, so they can’t find it here.” She tried to step around me, heading for the kitchen trash can, but I stepped into her path.
“He’ll know because he’ll ask, and I’ll have to answer. And I don’t want you to go.” I lifted her chin until her gaze met mine—I needed her to see how important this was. “We’re of more use to Anne and Hadley as a team than we are on our own, and Van’s safer not knowing what’s going on. Plausible deniability is the best defense.”
“No, a loaded gun is the best defense.” She settled her satchel strap over one shoulder and reached for Hunter’s laptop. “Well, that and a good head start. So I have to go.”
“Please stay.” I grabbed the computer before she could reach it and held it against my chest. “If not for me, then stay for Anne and Hadley. We really are better for them as a team.”
“That might be true if we could trust each other. But we can’t.” She sighed and I reluctantly let her pull the laptop from my grip. “If he can hurt us to punish you, then he could just as easily make you into the weapon that does the hurting. Then I’d have to defend myself, and Van, and Annika, and we’d all be hurt.”
Or worse. She didn’t say it, but we both heard it.
“And I can’t let that happen,” Liv concluded.
But there was more. There was something she wasn’t saying, and I could practically see it dangling from the end of her tongue, but she swallowed it. And whatever it was, it obviously tasted horrible.
“I gotta go. If you won’t drive me, I’m taking your car.” She glanced around for my keys, but I knew better than to leave them lying within reach. Olivia was an established flight risk.
For one long moment, I watched her, weighing the options and impossibilities in my head. What I was considering would never work. Mere determination—no matter how strong—could never overpower an oath willingly taken and sealed. Just trying it would probably kill me. But at least then I couldn’t be used against Liv, or anyone else.
“If you could trust me, you’d stay?” I said, staring straight into her eyes, trying to see past her defenses and distractions to the truth. “For good?”
Olivia frowned and seemed to think about it for a second. Then she shook her head slowly, wincing, as if her answer actually hurt. Or maybe it was my question that hurt. “No fair posing hypotheticals, Cam. What-ifs have no place in the real world. And I have no place in your life so long as Jake Tower is pulling your strings.”
But again, there was more she wanted to say. I could see it peeking out at me from behind the truth she wielded like a sword and hefted like a shield.
“This isn’t a what-if.” I stepped closer and she held her ground as the space between us disappeared.
“I don’t…” She cleared her throat and started over, staring up at me, each breath fast and shallow, as if she couldn’t get enough air. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means that I’m with you, Liv. Screw Tower.” A brief bolt of pain lanced the center of my forehead at the minor mental infraction of my loyalty clause, but it was gone the instant the words left my mouth. Actual breach of contract would hurt a hell of a lot worse, I knew, but this first step felt invigorating. Liberating, as if I’d just taken back the reins of my own life, however briefly.
And that was just the start, of both the pain and the progress.
“I’m done with Tower. I’ll do whatever it takes to break my binding to him, even if it means carving these damn marks out of my own arm.” I lifted my sleeve for emphasis.
“If it were that easy, you’d have already done it,” she said. “Everyone would have. But removing the evidence of an oath doesn’t unseal that oath. It doesn’t work like burning a contract. Please tell me you understand that.”
I forced a grin. “Yeah, but it makes an impressive gesture, right?” But she didn’t even crack a smile. “Olivia, I will break this binding. I swear. I’ll find the original contract and destroy it, even if I have to burn down an entire building in the process.”
“Cam, it won’t work….” she insisted, warily backing toward the door. “And even if it did, it could take you months just to find your contract, and even if you were able to destroy it, Tower would never let you live. You know that.”
I shook my head. “You’re getting tangled up in the details, and I don’t give a damn about the details. We’ll make it work. I’ll take a new oath, like you took as a kid. Right now. Write something and I’ll sign it. Write whatever you want—write that I’ll never leave your side again—and I’ll call a Binder right now so we can make it official.”
“It’s not that simple.” She shook her head, but her eyes were shiny and red with unshed tears. “It won’t work, Cam. It can’t.”
“Yes, it can. But I can’t make it work on my own. If you really want to leave, then leave. But don’t go just because you’re scared, of Tower, or anything else. Cedo nulli, Olivia. If you yield to no man, why should you yield to fear?”
“I’m not yielding to fear and I’m not running away. I’m facing facts. We don’t have any choice about this.”
“I have choices,” I insisted, refusing to break eye contact. “We both do. I may have to make mine carefully, and make a few compromises along the way, but I have a choice. I choose you.”