Eighteen
I didn’t truly relax until I’d closed and locked my office door, locking the rest of the world out in the process. I called Cam from my cell and poured the first shot of whiskey while the phone rang in my ear.
“Liv? Are you all right?” He sounded near panic. I knew how he felt.
I tossed back the whiskey and slammed the shot glass down on my desk, my eyes squeezed shut until the burn in my throat faded. The burn was a relief, even if I only felt it because Michaela had bruised my throat with her grip.
“Yeah. I need a favor.”
“What? Where are you?”
“At my office. Alone. I need you to bring me everything I left at your place. Including my gun. And on the way, can you stop and pick up one of those prepaid phones and have it activated?”
“Do I even want to know why?”
“Probably not.” I poured another shot, and he must have heard me swallow.
“Put the whiskey back in the drawer, Liv,” he said, and over the line I heard a zipper being opened as he packed my stuff into a bag.
“I’m done.” After one more shot. “See you in a few?”
“Be there as soon as I can.”
After that, I called Anne and asked her to send me another five-dollar retainer online, officially hiring me to track whoever wanted her daughter dead. Immediately. She sounded confused, but agreed and assured me that she, her parents and Hadley were all fine. But I wouldn’t let her tell me where they were.
When her payment came through, I printed the receipt and filed it, then exhaled in relief as I stowed the whiskey in my bottom desk drawer. I could now legally and officially tell Cavazos to go fuck himself. With that taken care of, I headed into the bathroom to assess the damage to my face.
My left cheek was turning purple—I’d already suspected as much, based on the reproachful shake of his head Tomas had given me when I’d left. The second bruise forming on my stomach was fainter and less defined, but very tender to the touch.
I’d had worse.
When Cam knocked on the office door, I lowered my shirt and let him in. He took one look at my face and dropped his duffel on the couch to take my chin in hand. “That black-hearted bastard… I’m going to break every tooth in his head.”
“Get in line.”
“Did you at least hit him back?” He let go of my chin and unzipped his bag.
“Hell yes. I may have cracked his ribs.”
“What set him off?”
“Does it matter?” I sank into my desk chair and dug a bottle of ibuprofen from the middle drawer.
Cam looked up, noting my reluctance to answer. “It does now.”
I sighed. “He wanted me to stay away from you, and I refused.”
“He hit you because of me?” Cam’s fist clenched around the duffel strap and his brows dipped low.
“No, he hit me because I refused an order he had no right to give. He doesn’t own me like he owns everyone else in his life, and he hates it that I can say no.” To some things, at least. I was a threat to his manhood, or his authority, or whatever, and he struck out to re-assert himself. And he left visible bruises so everyone else would know I wasn’t getting away with anything. “He wouldn’t do it if I did everything he told me to.” But that just wasn’t in me. I’d rather be bruised than acquiescent.
“Yes, he would. I had a run-in with him once, Liv.” Which I already knew, of course. “I know what he’s like.”
But he was wrong there.
“Here’s the phone.” He handed me a slim slider phone with a full keyboard. “I activated it in the car—the number’s in your contacts list, and I already programmed mine. And here’s your gun.”
“Thanks.” I dry-swallowed the painkillers, then emailed Anne the new number. Then I tossed my old phone to Cam, who caught it one-handed.
“What’s this for?”
“Nothing, anymore.”
“So, what do you want me to do with it?”
“What I can’t.” What I couldn’t even actually ask him to do. I was contractually prohibited from doing anything to avoid getting Cavazos’s calls or messages, which I was obligated to answer at the earliest possible moment.
Comprehension bloomed on Cam’s face in the form of a satisfied grin. He threw the phone at the floor and stomped on it. The crunch of plastic was clean, and violent, and cathartic, and I really wished I could have been the one to do it.
I would pay for that later, but for the moment, I was grateful to have a loophole to exploit. Fortunately, no contract is ever truly ironclad.
Cam dropped onto my couch and looked at me across my desk. “Okay, so now what?”
“Now…we figure out why Tower wants Hadley dead, without using any of your syndicate connections or letting Tower know what we’re up to. And we figure out where Hunter was getting those injections, still operating under those same constraints, while simultaneously avoiding all contact from Cavazos.”
“So basically, we’re working against the syndicate I’m bound to while hiding from the one you’re bound to.”
“Technically, I’m bound to Cavazos, not to the syndicate. But yes. Also…” I sighed and leaned with both elbows on my desk, fighting the seductive lure of sleep. “We should probably steer clear of the west side entirely.”
His eyes narrowed. “Agreed, but why do you say that?”
“It turns out that Meika Cavazos is the one who started the rumor that I’m her husband’s bound concubine-slash-mole. She’s not allowed to kill me, so she’s hoping to have me hung as a spy. Or whatever the modern equivalent of that is.”
“The modern equivalent would be systematic dismemberment, followed by a bullet to the brain.” And I could tell from the way he said it that he’d actually seen the floor show. And that it left an impression.
“Wow. Tower puts some serious thought into his executions.”
“They’re as much preventive measure as punishment. He’s big on public consequences. Speaking of overkill, that’s quite a complicated murder plot Cavazos’s wife has cooked up.”
“Evidently I’m taxing her creativity.” I shrugged. “She just had the first girl shot.”
“The first girl?”
“Ruben’s first mistress. At least, I assume she was the first. Not that I’m sleeping with him, but Meika thinks I am, and she and logic don’t exactly share closet space these days.”
“Sounds like she and sanity aren’t on very good terms, either.”
I was still laughing when my new cell phone rang. I glanced at it in surprise, then snatched it and pressed the button to accept the call. Only two people had the new number, and one of them was sitting on my couch.
“Liv, we’re headed your way.” Anne’s voice was tight with panic, and I recognized street noise and the rumble of an engine in the background.
“What? No. Tower wants to kill your daughter. The city’s the last place she should be. You need to hide her.”
“I did hide her, just like you said, and they found us.”
“They?” When I noticed Cam trying to eavesdrop, I put the call on speakerphone and set the new cell on the center of my desk.
“Just one, really. Another Traveler. But there will be more. He’s not going to give up.”
Cam and I exchanged a glance, then he returned his attention to the phone. “Okay, Anne, I need you to calm down and tell us what happened.”
Anne took a deep breath, and in the background, a little girl said something I couldn’t understand and was answered by an older man. She had her parents with her. “I put Hadley to bed at about eight-thirty. Then, maybe fifteen minutes ago, I went to check on her and found a man in the hall. He was just standing there, holding a gun. So I shot him, Liv.” Her voice splintered into broken, hiccuping half words, and an older woman reminded her gently to watch the road.
“You shot him?” I couldn’t believe it. I’d never even seen Anne hold a weapon, much less use one. “Where’d you get the gun?”
“It’s my dad’s. He brought it so we could protect Hadley, but I didn’t think I’d actually have to use it. But I did, and now someone’s dead.”
“Where?” Cam said. “Where were you?”
“At one of my mom’s show houses.”
“One of your…?” Cam frowned at me, silently asking for a translation.
“Her mother’s a real-estate agent,” I whispered. When we were in high school, Anne would sometimes borrow the keys to a show house and let us all in for a private party. The houses were fully furnished—the perfect place for kids to hang out and drink in private. But not a good place to hide from Skilled hit men. “Why the hell didn’t you leave town? That’s not running, it’s…burrowing.”
“A hotel seemed too obvious, and we needed someplace for Hadley to sleep. Someplace that felt like a home and wouldn’t scare her any more than she already is.”
“Well, scared is better than dead!” I snapped, then immediately wished I could take it back. Anne was a suburban wife and mother, not a trained bodyguard. She was new to all this, and obviously doing the best she could. “How did he get in? You had all the lights on, right?”
“Yes. All of them. There’s no way he could have come in through the shadows. He must have actually physically broken in.”
“But we would have heard that, Annika,” her mother said softly.
“What about the closets?” Cam asked. “And under the beds?”
“We opened all the closets, but…I forgot about the beds,” Anne groaned. “We’ve always used loft beds and captain’s beds.” To make sure there are never shadows beneath the beds—standard practice in Skilled homes; it’s like nailing your basement windows shut so you don’t have to remember to lock them. “It’s possible he could have come in under one of them….”
I exhaled, trying to control my temper, and noticed that Cam had closed his eyes. He was as frustrated by Anne’s survival skills—or lack thereof—as I was. “Okay, Anne…” Cam began, and I leaned back in my chair, happy to let him take over while I tried to gather my thoughts. “I understand that you were thinking about Hadley, but bringing her into the city is a bad idea. That’ll just make her easier to track.”
“Cam, I don’t know what to do. I can’t protect her. Liv, I need your help!”
“I know. Give me a minute….” I leaned with my elbows on my desk, forehead in my hands, thinking aloud. “Do they have her blood?”
“No,” Anne said, without hesitation. “There’s no way they could. We’ve burned every drop she’s ever spilled.”
“’Cept the drops in the trash,” a young voice said, and chills shot up my spine so fast I broke out in goose bumps all over.
“What?” Anne said, and again her mother reminded her to watch the road.
“I’m sorry, we forgot!” the child howled, then burst into sobs. “I fell and cut my knee yesterday. Daddy burned the tissues, but we…mighta forgot the Band-Aids. I think I threw them away.”
“Was there much blood?” I asked, holding my breath for her answer, and based on the silence in the car, I think they were all doing the same thing. But the child didn’t seem to know how to answer, so her mother rephrased my question.
“Hadley, honey, how many Band-Aids did it take?”
“Three!” she cried, half choking on her tears, and my sympathy for her was the only thing rivaling my fear and frustration at that moment. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to forget!”
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Anne said, and in the background, I could hear her parents comforting their granddaughter.
Cam looked as if he was holding back a string of profanities with sheer will. “I don’t suppose you know whether or not anyone actually found the blood, do you?” he asked, with more patience than I could have mustered.
“I have no clue,” Anne moaned miserably.
“Okay.” Another breath, while I waited for my thoughts to fall into some kind of coherent order. “We’ll have to assume they did, just to be safe. Which means they can track her. So we need to hide Hadley someplace where Tower can’t find her.”
“Is that even possible?” Anne asked.
Cam shook his head, though no one over the line could see it. “No. Short of putting her on a plane—and you can bet they’re watching the airport—there’s no way to get her out of tracking range fast enough for the Tracker to lose the pull of her blood, right?” He glanced at me with brows raised in question.
“Right.” Damn it. “Okay, then, what about a Jammer? Does anyone know a Jammer we can trust?” A good Jammer could block Hadley’s energy signature, preventing her from being tracked.
“No,” Anne said over the line. “I’ve never had use for one before.”
Cam scrubbed his face with both hands. “All the Jammers I know are loyal to Tower. If we hire one of them, we may as well hand her over to him ourselves. Not that we could actually afford a syndicate Jammer…”
And, naturally, all the Jammers I knew were bound to Cavazos.
I leaned back in my chair, eyes closed, searching the dark behind my eyelids for a stroke of brilliance, trying to ignore the certainty that the metaphorical lightbulb hanging over my head was surely sputtering its very last spark. Then, suddenly it flared to life so brightly I was nearly blinded. I sat up straight, hands flat on the desktop. “If we can’t put her somewhere he can’t find her, we’ll have to put her somewhere he can’t get to her.”
“Where’s that?” Anne asked, the first ribbon of hope in her voice battling a darker thread of skepticism.
“I’m not sure yet, but I have an idea.” I pushed my chair back, wishing there was room to pace in my office, so I could burn some of my nervous energy. “How far are you from the city?”
“Um…an hour?” Anne said.
I glanced at the clock on my computer screen. It was twelve-thirty. They’d be in town by 1:30 a.m.
“Okay, here’s what I want you to do. First, drop your parents off somewhere where they can take a cab or a bus home. They shouldn’t be in any danger so long as Hadley’s not with them, because she’s the one they’ll be tracking.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Anne said, “Okay, then what?”
“Then drive straight to Cam’s apartment. Do you know where that is?”
“No,” Anne said, so I listened while Cam recited his address and Anne asked her mother to write it down. “But you said not to come to the city.”
“Change of plans.” I dug through my drawer for a spare box of 9mm shells. “Don’t worry, you won’t be there for long.”
We said goodbye and hung up, and Cam watched me expectantly from the couch. “Well?”
I pulled a spare clip from the bottom drawer and started loading it, in spite of the tug on my injured arm. “I know where they can stay. Where we all can stay. If we keep all the lights on, Tower’s men can’t get in through the shadows. And if my plan works out like I think it will, they won’t be able to get close enough to break in the traditional way.”
Cam’s brows rose halfway up his forehead. “Why do I get the feeling this plan is more dangerous than it is clever?”
“I’d call it a fifty-fifty mix of risk and genius.” I grinned as I forced the last shell into the extra clip. “You know how Cavazos is having me followed, and Tower’s men think I’m sleeping with the enemy, and Ruben wants me to stay away from you?”
“I don’t think I like where this is going…”
I avoided his gaze while I shoved the half-empty box of shells into my satchel along with the extra clip. “I’m about to make all that work in our favor. I think I know how to get Ruben’s men to protect Hadley and her mom—only they won’t know they’re doing it.”
“I’m listening….”
“Okay, here’s how it should go—I’ll leave your place and make sure Cavazos’s men see me. They’ll follow me to my apartment, watch me go in, then hang around to make sure I don’t go anywhere. What they won’t know is that you, Anne and Hadley will already be there waiting for me. With Cavazos’s goons hanging around, Tower’s men won’t be able to get close enough to break in.” I shrugged, then pulled on my shoulder holster. “It’s not a permanent solution, but at least it’ll keep Hadley safe while we plan out our next move.”
Cam nodded slowly. “I like it. But why did you send them to my place? Why not send them straight to your apartment?”
I perched on the edge of my desk, in front of the couch where he sat. “Because we’re not going to my real apartment in the south fork. We’re going to one on the east side—deep in Cavazos’s territory. It’s only a mile from his house and it’s crawling with his initiates. Even once Tower’s men track Hadley there, there’s nothing they can do. They’ll be spotted and run off by Cavazos’s men. And no one will be able to get in through the shadows, because there won’t be any shadows. You and I can make sure of that.”
Cam blinked at me for nearly a minute, and I would have given anything to know what he was thinking. Then, finally he asked, “You have an apartment on the east side? Since when?”
“Since about a year ago. It’s not really mine. It’s Ruben’s. In one of his buildings. I’ve only been there once, but I have a key because he…kind of…gave it to me. Did I not mention that?” I smiled, trying to lighten the moment, but Cam wasn’t buying it.
“You seem to be forgetting to mention a lot of things, Liv.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. But there’s no good way to tell the guy you want to be with that the guy who’s rumored to own you gave you an apartment. You would never have believed that I’m not sleeping with him.” Just like Meika.
Cam gave me an open, expectant look I wouldn’t have bought from anyone else. “I believe you now.”
“But would you have earlier? Before…your couch?”
He sighed, then met my gaze again, reluctantly. “Probably not.”
“Well, now you believe me, and now you know about the apartment. So back to the plan. The only real problem is figuring out how to get the three of you inside. You can’t just walk up with my key and let yourself in. Everyone in the building knows whose apartment it is, and even if they don’t stop you, someone will call Ruben, and this whole thing will fall down around us.”
“Do you leave the lights on all the time?” Cam asked, and I could see the early spark of an idea glinting in his eyes.
“No… Like I said, I’ve never even been there, except the time he first showed it to me. I thought he was showing me a target’s apartment.”
“So someone could get there through the shadows now, before you actually arrive and turn on all the lights?”
I shrugged. “Yeah. If one of us were a Traveler.” But, obviously, we weren’t.
He glanced at the ground, his foot tapping the floor nervously. “What if one of us knows a Traveler?”
I shook my head. “Cam, we can’t trust any of your friends.”
“Not my friend. Yours. And she may be the only person in the world we can all trust right now.”
“You mean Kori?” She and her brother were the only shadow-walkers I knew, and Kris wasn’t obligated to help me if I asked him to—not that I knew how to get in touch with him. But now that Anne had burned the second oath, getting Kori’s help would be as easy as calling her up and asking her for it. Except… “I don’t know how to get ahold of her, Cam. We lost touch years ago.” When I’d left town. Just like I’d lost touch with everyone else. “I guess I could track her, but I’m not sure we have the time. I don’t even know if she’s in the city….”
“She is. And I have her number.”
He said it casually, as if it was no big deal. But if it was really no big deal, he would have already told me. There was something he wasn’t saying. Something important.
I’d given up my secrets—sure, a couple of them had to be dragged out of me—but Cam was obviously still hiding a couple of his own….