Nineteen
We took separate cars back to Cam’s apartment, and I stopped on the way for some cheap sleeping masks at a local drugstore. I always carried one for myself, of course—they come in handy when you sleep with the lights on—but knowing how scattered Anne’s thoughts were, considering she was running for her daughter’s life, I figured we’d need some extras.
By the time I pulled into the parking lot of Cam’s building, I’d decided I had to know. If we were going to give this another shot—if we were willing to risk our lives to be together—secrets weren’t going to cut it. He knew mine. Reciprocation was only fair.
On my way into the building, I glanced around the lot, looking for Ruben’s men. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there. Watching. And for once, that would actually help, rather than hinder, my plans.
I knocked on Cam’s third-floor apartment door, then tapped my foot impatiently for the fifteen seconds it took for the door to open. “Okay, why do you have Kori’s number?” I asked, before he could even invite me inside.
His brows rose in amusement, and he visibly fought a grin. “I wondered how long that would take.”
“You don’t have to look so smug.” I stomped past him when he stepped back to let me in.
“Are you kidding? I’m surprised you resisted this long.”
“So?” I set the convenience-store bag on his counter and my satchel on a bar stool. “Why do you have her number?”
Cam closed the door and crossed both arms over his chest. “I think the real question is why don’t you? Most people don’t leave their friends just because they leave town.”
Ouch.
“I didn’t mean to lose touch with everyone. I just… I needed some time to myself.” To process the fact that I was suddenly without Cam, under threat of death. “And by the time I felt like getting back in touch, Elle had disappeared. I tracked Anne and Kori just to make sure they were alive, but by then…so much had changed I was afraid I wouldn’t even know them anymore.” And they wouldn’t know me.
“Well, now you’re getting a second chance. You ready?”
“Yeah.” Though being ready didn’t really matter. Anne and Hadley would arrive in half an hour, and we needed to be ready for them. “What’s her number?”
Cam recited and I dialed. Then the phone rang. And rang. And rang. Then my call went to a voice-mail system answered by a computer-generated voice.
I hung up.
“She hasn’t recorded a voice-mail message,” I said, scowling at my new phone as if it had personally betrayed me. I hadn’t expected Kori’s message to provide her real name, but hearing her actual voice would have been nice. “How do I even know I have the right number?”
“It’s the right number. She doesn’t usually pick up if she doesn’t recognize the incoming number. You’ll either have to bug her until she answers or call her on my phone.”
I hit Redial. I hadn’t spoken to her in six years—I didn’t want to know she’d only taken my call because she thought it was Cam. I got her voice mail again, but when I called back a third time, she answered on the first ring.
“Who the fuck is this?”
I smiled. It was good to hear her voice, and from the sound of her greeting, Kori hadn’t changed a bit.
“Five seconds, then I’m hangin’ up and blockin’ your number,” she snapped.
“Kori, it’s Liv—willyouhelpme?” I ran the words together in my rush to be heard before she could hang up.
Silence. Then a deep intake of breath, and I flinched, knowing what was coming—I’d been pissed, too, when Anne asked for my help. “You bitch…” Kori muttered, and I smiled again, surprisingly nostalgic over Korinne’s all-purpose greeting/curse/compliment. “How did you get this number?”
“Hey, Kor,” Cam called, by way of explanation.
“You soft-skulled, marble-balled motherfucker. I’m going to kick your ass next time I see it.”
Cam laughed. “You know, my grandmother always said no woman with a decent vocabulary would resort to profanity.”
Kori huffed. “My grandmother said, ‘Get the hell out of my house, bitch, before I throw you out on your ass.’”
“Well, you did set the kitchen on fire. Twice. With her in it.” Kori had slept on my couch for two weeks before her grandmother finally took her back the second time.
Another impatient huff from over the line. “I fail to see how the facts are relevant here.”
“Don’t you want to know why I called?” I asked, leaning back to prop my boots on Cam’s coffee table, over scarred marks in the wood, proving he’d obviously done the same thing.
“I figure you’ll get to it eventually.”
I grinned at Cam—if I were speaking to anyone else, I’d have felt guilty for how much I planned to enjoy tugging on Kori’s binding. “I need help. Will you please come to Cam’s so we can talk?”
“Hell no—oww, fuck!” she cried, and I could practically see Kori clutching her head from the unexpected pain—proof that our original oath was still intact. “What the hell, Liv?”
“I’ll explain when you get here. Will you come, please?”
“Like I have any choice.”
A second later, the bathroom door squealed open and I turned to find Kori stomping toward me from the darkened hall, still holding her cell. She flipped the phone closed and shoved it into the pocket of her ripped, artfully ratty jeans—like us, she was fully dressed and obviously wide-awake at one in the morning—and propped both hands on her hips in the living-room doorway.
“You better tell me what the hell is going on, or I swear I’ll kill you just so I don’t have to listen to you.”
I laughed. “Good to see you, too.”
She shoved wavy, white-blond hair back from pixieish features twisted into her usual angry scowl. “I’m not fucking kidding.”
“Me, neither.” I’d actually missed her crass, sarcastic affection. Kori only yelled at people she liked. She didn’t bother with anyone else. “It’s been too long.”
“No, it hasn’t been long enough. What the hell happened to the second oath?”
“Anne burned it.” Cam tossed her a beer and Kori caught it one-handed, without even looking. She’d always been eerily well-coordinated, though I could find no correlation between that and her Skill as a Traveler.
“That mousy little bitch…” She twisted the top from her bottle as she crossed the room, then tossed the cap onto the coffee table and dropped onto the couch next to me. “Make this quick.”
“Okay, the short version…” I couldn’t quite escape the feeling of déjà vu. We’d sat just like that—with Anne and Noelle—all the time as teenagers, sharing an honesty everyone else in my life seemed to have outgrown.
Everyone except Kori.
“On Thursday night, Anne’s husband was killed. She asked us to track and kill the murderer, so Cam and I did. But it turns out he was after her daughter, not her husband. Somehow, the Tower syndicate is wrapped up in this….” I said, and she glanced briefly, pointedly at Cam. Did she know about his binding? “But we’re not sure how, or how far up it goes, except we have reason to believe that whichever high-level initiate hired the killer also paid for him to have some kind of blood transfusion—of Skilled blood.”
Kori blinked. Then she took a long, long chug from her bottle, and I couldn’t help wondering if she was just stalling until she could come up with some clever, curse-riddled response. “Do you always jump right into the deep end?” she said finally. “What happened to wading in a little at a time?”
“Wading into what?”
“Into trouble, Liv.” Kori set her bottle on the coffee table and gave me a half amused, half exasperated look. “You’re swimming with the fuckin’ sharks, and you’re too stupid to even know it. Those fins circling you? Those are warning signs. Take heed, and get the fuck out of the water before they eat you alive.”
“I didn’t jump in, I got pushed,” I insisted. “And I can’t just crawl out. We’re talking about Anne’s child, Kori.”
“Anne has kids?”
“One. A daughter. She’s five.”
Kori shrugged. “Well, she musta been an accident. Last time I saw Anne, she was in grad school, taking a bunch of sociology and psychology classes, talking about how pointless it was to bring another kid into the world, when there were already thousands of them in this country alone who didn’t have homes, or a fuckin’ thing to eat.”
“Clearly a direct quote…” Cam said, not bothering to hide a smile.
“Well, things change. People change.” I shrugged. “Now Anne has a daughter, and Jake Tower is trying to kill her.”
Kori leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Okay, first of all, if Tower wants Anne’s kid, it’s not so that he can kill her. It’s so he can keep her.”
“Keep her?” The horrifying conclusions that accompanied that thought were too awful to fully focus on, so I pushed them aside for the more immediate question. “How do you know what Jake Tower does or doesn’t want?” I wasn’t sure I really wanted the answer, but I was suddenly absolutely convinced that I needed it.
She downed the last third of her beer, then waved the empty bottle at Cam, wordlessly demanding another. “Okay, look,” she said finally, turning back to me. “I take this little command appearance to mean that I don’t have any choice but to help you with this.”
“That’s right,” I said, as Cam twisted the top from a fresh bottle and handed it to her.
“Fine.” She took the bottle and drank the neck in one gulp. “The truth is that I won’t hate doing what I can for Anne and her unlikely progeny. If we’re keeping score, I probably owe her anyway.”
In fact, if we were keeping score, Kori would be in debt up to her hair follicles to me and Noelle, too. If Elle were still alive.
She took another gulp, then continued. “But before you start officially asking me for help, you need to understand that there are certain requests I can’t carry out, and making those particular requests would be like pushing my self-destruct button. I’ll implode, like the fuckin’ Death Star.”
“Um, point of fact, I believe the Death Star exploded,” Cam said, leaning back on a bar stool, his elbows propped behind him on the counter. “Twice.”
“Congratulations. Your official super-nerd badge is in the mail,” Kori said, but I couldn’t get past the part about me accidently pushing her self-destruct button. Shit. Shit, shit, shit! “Please tell me that doesn’t mean what I think it means….”
Instead of answering, Kori shrugged out of her jacket and twisted to show me the two black chain links inked on her upper left arm.
“Son of a bitch!” The pressure building inside me had no outlet—I felt as if the top of my head was going to blow off. “Both of you?” I glanced at Cam, and as I’d expected, he showed no sign of surprise. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
No wonder he had her number memorized and she knew where he lived…
“It’s not my place to tell you about Kori’s marks. That’s up to her.” He glanced at her and shrugged. “Or not, if she chooses.”
Kori rolled her eyes. “Like I had any choice but to show her.”
She didn’t. And I didn’t. And Cam didn’t. We were fresh out of choices, and probably running out of time. Working with them was like playing Marco Polo, with all the Polos gagged.
“Does Tower know you’re bound to me and Anne?”
“No, but only because he hasn’t specifically asked. I was searched for marks when I signed on and forbidden to take on any more while I’m in his service. But so far, he’s assumed his are the only bonds I have.”
But if he asked, she’d have to tell him.
Beyond frustrated, I scowled at them both. “How the hell am I supposed to be any use to anyone if neither of you can do what I need done or tell me what I need to know?”
Kori shrugged, and the gesture looked well-worn. “Work around the bindings.”
I’d been working around my bindings to Cavazos for a year and a half, but I rarely had to work around anyone else’s marks….
Cam lowered himself onto the coffee table in front of me, and I didn’t miss Kori’s look of surprise when I let him take my hands. “Yes, our bindings to Tower complicate things. But your own professional life isn’t exactly simple at the moment.”
“My ties to Cavazos are nowhere near as restrictive as yours to Tower. And Ruben isn’t trying to kill a five-year-old!” Though if I failed to find his missing son in the next six months, I was going to wish he’d killed me.
“Wait, what? She’s bound to Ruben Cavazos?” Kori’s eyes widened dramatically, then she grinned and grabbed her beer. “You two take the concept of star-crossed to a whole new level.”
“So glad we amuse you,” I muttered, trying to refocus my thoughts and work around her chain links. “Okay, instead of just flat-out asking you to do some things, which would compel you to do them, I’m going to ask you if you can do what I need done.” I’d rather her help us of her own will anyway.
Kori nodded. “Greatly appreciated.”
“Okay, here goes. When Anne and Hadley get here, can you take them and Cam through the shadows to an apartment if I give you the address?”
“How far away is it?”
“About six miles. Less, as the crow flies.” Much less, as the shadow-walker travels…
“No problem. Anything else?”
I inhaled, debating my next request. “I don’t suppose there’s any way you could…not tell your boss where she is, or that we have her?”
Kori frowned at me. “Have you really been here for years, ’cause you sound like you just fell off the truck, fresh from the fuckin’ farm.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not green. I was just hoping you might be able to…work around your own bindings.”
“I’ll do what I can,” she said. “But if Tower asks me a direct question, I’ll have to answer.”
“I know. But we’d appreciate any sidestepping you’re able to do.” I shrugged and sipped from my bottle of water. “Hopefully, though, it won’t matter either way. We’re putting her deep in the east end, and I can’t see Tower making a move for her there, considering he’d have to physically break into the apartment once we get all the lights on.”
“So, what’s the plan after that?” Kori wore skepticism like some women wore jewelry. “Cower under a desk and hope nothing falls on your head? You can’t hide from Tower forever. Trust me.”
“I know. This is just to keep her safe while we figure out why he wants her and how to stop him. I don’t suppose you could help with any of that?” I watched Kori closely, expecting to learn as much from what I saw on her face as from whatever she’d actually say.
But her expression gave away nothing. It was carefully guarded and practically blank, which told me she knew something. Something big.
“I don’t have any knowledge of Anne’s kid specifically,” she said. “But I know that Tower’s working on a big project and that it requires a lot of…resources. Which may be why he wants her.”
Resources? Project? What kind of project could be so important, so top secret that he’d need a five-year-old to… To what?
“What big project?” Cam demanded, his irritation bordering on anger.
Kori shrugged. “If you don’t know, it’s because he doesn’t want you to know.”
“I want me to know,” he insisted.
“Well, then, it’s too damn bad you don’t have your own mark tattooed on your arm, instead of his,” Kori snapped. “You know how this works, Cam. I don’t make the fuckin’ rules.”
“I also know you don’t mind breaking them whenever possible.” His frown deepened. “Or whenever it benefits you.”
“Look, I would tell you if I could.” Kori set her empty bottle down on the coffee table. “But I’m strictly prohibited from talking about the project. And there’s not a damn thing I can do about that.”
But if I caught her off guard with a good guess, her surprise—or lack thereof—might say as much as her silence.
“He’s selling Skills, isn’t he?” I asked, making a sudden, mental leap between two pieces of the puzzle we hadn’t yet connected. And her surprise—then quick poker face—was like a little gold star for my internal score card. “We thought Tower just paid for Hunter to have the procedure—whatever it is—but actually, he’s the one who provided it.”
“No.” Cam shook his head firmly. “It’s not possible. There’s no way Tower could be up to something that big without me hearing about it.”
Kori laughed out loud. “I’m not sure if you’re overestimating your own abilities or underestimating Jake’s, but you’re—” she hesitated, evidently running up against a verbal line she was forbidden to cross “—inaccurate, at best,” she concluded, her amusement dampened by the restriction.
“And you’re saying he wants Hadley for this little project?” I said, while Cam sat in stunned anger.
“I’m not saying a damn thing,” Kori insisted, and I ignored her words, again focusing on her expression, which seemed to give a little this time. She looked…pleased.
“Does he want to use her blood for a transfusion?” Cam asked, when he caught on to my game. “She’s supposed to be one of his resources?”
Kori crossed her arms over her chest. “I can’t answer that.” Which was an answer in itself. “Nor can I confirm my own involvement in collecting these resources.”
Which was as good as admitting that Tower had made her kidnap people to be used in his new project.
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” I said, to Cam this time. “Hadley hasn’t come into her Skill yet. We don’t even know what Skill she’ll have. If she even has one.” I turned back to Kori. “Anne’s husband wasn’t Hadley’s biological father. Anne doesn’t even know who the father is.” And again I was struck by how odd that was—Anne just wasn’t the type to not know something like that. “It’s entirely possible that her father was unSkilled, and that Hadley’s not going to inherit any ability at all.” And honestly, if she inherited Anne’s Skill, she wouldn’t be much of a prize. Readers were a dime a dozen. “Why would he go through so much trouble to get her if he doesn’t even know whether or not she’ll be Skilled?”
Kori’s brows rose and she looked right into my eyes. “He wouldn’t.”
I glanced at Cam, but he looked as surprised as I was. “You’re saying he knows she’ll be Skilled? How can he possibly know that unless…?” My voice trailed off as synapses misfired in my brain. Surely not…
“Unless what?” Kori prompted.
“Unless he knows who her father is.” I blinked and glanced at Cam, but he only shrugged, as if he was following my train of thought and reluctant to derail it. “But how could Tower know, if Anne doesn’t even know?”
“Maybe she does know.” Kori grabbed my water bottle and helped herself to several gulps. “Our binding doesn’t prevent us from lying to each other….” She left that reminder hanging in the air while she drank the rest of my water.
And suddenly everything I thought I’d known about Anne and her child was thrown into question. I felt as if I was standing on my elementary-school merry-go-round, watching the world spin around me, struggling to identify the now-blurry landmarks I’d known all my life.
I turned to Cam to find him frowning, his grip on his own water bottle tight enough to crack the plastic. If Anne had lied to me, she’d lied to him, too.
“Be right back,” Cam mumbled, then set his bottle down on his way to the bathroom.
When the door closed behind him, I turned to Kori, unable to purge my own curiosity. “So, you and Cam work together? How did that happen?”
She shrugged. “We don’t so much work together as work near each other. I see him all the time, but we’ve only been paired up for a couple of jobs.”
“Was he already bound to Tower when you…signed on?”
“No, but he came on board soon after,” she said. I started to ask how the hell she’d wound up working for Tower, but she spoke before I could. “Speaking of familiar faces, you ever hear from Elle?”
I frowned, and she saw it on my face before I could figure out how best to say it.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Yeah. I’ve tried to track her over and over, and I’m not getting even a blip of an energy signature from her name.” And I didn’t have a blood sample, of course.
Kori nodded. “I had a feeling. Her brother’s been looking for her for a while, without any luck.” Her petite features betrayed no hint of emotion, but I saw through her mask of disinterest. She and Elle were close once, like Anne and I had been.
Then Kori blinked, as if someone had pressed her reset button, and I knew she was going to change the subject—a tried-and-true defense mechanism. She twisted to face me, one arm resting on the back of the couch, and I should have recognized the look on her face. As if she was bored and ready to start trouble. I should have remembered….
“So, I’m kinda surprised to see you and Cam together again, after what happened at that party. Especially with Anne coming over.”
Anne? I shrugged. “That was six years ago. I made a mistake, but that’s all over now.”
Kori blinked, surprised. “You made a mistake?”
“I dumped him in the middle of the party, Kor. He deserved an explanation, at least. Then maybe I wouldn’t have lost six years with him. Maybe I wouldn’t have lost touch with the rest of you, either.”
Kori just frowned at me. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?” Why was my heartbeat suddenly painful? Why did it hurt to inhale?
“Shit.” Kori glanced at the ceiling for a second, then met my eyes again. “I didn’t wanna be the one to tell you. I figured you knew and just decided to sweep it under the rug. Or whatever.”
“Knew what, Kori?”
“Cam slept with Annika. That night at the party. I thought you knew. Hell, I thought that’s why you walked out.” She watched me, waiting for my reaction, but I didn’t have one. Her words bounced around in my head and the hollow echo reverberated the entire length of my body. “Six years ago. Do the math, Liv.”
So I did the math. And suddenly wished I’d never learned how to add.