Twenty-One
Liv led Anne and her daughter into my living room, carrying two backpacks, presumably full of on-the-run essentials. I glanced at Anne, looking for some sign in her eyes to tell me whether or not I was a father. Whether or not my boss was trying to kidnap and drain my own daughter. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at Kori.
“Holy crap, it is you.”
“You, too.” Kori’s gaze passed over Hadley for a single, fleeting instant. “Plus one.”
Liv laughed nervously. “It’s a regular reunion. All we need now is Noelle.”
“I could go get a Ouija board….” Kori offered. Anne flinched and visibly paled, and I realized this was the first time the three of them had been in the same room since the night of the infamous party.
“We should probably get going….” I said, to nudge things along, and Liv nodded.
“First, brief introductions.” Anne held one hand out to Hadley, and the child let herself be pulled forward, huge green-eyed gaze capturing mine. Were my eyes that color, or just a shade darker? Wasn’t my skin paler, except during the height of summer? Or was I looking for dissimilarities that weren’t really there?
“Hadley, this is my friend Kori Daniels.”
Hadley stared up at Kori, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “If you’re friends, how come my mom never talks about you?”
I glanced at Anne in surprise. Hadley was very well-spoken for a five-year-old—not that I had any ruler to measure her by….
Kori started to answer, but I was afraid of what might come out of her mouth, so I stepped in. “They haven’t seen each other in a long time,” I said. “Since before you were born.”
Hadley studied me for a moment, and I wondered if she was seeing those same dissimilarities. Or if she saw something more? Did a kid know when she was looking at her father? If she was looking at her father?
Her green eyes peered up into mine. “Who are you?”
Did that mean she didn’t recognize me, on a biological, cellular level? Or just that she didn’t know my name?
“This is Cam Caballero,” Liv said. “Another…friend. The three of us are going to keep you safe until we can figure out what’s going on and make all this go away.” Hadley nodded solemnly, still clutching her mother’s hand, and Liv continued. “Kori’s going to take you and your mom and Cam to my apartment. She’s going to take you through the shadows. Do you know what that means?” Another nod from the child, and this time I thought I saw a slight spark of interest in her eyes. “Good. We’re going to hang out there with all the lights on for a while so no one else can get in while we figure a few things out. So…you ready to go?”
Hadley nodded one more time, but Anne pulled her back a little. “I think I should go first, so she won’t be there alone.”
“Let me,” I said. “So neither of you will be.”
Anne glanced at me in surprise, and again I tried to read whatever lay beneath her expression, but either she was really good at hiding her thoughts, or there was truly nothing to hide. “Thanks,” she said at last.
“Okay, Romeo, you’re up.” Kori slapped my shoulder, then headed for the darkened hallway. I grabbed a backpack full of prepacked emergency supplies and started to follow her, then felt Liv’s warm hand on my arm.
“Wait,” she said, and I turned just as she wrapped her arms around my neck. Her lips met mine, demanding, and I gave everything I could, a little worried by the intensity of her goodbye. I’d see her again in half an hour. “Don’t turn any lights on,” she said, pulling away reluctantly. “And stay away from the windows. No one can know you’re there, even once I get there.”
“Don’t worry.” I let my forehead touch hers. “I’m not afraid of the dark.” I glanced at Anne, then smiled at Hadley, who was staring at us. “See you two in a few minutes.” Then I followed Kori down the hall to stand in front of the unlit, windowless bathroom.
“You remember how?” she asked, and I nodded, though I wasn’t sure if she could see that in the dark. I’d shadow-walked with her a few times before, for work. It was faster and quieter than driving. “Good. Nothing’s changed. Just hold my hand and take three normal steps forward when I tell you to. I’ll do the rest.”
“You know where we’re going?”
“Yeah. Liv gave me the address, and I checked it out when I left here, ’cause I’m that fuckin’ pro.” She glanced over her shoulder, where I could hear Anne talking to her daughter in the living room, explaining what was going to happen and that it wouldn’t hurt at all. “Okay, start walkin’,” Kori said, taking my hand. So I stepped deliberately into the bathroom, and she walked with me. Three steps later, her hand tightened around mine. “Stop. We’re here.”
I stood still and blinked, and realized almost immediately that the room we’d stepped into felt much bigger than my bathroom, though I couldn’t make out anything other than darkness and the general sense of open space. The air was cooler—obviously the heat wasn’t running, and I was willing to bet it hadn’t been used since the previous winter.
Kori let go of my hand and I blinked rapidly, trying to bring the dark room into focus. “Give your eyes a second to adjust,” she said, backing away from me with confidence while I stood with my arms out to feel for obstacles I couldn’t yet see. Kori was accustomed to the dark. She was at home there.
I blinked again and finally found two windows, defined by the weak light leaking in around what could only be blackout curtains, probably hung for privacy by a very optimistic Ruben Cavazos. My blood boiled over the implications, and only when Kori tugged me toward the silhouette of a couch I could barely make out did I realize the room was slowly coming into focus as my eyes adjusted. Familiar shadows took shape against the darkness in the forms of chairs, small tables and a large, sleek entertainment center on one side of the room.
“Sit, and stay out of the way.” She pushed me onto the center couch cushion, and my temper burned a little brighter when I felt rich, smooth leather beneath my hands, double stitched and trimmed in what felt like rivets. Did he think he could buy Liv with nice furniture, when he hadn’t been able to command his way into her pants? I’d never met anyone as strong-willed as Olivia Warren, and whether Cavazos knew it or not, he probably hadn’t, either.
But in six months, if I couldn’t get her out of her contract, Liv’s free will would be reduced to a furious voice screaming inside her head, while the rest of her submitted to his every demand. He would break her, both body and spirit, and I couldn’t let that happen.
“I’ll be back with Anne in a second,” Kori said, pulling me from my inner rage, and though I didn’t see or hear her step back through the shadows, I could tell by the suddenly empty feel of the room that she was gone.
My eyes continued to adjust in her absence, and less than a minute later, Kori stepped into existence in the middle of the room with Anne in tow. “Here.” Kori held Anne’s hand out to me in the shadows and I stood to take it. “Don’t let her trip over anything while her eyes adjust. I gotta go get the kid.”
Then she was gone again, and Annika’s hand was tight around mine. “I can’t see you, Cam,” she said, and I squeezed her hand to set her at ease, trying not to think about the last time I’d touched her.
“I know. Your eyes will adjust in a minute. Come sit over here, though, or they’ll walk right into you when they get here.” I led her back to the couch and we sat side by side in the awkward silence while I tried to figure out how best to begin the conversation that would reveal Hadley as my daughter. Or not.
But I couldn’t find the words, and she didn’t seem to know they were missing, so we just sat there in the dark, waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
And finally Anne turned to me, her face a darker silhouette against the dim room. “Something’s wrong.”
“It’s only been a couple of minutes,” I insisted, pulling my phone from my pocket to check the time. But that was pointless, because I didn’t know exactly when Kori had left us. “Hadley probably just got scared. She doesn’t really know Kori, and Kori can be kind of scary….” I forced a laugh, but even I wasn’t buying it.
“It’s more than that,” she said in a fragile whisper, and the shaking in her voice worried me. The entire disastrous day suddenly seemed to be illustrated by that one small warbling sound—unsteady, and broken, and a little creepy. Anne was right. It had been too long. “Call Liv.”
I unlocked my keypad and was about to autodial when the phone started vibrating in my hand and Liv’s new number popped up on the screen. I accepted the call and held the phone to my ear. “Liv?”
“Yeah.” Something zipped on the other end of the line, and her footsteps clacked on my kitchen floor. “I’m about to head your way. Is there anything you want me to bring? A change of clothes, or something? I grabbed some easy food from the freezer—hope you don’t mind. I’m not sure what a five-year-old eats, so can you ask Hadley if she likes mac and cheese?”
My heart jumped into my throat and Anne leaned closer so she could hear. “Liv, she’s not here yet. Kori left, and she never came back.”
“What?” The background noise went quiet over the line as Liv stopped rooting through my cabinets, and there was only a heavy, shocked silence as we all came to the same conclusion.
“When did they leave?” I asked, and Anne’s breathing became fast and ragged beside me. I put my free hand over hers, trying wordlessly to calm her.
“A couple of minutes ago,” Liv said, and I heard the familiar groan of my own couch springs as she sat. “How could they not be there?”
“Where is she?” Anne demanded, breathless with encroaching panic. But I had no answer for her. None that she would want to hear, anyway.
“Kori…” Liv whispered. And as badly as I wanted to deny the obvious conclusion, there were no others to jump to. She’d infiltrated our operation at our invitation, divided our forces at our request and taken off with the prize—with Anne’s daughter—because we’d just handed the child over, foolishly trusting in the ties of our past, rather than the unbreakable chain on Kori’s arm.
I, of all people, should have known better.
“She tried to warn us,” Liv continued softly. “She practically told us she was involved in collecting Tower’s ‘resources,’ and she pointed out that her binding to me and Anne doesn’t prevent us from lying to one another. She tried to tell us, but we weren’t listening.”
“No…” Anne groaned, and my hand tightened on hers.
“Anne, can you hear me?” Liv asked over the line, and Anne nodded slowly, clearly in shock.
“She can hear you,” I said.
“Okay, good. I’m headed your way. We’re going to get her back, Anne. I swear we will.” A door closed over the line, and Liv’s boots clomped with the familiar echo of my building’s hallway. “Cam, you call Kori. If we both call we’ll just tie up the line, and she’s more likely to answer you.”
Though if she’d done what we suspected, mine was the last call she’d accept at the moment….
“Don’t panic,” Liv said, and in the background an engine rumbled to life, then her car door slammed shut. “I’m going to find her.”
Then Liv was gone, and I was alone with Anne and the harsh, whistling breaths she was sucking in like air was in short supply. “Annika, calm down.” I twisted to face her on the couch without letting go of her hand, but she just stared at her lap, squeezing my hand so tight it was starting to go numb. “Anne. You’re going to hyperventilate. Slow down…”
But I didn’t know how to help her. I had no experience with emotional trauma, other than what I’d helped Vanessa through, but that was completely different. That experience wouldn’t help me with Anne.
“Why?” she croaked finally, as I dialed Kori’s number one-handed. “Why would she do this? Where would she take Hadley?”
What are you supposed to say when the truth will only make things worse?
“Anne…” I began, and she must have heard something in my voice. Something I didn’t want her to hear, but didn’t know how to hide. She looked up at me, and I realized panic had sharpened her focus, not dulled it. She was stronger than I’d thought, and that really shouldn’t have surprised me.
“You know something,” she said, her focus shifting back and forth between my eyes, silently demanding answers she had every right to, but I really didn’t want to give. “What’s going on, Cam?” I hesitated, and she squeezed my hand so hard I actually heard my knuckles groan. “Tell me!”
“I will, but I need you to stay calm, okay?” I said, and she nodded eagerly, desperate to hear what I desperately didn’t want to say. “Kori is bound to Jake Tower, just like I am. Only she’s bound much more tightly. And hers is a much closer, more direct bond.”
“What does that mean?” Anne demanded, and I gently pulled my hand from her grasp before she could break my fingers off.
“She works for him directly.”
“She…” Anne swallowed thickly, then started over. “Korinne has a direct link to Jake Tower—to the man who’s been after Hadley the whole time—and you just handed my baby to her?” She stood and backed away from me before I could pull her back down to the couch or try to shush her.
“Anne, I swear I didn’t think she’d…” My words trailed off as I realized our mistake. “We should have compelled her. Her binding to you and Liv is older than her marks from Tower—if she’d been under a geas from either of you, it would have trumped her binding to Tower.”
Or, if her binding to Tower was extraordinarily strong, trying to follow both conflicting bindings would have killed her.
We’d been playing nice, trying not to put her under conflicting orders, but Tower never plays nice. If he ordered her to take the child and she had no conflicting directive, she’d have no choice but to do what he wanted.
“Call her!” Anne demanded, gesturing to the phone I still held in my lap. “Get that bitch back here with my baby!”
Speechless, I could only nod and finish dialing. A second later, Kori’s computer-voiced message system picked up, inviting me to leave a message. So I did.
“Korinne, where are you?” I said into the phone, and Anne’s shadowed face gaped at me. I’d considered ranting and screaming like she probably wanted me to, but pissing off the woman who had her daughter—at least, I hoped Kori still had Hadley—seemed stupid at best. “You can still fix this, Kori. You can bring her back. You still have time to do the right thing….”
“Give me the phone,” Anne demanded, and I started to pull my cell away from her until I realized what she was doing—pulling on strings we should have pulled in the first place.
I handed her my phone and she practically shouted into it. “Korinne, it’s Anne. I need you to—” Then she screamed in rage and frustration and flipped the phone closed. The machine had hung up on her.
A single heartbeat later, she flipped the phone open again and hit Redial, and this time she was talking before the beep even faded from my ears. “Kori, it’s Anne. Will you please bring my daughter back, unharmed? Immediately,” she added as an afterthought. Then she slammed the phone closed and dropped it into my lap.
Anne stood, pacing furiously in front of me.
“You have to calm down,” I said, trying to tug her back onto the couch, but she dodged my reach as if my hands were on fire. “Give her a chance to listen to the message. You have to believe that if she had any other choice, she wouldn’t have done this.”
“No, I don’t have to believe that.” Anne spoke through clenched teeth, and I was sure that if her face weren’t layered by thick shadows, her cheeks would have been flushed red with fury and fear. “What I have to believe is that Korinne stole my child. My daughter is out there somewhere, with people she doesn’t know, in a place she’s never been. I don’t know if they’re hurting her, and if they are, there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. I don’t know if she’s cold, or in the dark, or all alone, or in pain. She’s probably crying, calling for me, and I’m not there, and she doesn’t know why.”
“Anne, it’s going to be okay.” That was a lie, and we both knew it, but that lie was all I had to offer her, and I’d never felt so helpless in my entire life.
Anne turned on me, fists clenched in shadows at her sides. “No, it is not okay. It may never be okay again. I don’t know what they’ve told her. What if they told her I don’t want her anymore? What if they told her this is because of something she did? Some people are monsters, Cam. We both know that, but I’ve spent the last few years telling her there’s no such thing as monsters so she can sleep at night, and now Kori, and Tower, and some husband-murdering bastard have made a liar out of me, and even when I get Hadley back, she’s never going to trust me again.”
She sucked in a deep breath, then more words fell from her mouth before I could interrupt. “My only function in this whole world is to protect that little girl. It’s part job, part moral mandate and part intrinsic maternal urge I never expected and could never even begin to explain. I’m supposed to protect her, and I failed, and she could be dead or dying, or just scared to death, and I can’t help her!”
Her tears were flowing freely now, and each breath was a hiccuping sob. I tried to pull her close, but she backed out of reach again and banged her hip on an end table. “No. Don’t touch me. I don’t want your sympathy or your pity. This is your fault, Cam, and you will help me fix it.” She scrubbed her cheeks with the palms of both hands, then stood straight to wag one finger at me like my grandmother had done all my life. “So you…get Kori back here, and you make sure she has Hadley with her. Or I swear on my own soul, Cam Caballero, I will kill you and go after her myself.”