Eleven
Sera
Kris kissed me, and for a second, I forgot that we’d broken into one of Julia’s buildings—or was it my building?— taken down two of her security guards and could be assailed by another at any time. I even forgot how pissed off I was at how ungrateful he was for the fact that I’d just saved his bare torso from certain lethal perforation.
And I was hyperaware of just how bare that torso was, framed only by his shoulder holster—the strappiest accessory I’d ever seen a man wear. And damn, did he wear it well.
Then everything that was wrong with that moment came roaring back, and I shoved him away, trying not to notice how firm his chest felt beneath my hands. “Why did you do that?”
His brows rose, and a smile lurked at the corners of his mouth. Which I was definitely not staring at. “Why did you bash that man on the head with a toaster?”
“Because you needed help with him.”
“And now I need to be kissed. Wanna give it another shot?”
“No.” I was extraglad there was no Reader around to call me on my lie. “This isn’t the time or the place...”
His grin developed slowly, like a Polaroid from my mom’s old camera. “So, it’s not kissing me you object to—it’s the time and place?”
“I object to this entire conversation. We told Kori we’d destroy Ian’s blood.”
Kris nodded, but his smile wouldn’t fully retreat, and I didn’t entirely hate that fact. He looked at the man on the floor and kicked him in the side once, to make sure he was really unconscious. “Oh, good. He’s still breathing.”
I exhaled in relief. I’d never killed anyone, and though I would have done it if I had to, to protect someone I cared about, I was immeasurably relieved to have avoided the worst-case scenario.
Kris’s smile was back in full force. “He’s also covered with bread crumbs. As are you.” His gaze traveled south of my collarbone and I looked down to find that the front of my shirt—mostly the upper curve of my breasts—was indeed dusted with bread crumbs from the toaster I’d hefted. “I’m pretty sure I’m either supposed to drop you in a deep fryer or broil you on high for an hour.”
I picked up the toaster from where I’d dropped it, then set it on the nearest table. “Like you know the difference.”
Kris chuckled at his own expense. “Nice shot, by the way, with the spray bottle. You’re like some kind of ninja housekeeper.” He set the guard’s gun on the table next to my toaster. “There’s a joke in there somewhere. It involves a French maid’s uniform and a wide selection of deadly weapons disguised as ordinary mops and brooms.”
“Are you seriously making fun of me after I just saved your ass?”
“I’m not making fun of you. I’m just enjoying a little humor at your expense.” He knelt next to the guard’s arm and pulled a folding knife from his own pocket. Before I could object to the cold-blooded murder of an unconscious man, Kris pulled the guard’s sleeve away from his upper arm and sliced through the material.
I blinked in surprise as he folded the knife, then returned it to his pocket and ripped the man’s sleeve open wider, revealing two interlocking rust-colored rings.
“Binding marks?” My mother had taught me that much, but she hadn’t known the specifics, for good reason—she’d kept us too far away from the Tower syndicate to glean more than could be learned by watching the news and scouring the internet to make sure there was never any mention of Jake’s older, illegitimate child. “What does the color mean?”
Kris’s brows rose in surprise. “You really did just fall off the turnip truck, huh?” I frowned, but before I could come up with an insult of my own, he continued, “You truly don’t know?”
“I told you, I don’t work for the Towers. I never met any of them until two days ago.” Two unbelievably long days ago.
“I’m actually starting to believe that.” He let go of the man’s sleeve, but left it gaping over the tattoos. “Okay, here’s your Skilled syndicate primer. A term is five years long, and for each term you commit to, you get one ring, up front. The ink is usually mixed with the blood of either the Binder or the head of the syndicate—in this case, Jake Tower—to bind it in blood. This guy has two rings, so he’s served his first five years and is somewhere in the middle of his second enlistment. When that term’s over—or his binding is broken by other means—the marks will fade instantly to a dull gray. We call those dead marks.”
“And the color?” I repeated, pleased to realize I’d followed his explanation with no trouble.
“Rust-colored rings, like this one, mean unSkilled labor, no matter what job the bearer holds. Secretaries, bodyguards, tech, clerks, lawyers, whatever. If you have no Skill, your mark is rust-colored. Except for those in the...um...oldest profession.”
“Assassins?” I guessed, and he laughed out loud.
“Forget the turnip truck. You were born yesterday. I’m talking about prostitutes.”
“Why on earth would prostitution be the oldest profession?”
His grin widened. “I don’t know. That’s just what they say. I guess sex is the universal currency. But my point is that those in the skin trade are all unSkilled also, but they have red marks. This guy—” he tossed an openhanded gesture at the guard “—is just a hired gun. No Skill.”
“I can’t believe I’m about to ask this, but...why didn’t you just kill him? Because he didn’t actually take a shot at you?”
Kris pulled a zip tie from the pocket of his jeans, then hauled the unconscious man toward the refrigerator by one arm. “That, and because dead men are notoriously difficult to interrogate.” He propped the guard in a sitting position against the front of the fridge, then zip-tied the man’s right hand to the refrigerator door handle, so that his arm stuck up at an odd angle. Then Kris patted him down until he found a cell phone, which he tossed into the drawer two down from the fridge—within reach, if the guard stretched far enough to strain his shoulder.
“Hand me a cup of water.” Kris gestured toward a plastic cup sitting on the edge of the sink.
“What’s the magic word?”
“Abracadabra. But I fail to see the relevance.”
I crossed both arms over my chest. “Please. The magic word is please. Didn’t your mother ever teach you that?”
“All my mother ever taught me was how to die in a car wreck. Gran taught me quite a few interesting words, but please was not among them. And, for the record, please is not a magic word. It has no supernatural properties at all that I can think of.” He came one step closer, staring straight into my eyes with such intensity that I couldn’t have looked away if I’d tried, and again, I was hyperaware that he was half-naked. And that I wanted to know what that half felt like....
“Tequila’s the magic drink. Everyone over the age of twenty-one and south of the Mason-Dixon line is familiar with its magical properties.” Kris took another step, and I held my ground as my heart beat harder, wondering how close he would come. Or when I’d stop him. “Beans are the magical fruit, or so the boys in my third-grade class told me.”
One more step, and we were less than a foot apart, and the very air seemed to sizzle between us. “Love is the international language, death is the great equalizer and no is the word most likely to turn a good man into just a friend, a drunk man into a jackass and misdemeanor-class asshole into a felon. But please...” He shrugged. “Please works no miracles at all.”
With that, he reached past me for the cup, his arm brushing mine, his lips inches from my cheek. When he turned on the faucet and filled the cup with cold water, without ever breaking my gaze, I realized I was breathing too hard. As if I’d just run a marathon.
And in that moment, I became determined to pull the word please from Kris Daniels’s mouth and show him just what kind of magic it could do.
“This is the fun part,” he whispered, so close I could practically feel his heartbeat through his bare skin and my shirt. My fingers skimmed his stomach before I even realized my own intention, and he exhaled against my neck, then just...lingered.
He was right. This was the fun part.
Then Kris pulled back and grinned at me. He dropped into a squat next to the unconscious man, his blue-eyed gaze sparkling with heat, and mischief, and beneath that, single-minded determination to do what had to be done.
Oh. That was the fun part. Interrogation. I felt my cheeks flush.
“Ready?”
It took me a second to realize he was talking to me. I nodded, still trying to puzzle my way through whatever had almost happened between us. Then Kris tossed water from the cup into the guard’s face.
The man sputtered and blinked, and as soon as he was awake, he hissed in pain. “My eyes...” he moaned. “They burn. I can’t see.”
“That’s too bad.” Kris looked up at me and smiled one more time. “The view’s amazing,” he said, and my heart beat too fast. Then he pressed the barrel of his silenced gun into the hollow between the man’s collarbones, and everything about him changed. Hardened. “Where the hell is my sister?”
“What?” The guard sputtered, then licked his lips, staring at nothing, the whites of his eyes an angry red color. “I don’t know. Who’s your sister? Who are you?”
“My sister is Kenley Daniels, and you motherfuckers took her. My sister is a part of me...” He glanced at the guard’s name tag. “Ned. Losing her is like losing my own hand, and if I don’t get her back, unharmed, poste fucking haste, you’re gonna find out what it’s like to lose one of your parts....”
The guard swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed above the barrel of the gun. “I swear I don’t know your sister, or where she is.”
“He may be telling the truth,” I said, and the man’s unfocused, red-rimmed eyes rolled in my direction.
“I’m perfectly willing to believe that this idiot knows almost nothing, in the larger sense. But he was bound to Jake Tower, which means he knows more than he wants us to think he knows.” Kris stared into the man’s irritated eyes. “Isn’t that right, Ned?”
“I swear, I don’t—”
“The real problem will be making him tell us something he’s been contractually prohibited from revealing. That’s where this gets interesting.” He turned back to Ned. “When did you reenlist? How long ago?”
“Three years.” Ned answered quickly, and with no sign of resistance pain, and I realized that meant we hadn’t yet hit the classified information. I’d never seen anyone suffering from serious resistance pain, and I have to admit, I was a little curious.
“Then you know my sister. She was Tower’s top binder, and by the time you reenlisted for your second term, she would have been doing most of his bindings. Petite. Blonde. Answers to the name Kenley Daniels.”
I saw recognition in his eyes, as if a light switch had been flipped behind them. “Yeah. I never heard her name, but that’s her. Quiet thing. Kinda intense.”
“Much better,” Kris said. “Did you see her here? It would have been today. This afternoon.”
“Kris,” I said when the man shook his head, obviously confused. “She was never here. Julia wouldn’t have had enough time to put her here, realize that was a mistake, then move the entire operation. There’s no telling how long ago they moved the...project.”
Kris frowned, thinking through what I’d said, and I shifted to face the guard. “Do you know what they did here, Ned?”
He didn’t shake his head, but he didn’t answer either, and when his entire body tensed, I realized he was waiting for pain—either from a blow from Kris or from resistance pain. Which surely meant we were very close to information he wasn’t allowed to give us.
“Did you see any of it, before they moved everything?” I squatted next to Kris, and the guard nodded, but his mouth never opened. “You don’t have to give us specifics,” I said, and he looked marginally relieved. “We already know what Tower was doing. But here’s the part you do have to answer.”
He tensed again, immediately, and I paused to see if Kris wanted to take over, but he seemed content to let me ask the questions. Ned was obviously less intimidated by me. Maybe because I was a woman. Or maybe because I didn’t have a gun pressed into his throat.
“What we really need to know is where they went. Do you know where the project has been relocated?” Because if Kenley was with the donors—even if they weren’t actively bleeding her—she’d be wherever they were.
“I don’t know. I swear that’s the truth.”
“He’s lying.” Kris’s finger tightened on the trigger, and my heart thumped harder. “See how scared he looks?”
“He’s scared because you’re seconds away from shooting his head clean off his body. Shut up for a minute and let me talk to him.”
Kris’s eyes narrowed in irritation, but he didn’t object.
I turned the man’s head by his chin, so he was looking at me, though he didn’t seem to actually see me. “Did you help them pack and load?”
“Yes!” Ned was obviously relieved to have an answer in the affirmative for us. He looked like a man clinging to a life raft in the middle of the ocean. “There were vans, and—” His word ended abruptly in a groan of pain as his forehead wrinkled in a grimace. Resistance pain. He’d hit the silence barrier.
“Did you hear anything while you were loading? Did anyone say anything about where they were going? Anything at all?”
“I don’t know.” Ned shook his head. “I can’t remember.”
Kris pressed the gun harder into his throat. “Think. Think like your life depended on it.”
Ned swallowed again and closed his eyes.
“Did they seem to be expecting lots of gas or bathroom breaks?” I asked. “Did anyone mention getting car sick on long trips or back roads? Were they worried about hitting rush-hour traffic? Anything like that?”
Kris glanced at me in surprise and—if I’m not mistaken—respect. Which irritated the hell out of me. Why was he surprised to find out I wasn’t brain damaged?
“No. Nothing like that. But one of the nurses was complaining about warehouse bathrooms. Something about poor lighting.”
“That’s it?” Kris glared down at him. “That’s all you’ve got? They moved to a warehouse? That could be anywhere. Tower must own dozens of them.”
“What do you expect?” the guard demanded, suddenly almost bold in spite of the gun still pressed into the base of his throat. “I’m the guy they left behind to guard an empty building. How high would you expect that guy’s security clearance to be?”
“He’s got a point.”
Kris groaned in frustration. “Fine.” He withdrew his gun and backed away from the guard slowly, still aiming at the man’s head. “The rest of this is up to you,” he said, and it took me a minute to realize he was talking to me, because he was still looking at the guard zip-tied to the refrigerator.
“What’s up to me?”
“Whether he lives or dies.”
The guard stiffened again, and my heart slammed against my chest as I stood and backed away from them both. “Why? Why is that up to me?”
“Because you have the most to lose if we let him live. Julia already knows what I’m up to. Your participation in our mission to destroy her will be news, and not the kind of news she’s going to take well. So...your call. Shoot him or leave him?”
As far as I knew, the guard didn’t deserve death. He hadn’t actually shot at Kris. He’d been cooperative to the best of his ability, in spite of restrictive bindings. But Kris was right. If we left him, he’d have no choice but to answer any question Julia asked, assuming my understanding of his bindings was anywhere near accurate. Then she’d know that I...
That I what? What could she learn from interrogating Ned? That I wasn’t being held hostage anymore? That I was willingly working with the enemy? Those conclusions couldn’t be hard for her to draw on her own, considering that she’d been willing to kill me not once, but twice—she had to know I was the one who’d snuck back in to raid my own car.
“Let him live.”
Kris’s aim didn’t drop. “You sure?” he asked, and I nodded, but he only frowned. “Can I talk to you in the hall, please?”
I followed him out of the room reluctantly and pulled the door almost closed in the all-white hallway. “What?”
“I just want to make sure you understand how dangerous leaving him alive really is.”
“Because I’m a simpleton, who can’t be trusted to make a decision without a man’s guidance and supervision?” Ass-hat.
“Calm down, Wonder Woman. That’s not what I’m saying.” He leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms over his bare chest, lowering his voice to a whisper. “I’m just saying that if you’re new enough to the workings of the Skilled syndicate to be unfamiliar with the color-coding system, you may be even less familiar with the level of cruelty and depravity that goes on within the privacy of the Tower estate.”
“Okay. Fair point. But I figure that—worst-case scenario—leaving him alive will give Julia Tower reason to want me dead. Right?” I asked, and he nodded. “News flash—that already appears to be the case. Which means we have no legitimate reason to kill the poor asshole bound into her service.”
Into my service, if...
If what? What would it take to claim my inheritance? If I could claim the bindings she had temporary control of, could I then break them? Could I release the people Kenley Daniels had bound into indentured servitude?
A new world of possibilities blossomed before me, and my head swam as they swirled around me in a vortex of blood, and oaths, and death, and freedom. Beneath all that, Kori’s insistence that sometimes freedom only comes through death made me nervous, both for Ned and for myself.
Kris’s gaze narrowed on me, and I couldn’t tell if he approved of my logic. The part I’d explained aloud, anyway. And finally he nodded. “Okay. We’ll let him live. Let’s find some bleach and clean up, so we can get out of here. I’ll text Kori for an update on Ian.”
“There’s bleach in the bathroom,” I said, already on my way back into the snack room to retrieve it. Kris was pressing Send on his phone when I handed him the jug of bleach and a roll of hand towels. “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on Ned. Unless you’re as bad at cleaning as Gran says you are at cooking.”
His brows rose. “Trick question. Either I admit incompetence, or I get stuck with the dirty work.”
“You catch on quick.” I gave him a smile that felt like a lie on my lips, then gestured for him to hurry.
Once he’d disappeared into the room where Ian had been shot, stepping over the dead guy in his path, I quietly closed the break room door and knelt next to Ned, armed with his gun. He didn’t need to know I had no idea how to use it.
Ned scowled at me. “What, you’re going to shoot me now, after you talked that psycho into letting me live?”
“He’s not a psycho. Though I understand the mistake. I thought the same thing when I first met him.”
“Did he tie you to a refrigerator and hold a gun to your throat?”
“No. He kidnapped me and trapped me in a house with no exits. So I know he’s an acquired taste. But this...” I waved the gun for emphasis, and he flinched as if it might go off in my hand, which made me suddenly nervous, even though the safety was engaged. “This has nothing to do with him. I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”
“I’m guessing I have no choice but to answer?” he snapped with a glance at the gun, and I shrugged.
“That’s what we’re about to find out. Do you know who I am, Ned?”
He shook his head and tried to reposition his arm, which was still zip-tied to the refrigerator handle over his head. “Why? Should I?”
“Do you know what happened at the Tower estate yesterday?”
“No. What happened?”
“Kris Daniels—the guy who just agreed to let you live—broke in through the darkroom and shot three of the guards. It was kind of—” badass “—a big deal. Julia didn’t...send out a bulletin or something? Some kind of security alert? Isn’t that the kind of thing she’d want people to be aware of?”
The guard shook his head slowly, his forehead furrowed as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to believe me. “That’s exactly the kind of thing she wouldn’t want anyone else to know. Because it makes her look weak. Vulnerable. Something like that could never have happened when her brothers were alive.”
But, of course, it had happened to them, too. Obviously Jake had stomped out any rumors before they could spread. Julia must have been taking notes.
“Assuming any of that actually happened...” Ned added.
“It did. I was there, and when he escaped through the shadows, he dragged me with him. Thus—” I shrugged “—the kidnapping.”
Ned looked unconvinced, but I didn’t have time to try to rectify that. So I pressed on. “If Julia were to tell you to...I don’t know...sing the national anthem, would you have to do it?”
He nodded, obviously confused. “That, and anything else she wanted. Why? What’s this about?”
I took a deep breath. Let the great inheritance experiment begin....
“Ned, my name is Sera Tower. My father was Jake Tower. I’m his oldest living...um...”
“Child” felt too familiar—I’d never known him as a father and I wouldn’t change that for the world. But “descendant” felt too distant, as if Jake and I had lived in different time periods. So I went with...
“...offspring. I’m his oldest living offspring. And as such, your binding actually belongs to me, not to Julia Tower.”
“Yeah. Right.” Ned snorted, then shifted again, trying to take pressure off the arm tied to the refrigerator. “And I’m a midget in forty-eight-inch heels.”
“It’s true. That’s what I was doing there yesterday. That’s why Julia’s trying to kill me—because if people find out she hasn’t truly inherited her brother’s kingdom, she’ll be out on her ass.”
Ned’s focus narrowed on me, more in interest now than in skepticism. Everyone loves a scandal. “If you’re Jake Tower’s heir, why have I never heard of you?”
“Because I’m a secret. Probably an embarrassing one. Jake Tower, the family man, had an illegitimate child.”
“Why the hell would he leave everything to an illegitimate child no one’s ever heard of?”
“I don’t think he meant to.” I shifted on my heels. Squatting on the linoleum was getting uncomfortable. “In fact, I don’t think he knew I existed. My mother spent most of my life hiding me from him, and I’m starting to think she was very, very good at that.” No reason for him to know that I was even better at hiding myself—and anyone within my jamming zone. “This inheritance seems to be the result of a sloppily phrased last will and testament. But the only thing I’m really sure of is that Julia Tower wants me dead. If she gets her way, you may never be free of her.” I was taking a gamble with my next statement—assuming he wasn’t happy with his current state of employment. “If she doesn’t...if I inherit the bindings...I’ll let you all go.”
Ned rolled his eyes and pushed himself into a straighter sitting position with his free hand. “Right. You’re just going to break every binding your father ever had sealed. Dissolve his life’s work. Give up unbelievable fortune.”
I knew I had him when he called Jake my father.
“Yup.” I nodded firmly. “I don’t want to run the mafia.”
His gaze narrowed until his eyes were mere slits, staring at me more in puzzlement than in disbelief now. “You’re serious. You’d give it all up? Why?”
“Because I don’t have any criminal inclination, nor do I have the right to control your life. But I am going to ask you to help me out with a little test.”
“What kind of test?”
I stood and pulled open the last kitchenette drawer, where I’d found a box of plastic forks. They wouldn’t have been much good as a weapon, when I’d needed one, but they’d be fine for the job I had in mind. I pulled one fork out and dropped it on his lap, careful to say out of reach of all three of Ned’s unbound limbs. “Stab your right arm.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Pick up the fork in your left hand and stab your right arm, between your elbow and your wrist.” My theory was that in making him understand and believe that I truly was Jake Tower’s heir, I’d taken his binding back from Julia Tower, without her even knowing it. But the only way I could think of to test that and be sure he wasn’t faking—playing along, so he could report back to her—was to ask him to do something he’d never do, unless he really had no choice but to obey me.
No one who understood how much power blood truly holds would ever willingly spill his own in front of a stranger.
“I’m not gonna—” Ned flinched, and his left hand flew to his forehead. Resistance pain; it was easy to recognize. Whether or not he was faking was harder to determine. “You’re a bigger bitch than she is! Julia Tower never made me spill my own blood!” he insisted, still rubbing his forehead.
“Sorry about that. Can’t be helped. Do it. Now.”
His hand shook, hovering in the air between his forehead and the fork on his lap, and I watched, fascinated, as he silently weighed his options.
Then I heard faint footsteps in the hall, and my pulse raced so fast I got dizzy for a second. “Sera? You okay?”
“Yeah. Fine,” I called through the door. Then I turned back to Ned. “I don’t have time for you to think this through. Stab yourself in the fucking arm. Now!”
Ned groaned in pain, but his hand picked up the fork, squeezing it so tight his skin turned white from the pressure.
“Do it!” I repeated in a fierce whisper.
“Aaahh!” he shouted, resisting mentally, even as his body obeyed. Even as he stabbed himself in the arm, halfway between his elbow and the wrist lashed to the refrigerator door handle.
The fork stuck in his skin, standing up like a tower in the middle of his arm, blood welling slowly around the four buried tines.
“Sera!” Kris’s footsteps grew faster and louder. “Sera!”
“I’m fine!” I shouted, staring in fascination as dark drops of blood dribbled down the side of Ned’s arm and onto his pants. His breathing was ragged. Uneven. But that had to be from his efforts to resist—the fork hadn’t penetrated deeply enough to do any real damage.
“Fucking bitch!” he growled through clenched teeth, and I almost shouted in triumph. He clearly hadn’t wanted to stab himself. Which meant he’d had no choice. Which meant that his binding had transferred from Julia to me. “You are one of them.”
I blinked at him in surprise. Then in horror. I wasn’t one of them. Not in the way that he meant it.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my words running together in my haste to say what had to be said before Kris got there. “Don’t tell anyone what I’ve told you. Ever. Other than that, you are a free man. I release you from your binding.”
Ned’s eyes widened and he craned his neck, trying to see something on his arm, and as Kris threw the door open behind me, I saw what Ned couldn’t. The marks on his arm had faded to a muted gray.
Shit! Kris would see. I lurched forward and pulled the flap of his sleeve over the mark as Kris’s arm wrapped around my waist and hauled me away from Ned.
“Are you trying to give him back his gun?” Kris demanded, setting me on my feet out of the guard’s reach, which is when I realized I still held the pistol. And that Ned had been reaching for it with his left hand when Kris pulled me out of reach.
The ungrateful bastard was going to shoot me! After I set him free!
But then, I had made him stab his own arm, then freed him of any restriction from hurting me. Maybe I hadn’t thought that one through very well...
“What the hell happened?” Kris stared at the fork in Ned’s arm.
“Ask your bitch,” Ned snapped, and I was relieved to see that he was evidently still bound to silence, even though his employment binding had been broken.
Kris glanced at me, muttering something about how I wasn’t anyone’s bitch. Which almost made me smile. But I could only shrug in answer. “I don’t know. He found a fork, and before I could take it away from him, he just...stabbed himself in the arm. It was weird.”
Kris frowned as though he didn’t believe me—go figure—but it took most of my concentration to keep from grinning in return. I’d done it. I’d figured it out. Now, if I could figure out how to do the same thing I’d done to Ned, only on a large scale, I could single-handedly put that bitch Julia Tower out of business for good.