Fourteen
Ian
For almost a minute after she left, I stared at the door, willing her to come back, though I had no idea what I’d say if she actually did. How could she let him use her like that? How could she let him just give her to a man she barely knew? What fucking century were we living in?
And the worst part was that she’d thought I’d known. She’d thought I was party to forced prostitution and rape. That I was playing some kind of sadistic game with her, just waiting for the perfect moment to—
I couldn’t think the words, but I couldn’t purge them from my mind, either. I was caught between thinking it and not thinking it, an endless cycle of self-torture that built inside me until rage finally burst out of me like shrapnel from an explosion.
My hand closed around something I didn’t even see and I hurled it without looking. Ceramic crashed into the door and rained shards of broken table lamp on the floor. The crystal shade shattered, reflecting tiny rainbows all over the room, but the cheerful colors only further infuriated me. So I stomped the shards into the floor until I couldn’t see a single color.
Then I sank onto the couch with my head in my hands, trying to draw the chaos in my head into some semblance of order.
The mission was screwed. Steven was screwed. Kori would never trust me enough now to let me anywhere near her sister, and the more I learned about her and her reasons for serving Tower in the first place, the less likely it seemed that she ever would have anyway.
And just as suddenly as that thought occurred to me, I realized I didn’t care. I couldn’t let my brother die, but I couldn’t hurt Kori to save him. She’d been through enough, and even if the grief from losing Kenley didn’t destroy her, being left to bear the brunt of Tower’s rage certainly would.
With sudden insight, I understood what I should have known all along. If I killed Tower’s Binder and toppled his empire, he’d kill Kori for letting it happen. And I wasn’t naive enough to think her death would be either quick or painless.
I dug my phone from my pocket and my fingers pressed buttons automatically. Aaron worked the night shift, but he answered on the third ring. “Is it done?”
“I can’t do it, Aaron.” I let my head fall against the back of the couch, one hand over my eyes to cut the glare from the light overhead. “I can’t kill her.”
“Fuck.” For a moment, there was only silence, except for the distant sound of heavy machinery running in the background. Then Aaron groaned. “I’m coming over.”
Several seconds later he walked out of the darkened bathroom in stained jeans and a T-shirt stamped with his company logo. He took a glance around, then headed straight for the open minibar, where Kori’s half-empty bottle still sat. “So what’s with all the drama?” He sniffed her minibottle, then drained it. “Go ahead and air your girly feelings so I can laugh at them, then kick your ass back into the game.”
“This isn’t a game. I can’t do it.”
“Which part?” He grabbed another tiny bottle, then dropped into an armchair and stared at me over the coffee table. “The part where you get wined and dined and put up in a fancy hotel room while Steven and Meghan are slowly dying in a great deal of pain? Or the part where you get to spend all week with a beautiful woman at your beck and call, while I work my ass off in a factory to keep all three of us fed and clothed while they can’t work? Because in case you can’t tell from the ripe scent of man-sweat I’m rubbing into your chair, in the real world, this doesn’t qualify as a hardship.” He spread both arms to indicate the luxury Tower had thrown at me.
“Tower is psychotic. He’s fucked her up beyond what I can explain, and I can’t kill her sister after everything she’s already been through.”
“So we’re talking about the sister, not the target?” he said, and I nodded. “What’s she been through?”
“She won’t tell me. But it’s bad. They talk about her like she’s a piece of trash he just hasn’t gotten around to throwing out yet. And he’s using her like human currency.”
“Meaning…?”
“He told her to sleep with me.”
Aaron shrugged and cracked open the minibottle. “I’m still waiting for the psychotic part.”
“Aaron, he fucking gave her to me, like she’s some thing he can use however he wants. Like she’s part of the signing bonus. How would you like to see your sister treated like that?”
Aaron leaned forward in his chair and tossed the bottle cap onto the coffee table, where it slid across the surface and clattered to the floor. “My sister is in no danger of being treated like a slave or a whore because she wasn’t stupid enough to sign away her free will in exchange for paycheck and a tattoo.”
“Kori only joined to protect her sister, and she signed on as security. She never agreed to be used like this.”
Aaron drained his minibottle and stretched to set it on the end table. “She had to know it was a possibility, and you knew what this would be like. You know he has whores as well as assassins and you know damn well that one’s just as dangerous as the other. But you swore to my sister that you would save them both. Now you’re backing out because you’re too sensitive to call a whore a whore?”
“She’s not a whore.” Frustrated, I scrubbed my face with both hands, wishing I had something to shoot, or hit, or stab, so I could pretend I was killing Jake Tower with all the enthusiasm that task deserved. “You should have seen her. She couldn’t even leave without my permission, and I think telling me that actually made her sick.”
“Did you fuck her?”
“Hell no! I didn’t touch her.”
“Then you’ll come out smelling like roses. You’re the honorable man who didn’t take the bait. So pull up your big-boy pants and apologize for the misunderstanding. Explain that you didn’t realize this was supposed to be a full-service tour and you would never have made her do anything she didn’t want to do. The facts will back you up on that, since you didn’t touch her.” Aaron shrugged. “Voilà. You’re right back on schedule.”
“On schedule to kill her sister.”
“Well…yeah. That is what you came here to do.”
“When exactly did you forget that Kori’s a victim in this?” I demanded.
He rolled his eyes. “Around the time I started asking questions about her.” Aaron sighed and stared at his hands for a moment, then made eye contact. “After I dropped you off this afternoon, I called a few of my local contacts and asked them what they knew about Korinne Daniels, other than the fact that she’s evidently back from the dead.”
“And…?” I said, certain I already knew at least part of what he had to say.
“The word from a couple of former syndicate members—guys willing to talk so long as their names never come up—is that she impressed Tower from the start. Not his most powerful Traveler, but she’s a hell of a fighter and she’s got nerves of steel. Word has it she disabled half of his household security team in a matter of minutes, just to get Tower’s attention. That got her assigned to his personal security detail pretty quickly. One of the guys says he took a special interest in her. Nothing dirty, from what I can tell—”
“He doesn’t screw around on his wife,” I supplied.
Aaron nodded. “But he got a kick out of seeing her take down men twice her size. He treated her like a niece, and while she was in good standing, her sister was untouchable—a personal favor from Tower.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning hands-off. Completely. No one hit her, no one screwed her. No one so much as breathed too close to Kenley Daniels, like she was made of glass. It was like that for years. But then something went wrong.”
“She fell,” I whispered, hearing Kori say the words in my head. Aaron frowned at me in question, but I just waved him on. “What happened?”
“None of my sources were still active in the syndicate recently enough to tell me that, so I had to go digging on the other side of the river.” Aaron grinned. “You’re welcome.”
“Thanks. Now spill.”
“I found a loose tongue—one of Cavazos’s men—who claimed that a couple of months ago, Ruben Cavazos led a small team right into the heart of Tower’s territory. They broke into his fucking house, in the middle of the night. I haven’t been able to verify that with any secondary source—makes sense that Tower would have covered up an embarrassment that big—but the timing lines up.”
“You think Kori had something to do with the break-in?”
Aaron shrugged. “She was still working security at the time, and within days of when Cavazos’s man says this happened, she disappeared. I mean, gone. No one saw her. No one heard from her. I got ahold of her sister’s cell record—I’d tell you how, but then I’d have to kill you—and it looks like she was panicking. She called their brother several times a week, and she also called this chick who works for Cavazos, of all people. So I looked her up. Turns out this other chick—Olivia Warren—went to high school with your girl Kori.”
Olivia… Could this be the Olivia that Kenley bound Kori to when they were kids?
“Which gives Kori a connection to Tower’s biggest enemy,” I said, thinking aloud.
“Right. So what I’m thinking is that—intentional or not—Kori had something to do with Cavazos and his team getting into Tower’s house. And if I’m right about that, it’s a miracle she’s still alive.”
But I could still see her face when I closed my eyes. “I don’t think she’s feeling very miraculous.”
Aaron shrugged. “Well, I’m sure she’d feel better if she was free from Tower. And she will be, if you do what you came here to do.” Because killing Kenley would break Kori’s binding to Tower. “We’ll call that the bright side.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Yeah, but I’m also a fucking genius with a Wi-Fi connection and a keyboard.”
I stood, pacing to burn off angry energy. “She’s messed up. I mean, she’s really messed up, and I think the only reason she’s still alive is because her sister needs her. If I kill Kenley, what does Kori have to live for?” I stopped pacing to look at him. “I can’t do that to her.”
“So you’re just going to let Steven and Meghan die?” he demanded. But I could see what he wasn’t saying—that he couldn’t let that happen. If I didn’t kill Kenley, he would try. Which would get him killed. Then I’d have all three of their deaths on my head.
“Hell no, I’m not going to let them die. But there has to be another way.”
“A way other than killing Kenley?” Aaron frowned. “If she’s half as powerful as word on the street says she is, there’s no other way, short of getting her to break her own bindings.”
“Can she do that?” I frowned at him. Why hadn’t anyone mentioned that possibility before?
“Is she physically capable?” Aaron shrugged, looking up at me from his chair. “In theory, yes. Is she allowed?” He shook his head firmly. “No way in hell. The first thing Tower would have prohibited her from doing is breaking her own bindings. That clause may only include the bindings she sealed for him specifically, but that depends on whether or not she insisted on tightening the language from the broad, basic phrasing.” Which, according to Kori, she had not.
“Okay, so she’s probably not allowed. What if she tried anyway? People breach sealed contracts all the time, right?”
“Yeah. There’d be resistance pain, but how strong that is depends on how strong the seal on her contract is, and whether or not she swore on her life not to breach it. If she just swore and signed, she’ll be in pain—probably a lot of pain—but it’ll eventually end. But if she swore on her life, then breaches the contract, she’ll die.”
Great. That was no better than shooting her myself.
“But, Ian, the consequences aren’t the problem here. The real hurdle is convincing her to break her own seal. Seals are held intact by will of the Binder. You can’t just hold a gun to her head and tell her to withdraw her will from the binding. She has to want to break the seal. And if you can’t get within shooting distance of her, what makes you think you can get close enough to explain what you want and convince her to want it, too? Steven doesn’t have forever, you know. Meghan can’t hold out much longer.”
I exhaled slowly, my brain racing. This should have been a no-brainer. My brother and his girlfriend—my best friend’s sister, whom I’d known her whole life—or a woman I’d known less than thirty-two hours. I couldn’t let Steven die, but every time I thought about killing to protect him, I saw Kori in my head. Pale hair, petite build and pixieish features alternately reflecting fierce determination and haunted pain. I wanted to touch her. I wanted to make her smile. I wanted to protect her.
I wanted her not to die a prolonged, agonized death, screaming my name in fury, hating me until her last breath.
I sank onto the couch again and met his gaze over the coffee table. “One more day,” I said. “Can Meghan hold on for one more day?”
Aaron looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “What is it about this girl? You’ve only known her for a day.”
“You’d understand if you met her. She needs my help.”
He leaned back in his chair, shaking his head slowly. “She doesn’t need you. She doesn’t even want you—you said that yourself. And even if she did, she’s not worth it. She’s a killer!”
“If she’s killed, Tower made her do it.”
His frown deepened. “And you think being bound to follow orders absolves her of any guilt?”
I exhaled slowly, trying to swallow a sudden surge of guilt and anger when what I really wanted to do was unleash it on him. “I’ve killed under orders, Aaron.”
“You were a soldier.”
“That doesn’t make it right. I’m no more innocent than she is, so if you think hating Kori will make it easier for you to kill her sister to save yours, you may as well hate me, too. She had nothing to do with what happened to Steven.” But we both knew I had, even if inadvertently.
“You’ve lost perspective,” Aaron said, and he sounded sad.
He was right. Being near Kori was like standing on an iron plate holding a compass. I couldn’t tell which way was north. I couldn’t tell what was right. I only knew that I couldn’t kill her sister, and just knowing one plan was impossible made the other look more doable. “One more day, Aaron.”
He frowned. “Ian, I’m not going to let my sister die.”
“I know. Just ask her for one more day.”
Aaron hesitated. He stared at me. And finally he sighed. “I’ll ask her. But if you haven’t broken the binding by this time tomorrow, I’ll do it myself.”
“It won’t come to that,” I insisted. But I couldn’t tell if he believed me.
Hell, I couldn’t tell if I believed myself.