Thirty-One
Kori
“Let me the hell out of here or I’m going to rip your head off and finger paint with your fucking gray matter!” I shouted, roughly the twentieth variation of the same threat. Plausibility and creativity had expired about six versions earlier.
“That’s gonna be kinda hard to pull off, with you in there and me out here,” Jonah called back over the intercom, and I pounded on the glass again.
“Then come face me like a man!” My demands were useless—the glass pounding even more so—but I was alive with rage that had no outlet. My fists itched for Jonah’s face. I was finally free to fight, but couldn’t reach the target.
“Honey, if I go in there, only one of us is coming back out,” Jonah said.
“That’s the general idea!”
Silence answered me, and my rage burned on, unspent. I whirled around and scanned the cell for something to throw. Something to break. But there was nothing. I couldn’t even tell if this was the same room I’d occupied before, or just a neighboring look-alike.
Either way, there was nothing that wasn’t bolted to the floor, except for the worthless two-inch-thick mattress and… My gaze hovered over the toilet, one of the few differences between Jake’s homemade prison and a real one. This toilet was commercial, not detentional. The tank had a lid. A heavy, porcelain lid.
Someone was going to get his ass reamed for overlooking that security risk.
I picked up the tank lid and hefted it, getting used to the weight. If it would kill a Hollywood zombie, it would kill an actual asshole.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?” I demanded, stalking closer to the glass, my porcelain weapon hanging at my right side. “You’re scared to face me, now that I’m armed and free—” I bit off my own words in a sudden belated spasm of common sense. They didn’t know I was unbound, and telling Jonah would mean giving up my only advantage.
“Now that I’m free to fight back,” I finished instead. Because Jake hadn’t ordered me not to, this time. “Does your brother know what a sniveling coward you are?” I pounded the glass with one fist. “Is there anyone else out there? Can you guys actually see Jonah’s balls shrivel up and retreat indoors, or are they so small to begin with that you can’t tell any difference?”
“Keep talking, Kori,” Jonah said over the intercom, fury riding his voice like light rides a bolt of lightning. “Every word you say buys you a little more pain.” But beneath his worthless threats, I heard what I really wanted to hear. Laughter. He wasn’t alone, and the other men were laughing at him. Helping me taunt him into disobeying orders, at least long enough to open the door to my cell.
I glared at the one-way glass, pissed off that my reflection was all I could see. “A little pain, huh? If memory serves, a little’s about all you have to offer.”
I couldn’t hear the laughter that followed from the peanut gallery, but I could practically feel it.
“You know you’re in there because of your own stupidity, right?” Jonah said over the staticky intercom, obviously trying to claim the verbal upper hand. “You walked right into a trap.”
Unfortunately I couldn’t argue with that. But…
“It wasn’t your trap, though, was it? Leaving me in the dark last time wasn’t your idea, either, right? Was it Jake? No, it was Julia, wasn’t it? The ideas come from Julia. The orders come from Jake. But what good are you, Jonah? What do you contribute to the Tower team effort?” I paused to give him time to answer, but I wasn’t the least bit surprised when he didn’t.
“Nothing. That’s what you contribute,” I shouted. “They could give your job to a fucking monkey and the result would be the same. How does it feel to know you contribute nothing?”
The intercom buzzed with static for a moment before he spoke. “It’s not going to work. I’m not coming in there.”
“Because you’re a fucking coward!” My vision started to darken with fury and I swung the tank lid without thinking, smashing it against the glass. The glass cracked but held. The porcelain shattered into several large chunks and a zillion tiny slivers of white glass.
Shit! My fearsome bludgeoning weapon had been reduced to half a dozen mediocre stabbing weapons. Still, any one of them was sharp enough to open a vein if wielded with enough enthusiasm. But to even have a shot at Jonah, I’d have to get him in the room.
“Are you gonna cower and quake out there with your guns and knives because you’re scared of one unarmed woman? Did Jake actually say you couldn’t come in, or are you using your binding as an excuse to cower out there in the hall? We all know you bend the rules when you want to. You thread the loopholes like a seamstress threads a fucking needle. Don’t tell me you don’t!”
In another fit of fury, I reared back and kicked the glass, but it didn’t budge. The crack didn’t even widen. So I kicked it again. And again. And finally the crack started to spread, and a jolt of triumph burned the length of my spine.
Then the door opened.
Jonah stood in the doorway, one hand on the butt of his gun, like the idiot deputy from any old spaghetti Western. His jaw was clenched in fury and his eyes were narrowed in rage. “Are you trying to make me kill you? Because you know death is the only way out of here.”
I squatted without taking my focus from him and felt around on the ground for a large chunk of broken toilet tank lid, desperately wishing I had something to wrap it with, to keep it from cutting my hand. The last thing I wanted was to leave a sample of my blood behind—Jonah had taken my pocket-size bleach bottle along with my weapons.
“You’re bigger and better armed,” I said, hoping the men in the hall could hear. “But I’d lay money on me to win, any day of the week.”
“Arrogant little bitch!” But he didn’t move. And that’s when I realized he actually did have orders not to touch me. Or at least not to shoot me.
Jake still needed me, no matter what he’d said about me being obsolete. He needed me to draw Ian and Kenley back into the fold.
I couldn’t let that happen.
I clutched the three-inch splinter of porcelain and curled my other hand into a fist. I could kill Jonah caveman style, but I’d need his gun—and a lot of luck—to take out whoever was watching from the hall.
But before I could rush him, Jonah pulled the handheld radio from his belt clip and pressed a button. “Go ahead,” he said, and I froze when Jake’s voice invaded the cell, staticky, but perfectly audible.
“Why do you do this to yourself, Korinne?” he asked. But he didn’t wait for my answer, and Jonah didn’t let go of the button, which would have let him hear me. “You know the drill. Don’t fight back. And don’t touch the damn glass.”
For a moment, the old terror washed over me, and it actually took me a moment to remember that I didn’t have to obey Jake. His orders were worth less than the breath it took to say them, forgotten before the last syllable even faded from my ears.
Jake held no power over me. But my initial thoughtless fear probably saved my life. If I hadn’t looked scared, Jonah would have realized something was wrong, and my advantage would have faded into nothing, like Jake’s worthless order.
“Thanks,” Jonah said into the radio, teeth clenched in resentment. He hated needing his brother’s help.
“Move her to another cell and this time don’t leave the fucking toilet tank lid. Mess this up again, and you’ll be in the cell next to her, where you’ll have plenty of time to think about the fact that you can’t control one small woman without needing her muzzled first.”
Jonah seethed and clipped the radio to his belt again without answering. I waited. Watching him. Trying to remember how I’d looked and acted when I was actually scared of him. The memories were there, but they were disjointed and clouded by fear.
“Let’s go.” Jonah stalked toward me, even angrier than usual because of what I’d just overheard.
“Don’t touch me.” I backed up until my spine hit the wall, then slid the hand clutching the shard of porcelain behind my thigh, even as I scooted to the left, avoiding his reach like I had no better options.
Jonah grabbed my arm and a slimy smile appeared at the corner of his mouth—an instant mood-lift in response to my fake fear. He hauled me across the cell and I let him, biding my time.
When he got close to the door, I began to drag my feet, resisting, but not truly fighting back. Jonah jerked me forward and pulled the door open with his free hand.
I sucked in a deep breath and swung my right arm as a primal screech of rage erupted from my throat. His eyes widened, but I buried the three-inch chunk of white porcelain in his jugular before he could make a single sound. “There’s a reason I was his bodyguard and you were his lapdog,” I said as his mouth opened and closed, gasping uselessly.
Blood dribbled between my fingers, most of it his. He gurgled and grasped at my fingers, but he was already weak from massive blood loss.
“Don’t fight back,” I whispered, throwing Jake’s words at him as I pulled the glass free and stabbed him again, and when he slid to the floor, propping the door open with his weight, I knelt with him. “Beg me to stop.” I didn’t realize I was crying until the first tears dripped onto his shirt. “Does it hurt? Tell me how much it hurts.”
He blinked up at me, his eyelids sluggish, and then he stopped breathing. He just stopped, and my tears fell faster.
Finally, it was over.
Distantly, I heard men shouting my name, rounds being chambered, safety switches clicking off.
I hunched over Jonah’s body, my back to the other men, crying tears of joy and relief they no doubt mistook for some weaker, more primal emotion. And while they watched me sob, waiting for me to stand and face the inevitable consequences of my actions, I pulled Jonah’s gun from his holster and checked the chamber, then flicked off the safety. Then I stood, the pistol hidden by my own body. I turned slowly, sliding the weapon behind my thigh, and counted the men aiming guns at me while I sniffled, displaying my trauma.
There were only three.
“Kori, we need you to turn around and put your hands behind your head,” the guy in the middle said. Roscher. I’d known him since he signed on two years ago, but now he was talking to me like I was a child. Or insane. They thought I’d lost it.
I could work with that.
“He was right,” I said, letting my voice go light and shaky as I stepped forward. “Death was the only way out.”
“Stay there,” Roscher said, as they all three aimed at my chest. “Turn around and show us your hands.”
“My hands?” I stepped into the hall and took a moment to be grateful they were all on my right. As was the exit. No one could sneak up behind me. “You want to see my hands?” I held up my left hand, red and slick with Jonah’s blood. “See?”
When they all glanced at my bloodstained hand, I dropped into a squat and swung Jonah’s gun up, firing twice in rapid succession. Roscher and the man to his left stumbled back, hit, their bullets whizzing over my head.
“Drop it!” The third man called, aiming at my head, no doubt picturing how grateful Jake would be when he’d caged me where his coworkers failed.
His mistake.
I fired again, and a hole appeared in his shirt, right over his heart. He was dead before he hit the ground, and his bullet shattered the glass I’d already cracked.
I felt bad about killing them. But not too bad. They would have locked me back up. They would have helped Jake use me to get to Ian and Kenley. They would have let more bad things happen to Vanessa. And if our positions had been reversed, they would have killed me in a heartbeat.
Pulse racing, I snatched the key ring from Jonah’s belt and checked the other basement cells one by one until I found Vanessa, huddled in the corner on her bed in her underwear, holding one arm out from her body, because of the series of bright red cuts marching up her forearm in neat, bloody rows. She had a black eye and bruises on both legs. But she looked intact.
Van burst into tears the moment she saw me.
“Are you okay?” I asked as she crawled to the edge of the bloodstained mattress.
She nodded, in spite of obvious pain. “Are you alone?”
“Not anymore. Cover your ears.” She put both hands over her ears and I shot into the ceiling, using bullets four through six from Jonah’s full clip to shatter at least three of the infrared bulbs. Then I helped her off the bed and leaned outside the door to flip the switch controlling the regular lights. Her cell fell into shallow darkness, and I felt my way into the only patch of true dark, beneath the hole in the infrared grid. There was only room for a single step.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and squeezed her hand. Vanessa stepped into the deeper darkness with me and out into the bathroom in Olivia’s office.
Someone yelped, startled, and I opened my eyes to find myself staring at my brother, Kris, who’d been about to step into the bathroom. I hadn’t seen him in nearly two years, but nothing had changed except for his hair, which he now wore in short, dark blond waves. “Kris!” I dropped Vanessa’s hand and threw my arms around my brother.
He hugged me back, so tight I could hardly breathe. Then he let go and held me at arm’s length. “Why are you covered in blood every time I see you?”
“Be fuckin’ grateful it’s someone else’s,” I said, smiling in spite of the grim circumstances of our reunion.
“Still got that dirty mouth,” a gruff, shaky voice said, and I looked over Kris’s shoulder to find my grandmother frowning at me in gray slacks and a cardigan over a white blouse.
“I learned every four-letter word I know from you, Gran,” I said, and couldn’t resist a smile, even as I leaned closer to whisper into Kris’s ear. “Why the hell did you bring her here?”
“She thinks it’s 2004. Where was I supposed to leave her?” he asked, and I shrugged, conceding the point, then tugged him away from our grandmother.
“Have you talked to Kenley?” I asked, sinking onto Olivia’s office couch as Van followed my grandmother into the office.
“Yeah.” Kris sat next to me while Olivia handed Van a spare set of clothes. “She’s in a lot of pain, and that Meghan woman’s about out of juice.”
“Okay, Ian wasn’t in the basement when I was there, so I’m going back for him—”
“Who’s Ian?” Kris asked before I could finish my sentence.
“He’s…complicated. But he saved Kenley’s life and he helped her break my binding to Jake, so I’m not going to leave him there.”
“Okay. What can I do?”
“Um…get me George Barker, Tower’s other Binder. He’s the one who sealed Kenley’s oath. We’ll give him a chance to unseal it voluntarily and save his own life. If he won’t…there’s always plan B.”
“The B stands for bullet?” Kris said, grinning.
“What else. I’m going to take Gran and Vanessa to Kenley, then I’m heading back to Jake’s, through the hole I punched in his infrared grid in the basement.”
“How much security does Barker have?” Liv asked, perching on the edge of her own desk while across the room my grandmother was interrogating Vanessa under the misguided assumption that she was Kris’s new girlfriend.
“Probably more than usual, now that Kenley’s MIA. Kris could use another gun if you’re interested.” But I wouldn’t ask her. I wouldn’t force her to help me, when I could very well be leading us both to our deaths.
Olivia shrugged and grabbed a loaded extra clip from her top desk drawer. “I have nothing better to do at the moment, and since I have yet to replace my phone, I don’t anticipate any orders getting in the way.”
“Thanks, Liv.”
Kris glanced back and forth between us. “Aren’t you two on opposite sides of the turf war?”
Olivia shrugged. “With friends like Kori, who needs enemies?”
“Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth!” Gran called from across the room, and Vanessa burst into teary laughter.
“Okay, I have my phone. Let me know how it goes with Barker,” I said to Liv and my brother as I ushered Gran and Vanessa into the darkened bathroom.
Kris nodded and closed the door behind us as I took one of their hands in each of mine. Two steps later, we emerged in Meghan’s bathroom. “Nobody shoot, we come in peace!” I shouted, and Aaron stepped into sight in the hall, still clutching the broken arm he obviously hadn’t yet sought treatment for.
“Well, you can just step right back into that shadow and take your sister with you. If Tower tracks her here, we’re all as good as dead.”
“I’ll be back for her as soon as I can. For now, I need you to watch a couple of valuables for me while I go storm the castle.”
“No. No more women with prices on their heads…” Aaron started, shaking his head firmly, but his sister shouted over him from the bedroom.
“Bring them in here!”
I led Vanessa and Gran toward Meghan’s voice. Kenley struggled up from her chair in spite of obvious pain the moment she saw Van.
“This isn’t Europe,” Gran said as Kenni and Vanessa embraced. “You don’t have to kiss everyone you meet on the mouth, Kenley.”
I would have laughed, if I weren’t so close to tears.
“This is not a home for wayward women!” Aaron insisted.
“They’ll be out of your hair soon,” I said as Meghan gently began to examine Vanessa’s butchered arm. She obviously didn’t have the strength to heal three people at once—which explained Aaron’s persistent fracture—but most Healers knew more than a little about first aid, to supplement their natural Skills.
I took a deep breath, double-checked the gun I’d taken from Jonah, then marched back into Meghan’s bathroom, then into Jake’s basement through the hole I’d blown in the infrared grid. Vanessa’s cell was still dark, so I peeked into the hall cautiously. The bodies were all still there. Nothing had changed. I’d been gone less than ten minutes.
I spared a moment to grab extra guns from the downed men. Two went into my holsters and a third stayed in my hand, while I shoved their extra clips into my pockets. I’d never actually made an action-movie-style assault on a heavily guarded modern fortress, but I was pretty sure Hollywood was dead-on with at least two of the typical clichés: bullets would fly and blood would flow.
Properly armed, I walked right by the elevator—installed for easy transport of prisoners—and took the stairs instead. I didn’t want to be surprised by a room full of men aiming guns at me as soon as the doors slid open.
At the top of the stairs, I opened the door just wide enough to peek out. The foyer was empty, except for the usual guards, one at the foot of either staircase. No one in the basement had lived long enough to sound the alarm, but they’d be found as soon as Jake discovered he couldn’t raise Jonah on his radio. If not sooner.
I pushed the door open and stepped into an alcove off the foyer, my heart thumping painfully with each step. I glanced toward Jake’s office just as Julia pushed the door open and stepped out. A second later, movement from across the foyer caught my eye. Two armed men were getting on the elevator.
Shit. The elevator only went to the basement, and they would sound the alarm the minute they saw the bodies.
I turned back to Julia as she rounded the corner into the back hall, without noticing me—a blessing that would die with the first screech of the security siren. Then I stepped into the foyer.
“Hey!” the guard at the closest staircase shouted, drawing his gun, and I shot a hole through his left shoulder. He stumbled back onto the stairs as I shot his counterpart from across the room. But my silencer turned out to be pointless, because no sooner had the second guard fallen than the brain-skewering screech of the security alarm started wailing from everywhere.
Time was up.