Blood Bound
Blood Bound
Rachel Vincent
They say blood is thicker than water. They have no idea. As a blood tracker, Liv is extremely powerful. And in a world where power is a commodity that can get you killed, Liv has learnt to survive by her own rules. Rule number one? Trust no one. But when a friend s daughter goes missing, Liv is bound by a potent magical oath. She can't rest until the child is safe. And that means trusting her dangerous ex, Cam.A sinister prophecy tells that she and Cam will be the death of each other, yet Liv s tired of being a slave to destiny. She s ready to play the forces controlling her world at their own game. No matter what the cost.
Praise for the novels of
New York Times bestselling author
RACHEL VINCENT
“I liked the character and loved the action. I look
forward to reading the next book in the series.”
Charlaine Harris
“Vincent is a welcome addition to this genre!”
Kelley Armstrong
“Compelling and edgy, dark and evocative, Stray is a must read! I loved it from beginning to end.” Gena Showalter
“I had trouble putting this book down. Every time
I said I was going to read just one more chapter,
I’d find myself three chapters later.”
—Bitten by Books on Stray
“Vincent continues to impress with the freshness of her
approach and voice. Action and intrigue abound.”
—RT Book Reviews
Blood Bound
Rachel Vincent
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
Find out more about Rachel Vincent by visiting
mirabooks.co.uk/rachelvincent
and read Rachel’s blog at urbanfantasy.blogspot.com
Also available fromRachel Vincent
The Shifters series
STRAY
ROGUE
PRIDE
PREY
SHIFT
ALPHA
Soul Screamers series
MY SOUL TO TAKE
MY SOUL TO SAVE
MY SOUL TO KEEP
MY SOUL TO STEAL
And look for the thrilling second instalment in
Rachel’s new Unbound series
SHADOW BOUND
Available in 2012
To #1, who understands that a writer can never really leave her work at work. I live in my own head, constantly distracted from the real world by the ones I make up, and it takes someone special to put up with that. I hope you know how special you are. And I didn’t even have to make you up.
Acknowledgments
Thanks first and foremost to my husband, my #1 fan, for listening to all the crazy brainstorming that went into this book without betraying any hint that the author may be as crazy as the ideas. You’re the most wonderful sounding board ever.
Thanks as always to Rinda Elliott, my longtime critique partner and the first to see every book I write. You’re my second pair of eyes, and I always appreciate the fresh viewpoint.
Thanks to my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, for guidance and patience. And for pronouncing this manuscript “twisted,” then liking it anyway.
And thanks to everyone at MIRA Books, who made it all happen. There are so many more of you behind me than I would ever have guessed when I was first starting out, and I sometimes think books should get credit reels, like movies.
One
Only two-thirty in the morning, and I already had blood on my hands. The most messed-up part of that? It was the hour that bothered me.
“You sure it’s him, Liv?” Booker swiped one hand over his sweaty, stubbly face as we stared at the lit window on the third floor. The apartment building was long and plain, like a cracker box on its side, and the moonless night only smeared the sides of the featureless building into the ambient darkness.
I nodded, shoving both cold, chapped hands into my jacket pockets. It was warm for early March, but still cold for me.
“How sure?”
My eyes closed, and again I clutched the blood-stiffened swatch of cloth in my right pocket, inhaling deeply through my nose, and the world exploded into a bouquet of scents. Relying on years of training, I sorted through them rapidly, mentally tossing aside those I couldn’t use. The metal tang of several huge trash bins. The chemical bite of Booker’s cologne. And the pervasive, ambient smells of life east of the river—motor oil, fried food and sweat.
What was left, with those more obvious smells out of the way, was the trail I’d followed all over town, as much a feel as a true scent, and a virtual match to the blood sample in my pocket.
I am a Tracker. More specifically—and colloquially—I’m a bloodhound. Given a decent, recent sample of your blood, I can find you no matter where you hide. Officially, my range is about eighty miles—on the high end of average. Unofficially … well, let’s just say I’m good at what I do. But not too good. Too much Skill will get you noticed. And I know better than to get noticed.
Booker cleared his throat and I opened my eyes to find myself staring up at the lit window again—the only occupant still awake. “Ninety-five percent. It’s either him or a close male relative, and that’s the best you’re gonna get with a dry blood sample,” I said, as water dripped from a gutter somewhere to my left. “Tell Rawlinson I’ll send him a bill.”
Booker pulled his black ski cap over his ears. “He’s not gonna like that.”
“I don’t give a shit what he likes.” I turned and walked back the way I’d come, listening as my steel-toed work boots echoed in the alley. I was exhausted and pissed off from being woken at two on a Friday morning, yet still pleased for the excuse to charge nearly double my usual rate. Office space in the south fork doesn’t come cheap.
“Warren!” a deep voice barked from behind me, and I groaned beneath my breath. I turned slowly to see Adam Rawlinson step out from behind a rusty Dumpster, his dark hair, skin and expensive wool coat blending into the thick shadows. No telling how long he’d been there. Watching. Listening.
Travelers—shadow-walkers—were notorious for shit like that. They can step into a shadow in their own homes and step out of another shadow across town a split second later. You never know they’re coming until they’re already there. It’s a convenient Skill—except when it’s annoying as hell.
“Hey, Adam. Kinda late for a stroll, isn’t it?” Especially considering that his home address was at least two tax brackets above the inner-city grime now clinging to the soles of his dress shoes. “What? You don’t trust me?”
Rawlinson scowled, his frown exaggerated by deep shadows. “Ninety-five percent isn’t good enough, Liv.”
I shrugged, my arms crossed over my dark jacket. “You’re not going to get a hundred-percent certainty without a better blood sample or his full name to flesh out the scent.”
He nodded; I wasn’t telling him anything new. “But you’d know for sure if you had a current sample to compare it to, right? Something fresh?”
“I don’t get my hands dirty anymore. You know that.” I follow the blood scent, and I can track by name if I have to. But that’s where my job ends—no reason for me to be there when the action starts. My life was messy enough without adding blood spatter.
“Booker’s here for the takedown. I just need you to get close enough for a positive ID,” Rawlinson insisted. “We don’t know his name, and we’re not going to get a better blood sample. I played hell getting that one out of the evidence room as it is. This is personal, Liv.”
Damn it. Booker was working without a partner and Adam Rawlinson had come out to see the show. This one was off the books. “Is this about Alisha?” Rawlinson’s daughter had been killed in a carjacking the week before. He’d shown up for work the next day as if nothing had happened. As if her death meant nothing to him.
Here was proof to the contrary. I was almost relieved.
His gaze never wavered. “The cops had a near miss, and one of them winged the bastard last night. The sample’s from the passenger’s seat he bled all over.”
I exhaled, watching him closely. “Why do I get the feeling you’re not going to turn this asshole in?” Rawlinson’s operation had a rock-solid reputation. Official bounty-hunting in cooperation with bail bondsmen and the proper authorities, all on the up-and-up. He would turn in the target, collect a check for freelance services from the city, then pay the rest of his crew. Which used to include me.
But this time …
“Because you’re a very smart girl.” He started walking toward the building, and I followed reluctantly. “You know, I’d love to have you back on the crew full-time.”
“That’s because your new Tracker couldn’t find his own dick in the dark.” I hesitated, and the night was quiet, but for our footsteps on cracked asphalt. “You know better than to start shit east of the river without a work order, Adam. What if someone sees you?”
“That’s why you’re here.” He met my gaze, and I had to respect his honesty, even if it pissed me off. “Everyone knows you’re working for Ruben Cavazos, so no one will think to report this if you’re with us.”
“I work for myself.” And myself had to pay rent on a shitty apartment and a tiny office, repairs on a car saddled with more used parts than Frankenstein’s monster, and interest and principle on student loans for a degree I’d never once put to use. “I freelance for Cavazos just like I freelance for you.” And everyone knew that black hats paid better than white knights. “Having me with you isn’t going to keep your feet cool while you walk through flames, Adam. You need to let the police handle this.”
“We both know there’s nothing they can do.”
But that wasn’t true. They could do plenty—but they wouldn’t. Not as long as the courts refused to recognize Tracking as a legal form of identification and discovery. The world knew about us—the Skilled had been dragged into the spotlight almost thirty years ago—but the government had yet to officially recognize our existence. We were the biggest open secret in history. We had no rights and no protection under the law, beyond those afforded us as natural-born citizens.
What that meant in legal circles was that no government office could officially hire Binders to draft or seal contracts. Nor could they use evidence gathered via Trackers, like me. Everything involving the dozen or so Skilled abilities had to be unofficial consultations and contract work. And completely off the books.
What that meant in criminal circles was the gradual formation of the single most profitable—and ruthless—black-market system in history. Because the government didn’t officially recognize our Skills, they couldn’t regulate or police them, which left a huge gap at the top of the power pyramid. A gap that had been filled by various Skilled crime syndicates across the world, but most notably—and locally—by rival black-market kingpins Jake Tower and Ruben Cavazos, who together controlled more than two-thirds of the city.
Think of my city like a giant peace sign, divided by the river. Everything east of the river is controlled by Cavazos, everything west of the river by Tower. And on the south side, cradled by the fork in the river, you can live, eat and breathe without lining the pockets of either organization—but you’ll do it at a much higher price, because those who understand the world they live in and can afford the rent will pay to avoid picking a side.
“Okay, look. Now that you’ve found him, you should just watch him until he makes a mistake, then go after him legally. Stick to what you’re good at, Adam. Anything else would just be dripping blood into the shark tank.”
“Wait for him to make a mistake?” Rawlinson demanded softly, and I nodded, already feeling guilty for the suggestion. “How long will that take, if it even happens? Coming in here once, with you, to take care of business—that’s one thing. But if we loiter, just waiting for this bastard to commit another crime … Well, that’s just not an option on the east side, is it?” His gaze pleaded with me, and I resisted the overwhelming urge to stare at the ground. “She was my daughter, Warren,” Rawlinson said, and the rare glimpse of his raw pain made me groan on the inside, even as I spoke the question I shouldn’t have asked.
“What do you want me to do? Go in and prick his finger?” My hand clenched around the stiff cloth in my pocket.
“I don’t care how you ID him. Just get close enough to tell for sure, and we’ll handle the rest.”
“That’s going to cost you.” Sympathizing with his pain didn’t change my bottom line—freelancers don’t get benefits, and I was currently without health care, a dangerous position to be in, considering my line of work.
“Fine. Bill me.”
Against my better judgment, I led the way into the dark, quiet building with Rawlinson and Booker at my back. Most of the apartments were empty. Rumor had it the city planned to knock the eyesore down as soon as they managed to relocate the last six tenants—and convince Cavazos to sell the building. They probably had no idea there was a squatter on the third floor.
We crept silently up the stairs, the stiff bit of cloth clutched in my right hand, my fingers rubbing over and over the rough spot. I could feel him, so long as I was touching his blood. I could smell his sweat and taste his fear, both manifestations of the smear of psychic energy people leave behind with every drop of their blood.
For me, it’s a little harder working from only a name, but it can be done. And it’s easiest with both a name and fresh blood. But that rarely happens. UnSkilled criminals are much more careful than the unSkilled general population, and in hiding from police forensics labs, they’re inadvertently hiding from Trackers.
Even stupid criminals don’t want to be found.
The door between the stairwell and the third-floor hall was long gone, so we could see the light pouring from the crack beneath his door the moment we stepped onto the landing. The energy signature was stronger here, but no clearer. I was going to have to see the bastard to confirm his ID. Damn it.
I snuck down the hall silently with Booker and Rawlinson on my heels until we stood in front of the lit apartment. I gestured for them to give me some space, and they stood to either side of the door, backs pressed against the grimy walls, out of sight from the occupant, unless he actually stepped into the hall.
Then I took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
When I’d worked for Rawlinson, I’d done both the tracking and the takedown, and back then, I would have looked the part—harmless, vapid young woman who needed jumper cables, or a telephone, or a big, strong arm to open a jar of pickles. Anything to get close enough to use a Taser on the target and collect a paycheck.
It’s amazing what a few years’ experience and the threat of mortal injury with no health insurance can do to change your perspective. Especially with the clock ticking in my ear and the certainty that I had no time to be incapacitated by injury.
Footsteps clomped toward me from inside the apartment and the door squealed open to reveal a tall, thick man with two days’ growth on his chin and suspicion shining in his eyes. He was armed—the handheld behind his right thigh was a dead giveaway—probably with the gun that had killed Alisha Rawlinson.
“Hey, sorry to bother you so late, but—” I let my right arm fly, and my fist smashed into his nose.
The target gave a wet gurgle of surprise and pain, and swung his arm up, too stunned to actually aim his pistol as blood poured from his ruined face. I ducked below the gun and smashed his wrist into the door facing as hard as I could. Bone crunched. The target screamed again and his fist opened. The gun thumped to the floor and Booker kicked it down the hall.
I stepped back and let him take over, wiping the target’s blood from my face with the tissue Rawlinson offered. “It’s him.” I handed the tissue back as Booker pounded the target into unconsciousness in the doorway. The rest of this floor was empty, and even if one of the few tenants heard something, they wouldn’t come out to investigate. Not on this side of town. Not in the middle of the night.
Not if they had any wish to see daylight.
“Thank you, Liv,” Rawlinson said, as Booker dragged the unconscious man into his apartment.
“Don’t thank me. Pay me.” I peeled off my bloodstained jacket and handed it to him. “And if this doesn’t come clean, you owe me one just like it.” Then I took off toward the stairwell without looking back, trying to ignore the repetitive thud of fist hitting flesh echoing in the hall behind me.
On the street again, I exhaled, then glanced back at the building behind me. Silence, except for my own footsteps and the highway traffic two blocks away. True to his word, Rawlinson was keeping things quiet.
I crossed the road in a hurry, digging in my pocket for my keys, but froze when I spotted my car—and the man leaning against the hood. He was built of shadows, untouched by the streetlight on the corner, but I’d know that silhouette anywhere.
“Hey, Liv.” Cameron Caballero stood, and the past six years without him suddenly seemed surreal, as if I’d dreamed the whole thing, and now I’d finally woken up to the truth. To how my life should have gone.
But then a car engine started, stalled then restarted in the distance, and my life—the gritty reality—snapped back into place like emotional whiplash, leaving me gasping for breath.
Him showing up like this again wasn’t fair. But fair had never been less relevant.
“Not tonight, Cam.” Mentally steeling myself, I clomped toward him and my car, assuming he’d move when I tried to unlock my door. But instead of sliding out of the way, he stood, inches away now, intentionally invading my personal space. I could step back, but that would be acknowledging that being so close to him still affected me. Or I could stand my ground and make him back down.
“You know, someday you’re going to have to tell me what happened,” he said when neither of us moved, his voice an intimate, familiar whisper. “Why you left.”
“Today isn’t that day. Move.” I wanted to shove him out of my way, but touching him would have been a very bad idea. Maybe the best bad idea I’d ever had. “Don’t make me hurt you. I’ve already broken one face tonight.”
“I heard you were breaking faces professionally,” he said, still watching me as if nothing in the world existed, beyond whatever he saw in my eyes. “Then I heard you quit.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but as always, when I ran out of words, he still had plenty. “Would you really hit me?”
“Would you really make me?” I eyed him boldly and he sighed, and I could see that spark of possibility—of a rekindling—die in his eyes.
“No one makes you do anything, Olivia,” he said, and my chest tightened with the desperate wish that he were right. “A friend wants to see you.”
I reached around him and unlocked my car door, but he still leaned against it. “I don’t want to see your friend.”
He stared down at me from inches away, and I knew his eyes would be dark, dark blue, if they weren’t swimming in shadows. “Not my friend, Liv. Yours. She came to me looking for you. I think you should hear her out.”
But I couldn’t do anything that meant spending time with Cam, for both of our sakes. It was the same every time I ran into him: a jolt of memory, a spark of resurrected heat and a huge dose of regret I was sure he could see. That regret was what kept bringing him back.
It was what still drew me to him, even as I pushed him away.
“I don’t give a shit what you think,” I said, too late to be believable. I didn’t bother asking how he’d known where to find me. Cam was a Tracker—the best I’d ever met, other than … well, me. But whereas I was good with blood, he was good with names. Given a full, real name, he could find anyone, anywhere, and his range rivaled mine. And I’d made the mistake of telling him my full name—which no one else in the entire world knew—years ago. When I’d thought we’d be together forever.
That was one of the most foolish mistakes I’d ever made, but one he hadn’t given me reason to regret. Until now.
“Last chance, Cam. Move, or I’ll move you.”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of a snug pair of jeans and gave me this sad little smile, as if he missed me and wanted me gone, both at once, and I knew exactly how that felt. Then he stepped aside and watched while I slid into the driver’s seat and slammed the door.
As I pulled away from the curb, I glanced in the rearview mirror to find him still watching me, unmoving, until I turned at the corner and drove out of sight.
I unlocked my office door and shoved it open, then trudged across the small space toward the tiny bathroom. I had no waiting room and no fancy chairs. Just my desk, two cheap, upright cabinets full of my stuff and one old leather couch, stained and ripped, and more comfortable now than the day I took it from an ex’s house along with my own things—restitution for the car he’d stolen and nearly a year of my life wasted.
In the bathroom, I pulled off my top and grabbed a clean T-shirt from the cabinet over the toilet. The sun would be up in a couple of hours. I’d crash on the couch until dawn, then get an early start, because if I went home and crawled into bed, I’d lose most of the day to sleep, which would lead to me losing the job I’d just bid on to Travis Spencer, the runner-up, and his two meathead associates.
With a quick glance at my pale, blood-splattered reflection, I ran warm water on a clean rag and scrubbed my face until I could no longer smell the energy signature of the blood I’d been tracking. But as I turned away from the mirror, the squeal of hinges bisected the silence, and my heart beat a little faster.
Someone was in my office. At four-thirty in the morning. Without an appointment.
I dropped the rag into the sink and squatted to pull a 9mm from the holster nailed to the inside of the cabinet beneath the sink. Aiming at the floor, I disengaged the safety and stood, ready to elbow the door open. I wasn’t expecting trouble, but honestly, I wasn’t surprised by it, either. Spencer had been gunning for me ever since he dropped the ball on the governor’s missing mistress, and I picked it up and ran for the goal.
“Once upon a time, four little girls, best friends, took an oath of loyalty,” a woman’s voice said through the door, and I flicked the safety back on. It can’t be …
Annika. Cam had sent her alone. Smart man.
We hadn’t spoken in six years, but hearing her voice was like peeling back layers of time until my childhood came into focus, gritty and rough around the edges—was I ever really innocent?—yet somehow still naive compared to what time and experience had since made of me.
“They promised to always help one another, whenever they were asked,” she continued, as I fell through the rabbit hole, flailing for something solid to grab on to. “They signed their names, and—”
“And they stamped their thumbprints in blood.” I pushed open the bathroom door to find Annika Lawson watching me, green eyes holding my gaze with the weight of shared youth and the long-since frayed knots of friendship. “That’s where those stupid little girls went wrong,” I said. “They disrespected the power of names and blood.”
And look where it got us—my entire life ruled by one careless promise the year I was twelve.
“We didn’t disrespect the power, Liv.” Her gaze was steady, holding me accountable for every truth I’d ever tried to hide—that much hadn’t changed, even after six years apart. “We just didn’t understand it.”
Because no one had told us. We didn’t know we were Skilled, because our parents thought they were protecting us with ignorance. Insulating us from the dangers of our own genetic inheritance.
In the first years after the revelation, people sometimes disappeared. Government experiments or eager private industry research, no one knew for sure, but the disappearances terrified already worried parents into a perilous silence. They could never have known that Kori’s little sister was a Binder, or that at ten years old, she’d be strong enough to tie us to one another for the rest of our lives.
“Well, the power understood us.” And our ignorance didn’t make that binding any less real. Or any easier to undo. We’d bound ourselves together so tightly that as we grew up, the bonds chafed, wearing away at our friendship until nothing was left but resentment and anger.
I pulled the bathroom door closed and sank into my desk chair, fending off a battery of memories I’d thought buried. It felt weird to see Anne in my office, out of place in my adult life when she’d been a central figure of my youth. Part of me wanted to hug her and get caught up over drinks, but the stronger part of me remembered what went down that night six years ago, the last time we’d all four been together.
A reunion wasn’t gonna happen. Ever. And not just because Elle was dead and Kori was MIA. Anne had disappeared when I’d needed a friend. I could have tracked her, but why, when a dozen unanswered calls and messages said she didn’t want to talk to me? So I’d struck out on my own, and never once looked back at the past. Until now.
“What are you doing here? Is a third ghost from my past going to show up and take me to my own grave?” But that possibility struck a little too close to home, and I had to shrug it off.
She sank onto the couch and her composure cracked, then fell away, revealing raw pain and bitter anger, and suddenly I wanted to hurt whoever’d hurt her. In spite of what she’d done to me—what we’d all done to one another—I wanted to protect her, like Kori and I had looked out for her as kids, and that impulse ran deeper than the oath connecting us. Older. All the way back to the day Anne and I had first met, before Kori and Elle even moved to town.
But it wasn’t that simple. I knew what she was going to say, even though it shouldn’t have been possible.
“I need you, Liv. Will you help me?”
No! Shock sputtered within me, synapses misfiring in my brain as I tried to make sense of what she’d just said. Of what she shouldn’t have been able to say.
“How did you …?” But my voice faded into silence as the answer to my own question became obvious. “You burned it. You burned the second oath.” Damn it! “We swore, Anne. We swore to let it stand.”
In spite of unshed tears shining in her eyes, Anne’s gaze held no hint of shame or regret. “You’re the only one who can help me with this and I couldn’t even ask you with the second oath binding me.”
“That’s why we signed it!” I leaned forward with my arms crossed on the desktop, and my chair squealed in protest.
That second oath was our freedom. It couldn’t truly sever the ties binding us, but it prevented us from tugging on them. In the second oath, Anne, Kori, Elle and I had sworn never to ask one another for help, because once asked, we were compelled to do everything within our power to aid one another. Which, we’d learned the hard way, could only lead to disaster. And resentment. And expulsion from school. And arrest records.
“I’m sorry. I really am,” Anne insisted, tucking one coppery strand of shoulder-length hair behind her ear. “I know you probably don’t believe that, and I can’t blame you. But I truly had no choice. Will you help me,
Liv?”
“Hell no, I’m not going to help you!” But as soon as I said the words, breaking my oath to her, the pain began. It started as a bolt of white behind my left eye, shining so bright that everything else seemed dim by comparison. When I closed my eyes, the light sent pain shooting through my skull, and in less than a second, it was a full-blown migraine. Then came the muscle spasms—a revolt of my entire body, the consequence of going back on an oath signed voluntarily and sealed in blood by a child who’d turned out to be the most powerful Binder I’d ever met.
Defaulting on an oath sealed by an amateur—or even a weak professional—could put you in the hospital. Defaulting on an oath sealed by anyone with real power and/or training could kill you.
First, your brain sends warnings in the form of pain. Migraines. Muscle cramps. General abuse of the body’s pain receptors. Then it starts turning things off, one by one. Motor control. Bladder and bowel control. Sight and scent. Hearing. But never the sense of touch. Never the nerve endings. They remain functional so you can feel every second of your body’s decision to self-destruct.
I’m a little fuzzy on the order of betrayal by my own internal organs, but among the first to go are the kidneys, liver, gallbladder, intestines and pancreas, any one of which would probably kill you eventually. Then the big guns. If you hold out long enough, you’ll lose respiratory function, then circulatory. And without those, of course, your brain has only minutes—minutes—for you to try to think through the pain and humiliation and decide whether you’re going to stick to your word, or die breaking it.
Most people never get that far. I’ve never gotten that far, as evidenced by the fact that my heart continues to beat, in spite of several times I would have declared it broken beyond repair. But everyone has a limit. A point past which you can’t be pushed.
“Please don’t do this, Olivia,” Anne said, when my fingers began to twitch on my desk. A second later, my legs began to convulse, banging against the bottom of the pencil drawer, but I only stared at her through the ball of light in the center of my vision, breathing steadily through the pain. “I’m not going to take it back, Liv,” she insisted, leaning forward on the couch. “I can’t. Not this time. Will you help me?”
Her repetition of the original request escalated the process, and I gasped at the pain deep in my stomach. I couldn’t identify it, but I knew what that pain meant. One of us would have to back down in the next few minutes, or the last thing I saw would be her bright green eyes, full of tears and regret, and her stubborn lips sealed against the sentence that could make it all go away.
“Please, Liv,” Annika begged, and this time her voice came from behind me. Water ran in the bathroom. A second later, she leaned my chair back and laid a cold, wet cloth over my eyes and forehead, and my hands twitched violently in my lap. “You don’t even know what I need you to do.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I gasped, helpless to keep the rag from slipping down my face. Until I gave in to the compulsion to help her, I would feel nothing but the systematic shutdown of my entire body. But still I fought it. She had no right to make me do something I didn’t want to do, no matter what stupid mistake we’d made as children! The compulsion was like having my free will stripped. It was humiliating, and infuriating, and it was the reason we’d all gone our separate ways after high school without even a glance in the rearview mirror. “The point—” I growled through a throat that wanted to close around my words “—is that I … have … no … choice.”
Leather creaked as she sat on the couch again, and the hitch in her breath said she was fighting sobs. “I’m sorry, Liv. If I could ask you without compelling you, I would, but I don’t have that option.”
She was right—her very request triggered the compulsion—but that didn’t help. And neither did the regret obvious in her voice. “What do you want?” I whispered with all the volume I could manage, as pain ripped through my stomach again, and my arms began to contract toward my torso.
“I need you to find someone.”
No surprise, considering I was a Tracker, both by birth and by profession.
The rag slipped from my eyes and I saw her wipe tears from her cheeks with an angry stroke of one hand. “I need you to find the bastard who killed my husband and return the favor.”
Two
For a moment, I could only stare at her, and as my resistance began to fade in the face of surprise, so did the pain, though it wouldn’t completely subside until I’d said the magic words.
“Whoa, you got married?” I couldn’t picture it, and I hadn’t even noticed the wedding band that now seemed glaringly obvious on her left hand. Did she have a house in the suburbs? A mortgage? A dog in the backyard?
I frowned and sucked in a deep breath, relieved to feel the convulsions in my arms downgrading to mere spasms.
“Yes. Then I got widowed,” she said, and more tears fell, even as her jaws clenched in some powerful combination of rage and devastation. “I need you to track the murderer and kill him.”
“That’s … that’s not really what I do, Anne,” I said, careful not to refuse—so soon after that last refusal, anyway. I stared at her, surprised by the vengeful impulse in a woman who, when we were kids, was a turn-the-other-cheek kind of girl. “I just find people.
That’s it.”
Anne blinked, as if she hadn’t heard me. As if she didn’t want to hear me. Then she plucked her purse from the center couch cushion and dug through it with trembling hands. “Here.” She produced a wallet-size photo album and flipped to the second page, already pulling a picture out before I realized what she was going to do.
“No, don’t … “ Show me a picture of your dead husband … That was a low blow. But before I could finish my sentence, she’d leaned forward and slid the photo across my desk. I looked at it, against my better judgment, and found a handsome Asian man with a nice smile, one arm around an obviously happy Anne.
It was like staring at a ghost, though I’d never even met the man.
“His name was Shen Liang. He was thirty-four, and the nicest man I ever met. He wrote proprietary software for a company here in the city, but they let him work from home. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to kill him.” The tears were back, and I stared at my desk to avoid seeing them.
“What did the police say?”
“They’re investigating. But, Liv, his killer was Skilled. A Traveler. The police aren’t going to be able to find him, and even if they could, without traditional physical evidence, they can’t make the charges stick. You know what they’re up against.”
Yeah. I knew. Nearly half my business came from victims trying to catch people the cops couldn’t identify. “I’ll find him for you.” I had no choice about that. “But the rest.” The killing … “It’s not that simple.” Even if I found the suspect, and even if I was one-hundred-percent certain that he was guilty of cold-blooded murder, I couldn’t just kill him—not if I valued my own life—until I knew for sure what his connections were. Who, if anyone, he was bound to. “We have a daughter.”
“No …” I shook my head when she started digging in her purse again. No more pictures …
“Hadley.” More tears, and when her jaw began to quiver, something inside me twisted painfully. “She’s five years old, and tomorrow I’m going to have to tell her that her daddy is dead. I can’t let her grow up knowing the man who killed her father is still out there. You have to help me. I need you to find Shen’s killer and kill him. I’m asking you, Olivia.”
I groaned out loud. Those were the magic words. This had gone beyond a general request for help: it was now a specific request that I commit murder, regardless of the cost to me, personally. Now, unless I could somehow talk her out of it without actually refusing to do what she’d asked, I’d have to either kill her husband’s murderer or die fighting the compulsion. Or die when the police caught up to me. Or wish I’d died if the murderer turned out to be connected and his connections caught up to me.
Motherfucker!
“Annika, I’m asking you to rethink this.”
There. Two could play that game. Or—technically—four, since there were four bloody thumbprints on that old oath, wherever it was.
Anne flinched, and her hand twitched. She was resisting, and I could practically see how badly she wanted to rub her own forehead. So I tossed her the cool rag.
“Fine. State your case.” She leaned back on the couch and placed the folded rag over her forehead and tear-swollen eyes.
I took a deep breath, but was careful to keep it silent. I didn’t want her to know how important it was for me to get out of the assassin part of the favor she was asking. “I don’t have a problem with your husband’s murderer dying for his crimes.” The state would give him the death penalty anyway, if they could prove his guilt. “And I’m perfectly willing to find him for you. But once he’s found, you need an expert for … whatever comes next. And I’m no assassin, Anne.”
I was an amateur at best….
She sat up, clutching the rag in one hand. “Olivia, I don’t need you to cut his throat with a scalpel and frame the governor’s personal physician. I don’t need the best. Hell, I can’t afford the best. Proficiency will suffice, and from what I’ve heard, you’re more than proficient.”
What? “I don’t care what you’ve heard, I do not kill people for money!” Much. Anymore.
Not just for money, anyway.
My head throbbed again, but this headache was stress-induced. She wasn’t backing down, and I couldn’t tell her why I needed her to. And thanks to the original oath, I couldn’t just ask her not to ask me to kill someone. Noelle had called that the no-wishing-for-more-wishes clause—like a contractual paradox. It couldn’t be done.
Anne frowned. “But you work for Ruben Cavazos.”
“Freelance. I freelance for Cavazos.” Which was precisely why her request was so dangerous for me. “And for Adam Rawlinson, and for anyone else who can pay.” Except for Jake Tower. Working for both sides of the Skilled black market would be like putting a bullet in my own head—only more prolonged and painful. “But all I do for them is find people.” Usually. “What the client does with the target after that is their business. I don’t get involved with that side of it.” Not without a very good reason—and money doesn’t count.
“So Cavazos doesn’t … own you?” She blinked through her tears, watching me carefully, and if I hadn’t known her most of my life, I might not have realized what she was doing. What she was looking for in my eyes.
Anne was a Reader—a human truth detector—born with an ability most law enforcers worked years to develop. Only her Skill was virtually infallible, and it couldn’t be turned off. Which was why she hadn’t dated much in high school—turns out sometimes ignorance really is bliss. Or at least temporary consolation. Shen must have been the most honest man on the face of the planet.
“Say what you mean, Annika.” I knew what she meant, of course, but … “If you’re going to come in here and pull on the strings of a fifteen-year-old oath, you could at least have the guts to ask me what you really want to know.”
“Fine,” Anne said, and I recognized the rare flash of temper in her eyes. “Olivia, are you bound to Ruben Cavazos? Because that’s what they’re saying about you out there.” She nodded toward the window overlooking the street below. “They’re saying you quit Rawlinson’s team because you’re bound to Cavazos and he’s taking a cut of your freelance fee—along with whatever else he wants from you.”
My temper burned like indigestion, and I fought the need to stand in defense of my reputation—the only real asset a freelance Tracker has. “Who’s saying that?”
Anne glanced at her hands again, stalling. Then she looked at the door I still hadn’t locked. I followed her gaze as the glass panel swung open and Cam stepped in from the hall.
Damn it!
“Lurking in dark hallways?” I said, my hands hidden in my lap to hide how tightly they were clenched. “Isn’t that a little cliché, even for a stalker—I mean Tracker?”
“You wouldn’t have heard her out if you knew I was here,” he said calmly, and I couldn’t argue.
“You told her I’m bound to Cavazos?” I had to force my jaw to unclench as I stood, leaning with both palms flat on my desktop. “You used to be above spreading unsubstantiated rumors.”
“Those with Skills live and die by the word on the street, Olivia. Especially in this city.”
Yeah. It was that dying part that worried me.
“Look, I may be country mouse in the big city,” Anne started, still seated while Cam and I stood, “but I’m not stupid. I know Cavazos is selling blood and names on the black market, and I know he has his homegrown army out there doing the dirty work.”
But if that was all she knew, she really was country mouse.
“He’s not the only one. Jake Tower has this city by the balls, and everyone west of the river’s so afraid of his men—”
Anne stood, interrupting me smoothly with that same quiet confidence I’d envied in childhood, then hated in adolescence. “What I need to know from you is whether you’re part of that army. Is Ruben Cavazos pulling your strings, Liv?”
“Right now, you ‘re pulling my strings.” And pushing all the wrong buttons. “You need to back off, Annika. Before I have to push you back.”
“She has a right to know what you’re tangled up in, Liv,” Cam insisted quietly, and I exploded, as always, the roaring fire to his smooth, hard ice.
“Screw her rights. What about mine? You two can’t just ambush me, make me work for you, then question me like a criminal so you can be sure none of my dirt’s going to rub off on you.”
“Ask her to pull her sleeve up,” Cam said to Anne, though his gaze never left mine. “To see if she’s marked,” he added, when she hesitated in obvious confusion.
Anne sighed, but even the weary grief that had moved me earlier couldn’t calm me now. “Are you going to make me ask?” she said softly.
Hell no. I wasn’t going to give her—or anyone else—any more power over me, if I could possibly help it. “You wanna see?” I spat, gathering the hem of my T-shirt in both hands. I jerked the material over my head and dropped it into my chair, then stood watching them both, in only jeans and a bra. “Fine. Look.”
Cam swallowed thickly—the only outward sign that the sight of my bare skin still affected him—then his focus zeroed in on my arm automatically. “Cavazos’s first mark is a small black ring on the left bicep. She’s clean.”
I was clean? As opposed to dirty? “Fuck you!” Cam flinched, and I recognized the regret that flickered across his expression before he could hide it. “That’s not what I … I just meant …” He closed his eyes while I tugged my shirt back over my head, glad for the half second it shielded me from their scrutiny and judgment.
When I sank into my chair, dressed, but still pissed, Cam settled onto the arm of the couch. “I made Anne promise to let you out of this if you were bound to one of the syndicates.” Because, having lived in the city almost as long as I had—I was pretty sure he’d followed me there—he understood how dangerous and complicated her favor could make things for anyone sworn to serve on one side of the black-market divide.
It was very … compassionate of him, and it took real effort for me to deny the sudden rush of my own pulse. Because compassion was the last thing I needed from Cam Caballero. “I don’t want your pity, or sympathy, or whatever this is.”
“Fortunately, it looks like you don’t need it,” he said, with another glance at my now covered arm. “So let’s move on.”
Irritated that he seemed to be taking control of things, I turned back to Anne. “I’ll find your husband’s killer, and I’ll take you to him. But you can kill him yourself,” I said, careful not to actually refuse to do the second part of her request.
Anne paled, and Cam stood, scowling at me across my own desk. “No, Olivia.”
“What, she’s brave enough to come in here demanding vigilante justice, but not brave enough to do the job herself?”
Anne glanced back and forth between us, her purse trembling in her grip, but Cam answered before she could even open her mouth. “She’s never even held a gun. Even if she had any chance of actually pulling this off, can you really send her back to her half-orphaned daughter with blood on her hands?”
His point was subtle, but it still stung. Anne wasn’t like me. We’d started on the same path, sure. Parents, school, friends, college. Then Anne had continued down that path toward a respectable career, civil responsibility and family, while I had jumped the track entirely and derailed my own life with violence, under-the-carpet jobs and solitude.
If I made Anne take the shot herself, I’d be dragging her from her mostly tidy suburban life into the gritty reality of my own existence. Most people can’t commit murder then go on living their lives, even if that murder was actually justice. And I had no doubt Anne was one of those people.
But I was not. And Cam obviously knew that.
“Fine. I’ll do it.” I sighed, finally fully resigned to her request, and the last of the resistance pain faded. “You have a name or a sample of his blood?”
“Well, he didn’t leave a business card,” she snapped, her anger currently winning the battle against grief. “But I can get you several blood samples from the house.” She sniffled, then visibly swallowed tears. “They found Shen holding a bloody knife, so I’m hoping at least one of the blood samples will belong to his killer.”
But that made no sense. Why would a Skilled killer—especially a professional—leave his own blood at the scene? Maybe he was interrupted?
“The police left a huge mess, and obviously I haven’t had time to have it cleaned yet,” she continued.
Obviously? “Annika, when did he die?”
“Tonight.” She frowned and glanced out the window, where the first rays of daylight had changed inky black to deep, dark blue. “Last night, I guess.”
“Last night?”
“Around eight o’clock”
“Your husband’s been dead for less than ten hours?” I rubbed my forehead, then let one hand trail though my hair. “Don’t you think you might be reacting before you’ve had a chance to really think about this?”
“No.” For the first time since she’d walked into my office, Anne looked at me as if she didn’t even know me. As if I was just some stranger she’d hired from an ad in the phone book. “And I would rather have this whole thing over with before I go pick up Hadley. I don’t want to have to think about this while I’m trying to decide how best to explain what happened to her father without scarring her for life.”
“Okay.” I didn’t know what else to say—I wasn’t sure rationality would have had much attraction for me, either, in her position. I opened my mouth to name my one condition, but she beat me to the proverbial punch.
“Liv, there’s one more thing …” Anne hesitated, and I knew I wasn’t going to like whatever else she had to say. “I want you to work with Cam.”
I sucked in a long, slow breath, hoping she would deliver the punch line to the world’s worst joke before I had to actually say something. But she only watched me, waiting. “No,” I said finally. “No way.” I turned to Cam for support, but could find no resistance to the idea in his expression. Instead, I found … satisfaction. “This was your idea, wasn’t it?” I demanded He crossed both arms over a still-broad chest. “Does it matter? Is it going to kill you to work with me on one job? For Anne?”
Yes, it just might kill me. Or him. But there had never been a less appropriate time to explain why I’d left him. Why working with him could be more dangerous than hunting and killing a murderer on my own. And it didn’t help that while my brain protested on the basis of logic, the rest of me ached for this excuse to be near him again, if only in a professional capacity.
But that was a bad idea. The key to resisting Cam Caballero lay in avoiding temptation—a concept he seemed to personify for me more with every glance I avoided, every memory I buried.
“No.” I turned back to Anne, wearing my business face. The one that got me the rates and bonuses I demanded. The one that usually kept creeps off me when I followed criminals down dark alleys and through abandoned buildings. “No. That’s a deal-breaker.”
“There are no deal-breakers when you’re bound,” Cam pointed out calmly, and suddenly I wished I’d hit him when I had the chance. “You’ll do it, or you’ll die trying to resist the compulsion.”
“I haven’t actually asked you yet,” Anne reminded me, echoing the infuriating calm that Cam exuded like radiation—a slow, vicious poison. “But I will if I have to. Your choice.”
“So, I either work with him because you’re asking me to, or I work with him because you’re threatening to ask me to. What kind of choice is that?” I demanded.
“It’s better than the choices I’m facing right now. The rest of my day includes picking out a casket and a black suit.”
Another low blow. “Why Cam?” I asked, hoping to talk her out of it before she caught on and actually compelled me.
“Because I’m short on cash but rich on resources, Liv.” Meaning the two of us, of course. “But if you’re willing to subsidize this project financially and you know someone better than Cam, then by all means.” She extended one arm toward the window and the city just now waking up. “So … do you know anyone better than Cam?”
Damn. “Other than me? No.”
Cam laughed out loud. “Still arrogant …”
“Confident,” I corrected. “And willing to back that confidence up with results.”
“Good.” He nodded, in what may have been the first look of respect I’d seen from him in more than six years. “Let’s go.”
“Um …” I hedged. “I have something to take care of first, and we’ll need those blood samples before I can get started.” I glanced at Anne with both brows raised, and she nodded, already standing. “So, I’ll meet you here at noon?”
“Liv, I really want to get this over with,” she repeated.
“I know, but I have a previous commitment.” I hesitated, dreading the next part. “Oh, and … urn … I’m going to need a retainer.”
“What?”
“You’re going to charge her?” Cam demanded, and that respect I’d seen was long gone. “She’s your friend.”
I bristled, even though I’d expected—and understood—his reaction. “A friend who’s compelling me to work for her.” And with you. I hated what they probably thought of me now, but I had no choice—a state of events I was starting to truly resent. “You need my help? Fine. But I need a retainer. It doesn’t have to be much. Five or ten bucks. Just … something to make it official.”
Anne looked as if I’d just danced on her dead husband’s grave, but she dug in her purse without a word. Something snapped open, and she handed me a five-dollar bill. “I don’t carry much cash, but I can get you more, later,” she offered, in spite of the hurt clear on her face.
“Don’t worry about it. This is plenty.” I paper-clipped the bill to a blank invoice and stuffed it into my desk drawer. Never in my life had I been more relieved to lose sight of a payment.
As they left my office, Cam glanced at me with a look of confusion and disappointment so strong it burned deep in my chest. But all I could do was stare back and hope he wouldn’t decide to put into words what his gaze was accusing me of.
I hated how he saw me now, and I hated knowing that his opinion of me would only worsen, if I kept my secrets. But my secrets kept him safe, and that was more important than what he thought of the life I’d chosen.
His safety was more important than anything to me. Even if he would never know enough to understand that.
Three
“Well, did that go how you expected?” Anne asked, as Olivia closed and locked her office door behind us.
“Nope.” I sighed and dug my keys from my pocket. “I figured it’d be worse. Do you believe her? About the Cavazos syndicate?”
“Yeah.” Anne dug her keys from her purse with still-trembling hands. “She’s hiding something, but that’s not it. She’s not a syndicate member.”
I shrugged, trying not to show how relieved I really was. “Yeah, I’m guessing that if he owned a piece of Olivia Warren, he’d want everyone to know it.” And she’d do everything she could to hide it.
The Liv I’d known and loved was beautiful and passionate, with a backbone of steel and a fiery temper. This new Olivia was everything my Liv had been and more. More steel. More fire. She couldn’t truly bend to someone else’s will—Anne had convinced, as much as she’d compelled—and those who wouldn’t bend could only break.
It would kill me to see Liv broken, even after what she’d done.
“You sure you wanna do this?” Anne asked, as I held the stairwell door open for her. “It sounds like she’s pretty good at what she does.”
“So am I. This’ll be easier and faster with us working together.”
But as much as I wanted to help Anne—to know without a doubt, for once, that I’d be taking a murderer off the streets—that wasn’t my primary motivation.
Olivia was the goal.
Sometimes I thought about that night and the months afterward, and I hated her. Then I hated myself, for still wanting her. She was pissed at me for making her show her arm—for making her do anything—but my relief at the sight of her smooth, bare arm was like nothing I’d ever felt. Part joy, part memory and part aching possibility. I couldn’t stand the thought of someone else’s hands on her, much less some asshole’s mark of ownership.
But she wouldn’t talk to me voluntarily, and that left me no choice but to corner her, which Anne had unwittingly helped me do. Now Olivia couldn’t just hang up on me or close the door in my face. Now she’d have to listen to me. She’d have to talk. She’d have to tell me to my face why she’d ruined my life and stolen my future….
“What happened between you two?” Anne asked, clicking a button on her key chain to unlock her car doors. She slid into the driver’s seat and I settled in next to her.
“I don’t know. But I’m damn well going to find out.”
New Year’s Eve Six years ago
“Remind me what we’re doing here again.” I wrapped my arms around Olivia’s waist, watching the party over her shoulder. She smelled like vanilla, and I wanted a taste.
“It’s New Year’s Eve. Stop being so antisocial. “
“Oh, I want to socialize—on a very selective basis. I want to be very, very social with you.” I ducked into the warm space between her neck and her hair and dropped a kiss beneath her ear, where the scent of vanilla was strongest. She shivered and twisted to face me, winding her arms around my neck.
“You just don’t like my friends. “
It wasn’t that I didn’t like them—I didn’t know most of them. “In the three years since I met you, you’ve hardly even mentioned them, and never once introduced me to anyone but Anne. Why would you want to spend New Year’s Eve with people you haven’t seen in years, instead of with me?”
“I am with you.” She kissed me to punctuate her point. “But they’re my best friends. “
“From high school. That was years ago. “
“Some bonds last forever, Cam. “
I was kind of hoping she’d say that.
“Thanks for coming.” She turned to pick up her drink from the corner of an end table. “Even if you do look like you’d rather be skinned alive. “
“Not skinned …” I muttered, as she returned a greeting from some tall, fair-haired guy I didn’t recognize. “But maybe shot.” The last-minute party invitation had derailed my plans for the evening, but I had a backup plan—an empty room, a quiet moment and the small but clear diamond in my pocket. I kept touching it, to make sure it was still there, and every time I thought about it, I got a little queasy and a little high on adrenaline.
I glanced at my watch, and that adrenaline surged again. Half an hour to go …
She would say yes. I wasn’t worried about that. I’d planned and I’d waited, to make sure everything was right. We’d both finished college. Her parents liked me. She was still waiting tables and I was still selling tools, but I had a big interview scheduled, and her prospects were endless. The real jobs would come, and until then, we’d call our tiny apartment cozy and joke that we could make our own warmth when the car’s heater gave out again.
But all that was icing. She’d say yes because she wanted me as badly as I wanted her. I could see that every time she looked at me. I could taste it in every hungry kiss and feel it in every fevered touch. This was right. We were right.
“That’s Kori’s brother, Kristopher,” she said, as the blond guy saluted us with an open beer. “This is his house. “
Had he looked at her a little too long? Smiled a little too much? My arms tightened around her before I realized what I was doing. “Were you two a couple? “
“Kris?” Liv laughed and twisted to whisper into my ear. “You jealous?” She bit lightly on my earlobe.
“Mmm … Should I be?”
“Nah. When I was fifteen, we made out in his basement once, for, like, two minutes. Then Kori found us and threatened to kick the crap out of us both if she ever saw that again.”
“Which one’s Kori?” I asked, looking over her shoulder again when she turned and pressed her back against my chest.
“The one in the corner.”
I followed Liv’s gaze to an athletic woman with white-blond hair, pouring from a bottle of vodka as if she’d started waaay before her last birthday. “I like her already.”
Liv laughed. “Yeah, that’ll last until the first time you piss her off. Noelle, though—you’d like Elle. “
“The brunette? She seems like fun.” She sat surrounded by a crowd, cracking them up with some animated story I couldn’t hear.
“She is. Elle’s supersmart, but she skipped college in favor of travel. I was always kind of jealous of that.” Liv sighed. “She always said she wanted to live life instead of learning about it.”
“But if you’d skipped college, we never would have met,” I pointed out. “Then we’d both be miserable for the rest of our lives, with no idea why.”
Liv laughed. “Another tragedy averted by the lure of a state-school education.”
“What’s up with Anne tonight?” I asked, as the redhead—the only one of Liv’s friends I’d spent any time with—staggered past us with a full plastic cup.
“Another breakup. It must suck to know when people are lying.”
I shrugged. “I guess. But it’d be convenient to know when they aren’t, right? “
“After hearing Anne cry, I’m starting to think that doesn’t happen much anymore.” Her frown deepened. “And I kind of want to break some asshole’s face. “
I held her tighter, just because I could. Because she was fierce, and beautiful, and mine.
“After the countdown, let’s go outside. Kris has a telescope, and there are no clouds tonight …”
“It’s freezing out there.”
Liv smiled. “I’ll keep you warm. “
“I’ll let you.” Outside was fine with me. The party was too crowded for my taste anyway.
I glanced at my watch again. Eleven forty-eight. My pulse rushed so fast I spent the next few seconds mentally tallying my drinks. But it wasn’t the alcohol, and it wasn’t the party. It wasn’t the wintertime freeze or even the way Olivia felt in my arms, as if nothing could go wrong as long as I was holding her. It was the look in her eyes, as if there was no one in the room but me.
And in twelve minutes, that would be true. In twelve minutes, our lives would change for the better. Forever.
“Hey, looks like you ‘re out.” I looked pointedly at her plastic cup.
“No, I’m—” she began, glancing down into the dark liquid.
I snatched the cup from her and drained it in one swallow, barely tasting the whiskey mixed with her soda. “Now you are.”
She shoved me, but couldn’t quite pull off a frown. “You owe me a refill.”
I grinned. “Be right back.”
I headed toward the makeshift bar until I was sure she’d lost sight of me, then veered toward the front door, dropping her empty cup in the trash on the way. Outside, the wind cut through my sweater like needles and my feet slid on muddy slush.
Three cars down from the crowded driveway, I unlocked my trunk and carefully unwrapped the spare blanket to reveal a bottle of champagne—the best I could afford—and two tall glass flutes.
It had to be perfect. This would be the beginning of the rest of our lives, and I wanted to get it right. We would count down toward midnight together, then I’d show her the ring when the party crowd shouted the number three. I would ask her to marry me at the stroke of midnight, and then every year after, no matter what time zone we were in, we would celebrate the New Year at that exact moment. Because we wouldn’t just be celebrating the beginning of a new calendar year—we’d be celebrating the beginning of our lives together.
The ring and the wedding ceremony were formalities, to make everyone else happy. The promise was for us. Our word. Our binding. Our future.
Carrying the champagne in one hand, the glasses in the other, I ducked into the house as someone else was coming out, ignoring the raised eyebrows and whispers as I made my way through the crowd, scanning the faces to make sure Olivia wasn’t watching.
She wasn’t. She was talking with her friend Noelle—evidently the only sober friend she had—and they both looked upset. But that wouldn’t last long. No longer than the next ten minutes, by my guess …
At the end of the hall, I pushed open the door to the home office I’d scouted out earlier. The only other choice had been Kris’s bedroom, which would have been weird, at best. I set the champagne on the computer desk and arranged the glasses on either side of it. Then I closed the office door and made my way back to the party.
Noelle walked off as I approached, and I couldn’t interpret the look she gave Liv. Olivia was crying.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” I tried to pull her close. But she stepped out of reach, tears standing in her eyes. “This isn’t going to work, Cam.”
“I know. I just set up a little private party for us, back there …” I tried to guide her through the crowd but she wouldn’t move.
Liv wiped tears from her face and blinked up at me, and people were watching now. Kristopher What’s-his-face stepped forward, puffed up like a bulldog, as if he thought whatever was wrong with her was my fault.
“No.” Liv crossed her arms over her chest. “I mean us. This isn’t going to work. I don’t … I don’t want this anymore, Cam. I’m sorry. “
I couldn’t process what she’d said. It just didn’t make sense. And by the time the truth sank in, Liv was halfway across the room, on her way to the front door.
“Olivia!” I started after her, but Kristopher and three of his friends stepped into my path. “She wants to leave. Let her go.” I didn’t have the coherence to form words, but my fists flew on instinct. I’d bloodied Kristopher’s nose and laid one of his friends out cold before the other two managed to toss me onto the front porch. But by then, Liv was gone. Along with our car.
I sank onto the steps, colder inside than out, reeling from what she’d said, but I still hadn’t truly heard. She’d dumped me. In the middle of a party full of people I’d never met. Ten minutes before I was going to ask her to marry me. It didn’t make any sense.
The front door opened behind me, and I shifted to make room for whoever wanted past.
“You okay?” Liv’s friend Anne sat next to me on the top step, tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear. “I saw what happened.”
“Then you know I’m not okay.”
“Liv took the car?”
And everything else that had ever mattered to me. But I could only nod. “Want a ride?”
“No, I want a drink. Lots of them. “
Anne nodded, as if she could taste the truth in my words. She probably could. “There’s a Hudson’s half a mile from here.” She stood, wobbling on her feet—she’d probably already had too much. “That’s where I’m headed. You’re welcome to come.”
I stared up at her, and I could see the pain on her face. Whatever this asshole had done to her had hurt her. A lot. I could sympathize—there was now a gaping hole where my own heart had been minutes earlier.
“I’m driving …” I pulled the keys from her hand, and she only smiled and led me to her car. I started the engine as the guy on the radio counted down the last three seconds of the year.
“It was a shitty year anyway.” Anne punched the radio power button. “Maybe this one will be better. “
“Not likely,” I mumbled, as I pulled away from the curb. “Happy fucking New Year.”
Four
“Hey, Liv,” Tomas said, as I pulled open the heavy back door before he could push it open for me. You’d think he’d quit trying. “You’re late.”
“Yup. Passive resistance.” I put my hands behind my head and spread my feet so he could pat me down, then clomped across the kitchen, my boots echoing on the marble tile.
“He doesn’t like it when you’re late,” Tomas called out from behind me, unwilling—or maybe disallowed—to leave his post at the back door.
I turned to face him, walking backward as he rubbed the row of three interlocking blue rings tattooed on his exposed left bicep, indicating his midlevel rank in the organization and his position as syndicate muscle. “Exactly.”
Tomas shook his head slowly, half amused, half worried, and I wondered how much shit he’d had to take because of my twenty-minute tardy. East of the river, the concept of not shooting messengers was unpopular at best. I felt kinda bad about that. Really.
I crossed the foyer and ignored the main staircase in favor of the dim hallway beyond, where two of the three doors were closed. Bypassing the open guest bathroom, I stopped in front of the only door on the left and paused for a deep breath. The kind of breath you take before you step into the sewer, hoping you won’t have to inhale again before you’re out. But you will have to, and every breath you take will remind you that you’re standing knee-deep in someone else’s filth, and that no matter how hard you scrub afterward, you’re never going to feel truly clean again.
Then I pushed the door open and walked in without knocking.
Confusion sparked in the disconnect between my eyes and my brain, before comprehension was rerouted through my ears. It was the heavy breathing that finally clued me in. There was a girl in his lap, behind his desk, nibbling—or maybe sucking—on his neck. Or maybe his ear. And the rhythmic rise and fall of her body said that kissing wasn’t the extent of this little demonstration.
They knew I’d come in, but the show didn’t stop—a consequence of those twenty minutes I’d made him wait—and it wouldn’t stop until I officially acknowledged that I’d seen. But the joke was on him. I didn’t care who he screwed, and the sight of him being ridden by the nanny, or the maid, or whoever it was this week wasn’t going to improve my punctuality. Quite the opposite, in fact.
But since I was already there.
“Ahem.” I cleared my throat loudly, one hand still on the door handle. They both froze, pretending to be surprised, and the girl lifted her head, tossing long, straight black hair over her shoulder. And that’s when I saw her arm.
Oh, shit.
Beneath the usual interlocking rings, two in this case, her left bicep was tattooed with three beautifully lettered words in a golden band all the way around her arm—a sealed oath and a symbolic wedding ring she could never take off.
Fidelitas. Muneris. Oboedientia.
Fidelity. Service. Obedience.
Michaela. Shit, shit, shit! He wasn’t fucking the staff, he was fucking his wife.
That was new.
Ruben Cavazos peered at me over her shoulder, dark eyes shining. He looked at least a decade younger than his age—his early fifties—yet easily a decade older than his wife. “Olivia. Join us?”
I raised one brow. “Is that an invitation or an order?”
“It is an option.”
“Then this is my refusal.”
He laughed, and Mrs. Cavazos scowled in profile at the room in general. He couldn’t actually order me to sleep with him—or them—a fact I reminded him of often. But I wasn’t sure if his wife knew that.
He patted her thigh, bared by the skirt hiked up to her waist and trailing between his legs. When she only leaned down for another kiss, his expression hardened, and the next slap was hard enough to make me wince.
Michaela stood, and her skirt fell to her knees, covering the fresh red splotch from his hand. She straightened the blue gauzy material as she turned to me, dark eyes blazing with a fury she probably had no idea we shared. “You’re late,” she spat, by way of greeting, excuse, explanation and a general “fuck you.”
“Mea culpa.” I didn’t hate her like she hated me. I’d tried, over and over, and failed every time. Instead, I pitied her, and that just pissed her off even more.
“Meika, bring in a glass of Scotch for Ms. Warren,” Cavazos said, and his wife stopped two feet from the door, glaring at me openly.
“Ruben, it’s ten in the morning,” I said, then glanced at her, trying not to let pity leak into my expression.
“Coffee’s fine.”
She stomped past me, muttering angrily in Spanish, too fast for me to pick up anything more than bitch. I heard that one a lot.
Cavazos laughed. “Close the door,” he called after her, and she slammed it hard enough to shake the framed photos on the wall—a gallery of Ruben Cavazos, pictured with every city official and national and foreign dignitary he’d ever met.
He stood, zipped his black slacks and circled his desk to sit on the front corner.
I dropped into one of the leather chairs in front of his desk. “She hates me.”
“With a rather colorful intensity.” He chuckled again. “Do you blame her?”
“I blame you.”
More laughter. His good moods were scarier than his anger, at least to those who knew him well. “Think of her hatred as a compliment.”
I thought of it as a problem. Michaela followed orders, just like everyone else bound to her husband. But she also took full advantage of every moment that wasn’t governed by an order and every possibility she wasn’t specifically ordered not to take. If she got the chance, she’d kill me. Or die trying.
Either way, she had my respect.
“What happened with the apartment in Florida?” he asked, all traces of humor gone.
“I got hold of the superintendent two days ago. It’s still rented to a woman named Tamara Parker, and she’s approximately the right age, but the description doesn’t fit. And he’s not with her, Ruben. She lives alone.”
“A landlord never really knows how many people live in a unit. And looks can be changed.”
“Yes, but unless your Tamara Parker gained two hundred pounds and changed her skin color, I think we’ve hit another dead end. She gave you a fake name, and she’s not using it anymore.”
His sigh was so frustrated he almost sounded human. But I’d been fooled by that too many times to let my guard down now. “What about him?”
“Nothing new.” I shrugged. “I get a faint tug from the middle name, but without more to go on, I can’t even tell what direction he’s in, much less how far away he is. He could be across the country, or across the street. We’re going to have to approach this from another angle.” Damned if I know what angle, though …
“Agreed.” Ruben blinked, then met my gaze with fresh determination, and I realized he was about to change the subject. “Why were you on High Street in the middle of the night?” he asked.
He was like a damn spider—his eyes were everywhere. “I was on a job. Got time and a half.”
“From Adam Rawlinson?”
“Yes.”
His frown deepened, and suddenly I wanted the laughter back. “I don’t like you working for him.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck what you like.”
His hand flew, and pain exploded in the corner of my mouth. My head rocked to the side and I tasted blood. But it was an openhanded blow, intended to make a point, not to truly hurt me. “Respect, Olivia. It’s what this syndicate is founded on.”
Funny, I thought the syndicate was founded on money. And blood. And ironclad bonds of indentured servitude.
I tasted the cut on the inside of my lip. I could hit him back—I’d certainly done it before—but if I left a mark, he’d have to beat the shit out of me so everyone else could see what happens when you disrespect Ruben Cavazos. And I was done being an object lesson.
“If I didn’t respect your abilities, you wouldn’t be here,” he continued, and the irony in that fact stung worse than my lip. Was this the reward for being good at my job? Ruben crossed his arms over his chest and stared at me like he might a crossword puzzle beyond his vocabulary. “But I don’t know why you bother with these penny-ante jobs.”
I rolled my eyes. “You don’t know a lot of things.”
“I know you haven’t set foot in your apartment in more than a year.”
“It’s your apartment. Mine is the one I pay rent on.” On the south side. In a building owned by one of the few men in the city who owed loyalty to neither Tower nor Cavazos. The south fork was as close as I could get to Switzerland.
“I understand that you threw away every cent in your bank account.”
“My bank account is fine.” If a little malnourished. “And the account you set up wasn’t thrown away. The money was donated in your name.” I’d withdrawn the five-figure balance in cash and given it to the Catholic-run homeless shelter around the corner from my office. “Sister Theresa thanks you for your generosity.”
His grip tightened on the edge of his desk, and I held my breath. I was poking a lion with a stick, and one of these days he would bite me in half. I knew that. But I wasn’t going to just roll over and play dead for him.
That was his wife’s job.
Besides, as long as he still needed me, he wasn’t going to kill me, and we both knew it. “Olivia …” he warned.
“I’m not going to stop working, and you can’t make me.”
Cavazos stood and pulled me up by one arm. I didn’t bother resisting—the sooner we got this over with, the sooner I could start Tracking Shen’s killer. With Cam. But thinking about him must have shown on my face, because Ruben’s grip tightened and he pushed me around the chair.
“You want to work? Fine. I have a job for you.” He kept walking—kept pushing—until my back hit the darkly paneled wall. “One of my staff Binders is missing,” he whispered, leaning toward my neck. “Along with the contracts he was working on. I need them back. Rapido.”
“Can’t,” I said, as his warm lips brushed the skin just below my earlobe. “I just booked a new client. She’s already paid the retainer.” Thank goodness.
“This is important. And it pays well.”
It took most of my concentration to ignore how good his mouth felt, and that pissed me off. I didn’t want him to feel good. “I don’t want your money.” I wedged my hands between us and shoved him back. “I don’t want anything from you.”
“You want me to keep my word, don’t you?” he taunted, and my heart pounded painfully, though I recognized the empty threat.
“You don’t have any choice about that.”
He leaned into me again and slid his hands beneath my jacket, pushing it off my shoulders and halfway down my arms, until they were pinned by the material. “And you don’t have any choice about this.”
I’d had a choice, once. A year and a half ago. It was a tough one. No good options at all. I’d chosen the lesser of several evils, but in that moment, with his hands pushing my jacket off, his mouth on my skin, the evil I’d chosen didn’t feel very lesser.
I closed my eyes and tried not to react, not to feel, and when that didn’t work, I pretended. I’d gotten pretty good at that in the past eighteen months. At pretending they were someone else’s hands, and lips, and eyes. Pretending it was okay to enjoy it, because I was with someone I wanted.
Those were the only moments I let myself think about Cam—about what I’d walked away from—because those were the only moments when remembering the past hurt less than living in the present.
The door flew open, and so did my eyes. Michaela stared at us, shaking in a fury so strong the coffee mug clattered against the full pot on her tray.
“Out!” Cavazos thundered, whirling to glare at her while I stared at my jacket on the floor, mortified, and pissed off, and struggling to breathe.
She set the tray on the credenza, then backed into the hall and slammed the door. I flinched. “Why do you do this to her?” I groaned. “You told her to bring me a drink.”
“She delayed her entrance on purpose for dramatic effect.”
“Well, can you blame her?” I enjoyed throwing his own words back at him, but he didn’t seem to remember saying them. He just turned back to me with that hunger in his eyes, edged with an anger that seemed to serve as fuel for the fire.
“My marriage is complicated,” he whispered into my ear, his cheek brushing mine. “She punishes me, I punish her, and the cycle continues.”
“What do you punish each other for?”
“For living.”
“That’s screwed up, Ruben.” I tried to push him off again, but this time he wouldn’t go. “Did it ever occur to you that she might prefer a less complicated marriage?”
“Fidelitas. Muneris. Oboedientia. She knew what she was signing when she married me….” he murmured, fumbling with the buttons on my shirt.
That was the part I couldn’t understand. Why would someone as smart and fierce as Michaela sign a marriage oath promising fidelity to a husband who wasn’t bound by an equivalent clause? Was the lure of money and status really worth a husband who screwed around right under her nose? In her own house? Right in front of her?
But then, who was I to judge? The specifics of my involvement with her husband weren’t exactly pretty, so maybe the same was true for her.
“Your people are starting to talk, Ruben.”
He shook his head and reached for my waistband, and I let him push the button through the hole. Because I couldn’t stop him. He hadn’t hit that brick wall yet. “My people are bound by privacy clauses. All except you.”
“I’m not yours.”
“Yet.” He stroked the unmarred skin of my left bicep with his thumb. If he had his way, my arm would look just like Tomas’s.
And then there’d be no escaping him.
“Well, someone’s talking.” More than one someone. And whoever they were, they didn’t have their facts straight.
He knelt to unlace my boots, then slid my jeans over my hips and let them crumple on the floor. Then he wrapped his arms around my waist, pressing one stubbly cheek against my stomach. “The best way to silence the masses is to cut out a single tongue,” he whispered against my skin. Then he stood slowly and his fevered gaze met mine. “I could set something up. You can use my best knife if you let me watch.”
“You’re a sick bastard.” I bent for my pants, but he pulled me back up by one arm.
“Stay.”
“I have to work.”
“Stay as long as you can….” he insisted. I tried to walk away from him, but again, he pulled me back. “That’s an order.”
Damn it!
“Not today,” I said, and agony exploded behind my forehead, bright white and unbearable. I staggered and he picked me up. Several steps later, he lowered me onto the leather couch, cold against my bare legs, and knelt on the floor beside me.
He stroked hair back from my forehead while the pain raged behind my eyes and my hand twitched on the center cushion. “Why do you do this to yourself? You know you can’t win.”
“That’s exactly why I fight,” I groaned through clenched teeth.
Ruben ran one hand down my leg. “Let me see it,” he whispered.
My temper flared at his touch and I shook my head. The pain radiated toward the back of my skull and my left foot began to jiggle. My whole world was agony.
“Stubborn little bitch …” he whispered. “Let me see it.”
That time I didn’t fight. I’d made my point—he could never truly rule me, no matter what he made me do—and we both knew I wasn’t going to win in the end. So I didn’t resist when he slid one hand beneath my left knee and bent my leg to expose my bare thigh.
He traced the small black ring tattooed there, and my skin tingled beneath his finger, recognizing his touch. Because the ink was infused by his blood. A year and a half ago, when the needle spilled my blood, he rubbed it with his pricked thumb and sealed the binding.
“You’re mine, Olivia,” he whispered, leaning closer. His lips brushed the black ring, and I gasped as it burned hotter. Fortunately, he’d finally hit the brick wall—that was as far as he could go without breaking his word and suffering the same pain I’d brought on myself. But that didn’t make his next words any less true.
“Until you find and deliver what you promised, I own you, head to toe. And I won’t ever let you forget that …”
Five
“You’re late,” Cam said, as I unlocked the office door and held it open for him.
“Yup.” I’d left with just enough time to get there by noon—Cavazos had to let me go to work for official clients, but didn’t have to leave me any spare time—but I’d stopped by my apartment first to shower. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing Cam again with the feel of Cavazos still crawling on my skin.
Not with the memory of him calling me “clean” still echoing in my head.
I tossed my scuffed satchel onto the couch and headed straight for my desk.
“You really think that’s the best way to start this working relationship?”
“Nope.” I dropped into my chair and pulled open the bottom right-hand drawer, pawing through the contents as I spoke. “If you wanna work with someone else, I fully support your decision.” In fact, that was the only way I could get out of a direct request from Anne.
“You’re not going to get rid of me again, Liv. Unless you have a new vanishing act you’d like to try out.”
My fingers brushed smooth glass beneath a tangle of holster straps and receipts I’d really meant to file, and I pulled out a half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey. The shot glass in my pencil drawer had eraser shavings in it, so I tapped it upside down on my desk until they fell out, then poured myself a shot.
I threw it back and closed my eyes, half wishing the alcohol still burned. I’d tried drinking before my weekly report to Cavazos once, and once was all it took. Turns out I don’t really want to be relaxed around him after all.
“What’s wrong with you?” Cam demanded, sinking onto the couch with his elbows on his knees.
“I had a rough morning, and based on your presence in my office, my afternoon isn’t looking much better.”
His blue eyes narrowed in anger, and I had to swallow my own regret before it surfaced as an apology—I couldn’t afford to let him in again. “When did you turn into such a bitch?” he growled, and my urge to apologize dried up and blew away.
“About a year and a half ago.” I poured another shot and pushed the bottle toward him.
Instead of taking it, he watched me slowly turn the shot I’d poured for myself, staring down at the contents. “Are you going to be like this the whole time?” he asked.
“Nope. Sometimes I’ll be irritable and unpleasant.” I downed the shot and reached for the bottle again, but he pulled it out of my reach.
Cam tilted the bottle to read the label, then set it on the desk again with a disgusted look. “I guess you really don’t work for Cavazos. He pays better than this.”
“What, you’re too good for my whiskey?”
“Yeah, and so are you. When this is over, I’ll buy you a real drink.” His arched brows were a challenge, but his eyes were serious, and so was the question he hadn’t really asked.
“I might let you. Because I like whiskey.”
He leaned back on the couch, crossing both arms over his chest. “Is that the best I’m going to get?”
“From me? Today? Yes.” I screwed the lid on the bottle and put it back in the drawer. “Where’s Anne?” I asked, when the fact that I was alone with Cam became too much to think about.
“You were late and she had to pick up Hadley. She left these for you, though.” He picked up a plastic grocery bag I hadn’t even noticed and tossed it onto the desk. I opened it and looked in to find several clear plastic bags, each smeared with blood on the inside from their contents.
“She took these herself, didn’t she?” I asked, trying not to be horrified by the thought of Anne on her hands and knees, taking samples of blood from the scene of her husband’s slaughter.
“She wouldn’t let me help.” Cam glanced at the floor between his knees. “She seemed to think she owed it to him personally.”
Damn.
I spread the bags out on my desk, looking for some kind of order, but they weren’t numbered or labeled, as police evidence bags always were. There was a swatch of cloth that might once have been plaid, an uneven square of excised carpet, a patch of stained denim and a formerly white athletic sock.
“Have you tried any of them?” I asked, turning the first bag over to examine it.
Cam shook his head. “You’re the blood expert.” Which is what had brought me to Cavazos’s attention …
I unzipped the first baggie—the plaid cloth—and reached inside with my bare hand. The blood was room temperature and still sticky. Fresh enough to be viable, and readable from a decent distance.
As the metallic scent of blood filled the room, I pulled the cloth from the bag and closed my eyes, fingering the material, focusing on the feel of the blood between my fingers, and the feel of it in my head. That mental scent. The energy signature of whoever’d spilled it.
It came from a man. Gender was easy to discern, but race and age took more experience—exposure to and study of a variety of samples. Fortunately, I’d had plenty of experience.
The blood came from a man of Asian descent. I couldn’t pin down his age without a fresher sample, but I knew two things for sure. The blood held no power, which meant its owner was not Skilled. And the blood held no pull—no psychic thread connecting it to the man who’d spilled it, through which I could Track him. Which meant the owner was dead.
“It’s Shen’s,” I said, resealing the cloth in its bag.
Cam sat straighter. “How sure are you?”
“As sure as I can be, without having met him. It’s either his, or another dead Asian man with no Skill.” Which could easily have been one of about a billion other people—if we didn’t already know Shen’s killer was a Traveler.
I stood without touching anything and crossed into the bathroom to wash my hands with the bar of lye soap on the left side of the sink. It was hell on my skin, but lye destroys blood, which would keep me from confusing one sample with another.
In my chair again, I opened the second bag—the denim—and knew almost immediately that the blood in this one was also Shen’s.
Another hand scrub, then I opened the third bag. The carpet. And that one was interesting. Shen’s blood was there, but it wasn’t alone. Two people had bled on the carpet, and the second person’s blood held both power and pull. He was both Skilled and alive. But with the samples so thoroughly mixed, I couldn’t tell what kind of Skill it was, nor could I get any specific direction from the pull. I didn’t even know for sure that the owner was male.
I sealed up the carpet and washed my hands again, then sat down with the last sample—the sock. “The carpet, I understand. But how the hell did Anne get bloody clothes from a crime scene? Why didn’t the police take them for evidence?”
Cam sighed and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “The house was locked up tight when Shen was found, and his keys weren’t missing. The cops know the killer was a Traveler, and they know they’ll never find him with only county resources.” He shrugged. “It’s no surprise they’re not dedicating much time or effort to a case they know they can’t solve.”
And there were more of those every day, it seemed. Sure, some cops were Skilled, but the police department couldn’t legally use resources that weren’t officially recognized by the government, which meant they were crippled in the investigation of any crime obviously committed by a Skilled perp.
Victims and loved ones who could pay would come to people like me for answers the cops couldn’t give them. Some independent Trackers—like Spencer and his associates—also offered vigilante justice, of the variety Anne had requested, for a huge fee.
Those who wanted justice but couldn’t afford it in monetary terms would turn to either Tower or Cavazos, who were happy to take payment in the form of an IOU—a dangerously vague contract sealed by one of their own Binders. And just like that, one by one, private citizens fell into debt to one syndicate or the other, signing away their souls—or at least their free will—for one short moment of visceral satisfaction.
What they didn’t know was that half the time, the very syndicate they turned to for help was responsible for the crime they wanted avenged. I’d seen it happen. If Cavazos wanted a Traveler or a Reader who refused to sign on, he’d have the target’s spouse or parent killed—never a child, thank goodness—then sit back and wait for a desperate knock on the door.
And people kept falling for it, devastated and naive in the face of engineered tragedy.
I held up the bloody sock, mentally crossing my fingers that what had happened to Anne was nothing of that sort. That this was something we could put an end to without making powerful enemies. Then I closed my eyes and inhaled.
Score.
One bleeder, with both power and pull. This blood almost certainly matched the second bleeder from the carpet, and with only one scent to concentrate on, I was able to pin down some details.
“Male, and he’s a Traveler.” Just as Anne had guessed. I’d found the killer. Or, at least, I’d found his blood, and since it hadn’t completely dried, the pull from it was strong.
Cam sat straight again and glanced from the sock to my face. “Anything else?”
“A general direction.”
He was already on his feet, keys in hand. “I’ll drive.” I glanced at him, my gaze narrowed in suspicion, and Cam scowled. “What, you don’t trust me? Don’t you think it should be the other way around? How do I know that you’re not just going to ditch me again and move to another city, without even a goodbye?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I snatched my worn satchel from the couch and filled it with supplies from the cabinet behind my desk so I wouldn’t have to look at him.
“Well, then, why don’t you tell me?” he demanded, and when I didn’t answer, he grabbed my arm and tried to turn me around. “Why are you so angry? You’re pushing people away. People who care about you. What happened to you, Liv?”
I jerked my arm from his grasp and met his gaze reluctantly. “Nothing I can’t handle.” Yet. But he didn’t understand that, and I couldn’t explain it. “Fine. You can drive. It’ll be easier for me to concentrate on the blood that way anyway.” Which was probably the reason he’d offered in the first place.
The last thing that went into my satchel was a spray bottle of ammonia, then I zipped the bag and set it on the desk. I shrugged into my good holster and pulled my jacket on over it, then checked the clip and the safety on my favorite 9mm and dropped it into the holster. I sealed the sock back into its bag and shoved it into my right jacket pocket. With my phone in the opposite pocket and my satchel over one shoulder, I shooed Cam out the door and locked it behind us.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said, following me down the narrow staircase at the end of the hall. “Even if you’re not talking to me.”
“I am talking to you.” I pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairs and stepped into the bright parking lot, squinting against the glare of the sun. I’d rather work at night, when there were fewer of Cavazos’s eyes around to see me with Cam, but Anne’s blood sample wasn’t getting any fresher.
“You’re talking, but you’re not really saying anything,” Cam insisted, digging his keys from his pocket.
“You’re doing enough of that for both of us.”
His car—the one he’d tracked me down in the night before—was parked near the end of the front row, and as we approached, he unlocked it by remote.
“What do you want me to say?” I asked, dropping into the passenger’s seat.
“It’s been six years, Liv. I don’t even know you anymore.” When I didn’t know how to respond, he sighed and started the car. “Is this what you do now? Freelance Tracking?”
I nodded, and the knot of tension inside me eased just a little. Work questions, I could handle. “I was on Adam Rawlinson’s team for three years. They taught me to shoot and fight—Rawlinson himself trained me on the nine mil—and I quit last year and went into business for myself.”
Cam stopped at the parking-lot exit, the car’s V8 rumbling all the way into my bones. “Which way?”
I set the sock on my lap and opened the bag, then ran my fingers over the damp, sticky material and closed my eyes. “West.” Shit. Tower’s side of town. Not a promising start to the afternoon.
“What happened with Rawlinson?” Cam asked, turning left onto the street. “You didn’t like the company?”
“No, it was nice.” Good money, decent benefits and an upstanding boss. Rawlinson had a sterling reputation and got the bulk of the business from anyone who didn’t want to get tangled up with either Tower or Cavazos. Including a lot of unofficial police “consultations.”
“So why’d you quit? You obviously took a cut in Pay….”
I laughed, and it almost felt good. “Is that a dig at my liquor cabinet?”
Cam smiled. “That wasn’t liquor, it was swill. And that wasn’t a cabinet, it was a drawer.”
“The money will come, once I get my name out there.” For too many years, I’d been known only as Rawlinson’s top Tracker, “You know, that girl.” I’d almost started answering to the unofficial title.
“So you quit over money?”
“No.” I glanced at him, looking for judgment in his eyes, because there’d been none in his voice. “I wanted to be my own boss.”
The irony of my lie stung. Good thing I wasn’t bound to tell the truth.
I’d quit my job after Cavazos inked his mark on my thigh and ruined my whole life. I did it to keep Rawlinson and the rest of his employees safe. He would have fired me anyway if he’d found out. No syndicate-bound employees—that was both company policy and common sense. Never hire someone whose loyalty belongs to someone else. Especially someone with the power not only to kill you, but to make the world forget you ever existed. And that was only one of the reasons I had to keep my binding secret.
“Well, then, I guess you got what you wanted.”
Hardly. I stared at my lap. I hadn’t gotten a damn thing I’d wanted since that night six years ago.
When the road curved to the right, I looked up. The blood wanted us to go straight. “Take the next left and veer toward the market district,” I said, staring out the window to avoid looking at him. Being with Cam was harder than I’d thought it would be. Some things hadn’t changed—he still smelled like good coffee and cheap shampoo—and some things were totally different. Like that dark, scruffy stubble, as if he hadn’t gotten a chance to shave. And maybe he hadn’t. The stubble made him look older, and at first that had bothered me, because it reminded me how much had changed since we’d been together. But now that stubble was kind of growing on me.
Wonder what it feels like …
I’d actually pulled my hand from the plastic bag before I realized what I was doing, and when he glanced at my bloody fingers, I felt myself flush.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did you lose the pull?”
“No.” I shoved my hand back into the bag and ran my fingers over the stiffening material, staring straight out the windshield. He couldn’t guess at my thoughts if he couldn’t see my face. “Just keep heading west.” Deeper and deeper into Jake Tower’s side of town.
“So … how long have you been bound?” Cam asked, when I motioned for him to take the next left.
My heart jumped so high I could practically taste it on the back of my tongue. “I told you, Cavazos doesn’t—”
“I meant Anne. How long have you and Anne been bound to the others?”
Oh. Yeah.
I tried to relax, but that was hard to do, considering I was clutching the bloody evidence from a murder scene, riding into the territory of a man who’d kill me as soon as look at me and sitting next to the man I’d thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. “Fifteen years. Since I was twelve.”
Cam whistled, as if he was impressed. Or horrified. “So, the whole time we were together, you were bound to your three best friends?”
“And vice versa.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“After high school, it didn’t seem to matter. We hardly saw one another.”
“Anne said it was an accident …?” he prompted, and I wondered how much else she’d told him.
“Yeah. We didn’t know what we were doing. Some guy at school made Anne cry, so Kori made him cry. Then we went back to Kori’s house to comfort Anne with junk food, and we wound up swearing lifelong loyalty and assistance instead.”
“How do you accidently sign and seal a lifelong binding?”
“We didn’t know it was a binding.” I twisted to half face him, and only then realized how comfortable that felt. How easy talking to him had become—again—as if we could just pick up right where we’d left off.
But we couldn’t. Ever. And forgetting that would get one of us killed.
“It was different then, you know?” I made myself stare out the window to avoid looking at him. “The revelation was still recent, and our parents hadn’t told us we were Skilled. They were afraid that if we knew, we’d be in danger. Turns out ignorance is more dangerous than the truth.”
“It usually is,” Cam said, and suddenly my throat felt thick. He was talking about his own ignorance, about all the things I still couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell him.
“We were just being kids. Best friends standing around the kitchen, making promises we probably never would have kept, just to make Anne smile. But then Kori’s little sister, Kenley, came in and overheard us, and she wanted to help. She said it wouldn’t be official unless we wrote it down.”
Cam’s brows rose halfway up his forehead, and he looked away from the road long enough to make me nervous. “Kenley Daniels was your Binder? Sixteen years ago?”
I nodded. “If we’d known that ran in her family—turns out her mother’s a Binder, too—we probably would have realized what she was doing, even if she
didn’t.”
“Displaying the first instinctive manifestation of a very serious Skill?”
I couldn’t resist a smile. “Good guess.”
“How old was she?”
“Ten.”
“Damn. It doesn’t usually show up so early.”
“I know.” I’d met more than my share of Binders since that day fifteen years ago, and not one of them had displayed a stronger Skill or instinct than Kenley Daniels had at ten years old. Without even knowing what she was.
“So … she what? Scribbled a promise in crayon and told you to sign it?”
I laughed again, but more out of nerves than amusement. He wasn’t far off. “It was pink glitter pen, actually. And after we signed, she said it still didn’t feel right. She said it wouldn’t be ‘real’ unless we used blood.”
The four of us had been losing interest by then, but Kori had perked up when she realized that meant she’d get to use her knife. And I have to admit, I was curious—perhaps the beginnings of my own talent with blood.
“Oh, shit!” Cam glanced at me again, then back at the road. “Kenley’s a blood Binder? I thought she worked with signatures….”
“Actually, it turns out she’s a double threat.” Blood binding was a much rarer Skill than name binding—binding a written oath with a signature—and those who could do both were rarer still. And someone with the power to do both at such a young age was almost unheard of.
“So, I’m guessing that contract is ironclad …?” Cam said, flicking on his turn signal when I pointed toward a side street ahead.
“Yeah. And what’s worse is that she had plenty of Skill, but no training. It was really more an oath than a contract. Just a promise that we would help one another whenever asked. There was no expiration date, no stipulations and no exceptions. There weren’t even enough words to form a decent loophole.”
“Why didn’t you just burn it?”
Burning it to ashes was the only surefire way to destroy a blood-sealed contract, which is why certain notorious crime lords had started sealing their employee bindings in the flesh—literally—with tattoo marks as a fail-safe in case the corresponding written contract was destroyed. Fortunately, Kenley hadn’t foreseen that advancement. I wasn’t even sure she was capable of flesh binding, not that any of us knew what that was fifteen years ago. Her first sealed contract could easily be destroyed—if it could be found.
“By the time we realized what we’d done—the first time Kori’s grandmother had to pick her up from the police station—the oath was gone. We looked everywhere. Our parents got together and tore the Danielses’ house apart, and when it wasn’t there, they searched their own houses. But we never found so much as a scrap of powder-blue paper or pink glitter pen.”
“You think someone took it?” he asked, and I could only shrug.
“It didn’t walk off on its own. But I have no clue who could have taken it. Or why. Until Kori got arrested, only the four of us knew about it—Kori, Anne, Noelle and me. And Kenley, of course. And we all wanted it destroyed.” Badly, by the time we got to high school. “We explored different theories over the years. A parent trying to teach us a lesson. Kori’s brother, Kristopher, being a pain in the ass. Their dog burying a new prize. But no one ever admitted anything, and Anne didn’t know she was a Reader yet, so it never occurred to her to look for a lie. And every time we tested it, the binding was still intact, which meant that the oath was still whole, wherever it was. And obviously it still is now,” I said, gesturing to the entire car to indicate our current vigilante mission.
“That sounds like a total pain in the ass.”
“Worse. We started hating each other. Even the most offhand, ridiculous request became a geas—a compulsion that had to be obeyed, to the exclusion of everything else. We wound up cheating, and lying, and stealing, and starting fights for one another. We got hurt, and arrested, and kicked out of school. And the cycle was self-perpetuating. Anne would get pissed at Kori for making her help cheat on a test, so she’d ask Kori to go to the drugstore and shoplift only hemorrhoid cream and Vagisil, knowing that when she got caught, she’d be humiliated.”
Cam laughed. “When I met them, the four of you seemed to get along pretty well.”
“Part of that was the fact that we rarely saw one another after high school. The rest of it was the second oath.”
“There was a second oath?”
“Yeah. My senior year, Kenley got tired of all the bitching and backstabbing. And I think she felt guilty, because she was the reason for the trouble in the first place. So she conned us all into the same room long enough to show us a new oath she’d penned, which basically made us swear never to ask one another for anything.”
“So, did you sign?”
“Hell yes! We fought over who got to sign first. After that, everything was fine. We weren’t best friends anymore, but we didn’t hate each other, either. We just kind of … left each other alone. That New Year’s Eve party six years ago? That was the first time we’d spent more than an hour together since high-school graduation. It was also the last time I saw any of them. Until this morning.”
“Because Anne burned the second contract?” I scowled. “You were eavesdropping?” He shrugged. “I could only hear bits of it from the hallway.”
After a moment of hesitation and concentration, I motioned him through the next red light, but I could tell his thoughts were no longer on the drive. “So, why did you guys let Anne keep the second oath?”
“We didn’t,” I said. “It didn’t seem fair for any one of us to have it, so we let Kenley keep it. She was the only neutral party, and she was the one who sealed it.”
“Well, Anne must have gotten ahold of it somehow, if she burned it.”
My hand clenched around the bloody material. I hadn’t thought of that. “And she must have gotten to it quickly….” I mumbled, mentally counting the few hours between Shen’s murder and the moment Anne showed up in my office. And she’d found Cam even before that. “Maybe she’s still in contact with Kenley….” I began, then realized that we’d rolled to a halt three cars back from a four-way stop.
“Which way?” Cam asked, and I forced my mind back to the energy signature I was tracking.
I closed my eyes and placed my hand flat over the tacky sock, inside the bag. The pull was still there, but fading as the blood dried. “Straight,” I murmured. “But slightly to the right …”
“There’s no slightly to it,” he said, and I opened my eyes as we rolled through the intersection to find the street sandwiched by tightly packed rows of buildings—mostly neighborhood businesses and apartments.
“Slow down.” I closed my eyes again and let the blood guide me. The pull was getting stronger, but not definitively so. “Stop,” I said at last, when the blood began to pull me from behind. “We passed it.”
He backed into the first available parking spot on the curb and turned off the engine. “Up there, maybe?” he said, twisting to peer through the rear windshield at the building on the right. “In one of the apartments?”
“That’s my guess.” I pulled a packet of wet wipes from my satchel and started cleaning blood from my hand. Again. The wipes wouldn’t work as well as lye, but they were portable and didn’t make me want to peel my own skin off to stop the burning.
Cam glanced at the slight gun bulge beneath my jacket as I stuffed the used wipe into a plastic sandwich bag in the side pocket of my satchel. “Are you really going to do this?”
“I don’t have any choice. Or did you forget what compelled means?”
“I haven’t forgotten anything, Liv,” he said, and I realized we were having two different conversations. “Do you have a silencer for that thing?”
“No, I don’t have a silencer. Because I’m not an assassin.” I dug through my satchel for a thin box of surgical gloves and plucked two from the slit on top, then shoved them into my right jacket pocket.
“Well, that’s too bad, because this is an assassination.”
“No, this is an execution.”
“The difference would be …?”
“Assassination is murder. Execution is justice.” I pulled a small, folding blade from my back pocket and flicked it open, then folded it closed again, satisfied that it was still in working order.
“So now you’re an executioner?”
“No, I …” Too late, I caught the hint of a grin and realized he was teasing me. I scowled. “Are we going to sit here and argue until he comes out and begs to be shot, or you wanna go in?”
“Honestly, arguing sounds like more fun. And on that note … you sure have a lot of weapons for not-an-assassin.”
I shoved the knife back into my pocket and met his gaze, the butt of my gun digging into my side. “Do I look dead to you?”
His grin grew. “You look all pissed off. It’s kind of hot.”
It took serious effort for me to stay focused when I realized he wasn’t joking. “I don’t know about your line of work—” I wasn’t even sure what he did for a living, come to think of it “—but most of the people I track don’t want to be found, and people who don’t want to be found are usually armed. And dangerous. And on hair triggers. So yeah, I’m armed. Because I don’t want to die.”
“If you’re the muscle, that must make me the brains of the operation.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re the chauffeur. Here’s the plan—find him, kill him.”
Cam laughed out loud, and my teeth ground together. “That’s not a plan. It’s not even a complete sentence.”
“You got something better?”
“How ‘bout this?” He pulled back the right side of his jacket and showed me his gun. It was bigger than mine. And it was fitted with a long, barrel-shaped silencer in what had to be a custom-made holster.
“Nice,” I admitted, and his grin was back. But I couldn’t help wondering why the hell he even owned a silencer.
“I had a feeling you’d appreciate the reminder that I come well equipped.”
“I’d appreciate it more if I thought you knew how to use that,” I said, without thinking. His eyes lit up, and that’s when I realized I was flirting. We’d fallen back into that old familiar pattern as if the past six years had never happened.
“What, you don’t remember?” he teased, while I silently cursed myself.
“This isn’t going to happen, Cam.”
His good humor faltered, then resurged. “The execution?” He was as stubborn as ever.
“No, that’s going to happen. Then you go back to your life and I go back to mine.”
His grin vanished. “What life?” Cam demanded softly, his gaze holding mine like the earth holds the moon captive. “What could you possibly have now that’s better than what you left behind?”
Nothing. I had nothing now but the knowledge that I’d made a tough choice for us both, because I couldn’t live with the alternative. And neither could he. But that knowledge did little to ease the hollow ache in my chest or warm the empty half of my bed, and admitting regret now would only make the whole thing worse. So I closed my mouth, opened the car door and got out without a word.
Turning away from him this time hurt no less than it had the time before.
Six
Liv opened the passenger’s side door and stepped onto the sidewalk without acknowledging my question. She might think she could sweep me under the carpet again when this job was over, but she was wrong. I’d given her time. I’d given her space. I’d given her every opportunity in the world to find someone else and start a family, or at least start a life that included more than just the job she obviously lived and breathed. The closest she’d ever come was moving in with some asshole who cheated on her—I’d tracked him, even if she hadn’t thought to—then stolen her car.
I could see the truth as well as any Reader could have. If she really didn’t want me, she would have gotten serious with someone else. She wouldn’t grimace every time she told me to go away, as if the words tasted bad. She wouldn’t still look at me like she used to, when she thought I wasn’t watching.
Olivia still wanted me, just as much as I wanted her, but something was holding her back. Something she couldn’t move past. I could take care of that obstacle for her—I’d tear down anything standing between us—but I couldn’t destroy what I couldn’t even see. She’d have to show me the problem. I’d have to make her show me the problem.
Bolstered by fresh determination, I fell in at her side, and we headed for the entrance without even a glance around the neighborhood.
Rule #1 in tracking: don’t look like a Tracker.
It’s always best to go unnoticed. Even near my own neighborhood.
Especially with Liv at my side.
Even if she wasn’t marked or bound, word on the street was hard to overcome, and most people thought she was sleeping with Cavazos at the very least, which meant that Tower’s men would see her either as a trespasser to be booted from this side of town, or a prize to be offered up to the boss.
No easy outs, either way.
I jogged up the front steps and she followed me into a tiny, dusty entryway leading into a long hallway lined with doors and apartment numbers. “Well?” I said, relieved to have her off the street and out of sight.
Liv reached into her pocket to feel the bloody sock again. Then she nodded toward the staircase, and I followed her up the first flight of stairs. On the second-floor landing, she reassessed, then started down the hallway, eyes half-closed, obviously letting the energy signature pull her.
She had told me once that the blood pull was really more of a feeling than a scent, and though I had little blood-tracking skill myself, I knew she was right. But as she worked her way down the hall, she sniffed the air softly, like a real bloodhound, though she didn’t even seem to know she was doing it.
About halfway down, she stopped and turned to me. “It starts to fade here….” She stepped back toward me, then stopped, closed her eyes and nodded, as if she was sure of something. “And it’s strongest here.” She stood directly between two apartment doors. “Is that 208 or 210?”
I glanced at the end of the hall, toward the first door, then followed the pattern to where we stood. “Two-ten,” I whispered, and reached for the doorknob. But then her hand landed on my arm, warm against my bare skin.
“Let me,” she insisted. “Men are still less threatened by women than by other men. I’ll have a better shot of getting in there without causing a scene.”
I nodded and stepped back from the door, not because I agreed with her—I didn’t—but because I could still feel her hand on my arm, and the surprise of being touched by her again had yet to fade.
She may not have looked scary, with her big blue eyes and jacket that hid her gun but not her curves, but Liv could track better than any man I’d ever met, and if word on the street could be believed, Rawlinson had turned her into a damn fine fighter. Over the past six years, living and working in this city had turned the funny, charismatic girl I’d loved with every cell of my body into a jaded, hard-edged loner I still couldn’t look at without catching my breath.
I’d never felt more alive, watching Liv prepare to charm—or maybe force—her way into some stranger’s apartment. Olivia was a wire wound too tight, always about to snap, but she lived on excitement and thrived under pressure. Being with her was like holding a bomb in both hands, watching the numbers tick back toward zero. I knew she’d eventually explode, and this time it might kill me.
But it was hard to care about the potential for collateral damage when just being near her again felt so good. So I pressed my back against the wall to the right of the door, gun drawn and ready in a two-handed grip. Liv’s gun was still concealed, but I had no doubt she could get to it in a hurry. She knocked on the door, but no one answered. There was no sound from inside.
Liv knocked again, but again got no response. “The pull’s still strong, which means he’s home but not answering. Or, he’s lying unconscious and near death from whatever wound Shen managed to inflict before dying.” She glanced up at me, brows raised in question. “Plan B?” she whispered, and I nodded.
B always stood for breaking and entering.
She stepped aside and pulled her gun while I holstered mine. I took the doorknob in both hands and twisted sharply. The lock broke with a metallic snap that seemed to echo much louder than it should have. But the door didn’t swing open.
“Dead bolt,” I said.
“Is that a problem?”
I gave her a disappointed look. “It’s like you don’t know me at all…. Step back.”
She stepped away from the door hesitantly as I dropped into a deep squat to stretch—which is when she figured out what I had in mind. “Wait, don’t …!” she whispered, but I was already in motion. My foot slammed into the door just beneath the knob and wood creaked loudly. Liv cringed over the noise, then shrugged. “May as well finish it now….”
I kicked again, and the interior frame gave way with the loud splinter of wood. Maybe not the most subtle entry, but definitely the fastest.
The door swung open, and I lurched to the right, watching her from across the doorway with my gun already drawn. For one long second, neither of us moved.
I couldn’t break Cam’s gaze, and my own breathing was heavy in anticipation. We shared that single, taut moment of expectancy until we realized that if the target was in there, he wasn’t coming out.
Finally, I nodded at the ruined door, reluctantly impressed by the damage, and lifted both brows in question. Cam gestured for me to go first. Which I liked.
I rounded the door frame and into the living room, gun aimed at the floor, scanning the room with my gaze and the entire apartment with whatever sense it is that feels the pull of blood. That pull was still there, but not as strong as it should have been. Not as strong as it would have been if the target were in the apartment, even if he wasn’t bleeding.
Cam came in behind me and pushed the front door closed, but it swung open a couple of inches again, because of the busted lock. I heard him checking behind doors and under furniture while I opened all the kitchen cabinets big enough for a man to crawl into.
“I think it’s clear,” I said, flicking the safety on my 9mm. But I kept the gun out, just in case. “Damned if I understand it, though.”
“Maybe he just left.” Cam kicked open the bedroom door and glanced beneath the bed, then in the closet, checking both potential hiding places gun first. “He is a Traveler, right? So he probably just stepped into a shadow and out of the apartment the minute he heard us.”
Which was why tracking a Traveler could be a real bitch. The only way to catch one was to trap him in a room with no shadows big enough for him to walk through. And that’s a lot harder than it sounds. Kori was a shadow-walker, and her grandmother had given up on grounding her when she was fourteen.
But.
“That shouldn’t matter,” I said. “So long as he’s alive, his energy signature should lead to him, not to his apartment.” Which Cam would know if he were a bloodhound—name-tracking works a little differently, and Cam was no better with blood than I was with names. “But the pull still feels like it’s coming from …
here.”
“Here … where?”
I closed my eyes and clutched the sock in my pocket again, through the plastic bag. The energy signature was fainter now, as the sock continued to dry, but I could still feel it. Eyes still closed, I turned until I faced the direction of the pull, and when I opened my eyes, I found myself staring at the open bathroom door.
“There.”
Cam crossed the room in a heartbeat. He pushed the door open all the way with one hand, then scanned the interior with his gun aimed and ready. He’d had training. The same kind of training I’d had. And he was good.
For a moment, I wondered if he was a cop. Was that why Anne had wanted us to work together? Was Cam actually using his criminal-justice degree, while I’d let my B.A. in philosophy rot in a drawer?
And if not, how was he making a living?
A second later, he took two steps into the bathroom and pulled the shower curtain back in one swift movement. It rattled on the rod, but revealed an empty—if filthy—tub. There was barely space for two people in the room, but I squeezed in with him anyway, already half suspecting what I’d find.
Sure enough.
I dropped the toilet lid—the bowl was no cleaner than the tub—and sat, then pulled the wastebasket in front of me, between my boots. Inside was a pile of blood-soaked rags, tissues and bandages.
“Shen must have got him good.” Cam sank onto the edge of the tub.
“I guess. But why would he leave them here?” Every Skilled person I knew carried a bottle of ammonia—or at least bleach—in their car, and most of us had an entire collection of chemicals that would destroy blood in our homes.
Leaving blood around like this was beyond careless. If found by people with the right Skills—or people who had access to people with the right Skills—fresh blood samples could be used to track the donor, or bind him to … well, anything. At least for a while. Blood not freely given wouldn’t bind someone forever, unless the Binder was extraordinarily gifted. But it would work long enough to compel the donor to turn himself in, or keep him from going to the authorities, or whatever the Binder wrote into a contract and sealed with the stolen blood.
This wasn’t the kind of mistake anyone with Skill would make. In fact, fewer and fewer of the un Skilled were leaving viable blood samples undestroyed, as the truth of our existence persevered despite the lack of official recognition from the government. Any government.
“Something’s wrong here, Cam.” I glanced around the bathroom for something to prod the trash with, and didn’t find so much as a plunger. So I donned the latex gloves from my pocket and used them to lift bandage after bloody bandage from the trash can. They were all the same.
“Fresh …” I said, laying the first piece over the edge of the tub next to Cam. He stood to make more room. “He’s only been gone an hour. Maybe less. And you’re right, he’s hurt pretty badly.” Based on the amount of blood alone. “But why would I be drawn here, instead of drawn to him? Whoever he is?”
“Maybe he’s dead,” Cam suggested, leaning over the sink to pull open the medicine cabinet.
“If he were dead, his blood would have no pull. He’s still alive, somewhere, and leaving his own viable blood around like he wants to be found, whoever he is.”
“Eric Hunter.” Cam held a prescription pill bottle down for me to see. “Three of them, and they’re all prescribed to the same man, at this address. Antibiotics, antidepressants and anti-inflammatories.” He set the bottle back on its shelf and closed the cabinet. “Mr. Hunter, you were obviously depressed, inflamed and … biotic. But why did you kill Shen Liang?”
“My guess is that he was hired. But who would hire someone to kill a work-at-home husband and father?”
“Maybe something to do with his work?” Cam suggested. “Did Anne mention what kind of software he designs?”
I shook my head. We were no closer to the why, but the how was obvious. The killer was a Traveler—a shadow-walker, capable of stepping into one shadow and out of another one, anywhere in the world, if he were powerful enough. Certainly anywhere in the city, based on the strength of the blood sample Anne had brought.
“And why did he leave his blood …?” I thought aloud, staring at the mess he’d left. And that’s when I realized why the whole thing felt so weird, beyond the presence of so much viable blood. “It’s fading.”
“What’s fading?” Cam asked. “Is it drying already?”
“Not the blood, the power. The Skill.” I stood, stunned by what shouldn’t have been possible, but was quite obviously happening anyway. “Feel this.” I thrust a blood-soaked dish rag at Cam and he took it reluctantly in his bare hands. “Do you feel it?”
He shook his head slowly, and his blue eyes widened. “I’m not as good with blood as you are, but I should be able to feel something. If he’s Skilled.”
“Exactly.” I pulled off my gloves and laid them over the edge of the tub. “I can still feel it, but it’s nowhere near as strong as it was. As it still is, in this sample.” I pulled the bagged sock from my pocket. “But it’s definitely the same blood. Which means that somehow, his Skill was stronger when he bled on the sock than when he bandaged the wound here at home, about seventeen hours later.”
Cam ran water over his hand to rinse away the blood. “How is that possible? How can Skill fade?”
“I don’t know.” And I still couldn’t figure out why I’d be pulled to a trash can full of bloody rags, rather than to the man who’d left with even more of it in his veins.
The squeal of hinges froze us both, and Cam laid one finger over his lips, warning me to be quiet. As if I didn’t already know.
“Who’s in there?” a male voice called, and I shoved the sealed sock back into my pocket with one hand while I drew my gun with the other.
Hunter? I mouthed to Cam, but he shook his head, and I read recognition on his face.
“Nick, is that you?”
“Who’s that?” the voice from the living room called. “Cam Cabellero. We’re coming out.”
“Who’s we?”
Cam motioned for me to put my gun up and follow him out of the bathroom. I holstered my pistol, but left my jacket open so I could get to it in a hurry.
Nick turned out to be in his early twenties and unSkilled, with a thick build, dark hair and a black Glock 9mm, which he was shoving barrel first into the waist of his pants when I stepped into the living room. His eyes widened when he saw me, but in surprise, not recognition. So far, so good.
“Lady next door said someone kicked in the door to 210. I’m guessing that was you and …” He glanced at me expectantly, waiting for me to fill in my name.
“Liv Warren,” Cam said reluctantly, when I remained silent. I could have punched him. Why the hell had he given out my real name?
“Liv …?” Sudden comprehension wrinkled Nick’s forehead and when he crossed his arms over his chest, one of the short sleeves of his dark T-shirt rode up, revealing a single thick, rust-colored link of chain tattooed on his upper arm. He was one of Tower’s grunts—no surprise, considering the neighborhood. Like most of Tower’s men—and more than a few women—he’d probably grown up on the west side and discovered after high school that his employment options consisted mostly of greasy fast-food service and manual labor.
Like the typical syndicate employee, Nick had likely signed on for a five-year term of service with the potential for renewal and advancement if he proved useful. But even if he opted not to re-up at the end of his service commitment, he would never be able to work for another syndicate or work against Tower, thanks to the lifelong loyalty and noncompetition clauses he would have been required to sign and seal with his own blood.
“Aren’t you on the wrong side of town?” Nick demanded, staring down at me as if I was worth less than the crud stuck to the bottom of his shoe.
Nick’s single mark said he was in his first term of service; the cocky grin said he’d been in just long enough to think he was badass. I was itching to prove him wrong—to take out some of my unspent anger at Cavazos on this little prick’s face—but I knew better than to start shit with one of Tower’s men in his own neighborhood. I’d be outnumbered before I could throw my second punch.
“She’s an independent,” Cam said, meaning that I wasn’t bound to any syndicate. Which was mostly true—I worked for Cavazos alone and owed no loyalty or obedience to any of his syndicate members. “She’s working freelance and I’m helping her out.”
“She got a badge?”
“I’m not a cop.” Why wasn’t he browbeating Cam? And how did Cam happen to know one of Tower’s grunts?
“Then I gotta check her for marks.”
I drew my gun and flicked the safety off with my thumb. “You’re welcome to try.”
“No, he isn’t.” Cam met my gaze with a heavy one of his own. “You’re going to put the gun away.” Then he turned back to Nick. “And you’re going to back the hell off. I already told you she’s an independent.”
Independents were a dying breed in the city, even before I’d defected from their ranks.
“She broke into an apartment, she’s armed and I have it on good authority that she’s bound to Ruben Cavazos. I gotta check her for marks, Caballero. You don’t like it, you take that up with Adler. It’s over my head.”
Cam’s jaw clenched. “My word’s not good enough?”
Nick shook his head. “Not this time.” He turned to me. “Take off your jacket.”
My temper flared. “Go to hell.”
“Liv, just show him your arm,” Cam said. “You’re not marked. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that I don’t owe him anything.” And I was tired of being forced to strip.
“Fine. Then do it for me.” Cam frowned, but the lines around his mouth were fear for me, not anger. Something was wrong—beyond the obvious. “You owe me, Liv.”
He was wrong about that. I’d already made up for what I’d done to him, several times over, but I couldn’t tell him that.
The real question was why he wanted me to cooperate with this arrogant little grunt in the first place.
And that’s when I finally understood. “Push your sleeve up.”
Cam exhaled slowly, but didn’t even try to deny what I’d just figured out. He uncrossed his arms and pushed his left sleeve up with his right hand. And there it was. Not one, but three thick, iron-colored links of chain circling a quarter of his upper arm.
“You son of a bitch….” I whispered through clenched teeth. Cam was well entrenched in Jake Tower’s infrastructure. Halfway up the ranks. No wonder he’d been worried about my rumored affiliation with Cavazos. We couldn’t work together. We couldn’t even safely be seen together by anyone who knew about our respective bindings.
And that little bit of understanding brought Cam’s current predicament into clear focus. He’d brought me—a potential enemy—into his neighborhood and if I refused to prove I had no opposing affiliation, he would be held responsible.
My heart pounding, I holstered my gun and slid my jacket off my shoulders, then let Cam pull my shirt sleeve up to show off the unmarked flesh of my upper left arm.
“See?” he said, as I shrugged the jacket back into place. “No binding.”
“That’s not the only place she could be marked.” Nick’s gaze wandered down from my arm before finding my eyes again, his own gleaming in anticipation. “Where does Cavazos mark his whores?”
I stiffened, but Cam didn’t hesitate. His fist flew, and a second later, Nick was on the floor, bleeding from either his nose or his mouth—I couldn’t tell which, with all the blood.
Out of habit, I pulled the bottle of ammonia from my pocket, but Cam shook his head. “Save it.” He plucked a tissue from a box on the coffee table, then knelt next to Nick and wiped the blood from his fist while the grunt pinched his nose, trying to staunch the flow. “You checked. She’s unmarked. Your job here is done.” He folded the tissue into quarters and held it up for Nick to see. “You ever disrespect her again, and I’ll consider it a personal insult.” Cam tucked the tissue into his front pocket. “And I’ll send this to Ruben Cavazos myself, along with your name and a suggestion of how best to use them both to make your life a living hell. Got it?”
Nick swiped blood from his face with the tail of his shirt—an idiotic move, unless he was planning to burn it later. “Sorry, Cam. I just … That’s what I heard….”
“What did you hear?” I demanded, snapping the cap back onto my spray bottle.
Nick hesitated, glancing at me for a second before refocusing on Cam. “I’m not saying it’s true, but word on the street is that she’s doing Cavazos. And reporting to him. Tower put her on the watch list.”
“Based on a stupid rumor?” Cam demanded.
The grunt shrugged. “He don’t answer to me. All I know is we got orders to check for a mark if she comes west of the river.”
“Since when?”
Another shrug. “Couple hours ago? Maybe less. You didn’t get the message?”
Son of a bitch. I’d left Cavazos a couple of hours ago. It had to be one of his men.
Cam’s frown deepened. “I haven’t checked my phone.” He stood and shrugged to me. “Doesn’t matter, though. You’re not marked.”
But it wasn’t that simple. Eventually someone who outranked Cam would demand a more thorough search, and then I’d be screwed. We both would.
“We’re done here, right?” I asked, already headed back to the bathroom.
“Yeah.” Cam pulled the grunt to his feet while I squatted in front of the bathroom sink to check for cleaning supplies. Nothing but an extra roll of toilet paper and a half-empty quart of bleach. But that was good enough.
“What should I report?” Nick asked, still sniffling blood while I stuffed one of Hunter’s soiled rags into an extra quart bag from my pocket, then dropped the rest of them in the wastebasket.
“The truth,” Cam said. “She’s here on a freelance job, for a private party, and I’m assisting. You checked her, she’s unmarked, and I’m personally vouching for her. If they want to know any more than that, they’ve got my number.”
He was vouching for me. Shit. I couldn’t let him do that—it could get him killed, if something went wrong—but I couldn’t make him take the words back without telling him I was bound to Cavazos. And if I admitted that now, Nick would try to haul me in front of Tower, and Cam would try to stop him, and that would lead to more violence and spilled blood, and then we’d both be on the run from the entire Tower syndicate. Which would make it really hard to search for a murderer who lived west of the river.
That slope was slippery, but unavoidable.
Trying to swallow the bitter lump in my throat, I opened the bottle of bleach and poured it into the trash can at arm’s length, to keep from splashing my clothes. Then I used the bottle itself to press the whole bloody mess down into the liquid that had pooled at the bottom.
Bleach doesn’t erase all evidence of blood, as any crime-scene technician will tell you. But it does destroy the energy signature that pulls a Tracker to it.
I wasn’t worried about anyone else looking for Shen’s killer—the human police couldn’t track like a bloodhound, and Anne wouldn’t hire anyone else, with me and Cam already on the case. But if Cam’s superiors found out about my mark from Cavazos, it wouldn’t be hard for them to deduce that we were tracking Eric Hunter, and they could use his blood to follow our trail.
Thanks to the bleach, though, all they’d have to go on was his name, which cut their chances of tracking him in half. At least.
When I left the bathroom, Nick was gone, and Cam was in the kitchen, labeling the thug’s blood sample with a black Sharpie. When he was done, he handed it to me, and I dated Hunter’s bloody bandage, then labeled it with his first name and last initial only, for security. It’s much harder to find someone—through either traditional or Skilled searching methods—without a last name.
“We need to talk,” I said, while he blew on the print to dry it.
“Agreed. We also need to get something to eat and find Eric Hunter. Let’s wrap things up here.” He shoved the sealed tissue back into his pocket, then brushed past me on his way to the bedroom. “You look for a filing cabinet, I’ll check his computer.”
“What are we looking for?” I already had a more recent—if weaker—blood sample.
“His full name. Or as much of it as we can find.” Because the Skilled rarely used either of their middle names on official documents. But then again, they also rarely left a pile of bloody rags lying around for someone to find. “Look for documentation. A traffic ticket, an insurance card, an old college ID or even a magazine subscription. It’s a long shot, but I’ve gotten lucky like that before.”
Eric Hunter had no filing cabinet, and I couldn’t decide whether that meant he was smart enough to store all his dangerous personal information under lock and key elsewhere, or stupid enough not to keep track of it at all. But based on the shoebox full of unfiled receipts under his bed—an organizational method I was well acquainted with, personally—I was betting on the latter.
His kitchen trash—so glad I brought a pair of gloves—held an unopened bank statement, a two-week-old copy of Car and Driver addressed to Eric R. Hunter, several pieces of junk mail addressed to Resident and … a hospital bill, wadded into a tight, angry ball of crumpled paper.
Hmm … Yet another piece of Eric Hunter’s life that didn’t fit the profile.
Still wearing my gloves, I took the bank statement into the bedroom, where Cam sat at Hunter’s desk, clicking away at his laptop. “What’cha got?” he asked, without looking up.
“Couple of interesting things …” Unwilling to sit on the bed, I leaned against the door facing and unfolded the statement. “One of Eric Hunter’s middle initials is evidently R. And until last week, his personal financial crisis made the national debt look like small potatoes.” Four bounced checks all with twenty-five-dollar fees attached.
Cam finally looked up. “What happened last week?”
“He received a fifty-thousand-dollar wire transfer. I’m assuming that’s the up-front portion of the hit on Shen.”
“That must have turned his frown upside down. Where’d it come from?” Cam was already typing again, but the frustrated lines in his forehead said he wasn’t having much luck.
I shrugged. “There’s just an account number. Can you trace that?”
“Not without a crash course in criminal hacking and a few decades to practice. I might know someone,
Though….”
“One of your friendly neighborhood gangsters?” I asked, not quite surprised by the accusatory tone of my own voice, and Cam looked up at me again, his expression cautious, and difficult to read.
“I never said I wasn’t bound.”
“You never said you were, either.” I folded Hunter’s bank statement and stuffed it back into the envelope. “You made me show you my arm, but you never bothered to mention that you’re three chain links up Jake Tower’s ass.”
“We don’t have time for this right now.” He turned back to the screen, shoulders tense, forehead drawn low. “Did you find anything else?”
I had to clench my teeth to keep from yelling at him, and I only bothered because he was right—the longer we spent in Hunter’s apartment, the better the chance that Nick’s report would send one of his superiors our way.
“Just this.” I held up the bill, still wrinkled in spite of my best attempt to flatten it. “Hunter went to the E.R. for a broken arm four months ago and still hasn’t paid his bill.”
Cam frowned. “Why would he go to the E.R.?”
“Exactly.” Skilled people almost never go to the hospital, because of the compulsive blood-drawing policies and the staff’s utter refusal to let you incinerate your own biological waste onsite. Evidently setting fire to a medical wastebucket is a strict no-no.
Instead, we had our own doctors—certain legitimate private practices with access to all the same equipment as a public hospital, but run by people in the know. People who routinely gather everything you might possibly have bled on into one plastic bag and won’t look at you strangely if you take that bag home to burn in the privacy of your own apartment.
For the convenience of certain criminal elements, there were even private practices that were willing to overlook the legal requirement that they report gunshot wounds and other brow-raising injuries—for the right price. Or to comply with the binding that had provided the funding to open that specific practice in the first place. Syndicate-sponsored clinics were all the rage.
“Something isn’t right with this guy,” I said, and Cam nodded.
“You found more than I did. He pays most of his bills online, but if he keeps a list of passwords, it’s either encrypted or saved under a name no one else would recognize. His emails are banal—no smoking gun there, which means we still have no idea who hired him, or why.”
“But we do have his first and last name, and one middle initial,” I pointed out. “You can work with that,
right?”
“Assuming the name’s real and he’s still anywhere near the city, yeah.”
“Good, let’s get out of here before we run into any more of your fellow hired thugs.” I hated the thought of Cam working for Tower. I wanted to go on thinking that the dirt of the city hadn’t touched him. That his hands were still clean. I’d come to the city to protect us from each other, and instead, here we stood, side by side in the muck.
Cam closed Hunter’s laptop and frowned at me. “They’re not all like Nick, you know. There are some decent men and women working for Tower. Sometimes good people get caught up in bad things, Olivia.”
“I know.” Better than most. “But I also know that the closer you stand to the monsters, the more human they start to look.”
And perspective was something I could not afford to lose.
Seven
“His apartment was empty, but there was blood in the bathroom. His, not Shen’s,” Liv said into her phone, one boot propped on my dashboard. “We think he was hired. Someone wired a big chunk of cash to his checking account last week.”
Anne spoke during the pause, but I couldn’t hear much of what she said over the traffic noise as I turned onto Third Street, the main drag and the heart of Tower’s empire.
“Not yet. Cam thinks he knows someone who can trace the account, but for now, we’re still trying to sniff him out the hard way. Any idea why someone might want Shen dead? Something to do with his work, maybe?”
Anne spoke again, and I nodded through the window to one of Tower’s men on the street, his four rust-colored chain lengths showing beneath the rolled-up sleeve of his T-shirt. He nodded back, then glanced at Liv in my passenger’s seat. If he recognized her I saw no sign, but being seen with her was good enough. It was proof that I wasn’t trying to hide anything. And that she wasn’t, either.
“Okay, just let us know if you think of anything,” Liv said, and a second later, she flipped her phone closed.
“How is she?” I asked, cruising slowly down the street toward the next checkpoint four blocks away. Tower’s eyes were everywhere, and hiding from them would look like guilt.
Liv shrugged and brushed long brown hair off her shoulder. “Fine, considering. I think Hadley was in the room though, ‘cause she didn’t say very much. It’s like she doesn’t have the luxury of truly mourning, with the kid around.”
“She sounds like a good mother.” Though it was hard for me to picture Annika as anything other than the twenty-two-year-old small-town free spirit she’d been when I’d met her. Back then, she’d been more committed to vegetarianism than to any man she’d ever met—holding on to a relationship must have been hard for someone who could taste every lie—but I hadn’t seen her since the night Liv dumped me. In the middle of that damned party. It’s amazing how much can change in six years.
And how much stays the same.
“How did she get in touch with you?” Liv asked, sliding her phone into her pocket. “If she couldn’t find me, how did she find you?”
I exhaled slowly. “I still have the same phone number.” Because I wanted it to be easy for Olivia to get in touch with me, should she ever decide to.
Liv suddenly gripped the armrest built into the passenger’s side door, as if she hadn’t even heard me.
“Is this Third Street?”
“Yeah. You still like Greek? There’s this great gyro stand on the corner, about a mile—”
Her gaze hardened. “You’re headed west. Deeper into Tower’s side of town.”
“That’s where the gyro stand is….” I began, but she wasn’t buying it. And she didn’t miss my nod to the next sentinel, on the corner.
“You’re parading me down the fucking gauntlet.”
“I’m taking preemptive measures,” I insisted. “If they think I’m hiding you, they’ll assume you have something to hide, and you’re going to be checked for a mark by every initiate we run into.” And if we ran into anyone with more than three chain links, I wouldn’t be able to prevent a more thorough search, and we both knew Liv wasn’t going to simply submit to one, either. Her trigger finger was looking a little twitchy.
“Which is why we should be heading to the south fork,” she said. Toward the only neutral-controlled part of town. Which was where she both lived and worked, in spite of the higher rent.
“Olivia, Hunter lives on the west side, and so does my computer guru. I don’t think any of the leads are going to pull us toward the south today,” I said, but she looked unconvinced. “What’s the big deal? You’re unbound, and you must’ve done work on this side before.”
“Yeah, back when I worked for Rawlinson, but I haven’t been here since … Since I quit.”
“Well, that’s too bad, ‘cause the gyros are awesome.” I pulled into the last available spot at the curb and shifted into Park. “Let’s just relax and have some lunch while I track Van down.”
“Fine,” she said, one hand on the door handle. “But you owe me some answers, and unless you want to give them here, we need to find someplace more private to eat.”
I couldn’t argue with that, so I texted Van from the line in front of the gyro cart: Got a minute? I need some help.
The response came a minute later, as Liv stepped up to the cart to order: Yr place, 1 hr.
Fifteen minutes later, I parked in a covered space in front of my apartment building and snatched the bulging white paper sack from Liv’s lap. She glanced at me in amusement—a good look for her. “What, you don’t trust me with the food?”
“Sorry. I’m starving.”
She laughed. “I couldn’t tell from the four gyros you ordered.”
“Don’t forget the dolmades.” I swung my car door shut and led Liv toward the exterior staircase. “They’re the best in the city. Trucked in daily from some restaurant on the east side.”
“Yeah. Karagas. The owner’s mother makes them every morning. They’re best fresh.”
I tried on a grin as we walked up the stairs. “What, you won’t set foot on the west side, but you’ll have lunch in Cavazos’s backyard? No wonder people are talking.”
Liv scowled. “People are talking because someone’s started a smear campaign. The rumors are malicious, and evidently aimed at the west side of the city. Someone’s put a target on my head. My guess is Travis Spencer. He’s had it out for me ever since I found the governor’s missing mistress.”
I nearly choked on my own surprise. “That was you?” It hadn’t made the local news, of course. Officially, no one was supposed to know that governor was getting some on the side. But Trackers had been rabid over that job, and I’d never heard who finally found the target.
“Yeah. Paid for two whole months’ worth of office space. But evidently it also earned me some enemies. Stupid rumor-spreading bastards.”
“Relax, Liv. It’s just a bunch of idiots talking, and all you have to do to prove them wrong is wear short sleeves.” I shrugged. “Besides, I’d go to Karagas for lunch every day if I didn’t value my life just a bit higher than good Greek food.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t signed over your free will in exchange for a paycheck, you could enjoy both your life and your lunch wherever the hell you want. Then you could be a part of the solution, rather than the problem. Wasn’t that the plan?”
“Plans change.” I kicked the door closed and dropped my keys on the coffee table, and when I met Liv’s gaze, I was almost bowled over by the pain and power of my own memories. This part of her hadn’t changed—this fiery temper threaded with innate goodwill. She would have been one hell of a lawyer, or a child advocate, or a … superhero.
“What happened to the FBI, Cam?” She took the bag from me and pulled out two cartons of dolmades.
I shrugged and took two plates down from the cabinet over the bar, avoiding her gaze. “Last I heard, they’re still out there fighting crime. Catching murderers and foiling terrorists.”
“And you’re here, wasting a degree in criminal justice so you can track losers for a Mafia boss.”
“Yeah, well, it turns out the FBI can hold its own without me.” I pulled two forks from the drawer to my right and gave her one while I used the other to slide three dolmades onto my plate.
“What happened to the interview? Did you even go?”
“No, Liv, I didn’t go. Okay?” I dropped my fork on my plate, and the clang of metal against glass was louder than I’d intended. “I didn’t go on the fucking interview. I didn’t join the FBI. I don’t fight on the side of truth and justice, and frankly, having been out in the real world for a while now, I can say with some measure of certainty that it was a dumb idea in the first place. Just the stupid dream of a stupid, idealistic kid with a shiny diploma and no clue how the world really works.”
At twenty-two, I’d thought I was going to change the world. Or, at the very least, I was going to clean it up. I was going to join the FBI and use my Skill—secretly, of course—to track serial killers and pedophiles, and make the world a better place, one conviction at a time.
“It wasn’t dumb,” Liv insisted. “A little naive, maybe, but you could have pulled it off. You should have pulled it off.” She pushed one of the bar stools out with her foot and sat. “So what happened? How did you get tangled up with Tower instead?”
“I got shot.”
“What?” Her fork hovered over the open carton.
“I got shot. The week I moved here.” I took my first bite while she stared, obviously trying to decide what to ask first.
“How? What happened?”
I shrugged and swallowed, my favorite food suddenly tasteless with the memory. “I don’t know. I was walking down Hyacinth, about four nights after I got here, all farm-fresh and clueless—”
Liv frowned. “Hyacinth. That was in my neighborhood.”
“I know.”
She stabbed a dolma with her fork and the leaf started to come unwrapped as she gestured with it. “Do I even want to know what you were doing two blocks from my apartment?”
“Tracking you. You owed me an explanation—and, frankly, an apology—and I’d come prepared to demand both. But obviously, I didn’t find you.” Not that night, anyway. “I found the business end of a bullet instead.” I stood and pulled up my shirt to expose the small, round puckered scar just to the right of my navel. “I never saw the shooter or the gun. I was just walking down the street one minute, then flat on my back the next, lying in a pool of my own blood. I was trying to hold my guts in with one hand and dig my phone out of my pocket with the other when these guys just showed up out of nowhere.”
“Tower’s men?” she asked, her food untouched.
“Yeah.”
Her brows rose in challenge. “You do know they’re probably the ones who shot you.”
“Probably.” I certainly couldn’t prove otherwise. “All I know for sure is that they’re the ones who saved me. They took me to one of their doctors and paid the bill. They destroyed all the blood I spilled. Then, when I was released, they took me to Adler’s house—he’s my direct supervisor now. His wife put me in their guest room and took care of me for weeks, while I recovered. After that, how could I not sign with Tower? I’d come to town with nothing, spent more than I had on a hotel room I never actually checked out of. By the time I was able to get out of bed, I was flat-ass broke, unemployed and—”
“And you didn’t have a friend in the world to turn to,” Liv interrupted. “Because I wasn’t speaking to you.”
“That’s not what I was going to say,” I insisted.
“But we both know it’s true.”
I couldn’t argue. “Anyway, it was only supposed to be for one term. Five years. They’d lost their best Tracker and I needed a job—”
“Convenient …” she noted, peeling the foil back from the first gyro.
“At the time, yeah,” I admitted. “It seemed pretty damned convenient.” Fortuitous, even.
Liv swallowed her first bite and stared at me with her brows drawn low over those big blue eyes. “You know they set you up, right? They didn’t save you. They found you, assessed your potential, then shot you.”
“Liv …” I began, but she spoke over me—it almost felt like old times.
“By that point, they had you right where they wanted you. You were incapacitated and in their debt, and they had a fucking huge sample of your blood, which is probably on file in a room full of sensitive information somewhere. You didn’t really think they destroyed all of it, did you? Please tell me you’re not that gullible.”
“Of course not.” But wasn’t I? Liv was sitting in my kitchen, inches away, telling me what a fool I was, and all I could think of was how badly I wanted to kiss her—and not just to shut her up, though that benefit would not go unappreciated.
“It was a win-win for Tower from the beginning,” she insisted, dropping her gyro onto her plate so she could tick off points on her fingers. “He has you shot. If you die, at least you can’t sign on with the competition. If you live, he has a chance to recruit you, albeit through pretty damn vicious means. If you sign on voluntarily, he has one hell of a new Tracker. If you don’t, he has enough of your blood to bind you without your consent, at least for a while. Either way, you’re his, for the cost of a bullet, some gauze and a round of antibiotics.” She leaned on the counter with both elbows, eyeing me with the first sign of amusement I’d seen from her in hours. “You always were a cheap date.”
I laughed. “You’re one to talk.” On our first date, sophomore year in college, we’d split a carnival hot dog and a cherry slushy—which she’d then vomited all over us both on the Tilt-A-Whirl.
“Yeah, I guess I am.” Her nostalgic smile lasted as long as it took for me to pull two Coronas from the fridge. “Greek food, Mexican beer. Interesting combination.” She reached across the counter to pull the bottle opener/magnet from the side of my fridge, then popped the top off her bottle.
I watched her take a long draft, and when she set the bottle down, she eyed me pensively. Almost reluctantly. “Please tell me you already knew all that. About Tower’s unconventional recruiting methods. Because I thought that was just an urban legend until about ten minutes ago….”
“At the time, I didn’t know,” I admitted, popping the top off my own bottle. Suddenly I wished I’d poured something stronger. “But it didn’t take long to figure out. And it’s no urban legend.” Since my first binding mark, I’d seen two other Skilled members netted the same way, and rumor had it that syndicates in other major cities had caught on to the same recruiting techniques. Certain Skills—and the most talented in any Skill set—were in demand, and there was nothing those in power wouldn’t do to secure the services they wanted.
Liv took another drink, then stared at me through the half-empty bottle, as if the beer-bottle filter might reveal something she hadn’t seen in me before. “So, if you figured it out, why’d you re-up? How’d you get those second and third chain links so fast?”
I studied her for a moment, trying to decide whether or not she wanted the truth. “It’s not that bad, you know,” I said finally, and she looked at me as if I’d just put a knife through the Easter Bunny’s heart.
“It’s blood money, Cam,” she spat, slamming her bottle down on the counter, and my own temper sparked, part indignation, part denial. “How does it feel to know that your rent is paid with blood money?”
“You tell me,” I snapped, without thinking it through. But words can’t be unspoken—if I’d learned anything from swearing loyalty to Jake Tower, that was it. “You may not be bound to Cavazos, but you take commissions from him. What do you think he does with the people you find for him? You think he pats them on the head and sends them off to summer camp?”
“I don’t …” she stammered, and I’d had enough of her hypocrisy.
“Yes, you do!” I shouted, and some small part of me enjoyed her shock for that instant before it bled into anger. “You work for him, and you take his money, and you use it to pay absurdly high rent on an apartment in the fucking ghetto, just to stand on principle. But you’re paying for your principals with the same blood money that pays for this apartment. The only difference is that I can walk down the street without getting shot or mugged.”
She stood, practically shaking with fury, and I knew I’d made my point. “The difference,” she said through clenched teeth, her voice low and sharp enough to cut glass, “is that you signed on for this voluntarily, but I don’t have any choice.”
“What does that mean? Why don’t you have a choice?” I asked, and her face went as pale as my white Formica countertop.
“I …” Liv blinked, as if she’d confused herself. Or said more than she’d meant to. Then she grabbed her bottle and chugged the rest of it. “I just meant that I have to take whatever work I can get. I’m not exactly rolling in commissions since I left Rawlinson, and yes, I’ve done some jobs for Cavazos, but that doesn’t make me his bitch, or his whore, or anything else.”
“I never said it did.” But she was already backing across my living room, headed straight for the coffee table on her way to a dramatic exit fueled by something I didn’t understand. “Liv, wait,” I called, already rounding the countertop into the living room when the back of her leg hit the corner of the coffee table. She went down on one hip, and her bottle smashed against the side of the table, spraying her jacket with the last droplets.
“Shit.” She started picking up the sticky pieces of glass and I knelt next to her to help.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
I shrugged. “It’s just a little glass.”
“I meant about … that whole thing. It’s none of my business what you do for a living.”
But I wanted it to be. “They offered me a step promotion,” I said, dumping the glass I’d gathered onto the coffee table.
“What?”
“When my five years were up. Tower called me in the week my mark would have gone dead, and I would have been free, and he told me I’d become very important to the operation. He said I had two choices—I could sign on for another five years, or I could leave the organization. As incentive to stay, he offered me a step promotion—two chain links for the price of one. Instant seniority.” I’d since learned that that offer was seldom extended, and even more seldom refused. “But if I opted out, I’d have to leave the city entirely.”
“Was that in your contract? Part of the noncompetition clause?” she asked, staring into my eyes from inches away, and I realized I hadn’t been that close to her in years. She hadn’t let me get that close….
“No. But he wouldn’t have had any trouble enforcing it.”
“You signed an extension so you could stay in the city?” she said, and I could only nod. “Because of me?”
“There were other factors….” Other people I didn’t want to leave behind. “But yeah.”
“Cam …” Her voice was more breath than sound, and it echoed in every cell of my body. And suddenly the memories were too much to fight. She was right there, after so many years, and she wasn’t pushing me away.
So I kissed her, and she kissed me back, and for several seconds, it was as if she’d never left at all.
Then pain slammed into my chest and I fell backward on my ass. By the time I realized she’d shoved me, she was on her feet, staring down at me. Glaring at me.
“Don’t. Touch me.” Her voice shook, and she couldn’t hide the tremor in her hands, even when she shoved them into her pockets. “This isn’t what it used to be. We can’t … We can’t ever go back to that.” She jogged toward the hall, pulling her jacket off as she went, and I only recovered enough to stand when I heard water running in the bathroom.
Anger warred with something else inside me. Something deeper and older. Something that bruised me from the inside out every single time I heard her name, either out loud or in my own head. I followed her down the hall and stopped outside my own bathroom, where she stood with her jacket spread across the counter, trying to scrub drops of beer out of the leather.
“This is bullshit, Olivia.”
But she just scrubbed harder, so I snatched the cloth from her and she turned on me, eyes blazing with some dizzying combination of anger and … regret. “Don’t do this, Cam. This isn’t the time to open old wounds.”
“There’s never going to be a time, is there?” I pulled the cloth back when she reached for it. “Every time I see you, you tell me to go away, but you look like you want to cry when you say it. You don’t mean it, and we both know that.”
“I mean it …” she insisted.
“No, you don’t!” I shouted, and this time she didn’t argue. “What happened, Liv? Why are you lying to me? Why are you lying to yourself?”
She blinked up at me, eyes damp, in spite of the stoic set of her jaw, and I was nearly knocked off balance by the storm of conflicting urges raging inside me. How could I be so furious with her, yet so in love with her at the same time? How could she be so maddeningly closed-off, yet so obviously vulnerable beneath her shield of denial?
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Rachel Vincent
They say blood is thicker than water. They have no idea. As a blood tracker, Liv is extremely powerful. And in a world where power is a commodity that can get you killed, Liv has learnt to survive by her own rules. Rule number one? Trust no one. But when a friend s daughter goes missing, Liv is bound by a potent magical oath. She can't rest until the child is safe. And that means trusting her dangerous ex, Cam.A sinister prophecy tells that she and Cam will be the death of each other, yet Liv s tired of being a slave to destiny. She s ready to play the forces controlling her world at their own game. No matter what the cost.
Praise for the novels of
New York Times bestselling author
RACHEL VINCENT
“I liked the character and loved the action. I look
forward to reading the next book in the series.”
Charlaine Harris
“Vincent is a welcome addition to this genre!”
Kelley Armstrong
“Compelling and edgy, dark and evocative, Stray is a must read! I loved it from beginning to end.” Gena Showalter
“I had trouble putting this book down. Every time
I said I was going to read just one more chapter,
I’d find myself three chapters later.”
—Bitten by Books on Stray
“Vincent continues to impress with the freshness of her
approach and voice. Action and intrigue abound.”
—RT Book Reviews
Blood Bound
Rachel Vincent
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
Find out more about Rachel Vincent by visiting
mirabooks.co.uk/rachelvincent
and read Rachel’s blog at urbanfantasy.blogspot.com
Also available fromRachel Vincent
The Shifters series
STRAY
ROGUE
PRIDE
PREY
SHIFT
ALPHA
Soul Screamers series
MY SOUL TO TAKE
MY SOUL TO SAVE
MY SOUL TO KEEP
MY SOUL TO STEAL
And look for the thrilling second instalment in
Rachel’s new Unbound series
SHADOW BOUND
Available in 2012
To #1, who understands that a writer can never really leave her work at work. I live in my own head, constantly distracted from the real world by the ones I make up, and it takes someone special to put up with that. I hope you know how special you are. And I didn’t even have to make you up.
Acknowledgments
Thanks first and foremost to my husband, my #1 fan, for listening to all the crazy brainstorming that went into this book without betraying any hint that the author may be as crazy as the ideas. You’re the most wonderful sounding board ever.
Thanks as always to Rinda Elliott, my longtime critique partner and the first to see every book I write. You’re my second pair of eyes, and I always appreciate the fresh viewpoint.
Thanks to my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, for guidance and patience. And for pronouncing this manuscript “twisted,” then liking it anyway.
And thanks to everyone at MIRA Books, who made it all happen. There are so many more of you behind me than I would ever have guessed when I was first starting out, and I sometimes think books should get credit reels, like movies.
One
Only two-thirty in the morning, and I already had blood on my hands. The most messed-up part of that? It was the hour that bothered me.
“You sure it’s him, Liv?” Booker swiped one hand over his sweaty, stubbly face as we stared at the lit window on the third floor. The apartment building was long and plain, like a cracker box on its side, and the moonless night only smeared the sides of the featureless building into the ambient darkness.
I nodded, shoving both cold, chapped hands into my jacket pockets. It was warm for early March, but still cold for me.
“How sure?”
My eyes closed, and again I clutched the blood-stiffened swatch of cloth in my right pocket, inhaling deeply through my nose, and the world exploded into a bouquet of scents. Relying on years of training, I sorted through them rapidly, mentally tossing aside those I couldn’t use. The metal tang of several huge trash bins. The chemical bite of Booker’s cologne. And the pervasive, ambient smells of life east of the river—motor oil, fried food and sweat.
What was left, with those more obvious smells out of the way, was the trail I’d followed all over town, as much a feel as a true scent, and a virtual match to the blood sample in my pocket.
I am a Tracker. More specifically—and colloquially—I’m a bloodhound. Given a decent, recent sample of your blood, I can find you no matter where you hide. Officially, my range is about eighty miles—on the high end of average. Unofficially … well, let’s just say I’m good at what I do. But not too good. Too much Skill will get you noticed. And I know better than to get noticed.
Booker cleared his throat and I opened my eyes to find myself staring up at the lit window again—the only occupant still awake. “Ninety-five percent. It’s either him or a close male relative, and that’s the best you’re gonna get with a dry blood sample,” I said, as water dripped from a gutter somewhere to my left. “Tell Rawlinson I’ll send him a bill.”
Booker pulled his black ski cap over his ears. “He’s not gonna like that.”
“I don’t give a shit what he likes.” I turned and walked back the way I’d come, listening as my steel-toed work boots echoed in the alley. I was exhausted and pissed off from being woken at two on a Friday morning, yet still pleased for the excuse to charge nearly double my usual rate. Office space in the south fork doesn’t come cheap.
“Warren!” a deep voice barked from behind me, and I groaned beneath my breath. I turned slowly to see Adam Rawlinson step out from behind a rusty Dumpster, his dark hair, skin and expensive wool coat blending into the thick shadows. No telling how long he’d been there. Watching. Listening.
Travelers—shadow-walkers—were notorious for shit like that. They can step into a shadow in their own homes and step out of another shadow across town a split second later. You never know they’re coming until they’re already there. It’s a convenient Skill—except when it’s annoying as hell.
“Hey, Adam. Kinda late for a stroll, isn’t it?” Especially considering that his home address was at least two tax brackets above the inner-city grime now clinging to the soles of his dress shoes. “What? You don’t trust me?”
Rawlinson scowled, his frown exaggerated by deep shadows. “Ninety-five percent isn’t good enough, Liv.”
I shrugged, my arms crossed over my dark jacket. “You’re not going to get a hundred-percent certainty without a better blood sample or his full name to flesh out the scent.”
He nodded; I wasn’t telling him anything new. “But you’d know for sure if you had a current sample to compare it to, right? Something fresh?”
“I don’t get my hands dirty anymore. You know that.” I follow the blood scent, and I can track by name if I have to. But that’s where my job ends—no reason for me to be there when the action starts. My life was messy enough without adding blood spatter.
“Booker’s here for the takedown. I just need you to get close enough for a positive ID,” Rawlinson insisted. “We don’t know his name, and we’re not going to get a better blood sample. I played hell getting that one out of the evidence room as it is. This is personal, Liv.”
Damn it. Booker was working without a partner and Adam Rawlinson had come out to see the show. This one was off the books. “Is this about Alisha?” Rawlinson’s daughter had been killed in a carjacking the week before. He’d shown up for work the next day as if nothing had happened. As if her death meant nothing to him.
Here was proof to the contrary. I was almost relieved.
His gaze never wavered. “The cops had a near miss, and one of them winged the bastard last night. The sample’s from the passenger’s seat he bled all over.”
I exhaled, watching him closely. “Why do I get the feeling you’re not going to turn this asshole in?” Rawlinson’s operation had a rock-solid reputation. Official bounty-hunting in cooperation with bail bondsmen and the proper authorities, all on the up-and-up. He would turn in the target, collect a check for freelance services from the city, then pay the rest of his crew. Which used to include me.
But this time …
“Because you’re a very smart girl.” He started walking toward the building, and I followed reluctantly. “You know, I’d love to have you back on the crew full-time.”
“That’s because your new Tracker couldn’t find his own dick in the dark.” I hesitated, and the night was quiet, but for our footsteps on cracked asphalt. “You know better than to start shit east of the river without a work order, Adam. What if someone sees you?”
“That’s why you’re here.” He met my gaze, and I had to respect his honesty, even if it pissed me off. “Everyone knows you’re working for Ruben Cavazos, so no one will think to report this if you’re with us.”
“I work for myself.” And myself had to pay rent on a shitty apartment and a tiny office, repairs on a car saddled with more used parts than Frankenstein’s monster, and interest and principle on student loans for a degree I’d never once put to use. “I freelance for Cavazos just like I freelance for you.” And everyone knew that black hats paid better than white knights. “Having me with you isn’t going to keep your feet cool while you walk through flames, Adam. You need to let the police handle this.”
“We both know there’s nothing they can do.”
But that wasn’t true. They could do plenty—but they wouldn’t. Not as long as the courts refused to recognize Tracking as a legal form of identification and discovery. The world knew about us—the Skilled had been dragged into the spotlight almost thirty years ago—but the government had yet to officially recognize our existence. We were the biggest open secret in history. We had no rights and no protection under the law, beyond those afforded us as natural-born citizens.
What that meant in legal circles was that no government office could officially hire Binders to draft or seal contracts. Nor could they use evidence gathered via Trackers, like me. Everything involving the dozen or so Skilled abilities had to be unofficial consultations and contract work. And completely off the books.
What that meant in criminal circles was the gradual formation of the single most profitable—and ruthless—black-market system in history. Because the government didn’t officially recognize our Skills, they couldn’t regulate or police them, which left a huge gap at the top of the power pyramid. A gap that had been filled by various Skilled crime syndicates across the world, but most notably—and locally—by rival black-market kingpins Jake Tower and Ruben Cavazos, who together controlled more than two-thirds of the city.
Think of my city like a giant peace sign, divided by the river. Everything east of the river is controlled by Cavazos, everything west of the river by Tower. And on the south side, cradled by the fork in the river, you can live, eat and breathe without lining the pockets of either organization—but you’ll do it at a much higher price, because those who understand the world they live in and can afford the rent will pay to avoid picking a side.
“Okay, look. Now that you’ve found him, you should just watch him until he makes a mistake, then go after him legally. Stick to what you’re good at, Adam. Anything else would just be dripping blood into the shark tank.”
“Wait for him to make a mistake?” Rawlinson demanded softly, and I nodded, already feeling guilty for the suggestion. “How long will that take, if it even happens? Coming in here once, with you, to take care of business—that’s one thing. But if we loiter, just waiting for this bastard to commit another crime … Well, that’s just not an option on the east side, is it?” His gaze pleaded with me, and I resisted the overwhelming urge to stare at the ground. “She was my daughter, Warren,” Rawlinson said, and the rare glimpse of his raw pain made me groan on the inside, even as I spoke the question I shouldn’t have asked.
“What do you want me to do? Go in and prick his finger?” My hand clenched around the stiff cloth in my pocket.
“I don’t care how you ID him. Just get close enough to tell for sure, and we’ll handle the rest.”
“That’s going to cost you.” Sympathizing with his pain didn’t change my bottom line—freelancers don’t get benefits, and I was currently without health care, a dangerous position to be in, considering my line of work.
“Fine. Bill me.”
Against my better judgment, I led the way into the dark, quiet building with Rawlinson and Booker at my back. Most of the apartments were empty. Rumor had it the city planned to knock the eyesore down as soon as they managed to relocate the last six tenants—and convince Cavazos to sell the building. They probably had no idea there was a squatter on the third floor.
We crept silently up the stairs, the stiff bit of cloth clutched in my right hand, my fingers rubbing over and over the rough spot. I could feel him, so long as I was touching his blood. I could smell his sweat and taste his fear, both manifestations of the smear of psychic energy people leave behind with every drop of their blood.
For me, it’s a little harder working from only a name, but it can be done. And it’s easiest with both a name and fresh blood. But that rarely happens. UnSkilled criminals are much more careful than the unSkilled general population, and in hiding from police forensics labs, they’re inadvertently hiding from Trackers.
Even stupid criminals don’t want to be found.
The door between the stairwell and the third-floor hall was long gone, so we could see the light pouring from the crack beneath his door the moment we stepped onto the landing. The energy signature was stronger here, but no clearer. I was going to have to see the bastard to confirm his ID. Damn it.
I snuck down the hall silently with Booker and Rawlinson on my heels until we stood in front of the lit apartment. I gestured for them to give me some space, and they stood to either side of the door, backs pressed against the grimy walls, out of sight from the occupant, unless he actually stepped into the hall.
Then I took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
When I’d worked for Rawlinson, I’d done both the tracking and the takedown, and back then, I would have looked the part—harmless, vapid young woman who needed jumper cables, or a telephone, or a big, strong arm to open a jar of pickles. Anything to get close enough to use a Taser on the target and collect a paycheck.
It’s amazing what a few years’ experience and the threat of mortal injury with no health insurance can do to change your perspective. Especially with the clock ticking in my ear and the certainty that I had no time to be incapacitated by injury.
Footsteps clomped toward me from inside the apartment and the door squealed open to reveal a tall, thick man with two days’ growth on his chin and suspicion shining in his eyes. He was armed—the handheld behind his right thigh was a dead giveaway—probably with the gun that had killed Alisha Rawlinson.
“Hey, sorry to bother you so late, but—” I let my right arm fly, and my fist smashed into his nose.
The target gave a wet gurgle of surprise and pain, and swung his arm up, too stunned to actually aim his pistol as blood poured from his ruined face. I ducked below the gun and smashed his wrist into the door facing as hard as I could. Bone crunched. The target screamed again and his fist opened. The gun thumped to the floor and Booker kicked it down the hall.
I stepped back and let him take over, wiping the target’s blood from my face with the tissue Rawlinson offered. “It’s him.” I handed the tissue back as Booker pounded the target into unconsciousness in the doorway. The rest of this floor was empty, and even if one of the few tenants heard something, they wouldn’t come out to investigate. Not on this side of town. Not in the middle of the night.
Not if they had any wish to see daylight.
“Thank you, Liv,” Rawlinson said, as Booker dragged the unconscious man into his apartment.
“Don’t thank me. Pay me.” I peeled off my bloodstained jacket and handed it to him. “And if this doesn’t come clean, you owe me one just like it.” Then I took off toward the stairwell without looking back, trying to ignore the repetitive thud of fist hitting flesh echoing in the hall behind me.
On the street again, I exhaled, then glanced back at the building behind me. Silence, except for my own footsteps and the highway traffic two blocks away. True to his word, Rawlinson was keeping things quiet.
I crossed the road in a hurry, digging in my pocket for my keys, but froze when I spotted my car—and the man leaning against the hood. He was built of shadows, untouched by the streetlight on the corner, but I’d know that silhouette anywhere.
“Hey, Liv.” Cameron Caballero stood, and the past six years without him suddenly seemed surreal, as if I’d dreamed the whole thing, and now I’d finally woken up to the truth. To how my life should have gone.
But then a car engine started, stalled then restarted in the distance, and my life—the gritty reality—snapped back into place like emotional whiplash, leaving me gasping for breath.
Him showing up like this again wasn’t fair. But fair had never been less relevant.
“Not tonight, Cam.” Mentally steeling myself, I clomped toward him and my car, assuming he’d move when I tried to unlock my door. But instead of sliding out of the way, he stood, inches away now, intentionally invading my personal space. I could step back, but that would be acknowledging that being so close to him still affected me. Or I could stand my ground and make him back down.
“You know, someday you’re going to have to tell me what happened,” he said when neither of us moved, his voice an intimate, familiar whisper. “Why you left.”
“Today isn’t that day. Move.” I wanted to shove him out of my way, but touching him would have been a very bad idea. Maybe the best bad idea I’d ever had. “Don’t make me hurt you. I’ve already broken one face tonight.”
“I heard you were breaking faces professionally,” he said, still watching me as if nothing in the world existed, beyond whatever he saw in my eyes. “Then I heard you quit.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but as always, when I ran out of words, he still had plenty. “Would you really hit me?”
“Would you really make me?” I eyed him boldly and he sighed, and I could see that spark of possibility—of a rekindling—die in his eyes.
“No one makes you do anything, Olivia,” he said, and my chest tightened with the desperate wish that he were right. “A friend wants to see you.”
I reached around him and unlocked my car door, but he still leaned against it. “I don’t want to see your friend.”
He stared down at me from inches away, and I knew his eyes would be dark, dark blue, if they weren’t swimming in shadows. “Not my friend, Liv. Yours. She came to me looking for you. I think you should hear her out.”
But I couldn’t do anything that meant spending time with Cam, for both of our sakes. It was the same every time I ran into him: a jolt of memory, a spark of resurrected heat and a huge dose of regret I was sure he could see. That regret was what kept bringing him back.
It was what still drew me to him, even as I pushed him away.
“I don’t give a shit what you think,” I said, too late to be believable. I didn’t bother asking how he’d known where to find me. Cam was a Tracker—the best I’d ever met, other than … well, me. But whereas I was good with blood, he was good with names. Given a full, real name, he could find anyone, anywhere, and his range rivaled mine. And I’d made the mistake of telling him my full name—which no one else in the entire world knew—years ago. When I’d thought we’d be together forever.
That was one of the most foolish mistakes I’d ever made, but one he hadn’t given me reason to regret. Until now.
“Last chance, Cam. Move, or I’ll move you.”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of a snug pair of jeans and gave me this sad little smile, as if he missed me and wanted me gone, both at once, and I knew exactly how that felt. Then he stepped aside and watched while I slid into the driver’s seat and slammed the door.
As I pulled away from the curb, I glanced in the rearview mirror to find him still watching me, unmoving, until I turned at the corner and drove out of sight.
I unlocked my office door and shoved it open, then trudged across the small space toward the tiny bathroom. I had no waiting room and no fancy chairs. Just my desk, two cheap, upright cabinets full of my stuff and one old leather couch, stained and ripped, and more comfortable now than the day I took it from an ex’s house along with my own things—restitution for the car he’d stolen and nearly a year of my life wasted.
In the bathroom, I pulled off my top and grabbed a clean T-shirt from the cabinet over the toilet. The sun would be up in a couple of hours. I’d crash on the couch until dawn, then get an early start, because if I went home and crawled into bed, I’d lose most of the day to sleep, which would lead to me losing the job I’d just bid on to Travis Spencer, the runner-up, and his two meathead associates.
With a quick glance at my pale, blood-splattered reflection, I ran warm water on a clean rag and scrubbed my face until I could no longer smell the energy signature of the blood I’d been tracking. But as I turned away from the mirror, the squeal of hinges bisected the silence, and my heart beat a little faster.
Someone was in my office. At four-thirty in the morning. Without an appointment.
I dropped the rag into the sink and squatted to pull a 9mm from the holster nailed to the inside of the cabinet beneath the sink. Aiming at the floor, I disengaged the safety and stood, ready to elbow the door open. I wasn’t expecting trouble, but honestly, I wasn’t surprised by it, either. Spencer had been gunning for me ever since he dropped the ball on the governor’s missing mistress, and I picked it up and ran for the goal.
“Once upon a time, four little girls, best friends, took an oath of loyalty,” a woman’s voice said through the door, and I flicked the safety back on. It can’t be …
Annika. Cam had sent her alone. Smart man.
We hadn’t spoken in six years, but hearing her voice was like peeling back layers of time until my childhood came into focus, gritty and rough around the edges—was I ever really innocent?—yet somehow still naive compared to what time and experience had since made of me.
“They promised to always help one another, whenever they were asked,” she continued, as I fell through the rabbit hole, flailing for something solid to grab on to. “They signed their names, and—”
“And they stamped their thumbprints in blood.” I pushed open the bathroom door to find Annika Lawson watching me, green eyes holding my gaze with the weight of shared youth and the long-since frayed knots of friendship. “That’s where those stupid little girls went wrong,” I said. “They disrespected the power of names and blood.”
And look where it got us—my entire life ruled by one careless promise the year I was twelve.
“We didn’t disrespect the power, Liv.” Her gaze was steady, holding me accountable for every truth I’d ever tried to hide—that much hadn’t changed, even after six years apart. “We just didn’t understand it.”
Because no one had told us. We didn’t know we were Skilled, because our parents thought they were protecting us with ignorance. Insulating us from the dangers of our own genetic inheritance.
In the first years after the revelation, people sometimes disappeared. Government experiments or eager private industry research, no one knew for sure, but the disappearances terrified already worried parents into a perilous silence. They could never have known that Kori’s little sister was a Binder, or that at ten years old, she’d be strong enough to tie us to one another for the rest of our lives.
“Well, the power understood us.” And our ignorance didn’t make that binding any less real. Or any easier to undo. We’d bound ourselves together so tightly that as we grew up, the bonds chafed, wearing away at our friendship until nothing was left but resentment and anger.
I pulled the bathroom door closed and sank into my desk chair, fending off a battery of memories I’d thought buried. It felt weird to see Anne in my office, out of place in my adult life when she’d been a central figure of my youth. Part of me wanted to hug her and get caught up over drinks, but the stronger part of me remembered what went down that night six years ago, the last time we’d all four been together.
A reunion wasn’t gonna happen. Ever. And not just because Elle was dead and Kori was MIA. Anne had disappeared when I’d needed a friend. I could have tracked her, but why, when a dozen unanswered calls and messages said she didn’t want to talk to me? So I’d struck out on my own, and never once looked back at the past. Until now.
“What are you doing here? Is a third ghost from my past going to show up and take me to my own grave?” But that possibility struck a little too close to home, and I had to shrug it off.
She sank onto the couch and her composure cracked, then fell away, revealing raw pain and bitter anger, and suddenly I wanted to hurt whoever’d hurt her. In spite of what she’d done to me—what we’d all done to one another—I wanted to protect her, like Kori and I had looked out for her as kids, and that impulse ran deeper than the oath connecting us. Older. All the way back to the day Anne and I had first met, before Kori and Elle even moved to town.
But it wasn’t that simple. I knew what she was going to say, even though it shouldn’t have been possible.
“I need you, Liv. Will you help me?”
No! Shock sputtered within me, synapses misfiring in my brain as I tried to make sense of what she’d just said. Of what she shouldn’t have been able to say.
“How did you …?” But my voice faded into silence as the answer to my own question became obvious. “You burned it. You burned the second oath.” Damn it! “We swore, Anne. We swore to let it stand.”
In spite of unshed tears shining in her eyes, Anne’s gaze held no hint of shame or regret. “You’re the only one who can help me with this and I couldn’t even ask you with the second oath binding me.”
“That’s why we signed it!” I leaned forward with my arms crossed on the desktop, and my chair squealed in protest.
That second oath was our freedom. It couldn’t truly sever the ties binding us, but it prevented us from tugging on them. In the second oath, Anne, Kori, Elle and I had sworn never to ask one another for help, because once asked, we were compelled to do everything within our power to aid one another. Which, we’d learned the hard way, could only lead to disaster. And resentment. And expulsion from school. And arrest records.
“I’m sorry. I really am,” Anne insisted, tucking one coppery strand of shoulder-length hair behind her ear. “I know you probably don’t believe that, and I can’t blame you. But I truly had no choice. Will you help me,
Liv?”
“Hell no, I’m not going to help you!” But as soon as I said the words, breaking my oath to her, the pain began. It started as a bolt of white behind my left eye, shining so bright that everything else seemed dim by comparison. When I closed my eyes, the light sent pain shooting through my skull, and in less than a second, it was a full-blown migraine. Then came the muscle spasms—a revolt of my entire body, the consequence of going back on an oath signed voluntarily and sealed in blood by a child who’d turned out to be the most powerful Binder I’d ever met.
Defaulting on an oath sealed by an amateur—or even a weak professional—could put you in the hospital. Defaulting on an oath sealed by anyone with real power and/or training could kill you.
First, your brain sends warnings in the form of pain. Migraines. Muscle cramps. General abuse of the body’s pain receptors. Then it starts turning things off, one by one. Motor control. Bladder and bowel control. Sight and scent. Hearing. But never the sense of touch. Never the nerve endings. They remain functional so you can feel every second of your body’s decision to self-destruct.
I’m a little fuzzy on the order of betrayal by my own internal organs, but among the first to go are the kidneys, liver, gallbladder, intestines and pancreas, any one of which would probably kill you eventually. Then the big guns. If you hold out long enough, you’ll lose respiratory function, then circulatory. And without those, of course, your brain has only minutes—minutes—for you to try to think through the pain and humiliation and decide whether you’re going to stick to your word, or die breaking it.
Most people never get that far. I’ve never gotten that far, as evidenced by the fact that my heart continues to beat, in spite of several times I would have declared it broken beyond repair. But everyone has a limit. A point past which you can’t be pushed.
“Please don’t do this, Olivia,” Anne said, when my fingers began to twitch on my desk. A second later, my legs began to convulse, banging against the bottom of the pencil drawer, but I only stared at her through the ball of light in the center of my vision, breathing steadily through the pain. “I’m not going to take it back, Liv,” she insisted, leaning forward on the couch. “I can’t. Not this time. Will you help me?”
Her repetition of the original request escalated the process, and I gasped at the pain deep in my stomach. I couldn’t identify it, but I knew what that pain meant. One of us would have to back down in the next few minutes, or the last thing I saw would be her bright green eyes, full of tears and regret, and her stubborn lips sealed against the sentence that could make it all go away.
“Please, Liv,” Annika begged, and this time her voice came from behind me. Water ran in the bathroom. A second later, she leaned my chair back and laid a cold, wet cloth over my eyes and forehead, and my hands twitched violently in my lap. “You don’t even know what I need you to do.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I gasped, helpless to keep the rag from slipping down my face. Until I gave in to the compulsion to help her, I would feel nothing but the systematic shutdown of my entire body. But still I fought it. She had no right to make me do something I didn’t want to do, no matter what stupid mistake we’d made as children! The compulsion was like having my free will stripped. It was humiliating, and infuriating, and it was the reason we’d all gone our separate ways after high school without even a glance in the rearview mirror. “The point—” I growled through a throat that wanted to close around my words “—is that I … have … no … choice.”
Leather creaked as she sat on the couch again, and the hitch in her breath said she was fighting sobs. “I’m sorry, Liv. If I could ask you without compelling you, I would, but I don’t have that option.”
She was right—her very request triggered the compulsion—but that didn’t help. And neither did the regret obvious in her voice. “What do you want?” I whispered with all the volume I could manage, as pain ripped through my stomach again, and my arms began to contract toward my torso.
“I need you to find someone.”
No surprise, considering I was a Tracker, both by birth and by profession.
The rag slipped from my eyes and I saw her wipe tears from her cheeks with an angry stroke of one hand. “I need you to find the bastard who killed my husband and return the favor.”
Two
For a moment, I could only stare at her, and as my resistance began to fade in the face of surprise, so did the pain, though it wouldn’t completely subside until I’d said the magic words.
“Whoa, you got married?” I couldn’t picture it, and I hadn’t even noticed the wedding band that now seemed glaringly obvious on her left hand. Did she have a house in the suburbs? A mortgage? A dog in the backyard?
I frowned and sucked in a deep breath, relieved to feel the convulsions in my arms downgrading to mere spasms.
“Yes. Then I got widowed,” she said, and more tears fell, even as her jaws clenched in some powerful combination of rage and devastation. “I need you to track the murderer and kill him.”
“That’s … that’s not really what I do, Anne,” I said, careful not to refuse—so soon after that last refusal, anyway. I stared at her, surprised by the vengeful impulse in a woman who, when we were kids, was a turn-the-other-cheek kind of girl. “I just find people.
That’s it.”
Anne blinked, as if she hadn’t heard me. As if she didn’t want to hear me. Then she plucked her purse from the center couch cushion and dug through it with trembling hands. “Here.” She produced a wallet-size photo album and flipped to the second page, already pulling a picture out before I realized what she was going to do.
“No, don’t … “ Show me a picture of your dead husband … That was a low blow. But before I could finish my sentence, she’d leaned forward and slid the photo across my desk. I looked at it, against my better judgment, and found a handsome Asian man with a nice smile, one arm around an obviously happy Anne.
It was like staring at a ghost, though I’d never even met the man.
“His name was Shen Liang. He was thirty-four, and the nicest man I ever met. He wrote proprietary software for a company here in the city, but they let him work from home. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to kill him.” The tears were back, and I stared at my desk to avoid seeing them.
“What did the police say?”
“They’re investigating. But, Liv, his killer was Skilled. A Traveler. The police aren’t going to be able to find him, and even if they could, without traditional physical evidence, they can’t make the charges stick. You know what they’re up against.”
Yeah. I knew. Nearly half my business came from victims trying to catch people the cops couldn’t identify. “I’ll find him for you.” I had no choice about that. “But the rest.” The killing … “It’s not that simple.” Even if I found the suspect, and even if I was one-hundred-percent certain that he was guilty of cold-blooded murder, I couldn’t just kill him—not if I valued my own life—until I knew for sure what his connections were. Who, if anyone, he was bound to. “We have a daughter.”
“No …” I shook my head when she started digging in her purse again. No more pictures …
“Hadley.” More tears, and when her jaw began to quiver, something inside me twisted painfully. “She’s five years old, and tomorrow I’m going to have to tell her that her daddy is dead. I can’t let her grow up knowing the man who killed her father is still out there. You have to help me. I need you to find Shen’s killer and kill him. I’m asking you, Olivia.”
I groaned out loud. Those were the magic words. This had gone beyond a general request for help: it was now a specific request that I commit murder, regardless of the cost to me, personally. Now, unless I could somehow talk her out of it without actually refusing to do what she’d asked, I’d have to either kill her husband’s murderer or die fighting the compulsion. Or die when the police caught up to me. Or wish I’d died if the murderer turned out to be connected and his connections caught up to me.
Motherfucker!
“Annika, I’m asking you to rethink this.”
There. Two could play that game. Or—technically—four, since there were four bloody thumbprints on that old oath, wherever it was.
Anne flinched, and her hand twitched. She was resisting, and I could practically see how badly she wanted to rub her own forehead. So I tossed her the cool rag.
“Fine. State your case.” She leaned back on the couch and placed the folded rag over her forehead and tear-swollen eyes.
I took a deep breath, but was careful to keep it silent. I didn’t want her to know how important it was for me to get out of the assassin part of the favor she was asking. “I don’t have a problem with your husband’s murderer dying for his crimes.” The state would give him the death penalty anyway, if they could prove his guilt. “And I’m perfectly willing to find him for you. But once he’s found, you need an expert for … whatever comes next. And I’m no assassin, Anne.”
I was an amateur at best….
She sat up, clutching the rag in one hand. “Olivia, I don’t need you to cut his throat with a scalpel and frame the governor’s personal physician. I don’t need the best. Hell, I can’t afford the best. Proficiency will suffice, and from what I’ve heard, you’re more than proficient.”
What? “I don’t care what you’ve heard, I do not kill people for money!” Much. Anymore.
Not just for money, anyway.
My head throbbed again, but this headache was stress-induced. She wasn’t backing down, and I couldn’t tell her why I needed her to. And thanks to the original oath, I couldn’t just ask her not to ask me to kill someone. Noelle had called that the no-wishing-for-more-wishes clause—like a contractual paradox. It couldn’t be done.
Anne frowned. “But you work for Ruben Cavazos.”
“Freelance. I freelance for Cavazos.” Which was precisely why her request was so dangerous for me. “And for Adam Rawlinson, and for anyone else who can pay.” Except for Jake Tower. Working for both sides of the Skilled black market would be like putting a bullet in my own head—only more prolonged and painful. “But all I do for them is find people.” Usually. “What the client does with the target after that is their business. I don’t get involved with that side of it.” Not without a very good reason—and money doesn’t count.
“So Cavazos doesn’t … own you?” She blinked through her tears, watching me carefully, and if I hadn’t known her most of my life, I might not have realized what she was doing. What she was looking for in my eyes.
Anne was a Reader—a human truth detector—born with an ability most law enforcers worked years to develop. Only her Skill was virtually infallible, and it couldn’t be turned off. Which was why she hadn’t dated much in high school—turns out sometimes ignorance really is bliss. Or at least temporary consolation. Shen must have been the most honest man on the face of the planet.
“Say what you mean, Annika.” I knew what she meant, of course, but … “If you’re going to come in here and pull on the strings of a fifteen-year-old oath, you could at least have the guts to ask me what you really want to know.”
“Fine,” Anne said, and I recognized the rare flash of temper in her eyes. “Olivia, are you bound to Ruben Cavazos? Because that’s what they’re saying about you out there.” She nodded toward the window overlooking the street below. “They’re saying you quit Rawlinson’s team because you’re bound to Cavazos and he’s taking a cut of your freelance fee—along with whatever else he wants from you.”
My temper burned like indigestion, and I fought the need to stand in defense of my reputation—the only real asset a freelance Tracker has. “Who’s saying that?”
Anne glanced at her hands again, stalling. Then she looked at the door I still hadn’t locked. I followed her gaze as the glass panel swung open and Cam stepped in from the hall.
Damn it!
“Lurking in dark hallways?” I said, my hands hidden in my lap to hide how tightly they were clenched. “Isn’t that a little cliché, even for a stalker—I mean Tracker?”
“You wouldn’t have heard her out if you knew I was here,” he said calmly, and I couldn’t argue.
“You told her I’m bound to Cavazos?” I had to force my jaw to unclench as I stood, leaning with both palms flat on my desktop. “You used to be above spreading unsubstantiated rumors.”
“Those with Skills live and die by the word on the street, Olivia. Especially in this city.”
Yeah. It was that dying part that worried me.
“Look, I may be country mouse in the big city,” Anne started, still seated while Cam and I stood, “but I’m not stupid. I know Cavazos is selling blood and names on the black market, and I know he has his homegrown army out there doing the dirty work.”
But if that was all she knew, she really was country mouse.
“He’s not the only one. Jake Tower has this city by the balls, and everyone west of the river’s so afraid of his men—”
Anne stood, interrupting me smoothly with that same quiet confidence I’d envied in childhood, then hated in adolescence. “What I need to know from you is whether you’re part of that army. Is Ruben Cavazos pulling your strings, Liv?”
“Right now, you ‘re pulling my strings.” And pushing all the wrong buttons. “You need to back off, Annika. Before I have to push you back.”
“She has a right to know what you’re tangled up in, Liv,” Cam insisted quietly, and I exploded, as always, the roaring fire to his smooth, hard ice.
“Screw her rights. What about mine? You two can’t just ambush me, make me work for you, then question me like a criminal so you can be sure none of my dirt’s going to rub off on you.”
“Ask her to pull her sleeve up,” Cam said to Anne, though his gaze never left mine. “To see if she’s marked,” he added, when she hesitated in obvious confusion.
Anne sighed, but even the weary grief that had moved me earlier couldn’t calm me now. “Are you going to make me ask?” she said softly.
Hell no. I wasn’t going to give her—or anyone else—any more power over me, if I could possibly help it. “You wanna see?” I spat, gathering the hem of my T-shirt in both hands. I jerked the material over my head and dropped it into my chair, then stood watching them both, in only jeans and a bra. “Fine. Look.”
Cam swallowed thickly—the only outward sign that the sight of my bare skin still affected him—then his focus zeroed in on my arm automatically. “Cavazos’s first mark is a small black ring on the left bicep. She’s clean.”
I was clean? As opposed to dirty? “Fuck you!” Cam flinched, and I recognized the regret that flickered across his expression before he could hide it. “That’s not what I … I just meant …” He closed his eyes while I tugged my shirt back over my head, glad for the half second it shielded me from their scrutiny and judgment.
When I sank into my chair, dressed, but still pissed, Cam settled onto the arm of the couch. “I made Anne promise to let you out of this if you were bound to one of the syndicates.” Because, having lived in the city almost as long as I had—I was pretty sure he’d followed me there—he understood how dangerous and complicated her favor could make things for anyone sworn to serve on one side of the black-market divide.
It was very … compassionate of him, and it took real effort for me to deny the sudden rush of my own pulse. Because compassion was the last thing I needed from Cam Caballero. “I don’t want your pity, or sympathy, or whatever this is.”
“Fortunately, it looks like you don’t need it,” he said, with another glance at my now covered arm. “So let’s move on.”
Irritated that he seemed to be taking control of things, I turned back to Anne. “I’ll find your husband’s killer, and I’ll take you to him. But you can kill him yourself,” I said, careful not to actually refuse to do the second part of her request.
Anne paled, and Cam stood, scowling at me across my own desk. “No, Olivia.”
“What, she’s brave enough to come in here demanding vigilante justice, but not brave enough to do the job herself?”
Anne glanced back and forth between us, her purse trembling in her grip, but Cam answered before she could even open her mouth. “She’s never even held a gun. Even if she had any chance of actually pulling this off, can you really send her back to her half-orphaned daughter with blood on her hands?”
His point was subtle, but it still stung. Anne wasn’t like me. We’d started on the same path, sure. Parents, school, friends, college. Then Anne had continued down that path toward a respectable career, civil responsibility and family, while I had jumped the track entirely and derailed my own life with violence, under-the-carpet jobs and solitude.
If I made Anne take the shot herself, I’d be dragging her from her mostly tidy suburban life into the gritty reality of my own existence. Most people can’t commit murder then go on living their lives, even if that murder was actually justice. And I had no doubt Anne was one of those people.
But I was not. And Cam obviously knew that.
“Fine. I’ll do it.” I sighed, finally fully resigned to her request, and the last of the resistance pain faded. “You have a name or a sample of his blood?”
“Well, he didn’t leave a business card,” she snapped, her anger currently winning the battle against grief. “But I can get you several blood samples from the house.” She sniffled, then visibly swallowed tears. “They found Shen holding a bloody knife, so I’m hoping at least one of the blood samples will belong to his killer.”
But that made no sense. Why would a Skilled killer—especially a professional—leave his own blood at the scene? Maybe he was interrupted?
“The police left a huge mess, and obviously I haven’t had time to have it cleaned yet,” she continued.
Obviously? “Annika, when did he die?”
“Tonight.” She frowned and glanced out the window, where the first rays of daylight had changed inky black to deep, dark blue. “Last night, I guess.”
“Last night?”
“Around eight o’clock”
“Your husband’s been dead for less than ten hours?” I rubbed my forehead, then let one hand trail though my hair. “Don’t you think you might be reacting before you’ve had a chance to really think about this?”
“No.” For the first time since she’d walked into my office, Anne looked at me as if she didn’t even know me. As if I was just some stranger she’d hired from an ad in the phone book. “And I would rather have this whole thing over with before I go pick up Hadley. I don’t want to have to think about this while I’m trying to decide how best to explain what happened to her father without scarring her for life.”
“Okay.” I didn’t know what else to say—I wasn’t sure rationality would have had much attraction for me, either, in her position. I opened my mouth to name my one condition, but she beat me to the proverbial punch.
“Liv, there’s one more thing …” Anne hesitated, and I knew I wasn’t going to like whatever else she had to say. “I want you to work with Cam.”
I sucked in a long, slow breath, hoping she would deliver the punch line to the world’s worst joke before I had to actually say something. But she only watched me, waiting. “No,” I said finally. “No way.” I turned to Cam for support, but could find no resistance to the idea in his expression. Instead, I found … satisfaction. “This was your idea, wasn’t it?” I demanded He crossed both arms over a still-broad chest. “Does it matter? Is it going to kill you to work with me on one job? For Anne?”
Yes, it just might kill me. Or him. But there had never been a less appropriate time to explain why I’d left him. Why working with him could be more dangerous than hunting and killing a murderer on my own. And it didn’t help that while my brain protested on the basis of logic, the rest of me ached for this excuse to be near him again, if only in a professional capacity.
But that was a bad idea. The key to resisting Cam Caballero lay in avoiding temptation—a concept he seemed to personify for me more with every glance I avoided, every memory I buried.
“No.” I turned back to Anne, wearing my business face. The one that got me the rates and bonuses I demanded. The one that usually kept creeps off me when I followed criminals down dark alleys and through abandoned buildings. “No. That’s a deal-breaker.”
“There are no deal-breakers when you’re bound,” Cam pointed out calmly, and suddenly I wished I’d hit him when I had the chance. “You’ll do it, or you’ll die trying to resist the compulsion.”
“I haven’t actually asked you yet,” Anne reminded me, echoing the infuriating calm that Cam exuded like radiation—a slow, vicious poison. “But I will if I have to. Your choice.”
“So, I either work with him because you’re asking me to, or I work with him because you’re threatening to ask me to. What kind of choice is that?” I demanded.
“It’s better than the choices I’m facing right now. The rest of my day includes picking out a casket and a black suit.”
Another low blow. “Why Cam?” I asked, hoping to talk her out of it before she caught on and actually compelled me.
“Because I’m short on cash but rich on resources, Liv.” Meaning the two of us, of course. “But if you’re willing to subsidize this project financially and you know someone better than Cam, then by all means.” She extended one arm toward the window and the city just now waking up. “So … do you know anyone better than Cam?”
Damn. “Other than me? No.”
Cam laughed out loud. “Still arrogant …”
“Confident,” I corrected. “And willing to back that confidence up with results.”
“Good.” He nodded, in what may have been the first look of respect I’d seen from him in more than six years. “Let’s go.”
“Um …” I hedged. “I have something to take care of first, and we’ll need those blood samples before I can get started.” I glanced at Anne with both brows raised, and she nodded, already standing. “So, I’ll meet you here at noon?”
“Liv, I really want to get this over with,” she repeated.
“I know, but I have a previous commitment.” I hesitated, dreading the next part. “Oh, and … urn … I’m going to need a retainer.”
“What?”
“You’re going to charge her?” Cam demanded, and that respect I’d seen was long gone. “She’s your friend.”
I bristled, even though I’d expected—and understood—his reaction. “A friend who’s compelling me to work for her.” And with you. I hated what they probably thought of me now, but I had no choice—a state of events I was starting to truly resent. “You need my help? Fine. But I need a retainer. It doesn’t have to be much. Five or ten bucks. Just … something to make it official.”
Anne looked as if I’d just danced on her dead husband’s grave, but she dug in her purse without a word. Something snapped open, and she handed me a five-dollar bill. “I don’t carry much cash, but I can get you more, later,” she offered, in spite of the hurt clear on her face.
“Don’t worry about it. This is plenty.” I paper-clipped the bill to a blank invoice and stuffed it into my desk drawer. Never in my life had I been more relieved to lose sight of a payment.
As they left my office, Cam glanced at me with a look of confusion and disappointment so strong it burned deep in my chest. But all I could do was stare back and hope he wouldn’t decide to put into words what his gaze was accusing me of.
I hated how he saw me now, and I hated knowing that his opinion of me would only worsen, if I kept my secrets. But my secrets kept him safe, and that was more important than what he thought of the life I’d chosen.
His safety was more important than anything to me. Even if he would never know enough to understand that.
Three
“Well, did that go how you expected?” Anne asked, as Olivia closed and locked her office door behind us.
“Nope.” I sighed and dug my keys from my pocket. “I figured it’d be worse. Do you believe her? About the Cavazos syndicate?”
“Yeah.” Anne dug her keys from her purse with still-trembling hands. “She’s hiding something, but that’s not it. She’s not a syndicate member.”
I shrugged, trying not to show how relieved I really was. “Yeah, I’m guessing that if he owned a piece of Olivia Warren, he’d want everyone to know it.” And she’d do everything she could to hide it.
The Liv I’d known and loved was beautiful and passionate, with a backbone of steel and a fiery temper. This new Olivia was everything my Liv had been and more. More steel. More fire. She couldn’t truly bend to someone else’s will—Anne had convinced, as much as she’d compelled—and those who wouldn’t bend could only break.
It would kill me to see Liv broken, even after what she’d done.
“You sure you wanna do this?” Anne asked, as I held the stairwell door open for her. “It sounds like she’s pretty good at what she does.”
“So am I. This’ll be easier and faster with us working together.”
But as much as I wanted to help Anne—to know without a doubt, for once, that I’d be taking a murderer off the streets—that wasn’t my primary motivation.
Olivia was the goal.
Sometimes I thought about that night and the months afterward, and I hated her. Then I hated myself, for still wanting her. She was pissed at me for making her show her arm—for making her do anything—but my relief at the sight of her smooth, bare arm was like nothing I’d ever felt. Part joy, part memory and part aching possibility. I couldn’t stand the thought of someone else’s hands on her, much less some asshole’s mark of ownership.
But she wouldn’t talk to me voluntarily, and that left me no choice but to corner her, which Anne had unwittingly helped me do. Now Olivia couldn’t just hang up on me or close the door in my face. Now she’d have to listen to me. She’d have to talk. She’d have to tell me to my face why she’d ruined my life and stolen my future….
“What happened between you two?” Anne asked, clicking a button on her key chain to unlock her car doors. She slid into the driver’s seat and I settled in next to her.
“I don’t know. But I’m damn well going to find out.”
New Year’s Eve Six years ago
“Remind me what we’re doing here again.” I wrapped my arms around Olivia’s waist, watching the party over her shoulder. She smelled like vanilla, and I wanted a taste.
“It’s New Year’s Eve. Stop being so antisocial. “
“Oh, I want to socialize—on a very selective basis. I want to be very, very social with you.” I ducked into the warm space between her neck and her hair and dropped a kiss beneath her ear, where the scent of vanilla was strongest. She shivered and twisted to face me, winding her arms around my neck.
“You just don’t like my friends. “
It wasn’t that I didn’t like them—I didn’t know most of them. “In the three years since I met you, you’ve hardly even mentioned them, and never once introduced me to anyone but Anne. Why would you want to spend New Year’s Eve with people you haven’t seen in years, instead of with me?”
“I am with you.” She kissed me to punctuate her point. “But they’re my best friends. “
“From high school. That was years ago. “
“Some bonds last forever, Cam. “
I was kind of hoping she’d say that.
“Thanks for coming.” She turned to pick up her drink from the corner of an end table. “Even if you do look like you’d rather be skinned alive. “
“Not skinned …” I muttered, as she returned a greeting from some tall, fair-haired guy I didn’t recognize. “But maybe shot.” The last-minute party invitation had derailed my plans for the evening, but I had a backup plan—an empty room, a quiet moment and the small but clear diamond in my pocket. I kept touching it, to make sure it was still there, and every time I thought about it, I got a little queasy and a little high on adrenaline.
I glanced at my watch, and that adrenaline surged again. Half an hour to go …
She would say yes. I wasn’t worried about that. I’d planned and I’d waited, to make sure everything was right. We’d both finished college. Her parents liked me. She was still waiting tables and I was still selling tools, but I had a big interview scheduled, and her prospects were endless. The real jobs would come, and until then, we’d call our tiny apartment cozy and joke that we could make our own warmth when the car’s heater gave out again.
But all that was icing. She’d say yes because she wanted me as badly as I wanted her. I could see that every time she looked at me. I could taste it in every hungry kiss and feel it in every fevered touch. This was right. We were right.
“That’s Kori’s brother, Kristopher,” she said, as the blond guy saluted us with an open beer. “This is his house. “
Had he looked at her a little too long? Smiled a little too much? My arms tightened around her before I realized what I was doing. “Were you two a couple? “
“Kris?” Liv laughed and twisted to whisper into my ear. “You jealous?” She bit lightly on my earlobe.
“Mmm … Should I be?”
“Nah. When I was fifteen, we made out in his basement once, for, like, two minutes. Then Kori found us and threatened to kick the crap out of us both if she ever saw that again.”
“Which one’s Kori?” I asked, looking over her shoulder again when she turned and pressed her back against my chest.
“The one in the corner.”
I followed Liv’s gaze to an athletic woman with white-blond hair, pouring from a bottle of vodka as if she’d started waaay before her last birthday. “I like her already.”
Liv laughed. “Yeah, that’ll last until the first time you piss her off. Noelle, though—you’d like Elle. “
“The brunette? She seems like fun.” She sat surrounded by a crowd, cracking them up with some animated story I couldn’t hear.
“She is. Elle’s supersmart, but she skipped college in favor of travel. I was always kind of jealous of that.” Liv sighed. “She always said she wanted to live life instead of learning about it.”
“But if you’d skipped college, we never would have met,” I pointed out. “Then we’d both be miserable for the rest of our lives, with no idea why.”
Liv laughed. “Another tragedy averted by the lure of a state-school education.”
“What’s up with Anne tonight?” I asked, as the redhead—the only one of Liv’s friends I’d spent any time with—staggered past us with a full plastic cup.
“Another breakup. It must suck to know when people are lying.”
I shrugged. “I guess. But it’d be convenient to know when they aren’t, right? “
“After hearing Anne cry, I’m starting to think that doesn’t happen much anymore.” Her frown deepened. “And I kind of want to break some asshole’s face. “
I held her tighter, just because I could. Because she was fierce, and beautiful, and mine.
“After the countdown, let’s go outside. Kris has a telescope, and there are no clouds tonight …”
“It’s freezing out there.”
Liv smiled. “I’ll keep you warm. “
“I’ll let you.” Outside was fine with me. The party was too crowded for my taste anyway.
I glanced at my watch again. Eleven forty-eight. My pulse rushed so fast I spent the next few seconds mentally tallying my drinks. But it wasn’t the alcohol, and it wasn’t the party. It wasn’t the wintertime freeze or even the way Olivia felt in my arms, as if nothing could go wrong as long as I was holding her. It was the look in her eyes, as if there was no one in the room but me.
And in twelve minutes, that would be true. In twelve minutes, our lives would change for the better. Forever.
“Hey, looks like you ‘re out.” I looked pointedly at her plastic cup.
“No, I’m—” she began, glancing down into the dark liquid.
I snatched the cup from her and drained it in one swallow, barely tasting the whiskey mixed with her soda. “Now you are.”
She shoved me, but couldn’t quite pull off a frown. “You owe me a refill.”
I grinned. “Be right back.”
I headed toward the makeshift bar until I was sure she’d lost sight of me, then veered toward the front door, dropping her empty cup in the trash on the way. Outside, the wind cut through my sweater like needles and my feet slid on muddy slush.
Three cars down from the crowded driveway, I unlocked my trunk and carefully unwrapped the spare blanket to reveal a bottle of champagne—the best I could afford—and two tall glass flutes.
It had to be perfect. This would be the beginning of the rest of our lives, and I wanted to get it right. We would count down toward midnight together, then I’d show her the ring when the party crowd shouted the number three. I would ask her to marry me at the stroke of midnight, and then every year after, no matter what time zone we were in, we would celebrate the New Year at that exact moment. Because we wouldn’t just be celebrating the beginning of a new calendar year—we’d be celebrating the beginning of our lives together.
The ring and the wedding ceremony were formalities, to make everyone else happy. The promise was for us. Our word. Our binding. Our future.
Carrying the champagne in one hand, the glasses in the other, I ducked into the house as someone else was coming out, ignoring the raised eyebrows and whispers as I made my way through the crowd, scanning the faces to make sure Olivia wasn’t watching.
She wasn’t. She was talking with her friend Noelle—evidently the only sober friend she had—and they both looked upset. But that wouldn’t last long. No longer than the next ten minutes, by my guess …
At the end of the hall, I pushed open the door to the home office I’d scouted out earlier. The only other choice had been Kris’s bedroom, which would have been weird, at best. I set the champagne on the computer desk and arranged the glasses on either side of it. Then I closed the office door and made my way back to the party.
Noelle walked off as I approached, and I couldn’t interpret the look she gave Liv. Olivia was crying.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” I tried to pull her close. But she stepped out of reach, tears standing in her eyes. “This isn’t going to work, Cam.”
“I know. I just set up a little private party for us, back there …” I tried to guide her through the crowd but she wouldn’t move.
Liv wiped tears from her face and blinked up at me, and people were watching now. Kristopher What’s-his-face stepped forward, puffed up like a bulldog, as if he thought whatever was wrong with her was my fault.
“No.” Liv crossed her arms over her chest. “I mean us. This isn’t going to work. I don’t … I don’t want this anymore, Cam. I’m sorry. “
I couldn’t process what she’d said. It just didn’t make sense. And by the time the truth sank in, Liv was halfway across the room, on her way to the front door.
“Olivia!” I started after her, but Kristopher and three of his friends stepped into my path. “She wants to leave. Let her go.” I didn’t have the coherence to form words, but my fists flew on instinct. I’d bloodied Kristopher’s nose and laid one of his friends out cold before the other two managed to toss me onto the front porch. But by then, Liv was gone. Along with our car.
I sank onto the steps, colder inside than out, reeling from what she’d said, but I still hadn’t truly heard. She’d dumped me. In the middle of a party full of people I’d never met. Ten minutes before I was going to ask her to marry me. It didn’t make any sense.
The front door opened behind me, and I shifted to make room for whoever wanted past.
“You okay?” Liv’s friend Anne sat next to me on the top step, tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear. “I saw what happened.”
“Then you know I’m not okay.”
“Liv took the car?”
And everything else that had ever mattered to me. But I could only nod. “Want a ride?”
“No, I want a drink. Lots of them. “
Anne nodded, as if she could taste the truth in my words. She probably could. “There’s a Hudson’s half a mile from here.” She stood, wobbling on her feet—she’d probably already had too much. “That’s where I’m headed. You’re welcome to come.”
I stared up at her, and I could see the pain on her face. Whatever this asshole had done to her had hurt her. A lot. I could sympathize—there was now a gaping hole where my own heart had been minutes earlier.
“I’m driving …” I pulled the keys from her hand, and she only smiled and led me to her car. I started the engine as the guy on the radio counted down the last three seconds of the year.
“It was a shitty year anyway.” Anne punched the radio power button. “Maybe this one will be better. “
“Not likely,” I mumbled, as I pulled away from the curb. “Happy fucking New Year.”
Four
“Hey, Liv,” Tomas said, as I pulled open the heavy back door before he could push it open for me. You’d think he’d quit trying. “You’re late.”
“Yup. Passive resistance.” I put my hands behind my head and spread my feet so he could pat me down, then clomped across the kitchen, my boots echoing on the marble tile.
“He doesn’t like it when you’re late,” Tomas called out from behind me, unwilling—or maybe disallowed—to leave his post at the back door.
I turned to face him, walking backward as he rubbed the row of three interlocking blue rings tattooed on his exposed left bicep, indicating his midlevel rank in the organization and his position as syndicate muscle. “Exactly.”
Tomas shook his head slowly, half amused, half worried, and I wondered how much shit he’d had to take because of my twenty-minute tardy. East of the river, the concept of not shooting messengers was unpopular at best. I felt kinda bad about that. Really.
I crossed the foyer and ignored the main staircase in favor of the dim hallway beyond, where two of the three doors were closed. Bypassing the open guest bathroom, I stopped in front of the only door on the left and paused for a deep breath. The kind of breath you take before you step into the sewer, hoping you won’t have to inhale again before you’re out. But you will have to, and every breath you take will remind you that you’re standing knee-deep in someone else’s filth, and that no matter how hard you scrub afterward, you’re never going to feel truly clean again.
Then I pushed the door open and walked in without knocking.
Confusion sparked in the disconnect between my eyes and my brain, before comprehension was rerouted through my ears. It was the heavy breathing that finally clued me in. There was a girl in his lap, behind his desk, nibbling—or maybe sucking—on his neck. Or maybe his ear. And the rhythmic rise and fall of her body said that kissing wasn’t the extent of this little demonstration.
They knew I’d come in, but the show didn’t stop—a consequence of those twenty minutes I’d made him wait—and it wouldn’t stop until I officially acknowledged that I’d seen. But the joke was on him. I didn’t care who he screwed, and the sight of him being ridden by the nanny, or the maid, or whoever it was this week wasn’t going to improve my punctuality. Quite the opposite, in fact.
But since I was already there.
“Ahem.” I cleared my throat loudly, one hand still on the door handle. They both froze, pretending to be surprised, and the girl lifted her head, tossing long, straight black hair over her shoulder. And that’s when I saw her arm.
Oh, shit.
Beneath the usual interlocking rings, two in this case, her left bicep was tattooed with three beautifully lettered words in a golden band all the way around her arm—a sealed oath and a symbolic wedding ring she could never take off.
Fidelitas. Muneris. Oboedientia.
Fidelity. Service. Obedience.
Michaela. Shit, shit, shit! He wasn’t fucking the staff, he was fucking his wife.
That was new.
Ruben Cavazos peered at me over her shoulder, dark eyes shining. He looked at least a decade younger than his age—his early fifties—yet easily a decade older than his wife. “Olivia. Join us?”
I raised one brow. “Is that an invitation or an order?”
“It is an option.”
“Then this is my refusal.”
He laughed, and Mrs. Cavazos scowled in profile at the room in general. He couldn’t actually order me to sleep with him—or them—a fact I reminded him of often. But I wasn’t sure if his wife knew that.
He patted her thigh, bared by the skirt hiked up to her waist and trailing between his legs. When she only leaned down for another kiss, his expression hardened, and the next slap was hard enough to make me wince.
Michaela stood, and her skirt fell to her knees, covering the fresh red splotch from his hand. She straightened the blue gauzy material as she turned to me, dark eyes blazing with a fury she probably had no idea we shared. “You’re late,” she spat, by way of greeting, excuse, explanation and a general “fuck you.”
“Mea culpa.” I didn’t hate her like she hated me. I’d tried, over and over, and failed every time. Instead, I pitied her, and that just pissed her off even more.
“Meika, bring in a glass of Scotch for Ms. Warren,” Cavazos said, and his wife stopped two feet from the door, glaring at me openly.
“Ruben, it’s ten in the morning,” I said, then glanced at her, trying not to let pity leak into my expression.
“Coffee’s fine.”
She stomped past me, muttering angrily in Spanish, too fast for me to pick up anything more than bitch. I heard that one a lot.
Cavazos laughed. “Close the door,” he called after her, and she slammed it hard enough to shake the framed photos on the wall—a gallery of Ruben Cavazos, pictured with every city official and national and foreign dignitary he’d ever met.
He stood, zipped his black slacks and circled his desk to sit on the front corner.
I dropped into one of the leather chairs in front of his desk. “She hates me.”
“With a rather colorful intensity.” He chuckled again. “Do you blame her?”
“I blame you.”
More laughter. His good moods were scarier than his anger, at least to those who knew him well. “Think of her hatred as a compliment.”
I thought of it as a problem. Michaela followed orders, just like everyone else bound to her husband. But she also took full advantage of every moment that wasn’t governed by an order and every possibility she wasn’t specifically ordered not to take. If she got the chance, she’d kill me. Or die trying.
Either way, she had my respect.
“What happened with the apartment in Florida?” he asked, all traces of humor gone.
“I got hold of the superintendent two days ago. It’s still rented to a woman named Tamara Parker, and she’s approximately the right age, but the description doesn’t fit. And he’s not with her, Ruben. She lives alone.”
“A landlord never really knows how many people live in a unit. And looks can be changed.”
“Yes, but unless your Tamara Parker gained two hundred pounds and changed her skin color, I think we’ve hit another dead end. She gave you a fake name, and she’s not using it anymore.”
His sigh was so frustrated he almost sounded human. But I’d been fooled by that too many times to let my guard down now. “What about him?”
“Nothing new.” I shrugged. “I get a faint tug from the middle name, but without more to go on, I can’t even tell what direction he’s in, much less how far away he is. He could be across the country, or across the street. We’re going to have to approach this from another angle.” Damned if I know what angle, though …
“Agreed.” Ruben blinked, then met my gaze with fresh determination, and I realized he was about to change the subject. “Why were you on High Street in the middle of the night?” he asked.
He was like a damn spider—his eyes were everywhere. “I was on a job. Got time and a half.”
“From Adam Rawlinson?”
“Yes.”
His frown deepened, and suddenly I wanted the laughter back. “I don’t like you working for him.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck what you like.”
His hand flew, and pain exploded in the corner of my mouth. My head rocked to the side and I tasted blood. But it was an openhanded blow, intended to make a point, not to truly hurt me. “Respect, Olivia. It’s what this syndicate is founded on.”
Funny, I thought the syndicate was founded on money. And blood. And ironclad bonds of indentured servitude.
I tasted the cut on the inside of my lip. I could hit him back—I’d certainly done it before—but if I left a mark, he’d have to beat the shit out of me so everyone else could see what happens when you disrespect Ruben Cavazos. And I was done being an object lesson.
“If I didn’t respect your abilities, you wouldn’t be here,” he continued, and the irony in that fact stung worse than my lip. Was this the reward for being good at my job? Ruben crossed his arms over his chest and stared at me like he might a crossword puzzle beyond his vocabulary. “But I don’t know why you bother with these penny-ante jobs.”
I rolled my eyes. “You don’t know a lot of things.”
“I know you haven’t set foot in your apartment in more than a year.”
“It’s your apartment. Mine is the one I pay rent on.” On the south side. In a building owned by one of the few men in the city who owed loyalty to neither Tower nor Cavazos. The south fork was as close as I could get to Switzerland.
“I understand that you threw away every cent in your bank account.”
“My bank account is fine.” If a little malnourished. “And the account you set up wasn’t thrown away. The money was donated in your name.” I’d withdrawn the five-figure balance in cash and given it to the Catholic-run homeless shelter around the corner from my office. “Sister Theresa thanks you for your generosity.”
His grip tightened on the edge of his desk, and I held my breath. I was poking a lion with a stick, and one of these days he would bite me in half. I knew that. But I wasn’t going to just roll over and play dead for him.
That was his wife’s job.
Besides, as long as he still needed me, he wasn’t going to kill me, and we both knew it. “Olivia …” he warned.
“I’m not going to stop working, and you can’t make me.”
Cavazos stood and pulled me up by one arm. I didn’t bother resisting—the sooner we got this over with, the sooner I could start Tracking Shen’s killer. With Cam. But thinking about him must have shown on my face, because Ruben’s grip tightened and he pushed me around the chair.
“You want to work? Fine. I have a job for you.” He kept walking—kept pushing—until my back hit the darkly paneled wall. “One of my staff Binders is missing,” he whispered, leaning toward my neck. “Along with the contracts he was working on. I need them back. Rapido.”
“Can’t,” I said, as his warm lips brushed the skin just below my earlobe. “I just booked a new client. She’s already paid the retainer.” Thank goodness.
“This is important. And it pays well.”
It took most of my concentration to ignore how good his mouth felt, and that pissed me off. I didn’t want him to feel good. “I don’t want your money.” I wedged my hands between us and shoved him back. “I don’t want anything from you.”
“You want me to keep my word, don’t you?” he taunted, and my heart pounded painfully, though I recognized the empty threat.
“You don’t have any choice about that.”
He leaned into me again and slid his hands beneath my jacket, pushing it off my shoulders and halfway down my arms, until they were pinned by the material. “And you don’t have any choice about this.”
I’d had a choice, once. A year and a half ago. It was a tough one. No good options at all. I’d chosen the lesser of several evils, but in that moment, with his hands pushing my jacket off, his mouth on my skin, the evil I’d chosen didn’t feel very lesser.
I closed my eyes and tried not to react, not to feel, and when that didn’t work, I pretended. I’d gotten pretty good at that in the past eighteen months. At pretending they were someone else’s hands, and lips, and eyes. Pretending it was okay to enjoy it, because I was with someone I wanted.
Those were the only moments I let myself think about Cam—about what I’d walked away from—because those were the only moments when remembering the past hurt less than living in the present.
The door flew open, and so did my eyes. Michaela stared at us, shaking in a fury so strong the coffee mug clattered against the full pot on her tray.
“Out!” Cavazos thundered, whirling to glare at her while I stared at my jacket on the floor, mortified, and pissed off, and struggling to breathe.
She set the tray on the credenza, then backed into the hall and slammed the door. I flinched. “Why do you do this to her?” I groaned. “You told her to bring me a drink.”
“She delayed her entrance on purpose for dramatic effect.”
“Well, can you blame her?” I enjoyed throwing his own words back at him, but he didn’t seem to remember saying them. He just turned back to me with that hunger in his eyes, edged with an anger that seemed to serve as fuel for the fire.
“My marriage is complicated,” he whispered into my ear, his cheek brushing mine. “She punishes me, I punish her, and the cycle continues.”
“What do you punish each other for?”
“For living.”
“That’s screwed up, Ruben.” I tried to push him off again, but this time he wouldn’t go. “Did it ever occur to you that she might prefer a less complicated marriage?”
“Fidelitas. Muneris. Oboedientia. She knew what she was signing when she married me….” he murmured, fumbling with the buttons on my shirt.
That was the part I couldn’t understand. Why would someone as smart and fierce as Michaela sign a marriage oath promising fidelity to a husband who wasn’t bound by an equivalent clause? Was the lure of money and status really worth a husband who screwed around right under her nose? In her own house? Right in front of her?
But then, who was I to judge? The specifics of my involvement with her husband weren’t exactly pretty, so maybe the same was true for her.
“Your people are starting to talk, Ruben.”
He shook his head and reached for my waistband, and I let him push the button through the hole. Because I couldn’t stop him. He hadn’t hit that brick wall yet. “My people are bound by privacy clauses. All except you.”
“I’m not yours.”
“Yet.” He stroked the unmarred skin of my left bicep with his thumb. If he had his way, my arm would look just like Tomas’s.
And then there’d be no escaping him.
“Well, someone’s talking.” More than one someone. And whoever they were, they didn’t have their facts straight.
He knelt to unlace my boots, then slid my jeans over my hips and let them crumple on the floor. Then he wrapped his arms around my waist, pressing one stubbly cheek against my stomach. “The best way to silence the masses is to cut out a single tongue,” he whispered against my skin. Then he stood slowly and his fevered gaze met mine. “I could set something up. You can use my best knife if you let me watch.”
“You’re a sick bastard.” I bent for my pants, but he pulled me back up by one arm.
“Stay.”
“I have to work.”
“Stay as long as you can….” he insisted. I tried to walk away from him, but again, he pulled me back. “That’s an order.”
Damn it!
“Not today,” I said, and agony exploded behind my forehead, bright white and unbearable. I staggered and he picked me up. Several steps later, he lowered me onto the leather couch, cold against my bare legs, and knelt on the floor beside me.
He stroked hair back from my forehead while the pain raged behind my eyes and my hand twitched on the center cushion. “Why do you do this to yourself? You know you can’t win.”
“That’s exactly why I fight,” I groaned through clenched teeth.
Ruben ran one hand down my leg. “Let me see it,” he whispered.
My temper flared at his touch and I shook my head. The pain radiated toward the back of my skull and my left foot began to jiggle. My whole world was agony.
“Stubborn little bitch …” he whispered. “Let me see it.”
That time I didn’t fight. I’d made my point—he could never truly rule me, no matter what he made me do—and we both knew I wasn’t going to win in the end. So I didn’t resist when he slid one hand beneath my left knee and bent my leg to expose my bare thigh.
He traced the small black ring tattooed there, and my skin tingled beneath his finger, recognizing his touch. Because the ink was infused by his blood. A year and a half ago, when the needle spilled my blood, he rubbed it with his pricked thumb and sealed the binding.
“You’re mine, Olivia,” he whispered, leaning closer. His lips brushed the black ring, and I gasped as it burned hotter. Fortunately, he’d finally hit the brick wall—that was as far as he could go without breaking his word and suffering the same pain I’d brought on myself. But that didn’t make his next words any less true.
“Until you find and deliver what you promised, I own you, head to toe. And I won’t ever let you forget that …”
Five
“You’re late,” Cam said, as I unlocked the office door and held it open for him.
“Yup.” I’d left with just enough time to get there by noon—Cavazos had to let me go to work for official clients, but didn’t have to leave me any spare time—but I’d stopped by my apartment first to shower. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing Cam again with the feel of Cavazos still crawling on my skin.
Not with the memory of him calling me “clean” still echoing in my head.
I tossed my scuffed satchel onto the couch and headed straight for my desk.
“You really think that’s the best way to start this working relationship?”
“Nope.” I dropped into my chair and pulled open the bottom right-hand drawer, pawing through the contents as I spoke. “If you wanna work with someone else, I fully support your decision.” In fact, that was the only way I could get out of a direct request from Anne.
“You’re not going to get rid of me again, Liv. Unless you have a new vanishing act you’d like to try out.”
My fingers brushed smooth glass beneath a tangle of holster straps and receipts I’d really meant to file, and I pulled out a half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey. The shot glass in my pencil drawer had eraser shavings in it, so I tapped it upside down on my desk until they fell out, then poured myself a shot.
I threw it back and closed my eyes, half wishing the alcohol still burned. I’d tried drinking before my weekly report to Cavazos once, and once was all it took. Turns out I don’t really want to be relaxed around him after all.
“What’s wrong with you?” Cam demanded, sinking onto the couch with his elbows on his knees.
“I had a rough morning, and based on your presence in my office, my afternoon isn’t looking much better.”
His blue eyes narrowed in anger, and I had to swallow my own regret before it surfaced as an apology—I couldn’t afford to let him in again. “When did you turn into such a bitch?” he growled, and my urge to apologize dried up and blew away.
“About a year and a half ago.” I poured another shot and pushed the bottle toward him.
Instead of taking it, he watched me slowly turn the shot I’d poured for myself, staring down at the contents. “Are you going to be like this the whole time?” he asked.
“Nope. Sometimes I’ll be irritable and unpleasant.” I downed the shot and reached for the bottle again, but he pulled it out of my reach.
Cam tilted the bottle to read the label, then set it on the desk again with a disgusted look. “I guess you really don’t work for Cavazos. He pays better than this.”
“What, you’re too good for my whiskey?”
“Yeah, and so are you. When this is over, I’ll buy you a real drink.” His arched brows were a challenge, but his eyes were serious, and so was the question he hadn’t really asked.
“I might let you. Because I like whiskey.”
He leaned back on the couch, crossing both arms over his chest. “Is that the best I’m going to get?”
“From me? Today? Yes.” I screwed the lid on the bottle and put it back in the drawer. “Where’s Anne?” I asked, when the fact that I was alone with Cam became too much to think about.
“You were late and she had to pick up Hadley. She left these for you, though.” He picked up a plastic grocery bag I hadn’t even noticed and tossed it onto the desk. I opened it and looked in to find several clear plastic bags, each smeared with blood on the inside from their contents.
“She took these herself, didn’t she?” I asked, trying not to be horrified by the thought of Anne on her hands and knees, taking samples of blood from the scene of her husband’s slaughter.
“She wouldn’t let me help.” Cam glanced at the floor between his knees. “She seemed to think she owed it to him personally.”
Damn.
I spread the bags out on my desk, looking for some kind of order, but they weren’t numbered or labeled, as police evidence bags always were. There was a swatch of cloth that might once have been plaid, an uneven square of excised carpet, a patch of stained denim and a formerly white athletic sock.
“Have you tried any of them?” I asked, turning the first bag over to examine it.
Cam shook his head. “You’re the blood expert.” Which is what had brought me to Cavazos’s attention …
I unzipped the first baggie—the plaid cloth—and reached inside with my bare hand. The blood was room temperature and still sticky. Fresh enough to be viable, and readable from a decent distance.
As the metallic scent of blood filled the room, I pulled the cloth from the bag and closed my eyes, fingering the material, focusing on the feel of the blood between my fingers, and the feel of it in my head. That mental scent. The energy signature of whoever’d spilled it.
It came from a man. Gender was easy to discern, but race and age took more experience—exposure to and study of a variety of samples. Fortunately, I’d had plenty of experience.
The blood came from a man of Asian descent. I couldn’t pin down his age without a fresher sample, but I knew two things for sure. The blood held no power, which meant its owner was not Skilled. And the blood held no pull—no psychic thread connecting it to the man who’d spilled it, through which I could Track him. Which meant the owner was dead.
“It’s Shen’s,” I said, resealing the cloth in its bag.
Cam sat straighter. “How sure are you?”
“As sure as I can be, without having met him. It’s either his, or another dead Asian man with no Skill.” Which could easily have been one of about a billion other people—if we didn’t already know Shen’s killer was a Traveler.
I stood without touching anything and crossed into the bathroom to wash my hands with the bar of lye soap on the left side of the sink. It was hell on my skin, but lye destroys blood, which would keep me from confusing one sample with another.
In my chair again, I opened the second bag—the denim—and knew almost immediately that the blood in this one was also Shen’s.
Another hand scrub, then I opened the third bag. The carpet. And that one was interesting. Shen’s blood was there, but it wasn’t alone. Two people had bled on the carpet, and the second person’s blood held both power and pull. He was both Skilled and alive. But with the samples so thoroughly mixed, I couldn’t tell what kind of Skill it was, nor could I get any specific direction from the pull. I didn’t even know for sure that the owner was male.
I sealed up the carpet and washed my hands again, then sat down with the last sample—the sock. “The carpet, I understand. But how the hell did Anne get bloody clothes from a crime scene? Why didn’t the police take them for evidence?”
Cam sighed and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “The house was locked up tight when Shen was found, and his keys weren’t missing. The cops know the killer was a Traveler, and they know they’ll never find him with only county resources.” He shrugged. “It’s no surprise they’re not dedicating much time or effort to a case they know they can’t solve.”
And there were more of those every day, it seemed. Sure, some cops were Skilled, but the police department couldn’t legally use resources that weren’t officially recognized by the government, which meant they were crippled in the investigation of any crime obviously committed by a Skilled perp.
Victims and loved ones who could pay would come to people like me for answers the cops couldn’t give them. Some independent Trackers—like Spencer and his associates—also offered vigilante justice, of the variety Anne had requested, for a huge fee.
Those who wanted justice but couldn’t afford it in monetary terms would turn to either Tower or Cavazos, who were happy to take payment in the form of an IOU—a dangerously vague contract sealed by one of their own Binders. And just like that, one by one, private citizens fell into debt to one syndicate or the other, signing away their souls—or at least their free will—for one short moment of visceral satisfaction.
What they didn’t know was that half the time, the very syndicate they turned to for help was responsible for the crime they wanted avenged. I’d seen it happen. If Cavazos wanted a Traveler or a Reader who refused to sign on, he’d have the target’s spouse or parent killed—never a child, thank goodness—then sit back and wait for a desperate knock on the door.
And people kept falling for it, devastated and naive in the face of engineered tragedy.
I held up the bloody sock, mentally crossing my fingers that what had happened to Anne was nothing of that sort. That this was something we could put an end to without making powerful enemies. Then I closed my eyes and inhaled.
Score.
One bleeder, with both power and pull. This blood almost certainly matched the second bleeder from the carpet, and with only one scent to concentrate on, I was able to pin down some details.
“Male, and he’s a Traveler.” Just as Anne had guessed. I’d found the killer. Or, at least, I’d found his blood, and since it hadn’t completely dried, the pull from it was strong.
Cam sat straight again and glanced from the sock to my face. “Anything else?”
“A general direction.”
He was already on his feet, keys in hand. “I’ll drive.” I glanced at him, my gaze narrowed in suspicion, and Cam scowled. “What, you don’t trust me? Don’t you think it should be the other way around? How do I know that you’re not just going to ditch me again and move to another city, without even a goodbye?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I snatched my worn satchel from the couch and filled it with supplies from the cabinet behind my desk so I wouldn’t have to look at him.
“Well, then, why don’t you tell me?” he demanded, and when I didn’t answer, he grabbed my arm and tried to turn me around. “Why are you so angry? You’re pushing people away. People who care about you. What happened to you, Liv?”
I jerked my arm from his grasp and met his gaze reluctantly. “Nothing I can’t handle.” Yet. But he didn’t understand that, and I couldn’t explain it. “Fine. You can drive. It’ll be easier for me to concentrate on the blood that way anyway.” Which was probably the reason he’d offered in the first place.
The last thing that went into my satchel was a spray bottle of ammonia, then I zipped the bag and set it on the desk. I shrugged into my good holster and pulled my jacket on over it, then checked the clip and the safety on my favorite 9mm and dropped it into the holster. I sealed the sock back into its bag and shoved it into my right jacket pocket. With my phone in the opposite pocket and my satchel over one shoulder, I shooed Cam out the door and locked it behind us.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said, following me down the narrow staircase at the end of the hall. “Even if you’re not talking to me.”
“I am talking to you.” I pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairs and stepped into the bright parking lot, squinting against the glare of the sun. I’d rather work at night, when there were fewer of Cavazos’s eyes around to see me with Cam, but Anne’s blood sample wasn’t getting any fresher.
“You’re talking, but you’re not really saying anything,” Cam insisted, digging his keys from his pocket.
“You’re doing enough of that for both of us.”
His car—the one he’d tracked me down in the night before—was parked near the end of the front row, and as we approached, he unlocked it by remote.
“What do you want me to say?” I asked, dropping into the passenger’s seat.
“It’s been six years, Liv. I don’t even know you anymore.” When I didn’t know how to respond, he sighed and started the car. “Is this what you do now? Freelance Tracking?”
I nodded, and the knot of tension inside me eased just a little. Work questions, I could handle. “I was on Adam Rawlinson’s team for three years. They taught me to shoot and fight—Rawlinson himself trained me on the nine mil—and I quit last year and went into business for myself.”
Cam stopped at the parking-lot exit, the car’s V8 rumbling all the way into my bones. “Which way?”
I set the sock on my lap and opened the bag, then ran my fingers over the damp, sticky material and closed my eyes. “West.” Shit. Tower’s side of town. Not a promising start to the afternoon.
“What happened with Rawlinson?” Cam asked, turning left onto the street. “You didn’t like the company?”
“No, it was nice.” Good money, decent benefits and an upstanding boss. Rawlinson had a sterling reputation and got the bulk of the business from anyone who didn’t want to get tangled up with either Tower or Cavazos. Including a lot of unofficial police “consultations.”
“So why’d you quit? You obviously took a cut in Pay….”
I laughed, and it almost felt good. “Is that a dig at my liquor cabinet?”
Cam smiled. “That wasn’t liquor, it was swill. And that wasn’t a cabinet, it was a drawer.”
“The money will come, once I get my name out there.” For too many years, I’d been known only as Rawlinson’s top Tracker, “You know, that girl.” I’d almost started answering to the unofficial title.
“So you quit over money?”
“No.” I glanced at him, looking for judgment in his eyes, because there’d been none in his voice. “I wanted to be my own boss.”
The irony of my lie stung. Good thing I wasn’t bound to tell the truth.
I’d quit my job after Cavazos inked his mark on my thigh and ruined my whole life. I did it to keep Rawlinson and the rest of his employees safe. He would have fired me anyway if he’d found out. No syndicate-bound employees—that was both company policy and common sense. Never hire someone whose loyalty belongs to someone else. Especially someone with the power not only to kill you, but to make the world forget you ever existed. And that was only one of the reasons I had to keep my binding secret.
“Well, then, I guess you got what you wanted.”
Hardly. I stared at my lap. I hadn’t gotten a damn thing I’d wanted since that night six years ago.
When the road curved to the right, I looked up. The blood wanted us to go straight. “Take the next left and veer toward the market district,” I said, staring out the window to avoid looking at him. Being with Cam was harder than I’d thought it would be. Some things hadn’t changed—he still smelled like good coffee and cheap shampoo—and some things were totally different. Like that dark, scruffy stubble, as if he hadn’t gotten a chance to shave. And maybe he hadn’t. The stubble made him look older, and at first that had bothered me, because it reminded me how much had changed since we’d been together. But now that stubble was kind of growing on me.
Wonder what it feels like …
I’d actually pulled my hand from the plastic bag before I realized what I was doing, and when he glanced at my bloody fingers, I felt myself flush.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did you lose the pull?”
“No.” I shoved my hand back into the bag and ran my fingers over the stiffening material, staring straight out the windshield. He couldn’t guess at my thoughts if he couldn’t see my face. “Just keep heading west.” Deeper and deeper into Jake Tower’s side of town.
“So … how long have you been bound?” Cam asked, when I motioned for him to take the next left.
My heart jumped so high I could practically taste it on the back of my tongue. “I told you, Cavazos doesn’t—”
“I meant Anne. How long have you and Anne been bound to the others?”
Oh. Yeah.
I tried to relax, but that was hard to do, considering I was clutching the bloody evidence from a murder scene, riding into the territory of a man who’d kill me as soon as look at me and sitting next to the man I’d thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. “Fifteen years. Since I was twelve.”
Cam whistled, as if he was impressed. Or horrified. “So, the whole time we were together, you were bound to your three best friends?”
“And vice versa.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“After high school, it didn’t seem to matter. We hardly saw one another.”
“Anne said it was an accident …?” he prompted, and I wondered how much else she’d told him.
“Yeah. We didn’t know what we were doing. Some guy at school made Anne cry, so Kori made him cry. Then we went back to Kori’s house to comfort Anne with junk food, and we wound up swearing lifelong loyalty and assistance instead.”
“How do you accidently sign and seal a lifelong binding?”
“We didn’t know it was a binding.” I twisted to half face him, and only then realized how comfortable that felt. How easy talking to him had become—again—as if we could just pick up right where we’d left off.
But we couldn’t. Ever. And forgetting that would get one of us killed.
“It was different then, you know?” I made myself stare out the window to avoid looking at him. “The revelation was still recent, and our parents hadn’t told us we were Skilled. They were afraid that if we knew, we’d be in danger. Turns out ignorance is more dangerous than the truth.”
“It usually is,” Cam said, and suddenly my throat felt thick. He was talking about his own ignorance, about all the things I still couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell him.
“We were just being kids. Best friends standing around the kitchen, making promises we probably never would have kept, just to make Anne smile. But then Kori’s little sister, Kenley, came in and overheard us, and she wanted to help. She said it wouldn’t be official unless we wrote it down.”
Cam’s brows rose halfway up his forehead, and he looked away from the road long enough to make me nervous. “Kenley Daniels was your Binder? Sixteen years ago?”
I nodded. “If we’d known that ran in her family—turns out her mother’s a Binder, too—we probably would have realized what she was doing, even if she
didn’t.”
“Displaying the first instinctive manifestation of a very serious Skill?”
I couldn’t resist a smile. “Good guess.”
“How old was she?”
“Ten.”
“Damn. It doesn’t usually show up so early.”
“I know.” I’d met more than my share of Binders since that day fifteen years ago, and not one of them had displayed a stronger Skill or instinct than Kenley Daniels had at ten years old. Without even knowing what she was.
“So … she what? Scribbled a promise in crayon and told you to sign it?”
I laughed again, but more out of nerves than amusement. He wasn’t far off. “It was pink glitter pen, actually. And after we signed, she said it still didn’t feel right. She said it wouldn’t be ‘real’ unless we used blood.”
The four of us had been losing interest by then, but Kori had perked up when she realized that meant she’d get to use her knife. And I have to admit, I was curious—perhaps the beginnings of my own talent with blood.
“Oh, shit!” Cam glanced at me again, then back at the road. “Kenley’s a blood Binder? I thought she worked with signatures….”
“Actually, it turns out she’s a double threat.” Blood binding was a much rarer Skill than name binding—binding a written oath with a signature—and those who could do both were rarer still. And someone with the power to do both at such a young age was almost unheard of.
“So, I’m guessing that contract is ironclad …?” Cam said, flicking on his turn signal when I pointed toward a side street ahead.
“Yeah. And what’s worse is that she had plenty of Skill, but no training. It was really more an oath than a contract. Just a promise that we would help one another whenever asked. There was no expiration date, no stipulations and no exceptions. There weren’t even enough words to form a decent loophole.”
“Why didn’t you just burn it?”
Burning it to ashes was the only surefire way to destroy a blood-sealed contract, which is why certain notorious crime lords had started sealing their employee bindings in the flesh—literally—with tattoo marks as a fail-safe in case the corresponding written contract was destroyed. Fortunately, Kenley hadn’t foreseen that advancement. I wasn’t even sure she was capable of flesh binding, not that any of us knew what that was fifteen years ago. Her first sealed contract could easily be destroyed—if it could be found.
“By the time we realized what we’d done—the first time Kori’s grandmother had to pick her up from the police station—the oath was gone. We looked everywhere. Our parents got together and tore the Danielses’ house apart, and when it wasn’t there, they searched their own houses. But we never found so much as a scrap of powder-blue paper or pink glitter pen.”
“You think someone took it?” he asked, and I could only shrug.
“It didn’t walk off on its own. But I have no clue who could have taken it. Or why. Until Kori got arrested, only the four of us knew about it—Kori, Anne, Noelle and me. And Kenley, of course. And we all wanted it destroyed.” Badly, by the time we got to high school. “We explored different theories over the years. A parent trying to teach us a lesson. Kori’s brother, Kristopher, being a pain in the ass. Their dog burying a new prize. But no one ever admitted anything, and Anne didn’t know she was a Reader yet, so it never occurred to her to look for a lie. And every time we tested it, the binding was still intact, which meant that the oath was still whole, wherever it was. And obviously it still is now,” I said, gesturing to the entire car to indicate our current vigilante mission.
“That sounds like a total pain in the ass.”
“Worse. We started hating each other. Even the most offhand, ridiculous request became a geas—a compulsion that had to be obeyed, to the exclusion of everything else. We wound up cheating, and lying, and stealing, and starting fights for one another. We got hurt, and arrested, and kicked out of school. And the cycle was self-perpetuating. Anne would get pissed at Kori for making her help cheat on a test, so she’d ask Kori to go to the drugstore and shoplift only hemorrhoid cream and Vagisil, knowing that when she got caught, she’d be humiliated.”
Cam laughed. “When I met them, the four of you seemed to get along pretty well.”
“Part of that was the fact that we rarely saw one another after high school. The rest of it was the second oath.”
“There was a second oath?”
“Yeah. My senior year, Kenley got tired of all the bitching and backstabbing. And I think she felt guilty, because she was the reason for the trouble in the first place. So she conned us all into the same room long enough to show us a new oath she’d penned, which basically made us swear never to ask one another for anything.”
“So, did you sign?”
“Hell yes! We fought over who got to sign first. After that, everything was fine. We weren’t best friends anymore, but we didn’t hate each other, either. We just kind of … left each other alone. That New Year’s Eve party six years ago? That was the first time we’d spent more than an hour together since high-school graduation. It was also the last time I saw any of them. Until this morning.”
“Because Anne burned the second contract?” I scowled. “You were eavesdropping?” He shrugged. “I could only hear bits of it from the hallway.”
After a moment of hesitation and concentration, I motioned him through the next red light, but I could tell his thoughts were no longer on the drive. “So, why did you guys let Anne keep the second oath?”
“We didn’t,” I said. “It didn’t seem fair for any one of us to have it, so we let Kenley keep it. She was the only neutral party, and she was the one who sealed it.”
“Well, Anne must have gotten ahold of it somehow, if she burned it.”
My hand clenched around the bloody material. I hadn’t thought of that. “And she must have gotten to it quickly….” I mumbled, mentally counting the few hours between Shen’s murder and the moment Anne showed up in my office. And she’d found Cam even before that. “Maybe she’s still in contact with Kenley….” I began, then realized that we’d rolled to a halt three cars back from a four-way stop.
“Which way?” Cam asked, and I forced my mind back to the energy signature I was tracking.
I closed my eyes and placed my hand flat over the tacky sock, inside the bag. The pull was still there, but fading as the blood dried. “Straight,” I murmured. “But slightly to the right …”
“There’s no slightly to it,” he said, and I opened my eyes as we rolled through the intersection to find the street sandwiched by tightly packed rows of buildings—mostly neighborhood businesses and apartments.
“Slow down.” I closed my eyes again and let the blood guide me. The pull was getting stronger, but not definitively so. “Stop,” I said at last, when the blood began to pull me from behind. “We passed it.”
He backed into the first available parking spot on the curb and turned off the engine. “Up there, maybe?” he said, twisting to peer through the rear windshield at the building on the right. “In one of the apartments?”
“That’s my guess.” I pulled a packet of wet wipes from my satchel and started cleaning blood from my hand. Again. The wipes wouldn’t work as well as lye, but they were portable and didn’t make me want to peel my own skin off to stop the burning.
Cam glanced at the slight gun bulge beneath my jacket as I stuffed the used wipe into a plastic sandwich bag in the side pocket of my satchel. “Are you really going to do this?”
“I don’t have any choice. Or did you forget what compelled means?”
“I haven’t forgotten anything, Liv,” he said, and I realized we were having two different conversations. “Do you have a silencer for that thing?”
“No, I don’t have a silencer. Because I’m not an assassin.” I dug through my satchel for a thin box of surgical gloves and plucked two from the slit on top, then shoved them into my right jacket pocket.
“Well, that’s too bad, because this is an assassination.”
“No, this is an execution.”
“The difference would be …?”
“Assassination is murder. Execution is justice.” I pulled a small, folding blade from my back pocket and flicked it open, then folded it closed again, satisfied that it was still in working order.
“So now you’re an executioner?”
“No, I …” Too late, I caught the hint of a grin and realized he was teasing me. I scowled. “Are we going to sit here and argue until he comes out and begs to be shot, or you wanna go in?”
“Honestly, arguing sounds like more fun. And on that note … you sure have a lot of weapons for not-an-assassin.”
I shoved the knife back into my pocket and met his gaze, the butt of my gun digging into my side. “Do I look dead to you?”
His grin grew. “You look all pissed off. It’s kind of hot.”
It took serious effort for me to stay focused when I realized he wasn’t joking. “I don’t know about your line of work—” I wasn’t even sure what he did for a living, come to think of it “—but most of the people I track don’t want to be found, and people who don’t want to be found are usually armed. And dangerous. And on hair triggers. So yeah, I’m armed. Because I don’t want to die.”
“If you’re the muscle, that must make me the brains of the operation.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re the chauffeur. Here’s the plan—find him, kill him.”
Cam laughed out loud, and my teeth ground together. “That’s not a plan. It’s not even a complete sentence.”
“You got something better?”
“How ‘bout this?” He pulled back the right side of his jacket and showed me his gun. It was bigger than mine. And it was fitted with a long, barrel-shaped silencer in what had to be a custom-made holster.
“Nice,” I admitted, and his grin was back. But I couldn’t help wondering why the hell he even owned a silencer.
“I had a feeling you’d appreciate the reminder that I come well equipped.”
“I’d appreciate it more if I thought you knew how to use that,” I said, without thinking. His eyes lit up, and that’s when I realized I was flirting. We’d fallen back into that old familiar pattern as if the past six years had never happened.
“What, you don’t remember?” he teased, while I silently cursed myself.
“This isn’t going to happen, Cam.”
His good humor faltered, then resurged. “The execution?” He was as stubborn as ever.
“No, that’s going to happen. Then you go back to your life and I go back to mine.”
His grin vanished. “What life?” Cam demanded softly, his gaze holding mine like the earth holds the moon captive. “What could you possibly have now that’s better than what you left behind?”
Nothing. I had nothing now but the knowledge that I’d made a tough choice for us both, because I couldn’t live with the alternative. And neither could he. But that knowledge did little to ease the hollow ache in my chest or warm the empty half of my bed, and admitting regret now would only make the whole thing worse. So I closed my mouth, opened the car door and got out without a word.
Turning away from him this time hurt no less than it had the time before.
Six
Liv opened the passenger’s side door and stepped onto the sidewalk without acknowledging my question. She might think she could sweep me under the carpet again when this job was over, but she was wrong. I’d given her time. I’d given her space. I’d given her every opportunity in the world to find someone else and start a family, or at least start a life that included more than just the job she obviously lived and breathed. The closest she’d ever come was moving in with some asshole who cheated on her—I’d tracked him, even if she hadn’t thought to—then stolen her car.
I could see the truth as well as any Reader could have. If she really didn’t want me, she would have gotten serious with someone else. She wouldn’t grimace every time she told me to go away, as if the words tasted bad. She wouldn’t still look at me like she used to, when she thought I wasn’t watching.
Olivia still wanted me, just as much as I wanted her, but something was holding her back. Something she couldn’t move past. I could take care of that obstacle for her—I’d tear down anything standing between us—but I couldn’t destroy what I couldn’t even see. She’d have to show me the problem. I’d have to make her show me the problem.
Bolstered by fresh determination, I fell in at her side, and we headed for the entrance without even a glance around the neighborhood.
Rule #1 in tracking: don’t look like a Tracker.
It’s always best to go unnoticed. Even near my own neighborhood.
Especially with Liv at my side.
Even if she wasn’t marked or bound, word on the street was hard to overcome, and most people thought she was sleeping with Cavazos at the very least, which meant that Tower’s men would see her either as a trespasser to be booted from this side of town, or a prize to be offered up to the boss.
No easy outs, either way.
I jogged up the front steps and she followed me into a tiny, dusty entryway leading into a long hallway lined with doors and apartment numbers. “Well?” I said, relieved to have her off the street and out of sight.
Liv reached into her pocket to feel the bloody sock again. Then she nodded toward the staircase, and I followed her up the first flight of stairs. On the second-floor landing, she reassessed, then started down the hallway, eyes half-closed, obviously letting the energy signature pull her.
She had told me once that the blood pull was really more of a feeling than a scent, and though I had little blood-tracking skill myself, I knew she was right. But as she worked her way down the hall, she sniffed the air softly, like a real bloodhound, though she didn’t even seem to know she was doing it.
About halfway down, she stopped and turned to me. “It starts to fade here….” She stepped back toward me, then stopped, closed her eyes and nodded, as if she was sure of something. “And it’s strongest here.” She stood directly between two apartment doors. “Is that 208 or 210?”
I glanced at the end of the hall, toward the first door, then followed the pattern to where we stood. “Two-ten,” I whispered, and reached for the doorknob. But then her hand landed on my arm, warm against my bare skin.
“Let me,” she insisted. “Men are still less threatened by women than by other men. I’ll have a better shot of getting in there without causing a scene.”
I nodded and stepped back from the door, not because I agreed with her—I didn’t—but because I could still feel her hand on my arm, and the surprise of being touched by her again had yet to fade.
She may not have looked scary, with her big blue eyes and jacket that hid her gun but not her curves, but Liv could track better than any man I’d ever met, and if word on the street could be believed, Rawlinson had turned her into a damn fine fighter. Over the past six years, living and working in this city had turned the funny, charismatic girl I’d loved with every cell of my body into a jaded, hard-edged loner I still couldn’t look at without catching my breath.
I’d never felt more alive, watching Liv prepare to charm—or maybe force—her way into some stranger’s apartment. Olivia was a wire wound too tight, always about to snap, but she lived on excitement and thrived under pressure. Being with her was like holding a bomb in both hands, watching the numbers tick back toward zero. I knew she’d eventually explode, and this time it might kill me.
But it was hard to care about the potential for collateral damage when just being near her again felt so good. So I pressed my back against the wall to the right of the door, gun drawn and ready in a two-handed grip. Liv’s gun was still concealed, but I had no doubt she could get to it in a hurry. She knocked on the door, but no one answered. There was no sound from inside.
Liv knocked again, but again got no response. “The pull’s still strong, which means he’s home but not answering. Or, he’s lying unconscious and near death from whatever wound Shen managed to inflict before dying.” She glanced up at me, brows raised in question. “Plan B?” she whispered, and I nodded.
B always stood for breaking and entering.
She stepped aside and pulled her gun while I holstered mine. I took the doorknob in both hands and twisted sharply. The lock broke with a metallic snap that seemed to echo much louder than it should have. But the door didn’t swing open.
“Dead bolt,” I said.
“Is that a problem?”
I gave her a disappointed look. “It’s like you don’t know me at all…. Step back.”
She stepped away from the door hesitantly as I dropped into a deep squat to stretch—which is when she figured out what I had in mind. “Wait, don’t …!” she whispered, but I was already in motion. My foot slammed into the door just beneath the knob and wood creaked loudly. Liv cringed over the noise, then shrugged. “May as well finish it now….”
I kicked again, and the interior frame gave way with the loud splinter of wood. Maybe not the most subtle entry, but definitely the fastest.
The door swung open, and I lurched to the right, watching her from across the doorway with my gun already drawn. For one long second, neither of us moved.
I couldn’t break Cam’s gaze, and my own breathing was heavy in anticipation. We shared that single, taut moment of expectancy until we realized that if the target was in there, he wasn’t coming out.
Finally, I nodded at the ruined door, reluctantly impressed by the damage, and lifted both brows in question. Cam gestured for me to go first. Which I liked.
I rounded the door frame and into the living room, gun aimed at the floor, scanning the room with my gaze and the entire apartment with whatever sense it is that feels the pull of blood. That pull was still there, but not as strong as it should have been. Not as strong as it would have been if the target were in the apartment, even if he wasn’t bleeding.
Cam came in behind me and pushed the front door closed, but it swung open a couple of inches again, because of the busted lock. I heard him checking behind doors and under furniture while I opened all the kitchen cabinets big enough for a man to crawl into.
“I think it’s clear,” I said, flicking the safety on my 9mm. But I kept the gun out, just in case. “Damned if I understand it, though.”
“Maybe he just left.” Cam kicked open the bedroom door and glanced beneath the bed, then in the closet, checking both potential hiding places gun first. “He is a Traveler, right? So he probably just stepped into a shadow and out of the apartment the minute he heard us.”
Which was why tracking a Traveler could be a real bitch. The only way to catch one was to trap him in a room with no shadows big enough for him to walk through. And that’s a lot harder than it sounds. Kori was a shadow-walker, and her grandmother had given up on grounding her when she was fourteen.
But.
“That shouldn’t matter,” I said. “So long as he’s alive, his energy signature should lead to him, not to his apartment.” Which Cam would know if he were a bloodhound—name-tracking works a little differently, and Cam was no better with blood than I was with names. “But the pull still feels like it’s coming from …
here.”
“Here … where?”
I closed my eyes and clutched the sock in my pocket again, through the plastic bag. The energy signature was fainter now, as the sock continued to dry, but I could still feel it. Eyes still closed, I turned until I faced the direction of the pull, and when I opened my eyes, I found myself staring at the open bathroom door.
“There.”
Cam crossed the room in a heartbeat. He pushed the door open all the way with one hand, then scanned the interior with his gun aimed and ready. He’d had training. The same kind of training I’d had. And he was good.
For a moment, I wondered if he was a cop. Was that why Anne had wanted us to work together? Was Cam actually using his criminal-justice degree, while I’d let my B.A. in philosophy rot in a drawer?
And if not, how was he making a living?
A second later, he took two steps into the bathroom and pulled the shower curtain back in one swift movement. It rattled on the rod, but revealed an empty—if filthy—tub. There was barely space for two people in the room, but I squeezed in with him anyway, already half suspecting what I’d find.
Sure enough.
I dropped the toilet lid—the bowl was no cleaner than the tub—and sat, then pulled the wastebasket in front of me, between my boots. Inside was a pile of blood-soaked rags, tissues and bandages.
“Shen must have got him good.” Cam sank onto the edge of the tub.
“I guess. But why would he leave them here?” Every Skilled person I knew carried a bottle of ammonia—or at least bleach—in their car, and most of us had an entire collection of chemicals that would destroy blood in our homes.
Leaving blood around like this was beyond careless. If found by people with the right Skills—or people who had access to people with the right Skills—fresh blood samples could be used to track the donor, or bind him to … well, anything. At least for a while. Blood not freely given wouldn’t bind someone forever, unless the Binder was extraordinarily gifted. But it would work long enough to compel the donor to turn himself in, or keep him from going to the authorities, or whatever the Binder wrote into a contract and sealed with the stolen blood.
This wasn’t the kind of mistake anyone with Skill would make. In fact, fewer and fewer of the un Skilled were leaving viable blood samples undestroyed, as the truth of our existence persevered despite the lack of official recognition from the government. Any government.
“Something’s wrong here, Cam.” I glanced around the bathroom for something to prod the trash with, and didn’t find so much as a plunger. So I donned the latex gloves from my pocket and used them to lift bandage after bloody bandage from the trash can. They were all the same.
“Fresh …” I said, laying the first piece over the edge of the tub next to Cam. He stood to make more room. “He’s only been gone an hour. Maybe less. And you’re right, he’s hurt pretty badly.” Based on the amount of blood alone. “But why would I be drawn here, instead of drawn to him? Whoever he is?”
“Maybe he’s dead,” Cam suggested, leaning over the sink to pull open the medicine cabinet.
“If he were dead, his blood would have no pull. He’s still alive, somewhere, and leaving his own viable blood around like he wants to be found, whoever he is.”
“Eric Hunter.” Cam held a prescription pill bottle down for me to see. “Three of them, and they’re all prescribed to the same man, at this address. Antibiotics, antidepressants and anti-inflammatories.” He set the bottle back on its shelf and closed the cabinet. “Mr. Hunter, you were obviously depressed, inflamed and … biotic. But why did you kill Shen Liang?”
“My guess is that he was hired. But who would hire someone to kill a work-at-home husband and father?”
“Maybe something to do with his work?” Cam suggested. “Did Anne mention what kind of software he designs?”
I shook my head. We were no closer to the why, but the how was obvious. The killer was a Traveler—a shadow-walker, capable of stepping into one shadow and out of another one, anywhere in the world, if he were powerful enough. Certainly anywhere in the city, based on the strength of the blood sample Anne had brought.
“And why did he leave his blood …?” I thought aloud, staring at the mess he’d left. And that’s when I realized why the whole thing felt so weird, beyond the presence of so much viable blood. “It’s fading.”
“What’s fading?” Cam asked. “Is it drying already?”
“Not the blood, the power. The Skill.” I stood, stunned by what shouldn’t have been possible, but was quite obviously happening anyway. “Feel this.” I thrust a blood-soaked dish rag at Cam and he took it reluctantly in his bare hands. “Do you feel it?”
He shook his head slowly, and his blue eyes widened. “I’m not as good with blood as you are, but I should be able to feel something. If he’s Skilled.”
“Exactly.” I pulled off my gloves and laid them over the edge of the tub. “I can still feel it, but it’s nowhere near as strong as it was. As it still is, in this sample.” I pulled the bagged sock from my pocket. “But it’s definitely the same blood. Which means that somehow, his Skill was stronger when he bled on the sock than when he bandaged the wound here at home, about seventeen hours later.”
Cam ran water over his hand to rinse away the blood. “How is that possible? How can Skill fade?”
“I don’t know.” And I still couldn’t figure out why I’d be pulled to a trash can full of bloody rags, rather than to the man who’d left with even more of it in his veins.
The squeal of hinges froze us both, and Cam laid one finger over his lips, warning me to be quiet. As if I didn’t already know.
“Who’s in there?” a male voice called, and I shoved the sealed sock back into my pocket with one hand while I drew my gun with the other.
Hunter? I mouthed to Cam, but he shook his head, and I read recognition on his face.
“Nick, is that you?”
“Who’s that?” the voice from the living room called. “Cam Cabellero. We’re coming out.”
“Who’s we?”
Cam motioned for me to put my gun up and follow him out of the bathroom. I holstered my pistol, but left my jacket open so I could get to it in a hurry.
Nick turned out to be in his early twenties and unSkilled, with a thick build, dark hair and a black Glock 9mm, which he was shoving barrel first into the waist of his pants when I stepped into the living room. His eyes widened when he saw me, but in surprise, not recognition. So far, so good.
“Lady next door said someone kicked in the door to 210. I’m guessing that was you and …” He glanced at me expectantly, waiting for me to fill in my name.
“Liv Warren,” Cam said reluctantly, when I remained silent. I could have punched him. Why the hell had he given out my real name?
“Liv …?” Sudden comprehension wrinkled Nick’s forehead and when he crossed his arms over his chest, one of the short sleeves of his dark T-shirt rode up, revealing a single thick, rust-colored link of chain tattooed on his upper arm. He was one of Tower’s grunts—no surprise, considering the neighborhood. Like most of Tower’s men—and more than a few women—he’d probably grown up on the west side and discovered after high school that his employment options consisted mostly of greasy fast-food service and manual labor.
Like the typical syndicate employee, Nick had likely signed on for a five-year term of service with the potential for renewal and advancement if he proved useful. But even if he opted not to re-up at the end of his service commitment, he would never be able to work for another syndicate or work against Tower, thanks to the lifelong loyalty and noncompetition clauses he would have been required to sign and seal with his own blood.
“Aren’t you on the wrong side of town?” Nick demanded, staring down at me as if I was worth less than the crud stuck to the bottom of his shoe.
Nick’s single mark said he was in his first term of service; the cocky grin said he’d been in just long enough to think he was badass. I was itching to prove him wrong—to take out some of my unspent anger at Cavazos on this little prick’s face—but I knew better than to start shit with one of Tower’s men in his own neighborhood. I’d be outnumbered before I could throw my second punch.
“She’s an independent,” Cam said, meaning that I wasn’t bound to any syndicate. Which was mostly true—I worked for Cavazos alone and owed no loyalty or obedience to any of his syndicate members. “She’s working freelance and I’m helping her out.”
“She got a badge?”
“I’m not a cop.” Why wasn’t he browbeating Cam? And how did Cam happen to know one of Tower’s grunts?
“Then I gotta check her for marks.”
I drew my gun and flicked the safety off with my thumb. “You’re welcome to try.”
“No, he isn’t.” Cam met my gaze with a heavy one of his own. “You’re going to put the gun away.” Then he turned back to Nick. “And you’re going to back the hell off. I already told you she’s an independent.”
Independents were a dying breed in the city, even before I’d defected from their ranks.
“She broke into an apartment, she’s armed and I have it on good authority that she’s bound to Ruben Cavazos. I gotta check her for marks, Caballero. You don’t like it, you take that up with Adler. It’s over my head.”
Cam’s jaw clenched. “My word’s not good enough?”
Nick shook his head. “Not this time.” He turned to me. “Take off your jacket.”
My temper flared. “Go to hell.”
“Liv, just show him your arm,” Cam said. “You’re not marked. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that I don’t owe him anything.” And I was tired of being forced to strip.
“Fine. Then do it for me.” Cam frowned, but the lines around his mouth were fear for me, not anger. Something was wrong—beyond the obvious. “You owe me, Liv.”
He was wrong about that. I’d already made up for what I’d done to him, several times over, but I couldn’t tell him that.
The real question was why he wanted me to cooperate with this arrogant little grunt in the first place.
And that’s when I finally understood. “Push your sleeve up.”
Cam exhaled slowly, but didn’t even try to deny what I’d just figured out. He uncrossed his arms and pushed his left sleeve up with his right hand. And there it was. Not one, but three thick, iron-colored links of chain circling a quarter of his upper arm.
“You son of a bitch….” I whispered through clenched teeth. Cam was well entrenched in Jake Tower’s infrastructure. Halfway up the ranks. No wonder he’d been worried about my rumored affiliation with Cavazos. We couldn’t work together. We couldn’t even safely be seen together by anyone who knew about our respective bindings.
And that little bit of understanding brought Cam’s current predicament into clear focus. He’d brought me—a potential enemy—into his neighborhood and if I refused to prove I had no opposing affiliation, he would be held responsible.
My heart pounding, I holstered my gun and slid my jacket off my shoulders, then let Cam pull my shirt sleeve up to show off the unmarked flesh of my upper left arm.
“See?” he said, as I shrugged the jacket back into place. “No binding.”
“That’s not the only place she could be marked.” Nick’s gaze wandered down from my arm before finding my eyes again, his own gleaming in anticipation. “Where does Cavazos mark his whores?”
I stiffened, but Cam didn’t hesitate. His fist flew, and a second later, Nick was on the floor, bleeding from either his nose or his mouth—I couldn’t tell which, with all the blood.
Out of habit, I pulled the bottle of ammonia from my pocket, but Cam shook his head. “Save it.” He plucked a tissue from a box on the coffee table, then knelt next to Nick and wiped the blood from his fist while the grunt pinched his nose, trying to staunch the flow. “You checked. She’s unmarked. Your job here is done.” He folded the tissue into quarters and held it up for Nick to see. “You ever disrespect her again, and I’ll consider it a personal insult.” Cam tucked the tissue into his front pocket. “And I’ll send this to Ruben Cavazos myself, along with your name and a suggestion of how best to use them both to make your life a living hell. Got it?”
Nick swiped blood from his face with the tail of his shirt—an idiotic move, unless he was planning to burn it later. “Sorry, Cam. I just … That’s what I heard….”
“What did you hear?” I demanded, snapping the cap back onto my spray bottle.
Nick hesitated, glancing at me for a second before refocusing on Cam. “I’m not saying it’s true, but word on the street is that she’s doing Cavazos. And reporting to him. Tower put her on the watch list.”
“Based on a stupid rumor?” Cam demanded.
The grunt shrugged. “He don’t answer to me. All I know is we got orders to check for a mark if she comes west of the river.”
“Since when?”
Another shrug. “Couple hours ago? Maybe less. You didn’t get the message?”
Son of a bitch. I’d left Cavazos a couple of hours ago. It had to be one of his men.
Cam’s frown deepened. “I haven’t checked my phone.” He stood and shrugged to me. “Doesn’t matter, though. You’re not marked.”
But it wasn’t that simple. Eventually someone who outranked Cam would demand a more thorough search, and then I’d be screwed. We both would.
“We’re done here, right?” I asked, already headed back to the bathroom.
“Yeah.” Cam pulled the grunt to his feet while I squatted in front of the bathroom sink to check for cleaning supplies. Nothing but an extra roll of toilet paper and a half-empty quart of bleach. But that was good enough.
“What should I report?” Nick asked, still sniffling blood while I stuffed one of Hunter’s soiled rags into an extra quart bag from my pocket, then dropped the rest of them in the wastebasket.
“The truth,” Cam said. “She’s here on a freelance job, for a private party, and I’m assisting. You checked her, she’s unmarked, and I’m personally vouching for her. If they want to know any more than that, they’ve got my number.”
He was vouching for me. Shit. I couldn’t let him do that—it could get him killed, if something went wrong—but I couldn’t make him take the words back without telling him I was bound to Cavazos. And if I admitted that now, Nick would try to haul me in front of Tower, and Cam would try to stop him, and that would lead to more violence and spilled blood, and then we’d both be on the run from the entire Tower syndicate. Which would make it really hard to search for a murderer who lived west of the river.
That slope was slippery, but unavoidable.
Trying to swallow the bitter lump in my throat, I opened the bottle of bleach and poured it into the trash can at arm’s length, to keep from splashing my clothes. Then I used the bottle itself to press the whole bloody mess down into the liquid that had pooled at the bottom.
Bleach doesn’t erase all evidence of blood, as any crime-scene technician will tell you. But it does destroy the energy signature that pulls a Tracker to it.
I wasn’t worried about anyone else looking for Shen’s killer—the human police couldn’t track like a bloodhound, and Anne wouldn’t hire anyone else, with me and Cam already on the case. But if Cam’s superiors found out about my mark from Cavazos, it wouldn’t be hard for them to deduce that we were tracking Eric Hunter, and they could use his blood to follow our trail.
Thanks to the bleach, though, all they’d have to go on was his name, which cut their chances of tracking him in half. At least.
When I left the bathroom, Nick was gone, and Cam was in the kitchen, labeling the thug’s blood sample with a black Sharpie. When he was done, he handed it to me, and I dated Hunter’s bloody bandage, then labeled it with his first name and last initial only, for security. It’s much harder to find someone—through either traditional or Skilled searching methods—without a last name.
“We need to talk,” I said, while he blew on the print to dry it.
“Agreed. We also need to get something to eat and find Eric Hunter. Let’s wrap things up here.” He shoved the sealed tissue back into his pocket, then brushed past me on his way to the bedroom. “You look for a filing cabinet, I’ll check his computer.”
“What are we looking for?” I already had a more recent—if weaker—blood sample.
“His full name. Or as much of it as we can find.” Because the Skilled rarely used either of their middle names on official documents. But then again, they also rarely left a pile of bloody rags lying around for someone to find. “Look for documentation. A traffic ticket, an insurance card, an old college ID or even a magazine subscription. It’s a long shot, but I’ve gotten lucky like that before.”
Eric Hunter had no filing cabinet, and I couldn’t decide whether that meant he was smart enough to store all his dangerous personal information under lock and key elsewhere, or stupid enough not to keep track of it at all. But based on the shoebox full of unfiled receipts under his bed—an organizational method I was well acquainted with, personally—I was betting on the latter.
His kitchen trash—so glad I brought a pair of gloves—held an unopened bank statement, a two-week-old copy of Car and Driver addressed to Eric R. Hunter, several pieces of junk mail addressed to Resident and … a hospital bill, wadded into a tight, angry ball of crumpled paper.
Hmm … Yet another piece of Eric Hunter’s life that didn’t fit the profile.
Still wearing my gloves, I took the bank statement into the bedroom, where Cam sat at Hunter’s desk, clicking away at his laptop. “What’cha got?” he asked, without looking up.
“Couple of interesting things …” Unwilling to sit on the bed, I leaned against the door facing and unfolded the statement. “One of Eric Hunter’s middle initials is evidently R. And until last week, his personal financial crisis made the national debt look like small potatoes.” Four bounced checks all with twenty-five-dollar fees attached.
Cam finally looked up. “What happened last week?”
“He received a fifty-thousand-dollar wire transfer. I’m assuming that’s the up-front portion of the hit on Shen.”
“That must have turned his frown upside down. Where’d it come from?” Cam was already typing again, but the frustrated lines in his forehead said he wasn’t having much luck.
I shrugged. “There’s just an account number. Can you trace that?”
“Not without a crash course in criminal hacking and a few decades to practice. I might know someone,
Though….”
“One of your friendly neighborhood gangsters?” I asked, not quite surprised by the accusatory tone of my own voice, and Cam looked up at me again, his expression cautious, and difficult to read.
“I never said I wasn’t bound.”
“You never said you were, either.” I folded Hunter’s bank statement and stuffed it back into the envelope. “You made me show you my arm, but you never bothered to mention that you’re three chain links up Jake Tower’s ass.”
“We don’t have time for this right now.” He turned back to the screen, shoulders tense, forehead drawn low. “Did you find anything else?”
I had to clench my teeth to keep from yelling at him, and I only bothered because he was right—the longer we spent in Hunter’s apartment, the better the chance that Nick’s report would send one of his superiors our way.
“Just this.” I held up the bill, still wrinkled in spite of my best attempt to flatten it. “Hunter went to the E.R. for a broken arm four months ago and still hasn’t paid his bill.”
Cam frowned. “Why would he go to the E.R.?”
“Exactly.” Skilled people almost never go to the hospital, because of the compulsive blood-drawing policies and the staff’s utter refusal to let you incinerate your own biological waste onsite. Evidently setting fire to a medical wastebucket is a strict no-no.
Instead, we had our own doctors—certain legitimate private practices with access to all the same equipment as a public hospital, but run by people in the know. People who routinely gather everything you might possibly have bled on into one plastic bag and won’t look at you strangely if you take that bag home to burn in the privacy of your own apartment.
For the convenience of certain criminal elements, there were even private practices that were willing to overlook the legal requirement that they report gunshot wounds and other brow-raising injuries—for the right price. Or to comply with the binding that had provided the funding to open that specific practice in the first place. Syndicate-sponsored clinics were all the rage.
“Something isn’t right with this guy,” I said, and Cam nodded.
“You found more than I did. He pays most of his bills online, but if he keeps a list of passwords, it’s either encrypted or saved under a name no one else would recognize. His emails are banal—no smoking gun there, which means we still have no idea who hired him, or why.”
“But we do have his first and last name, and one middle initial,” I pointed out. “You can work with that,
right?”
“Assuming the name’s real and he’s still anywhere near the city, yeah.”
“Good, let’s get out of here before we run into any more of your fellow hired thugs.” I hated the thought of Cam working for Tower. I wanted to go on thinking that the dirt of the city hadn’t touched him. That his hands were still clean. I’d come to the city to protect us from each other, and instead, here we stood, side by side in the muck.
Cam closed Hunter’s laptop and frowned at me. “They’re not all like Nick, you know. There are some decent men and women working for Tower. Sometimes good people get caught up in bad things, Olivia.”
“I know.” Better than most. “But I also know that the closer you stand to the monsters, the more human they start to look.”
And perspective was something I could not afford to lose.
Seven
“His apartment was empty, but there was blood in the bathroom. His, not Shen’s,” Liv said into her phone, one boot propped on my dashboard. “We think he was hired. Someone wired a big chunk of cash to his checking account last week.”
Anne spoke during the pause, but I couldn’t hear much of what she said over the traffic noise as I turned onto Third Street, the main drag and the heart of Tower’s empire.
“Not yet. Cam thinks he knows someone who can trace the account, but for now, we’re still trying to sniff him out the hard way. Any idea why someone might want Shen dead? Something to do with his work, maybe?”
Anne spoke again, and I nodded through the window to one of Tower’s men on the street, his four rust-colored chain lengths showing beneath the rolled-up sleeve of his T-shirt. He nodded back, then glanced at Liv in my passenger’s seat. If he recognized her I saw no sign, but being seen with her was good enough. It was proof that I wasn’t trying to hide anything. And that she wasn’t, either.
“Okay, just let us know if you think of anything,” Liv said, and a second later, she flipped her phone closed.
“How is she?” I asked, cruising slowly down the street toward the next checkpoint four blocks away. Tower’s eyes were everywhere, and hiding from them would look like guilt.
Liv shrugged and brushed long brown hair off her shoulder. “Fine, considering. I think Hadley was in the room though, ‘cause she didn’t say very much. It’s like she doesn’t have the luxury of truly mourning, with the kid around.”
“She sounds like a good mother.” Though it was hard for me to picture Annika as anything other than the twenty-two-year-old small-town free spirit she’d been when I’d met her. Back then, she’d been more committed to vegetarianism than to any man she’d ever met—holding on to a relationship must have been hard for someone who could taste every lie—but I hadn’t seen her since the night Liv dumped me. In the middle of that damned party. It’s amazing how much can change in six years.
And how much stays the same.
“How did she get in touch with you?” Liv asked, sliding her phone into her pocket. “If she couldn’t find me, how did she find you?”
I exhaled slowly. “I still have the same phone number.” Because I wanted it to be easy for Olivia to get in touch with me, should she ever decide to.
Liv suddenly gripped the armrest built into the passenger’s side door, as if she hadn’t even heard me.
“Is this Third Street?”
“Yeah. You still like Greek? There’s this great gyro stand on the corner, about a mile—”
Her gaze hardened. “You’re headed west. Deeper into Tower’s side of town.”
“That’s where the gyro stand is….” I began, but she wasn’t buying it. And she didn’t miss my nod to the next sentinel, on the corner.
“You’re parading me down the fucking gauntlet.”
“I’m taking preemptive measures,” I insisted. “If they think I’m hiding you, they’ll assume you have something to hide, and you’re going to be checked for a mark by every initiate we run into.” And if we ran into anyone with more than three chain links, I wouldn’t be able to prevent a more thorough search, and we both knew Liv wasn’t going to simply submit to one, either. Her trigger finger was looking a little twitchy.
“Which is why we should be heading to the south fork,” she said. Toward the only neutral-controlled part of town. Which was where she both lived and worked, in spite of the higher rent.
“Olivia, Hunter lives on the west side, and so does my computer guru. I don’t think any of the leads are going to pull us toward the south today,” I said, but she looked unconvinced. “What’s the big deal? You’re unbound, and you must’ve done work on this side before.”
“Yeah, back when I worked for Rawlinson, but I haven’t been here since … Since I quit.”
“Well, that’s too bad, ‘cause the gyros are awesome.” I pulled into the last available spot at the curb and shifted into Park. “Let’s just relax and have some lunch while I track Van down.”
“Fine,” she said, one hand on the door handle. “But you owe me some answers, and unless you want to give them here, we need to find someplace more private to eat.”
I couldn’t argue with that, so I texted Van from the line in front of the gyro cart: Got a minute? I need some help.
The response came a minute later, as Liv stepped up to the cart to order: Yr place, 1 hr.
Fifteen minutes later, I parked in a covered space in front of my apartment building and snatched the bulging white paper sack from Liv’s lap. She glanced at me in amusement—a good look for her. “What, you don’t trust me with the food?”
“Sorry. I’m starving.”
She laughed. “I couldn’t tell from the four gyros you ordered.”
“Don’t forget the dolmades.” I swung my car door shut and led Liv toward the exterior staircase. “They’re the best in the city. Trucked in daily from some restaurant on the east side.”
“Yeah. Karagas. The owner’s mother makes them every morning. They’re best fresh.”
I tried on a grin as we walked up the stairs. “What, you won’t set foot on the west side, but you’ll have lunch in Cavazos’s backyard? No wonder people are talking.”
Liv scowled. “People are talking because someone’s started a smear campaign. The rumors are malicious, and evidently aimed at the west side of the city. Someone’s put a target on my head. My guess is Travis Spencer. He’s had it out for me ever since I found the governor’s missing mistress.”
I nearly choked on my own surprise. “That was you?” It hadn’t made the local news, of course. Officially, no one was supposed to know that governor was getting some on the side. But Trackers had been rabid over that job, and I’d never heard who finally found the target.
“Yeah. Paid for two whole months’ worth of office space. But evidently it also earned me some enemies. Stupid rumor-spreading bastards.”
“Relax, Liv. It’s just a bunch of idiots talking, and all you have to do to prove them wrong is wear short sleeves.” I shrugged. “Besides, I’d go to Karagas for lunch every day if I didn’t value my life just a bit higher than good Greek food.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t signed over your free will in exchange for a paycheck, you could enjoy both your life and your lunch wherever the hell you want. Then you could be a part of the solution, rather than the problem. Wasn’t that the plan?”
“Plans change.” I kicked the door closed and dropped my keys on the coffee table, and when I met Liv’s gaze, I was almost bowled over by the pain and power of my own memories. This part of her hadn’t changed—this fiery temper threaded with innate goodwill. She would have been one hell of a lawyer, or a child advocate, or a … superhero.
“What happened to the FBI, Cam?” She took the bag from me and pulled out two cartons of dolmades.
I shrugged and took two plates down from the cabinet over the bar, avoiding her gaze. “Last I heard, they’re still out there fighting crime. Catching murderers and foiling terrorists.”
“And you’re here, wasting a degree in criminal justice so you can track losers for a Mafia boss.”
“Yeah, well, it turns out the FBI can hold its own without me.” I pulled two forks from the drawer to my right and gave her one while I used the other to slide three dolmades onto my plate.
“What happened to the interview? Did you even go?”
“No, Liv, I didn’t go. Okay?” I dropped my fork on my plate, and the clang of metal against glass was louder than I’d intended. “I didn’t go on the fucking interview. I didn’t join the FBI. I don’t fight on the side of truth and justice, and frankly, having been out in the real world for a while now, I can say with some measure of certainty that it was a dumb idea in the first place. Just the stupid dream of a stupid, idealistic kid with a shiny diploma and no clue how the world really works.”
At twenty-two, I’d thought I was going to change the world. Or, at the very least, I was going to clean it up. I was going to join the FBI and use my Skill—secretly, of course—to track serial killers and pedophiles, and make the world a better place, one conviction at a time.
“It wasn’t dumb,” Liv insisted. “A little naive, maybe, but you could have pulled it off. You should have pulled it off.” She pushed one of the bar stools out with her foot and sat. “So what happened? How did you get tangled up with Tower instead?”
“I got shot.”
“What?” Her fork hovered over the open carton.
“I got shot. The week I moved here.” I took my first bite while she stared, obviously trying to decide what to ask first.
“How? What happened?”
I shrugged and swallowed, my favorite food suddenly tasteless with the memory. “I don’t know. I was walking down Hyacinth, about four nights after I got here, all farm-fresh and clueless—”
Liv frowned. “Hyacinth. That was in my neighborhood.”
“I know.”
She stabbed a dolma with her fork and the leaf started to come unwrapped as she gestured with it. “Do I even want to know what you were doing two blocks from my apartment?”
“Tracking you. You owed me an explanation—and, frankly, an apology—and I’d come prepared to demand both. But obviously, I didn’t find you.” Not that night, anyway. “I found the business end of a bullet instead.” I stood and pulled up my shirt to expose the small, round puckered scar just to the right of my navel. “I never saw the shooter or the gun. I was just walking down the street one minute, then flat on my back the next, lying in a pool of my own blood. I was trying to hold my guts in with one hand and dig my phone out of my pocket with the other when these guys just showed up out of nowhere.”
“Tower’s men?” she asked, her food untouched.
“Yeah.”
Her brows rose in challenge. “You do know they’re probably the ones who shot you.”
“Probably.” I certainly couldn’t prove otherwise. “All I know for sure is that they’re the ones who saved me. They took me to one of their doctors and paid the bill. They destroyed all the blood I spilled. Then, when I was released, they took me to Adler’s house—he’s my direct supervisor now. His wife put me in their guest room and took care of me for weeks, while I recovered. After that, how could I not sign with Tower? I’d come to town with nothing, spent more than I had on a hotel room I never actually checked out of. By the time I was able to get out of bed, I was flat-ass broke, unemployed and—”
“And you didn’t have a friend in the world to turn to,” Liv interrupted. “Because I wasn’t speaking to you.”
“That’s not what I was going to say,” I insisted.
“But we both know it’s true.”
I couldn’t argue. “Anyway, it was only supposed to be for one term. Five years. They’d lost their best Tracker and I needed a job—”
“Convenient …” she noted, peeling the foil back from the first gyro.
“At the time, yeah,” I admitted. “It seemed pretty damned convenient.” Fortuitous, even.
Liv swallowed her first bite and stared at me with her brows drawn low over those big blue eyes. “You know they set you up, right? They didn’t save you. They found you, assessed your potential, then shot you.”
“Liv …” I began, but she spoke over me—it almost felt like old times.
“By that point, they had you right where they wanted you. You were incapacitated and in their debt, and they had a fucking huge sample of your blood, which is probably on file in a room full of sensitive information somewhere. You didn’t really think they destroyed all of it, did you? Please tell me you’re not that gullible.”
“Of course not.” But wasn’t I? Liv was sitting in my kitchen, inches away, telling me what a fool I was, and all I could think of was how badly I wanted to kiss her—and not just to shut her up, though that benefit would not go unappreciated.
“It was a win-win for Tower from the beginning,” she insisted, dropping her gyro onto her plate so she could tick off points on her fingers. “He has you shot. If you die, at least you can’t sign on with the competition. If you live, he has a chance to recruit you, albeit through pretty damn vicious means. If you sign on voluntarily, he has one hell of a new Tracker. If you don’t, he has enough of your blood to bind you without your consent, at least for a while. Either way, you’re his, for the cost of a bullet, some gauze and a round of antibiotics.” She leaned on the counter with both elbows, eyeing me with the first sign of amusement I’d seen from her in hours. “You always were a cheap date.”
I laughed. “You’re one to talk.” On our first date, sophomore year in college, we’d split a carnival hot dog and a cherry slushy—which she’d then vomited all over us both on the Tilt-A-Whirl.
“Yeah, I guess I am.” Her nostalgic smile lasted as long as it took for me to pull two Coronas from the fridge. “Greek food, Mexican beer. Interesting combination.” She reached across the counter to pull the bottle opener/magnet from the side of my fridge, then popped the top off her bottle.
I watched her take a long draft, and when she set the bottle down, she eyed me pensively. Almost reluctantly. “Please tell me you already knew all that. About Tower’s unconventional recruiting methods. Because I thought that was just an urban legend until about ten minutes ago….”
“At the time, I didn’t know,” I admitted, popping the top off my own bottle. Suddenly I wished I’d poured something stronger. “But it didn’t take long to figure out. And it’s no urban legend.” Since my first binding mark, I’d seen two other Skilled members netted the same way, and rumor had it that syndicates in other major cities had caught on to the same recruiting techniques. Certain Skills—and the most talented in any Skill set—were in demand, and there was nothing those in power wouldn’t do to secure the services they wanted.
Liv took another drink, then stared at me through the half-empty bottle, as if the beer-bottle filter might reveal something she hadn’t seen in me before. “So, if you figured it out, why’d you re-up? How’d you get those second and third chain links so fast?”
I studied her for a moment, trying to decide whether or not she wanted the truth. “It’s not that bad, you know,” I said finally, and she looked at me as if I’d just put a knife through the Easter Bunny’s heart.
“It’s blood money, Cam,” she spat, slamming her bottle down on the counter, and my own temper sparked, part indignation, part denial. “How does it feel to know that your rent is paid with blood money?”
“You tell me,” I snapped, without thinking it through. But words can’t be unspoken—if I’d learned anything from swearing loyalty to Jake Tower, that was it. “You may not be bound to Cavazos, but you take commissions from him. What do you think he does with the people you find for him? You think he pats them on the head and sends them off to summer camp?”
“I don’t …” she stammered, and I’d had enough of her hypocrisy.
“Yes, you do!” I shouted, and some small part of me enjoyed her shock for that instant before it bled into anger. “You work for him, and you take his money, and you use it to pay absurdly high rent on an apartment in the fucking ghetto, just to stand on principle. But you’re paying for your principals with the same blood money that pays for this apartment. The only difference is that I can walk down the street without getting shot or mugged.”
She stood, practically shaking with fury, and I knew I’d made my point. “The difference,” she said through clenched teeth, her voice low and sharp enough to cut glass, “is that you signed on for this voluntarily, but I don’t have any choice.”
“What does that mean? Why don’t you have a choice?” I asked, and her face went as pale as my white Formica countertop.
“I …” Liv blinked, as if she’d confused herself. Or said more than she’d meant to. Then she grabbed her bottle and chugged the rest of it. “I just meant that I have to take whatever work I can get. I’m not exactly rolling in commissions since I left Rawlinson, and yes, I’ve done some jobs for Cavazos, but that doesn’t make me his bitch, or his whore, or anything else.”
“I never said it did.” But she was already backing across my living room, headed straight for the coffee table on her way to a dramatic exit fueled by something I didn’t understand. “Liv, wait,” I called, already rounding the countertop into the living room when the back of her leg hit the corner of the coffee table. She went down on one hip, and her bottle smashed against the side of the table, spraying her jacket with the last droplets.
“Shit.” She started picking up the sticky pieces of glass and I knelt next to her to help.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
I shrugged. “It’s just a little glass.”
“I meant about … that whole thing. It’s none of my business what you do for a living.”
But I wanted it to be. “They offered me a step promotion,” I said, dumping the glass I’d gathered onto the coffee table.
“What?”
“When my five years were up. Tower called me in the week my mark would have gone dead, and I would have been free, and he told me I’d become very important to the operation. He said I had two choices—I could sign on for another five years, or I could leave the organization. As incentive to stay, he offered me a step promotion—two chain links for the price of one. Instant seniority.” I’d since learned that that offer was seldom extended, and even more seldom refused. “But if I opted out, I’d have to leave the city entirely.”
“Was that in your contract? Part of the noncompetition clause?” she asked, staring into my eyes from inches away, and I realized I hadn’t been that close to her in years. She hadn’t let me get that close….
“No. But he wouldn’t have had any trouble enforcing it.”
“You signed an extension so you could stay in the city?” she said, and I could only nod. “Because of me?”
“There were other factors….” Other people I didn’t want to leave behind. “But yeah.”
“Cam …” Her voice was more breath than sound, and it echoed in every cell of my body. And suddenly the memories were too much to fight. She was right there, after so many years, and she wasn’t pushing me away.
So I kissed her, and she kissed me back, and for several seconds, it was as if she’d never left at all.
Then pain slammed into my chest and I fell backward on my ass. By the time I realized she’d shoved me, she was on her feet, staring down at me. Glaring at me.
“Don’t. Touch me.” Her voice shook, and she couldn’t hide the tremor in her hands, even when she shoved them into her pockets. “This isn’t what it used to be. We can’t … We can’t ever go back to that.” She jogged toward the hall, pulling her jacket off as she went, and I only recovered enough to stand when I heard water running in the bathroom.
Anger warred with something else inside me. Something deeper and older. Something that bruised me from the inside out every single time I heard her name, either out loud or in my own head. I followed her down the hall and stopped outside my own bathroom, where she stood with her jacket spread across the counter, trying to scrub drops of beer out of the leather.
“This is bullshit, Olivia.”
But she just scrubbed harder, so I snatched the cloth from her and she turned on me, eyes blazing with some dizzying combination of anger and … regret. “Don’t do this, Cam. This isn’t the time to open old wounds.”
“There’s never going to be a time, is there?” I pulled the cloth back when she reached for it. “Every time I see you, you tell me to go away, but you look like you want to cry when you say it. You don’t mean it, and we both know that.”
“I mean it …” she insisted.
“No, you don’t!” I shouted, and this time she didn’t argue. “What happened, Liv? Why are you lying to me? Why are you lying to yourself?”
She blinked up at me, eyes damp, in spite of the stoic set of her jaw, and I was nearly knocked off balance by the storm of conflicting urges raging inside me. How could I be so furious with her, yet so in love with her at the same time? How could she be so maddeningly closed-off, yet so obviously vulnerable beneath her shield of denial?
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Rachel Vincent
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Триллеры
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: They say blood is thicker than water. They have no idea. As a blood tracker, Liv is extremely powerful. And in a world where power is a commodity that can get you killed, Liv has learnt to survive by her own rules. Rule number one? Trust no one. But when a friend s daughter goes missing, Liv is bound by a potent magical oath. She can′t rest until the child is safe. And that means trusting her dangerous ex, Cam.A sinister prophecy tells that she and Cam will be the death of each other, yet Liv s tired of being a slave to destiny. She s ready to play the forces controlling her world at their own game. No matter what the cost.