Oath Bound (An Unbound Novel) (18 page)

“No, we were wrong because Julia moved the whole operation. Kenley’s not in the basement,” Ian insisted.

“We have to check.” Kori’s eyes were narrowed, her jaw set in a firm line. Ian nodded, Sera shot me a confused look, but I couldn’t explain, because I didn’t fully understand Kori’s mental shift, other than that it stemmed from whatever she’d suffered at Tower’s hands, whatever she thought they were now doing to Kenley.

“We will. We’ll look everywhere,” Ian promised. “But for now, let’s get out of here.” He wrapped one arm around Kori, and as grateful as I was that he was able to comfort her, I felt that his gain was my loss. I didn’t know how to be there for her anymore, and that realization resonated deep inside me, an ache I couldn’t ease.

“What basement?” Sera whispered in my direction.

Kori’s head snapped up and her sharp gaze found Sera. “Hell. The basement in
hell.
That’s where she put Kenley. I know it is.”

“Okay. Let’s go.” Ian held his hand out, then waited for her to take it. Finally she did, and there was a shift in her eyes. Behind her eyes. She blinked, then seemed to stand straighter, stronger, just from being close to him. Her focus returned, and she was with us again, back from whatever psychological detour had claimed her moments before.

I started to smile and welcome her back. Then something moved on my right. With a jolt of alarm, I turned just as two large hands aimed a silenced pistol through the doorway from the hall. I pulled my gun, but Sera was closer. And faster. She threw one arm up beneath his wrists, trying to raise his aim so he’d hit the ceiling.

It almost worked.

A flash of light came from the barrel an instant before the muted
thwup
echoed through the small room.

Ian crumpled to the ground. Kori and I fired at the same time—I hadn’t even seen her draw. I have no idea whose bullet actually did the job, but the shooter stumbled backward into the hallway, then slid down the opposite wall, leaving a single wide red smear on the white paint.

Out bullets had struck so close together—over his heart—that I could only see one hole.

In the shocked silence that followed, no one moved for at least a second. Sera gaped at me. Then at Kori. Then at the dead guy. Then she started breathing really, really fast.

“Sera? You okay?”

“Fuck her!” Kori holstered her gun and dropped to the ground at Ian’s side, where blood dribbled between the fingers of the hand he held to his own shoulder. “I need something to— Give me your shirt!”

But that was easier said than done. I handed Sera my gun, and she held it like it might explode and kill us all. I shrugged out of my jacket, ripped off my holster and pulled my T-shirt over my head, then tossed it to Kori.

While she wadded it up and pressed it to Ian’s wound, I stepped into the hall, glanced in either direction, then squatted next to the downed man and checked his neck for a pulse.

“Dead,” I announced, stepping back into the observation room.

“Of course he’s dead,” Kori snapped, still pressing my shirt against the hole in Ian’s shoulder. “Are there any more?”

“Not yet. He’s security. If the entire building’s empty, he may be the only one here, guarding the cemetery, so to speak. Or so he thought.”

Kori brushed hair from Ian’s forehead, and even in the dim light, I could see that his dark complexion looked strangely washed out. “I have to get him out of here, but I don’t have enough bleach to clean this up.”

“Go,” Sera said. Her eyes were still wide, but her focus was steady. She was still with me. “We’ll take care of it. They have to have a supply closet, or something.”

“You sure?” Kori flinched when Ian grimaced.

“Go!” I shrugged into my holster, which felt weird against my bare skin, and took my gun back from Sera. “The longer you stay, the more blood there is to destroy.”

Kori stood and fired her silenced pistol into the ceiling twice. Glass shattered, obliterating both sets of lights, and I pulled Sera close, tucking her head against my shoulder to shield it. When the glass settled, I glanced up to see Kori doing the same thing for Ian. He still looked pale. He was losing a lot of blood.

Kori helped him to his feet while he held my bloody shirt to his wound with his opposite hand. Then she pulled him through the darkest corner of the room.

The moment they were gone, I headed into the hallway, with another glance in both directions, just in case.

“Will he be okay?” Sera asked as I tried doorknob after doorknob. Most were unlocked, and all of the rooms were empty, which seemed to verify the fact that the building had been completely deserted.

“Ian?” I said, and she nodded, moving to the next door on her side of the hall. “Probably. Shoulder wound. Through-and-through, from the looks of the blood on the wall behind him. Gran will get him all patched up. But if we don’t destroy his blood, Julia will be able to use it against him, and Ian will
wish
he were dead.”

I threw open another door and found a break room with three card tables set up on the left, opposite a wall-length counter on the right, complete with two microwaves and a full-size fridge.

I headed straight for a package of napkins abandoned on the counter, and Sera started to follow me, probably to search the cabinets. But then she noticed an open door beyond the first table, which hadn’t been visible from the hall. It was a bathroom.

She veered into the restroom and knelt to open the cabinet beneath the sink as I started opening cabinets in the kitchenette.

“Don’t move.”

I froze, the package of napkins tucked under one arm. My pulse raced, and I hoped he was talking to me, not Sera.

“Turn around slowly and put your hands on the back of your head. You even
look
like you’re gonna go for your gun, and I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

Bittersweet relief took the edge from the stress of knowing a gun was aimed at my back. He
had
to be talking to me. Sera was unarmed.

I turned slowly and considered letting the napkins fall, so I could go for my gun at the first opportunity. But if the shooter was jumpy, he’d open a hole in my chest before they even hit the ground.

A man in a security guard’s uniform—matching the dead man’s—stood in the middle of the break room, aiming his silenced pistol at me with his back to the bathroom. He hadn’t seen Sera yet.

He was one of Julia’s, just like the last guy. Ordinary security guards don’t carry suppressors.

At his back, Sera slowly, silently set a bottle of bleach on the floor, then stood without a sound. I couldn’t look directly at her without exposing her, and my peripheral vision wasn’t good enough to tell what she was up to. Which made me nervous. She had a history of confronting gunmen—she’d demanded my gun and foiled the aim of the dead man in the hall—and if she got herself killed trying to help me, I would never forgive myself.

“Unsnap the gun pocket from your holster and set it down, then kick it across the floor to me.” The guard’s aim held steady at my chest. Behind him, Sera glanced around the bathroom, and I had a horrible hunch that she was looking for a weapon.

I lifted both brows at the gunman as Sera knelt to pick up a bottle of spray cleaner, and I hoped she’d understand that my response was actually aimed at her. “This is a little ridiculous,” I said. “I don’t need a gun to kill you.” That last part, obviously, was for the bad guy.

“Humor me,” he said. “Hand over the gun.”

Sera silently turned the end of the nozzle, opening the spray bottle, and my heart began to beat too hard. What the hell was she planning to do, shine his bald spot?

When she picked up a toilet plunger and hefted it, testing the weight, I nearly groaned. The handle was too light to pack a punch, and the rubber part on the end would do about as much damage as the proverbial wet noodle.

Her boots were silent on the tile, as the guard watched me unsnap my gun pocket. Her last step squeaked on the floor, and my heart nearly burst through my chest when he heard her and turned, his aim shifting with the movement.

Sera swung the plunger at his arms, driving his aim down as she sprayed the cleaner in his face.

The guard screamed.

I fumbled, trying to pull my pistol from the partly detached pocket.

The guard’s gun went off with a
thwack.
A chunk of linoleum tile exploded to my left, and my heart leaped into my throat as I lurched out of the fire zone. The gunman abandoned his two-handed grip to rub his eyes, still screaming, and Sera shoved the stick end of the plunger into his stomach with a wild grunt of effort.

The guard oofed and swung the gun toward her. She ducked below his blind aim just before the
thwack,
and the bullet slammed into the wall at my back.

I let go of the gun pocket, and it dangled from my holster by one snap as I launched myself at the blinded guard, trying to pull his gun away before he could fire again. Sera circled us, struggling to stay out of the line of fire as we fought over the weapon.

The gun went off twice more, and my heart stopped with each muffled shot, certain I’d just met my own death. Shooting the guard would have been easier than wrestling his gun from him, but he had to live long enough to be interrogated.

Still trying to avoid the kill zone, Sera bumped into the countertop next to the fridge, then turned to pull it open. It was empty, as was every drawer she tried. The only thing that wasn’t nailed down, other than the furniture and the microwaves, was...

She grabbed the cheap four-slice toaster and jerked so hard the cord pulled free from its plug.
Stay back,
I thought, as she circled us, avoiding the gun we still fought over, looking for her chance.

When I understood that she wasn’t going to stop trying to help until I’d gotten the guard’s gun, I realized I’d have to work
with
her, instead of silently cursing her dangerous involvement. I jerked hard on the guard’s wrists, avoiding his trigger finger, and swung him around in a half circle.

Sera pulled the toaster over her head. The cord dangled against her back. When the moment was right, she swung the toaster down with another grunt of effort, straight into the guard’s shiny, bald head.

The guard grunted, then crumpled to the floor. I ripped the gun from his grip and clicked the safety switch. I exhaled slowly and took a moment to celebrate the fact that we were both still alive. And whole. Then I turned to Sera, latent anger and intense relief coursing through me in a complicated storm of emotion.

“What the
hell
were you thinking? You could have been killed.”

Her eyes widened and her triumphant smile faded. “I just saved your ass!”

“I didn’t ask you to!” I couldn’t make sense of the tight feeling in the pit of my stomach, as if I’d just survived some massive free fall that should have killed me, but my organs hadn’t yet adjusted to the landing. “You could have been killed.”

Sera frowned. “You already said that.”

“Because it keeps bothering me.” The words hurt coming out; the truth was still too raw. “Don’t
ever
do that again.” And suddenly I understood what was wrong with me. Why my heart was beating so hard I could almost hear it, even after the fight was over.

I wasn’t scared of Sera dying because it would have meant I’d failed to protect someone else. I was scared of her dying because I didn’t want her to die. Or leave. Or spill even a drop of blood. The thought of her getting hurt left me furious and terrified, just like the thought of Kenley in Julia Tower’s cruel hands. Except Sera wasn’t my sister, a fact I grew more grateful for with each passing second.

But her eyes still blazed with fury.

“Fine. Next time I’ll let the bad guy shoot you! Don’t cry to me when you’re bleeding out on the floor!” She started to turn away, already bending for the spray cleaner she’d dropped in favor of the toaster.

“Sera,” I said, and she stood slowly, mad at me again, for about the billionth time since we’d met. “Thank you for not letting the bad guy shoot me.”

Then I kissed her. Because I couldn’t fucking resist.

Eleven

Sera

K
ris kissed me, and for a second, I forgot that we’d broken into one of Julia’s buildings—or was it
my
building?— taken down two of her security guards and could be assailed by another at any time. I even forgot how pissed off I was at how ungrateful
he
was for the fact that I’d just saved his bare torso from certain lethal perforation.

And I was hyperaware of just how bare that torso was, framed only by his shoulder holster—the strappiest accessory I’d ever seen a man wear. And damn, did he wear it well.

Then everything that was wrong with that moment came roaring back, and I shoved him away, trying not to notice how firm his chest felt beneath my hands. “Why did you do that?”

His brows rose, and a smile lurked at the corners of his mouth. Which I was definitely
not
staring at. “Why did you bash that man on the head with a toaster?”

“Because you needed help with him.”

“And now I need to be kissed. Wanna give it another shot?”

“No.” I was extraglad there was no Reader around to call me on my lie. “This isn’t the time or the place...”

His grin developed slowly, like a Polaroid from my mom’s old camera. “So, it’s not kissing me you object to—it’s the time and place?”

“I object to this entire conversation. We told Kori we’d destroy Ian’s blood.”

Kris nodded, but his smile wouldn’t fully retreat, and I didn’t entirely hate that fact. He looked at the man on the floor and kicked him in the side once, to make sure he was really unconscious. “Oh, good. He’s still breathing.”

I exhaled in relief. I’d never killed anyone, and though I would have done it if I had to, to protect someone I cared about, I was immeasurably relieved to have avoided the worst-case scenario.

Kris’s smile was back in full force. “He’s also covered with bread crumbs. As are you.” His gaze traveled south of my collarbone and I looked down to find that the front of my shirt—mostly the upper curve of my breasts—was indeed dusted with bread crumbs from the toaster I’d hefted. “I’m pretty sure I’m either supposed to drop you in a deep fryer or broil you on high for an hour.”

I picked up the toaster from where I’d dropped it, then set it on the nearest table. “Like you know the difference.”

Kris chuckled at his own expense. “Nice shot, by the way, with the spray bottle. You’re like some kind of ninja housekeeper.” He set the guard’s gun on the table next to my toaster. “There’s a joke in there somewhere. It involves a French maid’s uniform and a wide selection of deadly weapons disguised as ordinary mops and brooms.”

“Are you seriously making fun of me after I just saved your ass?”

“I’m not making fun of you. I’m just enjoying a little humor at your expense.” He knelt next to the guard’s arm and pulled a folding knife from his own pocket. Before I could object to the cold-blooded murder of an unconscious man, Kris pulled the guard’s sleeve away from his upper arm and sliced through the material.

I blinked in surprise as he folded the knife, then returned it to his pocket and ripped the man’s sleeve open wider, revealing two interlocking rust-colored rings.

“Binding marks?” My mother had taught me that much, but she hadn’t known the specifics, for good reason—she’d kept us too far away from the Tower syndicate to glean more than could be learned by watching the news and scouring the internet to make sure there was never any mention of Jake’s older, illegitimate child. “What does the color mean?”

Kris’s brows rose in surprise. “You really did just fall off the turnip truck, huh?” I frowned, but before I could come up with an insult of my own, he continued, “You truly don’t know?”

“I told you, I don’t work for the Towers. I never met any of them until two days ago.” Two unbelievably long days ago.

“I’m actually starting to believe that.” He let go of the man’s sleeve, but left it gaping over the tattoos. “Okay, here’s your Skilled syndicate primer. A term is five years long, and for each term you commit to, you get one ring, up front. The ink is usually mixed with the blood of either the Binder or the head of the syndicate—in this case, Jake Tower—to bind it in blood. This guy has two rings, so he’s served his first five years and is somewhere in the middle of his second enlistment. When that term’s over—or his binding is broken by other means—the marks will fade instantly to a dull gray. We call those dead marks.”

“And the color?” I repeated, pleased to realize I’d followed his explanation with no trouble.

“Rust-colored rings, like this one, mean unSkilled labor, no matter what job the bearer holds. Secretaries, bodyguards, tech, clerks, lawyers, whatever. If you have no Skill, your mark is rust-colored. Except for those in the...um...oldest profession.”

“Assassins?” I guessed, and he laughed out loud.

“Forget the turnip truck. You were
born
yesterday. I’m talking about prostitutes.”

“Why on earth would prostitution be the oldest profession?”

His grin widened. “I don’t know. That’s just what they say. I guess sex is the universal currency. But my point is that those in the skin trade are all unSkilled also, but they have red marks. This guy—” he tossed an openhanded gesture at the guard “—is just a hired gun. No Skill.”

“I can’t believe I’m about to ask this, but...why didn’t you just kill him? Because he didn’t actually take a shot at you?”

Kris pulled a zip tie from the pocket of his jeans, then hauled the unconscious man toward the refrigerator by one arm. “That, and because dead men are notoriously difficult to interrogate.” He propped the guard in a sitting position against the front of the fridge, then zip-tied the man’s right hand to the refrigerator door handle, so that his arm stuck up at an odd angle. Then Kris patted him down until he found a cell phone, which he tossed into the drawer two down from the fridge—within reach, if the guard stretched far enough to strain his shoulder.

“Hand me a cup of water.” Kris gestured toward a plastic cup sitting on the edge of the sink.

“What’s the magic word?”

“Abracadabra. But I fail to see the relevance.”

I crossed both arms over my chest. “Please. The magic word is
please.
Didn’t your mother ever teach you that?”

“All my mother ever taught me was how to die in a car wreck. Gran taught me quite a few interesting words, but
please
was not among them. And, for the record,
please
is not a magic word. It has no supernatural properties at all that I can think of.” He came one step closer, staring straight into my eyes with such intensity that I couldn’t have looked away if I’d tried, and again, I was hyperaware that he was half-naked. And that I wanted to know what that half felt like....

“Tequila’s the magic drink. Everyone over the age of twenty-one and south of the Mason-Dixon line is familiar with its magical properties.” Kris took another step, and I held my ground as my heart beat harder, wondering how close he would come. Or when I’d stop him. “Beans are the magical fruit, or so the boys in my third-grade class told me.”

One more step, and we were less than a foot apart, and the very air seemed to sizzle between us. “Love is the international language, death is the great equalizer and
no
is the word most likely to turn a good man into just a friend, a drunk man into a jackass and misdemeanor-class asshole into a felon. But
please...
” He shrugged. “
Please
works no miracles at all.”

With that, he reached past me for the cup, his arm brushing mine, his lips inches from my cheek. When he turned on the faucet and filled the cup with cold water, without ever breaking my gaze, I realized I was breathing too hard. As if I’d just run a marathon.

And in that moment, I became determined to pull the word
please
from Kris Daniels’s mouth and show him just what kind of magic it could do.

“This is the fun part,” he whispered, so close I could practically feel his heartbeat through his bare skin and my shirt. My fingers skimmed his stomach before I even realized my own intention, and he exhaled against my neck, then just...
lingered
.

He was right. This
was
the fun part.

Then Kris pulled back and grinned at me. He dropped into a squat next to the unconscious man, his blue-eyed gaze sparkling with heat, and mischief, and beneath that, single-minded determination to do what had to be done.

Oh.
That
was the fun part. Interrogation. I felt my cheeks flush.

“Ready?”

It took me a second to realize he was talking to me. I nodded, still trying to puzzle my way through whatever had almost happened between us. Then Kris tossed water from the cup into the guard’s face.

The man sputtered and blinked, and as soon as he was awake, he hissed in pain. “My eyes...” he moaned. “They burn. I can’t see.”

“That’s too bad.” Kris looked up at me and smiled one more time. “The view’s amazing,” he said, and my heart beat too fast. Then he pressed the barrel of his silenced gun into the hollow between the man’s collarbones, and everything about him changed. Hardened. “Where the hell is my sister?”

“What?” The guard sputtered, then licked his lips, staring at nothing, the whites of his eyes an angry red color. “I don’t know. Who’s your sister? Who are you?”

“My sister is Kenley Daniels, and you motherfuckers took her. My sister is a part of me...” He glanced at the guard’s name tag. “Ned. Losing her is like losing my own hand, and if I don’t get her back, unharmed, poste fucking haste, you’re gonna find out what it’s like to lose one of
your
parts....”

The guard swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed above the barrel of the gun. “I swear I don’t know your sister, or where she is.”

“He may be telling the truth,” I said, and the man’s unfocused, red-rimmed eyes rolled in my direction.

“I’m perfectly willing to believe that this idiot knows almost nothing, in the larger sense. But he was bound to Jake Tower, which means he knows more than he wants us to think he knows.” Kris stared into the man’s irritated eyes. “Isn’t that right, Ned?”

“I swear, I don’t—”

“The real problem will be making him tell us something he’s been contractually prohibited from revealing. That’s where this gets interesting.” He turned back to Ned. “When did you reenlist? How long ago?”

“Three years.” Ned answered quickly, and with no sign of resistance pain, and I realized that meant we hadn’t yet hit the classified information. I’d never seen anyone suffering from serious resistance pain, and I have to admit, I was a little curious.

“Then you know my sister. She was Tower’s top binder, and by the time you reenlisted for your second term, she would have been doing most of his bindings. Petite. Blonde. Answers to the name
Kenley Daniels
.”

I saw recognition in his eyes, as if a light switch had been flipped behind them. “Yeah. I never heard her name, but that’s her. Quiet thing. Kinda intense.”

“Much better,” Kris said. “Did you see her here? It would have been today. This afternoon.”

“Kris,” I said when the man shook his head, obviously confused. “She was never here. Julia wouldn’t have had enough time to put her here, realize that was a mistake, then move the entire operation. There’s no telling how long ago they moved the...project.”

Kris frowned, thinking through what I’d said, and I shifted to face the guard. “Do you know what they did here, Ned?”

He didn’t shake his head, but he didn’t answer either, and when his entire body tensed, I realized he was waiting for pain—either from a blow from Kris or from resistance pain. Which surely meant we were very close to information he wasn’t allowed to give us.

“Did you see any of it, before they moved everything?” I squatted next to Kris, and the guard nodded, but his mouth never opened. “You don’t have to give us specifics,” I said, and he looked marginally relieved. “We already know what Tower was doing. But here’s the part you do have to answer.”

He tensed again, immediately, and I paused to see if Kris wanted to take over, but he seemed content to let me ask the questions. Ned was obviously less intimidated by me. Maybe because I was a woman. Or maybe because I didn’t have a gun pressed into his throat.

“What we really need to know is where they went. Do you know where the project has been relocated?” Because if Kenley was with the donors—even if they weren’t actively bleeding her—she’d be wherever they were.

“I don’t know. I swear that’s the truth.”

“He’s lying.” Kris’s finger tightened on the trigger, and my heart thumped harder. “See how scared he looks?”

“He’s scared because you’re seconds away from shooting his head clean off his body. Shut up for a minute and let me talk to him.”

Kris’s eyes narrowed in irritation, but he didn’t object.

I turned the man’s head by his chin, so he was looking at me, though he didn’t seem to actually see me. “Did you help them pack and load?”

“Yes!” Ned was obviously relieved to have an answer in the affirmative for us. He looked like a man clinging to a life raft in the middle of the ocean. “There were vans, and—” His word ended abruptly in a groan of pain as his forehead wrinkled in a grimace. Resistance pain. He’d hit the silence barrier.

“Did you hear anything while you were loading? Did anyone say anything about where they were going? Anything at all?”

“I don’t know.” Ned shook his head. “I can’t remember.”

Kris pressed the gun harder into his throat. “Think. Think like your life depended on it.”

Ned swallowed again and closed his eyes.

“Did they seem to be expecting lots of gas or bathroom breaks?” I asked. “Did anyone mention getting car sick on long trips or back roads? Were they worried about hitting rush-hour traffic? Anything like that?”

Kris glanced at me in surprise and—if I’m not mistaken—respect. Which irritated the hell out of me. Why was he surprised to find out I wasn’t brain damaged?

“No. Nothing like that. But one of the nurses was complaining about warehouse bathrooms. Something about poor lighting.”