Oath Bound

“I am,” he called over one shoulder as he crossed the living room toward the kitchen. “And could you be quiet for a minute? I need to think …”

“No I can’t be quiet!” That smolder deep inside me burst into a blaze, and I felt as though I could breathe fire. “I’ll tell the whole damn neighborhood I’ve been kidnapped if you don’t take me someplace public, right now!”

“There’s no neighborhood.” He turned to face me from the kitchen doorway, infuriatingly calm, and gestured to the sidelights flanking the front door.

I glanced through the glass and groaned. No other houses. No other buildings. No traffic. Nothing but starlight and a narrow gravel road, illuminated by the porch light. Where the hell were we?

“And you’re not kidnapped,” he continued when I turned, ready to roast him alive with the power of my rage. “You’re just … borrowed. I’m gonna put you back.” He frowned and his gaze dropped to the floor for a second. “Well, probably not back where I found you, but … My point is that you won’t have to stay here forever.”

“I don’t have to stay here at all. You can’t just borrow people!”

He glanced around the empty room, as if expecting someone to agree with me. “Kinda looks like I can. You want some coffee? Or are you thinking something stronger? I’m thinking something stronger.”

“What is wrong with you?” I demanded when anger defeated my attempt at something more articulate.

“My sister’s missing, my grandmother has Alzheimer’s, Julia Tower wants me dead and you’re turning out to be kind of a pain in the ass.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have kidnapped me!”

He rubbed his forehead, then raked one hand through his blond waves. “Well, hindsight is worthless, so could you just shut up so I can figure a few things out?”

“What things?” I demanded, but then I figured that out for myself. He’d broken into Julia’s house, guns ablaze—surely an unforgivable insult to the head of a Skilled crime syndicate—but she had yet to return the favor. Which surely meant she didn’t know where he was. “If you’re worried that I’ll tell Julia where you are, or something like that, you can relax. I don’t know who you are, or where we are, and she hasn’t exactly inspired my loyalty today.”

“Loyalty is compulsory when you’re bound.” He hesitated, but just for a second. “Are you bound to her?”

“No. I’m not bound to anyone.”

“And I’m just supposed to take your word for it?” His frown deepened and he glanced at my left arm, covered by my long-sleeved shirt. “I … um … need to see your arm.”

But even if I’d felt obligated to show him my unmarked arm—and I didn’t—I couldn’t have complied without taking my shirt off. And that wasn’t gonna happen.

“No.” Was this what my mother’s obsessive caution had spared me? A lifetime of suspicion, and dangerous loyalties, and lives defined by the color of the marks on my skin? By the constant need to prove I had no syndicate marks and served no one but myself?

“I’m asking nicely,” he said, but there was a warning threaded through his voice.

“And if I refuse nicely?” I backed up several steps, blindly aiming for the front door while my heart pounded in my throat. “Are you going to get less nice?”

Was I going to have to get less nice? He was bigger and stronger, but I had no problem fighting dirty, and I had nothing left to lose.

“No.” He exhaled in frustration. “Look, you don’t have to take anything off. We can cut your sleeve, or you can change into something of my sister’s. I just need to know that when I let you—” He stopped, then started over. “That when you leave, you won’t be obligated to go back and tell Julia everything you saw and heard here today.”

My heart thumped painfully. “Can’t you just take my word for it?”

He looked kind of sad. “I wish we lived in the kind of world where I could, but we don’t. Can’t you just show me? If you don’t have a mark, why is this such a big deal?”

That question cut straight to the heart of the matter, and suddenly everything seemed really clear. “Because I don’t have to. Because you don’t get to see anything I don’t want to show you. Because you don’t have the right to keep me here and make demands. Because the fact that I don’t have a mark means I don’t have to take orders from anyone. Including you!”

He blinked at me in surprise. Then he nodded. “All valid points. And in a perfect world, they’d matter, but here, they don’t. I can’t take you anywhere until I know you pose no threat to me and mine.” With that, he turned and stepped into the kitchen while I fumed from the middle of the living room floor.

“Fine.” My jaw already ached from grinding my teeth. “I’m guessing your range is no more than a few miles, so we can’t have gone too far.” I had some cash, my only credit card and my phone. No reason I couldn’t walk back to civilization on my own.

“Why do women always err on the side of underestimation?” he mumbled, pulling a bottle from an overhead cabinet as I headed for the front door. “My Skill could be huge, for all you know.” He had his back to me. He wasn’t even watching.

A second later, as I twisted and pulled on the front doorknob to no avail, I saw why.

“The door’s nailed shut!” Furious, I bent to examine the nails and my teeth ground together when I noticed the tiny crosshairs. “Those aren’t nails, they’re screws!”

And half of them had been countersunk. No one was getting through that door without an electric drill, a Phillips head bit and a spare half hour.

“Did that myself,” my kidnapper called from the kitchen. “Of course, we can probably kiss the security deposit goodbye. Ironic, isn’t it, considering that I actually made the house more secure.”

I stood to glare at him through the kitchen doorway, fingering my phone in my pocket. If I didn’t dread explaining the circumstances of my abduction, I’d have already dialed 911. “Look, I don’t recognize your particular psychosis, but trust me when I say this is a very special kind of crazy. Why the hell would you screw the front door shut?”

He shrugged, leaning with one hip against the counter, a half-empty bottle of whiskey in one hand. “We don’t use that exit.”

My focus found the door behind him, which presumably led to the backyard, and before I could decide whether or not to make a break for it—which would involve running right past him—he shook his head. “We don’t use that one, either.”

Both exits were screwed shut because he and his grandmother had no use for them? Bullshit.

He was prepared to house a prisoner, which meant this was premeditated. How could I have misread him so drastically? The fact that he cared about his sister didn’t make him less dangerous; it made him more dangerous. If his rash invasion of the Tower estate was any indication, he’d do anything to get her back. He’d gone in planning to take a hostage. The bastard wasn’t going to let me go until he got his sister back!

But … that didn’t make any sense. Why trade me, if he didn’t want me to go back to Julia? Was that just an act? Or had he planned to kidnap someone she valued—someone she would bargain for—but got stuck with me instead? If so, what was the new plan? What good was a hostage who couldn’t be traded?

No good at all.

Panic raced through me like fire in my veins. This was real. The psycho with nice eyes had taken me, but had no use for me. Even if he truly had no plans for violence—and his grandmother’s presence seemed to confirm that—he had no intentions of letting me go, either.

Knowing the doors didn’t function made my skin crawl, as if I were trapped not just by this house, but by my own body. My own mind.

I needed fresh air. Space. Now.

Logically, I knew that was the panic talking. There was plenty of air, and the house wasn’t that small—the foot of the staircase in one corner of the living room meant there was an entire second story I had yet to see. And the hum of the air conditioner told me the ventilation was fine. Being locked up wasn’t going to kill me.

But being stupid might.

Think.

Assuming he truly loved his grandmother—and I’d seen no reason to doubt that—he wouldn’t leave her alone if she couldn’t get out of the house. What if there was a fire?

There had to be a functioning exit.

I took a deep breath and swallowed my panic. “Fine. If you don’t use the doors, how do you get out of here?”

He didn’t even look up from the soda he was pouring into a short glass, over an inch of whiskey. “The same way I brought you in.”

Damn it. “You’re both shadow-walkers?”

“Not all of us. But enough.”