Oath Bound

He spun me around to face him again, anger drawn in every line of his face, and when I tried to pull free, his grip on my arm tightened. “Just FYI, this is not the easy way.”

He pulled me into the living room. When I refused to sit on the couch, he gave my left shoulder a small shove, and I fell onto the center cushion, my hands trapped behind me.

He sat on the coffee table facing me, at eye-height again, and that’s when I saw where he was bleeding. My blade had sliced across his right forearm in two different places.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a total pain in the ass?” He rolled back his sleeve and flinched with one look at the long, shallow cuts. “I’m sorry about the zip tie. I don’t usually tie women up, but I don’t know what else to do with you.”

“Don’t apologize because I’m a woman. Apologize because you’re an asshole!” I shouted.

His grandmother laughed out loud from the kitchen doorway, holding her still-steaming mug of coffee. “I like her, Kris. I doubt Vanessa will, though.”

Who the hell was Vanessa?

Kris’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t even glance at his grandmother. “Just so we’re clear, the zip tie isn’t the only equipment at my disposal. I’m also fully prepared to tape your mouth shut.”

In reply, I leaned back on the couch and kicked him off the coffee table.

Four

Kris

The closet door opened down the hall as I was rinsing my cuts in the bathroom. I went for my gun out of habit, trailing water across the floor and blood across my arm.

“Kris?” Kori called, and I slid my gun back into its holster and stepped out of the bathroom with a clean white towel pressed to my arm. “What happened? Liv said you went after Kenley, but she lost your scent.”

She meant my psychic scent—the personal energy signature given off by my blood, which blood Trackers, like Olivia and Cam, could use to find people.

“No surprise there. The Towers’ nanny is a Jammer, right?” Being near a Jammer is like being in a psychic dead zone—you can’t be tracked, either by name or by blood. That’s a benefit those who can afford it will gladly pay for, but it comes with a couple of obvious disadvantages, as well.

“You went to Jake’s house?” She lifted the towel from my arm and her pale brows furrowed over eyes as deep a brown as our mother’s had been. “What the hell were you thinking? It’s a miracle you walked out of there with only—”

“Hey!” Sera shouted from Gran’s bedroom—the only one on the first floor.

I groaned. There was no good way to tell Kori about our new guest, but letting Sera deliver the news herself was number one on a long list of bad ways to get the job done.

Kori’s focus shifted from my wounds to the closed bedroom door. She dropped the rag into place on my arm and her hand found the grip of the gun holstered beneath her jacket. “Who the fuck is that?”

Gran chuckled from the living room, where she was sipping iced tea in front of the muted television. She’d refused to help me with Sera on the grounds that I deserved whatever I got for bringing a stranger back to our hideout, even though she only remembered who we were hiding from about half the time.

“Hey!” Sera shouted again, while I actively regretted not gagging her when I’d had the chance. “Whoever’s out there, if you’re even marginally sane, please consider calling the police. But if you’re as psychologically damaged as Kris and his grandmother, then by all means, carry on with whatever the descendants of Norman Bates do for fun on the weekend. I’m sure I’ll still be here whenever you get around to stabbing me and laughing maniacally over my cooling corpse.”

“That’s Sera.” I pressed the rag tighter against the cuts on my arm. “She’s rational and calm, and just generally pleasant to be around. I think you’re gonna like her.”

“I like her!” Gran called over the wooden creak of her rocker.

Kori took a single, cautious step back and slowly pushed the bedroom door open.

Sera sat in Gran’s rolling desk chair, kind of tilted to the side because I’d used a leather belt to secure her bound arms to the back of the chair.

Kori made a noise deep in her throat. It sounded like an angry mutation of my name. “Who the fuck is that, and where the hell is Kenley?”

“The short version?” I said, and she nodded without taking her focus from Sera. “I went to Tower’s looking for Kenni, but Julia was more interested in having me shot than in answering my questions, and I didn’t have time for a leisurely search of the compound.” Not that I’d expected her to actually be there. I’d hoped Julia might value her own life enough to order my sister’s return. Or at least tell me where to find her. “I didn’t find Kenley, but I did find Sera, and they seemed willing to shoot through her to get to me, so I figured she wouldn’t mind being removed from immediate danger.” I shrugged. “Turns out they might have had the right idea.”

“Fuck you.” If Sera’s eyes could have shot flames, I would have been nothing but a pile of ash. “Untie me.”

Kori turned to me, both brows raised. “Wait. Julia took our sister, and your brilliant plan was to break into her house and return the favor?”

“No, my intent was to get Kenni back. But Sera was there, and she got between my gun and Julia.” And she was wearing a yellow scarf … “Then they started shooting at us—at both of us—so I had to take her with me.”

“You had to take her?” Kori pushed pale hair back from her face, then crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine. What are you planning to do with her? She’s a bargaining chip? A trade?”

“I’m a hostage,” Sera said.

Kori turned on me, but the anger I expected to find in her eyes was backlit by something more bitter. More personal. “We don’t take hostages, Kris. And we damn sure don’t take prisoners. That’s not how we operate.”

“I’m aware. She’s neither prisoner nor hostage,” I insisted as I lost the battle not to stare at Sera some more. At her scarf. At her eyes. At the tension in her frame, telling me she would fight until the very last breath was forced from her body, if that’s what it took. She didn’t need a reason to fight—she just needed an excuse.

I didn’t want to be her reason or her excuse. Or her jailer. In spite of her sharp knife and her even sharper tongue, I was captivated by the fire inside her and curious about the fuel that fed it.

And I needed to know why Sera had shown up in my notebook, nearly a decade before I met her.

“She’s a guest,” I continued, watching Sera while I spoke to my sister. “She’s a reluctant guest who really shouldn’t be thrown out in the cold until we know whether or not she’s bound to tell Julia Tower about everything she’s said and heard here.”

“Agreed. Although she wouldn’t have seen or heard anything if you hadn’t brought her here.” Kori exhaled and crossed her arms over her shirt. “So … who is she?”

A pang of disappointment unfurled in my chest. “I was hoping you could tell me that.”

“I don’t recognize her. But she could have signed on with Julia after I left the organization.”

Understatement of the decade. Kori hadn’t just “left” the Tower syndicate. She’d fought her way out in an elegant clusterfuck of a showdown, in which Ian, Olivia and I all kicked ass and fired guns on her behalf.

They say combat is a bonding experience for those who survive. They’re right.

Kori eyed our guest’s awkward tilt. “Why is she tied up?”

“Because he’s psychotic,” Sera spat.

“Because she’s a flight risk,” I corrected, and I got the distinct impression that she was flipping me off behind her back. “Did I mention she’s feisty? Because she’s also stubborn.”

“Fascinating.” Kori glanced at the long sleeve covering Sera’s left arm. “Does she have marks?”

Sera groaned, still glaring up at me. “I told you, I don’t work for Julia Tower!”

I could only shrug. “She keeps saying that, but she won’t prove it.”

“You have to prove it. That’s the way the world works.” Kori studied Sera’s scowl. “Either you know that, and you’re refusing because you’re marked, or you’re naive enough to think you actually have a choice in the matter. That’s adorable, but completely erroneous.”

“She’s not from around here,” I said, while Sera shot rage daggers at us both.