Oath Bound

“So, who’s next?” Ian Holt sank onto the couch next to Kori, and she leaned into him, a display of trust and affection I’d rarely seen from her. I don’t know how he got through her mile-thick outer shell, but I do know that I’ve never seen her happier. And I know that Ian helped free Kori, Kenni and Vanessa from that bastard Jake Tower, and that he’d stuck around to help us free everyone else Kenley had been forced to bind. As far as we were all concerned, Ian was part of the family, even if Kori never got around to putting a ring on his finger.

“Um …” I checked my list again. “Rick Wallace.” I glanced at Kori. “What do we know about him?”

She shrugged. “He’s a Silencer. Average strength. Mid-thirties. He’s also a world-class asshole who’s literally never heard ‘no’ from a woman, because he sucks the sound right out of the word every time one tries to say it. I’m not surprised he wants out from under Julia Tower, but I’m kind of surprised he’d contact us, considering how many times I’ve threatened to cut his tongue out and serve it to his latest ‘date’ on a toasted hot-dog bun.”

Ian made a face. “That’s disgusting,”

Kori nodded solemnly. “So is Rick Wallace.”

“Agreed. But no one deserves to be tied to Julia Tower,” Kenley insisted, and Kori kept her mouth shut, though she obviously wanted to argue. “When and where is the meeting?”

“Meghan’s parents’ house,” Ian said. His sister-in-law had offered to let us use the house when she and his twin brother left town.

“Olivia’s already securing the site,” Kori added. “We’re supposed to meet her there in half an hour. If you’re sure you feel like it.”

“I’m fine.” Kenley squared her shoulders and sat straighter. “Let’s just get it over with.”

“Eat something first,” Vanessa insisted, and before Kenley could object, Van was halfway to the kitchen in search of food.

I followed her, headed for the coffeepot, and my grandmother looked up from the stove when she saw me. “Kristopher, the knobs are missing.”

“Really?” I frowned down at the stove. “That’s weird.” We’d had to take the knobs off the day before, when she lit the fire under one gas burner, but forgot to put a pot over the flame and nearly caught the whole damn house on fire.

“What happened to them?”

“I dunno, Gran. Maybe Liv or Cam will track them for us.” Olivia and her boyfriend were both Trackers, but he worked mainly with names, while she worked with blood.

“Don’t get smart with me, Kristopher Daniels,” Gran snapped. “I’ll ground you till you’re twenty-five years old, and you can forget the senior prom.”

She’d lit the candles on my thirtieth birthday cake six months earlier, and I couldn’t even remember most of my senior prom. Which is how I know I probably enjoyed the hell out of it. Or maybe that was the after-party …

“I’m not getting smart, Gran.”

“Well, that’s the truth …” Kori mumbled beneath her breath as she walked past on her way to the fridge, and I ignored her.

“I’ll look into the missing knobs, I swear.”

“Do it now. I want to make some—” Gran’s scowl morphed into an instant smile when she noticed Vanessa taking the lid off a plastic container of cookies. “You two make such a cute couple.”

“Gran …” I started, but she slapped my arm, which was only a minor improvement over the way she used to slap the back of my head when I was twelve and the occasional—okay, frequent—profanity slipped out.

She’d given up smacking Kori for cussing when my sister was ten.

“Don’t give up on him just because he pretends to be emotionally unavailable, Vanessa,” Gran said, and I realized for the first time that she’d never forgotten Van’s name. Not even once. “He’s a slob and he leaves his towel on the bathroom floor, but he’s a pretty good boy.”

“No, I’m not.” I shook my head at Van. “I’m very, very bad.”

Vanessa laughed as she wrapped two cookies in a paper towel, then took them into the living room for Kenley, leaving me to explain things to my grandmother on my own. Again.

“Vanessa’s not my girlfriend, Gran. She’s with Kenley, remember?”

“Oh, please.” Gran huffed in exasperation. “Anyone can see how much she likes you.”

No one else could see any such thing. But trying to explain to Gran that Kenni and Vanessa were more than friends was like trying to explain … well, like trying to explain anything to Gran. Futile. We’d had a few temporary victories in the battle against Alzheimer’s but the backslides all but killed any real hope.

While Gran searched the kitchen drawers and cabinets for the missing stove knobs, Vanessa joined me again at the coffeepot with an empty mug of her own. “I’ve been meaning to ask you …” she said as she filled her mug. “Does your grandmother have a Skill? I’ve never seen her use it.”

“No, thank goodness.” I pulled the sugar bowl closer and stirred a spoonful into my coffee. “Alzheimer’s and Skills don’t mix well.” You can’t just take the knobs off a Skill to make sure it isn’t accidentally left running when the user forgets what year it is.

“I’m ready,” Kenni called from the living room, and I looked up to find her brushing cookie crumbs from her shirt while Kori slid a 9 mm into the holster beneath her left arm. Ian handed her a light jacket to hide the gun, just in case. His jacket was already in place, and if I didn’t already know where his own weapons were hidden, I’d never have known he had any.

“I’ll go.” I set my coffee on the counter, untouched. “You and Ian can stay.”

Kori frowned, always unhappy to be taken out of the action. “Why?”

“Because I’m sick of watching the two of you actively hate the rest of the world for interrupting your privacy. And because I don’t trust you not to kill Rick Wallace before Kenni has a chance to break his bindings.”

“I wasn’t gonna do any permanent damage,” Kori mumbled.

“It’s my turn anyway.” I grabbed my own jacket from the back of a chair at the kitchen table.

When she started to protest, Ian pulled her close. “Shut up before he changes his mind.” Then he turned to me. “Go on. We’ll hold down the fort.”

“And I’ll pretend I don’t know what you’re about to do with my sister. Ready, Kenni?” But when I turned, I found her kissing Vanessa goodbye. “Damn it, people,” I groaned. “This is a hideout, not a couples retreat!”

“Jealous?” Van teased, sinking into the chair Kenley had just vacated.

Was I jealous?

I might have been jealous of all the sex they were having, in their respective pairs, if each of those pairs didn’t involve one of my sisters. But because my sisters were involved, envy of their physical relationships wasn’t really … relevant. In fact, the very thought was vaguely nauseating.

As for the rest of it—the casual touches, intense looks and the feeling that the world would stop spinning if intimate eye contact was broken—I’d gone down that route once. The curves in the road were unpredictable, the speed bumps were more like small mountains, and the sudden roadblock thrown into my path had resulted in a collision I’d barely limped away from.

Since then, I stuck to the highway, with the other casual drivers. Regular shifts in the scenery, no stop-and-go traffic and the freedom to change lanes whenever I got bored.

“Let me get my stuff.” I jogged up the stairs and into the center bedroom, where I’d been sleeping for most of the three months we’d spent finding and contacting Tower’s remaining disgruntled employees and arranging clandestine meetings. Three months hiding from Julia in her own city while we slowly chipped away at the bedrock of indentured servants forming the foundation of the empire she’d inherited.

Eventually, that foundation would crumble, and its queen would plummet to the ground. And as with the fall of any corrupt dynasty, the peasants would rejoice.

I sat on the edge of my unmade bed and pulled open the nightstand drawer, and while my hand went straight for my gun, my gaze found something else instead.

What the hell?

My notebook. The indecipherable roadmap from my one disastrous trip down lover’s lane.

What the hell was it doing in the hideout house? In my bedroom? In my bedside drawer?

I lifted the notebook and flipped back the red cardboard cover. I hadn’t seen it in more than a year, but I still knew the curve of every G and the slanted cross of every T. I used to keep a yellow No. 2 pencil in the spiral, for when I needed to jot something down in the middle of the night.