Blood Bound

  “So, wait a minute,” I said, going over the facts in my head. “Hunter left large amounts of his own blood in his bathroom, and the power from it is fading faster than the blood itself is drying? He went to a public hospital, and his middle name is on records accessible to the public?”

  “Well, maybe not accessible to most of the public,” Van amended.

  “Okay, but my point is that this doesn’t sound like the behavior of any Skilled person I ever met.”

  “Nor does the Skill fading from his blood make one single bit of sense,” Liv added. “I don’t know what to think.”

  “Does that mean you can’t track him?”

  Liv grabbed her jacket from the back of an armchair and dug into her pocket, presumably for the most recent blood sample. “It still has some pull. Which means we can and will track him. Especially now that you’ve found his middle name for us.” Because for all we knew, the pull from his blood might just lead us to another pile of bloody bandages instead of to the man himself. Which was why we’d stopped to look for his name—our tracking plan B.

  “What about the bank account?” I asked, and Van turned back to her computer as I slid Hunter’s bank statement across the counter toward her.

  “I’ll see what I can do, but I’m going to need some privacy. My methods are kind of…supersecret, proprietary knowledge.” Van picked up her laptop and gave me a sly smile. “Should I take the bedroom, or would you two like it?”

  I laughed, and deferred the matter to Liv, who looked as if she wanted to boil me alive. “You go ahead,” she said finally. “We’re not going to need it.”

  Vanessa shrugged and hauled her stuff down the hall to my bedroom, the only other room in the apartment, except for the bathroom. I took my water bottle to the couch and sat, amused when Olivia just stood in the middle of the room, glancing between the couch and the bar stools. “I promise I won’t bite,” I said, gesturing at the two unoccupied couch cushions.

  She considered for a second, then dropped onto the opposite end of the couch. “If memory serves, you’re all bark anyway.”

  “I think we both know better than that. And if my memory serves, I have a couple of bite marks that prove you’re not, either.”

  Liv laughed, and my mission in life became making that happen again. When she laughed, she looked like the Olivia I’d known, and if I closed my eyes and listened closely, I could almost pretend the past six years had never happened. I could pretend she might not hate me for signing my life over to a man and an organization she detested. An organization we both detested, if I were being completely honest—which I couldn’t do aloud.

  “Can I see your tattoo?” I asked, and her smile died a sudden, brutal death. “On your back. You don’t have to take anything off,” I clarified. What had she thought I meant? “You don’t have a mark from Anne and the girls, right? I thought that was a paper binding.”

  “It is. Blood bound and name bound, but on paper. Thank goodness.” She relaxed a little, but I couldn’t forget the severity of her original reaction. What did it mean? Why was she so touchy on the subject of marks?

  And then the guarded look in her eyes gave me sudden insight: she had another mark somewhere—one she clearly didn’t want anyone else to know about. It was probably a dead mark—the statement tattooed on her back clearly stated her position on the subject of ownership—but I couldn’t help wondering who she’d been bound to. What she’d been bound to do—or not to do?

  Instead of answering the questions I hadn’t asked, she twisted away from me and folded one leg beneath herself on the couch. Then she slowly swept her long hair over one shoulder, baring the small black script echoing the neckline of her shirt, between her shoulder blades.

  And there it was. Cedo nulli.i> The script taunted me. It said that, even if she’d been bound before, she’d gotten out of it with her principles intact. She answered to no one.

  Well, no one but the women she’d sworn to help, and none of them would ever make her do what I’d had to do for Tower and the syndicate.

  I reached out without thinking, drawn by the pull of the words and the purity of soul they represented, and traced the first letter with my finger. Liv’s whole body tensed. She pulled away from my touch, and the ever-present ache in my chest widened into a chasm I couldn’t climb out of. My sigh was an exhale of pain.

  But then she relaxed a little—an obvious effort for her—and leaned back until her skin touched my finger again, at the base of the calligraphic C. I held my breath as I traced the rest of the letters, treasuring the warmth of her skin. I don’t know why she let me touch her this time, when she’d been pushing me away for years, but I wasn’t going to question it.

  I’d just finished the last letter—acutely aware that once I’d started breathing again, her breathing synced with mine—when my bedroom door opened and Vanessa clomped down the hall toward us with her backpack over her shoulder, equipment already stowed.

  “Any luck?” I asked, as Liv swept her hair back over her shoulder to cover the words, as if she had never let me touch them.

  “I’m sorry, Cam, but I can’t help you.” Vanessa walked past the kitchen on her way to the door, and Liv was up in an instant. She grabbed Van’s arm and pulled her to a stop before I could get between them.

  “What do you mean? Why not?”

  Van tugged free from Liv’s grip, and I pulled Olivia back, in case she was tempted to reach out again. Vanessa didn’t like uninvited touches.

  “Let her go,” I said, recognizing the frustration and fear cycling in a never-ending loop beneath Van’s sudden mask of disinterest. “If she says she can’t help, she can’t help.”

  Liv whirled on me, confused and angry. “She found the account! You know she did. She knows who hired Hunter to kill Anne’s husband, but she’s not telling. That is in no way okay with me.”

  “I’m sorry.” Vanessa backed toward the door, the strap of her bag clenched in a white-knuckle grip. “I just can’t.” She was upset—I could see that much. She liked Liv, probably because of what she’d told Van that I couldn’t. They could have been friends, if not for that damned Tower binding.

  Liv was right. No one bound to a syndicate could ever really have friends.

  She reached for Van again, and again I pulled her back, and Van slipped out of the apartment and into the hall. When I wouldn’t let Liv go, she spun into a right hook that caught me square on the jaw.

  “Damn it, Olivia!” I rubbed my face with one hand and held her arm in the other, forced to tighten my grip until it probably bruised. “Just let her go.”

  “She knows who paid him!”

  “That’s exactly why she can’t tell you!” I shouted, hoping—wishing—that she would just calm down long enough to draw the obvious conclusion, a fact I wasn’t allowed to outright divulge. “I can’t tell you this, Liv. You’re going to have to think it through for yourself.”

  And finally she stopped struggling, and her arm went limp in my hand. “It was there all along, and we didn’t see it.” She swallowed thickly, and suddenly looked sick to her stomach. “It was Tower. Jake Tower hired Hunter to kill Anne’s husband.”

  Ten

  “Tower.” Stunned, I sank onto Cam’s couch and closed my eyes. But that didn’t make it any less true. “Are you sure?”

  Cam sat next to me. “If that money had come from anywhere else in the world, she’d tell us. But she can’t say anything that might incriminate the syndicate, so it has to be from one of Tower’s accounts.”

  I frowned at him, confused. “Are you allowed to say that?”

  Cam shrugged. “Now that you’ve already guessed, I’m not divulging incriminating evidence.”

  “Is she going to get into trouble for this?” I felt sick, knowing I might have made things worse for Van, after everything she’d already been through.

  “Not unless someone asks her a direct question. And that can’t happen unless someone finds out what she was doing here. So, obviously, don??
?t tell anyone.”

  I nodded absently, but my brain had already moved on. “Why the hell would Jake Tower want to kill Anne’s husband? I can’t imagine him being tangled up with the syndicate without her knowing about it.” And if she’d known about it, surely she would have told us—not telling us would only make it harder for us to find Shen’s killer.

  “It’s probably not actually Tower,” Cam pointed out. “It could be anyone with access to a syndicate bank account.”

  But that wasn’t really true. “It’d have to be someone high up enough to have access to the account, and the clout to spend funds autonomously. Maybe even anonymously, right?” I had no personal knowledge about the Tower syndicate, but I knew how Cavazos ran his operation, and I was willing to bet my unmarked left arm that their day-to-day operations had a lot in common. “I’m guessing that’s no more than a handful of people, right?”

  Cam nodded, looking distinctly uncomfortable, and I took that to mean we were getting close to a line he couldn’t cross.

  “I’m also guessing you can’t tell me who those people are, can you?”

  “No,” he said, and my sigh sounded almost as heavy as it felt. “But I swear, Liv, I had no idea the syndicate was involved until Van came out of the bedroom.”

  I believed him. I don’t know why I believed him; he’d lie to protect the syndicate if the situation required it. But when I looked into his eyes, I believed him, and I felt a ghost of his touch on my back, tracing the words I wanted so desperately to be true. For both of us.

  “Okay. I can get those names on my own.” Most of them, anyway. I wasn’t without resources. “But first we need to update Anne. And she needs to know about your binding, Cam.”

  “I know.” He took my hand and pulled me closer, and I let him, against my better judgment. “Maybe you should let me talk to her. Alone.”

  “Why?” I didn’t even bother screening suspicion from my voice. I hated knowing that even though he still loved me—I had no doubt about that—I couldn’t trust him. As long as he bore a live mark, no one would be able to fully trust him. Not even the syndicate. They may have had his service and obedience, but they didn’t have his heart—maybe they never had—and that meant he would use whatever loopholes he found.

  But I still couldn’t trust him.

  Cam looked up at me from the couch, and I let him pull me forward until I stood between his thighs, my knees brushing the front of the couch cushion. “Olivia, if you go up against the Tower syndicate, I can’t help you. And if Anne asks you to, you’ll have to do it. So it seems to me that the only way to avoid being asked to go up against the syndicate is to let me deal with Anne.”

  I pushed aside the ache I got every time he touched me—the overwhelming urge to lean into his touch, rather than pull away from it—and made myself focus on his words. Because they made sense—up to a point. “Cam, I can’t avoid Anne. Even if she weren’t a friend, I’m working for her.” And unease was already crawling beneath my skin—the very beginnings of resistance pain—because I wasn’t actively pursuing her husband’s killer in that moment. “But she’s not going to ask me to go up against Jake Tower. She won’t do anything to put her daughter in danger, and going after Tower would do just that.”

  “She’s in mourning, Liv. You can’t expect her to react rationally. And you’ll be bound to whatever suicidal, impulsive revenge she asks for.” He frowned, and I recognized the stubborn set of his jawline. “I can’t let you put yourself in that kind of danger.”

  I stepped out of his reach, crossing both arms over my chest. “That’s not up to you.”

  “I’m just trying to protect you, Liv.” He frowned up at me from the couch, elbows resting on his knees.

  “I don’t need your protection. But I could use your help. And for the record, you’re not giving Anne enough credit—I think she’s holding things together pretty well. Besides, I owe her an update, and she deserves to hear the facts in person.”

  Cam gave in with a heavy exhale and a single nod. “Six years has only made you more stubborn.”

  But he was wrong about that. The past six years had also made me faster, meaner and less willing to believe in the inherent goodness of any species that could include Jake Tower and Ruben Cavazos among its numbers.

  “I take it this little emergency meeting means you haven’t found him yet.” Anne’s hand shook as she spooned sugar into her coffee, and I wondered if she’d had any sleep at all in the twenty hours since her husband was murdered.

  Cam and I had not.

  “Not yet. But we know where he lives, we have most of his name, and we found a fresher sample of his blood.” And we had tested the pull of Hunter’s energy signature using both his blood and his name on the way to meet Anne. Both were very strong signals, leading deeper into the west side. Hunter was still alive, and he almost certainly knew someone was after him. Yet he hadn’t left the city.

  The fact that he’d stayed made me nervous, and it was one of the biggest factors in our decision to update—and question—Anne before going after Hunter again.

  Anne sipped from her mug and watched us from across the table, oblivious to the Friday-night dinner crowd just starting to filter in at the end of the nine-to-five shift. “So what’s the problem?”

  I glanced at Cam to see if he wanted to take the lead—he was the one bound to Tower, after all—but he gestured for me to go ahead.

  “Anne, was Shen involved with the Tower syndicate?” I whispered, leaning across the table to make sure we wouldn’t be overheard. “In any way at all?”

  She choked on her coffee. “No,” Anne croaked, blotting her mouth with a paper napkin. “Absolutely not.”

  “Are you sure?” Cam asked. “If he was, he might not have been allowed to tell you. Did you ever see him with anyone who had a chain link tattooed on his arm. Or her arm?”

  Anne leaned closer, brows drawn low over eyes shining even greener than usual with exhaustion. “Living in the suburbs doesn’t make me an idiot. I know Tower’s insignia, and I would know if my husband were working for him. Or meeting with someone who worked for him.”

  Cam gave her an awkward little grin, obviously trying to soften the coming blow. “You might not.” He slid his right hand beneath his left sleeve, as if he had an itch to scratch. “I’m a third-tier initiate.” He lifted the hem of his sleeve quickly and subtly, just long enough for her to get a peek at his marks, then let the material fall.

  Anne set her coffee down carefully, deliberately, but she couldn’t hide the tension in her grip. “You work for Tower.” It wasn’t a question. It was a stunned statement of new facts, spoken to try to convince herself of the reality.

  I knew exactly how she felt.

  “He’s being modest,” I said, unable to keep the bitter edge out of my voice. “He’s actually Jake Tower’s top Tracker. Even got a step promotion last year. Isn’t that swell?”

  Cam’s jaw tightened, but just because he didn’t like the truth didn’t make it not true.

  Anne focused on him with an iron glare, and I realized she was about to make me proud. “I’m going to forgo the whole ‘what the hell were you thinking?’ speech in favor of something even more obvious,” she snapped in a harshisper. “You should have told me that up front. I never would have involved you in this if I’d known!”

  “That’s why I didn’t tell you,” he said, with a meaningful glance at me. “I wanted to help.”

  Anne took a deep breath and another sip from her mug. “So, what does this mean? Why are you asking about Shen in relation to Tower? You think someone killed him because they thought he was…one of you?” she asked, with a censuring glance at Cam.

  “Not exactly…” he mumbled, and I exhaled slowly.

  “Anne, someone in the Tower syndicate paid to have your husband killed.”

  In the silence that followed, the ambient restaurant noise seemed to close in on us, amplifying Anne’s shock and denial, Cam’s obvious confliction, and my own kaleido
scope of anger, fear and dread.

  “Why?” she said, when she’d recovered the ability to speak. “Why would they want Shen dead?”

  “I don’t know.” And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “Are you sure he never had any business with the organization? Could he have been working with or for someone you didn’t know about?”

  Red hair tumbled over her shoulder as Anne shook her head slowly, clearly giving it serious thought. “We both worked from home. We shared an office. There’s no way he could have kept something like that from me. No way he would have.”

  “Then I don’t know,” I repeated. “Cam, any insight? Why might your brothers in crime have a suburban software engineer capped?”

  He scowled at me, but didn’t even try to deny the illegal nature of most of his employer’s business. “It could have been anything. To stop him from working on whatever he was working on. Or, if they wanted him to do something and he refused, this could have been a reprisal. It could even have been intended to scare someone else he worked with into falling into line. Or it could be completely unrelated to his job. Maybe he saw something he shouldn’t have. Maybe he borrowed money he couldn’t pay back. But based on the amount of money someone put out for this, and the fact that they hired someone outside of the organization, I’m guessing this was both personal and important to someone pretty high up. And that’s all I can say. But for the record, it’s also all I know.” This time.

  He didn’t say that last part, but we all heard it.

  “This doesn’t make any sense.” Anne still looked so stunned I was surprised she could form complete sentences. “He didn’t owe any money. We’re not wealthy, but our savings are intact. And he didn’t see anything unusual—he would have told me if he had.” I started to argue that he might not have, to keep her safe, but she amended her own thought before I could. “Or maybe he wouldn’t have told me, but I would have known if he was upset about something. But everything was fine.” Anne closed her eyes and visibly paled. Her hands shook as she pushed straight red hair back from her face.