“No, that is a little girl in a blue baseball cap. Evidently gender-specific physical traits aren’t so clear at that age. At least, not with the diaper on.”
Ruben brought the picture closer to his face and stared at the baby. Then he compared it to the child in his own picture by staring at that one. And finally he met my gaze again. “So…you’re serious? I have another daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
I hesitated a little longer than I should have, unsure how best to break the rest of the news to him. “That’s where this gets complicated. A couple of hours ago, she was in Cam’s apartment, but—”
“You brought him in on this? You took my daughter to Caballero’s apartment, before you even told me you’d found her?”
“No, on both counts. Cam and I were working on something else entirely. We were trying to protect a mutual friend’s daughter. But then it turned out that her daughter and your son were the same person. Only she was a little better informed about the child’s gender. And location. And name.” But not by much.
His forehead furrowed and his voice dropped into the dangerously angry range. “You and Caballero knew Tam—Noelle?”
“I grew up with her. Cam only met her once, through me. But we never knew she had a baby. Elle and I were out of touch the whole time she was with you, and afterward…she didn’t tell anyone.”
“If Noelle is dead, how did she hire you to protect her daughter from me?”
“We weren’t protecting her from you, Ruben. I’ve found no indication that she ever thought you’d hurt your own child.”
He looked so relieved by that fact—so uncharacteristically human—that I had to press the ice into my battered cheek again to remind myself that he really was a world-class asshole in everyday life.
“And she wasn’t the one who hired us. Before Elle was murdered, she sent Hadley to another friend to raise, in the event of her death. Which she obviously knew was coming. You knew about her Skill, right?”
Cavazos nodded and waved that bit of trivia off as unimportant. “Get on with it.”
“Anyway, she gave the bby to Anne and forbade her from telling anyone the child wasn’t hers. Which is one of the reasons you’ve had trouble finding her. Well, that, and you thought she was a boy. Clever on Elle’s part, huh?”
“I should have expected no less.”
“Yeah, well, she’s given all of us a bit of a postmortem surprise. But the weirdest part is that I randomly wound up working for you six years after she died, looking for the daughter you never knew you had. It’s almost too coincidental to believe.”
Ruben brows rose in mild amusement. “It’s neither weird nor coincidental, Olivia. It’s my Tamara. Your Noelle.”
“You think she knew I’d wind up working for you? And that Anne would hire me to protect Hadley in the middle of all that?” I shook my head slowly, trying to wrap my brain around the impossibility.
“I’m saying she pushed you into working for me, just like she pushed your friend Anne into raising her child and protecting her from Michaela.”
Did he really think we were all trying to protect his illegitimate child from his own psychotic wife? A valid assumption, I guess, but way off base…
“Ruben, I know she was a Seer, which is part of the problem with Hadley, but she couldn’t have seen everything. No one can see everything.”
“Is that what you think?” He laughed, as if he hadn’t even heard the part about his daughter. “You think she was just a Seer? Tamara—Noelle—was so much more than that. She didn’t just see the possibilities for the future, she saw the strings connecting all those possibilities. She could mentally pluck one string and watch how it rippled along all the other lines, changing things. Rearranging them. She pulled my strings, Olivia. It sounds like she pulled yours, too—yours and your friends. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that she pulled the string that put you in the city—in my line of sight—in the first place.”
“No.” I shook my head, trying not to see all the pieces of the puzzle that was Elle, suddenly falling into place now that he’d revealed the pattern they formed. “I came to the city to get away from Cam.” Because Elle had said one of us would kill the other.
Shit!
Ruben laughed at my expression. “It was her, wasn’t it? She’s the reason you’re here?”
“Not just me…” I mumbled, before I realized I wasn’t obligated to tell him this part of it, and that if I did, he’d no doubt use it against me someday.
But the unspoken words still echoed in my head. The truth was that Elle hadn’t just pulled my strings. Cam had followed me to the city and wound up working for the other side—the side that had kidnapped her daughter—and that no longer felt like an unfortunate-but-random occurrence. If Ruben was right about Elle’s Skill, she could have put Cam where he was. She’d placed a mole—an insider’s set of eyes and ears—into the organization she knew we would someday have to infiltrate.
But she hadn’ placed Kori in the Tower syndicate. I was virtually certain of that. She never would have put a friend in the position Kori was in. Kori was a wild card—the one element Noelle, for whatever reason, hadn’t been able to account for.
“Oh, wow.” I had no other words for it. No wonder Tower wanted her child. He might not even know Hadley was also the daughter of his mortal enemy—knowing she might inherit the kind of serious Skill her mother had was temptation enough to snatch the child while she was still small and helpless, even if there was no proof yet that she’d actually be a Seer.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Cavazos said, and I saw a hint of a nostalgic smile on his face, so out of place it was startling. “She was also impossible to surprise on her birthday. Though I still have no idea what she saw.” He spread both arms to take in the whole tangled catastrophe. “Why she did any of this.”
“She did it to protect her daughter—your daughter—from Jake Tower.”
“What?” Cavazos demanded, and in an instant, the calm, almost nostalgic syndicate leader I’d come to tolerate over the past few minutes was gone. In his place sat the Ruben Cavazos of old, but the anger now blazing behind his eyes was fueled by fear and desperation, lending a much more personal—and dangerous—flavor to his rage.
“Olivia, where is my daughter?”
“We’re not sure. Exactly. Cam was able to get a read on her name, and he thinks she’s still in the city. But Tower has her.”
I barely even saw him move. One second he was sitting in the chair to my right. In the next instant, a Ruben-shape blur streaked toward me and an instant after that, I fought to get my feet beneath me as I was dragged across the room by my neck. My back slammed into the front door. Then Ruben was in my face, and I really wished I’d had the forethought to grab the knife I’d hidden in the couch.
“How the hell did Jake Tower get my daughter?”
“Spy,” I gasped, and he loosened his hold so I could speak. But not by much. “Before we knew Hadley was yours, we called a friend for help—a Traveler—but it turns out she’s bound to Tower. She didn’t want to take Hadley. She didn’t have any choice.”
“How long ago?”
I rolled my eyes to the left until I could see the clock mounted on the wall above the kitchen sink. “About two and a half hours ago.”
“Jake Tower has had my daughter for two and a half hours, and you’re just now telling me?”
“We didn’t know she was yours until a few minutes ago—when I told your men to call you.”
“So…I hire you to find my child, and instead, you get her kidnapped by a man who’s been trying to kill me for the better part of a decade. Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you right now.”
His hand tightened around my throat, and I gasped reflexively, trying to drag in air that wouldn’t come. I clawed at his hands, but when he whispered for me to let go, my hands fell to my sides of their own accord. Contractually speaking, he couldn’t kill me. But he could da
mn well choke me until I passed out, and then he’d find Cam and Anne in the back room, and without me to mediate, he might very well decide to kill them both before he even realized who Anne was.
I kicked out as hard as I could, and my boot slammed into his shin. Ruben cursed and squeezed tighter.
Desperate and out of ideas, I kicked backward, and my boot heel echoed against the hollow door. I kicked it one more time, before he could order me to stop.
A second later, Cam stepped into my line of sight over Cavazos’s shoulder, gun aimed at Ruben’s back. “Let go of her now, or I will shoot you.”
Twenty-Six
Ruben Cavazos turned to face me slowly, one hand still around Liv’s neck. I’d only met him once, and I would have hated him then even if his men hadn’t just beaten me into a mass of lumps and bruises. Seeing his hands on Liv now… I wanted to kill him. Not just shoot him. Not kick his teeth in. I wanted to squeeze the last breath from his body and watch the life drain from his eyes.
“If you pull that trigger, it’ll be the last thing you ever do,” Cavazos said, and in that moment, I didn’t give a damn. At least he’d be dead and she would be free of him. Until his men burst into the apartment and killed everyone left standing.
So I didn’t shoot, but I didn’t lower my gun either, and Cavazos turned back to Liv as if I wasn’t still pointing a gun at him—an illustration of the arrogance and fearlessness he was known for. And I hated him just a little more.
“What the hell is he doing in my apartment?” he demanded calmly. “Did you fuck him in my bed? Because I’m not sure I could forgive that, Olivia.”
“Helping,” she gasped, when his grip loosened just enough for her to speak. “He’s helping.”
“Clearly.” His voice deepened with sarcasm. “A gun aimed at my back is always the sign of a helping hand.” He turned to me without letting her go. “Put the gun down, or I’ll crush her windpipe. Now.”
“I don’t think you’re going to do that,” I said, and Olivia’s eye widened. “In fact, I think you’re contractually prohibited from killing her, and even if I’m wrong, if you kill her, I have no reason not to kill you. Then your men will come in here and kill everyone else, and there’ll be no one left to go rescue Hadley. And I don’t think you’re going to let that happen.”
Even if Liv was wrong about his capacity to love a child he’d never met, I wasn’t wrong about his determination to take her back from Jake Tower, at all costs. Cavazos would never let an insult like that go unpunished.
He nodded, once, curtly, as she sucked in another breath. “We seem to be in a draw.”
“No, you’re at a distinct disadvantage. I have a gun and am willing to kill you, but you hav no gun and are not willing to kill her. Ergo, I win.”
Cavazos considered that for a moment, then narrowed his gaze at me. “If I let her go, you will put the gun away? Immediately?”
I nodded. “If you swear to leave your men downstairs out of this.”
“Done. I swear.” He let go of Liv’s throat and she half collapsed, gasping for air. He reached for her, as if he’d either help her up or haul her up, but she dodged his grasp before he could wrap a hand around her gunshot wound.
“Don’t…touch…me,” she growled, her voice as low-pitched and hoarse as I’d ever heard it. Then she stomped past him, headed in my direction. “FYI, Cam, he does have a gun. He always has a gun.”
“Good to know.” I holstered mine, but left it exposed just in case.
“Olivia, you can’t trust him,” Cavazos said. “He works for Tower.”
“Not by choice.” In the kitchen, I ran a cold glass of water for Liv and handed it to her across the counter dividing the two rooms. “And if Tower knows I’m here, it’s not because I told him. Liv destroyed my phone. We’ve been operating completely outside both syndicates.”
“You really expect me to believe that?” Cavazos scowled at me from across the room through eyes so dark they could have hidden original sin.
“I don’t give a shit what you believe.”
“Ruben,” Liv said, still hoarse from the abuse of her throat. He looked at her as if he wanted to eat her whole, and the urge to rip his heart out with my bare hands grew from fleeting fantasy to finger-twitching compulsion. “Cam’s not representing Tower in this. He’s telling the truth. And I trust him with my life.”
“Then you’re a fool,” Cavazos snapped. “He’d hand you over with one word from Jake Tower.”
“Yeah, and you just threatened to crush my windpipe. The difference is that you were acting of your own free will. So shut the hell up so we can start planning. We’re going to need your manpower and Cam’s knowledge of the Tower syndicate to get her out of there.”
“Will someone please tell me why the hell Jake Tower took my daughter? Is this a move against me?”
“It has nothing to do with you,” Liv said, while I pulled two clean, short glasses from an upper cabinet. “As far as we know, he has no idea she’s yours.”
“Then what does he want with her? Has he hurt her?”
Liv glanced at the floor, then met his gaze again. “I don’t know. But the more time we waste, the less likely she is to be unhurt when we get to her.”
I set the bottle of whiskey on the countertop harder than necessary to capture his attention, and when Cavazos looked at me, I poured a fifty-dollar shot into each of two glasses, then handed one to Liv. When I drank the other one myself, he scowled, but made no comment.
“If he’s not tryk the othe get to me, why the hell does he want her?”
“He wants her blood,” Anne said from the hallway, having ventured out of the bedroom for the first time since I’d told her to stay put, unsure how bad things were going to get. “How are you going to keep him from getting it?”
Cavazos whirled around fast enough I half hoped he’d injured his own neck. “Who the hell are you?”
“This is Anne,” Liv said, before Annika could dig herself in any deeper. “She’s been raising Hadley since Elle died. Which means you owe her both respect and gratitude.”
“Is there anyone else back there?” he demanded from Liv. “Or are you done pulling rabbits from your hat?”
Anne crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m the last,” she said, and Cavazos truly looked at her for the first time, studying her from head to toe, and I could see that she wanted to squirm, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“My daughter thinks you’re her mother?”
“I am her mother,” Anne insisted. “The only one she remembers.”
“And your husband?” he demanded, glancing pointedly at the wedding ring she still wore. “She thinks your husband is her father?”
“She did.” Anne glanced at the ground for a second, silently grasping for composure, then she met his gaze again boldly. “Tower had him killed yesterday, trying to get to Hadley.”
“Did your husband treat her well? Did you both?”
Fresh tears shone in her eyes. “As if she were our own.”
“Then I am very sorry for your loss. You will be compensated for your care of my daughter.”
“I don’t want your money!” Anne snapped, cheeks flaming with indignation, fists clenched against injustice. “I just want my daughter back. And she is my daughter. She may have your DNA, but she has Elle’s heart and my love, and you don’t even know her!”
Liv tried to quiet her with one hand on her shoulder, but Anne brushed that hand away and stepped closer to Cavazos, fearless in defense of her daughter. “We could really use your help, but I’d rather go after her all alone than rescue her from one monster only to turn her over to another.”
“You think I’m a monster?”
“I know you are.” She glanced pointedly at Liv’s bruised face. “And I won’t let you have Hadley, even if you help us get her back.”
Cavazos watched her for a moment in silence, evidently waiting for her to take the insult back or soften it with an apology, and when she did ne
ither, his expression broke into a small, genuinely amused smile. “I admire your grit. When this is all over, I’d like to discuss a potential future for you in the syndicate….”
“Go to hell,” Anne spat, and Cavazos laughed out loud, turning to Liv. “Are the two of you actually related? Because I think I see the family resemblance.&8221;
“Anne…” I tugged her toward the table and motioned for Liv to follow, and with us seated on either side of her, she seemed to calm down. “Why don’t we just worry about getting Hadley back for now, and we can sort the rest of this out then. Once she’s safe.” And finally Anne nodded.
Instead of joining us at the table for a civilized discussion, however, Cavazos leaned against the back of the couch, where he could see the three of us, the front door and the hallway, with nothing more than a glance in one of three directions. “First, the facts,” he said, evidently under the impression that he was in charge. Rumor had it he lived his whole life under that delusion. “Why does Tower want my daughter’s blood?”
“It’s not just hers,” Liv said. “He’s collecting Skilled blood samples—or maybe Skilled people, we’re not entirely sure about that—like Noah collecting for the arc. Minus the apocalyptic flood.”
“Interesting recruiting technique…” Cavazos said, as if he might consider something similar, and I wanted to punch him. “But taking children is way over the line.”
I huffed in disgust. “And enslaving teenagers as prostitutes isn’t?”
Cavazos turned to me slowly and the slightly deepened lines on his forehead hinted of caution—not guilt, not regret and certainly not denial—and that pissed me off even more. “I have no moral objection to the skin trade,” he said. “If someone wants to sell his or her body, who am I to object? Beyond that, I’m perfectly willing to profit from the sale, should someone wish to use my contacts to establish a reliable customer base. But I neither sanction nor participate in the binding of minors, for a variety of reasons.”
“Whether you ‘sanction’ it or not, it’s being done in your name, and you’re profiting from it, so don’t start talking like the horse you ride is any higher than Tower’s when the truth is that neither of you would recognize morality if it punched you in the face.”