“Don’t…” She shook her head in frustration. “I can’t explain what I mean. You can tell me it wasn’t my fault until the earth cracks into a billion pieces of space dust, and in my head, I know that’s true. But that doesn’t change anything. I fight for Kenley. I fight for myself. I even fight for Jake, but that’s really just another way of fighting for me and Kenley. But in the dark, I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t do what I do, and that means I failed. I wasn’t strong.”
“Kori, they took away your strength,” I insisted, and she flinched, like my words actually hurt.
“Yeah. And if someone can take away your strength, you weren’t strong enough in the first place. I wasn’t strong enough to fight, and if I’m not a fighter, I don’t know who I am. I don’t know how to be me now. I don’t know how to be anything. I lost myself in there, Ian.” Her fists clenched around a handful of comforter, and her eyes watered. “The Kori who went into that cell isn’t the Kori who came out. I can’t find the old me, and I don’t know how to be this new one.” Her gaze held mine. I was captivated and devastated by the pain she was showing me. “I’m not the Kori Daniels you would have met if you’d come here two months ago.”
“Good.” I reached for her hand and she let me take it. “I’m so very sorry and angry about what happened to you, but I like this Kori. I might even love her.” How could I not? She was a force of nature—a sudden fierce storm that had blown into my life, overturning everything I thought I knew about myself and exposing new truths. She was stronger than anyone I’d ever met, whether she could see that or not. “You may not know who you are, but I do. I know you, and I know you can be anything you want. What do you want to be? Who do you want to be?”
“I don’t know!” She pulled her hand from mine and shoved blond tangles back from her face. “All I know is that I don’t want to be her anymore. I don’t want to be the woman I hear screaming and begging whenever there’s nothing else loud enough to drown it out. I hate her. I hate what she said and what she let happen. I hate her so much that it actually makes me sick. She’s there, in the pit of my stomach, rotting me from the inside out, and every time I think about it, I need to vomit. But no matter how many times I throw up, I can’t purge her. She’s in there, and she’s scared and hurt, and I hate her.”
“No.” I shook my head and took her hands, and finally she looked at me again. “You may not be the woman who went into that cell, but you’re not the woman who lived there for six weeks, either. That Kori died so you can live, and that’s what you have to do. You have to live. And I want to be a part of that life. When the time comes for Jake and Jonah to die, I want to help you hunt them down, and slice them open, and watch their insides fall out.”
“Again with the poetry.” She managed a small smile. “That sounds so much prettier than blowing their brains out.”
“I doubt Jonah would agree with you,” I said returning her smile with a small one of my own. “But I think it’s worth dreaming about. Why don’t you try that? Try dreaming about what we’re going to do to them, instead of what they did to you? I’ll do it with you. We’ll share the dream. Then we’ll share the reality. I promise.”
She blinked at me for several seconds, like she was trying to decide if I was serious. Then she nodded and kissed me, and we slid beneath the covers together. A few minutes later, she fell asleep in my arms again, and this time there were no nightmares. For her. I lay awake for three more hours, trying to figure out how to make my promise a reality. How to help her kill Jake and Jonah, without getting both of us killed in the process.
Her binding had to be broken. All roads led to that one conclusion. And there was only one person in the world who could make that happen.
Kenley Daniels. It all came back to her.
* * *
The next morning, I woke up to find Kori watching me, her fingers curled around mine on the comforter. There was something new in her eyes. Something fragile, but full of promise. After a moment, I realized what I was seeing.
Trust. She was trusting me. She had trusted me, and that couldn’t have been easy, considering what she’d been through. And what I’d come to do. But she didn’t know I’d come to kill her sister, and she wouldn’t know, because I wasn’t going to do it. If I’d had any doubts about that before, they were gone now. I could not betray this fragile new trust.
“Breakfast?” I asked.
She smiled, and my heart beat so hard it bruised the inside of my chest. How could she do that? How could one smile make me ache deep inside, in places I hadn’t even known existed? How could she mean so much to me, in so little time?
“Yeah, but first—” Her sentence ended abruptly as her phone started beeping from somewhere on the floor. Kori popped upright like a jack-in-the-box, fear suddenly as clear in her features as satisfaction had been a moment before. “Shit!” She glanced at the bedside clock, which said it was seven-thirty in the morning, then scrambled off the bed and snatched her jeans from the floor, digging in one pocket in search of her phone. “I have to be in Tower’s office in thirty minutes, or he’ll lock me back up.”
“What?” I rolled onto the floor and flipped up the lid on my suitcase, then snatched a pair of pants from the top of the pile.
“I’m in trouble for not reporting what happened at the park,” she said, stepping into her jeans as I stepped into mine.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because there was fighting, then there was sex, then I told you a whole bunch of other things, and this one just kind of slipped my mind. It’s messy in there, you know.”
“I’m coming with you.” I pulled on my shirt, then sat on the end of the bed to shove my feet into a pair of socks.
“No, I have to go alone.” She buttoned her pants, then took the bra I handed her and I fastened the hooks at her back while she dialed on her phone. “Kenley?” she said, when her sister answered. Kenley said something I couldn’t make out, and Kori nodded. “I know. Twenty-five minutes.” She shoved one arm into her sleeve, then transferred the phone to her other hand and slid the opposite arm in, too. “Is Van with you?” she said, and I buttoned her shirt, so she could hold the phone.
“I don’t want to leave you alone,” Kori said, in response to something else I couldn’t hear, and I saw my opportunity.
“I’ll stay with her,” I said, and Kori looked up at me. And that trust faltered. I could see it. “She can come here, or I’ll go there. Whichever’s easier.”
“I don’t know…” Kori said, and I realized that her devotion to Kenley might be the only thing in the world strong enough to threaten the connection we’d just made.
Good thing I wasn’t planning to kill her sister anymore.
“I swear on my life that I won’t let anything happen to her,” I said.
Kori closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay.” She wanted to threaten me. I could almost hear the words she was holding back, and I understood them. She was trusting me with the only thing she had left in the world, other than her heart, and I was hoping she’d trust me with that, too, if I kept Kenley safe from…whatever was threatening her at the moment.
“Kenni, I’m going to drop Ian off on my way to Jake’s.” Another pause, and Kori frowned. “He’s not a babysitter. He’s a friend, and I trust him. Just humor me, okay? We’ll be there in a minute.”
Thanks to the miracle of shadow-walking, she meant that literally.
Kori threw on the rest of her clothes, then we brushed our teeth and I helped wind the scarf around her neck again. Then we stepped from my bathroom into her sister’s apartment.
Kori let go of my hand and a second later, light flared to life overhead, illuminating a cramped room stuffed with a twin bed, desk and dresser. A pile of free weights stood in one corner and a collection of handguns and knives were laid out on a towel stretched over her dresser, next to a squeeze bottle of gun oil sitting on an aluminum case that could only be a gun kit.
“Kenni!” Kori called, and an
instant later Kenley Daniels appeared in the tiny hall. The three of us would hardly have fit in the bedroom together. “I have to go. I need you to stay here with Ian. He’ll protect you.”
“From what?” Kenley crossed her arms over her chest and glared openly at me. “There’s a guard right outside the front door.”
“We can’t trust Jake’s men. This is just in case.”
“No way. We can’t trust him, Kori! He’s not bound. You hardly even know him.”
“I know enough,” Kori said, and I realized she was using my words. And that I loved hearing them in her voice. “Just stay with him until I get back.” Then she turned to me, her hand already on the light switch, ready to step into the darkness once again. “If I’m not back in an hour, get her out of here. Same thing goes if anyone comes for her. Kill the bastard and get her as far away as you can.”
I nodded, but she shook her head, like that wasn’t enough. “Fucking promise me, Ian.”
“What’s going on?” Kenley demanded, but Kori didn’t even glance at her.
“I swear, I won’t let anything happen to her,” I said, but Kenley’s scowl didn’t soften.
Kori watched me for a second, then went up on her toes and kissed me. “Thank you.” Then she reached back and flipped the switch to kill the light, and as soon as she was gone, I realized that I could feel her absence, even though I couldn’t see it.
Twenty-Five
Kori
I stepped out of my bedroom and into Jake’s darkroom in an instant, my heartbeat measuring the seconds, burning through them faster than should have been possible. I had minutes to get out of the darkroom, down the stairs, and into Jake’s office, and if I wasn’t there when his timer went off, I might never see either the light of day or true darkness again.
I flipped the light switch up and pressed the button beneath the monitor mounted flush with the wall next to the door. Static buzzed on the screen for several seconds, while impatience buzzed beneath my skin. Then a familiar face appeared in its place, his broken nose and black eyes rendered in full color from the closed-circuit camera in the security room.
David. Shit. He’d been demoted to hall monitor because I’d taken him down twice in twenty-four hours.
“Kori Daniels, what an unpleasant surprise.”
“Let me out. Jake’s expecting me.”
David leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, and I realized that—at least from my vantage point—the security room was empty behind him. His supervisor was gone—cigarette? Bathroom?—and it was just the two of us, for the time being. “Apologize for rebreaking my nose with a fucking sucker punch, and I’ll let you out.”
“Sucker punch my ass.” I crossed my arms over my shirt. “You fight like a twelve-year-old girl with menstrual cramps.”
“Bitch!” he growled, leaning closer to the camera. “You know Jake won’t let them set my nose? He wants me to see it every day as a reminder of my arrogance. Or some shit like that.” His eyes narrowed in fury. “If I ever get another shot at you, I’m going to break every bone in your face. Then there’ll be no jobs left for you, except as a freak in the haunted house on Halloween.”
“Don’t listen to the rest of them, David. Your threats are sounding more credible every day. Someday I might even tremble.” I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed Jake’s number. “Hey, it’s Kori,” I said, when he answered. “I’m in the darkroom.”
On the monitor, David scowled and pressed a button, and the darkroom door swung open into the hall.
“Be there in just a sec,” I said, then hung up without waiting for a response from Jake. I had a minute and a half. I shoved the door open, and David’s shout chased me halfway down the hall.
“You’ll never see me coming, Daniels!”
Maybe not. But his angry bellow seemed to suggest that I’d hear him coming from a mile away.
I raced down the curved staircase, across the foyer, and into Jake’s office with thirty seconds to spare, and his timer started beeping before I’d even caught my breath.
“Slow start this morning?” he said from behind his desk, one brow raised in amusement over my huffing and puffing.
“Nah. Traffic was a bitch, though.”
“Well, you seem to have regained some of your former spunk.” Julia crossed one leg over the other from her perch on the credenza to the left of Jake’s desk. “It almost sounds like recruiting agrees with you, Kori.” I spared one moment to visualize exactly how far through her face I’d like to shove my fist, then I dismissed her in favor of her brother, almost proud that I’d resisted rising to her bait.
“Tell me about the park,” Jake said, and Julia scowled. She hated being ignored by anyone, and by her brother most of all.
I shrugged and dropped into a chair in front of his desk. “There’s a swing set, and a slide, and on Thursdays, if you bring two dollars, you can get a cherry-pineapple snow cone from a clown with a red nose.”
“Korinne…” Jake’s angry voice was all the warning I’d get, but if I didn’t at least try to push his buttons, he’d suspect something was up.
“Oh, fine. Cam and Olivia showed up with guns and tried to take Ian to the east side.”
Jake’s brows shot up again. “Cameron was there?”
“Yeah. Is it true you let Cavazos buy his contract?” I’d never heard of anyone else getting out of a contract with Tower early.
Jake folded his hands on his desk, and suddenly I felt like a kid called before the principal. “Korinne, it doesn’t benefit you to remind me of the part you played in letting Cavazos into my home. In fact, it makes me want to lock you up again until I manage to forget just how badly behaved you’ve been.”
My jaw clenched, and I fought to unlock it. “I’m more use to you here. On the outside.”
Julia huffed and leaned forward, gripping the edge of the credenza on either side of her knees. “That remains to be seen.”
“Well, it’s not like I can compete with all that useful sitting around you do,” I snapped, relishing the glower she aimed my way.
“I was well compensated for the loss of Mr. Caballero,” Jake said, as if neither of us had spoken. “But please understand that no one will pay for you like Cavazos paid for him. Your Skill is common, your strength and range mediocre. You are worth more to me for your influence over your sister than as a Traveler, and you’ve never been worth less to me as a bodyguard.” He leaned forward, eyeing me closely. “And to elaborate on the recent decline of your value, reports from the guards who protect your sister tell me she’s had frequent company recently—a certain pretty former prostitute who seems quite taken with Kenley. You know what that means, don’t you, Korinne?”
Yeah. I knew.
“That means that you’re about to become obsolete,” Julia supplied, and Jake nodded.
“So if you have any worth to claim, I suggest you start demonstrating it now. What happened with Caballero and Olivia Warren at the park?”
I sighed and swallowed the rest of the sarcasm burning in my throat. “They pulled guns on us, so Ian called up darkness, and I stepped us through it and into the wine cellar. We picked up a bottle of Cabernet for you, but I seem to have forgotten it in my rush to be threatened and insulted here today.”
Okay, I swallowed most of the sarcasm. But neither Tower sibling seemed to notice.
“He made it dark in the middle of the day? Outside?” Julia said, and for once there was nothing in her voice but genuine surprise.
“Well, in the shade from some oak trees, but yeah.”
“Amazing.” Jake nodded, pleased. “Tell me about his fighting. He’s good?”
“Yeah. He’s fast, and strong, and accurate with a gun.” I didn’t want to increase Ian’s value, but I wouldn’t get away with lying. “We actually make a good team—he creates darkness and I use it. We could do good work for you.” I flinched as soon as I heard the words falling from my own tongue. They reeked of desperation. But it’s not like I was
giving away my hand; we all knew what I stood to lose.
Jake leaned back in his chair, eyeing me in ruthless interest now. “Did you fuck him yet?”
I stared at the floor, silently refusing to answer. Hating how dirty the question made me feel. “He’s going to sign. That’s what you really want to know.”
“Don’t tell me what I want to know. This assignment is equal parts recruitment of Holt and punishment for you—an extension of your sentence in the basement.”
I bristled, my temper flaring like heartburn. “I thought this was a chance for me to prove myself.” To save my life and secure Kenley’s future.
“It’s all of that at once. Efficient, isn’t it?” Jake smiled, and I wanted to break every tooth in his mouth. “Now, did you fuck him?”