“Vanessa!” Kenley screeched, and Tower laughed again.
“Good guess. Vanessa and I are in the basement, and she’s just had her first taste of my displeasure. Tell them what happened, Vanessa,” Tower said, and Van’s ragged, uneven breathing grew louder as the phone was moved closer to her.
“Cut,” she gasped, and the word was bitten off, like she’d swallowed back sobs. “Fucker cut me.”
“And I’ll let him do it again,” Tower said as Vanessa’s shocked pants faded. “Once every fifteen minutes until you show up. If the three of you aren’t here in ninety minutes, the last cut will be across her throat.”
“Kenley, don’t—” Vanessa shouted, but her words were swallowed by another scream of pain, and tears rolled down Kenley’s face.
“Ninety minutes,” Tower repeated. Then the phone went dead.
“Oh, shit. Shitshitshit.” Kenley sank onto the couch in shock, her phone still cradled in her hands. She was pale from ongoing resistance pain, and her hands were starting to shake again. “What are we going to do?”
“Surely he won’t kill her,” Ian said. “If she’s dead, what’s our motivation to turn ourselves in?”
If Jake said he’d kill her, he’d kill her. Then he’d find new motivation. But I couldn’t say that with my sister listening.
“But he’ll cut her!” Kenley shrieked.
“There’s nothing we can do about that,” I said, brushing past her and into my bedroom. “But we’re going to get her back, and then we’re out of here. All four of us. You can break her binding, and we’ll figure out how to break yours, even if it means killing Barker.”
“The minute someone sees your dead marks and reports them, Tower will know Kenley broke your binding,” Ian said, following me into my room. “And he’ll know you’re going after Barker to free Kenley. Beyond that, if we get caught and Vanessa’s binding is already broken, he’ll have no reason to keep her alive.”
I settled my double holster onto my shoulders and adjusted the straps, watching him in the mirror. “So Kenley won’t break Van’s binding yet, and he won’t know she broke mine.” I turned to my sister as I slid the silenced nine millimeter into the custom left hip holster. “Kenni, get a black permanent marker.”
While she rooted through kitchen drawers, I handed Ian a spare double holster and he chose one of my extras to go along with Milligan’s gun, which he obviously meant to keep.
When Kenley came back with the marker, I exchanged it for a slim folding knife. I would have given her a gun, except that she was still bound to Jake, and the gun would be easier for him to make her use against us.
Then I turned to Ian with my left sleeve pulled up over my shoulder and handed him the marker. “Try to stay inside the lines.”
Twenty-Eight
Ian
“How does it look?” Kori asked as I put the cap back on the marker.
“Not bad. Unless he carries a magnifying glass, he’ll never know the difference. How did you know that would work?”
She stood and examined her arm in the bathroom mirror. “I used a wig and a black permanent marker to sneak around the east side a couple of times when I first came to the city, before anyone really knew who I was.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Kenley asked from the doorway, twisting her fingers together. She hadn’t stopped fidgeting since Tower hung up on her, and she kept ducking into the living room to check the clock hanging over the door.
I’d been checking the time, too. Eight minutes until her girlfriend would get cut again. No wonder she was melting down.
“Well, even if Jake doesn’t know my marks are dead, I’ll never make it to the basement like this,” Kori said, patting her guns in their holsters.
“What if we go in from the basement?” I said, from my seat on the edge of the tub. “If I could get down there on my own and call up true darkness, you could come through it, right? We could grab Vanessa and go.”
“Can you do that?” Surprise shone through the shock still lingering in Kenley’s eyes. “Can you make darkness deep enough to blind the infrared lights?”
Kori’s brows rose. “Kenni, he can block out the fuckin’ sun.”
“Not the whole sun,” I amended. “Just a little of its light.”
“Daylight?” Kenley gaped at me. “You can kill daylight?” she said, and I nodded. “No wonder Jake wants you.”
“Well, he’s not going to get me. He’s not going to get any of us.”
Kori nodded, obviously thinking. “Okay, we’ll drop Kenley somewhere safe, then you’ll turn yourself in to Jake. Once you’re in the house, find some excuse to go to the basement. Say you won’t sign until you know Van’s okay, and if that doesn’t work, do whatever it takes to get down there, and I’ll come get you both. But take this gun and leave that one here.” She pulled the pistol from my right holster and replaced it with one from her dresser.
“Why this one?”
“Because they’ll confiscate your weapons, but if you don’t try to bring some in, you’ll look weak. And I don’t mind losing that one.”
I gave her a grim nod, trying not to show how much this plan was growing on me. If Van was in the basement, Jonah would be, too. I would get a shot at him, and that would make the whole thing worth it. But…
“But my brother comes first.”
Both Daniels sisters looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Ian, Van’s being tortured,” Kori said.
“So is Steven. He’s been on the verge of death for two weeks. His organs are failing. He can’t talk. He can’t sleep. He’s so pale you can almost see through his skin. He’s dying, and I’ve made him suffer two days longer than he had to because I didn’t want to hurt either of you. But now that I know Kenley can break his binding, we have to go help him. Now.”
“Wait, he’s in breach?” Kori’s eyes were so big the rest of her features looked smaller in comparison. “You said he was bound, but you never said he was in breach of his binding. How could he survive that for two weeks?”
“Meghan’s a Healer.”
“Who’s Meghan?” Kenley asked, and Kori answered with only a brief glance at her.
“Steven’s girlfriend.” She turned back to me. “Meghan’s been healing him for two weeks?”
I nodded. “Almost two and a half, now. They’re both hanging on by a thread, and I came here to break the binding. And for that I need Kenley.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Kenley said, crossing her arms over her chest so I couldn’t see them shake—a clear sign of the resistance pain she was fighting.
Kori’s hard gaze flicked from me to the clock over the microwave—we were all counting the minutes. “But you said she can only break bindings she actually sealed…”
“Yeah. She’s the one who bound Steven. We don’t know what or who she bound him to, but we know it was her. The Tracker recognized her psychic signature—he evidently sees it a lot in this area.” Because Kenley had bound nearly three quarters of Tower’s current employees, according to Aaron’s sources.
“Whoa.” Kori stepped away from me, eyes narrowed on me in suspicion. “You never said Kenley was the one who bound your brother.”
“I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell you any of this while you were still bound to Tower.” And now Kenley was suffering the resistance pain I’d tried so hard to spare Kori.
“He works for Jake?” Kenley frowned in both confusion and pain. She hadn’t caught on yet to the truth already surfacing through her sister’s ambient anger. “Because I haven’t bound anyone to anything except service to Jake in six and a half years.”
“This would have been sometime before that,” I said, watching Kori even as I answered her sister.
“Why are you here, Ian?” Kori demanded, her voice as soft and dangerous as I’d ever heard it. “Why are you really here?” Her hand hovered at her hip, ready to draw on me like a Wild West outlaw. A tiny, scary, blonde outlaw.
“Kori, wait…”
&
nbsp; “At least have the balls to admit it. You didn’t come for her help. You came here to kill her,” Kori said, and Kenley stared at us both, pain and confusion warring for control of her expression. “That description you gave Jake—that wasn’t me, it was Kenley. You requested her so you could get close enough to kill her.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Kenley said, hunched over now from the pain in her stomach. “I didn’t bind your brother. I’ve never even heard of him.”
Kori drew her gun. “Kenni, go to your room.” Tears filled her eyes, but her aim didn’t waver. And I didn’t draw against her. I couldn’t.
“I’m not going to hurt her.” I held my hands up, palms out, demonstrating how harmless I was. “I gave you my word.”
“What good is your word, if you’ve been lying the whole time?” Kori demanded, rage flashing behind her eyes, fueled by something even stronger. Something she didn’t want to admit to.
“I had no choice!” Anger rose through me slowly, winding its way up my spine. “You’d do anything to protect Kenley. So how can you blame me for being willing to do the same for my brother? I didn’t know her.” I spared a glance at Kenley, who still watched us in shock. “I didn’t know you. All I knew was that killing her would save Steven, and he’s my brother. We shared the same fucking womb! But then I met you, and you were horrible, in the most wonderful way.”
“Don’t…” Her aim held steady, but her eyes were watering again.
“You were tactless, and scary, and funny, and easy to provoke, but I knew from the start that you were so strong. You’re a fighter, and I loved that about you from the beginning, and I knew I couldn’t hurt you, even to save my brother. So I found another way, and I had to do it without telling you. To protect you. I did what had to be done, and if you’ll just put the damn gun down and think about this for a second, you’ll realize that you would have done the same thing.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” She lowered the gun. “I would have gone through with it. I wouldn’t have hesitated to kill your brother to save my sister.”
For a moment, we stared at one another, a silent brutal understanding passing between us. Then she blinked, and one more tear rolled down her face. “And I would do the same for you.”
My chest ached like someone had tried to pry my ribs open and pull my heart out through the gap.
“I don’t know what’s going on here.” Kenley sank onto the couch, drawing both her sister’s attention and mine. “I don’t remember binding anyone named Steven Holt, but if this doesn’t stop, I’m going to ask you to reconsider shooting me.” Her face was twisted with pain, her arms clutching her stomach in obvious agony.
“Come with me.” I dropped into a squat in front of Kenley, to catch her gaze. “If you can break Steven’s binding while Meghan has anything left in her, she can help you, at least long enough for us to work on your binding.” I glanced up at Kori, appealing to her mercenary logic. “We can’t stay here anyway. Tower’s probably already sent men after us.”
“What about Van?” Kenley demanded, and I recognized the angry flush in her cheeks—she looked just like her sister in that moment.
“I’m not going to let the princess die in the dungeon. Kori and I will go after her as soon as Steven’s unbound.”
“But…” Her foot began to jiggle—a very bad sign. And every minute she didn’t turn herself in to Jake, it would get a little worse.
“No more arguments. We’re going. Ian, get the lights.” Kori wrapped one arm around her sister and carefully pulled her up from the couch while I crossed the room to flip switches in the kitchen and by the front door, where I had to step over the dead guard’s body. When the room was dark enough to travel through, I took Kori’s free hand and gave her the address. She spared a moment to visualize the general location and search for a pocket of darkness. Then she stepped forward and Kenley and I went with her.
Two steps later, I banged my shin on the toilet in the house Meghan grew up in. They’d kept the house when they moved out a few years earlier, but it was currently unrented, which made it a decent hideout. Though Tower’s Trackers would find us, if we stayed too long.
Kori’s foot hit something and she cursed, while I felt around on the wall for the light switch.
Something clicked behind us just as I found the light, and I was still half-blind when I turned to find Aaron aiming a gun at me from the hall. He exhaled in relief when he recognized me, and his aim shifted to Kori.
“We haven’t met.” Kori half held her sister up with one arm, leaving her left hand free to go for her gun. “I’m Kori Daniels. If you don’t get that gun out of my face, I’m gonna take it, then I’m gonna break your jaw so I can unhinge it and shove your own pistol down your throat. That way the bullet goes through the long way.”
I groaned and gestured for Aaron to holster his gun, but he looked distinctly disinclined. “She believes in making a strong first impression. But she’s here to help. They both are.”
Aaron held his position for another second, then reluctantly lowered his gun and stepped aside, so we could enter. I took Kenley from her sister and carried the Binder in both arms down the hall and into Steven’s room, where he lay on the bed, a skeleton wrapped in skin so thin it looked like it might tear at the slightest pressure.
“Oh, hell,” Kori whispered. “He should be dead.”
“Don’t ever say that again,” Meghan said from her recliner next to the bed. The circles beneath her eyes had darkened and swollen. Her arms were thin and pale, and the veins stood out like dark tree branches, stretching beneath her skin.
Kenley gasped when I set her in a chair on the opposite side of the bed and she got her first look at my brother. “Twins?” she asked, and I nodded, surprised she could see the resemblance in what little was left of him.
“He’s nine minutes my junior.” I knelt next to the bed, searching for something familiar in the living skeleton that used to be my brother. I wanted to take his hand so he’d know I was there, but I was afraid to touch him.
Steven’s eyes rolled beneath his lids, and he groaned in his sleep. Only he wasn’t really sleeping—he was barely clinging to consciousness.
“I don’t know him.” Kenley’s eyes filled with tears and she sounded half-choked by them. “I thought when I saw him I’d remember, but I’ve never seen him before. I didn’t bind him.”
I pulled up a folding chair and sat next to her, while Aaron and Kori hovered near the doorway. “You may not have personally bound him, but your blood and your will sealed the binding.”
Kenley blinked in confusion, but then comprehension surfaced so hard and fast her body actually jerked, like someone had slapped her. She turned to her sister, anger and guilt warring behind her eyes, pain evident in every movement she made. “Nadia? You told him about Nadia?”
Kori shrugged. “I was explaining how we got involved with Jake in the first place.”
“Who’s Nadia?” Aaron asked.
“Her college roommate,” Kori said. “Years ago Kenley gave a sample of her blood to some bitch she had a crush on, who abused the fuckin’ privilege.”
“But Jake fixed all that. None of those bindings are still intact.”
“I don’t care who made the mess and who cleaned it up,” Aaron said from the edge of the room. “His bindings are obviously still intact, and your blood is keeping it that way. So break the fucking seal now, or I’ll end this once and for all.” He drew his gun and pointed it at Kenley’s head, and she gasped.
Kori burst into motion so fast I hardly saw her move. She shoved his gun arm up, startling Aaron, who accidently fired into the ceiling, and the rest of us ducked. Kori threw her knee up and into his groin, and when Aaron fell to his knees, too shocked to make a sound, she took his gun hand in both of hers and twisted viciously. I heard his bone crack from across the room, and I flinched when Aaron howled in pain.
Kori plucked the pistol from his grip, then kicked him in the stomach for good measure.
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“You ever point a gun at my sister again, and I’ll strangle you with your own intestines. Got it?”
Aaron moaned from the floor, and Kori must have accepted that as a reply, because she checked the safety on his gun, then kept it, and suddenly I understood where most of her weapons collection had come from.
“Carry on,” she said, waving her empty hand at both Kenley and Steven, but when Meghan stood to help her brother, Kori shook her head and raised the gun again. “Sit. Save your healing juice for my sister. He’ll be fine,” she added, with a contemptuous glance at Aaron, who was still curled up on the floor.
Meghan sank back into her chair reluctantly, and I turned back to Kenley.
“I don’t even know how to start,” she said. “Breaking Kori’s seal was hard, but at least I knew what I was doing. I don’t know what Steven was bound to, so I don’t know what to remove my will from.”