Blood Bound

by Rachel Vincent

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, though the answers seemed too numerous and obvious to be stated.

  “I just realized that Hadley could have been home when it happened. Any other Thursday night, she would have been. She would have seen him die. Or worse.”

  “What was unusual about yesterday?” Cam asked, and I leaned closer to listen. Any variation in their normal routine could hint at why Shen was killed.

  Anne picked at the fingernails of her left hand. “It was Hadley’s best friend’s birthday. I dropped her off at the party on my way to the gym. Any other night of the week, we all three would have been home. Any other Thursday, Shen and Hadley would have been home together.”

  I laid my hand over hers on the table. “Okay, I think you should focus on the fact that she wasn’t home. Neither of you were. Focus on that and be grateful. And leave the rest of it to us.”

  “You’re still going to…finish this?” Anne’s eyes shined with feverish hope. Dark desperation.

  “We can—and will—still go after Hunter,” Cam said. “He’s not a member of the syndicate, so I have no official conflict of interest. But that’s as far as I can go. I can’t take any action against the organization, and I can’t know for sure that either of you are going to, or I’d be obligated to stop you. So please take this seriously—do not move against Tower.” He turned to me then, as somber as I’d ever seen him. “And if you choose to ignore that warning, as I’m fully aware that you will, do not discuss it in front of me. Wait until I’m gone.”

  “We’re not moving against Tower,” Anne insisted. “That would be suicide. Just get Hunter—that’s all I have any right to ask.”

  “Wait…” I turned to Cam, choosing not to point out that Anne didn’t actually have the right to ask for Hunter’s life, either—she was neither judge nor jury. “How do you know Hunter isn’t syndicate?” Surely Cam didn’t personally know everyone bearing Tower’s mark.

  “An initiate wouldn’t have been paid like that—he would just have been ordered to make the kill. He might have gotten a bonus after the fact, if he really rocked the execution, but it wouldn’t have been even half what Hunter got paid. Someone hired an independent to keep this from being traced back to the syndicate.”

  “But we traced it back to you guys pretty easily,” I pointed out.

  “No, Van traced it back to Tower. Because she works on the business side of things and is already familiar with the accounts. An outsider would have had a bitch of a time finding the source of that money, I’d bet you anything.”

  “Okay, I think the best thing for you to do is to go back home and be with your daughter. And forget about the Tower syndicate,” I said to Anne, pushing my own mug toward the middle of the table while Cam dropped a twenty-dollar bill next to his. “We’ll call you when it’s done.”

  Anne nodded, still gripping her mug.

  I glanced back at her from the front of the restaurant as Cam pulled open the door. She still sat there, staring at the tble. Shaking. Gone was the steel-spined widow who’d walked into my office demanding justice. Things had changed. She was in over her head.

  And so were we.

  Eleven

  “Why would he stay?” I asked, as Cam flicked on his left blinker. At the moment, the pull of Hunter’s name was stronger than the pull from his blood, so I was letting him take the lead in tracking, so long as his path didn’t contradict the pull I felt. And so far, it hadn’t.

  “If he were an initiate, I’d say he’s being shielded— Tower put the word out that he’s not to be touched. Or maybe he put Hunter in a safe house. But he’s not a member, and I would have heard about him being shielded. Thanks to Nick, the organization knows you and I are working together, and that we’re looking for Hunter. If the syndicate had any problem with us killing him, they’d have already stopped us.”

  We were still on the west side, but headed east now. Huh. Hunter was on the move.

  “So, what, they don’t care if we kill him, because then they don’t have to drop the second half of his payment?”

  “Maybe.” Cam shrugged and took another left, and I verified our direction privately with another feel of the stiffening bandage in my pocket. “Also, whoever hired him is probably happy to have us clean up loose ends for him.”

  I would have been much more comfortable if those loose ends weren’t winding through the center of Jake Tower’s territory. The blood pull of Hunter’s energy signature was very strong now, and based on the confidence with which Cam navigated the streets, the name pull was even stronger. Which didn’t make much sense. Even if he’d died in the three hours since we’d found blood in his apartment, the blood pull should have been just as strong.

  “Do you know this neighborhood?” I asked, as Cam slowed the car to a crawl and the setting sun blinded me in the side-view mirror. We were close now. Close enough that we’d overshoot it if we weren’t careful.

  “Yeah, and so do you. We were here this afternoon.”

  We were? I sat straighter, glancing around for something I recognized, but saw only a narrow backstreet—an urban alley bordered by rear garage entrances and tiny backyards fenced with chain link. “This doesn’t look familiar.”

  “The back of his building’s about half a mile ahead. We’re coming at it from another direction. I know this way better.”

  His sudden glance out the driver’s side window told me there was something he wasn’t saying. So, of course, I asked. “Why are you familiar with a residential neighborhood backstreet, when you live in an apartment on the main drag?”

  “I used to know a girl who lived in that house.” He pointed to a small, run-down, white-sided house with a big dog fenced into a small yard. “But I don’t think she lives there anymore.”

  I swallowed the bitter taste on the back of my tongue at the thought of him with someone else. It was inevitable. Six years is a long time, and Cam…he wore it very, very well. Of course other women would want him.

  “Was she syndicate?” I asked, and he glanced at me with a look I couldn’t quite interpret. Was he surprised that I’d ask? Or that I cared? Or that I thought he might go out with someone outside of the organization? Or the opposite?

  “No. I don’t…socialize with coworkers. That’s too complicated. And dangerous.”

  “You’d give up on a relationship because it’s dangerous?” Maybe he would understand why I’d left…

  But he mistook my hope for a criticism.

  “Not a relationship,” he clarified. “Sex. No momentary pleasure is worth the risk that she might be looking to sleep her way up the tiers. Or that she might think I am. Or that she may be bound to someone who outranks me, but she’s unhappy with his performance. And it’s even worse if she outranks me, because then I’m tiptoeing through a minefield where orders and requests get confused.”

  My stomach churned. “It sounds like you’ve learned through experience.”

  “Six years is a long time.” He turned left onto one of the major streets, then met my gaze. “Are you jealous?”

  “No,” I answered too fast.

  “You never used to lie to me.”

  Speaking of minefields… I exhaled slowly and made myself hold his gaze. “I shouldn’t have asked. It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m jealous. Do I like thinking about you with other women? Of course not—”

  “Then why’d you ask?”

  “Because…” I’m an idiot. A masochist. “I don’t know why I asked.”

  “I do.” He exhaled, then shifted into Park right there in the street, sitting idle at a stoplight. “Would it help to know that I tracked down and beat the shit out of the asshole you moved in with a couple of years ago? The one who stole your car.”

  I felt my jaw drop open, but words wouldn’t come. I could only gape at him. “Are you serious?” I asked at last and he nodded solemnly. “Over a car?”

  He blinked, but his gaze held mine captive. “It had nothing to do with the car, Liv.”

  �
��Did you… Is he…?”

  “He lived.” Cam shifted into Drive again when the light changed and we rolled through the intersection. “But I don’t think he’ll be looking either of us up again anytime soon.”

  “I can beat up my own exes, thank you.”

  He laughed. “Not like I can.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  you were jealous because you still want me.”

  “No…” I said through clenched teeth. “The point is that we have a job to do, and that job has nothing to do with who either of us has slept with or pounded on since we broke up.”

  “We didn’t break up, Liv. You ran out on me, right before…” He stopped, staring out the windshield at the city as we rolled through it slowly enough to annoy the cars trapped behind us.

  “I’m sorry.” I glanced at him, but his gaze never left the road. “I don’t think I’ve actually said that yet, but I’m sorry for…the way it happened. But none of that matters anymore. What matters is that for some reason, Eric Richard Hunter went home again, and we need to make sure he never leaves.”

  I could see his building now, and for a second, I worried that I might be tracking the same cold trail that had led me there earlier—the pull of his spilled blood. But then I remembered that I’d destroyed what he left. And that the name pull Cam was tracking could only lead to the man himself.

  Cam parked in the unlit lot behind Hunter’s building. As the engine cooled and ticked, he watched me in the last dying rays of light, painting his dashboard red. “Sorry isn’t good enough.”

  “What?” I frowned, trying to ignore the discomfort buzzing beneath my skin, now that we were so close to the goal, yet not actively pursuing it. “Good enough for what?”

  “Not good enough for me. Not good enough for us. For what we still have, even if you’re too damn stubborn to admit it. You owe us better than a half-assed apology, six years too late.”

  “I owe you…?” My words expired on a cloud of disbelief.

  “No, you owe us.”

  Itching to get going, I pulled my 9mm from the holster and released the clip to check it, though I already knew it was full. “There is no us, Cam. Not anymore.”

  “The hell there isn’t.” He twisted in his seat to face me. “You can keep saying that if you want. You might even convince Anne. But you’re not going to convince me, and you’re sure as hell not going to convince yourself. You’ve had years to forget about me and move on, but you haven’t done it.”

  “Yes, I…”

  “No, you haven’t!” he thundered. His anger seemed to echo in the confines of the car, and that time, I didn’t bother arguing. “If you had, this wouldn’t be so hard for you. And I can see that it’s hard. I don’t know why you’re still trying to push me away, but it obviously isn’t because you want to.”

  My next breath hurt. It ached in my lungs, as if my heart was bruised. “You’re right,” I admitted, but the truth didn’t set me free. It felt like a whole new set of chains. “This isn’t how I want it, but this is how it has to be.”

  “Why?” he demanded. “i>us.are you doing this? I need to know, Liv. You owe me that much.”

  He was right. Hiding what I knew when I could just walk away from him was one thing, but now that we were stuck together? Keeping my secrets—this one, anyway—was too much for us both. “Fine. But it’s a little complicated, and we need to move on Hunter now.” Before the buzzing beneath my skin ushered in full-scale resistance pain. Before Hunter stepped through a shadow and we lost his trail again.

  “You swear?” Cam wasn’t happy, but was obviously willing to delay full satisfaction if he had my word.

  “On my life. When this is over, I’ll explain why I left. Why I had to.”

  “Fine. For now. But don’t think you can just disappear on me again. I know how to find you, and there’s nothing stopping me from showing up everywhere you go, until you tell me what I want to know.”

  Actually, Cavazos would have been happy to stop Cam from showing up everywhere I went. But that was one secret I couldn’t give up. What little self-respect I still had would bleed into humiliation if Cam found out I was bound to Ruben. I didn’t want him to know what I’d agreed to. I didn’t want him to know about the things I couldn’t say no to, or how much worse it would be if—when—I couldn’t fulfill my contract.

  I didn’t want him to know that the words on my back were just that: words. An ideal I’d failed to live up to.

  “Are you ready?” I asked, one hand on the door handle. He nodded stiffly, and I pushed the door open and stepped into the parking lot. It wasn’t fully dark yet, which meant my gun would have to stay holstered for the moment. People on the west side almost never spoke to the police, but their silence wasn’t my license for carelessness.

  Cam followed me across the lot and through the rear door, which opened into the opposite end of the long, dark hallway we’d entered from the front earlier. After a second to check the pull from Hunter’s blood, I pointed to the rear staircase with my brows raised in question. Cam nodded, confirming that the target’s name was pulling him upstairs, too.

  We took the steps quickly and quietly, and I let him lead. This was his neighborhood and the residents would be less likely to interfere with or report us if they recognized him. But both the stairs and the hallway were deserted, either because it was dinnertime, or because the occupants sensed that something was going down. TV applause and canned laughter rang out from behind some of the doors, and muffled conversation from others, but no one came out to investigate our soft footsteps.

  On either side of Hunter’s door, we drew our guns, and I attached the silencer Cam had lent me. A seam of light showed around three sides of the frame—it was still broken from when Cam had kicked it in. I heard movement from inside. A scrape of something against the floor. Light footsteps. A quiet curse.

  Hunter was alone, and he wasn’t happy.

  I lifted one brow at Cam, and he nodded. So I knocked on the door frame.

  Silence from inside. Then two more footsteps, and the floor creaked. I could practically hear his heart beating. His brain racing. Should he answer? Or just wait? Would he have time to go out the fire escae? Or simply step into a shadow and disappear?

  Cam nodded, and I nudged the door open with one foot while he knelt in the open doorway, below typical firing height, gun aimed and ready. He held that pose for a single breath, then rose smoothly to his feet.

  I peeked into the apartment. The living room was empty. But Hunter was still in there. I could feel the pull of his blood, stronger than ever. Yet somehow different than it had felt before.

  Cam stepped inside and I followed him, then pushed the door closed. Or, as close to closed as I could get it, because of the broken door frame. I checked the right half of the room while he checked the left, silently clearing the possible hiding places and turning on lights to banish the shadows one by one. You can never be too careful about shadows when tracking a Traveler.

  The living room and kitchen were both clear, the only remaining shadows too small for a man to fit through. The bathroom was open, the shower curtain pulled to one side to reveal the empty tub. That only left the bedroom. But surely Hunter wasn’t in there. Why would he be, when a Traveler can leave a room just by stepping into a shadow?

  Yet his blood pulled me toward the closed bedroom door.

  I tossed my head toward the door and gave Cam a questioning look. He closed his eyes for a second, meditating on Hunter’s full name, then nodded. Every tracking instinct we had said that, in apparent defiance of logic, Hunter was still in his room.

  Possible explanations ran through my head while fear and doubt prickled my skin. Was this a trap? Had Tower found out about my mark and hired Hunter to kill me? If so, this would be the easiest hit in history— I’d actually tracked the man contracted to shoot me.

  And what about Cam? Did Tower consider him a traitor? Was he on the chopping block, too?

  Or was there a s
impler explanation for why a Traveler would stay in an apartment with two people intent on killing him? Was his bedroom somehow devoid of shadows? Was he too weak from blood loss to travel? Could that have something to do with why the level of Skill in his blood had dropped between the sample Anne had provided and the one I’d found in his bathroom?

  We took positions on either side of the bedroom door, and again, I knocked on the frame. “Eric, come on out,” I said.

  Harsh laughter from the other side of the door, followed by a man’s voice. “They sent a girl. I’m not sure if that’s insult to injury, or a gift from above.”

  I glanced at Cam. Hunter thought I was alone, which gave us the element of surprise. I chose to ignore his misogynistic underestimation of my abilities, but who were the “they,” who’d supposedly sent me? “I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”

  Yes, I was lying. But considering I was about to commit vigilante murder, a half-truth felt pretty insignificant.

  “Yeah, right.” Hunter laughed again, but this time sarcasm exposed his nerves. “Because you guys are known for asking questions first.”

  You guys? I mouthed to Cam. Who did he think I was?

  Cam pushed up his left sleeve and tapped chain links on his upper bicep.

  Oh, shit. Hunter thought the Tower syndicate had sent someone to kill him. But why? Had he assumed that our break-in earlier meant the syndicate would rather kill him than pay him? Or had he actually given Tower a reason to come after him?

  Was he running his mouth? Demanding more money? Threatening to turn state’s witness?

  “So you know why I’m here?” I said, playing along, hoping for more information.

  “Unless they’re sending singing telegrams now instead of mercenaries—in which case you should start warming up—I’m gonna have to assume you’re here to kill me.”

  Funny. We might have been friends, if he weren’t a hired killer. But then, considering I was standing outside his door with a loaded gun, maybe we had more than sarcasm in common.