Blood Bound

by Rachel Vincent

“They?” When I noticed Cam trying to eavesdrop, I put the call on speakerphone and set the new cell on the center of my desk.

  “Just one, really. Another Traveler. But there will be more. He’s not going to give up.”

  Cam and I exchanged a glance, then he returned his attention to the phone. “Okay, Anne, I need you to calm down and tell us what happened.”

  Anne took a deep breath, and in the background, a little girl said something I couldn’t understand and was answered by an older man. She had her parents with her. “I put Hadley to bed at about eight-thirty. Then, maybe fifteen minutes ago, I went to check on her and found a man in the hall. He was just standing there, holding a gun. So I shot him, Liv.” Her voice splintered into broken, hiccuping half words, and an older woman reminded her gently to watch the road.

  “You shot him?” I couldn’t believe it. I’d never even seen Anne hold a weapon, much less use one. “Where’d you get the gun?”

  “It’s my dad’s. He brought it so we could protect Hadley, but I didn’t think I’d actually have to use it. But I did, and now someone’s dead.”

  “Where?” Cam said. “Where were you?”

  “At one of my mom’s show houses.”

  “One of your…?” Cam frowned at me, silently asking for a translation.

  “Her mother’s a real-estate agent,” I whispered. When we were in high school, Anne would sometimes borrow the keys to a show house and let us all in for a private party. The houses were fully furnished—the perfect place for kids to hang out and drink in private. But not a good place to hide from Skilled hit men. “Why the hell didn’t you leave town? That’s not running, it’s…burrowng.”

  “A hotel seemed too obvious, and we needed someplace for Hadley to sleep. Someplace that felt like a home and wouldn’t scare her any more than she already is.”

  “Well, scared is better than dead!” I snapped, then immediately wished I could take it back. Anne was a suburban wife and mother, not a trained bodyguard. She was new to all this, and obviously doing the best she could. “How did he get in? You had all the lights on, right?”

  “Yes. All of them. There’s no way he could have come in through the shadows. He must have actually physically broken in.”

  “But we would have heard that, Annika,” her mother said softly.

  “What about the closets?” Cam asked. “And under the beds?”

  “We opened all the closets, but…I forgot about the beds,” Anne groaned. “We’ve always used loft beds and captain’s beds.” To make sure there are never shadows beneath the beds—standard practice in Skilled homes; it’s like nailing your basement windows shut so you don’t have to remember to lock them. “It’s possible he could have come in under one of them….”

  I exhaled, trying to control my temper, and noticed that Cam had closed his eyes. He was as frustrated by Anne’s survival skills—or lack thereof—as I was. “Okay, Anne…” Cam began, and I leaned back in my chair, happy to let him take over while I tried to gather my thoughts. “I understand that you were thinking about Hadley, but bringing her into the city is a bad idea. That’ll just make her easier to track.”

  “Cam, I don’t know what to do. I can’t protect her. Liv, I need your help!”

  “I know. Give me a minute….” I leaned with my elbows on my desk, forehead in my hands, thinking aloud. “Do they have her blood?”

  “No,” Anne said, without hesitation. “There’s no way they could. We’ve burned every drop she’s ever spilled.”

  “’Cept the drops in the trash,” a young voice said, and chills shot up my spine so fast I broke out in goose bumps all over.

  “What?” Anne said, and again her mother reminded her to watch the road.

  “I’m sorry, we forgot!” the child howled, then burst into sobs. “I fell and cut my knee yesterday. Daddy burned the tissues, but we…mighta forgot the Band-Aids. I think I threw them away.”

  “Was there much blood?” I asked, holding my breath for her answer, and based on the silence in the car, I think they were all doing the same thing. But the child didn’t seem to know how to answer, so her mother rephrased my question.

  “Hadley, honey, how many Band-Aids did it take?”

  “Three!” she cried, half choking on her tears, and my sympathy for her was the only thing rivaling my fear and frustration at that moment. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to forget!”

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” Anne said, and in the background, I could hear her parents comforting aloud.their granddaughter.

  Cam looked as if he was holding back a string of profanities with sheer will. “I don’t suppose you know whether or not anyone actually found the blood, do you?” he asked, with more patience than I could have mustered.

  “I have no clue,” Anne moaned miserably.

  “Okay.” Another breath, while I waited for my thoughts to fall into some kind of coherent order. “We’ll have to assume they did, just to be safe. Which means they can track her. So we need to hide Hadley someplace where Tower can’t find her.”

  “Is that even possible?” Anne asked.

  Cam shook his head, though no one over the line could see it. “No. Short of putting her on a plane—and you can bet they’re watching the airport—there’s no way to get her out of tracking range fast enough for the Tracker to lose the pull of her blood, right?” He glanced at me with brows raised in question.

  “Right.” Damn it. “Okay, then, what about a Jammer? Does anyone know a Jammer we can trust?” A good Jammer could block Hadley’s energy signature, preventing her from being tracked.

  “No,” Anne said over the line. “I’ve never had use for one before.”

  Cam scrubbed his face with both hands. “All the Jammers I know are loyal to Tower. If we hire one of them, we may as well hand her over to him ourselves. Not that we could actually afford a syndicate Jammer…”

  And, naturally, all the Jammers I knew were bound to Cavazos.

  I leaned back in my chair, eyes closed, searching the dark behind my eyelids for a stroke of brilliance, trying to ignore the certainty that the metaphorical lightbulb hanging over my head was surely sputtering its very last spark. Then, suddenly it flared to life so brightly I was nearly blinded. I sat up straight, hands flat on the desktop. “If we can’t put her somewhere he can’t find her, we’ll have to put her somewhere he can’t get to her.”

  “Where’s that?” Anne asked, the first ribbon of hope in her voice battling a darker thread of skepticism.

  “I’m not sure yet, but I have an idea.” I pushed my chair back, wishing there was room to pace in my office, so I could burn some of my nervous energy. “How far are you from the city?”

  “Um…an hour?” Anne said.

  I glanced at the clock on my computer screen. It was twelve-thirty. They’d be in town by 1:30 a.m.

  “Okay, here’s what I want you to do. First, drop your parents off somewhere where they can take a cab or a bus home. They shouldn’t be in any danger so long as Hadley’s not with them, because she’s the one they’ll be tracking.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Anne said, “Okay, then what?”

  “Then drive straight to Cam’s apartment. Do you know where that is?”

  “No,” Anne said, so I listened while Cam recited his address and Anne asked her mothr to write it down. “But you said not to come to the city.”

  “Change of plans.” I dug through my drawer for a spare box of 9mm shells. “Don’t worry, you won’t be there for long.”

  We said goodbye and hung up, and Cam watched me expectantly from the couch. “Well?”

  I pulled a spare clip from the bottom drawer and started loading it, in spite of the tug on my injured arm. “I know where they can stay. Where we all can stay. If we keep all the lights on, Tower’s men can’t get in through the shadows. And if my plan works out like I think it will, they won’t be able to get close enough to break in the traditional way.”

  Cam’s brows rose halfway up his forehea
d. “Why do I get the feeling this plan is more dangerous than it is clever?”

  “I’d call it a fifty-fifty mix of risk and genius.” I grinned as I forced the last shell into the extra clip. “You know how Cavazos is having me followed, and Tower’s men think I’m sleeping with the enemy, and Ruben wants me to stay away from you?”

  “I don’t think I like where this is going…”

  I avoided his gaze while I shoved the half-empty box of shells into my satchel along with the extra clip. “I’m about to make all that work in our favor. I think I know how to get Ruben’s men to protect Hadley and her mom—only they won’t know they’re doing it.”

  “I’m listening….”

  “Okay, here’s how it should go—I’ll leave your place and make sure Cavazos’s men see me. They’ll follow me to my apartment, watch me go in, then hang around to make sure I don’t go anywhere. What they won’t know is that you, Anne and Hadley will already be there waiting for me. With Cavazos’s goons hanging around, Tower’s men won’t be able to get close enough to break in.” I shrugged, then pulled on my shoulder holster. “It’s not a permanent solution, but at least it’ll keep Hadley safe while we plan out our next move.”

  Cam nodded slowly. “I like it. But why did you send them to my place? Why not send them straight to your apartment?”

  I perched on the edge of my desk, in front of the couch where he sat. “Because we’re not going to my real apartment in the south fork. We’re going to one on the east side—deep in Cavazos’s territory. It’s only a mile from his house and it’s crawling with his initiates. Even once Tower’s men track Hadley there, there’s nothing they can do. They’ll be spotted and run off by Cavazos’s men. And no one will be able to get in through the shadows, because there won’t be any shadows. You and I can make sure of that.”

  Cam blinked at me for nearly a minute, and I would have given anything to know what he was thinking. Then, finally he asked, “You have an apartment on the east side? Since when?”

  “Since about a year ago. It’s not really mine. It’s Ruben’s. In one of his buildings. I’ve only been there once, but I have a key because he…kind of…gave it to me. Did I not mention that?” I smiled, trying to lighten the moment, but Cam wasn’t buying t.

  “You seem to be forgetting to mention a lot of things, Liv.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. But there’s no good way to tell the guy you want to be with that the guy who’s rumored to own you gave you an apartment. You would never have believed that I’m not sleeping with him.” Just like Meika.

  Cam gave me an open, expectant look I wouldn’t have bought from anyone else. “I believe you now.”

  “But would you have earlier? Before…your couch?”

  He sighed, then met my gaze again, reluctantly. “Probably not.”

  “Well, now you believe me, and now you know about the apartment. So back to the plan. The only real problem is figuring out how to get the three of you inside. You can’t just walk up with my key and let yourself in. Everyone in the building knows whose apartment it is, and even if they don’t stop you, someone will call Ruben, and this whole thing will fall down around us.”

  “Do you leave the lights on all the time?” Cam asked, and I could see the early spark of an idea glinting in his eyes.

  “No… Like I said, I’ve never even been there, except the time he first showed it to me. I thought he was showing me a target’s apartment.”

  “So someone could get there through the shadows now, before you actually arrive and turn on all the lights?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah. If one of us were a Traveler.” But, obviously, we weren’t.

  He glanced at the ground, his foot tapping the floor nervously. “What if one of us knows a Traveler?”

  I shook my head. “Cam, we can’t trust any of your friends.”

  “Not my friend. Yours. And she may be the only person in the world we can all trust right now.”

  “You mean Kori?” She and her brother were the only shadow-walkers I knew, and Kris wasn’t obligated to help me if I asked him to—not that I knew how to get in touch with him. But now that Anne had burned the second oath, getting Kori’s help would be as easy as calling her up and asking her for it. Except… “I don’t know how to get ahold of her, Cam. We lost touch years ago.” When I’d left town. Just like I’d lost touch with everyone else. “I guess I could track her, but I’m not sure we have the time. I don’t even know if she’s in the city….”

  “She is. And I have her number.”

  He said it casually, as if it was no big deal. But if it was really no big deal, he would have already told me. There was something he wasn’t saying. Something important.

  I’d given up my secrets—sure, a couple of them had to be dragged out of me—but Cam was obviously still hiding a couple of his own….

  Nineteen

  We took separate cars back to Cam’s apartment, and I stopped on the way for some cheap sleeping masks at a local drugstore. I always carried one for myself, of course—they come in handy when you sleep with the lights on—but knowing how scattered Anne’s thoughts were, considering she was running for her daughter’s life, I figured we’d need some extras.

  By the time I pulled into the parking lot of Cam’s building, I’d decided I had to know. If we were going to give this another shot—if we were willing to risk our lives to be together—secrets weren’t going to cut it. He knew mine. Reciprocation was only fair.

  On my way into the building, I glanced around the lot, looking for Ruben’s men. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there. Watching. And for once, that would actually help, rather than hinder, my plans.

  I knocked on Cam’s third-floor apartment door, then tapped my foot impatiently for the fifteen seconds it took for the door to open. “Okay, why do you have Kori’s number?” I asked, before he could even invite me inside.

  His brows rose in amusement, and he visibly fought a grin. “I wondered how long that would take.”

  “You don’t have to look so smug.” I stomped past him when he stepped back to let me in.

  “Are you kidding? I’m surprised you resisted this long.”

  “So?” I set the convenience-store bag on his counter and my satchel on a bar stool. “Why do you have her number?”

  Cam closed the door and crossed both arms over his chest. “I think the real question is why don’t you? Most people don’t leave their friends just because they leave town.”

  Ouch.

  “I didn’t mean to lose touch with everyone. I just… I needed some time to myself.” To process the fact that I was suddenly without Cam, under threat of death. “And by the time I felt like getting back in touch, Elle had disappeared. I tracked Anne and Kori just to make sure they were alive, but by then…so much had changed I was afraid I wouldn’t even know them anymore.” And they wouldn’t know me.

  “Well, now you’re getting a second chance. You ready?”

  “Yeah.” Though being ready didn’t really matter. Anne and Hadley would arrive in half an hour, and we needed to be ready for them. “What’s her number?”

  Cam recited and I dialed. Then the phone rang. And rang. And rang. Then my call went to a voice-mail system answered by a computer-generated voice.

  I hung up.

  “She hasn’t recorded a voice-mail message,” I said, scowling at my new phone as if it had personally betrayed me. I hadn’t expected Kori’s message to provide her real name, but hearing her actual voice would have been nice. “How do I even know I have the right number?”

  “It’s the right number. She doesn’t usually pick up if she doesn’t recognize the incoming number. You’ll either have to bug her until she answers or call her on my phone.”

  I hit Redial. I hadn’t spoken to her in six years—I didn’t want to know she’d only taken my call because she thought it was Cam. I got her voice mail again, but when I called back a third time, she answered on the first ring.

  “Who the fuck is
this?”

  I smiled. It was good to hear her voice, and from the sound of her greeting, Kori hadn’t changed a bit.

  “Five seconds, then I’m hangin’ up and blockin’ your number,” she snapped.

  “Kori, it’s Liv—willyouhelpme?” I ran the words together in my rush to be heard before she could hang up.

  Silence. Then a deep intake of breath, and I flinched, knowing what was coming—I’d been pissed, too, when Anne asked for my help. “You bitch…” Kori muttered, and I smiled again, surprisingly nostalgic over Korinne’s all-purpose greeting/curse/compliment. “How did you get this number?”

  “Hey, Kor,” Cam called, by way of explanation.

  “You soft-skulled, marble-balled motherfucker. I’m going to kick your ass next time I see it.”

  Cam laughed. “You know, my grandmother always said no woman with a decent vocabulary would resort to profanity.”

  Kori huffed. “My grandmother said, ‘Get the hell out of my house, bitch, before I throw you out on your ass.’”

  “Well, you did set the kitchen on fire. Twice. With her in it.” Kori had slept on my couch for two weeks before her grandmother finally took her back the second time.

  Another impatient huff from over the line. “I fail to see how the facts are relevant here.”

  “Don’t you want to know why I called?” I asked, leaning back to prop my boots on Cam’s coffee table, over scarred marks in the wood, proving he’d obviously done the same thing.

  “I figure you’ll get to it eventually.”

  I grinned at Cam—if I were speaking to anyone else, I’d have felt guilty for how much I planned to enjoy tugging on Kori’s binding. “I need help. Will you please come to Cam’s so we can talk?”

  “Hell no—oww, fuck!” she cried, and I could practically see Kori clutching her head from the unexpected pain—proof that our original oath was still intact. “What the hell, Liv?”

  “I’ll explain when you get here. Will you come, please?”

  “Like I have any choice.”

  A second later, the bathroom door squealed open and I turned to find Kori stomping toward me from the darkened hall, still holding her cell. She flipped the phone closed and shoved it into the pocket of her ripped, artfully ratty jeans—like us, she was fully dressed and obviously wide-awake at one in the morning—and propped both hands on her hips in the living-room doorway.