“You’re with her on this? You’re gonna pick some bitch you just met over a friend you’ve known all your life?”
“I’m hoping I won’t have to. Don’t be stupid, Aaron. Kenley just saved your sister’s life.”
“She’s the one who put it in danger!”
“No, I put my own life in danger,” Meghan said, rounding the bed for a closer look at Kenley. “I chose to heal Steven. And now I choose to heal the woman who saved him.” She turned to Kori, as she knelt next to Kenley. “She’ll be fine as long as I am. But I don’t know how long that’ll be. I’ve been doing this too long as it is.”
“It won’t be long,” Kori said, and I could see the solution in her eyes. In the set line of her jaw. She was going after Barker. In killing one of Tower’s Binders, she’d be freeing the other. The king’s castle would come crumbling down on top of him. “Let’s go.”
Twenty-Nine
Kori
I walked us out of Meghan’s bathroom and back into Kenley’s living room, and neither of us bothered with the light. “I need to be gone before Jake’s men get here, and it’ll look better if you go in voluntarily.”
“Where will you be?” Ian asked.
“Recruiting backup.”
“You know, if you hadn’t broken Aaron’s arm, we could have used him as backup.”
I huffed. “If he was that easy to disarm, he wouldn’t have done us any good.”
“So who are you calling?” Ian asked as I dug my phone from my pocket.
“My brother. And Olivia. I trust them both at my back.”
“Olivia Warren?” I could hardly see his frown in the deep shadows. “Cavazos’s Olivia?”
“She was my Olivia before she was his, and I know how to avoid his claim to her.” I glanced at the microwave clock. It had been seventy-five minutes since Jake called Kenley’s phone. In the basement, Vanessa was being cut again. I couldn’t hear her scream, but I could almost feel it.
I dialed Liv’s number from memory, then pressed the speaker button and my phone rang out into the room. After four electronic bleats, Olivia answered, her voice thick with suspicion. “Hello?”
“Will you help me?” I said, in lieu of a greeting.
“Kori?” Liv was pissed. I could hear it in her voice, in the way she bit my name off at the edges. But she was also worried; she knew I wouldn’t call unless I was in trouble. “What’s wrong?”
“I need sanctuary. Are you at your office?”
“Yeah.”
“Turn off the light. I’m coming over.”
Olivia sighed. “Fine.”
I hung up and turned to Ian. “I’ll see you in the basement.”
“Be careful.” He pulled me close for a kiss, and I didn’t want to let him go. Ever. But this wouldn’t be over until Van and Kenley were free. Hell, it might never be over. And Van was running out of time.
I took a deep breath, then made myself let him go and step into the shadows.
The moment I stepped into the darkened bathroom in Olivia’s tiny two-room office, I could see her. And hear her. She sat on the couch opposite her desk, fully visible in the well-lit main room.
“Kori’s here,” she said into her phone as I rounded the desk toward her. “Yeah, I’ll let you know when—”
“You still bound to Cavazos?” I asked, and she nodded, scowling at the interruption.
I snatched the phone before she could finish the aborted sentence and threw it at the ground as hard as I could, where it broke into several large plastic pieces.
“Damn it, Kori! Do you have any idea how many phones I go through in a good year?”
“Sorry,” I lied, shoving her stapler over so I could sit on her desk. “I can’t chance Cavazos calling you while I’m here.” He’d use her against me.
“That was Cam, not Ruben.”
“He’ll understand. Text him from my phone.” I tossed my cell to her and she started typing with both thumbs, pausing frequently to glare at me.
“What’s this about?” she said as she handed my phone back.
“As of about an hour ago, I am a free woman, and the best part is that Jake doesn’t know yet.”
Olivia reached over and pushed up my left sleeve. “Your marks aren’t dead.”
“Black permanent marker.” I sat next to her on the couch. “Take a closer look.”
She leaned down, squinting at my arm from two inches away. “Wow. How’d it happen?”
“Ian taught Kenley how to break her seal. It’s no piece of cake, but she pulled it off.”
“Is she still bound?”
“Yes, and she’s in a lot of pain, but a friend of Ian’s is a Healer, so she’s in good hands, at least until I can kill the Binder that sealed her to Jake.”
“If you’re killing Tower’s men, I’m in.”
I grinned without bothering to hide my relief. “I was hoping you’d say that. But first I have to bust Kenley’s girlfriend out of Jake’s basement.”
“Her girlfriend?”
“Yeah.” I stood and shoved my phone into my pocket. “She was a friend of Cam’s. You two might have met.”
“Van?” Olivia sounded horrified, and I nodded from the bathroom doorway. “Why would Tower torture her?” Cam had obviously told her what goes on down in Jake’s basement.
“To get to Kenley. And by extension, me and Ian.”
“How are you going to get her out?”
“I sent Ian in to bust a hole in Jake’s infrared grid. Once he has, I’m gonna walk in alone, and walk out with Vanessa. Then we’re going after Barker, Tower’s secondary Binder.”
“Want some help in the basement?”
“Thanks, but I’ll have Ian and Van on the way out.” And if she got too close to Ian, she’d be obligated to try to take him from me. “I do need another favor, though. Are you under any standing orders to give Kenley to Cavazos?”
“Nope.” She smiled, and I welcomed the sight. “Obviously he knows Tower has a Binder, but he doesn’t know who that is, to my knowledge. Or that I have any connection to her.”
“Good. If you can do it, I need you to call Kris, so he can get both Van and Kenley somewhere safe, as soon as we’re done with Barker.” Because Jake was probably already tracking Kenley, and the farther away she was, the harder that would be for him. And she couldn’t stay with Liv, because if Cavazos got his hands on my sister, the mess we were already in would be infinitely worse. And bloodier.
“No problem,” Olivia said.
I thanked her, then closed my eyes and mentally reached out toward Jake’s house, ignoring all the other pockets of darkness between. As usual, his house was an inferno of infrared light burning beyond the visible spectrum, except for the cool, dark sanctuary of the darkroom. But I reached deeper, lower, hoping against all hope that Ian had already found his way to the basement, and that I wasn’t too late to take advantage of it. Because once he’d created darkness, they’d realize what he was doing and they’d try to stop him.
So when I actually found that spot of true dark in the basement, I nearly choked on my own surprise. We’d caught another break.
“Hopefully this won’t take long,” I said, backing into the bathroom. Then I took another step backward, and this time my shoe landed not on cheap, faded linoleum, but on gritty concrete.
The basement.
“Ian?” I whispered, because I’d need him to let go of the dark long enough for us to find Vanessa and take care of whoever was with her. I was close. My bindings were dead and I’d broken into the impenetrable Tower fortress. I was minutes from true freedom.
I might just survive the day after all.
A footstep whispered on the concrete behind me and I started to turn, my heart thumping. Then something slammed into the side of my head and the world spun around me, unseen in the dark. The floor crashed into my back and the lights came on overhead. Stunned and out of breath, I could only blink as a foot pressed into my neck and someone pulled my guns from their holsters.<
br />
I blinked again, and a face came into focus against the glare of the lights overhead. Jonah.
“Welcome home, Kori. We’ve missed you.”
Thirty
Ian
After Kori left Kenley’s apartment, I double-checked the clips in both of the guns she’d lent me—not that I’d have a chance to use them—then took the jacket off the dead guard still slumped against the front door. The jacket was a size too large and had an uneven spot of blood near the hem on the right side and a blood-soaked bullet hole in the right sleeve, but neither would be easily visible in the dark material, which would hide the fully loaded double holster.
Satisfied with the functionality of the jacket, I hauled the guard into the kitchen, then went downstairs to catch a cab, intending to report to Tower’s fortress for Trojan horse duty. But as I stepped onto the sidewalk, a sleek black car pulled to a stop at the curb in front of me. The window rolled down to reveal Julia Tower. Alone, except for her faceless driver.
“Mr. Holt, may I offer you a ride?” Her head was tilted slightly to the left, but her cool smile was on straight.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You say that like I have some choice in the matter.”
“In fact, you have three choices. You may ride in here with me, up front with the driver, or in the trunk.”
“And if I decline all three options?”
“My brother Jonah is in a basement cell right now, hoping that’s exactly what you’ll do. The young woman with him is no doubt praying you’ll show better sense.”
“Vanessa?” I asked, and Julia nodded. “What makes you think I care what happens to a woman I’ve never even met?”
“I know you care, because I know the real Ian Holt—the man who doesn’t own a personal computer and doesn’t even know what kind of systems he supposedly analyzes.” She paused a moment to let me truly experience the shock of her words. “I know Ian Holt, the soldier who defied a direct order to pull an injured friend out of the line of fire. The brother who rose from the grave—feigned though that grave was—and stepped back into his own identity to save his twin from certain agonizing death. That Ian Holt can’t help himself—he’s at the mercy of a ruthless hero complex.”
“How…?” I started to ask how she knew. Then I realized that didn’t matter. What mattered was, “How long have you known?”
“Mr. Holt, we would never have asked you to become one of us if we didn’t already know how many fillings are in your teeth and how you broke your arm in the third grade.”
I had broken my arm in the third grade… “Lila Sobresky—”
“Pushed you off the slide. I know.” She folded her hands in her lap, and I couldn’t take my gaze from her face. From eyes that saw more than they should and ears that seemed to hear my very thoughts. “I also know that your mother is first-generation Irish-American, which is where you get those striking green eyes, and your father is fifth-generation African-American, the source of your lovely dark skin. You and your brother are fraternal twins, but you looked virtually identical until he began wasting away in excruciating pain two weeks ago. Steven was named for your paternal grandfather, who spelled his name with a ph instead of a v. Your mother named you after her older brother. Sweet, but stupid. Almost as stupid as it was for you and your brother to keep the names. But switching them…?” Julia laughed, and the sound bounced around inside my head like nuts and bolts clanging in the dryer. “That was clever. We might never have figured that part out, if you and your brother hadn’t already pinged our radar years ago, thanks to the younger Miss Daniels.”
Her gaze trailed over my face and down the front of my shirt, like she could see the flesh beneath, and my teeth ground together so hard my jaw ached. “You are quite a prize, Mr. Holt. A soldier with a philosophy degree under a stolen identity. A thinker and a fighter, with a strong, thick—” her gaze traveled lower “—protective streak. No wonder Korinne fell for you.”
My anger built with every word she spoke, like my secrets were worth less than the lipstick staining the mouth that spilled them. I’d rarely wanted to punch a woman, but I wanted to drive Julia Tower’s straight, white teeth through the back of her skull, just so I wouldn’t have to hear another word come out of her mouth.
“Get in the car, or Vanessa loses a finger.”
I hesitated, gripping the car door where the window had receded into it, letting my anger swell a little more. Grow a little more useful. Then I opened the door, not because Julia had told me to, but because she represented the most direct path through Tower’s heavily guarded headquarters to the basement, where Vanessa and Kori needed me to be. But before I could sit, Julia held up a hand to stop me. “Place your weapons in the front seat.” Where they would be beyond my reach, thanks to the panel separating driver from passengers.
But that was not unexpected.
I opened the front door and dropped both guns on the seat, then slid onto the backseat next to Julia Tower. Before I’d even closed the door, I wondered if I’d made a tactical error. If bending to her will, even for my own purpose, was the first of many steps in the devouring of my soul by the beast that was her brother’s organization.
“Kori didn’t know any of that, did she?” I asked, twisting to face Julia on the bench seat. Why would they keep their recruiter in the dark about her own recruit?
“Korinne knew only what she needed to know,” Julia said as the car pulled away from the curb. “But Jake and I knew why you really accepted our invitation from the beginning. And we knew you would never go through with your cold-blooded mission because at your core, pulsing where your heart should be, is a stubborn kernel of chivalry, rotting you alive like a cancer. You didn’t kill Kenley Daniels when you had the chance because you couldn’t. And you fell for Kori like a schoolboy in love the moment you got that first glimpse of her poor, abused, damaged heart. Just like Jake knew you would.”
My fist clenched around the door handle. “If Tower knew I had no intention of joining, why send Kori to recruit me?”
Julia laughed, like she’d never heard anything truly amusing until that very moment. “Korinne wasn’t recruiting you. She was living out her sentence. Jake got bored with her in the basement.” Julia frowned in thought. “That’s what he says, anyway, but he’s lying.”
And suddenly, studying her expression—the first raw, unfiltered look I could remember seeing from Julia Tower—I understood what Kori hadn’t been free to tell me. Julia was a Reader. She’d heard—and no doubt reported—every lie she’d heard me tell. But now that I knew what she was, she’d lost her advantage. The key to fooling a Reader is to tell two lies at once, and make one of them obvious. That way the Reader doesn’t know there’s a bigger untruth buried beneath the surface lie. I’d learned that, if nothing else, from growing up with Steven.
“The truth is that he started to hate her, because Jonah couldn’t break her and Jake couldn’t do it himself. That’s in his vows, you know.” Julia’s eyes sparkled with bitter amusement. “The only thing he promised his wife—that he would never touch another woman. Not ever. So when you came along, he saw a possibility involving you both. For Kori, the impossible task. Recruit the man who cannot be recruited. The immovable object.”
My blood burned in my veins like liquid fire. “He set her up to fail.”
Julia nodded. “And to hate every single debasing, humiliating moment of it.”
Shadow Bound (Unbound) Page 39