“Pictures,” she whispered. “I brought my mom’s photo album. Those can’t be replaced. I don’t know if she even kept the negatives.”
Shit. Her dead mother’s photos. Real photos, with no digital footprint. “Okay. You have your key?” I asked, and she nodded, pulling the electronic key fob from her pocket. The gaze that met mine was scared, but steady. And intense. “When I say go, you’re going to run for it. Stay hunched over, to make as small a target as possible. Keep the car between you and the house. I’ll keep watch from here.”
Sera frowned and glanced back at her car, and hair fell across her face. “There has to be a better way,” she whispered. “I can’t fight a bullet. Can’t outrun one, either.”
I brushed that strand of hair behind her ear and looked directly into her eyes. “You won’t have to. I’m faster than anyone Julia has on staff, and more accurate than anyone she’s ever met. Including Kori.” I pulled back the side of my jacket to show her my gun, hoping the sight of it would reassure her the same way the feel of it reassured me.
She actually grinned, and something in my throat tightened at the sight. “Not exactly modest, are you?”
“Modesty is for the mediocre. Now, when you get there, use the key to unlock the car manually, so it doesn’t beep. Is the album in the trunk?”
Sera shook her head, her gaze glued to me, and I realized I liked having her full attention. A lot. “No. It’s in the backseat.”
“Good. Go in through the rear door and close it as softly as you can. Make sure the interior lights go off. You should be able to see fine with just the parking lot light. Sit on the floorboard and gather what you need—as much as you can carry without hampering your ability to run. You good so far?”
She nodded, and, though she still looked noticeably nervous, her hands were steady and her jaw set. I was impressed, considering that she’d probably never done anything like this before.
“When you have what you can carry, get out, close the door and run back to me.” I glanced around at the acres of shadowed lawn—my personal transit system. “I’ll have you out of here in a single step. Questions?”
She glanced at my gun. “You sure you’re not exaggerating your skill with that thing?”
“Anyone who so much as pokes his head out of that house before you get back here is going to get permanently ventilated. You have my word.”
“The word of a kidnapper?” She seemed way more amused by that than the situation warranted.
“I didn’t kidnap you. I—”
“I know. You liberated me from a den of evil. Or you anticipated my forthcoming desire to flee. Or maybe you released me from the burden of choice. Whatever it was, don’t do it again. Got it?”
“Got it.”
She still looked pissed off by the memory.
Pissed off looked good on her.
“You ready?” She looked scared, but she also looked determined. Sera wasn’t fearless, by any means, but she wasn’t going to let fear stop her. I could respect that.
In answer to her question, I drew my gun.
She turned and ran. With no warning. One second she was standing next to me in the shadow-drenched grass and in the next instant, she was racing across the lawn toward the parking lot, a glaring island of light, as if she were being chased by hounds from hell.
I scanned the night, alert for movement, but I saw none.
Sera’s footsteps thumped softly from grass onto pavement and her speed increased. She was one hell of a sprinter—a black blur racing across the pale pavement, hunched over, just like I’d instructed.
When she reached her car, she dropped into a squat, shielded from view of the house. Sera fumbled with her keys for a second, then opened the front door and reached inside to unlock the back door. Then she closed the front door softly and climbed into the back of the car.
I lost sight of her then, but if I couldn’t see her, neither could anyone else.
The soft click of her door closing had just rolled into the still night when a man dressed all in black turned the corner from the east side of the huge house. He carried an automatic rifle. I couldn’t tell what kind from the shadow it cast against the wall, but it had a long barrel and a scope, which meant he could hit me—or Sera—from much farther away than we actually were.
Kori hadn’t mentioned guards with rifles walking the grounds. So much for a skeleton crew. My home invasion must have really spooked Julia.
I stepped back slowly, carefully, fading deeper into the darkness with one eye on the guard, the other on Sera’s car, waiting for her head to appear above the backseat. Hoping he wouldn’t notice her.
The guard walked slowly—too slowly—and with each of his steps, my blood pressure rose. My heart beat a little harder. I pulled my suppresser from my jacket pocket and quietly attached it to the end of my gun.
Halfway. The guard was almost halfway across the yard, crossing the large covered patio, headed toward a pool, surrounded by its own privacy fence and adjoining pool house.
Then Sera sat up inside the car.
For the span of several held breaths, neither saw the other. I was the only one who knew how close to disaster we all sat. Sera’s head bobbed between the seats as she gathered her things, still oblivious. But her movement drew his eye.
The guard pulled a radio from his belt, swinging his rifle up with the other hand. But he couldn’t aim one-handed, and since the intruder hadn’t noticed him yet, policy dictated that he call for backup first.
I aimed.
I’m fast. But I’m not faster than the spoken word.
I could hear the static of his radio, but not what was said into it, or the reply that came back. I fired once. The gun thwuped. The guard tumbled backward and went down on the patio steps. I couldn’t see his wound from where I stood, but I knew he was dead before he hit the ground, because I knew where I’d hit him. The middle of his forehead.
Sera still hadn’t seen him, and more were surely on the way.
Shit! I glanced at the house. No activity yet. But that wouldn’t last long.
Gun aimed at the ground to my left, I jogged across the grass and into the parking lot, where the light made me feel exposed. Naked. Vulnerable.
“Sera!” I hissed, but she didn’t hear me. She was below seat-level again, doing something I couldn’t see.
I scanned the back of the main house as I approached the car, then squatted next to the rear tire just as the back door of the house opened and two more guards came out. I pulled open the rear door of her car, and Sera’s squeal of surprise was swallowed by the shouts of the guards as they discovered their coworker’s body.
“It’s me!” I hissed, and Sera exhaled. “We gotta go!”
“Okay, just let me...” she whispered, bending again to gather her things.
“Now!” I snapped, and she flinched. And that’s when I realized what was taking her so long. She was gathering the photos that had fallen across the backseat and floorboard. Her mother’s album was old and worn out. It had practically fallen apart in her hands.
They must have looked through it all the time. That thought nearly broke my heart.
But then there was more shouting. More footsteps. I peeked through the rear windshield to see that three guards had become five, and they were fanning out across the porch, handguns and rifles drawn, prepared to search the property. They wouldn’t have to go far to find us.
“Sorry, Sera, but we have to go.” I sank out of sight again. She peeked over the backseat, then dropped onto her heels in the floorboard, air wheezing in and out of her lungs.
“Shit!” she whispered. “Do you have another gun?”
“Can you shoot?”
She shook her head, but her hands were steady as she gathered the photos. “But I’m a fast learner.”
“Good. I’ll teach you—if we get out of here.” I scooped the last of the loose photos into my left hand and dumped them into the computer bag she held open, then took it from her and slung
the strap over my shoulder. I helped her out of the car—awkward, with us both squatting—then carefully, silently closed the door.
Then I peeked around the end of the car.
There were too many of them. They were all armed. Even if they were all horrible shots—and they wouldn’t be—they were close enough that it would take more effort for them to avoid hitting us than to hit us.
“Change of plans. Give me your keys.”
“What?” Her eyes were huge again. But her voice was steady. “We can’t drive out of here!”
“We can’t walk out, either, unless you’ve decided your body didn’t come with enough holes in it.” And that wasn’t possible, because her body was perfect. My job was to keep it that way.
She peeked through the rear window again, then dropped into a squat with her back against the car, eyes wide. “What’s the plan?”
“Give me your keys. Crawl into the backseat and stay down on the floorboard. I’ll drive us into the dark, then we get out and shadow-walk into the closet.”
She nodded. “Sounds easy enough.”
“Except for the part where you lose your car to a storm of bullet holes.”
“Can bullets penetrate a car?”
“This car? Yeah. So stay down. Ready?”
“No.”
“Too bad.” I plucked the keys from her hand and pulled open the back door. Three of the guards’ heads swiveled in our direction, but they weren’t at the right angle to see the open door.
Sera climbed onto the rear floorboard, then pulled the door mostly closed. I opened the front passenger door and crawled across the bucket seats, banging my knee on the center console. The interior light came on. And that’s when the bullets began to fly.
Rifles are loud. So is the collision of bullet and car.
Bent almost in half, I stepped on the brake pedal and shoved Sera’s key into the ignition. I turned the key, and when her engine growled to life, I shifted into Drive and stomped on the gas without even peeking through the windshield. It was a straight shot into the yard. The blissfully dark yard.
But I forgot about the curb. Tower’s stupid backyard parking lot had a stupid fucking curb all the way around it.
The front tires slammed into the raised concrete then rolled over it. My chest hit the steering wheel and Sera hit the back of my seat.
She screamed as more bullets ripped through the trunk. Several shattered the rear windshield and lodged in the headrest of the driver’s seat, and I hoped she’d stayed down and the bullets had all gone up.
I stomped the gas pedal again, and as soon as night washed over the windshield, I swerved sharply to the right and slammed the gearshift into Park. “Out!” I shouted as bullets ripped through the passenger side of the car. I dove out the driver’s door and rolled onto the grass as Sera’s door opened.
She crawled out onto the grass, shaking, and I pulled her up by one arm, pinning her computer bag between us when the strap fell off my shoulder. More bullets flew, but most of the guards were shooting handguns. Bigger bullets, but less power.
“Give me your hand!” I said, pulling her farther into the dark.
“What?”
“I have to be touching your skin.” But all I could find was her sleeve.
She fumbled in the dark, but couldn’t catch my hand, so I shoved the computer bag at her and picked her up as though giving her a bear hug, one hand sliding beneath the back of her shirt.
Two steps later, the air changed. Silence descended with the weight of my own conscience, and we collided with the closed closet door. Sera fumbled with the knob and the door flew open before I was ready. We fell to a heap on the hall floor. When I looked up, I found three different guns aimed at our heads.
Gazes focused on us. Tensed postures relaxed. Everyone seemed to exhale in relief all at once. Kori, Ian and Liv holstered their guns, and Liv bent to offer Sera a hand up. “I take it you didn’t get the car.”
I stood and brushed off my pants, then picked Sera’s computer bag up from where it had fallen on the floor. “I’m just happy that we made it out unshot.” I handed Sera’s bag to her and her eyes widened. Instead of taking it, she unzipped it while I still held it and pulled out her laptop. Or, what remained of her laptop. A bullet had punctured the computer’s case and lodged in some part of its electronic guts.
“Seriously?” Her forehead was deeply furrowed. “I’ve known you for all of four hours, and you’ve managed to destroy my phone, my car and now my computer. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were still trying to cut me off from the outside world.”
“Would it help to remind you that your computer died a noble death, in defense of both our lives?”
She snatched her bag from me, busted laptop and all. “No. That wouldn’t help. If I’d never met you, my life wouldn’t need defending.” With that, she turned and marched into the living room where she sat next to Hadley, pretending to watch TV while silent tears rolled down her face.
Kori gave me a silent, brow-raised look as she pushed the closet door closed behind me.
“I don’t think she likes me, Kor.”
“Yeah, I can’t figure that out. You’re the friendliest kidnapper I’ve ever met.” My sister shrugged. “She probably hates puppies, too.”
* * *
That night, after Anne and Hadley had gone home, Vanessa loaned Sera something to sleep in and Kori dug out an extra toothbrush from the linen closet and told her to help herself to any toiletries she needed from the bathroom. While Sera showered, I sat backward in my sister’s desk chair, conferring with Kori and Ian in their bedroom.
It was nearly twice the size of mine, and the bed looked all rumpled and...used. I tried not to think about that. At all. Ever.
“I asked Van to do a search for murdered families with a survivor named Sera,” Kori whispered, even though we could all hear the shower running. “If she doesn’t find anything in the immediate area, she’ll widen the search.”
“She won’t find anything local.” I laid my arms over the back of the chair, my voice almost as low as hers. “Sera’s definitely not a city mouse.”
“Or so she’d have us think.” Kori’s gaze narrowed on me. “Do you believe her?”
“About everything? No. About that? Yes. Anne says she’s hiding something, and we have no reason not to trust Anne. But I believe Sera doesn’t know the city and truly has no clue about the Towers.”
Ian sank onto the love seat in front of a large window. My room had only one small window, and no couch. “Do you trust her?”
That was a more complicated question. “I don’t know.”
“That’s kind of a ‘no’ by default.” Kori shrugged. “Either you trust her, or you don’t.”
“I don’t trust her yet.” But I wanted to. And I wanted her to trust me.
Ian pulled Kori down with him on the couch. “Maybe we’ll be able to once we figure out who the hell she is.”
“Crossing my fingers for Vanessa on that account,” I said, and Kori gave me that same I’m-laughing-at-you-but-you’re-too-dumb-to-know-it grin she’d been using on me since the sixth grade.
“Cross your fingers for yourself.” She glanced at Ian and he smiled. “If I had any money, I’d bet that you’ll get her talking long before Van can dig up anything reliable.”
“Kor, Sera hates me.”
My sister’s smile refused to die, and if it weren’t so good to see her happy—even at my expense—I might have tried to rid her of it. “Maybe. But you’re the only one she’s really spoken to so far, other than Hadley. That has to mean something.”
But I had my doubts.
Ian shrugged. “Either way, we’re safer with her here, unless she’s a mole planted by Julia Tower.” But if that were the case, Anne would have known Sera was lying.
“We may be safer. But Kenley isn’t,” Kori said, and the mood in the room sobered instantly. We hadn’t forgotten about her—not even for a second—but hearing her name brought all ou
r anger, fear and frustration to the surface.
Ian put one arm around her. “We’ll get her back, Kori. But there’s nothing we can do for her tonight, and we won’t be much good to her tomorrow without some rest. So kick your brother out of here, so we can all get some sleep.”
“Get out, brother, so we can all get some sleep,” Kori said, obviously struggling to maintain the illusion of optimism.
I stood, already backing toward the door. “You have to stop using ‘sleep’ as a euphemism.”
I closed the door on their soft laughter and began my first-floor security scan, specifically checking on the window Ian had covered, which now felt safer than the ones that still held glass. Then I checked on Gran, who was snoring on her left side, and on the hall closet, which stood wide open, lit from within by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.
All the other rooms held a single infrared bulb in a floor lamp with no shade. We kept them on all the time as a security precaution. They shed no visible light, but kept the darkness too shallow for shadow-walkers to utilize.
Upstairs, Van was clicking away at her laptop in the room at the end of the hall, and I knew without asking that she wouldn’t get much sleep, in spite of the late hour. Not with Kenley missing. But at least she’d found something constructive to do with the time.
When I was sure everything was secure and everyone was safe—except for Kenley—I headed into my own room. Then stopped cold with my hand still on the doorknob.
Sera stood naked in the middle of the floor with her back to me, a towel in her left hand, a T-shirt in her right.
For about half a second, I had a stunning, unimpeded view of one of the most beautiful sights I’d ever seen. She was slim, and soft and every curve on her body seemed designed to fit into my hand, or under my lips, or into my mouth...
Then she half-turned and saw me, and if she hadn’t choked on surprise, she’d surely have screamed loud enough to break every pane of glass in the house. Fear flashed behind her eyes for just an instant, replaced almost immediately by blazing fury as she dropped the shirt and clutched the towel to her chest, its hem grazing her toes.
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