“You’re talking to the man who fell in love with your sister. If ‘crazy’ were a deal-breaker for me, I wouldn’t be here. This whole house is crazy.”
I nodded. “This place is crazy, and we’re gluttons for punishment, you and I. How we’ve survived Gran, and Kori, and Sera is beyond me. I wouldn’t want to face any one of them in a dark alley on a bad day, and we’ve got them all under one roof. Kinda makes you think Kenni and Van have the right idea, huh?”
“If you’re changing teams in the middle of the game, I’m gonna have to cheer you on from the stands, man. My compass points toward women. One woman in particular.”
I laughed. “Glad to hear it, for my sister’s sake. And no, I’m not changing teams. Far from it.” In fact, the heading on my own internal compass was steadier than I’d seen it in years. Instead of pointing to the entire female gender, it now seemed to be singling out Sera. Only Sera. And... “The thing is that for the first time since Noelle, I’m not scared to do this.”
“To do what?” Ian unscrewed the cap from the whiskey bottle and took a short gulp. Bonding with me had driven him to drink, after only a quarter of an hour.
“To be with her. In every sense, not just the biblical. Although that was—”
“Stop there...” Ian warned, tilting the bottle up again, but I hardly heard him.
“She’s like this living fire, jumping and sparking, and lighting me up even while she casts fierce shadow all around us, and when I’m with her I can totally see how fire could be the source of all life, because that’s what she is. She is life. She burns with it. And I want to kill everyone who’s ever laid a cruel hand on her.”
I hadn’t realized I was clenching my empty glass until Ian shrugged and pushed the bottle my way. “So do it.”
Glass clinked as I poured. “Do what?”
“Kill him. We both know who you’re talking about. Find him and kill him.”
“I can’t.” Well, I could, but... “She wants to see him die. And I don’t fucking blame her.”
Ian frowned, as if I’d started speaking gibberish. “I didn’t mean now. I’m just saying that if you want to prove you can protect her, give her what she came here for.”
“That’s the plan, but I can’t do much until I know who the bastard is.”
“Just give it a little more time. Before she went to bed, Van was making a list of possible suspects based on Sera’s description and details from the crime scene. She’s planning to show mug shots to Sera tomorrow. If they can identify him, Cam and Liv will be able to find him.” He shrugged. “Then you can do what you do best, which will be giving her what she wants most in the world.”
“You think killing is what I do best? Did you learn nothing from whatever you heard through the thin walls?”
“Ah. Humor as a defense mechanism. I know that tactic well.”
I didn’t bother denying it. Nor did I own up to what was really bothering me. I was supposed to stop Sera’s bad guy before he killed her family. Killing him as an afterthought wouldn’t give her back what she’d lost.
“No use stressing over it now.” Ian pushed his chair back from the table. “There’s nothing anyone can do until Sera’s had a chance to look at the mug shots.” He stood and pushed his chair in. “I don’t think you have anything to prove to her, though. She likes you. We can all see that. So just don’t kidnap her anymore and keep doing...whatever you did upstairs, and you should be golden.”
After Ian went to bed, I poured another inch of whiskey and pulled Vanessa’s laptop into position in front of me. Ian might not have understood computers, but I understood them well enough to find Van’s search history and the files she’d worked on most recently. After three minutes of clicking links and opening documents, I found what I was looking for, though probably only because she’d made no effort to hide it. A series of six mug shots taken from a police database she shouldn’t have had access to, compiled and labeled with both a number and a letter designation. Three files later, I found the code key, which provided each paroled—and one escaped—criminal with an arrest record, labeled with those same letter/number combinations.
I stared at the pictures, wondering which—if any—of these men had smiled at Sera as he drove his knife into her. Which of them had shot her parents, then stabbed and violated her little sister? Which man would I have to kill to see that rage in her eyes replaced with a sad peace that would grow a little less sad and a little more peaceful every day?
But their pictures told me nothing, except that all of them had light eyes, pale skin, and dark curls of various lengths.
Their arrest records didn’t say much more. All had been arrested for violent crimes within one hundred miles of her parents’ home, including multiple counts of rape, aggravated assault, murder and one other home invasion. Three had been convicted and served time—several years each—before being paroled. One escaped from a local jail, where he was being kept during his appeal. One was acquitted. One never went to trial, thanks to police error. Such was the state of the justice system—I knew men who’d done more time for drug charges and nonviolent robbery than any of the sick fucks the police had questioned in Sera’s case.
But none of that told me who to kill. Vanessa’s technical sleuthing was no more help than Noelle’s incomplete predictions had been. But maybe together...
I stood so fast my chair screeched across the kitchen floor, and for a second, I was afraid I’d woken Gran. But when no sound came from her room, I practically ran into the living room and hauled my duffel bag out from under the coffee table, where I’d been storing all the stuff I’d taken out of my room when Sera moved in.
Elle’s notebook was at the bottom. I pulled it out carefully, aware, as always, that the cardboard cover and flimsy paper pages wouldn’t last forever.
In the kitchen, I rooted through the junk drawer until I found a pen and a half-used pad of sticky notes, then I sat in front of Van’s laptop again, ready—no, desperate—to make sense of passages whose meaning had been eluding me for years.
There was no guarantee I’d have any more success this time, but I couldn’t help thinking that I was more prepared than ever to unravel Elle’s knot of prophesies, considering that this time I already knew not only what and where the crime was, but who the victims were.
All I needed was the perpetrator’s identity.
While everyone else slept, I spent the next two and a half hours reading that notebook all over again, from start to finish, flagging all of the promising passages with a sticky note. There weren’t many. Then I reread the suspects’ criminal records, wishing that, like Cam, I had a degree in criminal justice. Even an unused one.
But all I had was several years’ experience breaking and entering, Traveler-style.
Well, I had that, and I had Google. So I started doing image searches for the criminals Van had listed, as well as all of their aliases, hoping someone, somewhere had posted a picture of one of them with an identifying mark Sera had missed, or in a location or clothing that fit a passage in Elle’s notebook.
And finally, somewhere around four in the morning, I found a picture on a social networking site labeled with the second known alias of the fifth man on the list—the one who’d been arrested, but never went to trial. The man in the picture was shirtless, with most of his back turned toward the camera, and on the back of his left shoulder was a small tattoo of a tarantula, crawling up his body.
My heart beat a little faster and I flipped through the notebook, passing up all the passages I’d marked, in search of one I’d had no idea was connected to Sera and her family.
I still wasn’t sure they were connected. It could be a coincidence. But one night, about three years after Noelle and I first...got together, she’d started mumbling at about 1:40 in the morning, and I’d written what I could understand.
Spider, caught in the web of lies.
Was the man with the tattoos Noelle’s spider? If so, was Noelle’s spider also Sera’s smiling m
an? What was the web of lies—could it be Sera’s statement to the police?
It took ten more minutes of searching that same alias to find an image showing both the tattoo and the man’s face, in profile. But that was enough. It was him. One of the police department’s suspects in Sera’s case had a tattoo of a spider, and one of Noelle’s prophesies was about a spider. If that was a coincidence, it was coincidental enough to deserve investigation.
The suspect’s legal name was Chance Alexander Curtis. He sounded more like an Ivy League undergrad than a brutal murderer. But then, that fit Sera’s description, too.
I closed Van’s laptop and stowed Noelle’s notebook in the bottom of my duffel again. Then I borrowed the cell phone Ian had left in the kitchen to send a text to Cam.
It’s Kris. I need a favor.
His reply came two minutes later, while I was shrugging into my shoulder holster, over a mostly clean T-shirt dug from my bag.
Hell no. It’s 4 am & I still owe you a rt hook.
Oh, yeah. I’d punched Cam once, years ago, when I thought he was threatening Olivia. I was wrong, and he’d never let me forget it.
Turn off the light, or I’ll wake up Liv.
With my .40 loaded and holstered, I shrugged into a light jacket, then killed the bulb in the hall closet—we still kept it on at night, so no one could sneak in—then stepped into the darkness and out into the living room of Cam and Olivia’s apartment.
The second I appeared, something clicked, and light flooded the room from a lamp in the corner. I squinted and found Cam with his fingers still on the switch. Before my eyes had even adjusted to the light, he reached to his left and flipped the switch on another lamp, this one without a shade.
Nothing happened. That lamp held an infrared bulb, to keep the room inaccessible to Travelers—like me—without keeping the house lit up all night. There was one in every room of our hideout house.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Cam crossed into the tiny galley-style kitchen.
“I know it’s late, and—”
“Actually, it’s early.” He pulled open the fridge and tossed me a soda from inside, then took one for himself.
“—and Liv’s asleep—”
“Not anymore,” Olivia said, and I turned to find her standing in the hallway in a tank top and short pj shorts.
“You better not be looking at her...anything,” Cam growled, and I couldn’t roll my eyes fast enough.
“I’m not. We were never a thing.” I turned back to her when Cam pretended he hadn’t heard me. “Liv, tell him we were never a thing.”
“We were never a thing,” she said, settling onto a stool at the kitchen peninsula, and I could tell from her mischievous grin that she wouldn’t leave it at that. “Except for that time in your basement...”
I popped the top on my soda. “That lasted, like, five minutes—we were just kids—and I never even got past her bra.”
Cam glared at me from across the counter, looking less and less like he wanted to do me a favor.
“Seriously,” I reiterated. “And it was a teen bra. She didn’t even have...”
He growled again, and Olivia looked a little miffed.
“Never mind. That’s why I’m here.”
Cam frowned. “You’re here because Liv was a flat-chested teenager?”
“I wasn’t—” Liv started, but neither of us looked at her.
“No. I’m here because I don’t want Liv. Like that.” I shook my head, struggling to straighten out my thoughts. I was sleep-deprived and too focused on what needed to be done to think through what needed to be said, to make the rest of it possible. “I don’t like her like that. I like Sera. I think I more than like her. So I need to go kill someone.”
“Have you been drinking?” Olivia pressed the power button on their coffeepot and Cam pulled a bag of grounds from the cabinet over his head.
“No. Well, yes, but I’m not drunk. In fact, I’m thinking clearer than I have in years.”
“I can tell by how you reek of whiskey and make no sense,” Cam said. “And did I mention it’s four in the morning?”
“Yeah. I figure that’s the best time to catch him unaware.” Also, I didn’t want to wait. I was kind of eager to put a few bullets in the bastard who’d taken everything from Sera.
“Catch who?”
“Sera’s smiling man,” Olivia said, and I realized I’d have more luck appealing to her, even though it was Cam’s Skill I needed. “She ID’d him?”
“No, I did. With Van’s help. Not that she knows she helped yet, but she will.”
“Sit,” Cam ordered. “Drink your damn soda and calm down. Either you’re skipping entire sentences, or I’m only hearing half of them.”
“I have a name. Chance Alexander Curtis. I need you to Track him, so I can go get the bastard.”
Cam looked suddenly interested, despite the hour and his general disinterest in me as a human being—turns out it’s difficult to replace that vital first impression. “No fourth name?”
“Not that I found. I don’t think he’s Skilled.” Most unSkilled people didn’t have that second middle name. Their parents didn’t know they needed it.
“Why are you doing this at four in the morning?” Liv asked, while the coffeepot gurgled and ticked. “And why are you doing it alone?”
“It’s kind of a surprise,” I admitted, and her frown looked almost amused.
“Most men surprise their girlfriends with roses,” Liv said, and I didn’t bother telling them that Sera wasn’t my girlfriend. Or the type to want worthless clipped flowers.
“This is what she wants. This is what she needs, and I’m going to give it to her.” I turned back to Cam. “Can you just tell me where he is? Please? I’ll owe you.”
“You already owe me.”
“Fine. You can punch me in the face, and I won’t duck or fire back.”
Cam frowned, and I was starting to think that was the only expression he had. “What am I, fifteen?” He drank from his can again, then set it down harder than necessary. “Chance Alexander Curtis?”
I nodded.
“Fine. Give me a minute.” He closed his eyes, and I sank onto the stool next to Liv, silently sipping from my can as she opened the laptop on the counter in front of her and began to type.
It took less than a minute.
“Strong signal.” Cam opened his eyes and met my gaze from across the peninsula. “East side, about two miles from the river.”
“Here in the city?” I’d expected him to be closer to where Sera’s family was killed. Closer to where he lived.
“Yeah.”
“Got a street name, or a neighborhood?”
“That’s not how it works,” Cam said. “There’s no GPS in my head. Just a signal, coming from a certain direction. I can gauge distance based on the strength of the signal. I could lead you to him....”
“That would take too long. But thanks.”
“6141 Holloway, apartment 4C. On the corner of Fourth and Holloway.” Olivia turned her laptop to face me. “A man named Glen Curtis has an apartment there, and his social profile says he has a brother named Chase. I bet that’s where he’s staying.”
“How did you find that?”
“Van’s been teaching me some tricks I’d rather Ruben not know about...” she said, and I nodded. The last thing I wanted to do was give Ruben Cavazos information he didn’t have to work for.
“Thanks.” I stood and drained my soda. “Can you get the lights?”
Cam turned off both lamps and Olivia closed her laptop. I stepped out of the thick shadows in their living room and into an alley near the corner of Fourth and Holloway.
There are very few circumstances under which I’d walk down the street in Julia Tower’s section of town in broad daylight. Fortunately, 4:47 a.m. wasn’t quite broad daylight, and the walk from the alley to Curtis’s apartment building only took a couple of minutes.
I jogged up three flights of stairs and made a mental note t
o stop ignoring cardio in favor of weight training—sometimes, even a Traveler has to run. And if Sera decided she wasn’t done with me after one night, cardiovascular stamina would certainly come in handy.
I paused on the landing to catch my breath. And double-check my clip. Fully loaded, with one round in the chamber. Then I found the door to apartment 4C, halfway down the hall.
If I’d ever been there before, or was more than passingly familiar with the area, I could have Traveled right into the apartment itself, assuming the Curtis brothers had left any of their lights off. But since I wasn’t, and this was an important job, I’d decided to play it safe and check the place out before popping in unannounced.
From the hall, I could hear no sound coming from 4C, but then, most of the building’s residents were probably still sleeping. So I closed my eyes and felt for a dark pocket within.
The whole damn place was dark. So dark I knew the Curtises were either completely unSkilled, or not at home.
I closed my eyes and shadow-walked into the living room. A single step later, my shin smashed into something hard, and I cursed in the darkness. Then cursed silently over my own stupidity.
Something clicked, and a single bright light flared to life, momentarily blinding me. Something moved on my left, but I couldn’t focus on it.
I pulled my gun, blinking furiously, but couldn’t see to aim. “Who’s there?”
“Who do you think?” an unfamiliar voice asked. And as my eyes began to adjust, a man came into focus on the floor, his head slumped forward, sitting in a puddle of his own blood.
Chase Alexander Curtis sat next to him, bound and gagged with duct tape—the dead man could only be his brother. I raised my aim to his chest, and his eyes widened in fear. Desperate, inarticulate sounds came from behind his gag. The smiling man was no longer smiling.
Oath Bound (An Unbound Novel) Page 32