Oath Bound (An Unbound Novel) (10 page)

“We still need to see your arm.” I stood and Sera stared up at me, and I wished I knew her well enough to understand the intense blend of strength, fear and anger warring behind her eyes. “You want me to step outside?”

Her fingers found the hem of her shirt and her gaze hardened. “I don’t care what you do.”

But that was a lie. Women who don’t care what you do have no reason to tell you that.

I started to turn, to give her some privacy, but she turned faster. She pulled her left arm out of its long sleeve, then lifted that side of her shirt to her shoulder, revealing half of a slim, almost delicate waist above the denim clinging to the swell of her hip.

My throat felt tight. I tried not to stare. When that didn’t work, I tried not to
look
like I was staring. If Kori noticed, I couldn’t tell. She was fixated on Sera’s arm, as I should have been.

With the front of her shirt clutched to her chest, Sera twisted to show us her left arm, and I exhaled in relief before I realized she would hear that, and that she might understand how badly I’d wanted her to be unaffiliated with the Towers, and not just for her own sake. Not just for Kenley’s sake.

For my sake.

Her arm was smooth and pale, and completely unmarked. She was free from obligation not just to the Towers, but to any of the other syndicates who routinely marked their employees in the same spot. And that was most of them.

Sera was unbound.

Based on the lack of dead marks, she’d
never
been bound, which would explain her incomprehension of just how vile the syndicates really were. But if that was the case—if she didn’t work for Julia Tower—why had my notebook told me to take her? How was she supposed to help us get Kenley back?

Maybe she wasn’t. My head spun with that possibility. Maybe Sera wasn’t supposed to help me. Maybe
I
was supposed to help
her.

Kori shrugged, arms folded over her chest, while Sera slid her arm back into its sleeve. “Well, assuming the rest of her is as spotless as her arm, I’m good with letting her walk around unfettered until Anne gets here.”

“Me, too.” I hadn’t planned to tie her up at all until she tried to climb out the window.

“The rest of me is fine, but I’m not showing you anything else.” When Sera turned to face us, I saw that her resolution was just as firmly back in place as her shirt. “I’m not a prostitute.”

“We know,” I assured her.

Kori shrugged again. “I believe you, but what I believe doesn’t matter. You have to make Anne believe.” She turned to me, already reaching for the doorknob. “I’ll go get her.” Then she stepped into the hall and left the door open behind her back.

“She’s...interesting.” Sera glanced at the bed, as if she was considering sitting, then she sat in the chair instead. “Kinda scary.”

“Yeah. I’d like to say that’s Tower’s fault, but the truth is that Kori’s always been a little scary. I think that’s why he liked her.” Until suddenly he didn’t like her.

“She really worked for him?”

“Yup.” I knew better than to give her any new information, but I could verify what Kori had already said. “And she hated every minute of it.”

“She seemed legitimately surprised to see me.”

I sat on the edge of my grandmother’s desk, trying to look casual, as if I weren’t dying to interrogate her, to figure out how and why she fit into my notebook. And by extension, into my life. “As opposed to what?” Then I understood. “You still think I planned this.”

She shrugged and glanced at the nails I’d driven into the window frame. “You sealed all the exits. It’s kind of hard to believe you didn’t go to the Tower estate intending to take a prisoner.”

“Okay, I know that looks bad, but the doors and windows have been nailed shut for weeks,” I insisted, shoving my hands in my pockets. “I did that to keep everyone else out, not to keep you in.”

She looked like she wanted to believe me, but...

“If you can’t take my word for it, ask Kori when she gets back.” Or any of the others. I’d tell her to ask Gran, but I could never be sure what decade Gran was currently living in.

“If that’s the truth, why do you have such easy access to restraints?” She bent to pick up the severed zip tie.

“Those are for my job.”

“Are you a cop?” She studied me closer, as if that thought made her rethink her original assessment.

I actually laughed. “No. I...um...retrieve things.” That was half the truth. I couldn’t trust her with the other half. Not yet. Although if Gran kept slipping into the past, Sera would figure it out for herself.

“Things?” Sera may have been young, but she was a born skeptic. Not that I’d given her any reason to trust me.

“People, usually,” I admitted, and she opened her mouth to start shouting something that probably included a lot of I-told-you-so’s, so I spoke before she could interrupt. “I know how that sounds, but it’s legit.”
Mostly.
“I work part-time for a bail bondsman, doing the jobs his unSkilled employees can’t handle.”

Olivia had hooked me up with Adam Rawlinson, the man she’d worked for before Ruben Cavazos—the Towers’ biggest rival for control of the city—had snared her exclusive services via extortion and blood binding. Rawlinson served neither syndicate, and his clientele was mostly those who also wanted to avoid syndicate tangles. And could afford to pay.

“Bail bondsman?” Sera seemed to think about that. “So, you find runaway criminals?”

“No. His Trackers find them. I go get them and turn them in. Thus the zip ties.” I glanced at the one she still held. “But I also do odd jobs for private collectors.”
Very
odd jobs. For
very
private collectors.

Her gaze narrowed. “What kind of collectors?”

“Not people collectors, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Not anymore. Not since Micah, and the realization of just what I’d been aiding and abetting. “Just stuff the rich are willing to pay for, but can’t get their hands on through other means.”

“And that’s legal?”

I shrugged. “Not always. But it pays, and it doesn’t hurt anyone, and someone has to keep the lights on and the water flowing around here.”

“What, no one else here works?”

“
Everyone
here works. But most of that work goes toward accomplishing our higher purpose, rather than actually paying the bills.”

Ian helped me out when he could—the man could make darkness appear in broad daylight—and Kori had taken a couple of Rawlinson’s jobs, but they were both more useful to Kenley’s efforts than I was, so it was my mostly steady, mostly legit income that paid to rent and heat our hideout house while we slowly chipped away at the foundation of Julia Tower’s inherited power.

Sera looked as though she wanted to say something, and as if whatever she wanted to say might not be an insult to my moral fiber; but before she could do more than open her mouth, Ian called out from the hall as the floorboard in front of the empty closet creaked.

“Kori?”

“She went to get Anne,” I said, and a moment later Vanessa appeared in the bedroom doorway, with Ian at her back.

“Kenley?” Van’s forehead was lined in worry. She hardly even glanced at Sera.

“We haven’t found her yet,” I said, and I could see from Van’s wince that she hated hearing the words as badly as I hated saying them. “But we will. They won’t kill her.”

“I’m not worried about them killing her.” Vanessa frowned at our guest. “Who’s this?”

“This is Sera...um...” I shrugged with a glance at her. “That’s all I know so far, except that she almost certainly doesn’t work for the Towers.”

“I don’t,” Sera said.

“And that she may be able to help us find Kenley.”

Sera sighed and slouched in her chair as Van sank onto the bed next to her. “I would if I could, but I honestly know nothing about your sister.”

“What happened?” Ian said with a pointed glance at my arm.

I removed the towel and Vanessa gasped. “Those are going to need stitches. Or a Healer.”

I glanced at the neat line of horizontal scars on her right forearm and I remembered that she spoke from experience.

Sera scowled at my cuts, but she looked more guilty than angry. “I’m sorry, but you brought it on yourself.”

Ian blinked. “You did that?”

She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “He kidnapped me.”

Ian and Vanessa turned to me with matching arched brows.

I glared at Sera. “It’s not like it sounds.”

She snorted. “It’s exactly like it sounds.”

“It’s complicated,” I insisted.

She shrugged. “He may be right about that.”

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Van eyed the severed zip tie on the floor, then the blood finally seeping through the towel on my arm. “Did I miss that part?”

“She blocked my aim at Julia Tower when I went looking for Kenni.”

“But I don’t work for Julia,” Sera repeated. “Or for anyone else.”

Ian lifted the towel for another look at my cuts, then dropped it into place again and turned to Sera. “Then why would you stand between her and a well-deserved bullet?”

She blinked, evidently surprised by the question. “He wasn’t really going to shoot her.” Sera turned to me with a frown. “You weren’t, were you?”

“Not before she told me where Kenni is. But you didn’t know that. Why would you shield her from a bullet, if you’re not bound to her?” Nearly everyone who’d worked for Jake Tower had been contractually obligated to take a bullet for him, but I couldn’t think of anyone who would have done that voluntarily.

“Because I’m a decent person,” Sera said, and I believed that. But I also believed there was more to it. “Beyond that, it’s really none of your business.”

I folded the rag and set it on the desk next to me, then met her gaze again. “You’re actually wrong about that, but you’re welcome to wait for Anne before you start answering questions, unless you want to repeat everything.”

Sera groaned. “Why is everything such a pain in the ass here? And who are you two?”

“Oh, sorry.” Ian stepped forward and offered her his hand. “I’m Ian.”

“Kori’s Ian?”

He chuckled. “Um...yeah. You met her?”

Sera paled. “She offered to kill me, for my own good.”

His grin broke into a full-fledged smile. “Well, then, she must like you.”

“Kori’s an acquired taste.” Vanessa offered her hand next. “I’m Van.”

“And how do you fit in here?”

“Kenley and I are...” Vanessa’s eyes watered, and Ian lightly wrapped one arm around her. When she didn’t object—Van usually didn’t like to be touched—he squeezed her shoulders, and her tears fell.

“She’s part of the family,” I finished for her. Van had spilled blood for us in Tower’s basement, just like Kori had, and that would have made her family even if she and Kenni weren’t in love.

“We have a little time. Julia needs Kenley alive,” I reminded Vanessa, and she finally nodded stiffly.

Sera frowned. “Why? Why does Julia need your sister?”

Van turned to me, brows arched in question. “How much are we telling her?”

“Nothing, until Anne’s had a chance to—”

“Motherfucker!” my grandmother shouted from the kitchen, and I was up in an instant, my bloody towel forgotten. I pulled the bedroom door open farther, and the scent of cooking beef rolled over me, eliciting dueling waves of dread and hunger.

Gran had found the stove knobs.

I raced down the hall and through the living room into the kitchen, expecting to find flames engulfing the room. Instead, I found my grandmother standing in a crimson pool, in her house shoes.

“What happened? Where are you cut?”

Gran scowled at me. “I’m not cut, I’m just old and clumsy.”

Several sets of footsteps slowed to a stop at my back and Sera laughed as she brushed past me and took the open can my grandmother held. Thin red liquid dripped down the side of the label, over her fingers. “It’s tomato sauce.” She set the can on the counter next to three others lined up there, and took my grandmother’s hand. “Here, let me help you out of that mess.”

Gran stepped out of her house shoes and onto a clean spot on the floor, clutching Sera’s hand for balance. “Thank you, hon.” She shook her head. “I guess that’s what I get for using marinara out of a can, but you don’t leave me much choice when you buy the wrong tomatoes and lose all the chopping knives, Kristopher.”

I’d “lost” all the chopping knives just like I’d “misplaced” the stove knobs. Life and work had both gotten much harder when senility had started to affect Gran’s everyday function, instead of just her perception of time.

“Gran, that’s way too much sauce. There are only five of us now.” Six if I counted Kenley. Or Sera.

Sera shot me a questioning look, but I couldn’t figure out how to explain what reality Gran was living in at that moment without telling her about the kids. And I could
not
afford to tell her about the kids.

She turned back to my grandmother. “Here, you have a seat, and I’ll get that cleaned up.” She pulled out a chair at the table for my grandmother, then turned toward the mess on the floor and grabbed a roll of paper towels.

“Don’t worry about that, hon. You’re a guest. Kristopher will get it. Kristopher?” Gran glanced at me expectantly and I held up my arm, silently pleading my bloody hardship.

Gran rolled her eyes. “Oh, fine, bring me my sewing kit, and I’ll stitch you up.”

Ian noticed my panic as I tried to come up with a reason to refuse my grandmother’s offer—some reason other than the fact that she could no longer see well enough to cross-stitch, much less repair my open, bleeding wounds—and he stepped in.

“I got it, Gran.” Everyone called her Gran. That’s the only way she’d have it. “I need the practice, but maybe you wouldn’t mind giving me some pointers while I work?” Ian pulled out a chair for me and I sank into it, grateful both for the rescue and for his tact.

“Be glad to, hon.” Gran scowled at me as she spoke. “Anything for a man not ashamed to admit when he needs help.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t need help. I need stitches.”

Ian chuckled as he pulled the first aid kit from the top of the fridge.