Oath Bound (An Unbound Novel) (38 page)

When Kris had taken her back to the house, and out of the influence of my jamming ability.

And that’s when I noticed that my gun was no longer on the coffee table.

My pulse raced so fast that my vision started to swim, but I made myself smile. I stopped myself from fidgeting, or glancing nervously at Gran over Lynn’s shoulder, or doing anything else to tip them off to my suspicion. Which was ill-formed, at best.

Why were they really here?

“Well, you’ve found me. And I’m fine, as you can see.” I spread my arms in demonstration.

“And Julia?” Lynn watched me carefully as I sank onto the arm of the nearest living room chair, desperate to look casual. “Have you seen her today? She’s still...missing.”

Oh.
Could that be it? Was she trying to find out if we’d taken Julia out of power? Or out of the
world?
I knew from my first encounter with them both that there was no love lost between the widow and her sister-in-law.

“Julia’s... You won’t have to worry about her for a while,” I said.
Or ever.

“Oh, good!” Lynn looked so relieved I couldn’t help smiling with her. Until she pulled my gun from behind her leg and aimed it at me.

My heart clawed its way up my throat, then got stuck there, where I had to speak around it. I stood, my hands out to show that I was unarmed. “Lynn?” Her name came out as a croak—that was all the sound I could force out.

“I’m sorry, Sera. You seem like a sweet girl. But there’s no place for sweet girls in this city, and there’s certainly no place for them in the Tower syndicate.”

“But...I don’t want the syndicate. If you’ll just listen...” If she’d just let me explain that I was going to set them all free, surely...

“That’s good. And if you’d been willing to give it up, I would have let you walk away. But rumor has it you want to
disband
the syndicate. Honestly, you’ve been difficult from the beginning, and that little stunt you pulled with the texting campaign...” Disgust shone in her eyes. “I can’t let you give it all away. This syndicate belongs to my children. It’s their father’s life’s work, and you are
not
going to take that from us.”

I heard her, but the part that kept playing over and over in my head was... “The beginning? What does that mean? What’s the beginning?”

Nonononono...!
But I understood, even before she could say it.

“The hiding, Sera. You’ve been hiding from me for years. At least, that’s what I thought until Julia let it slip that you’re a Jammer. Just like Jake.”

“You were looking for me? Before Jake died?” The House of Crazy was
full
of guns. Any other time, I’d be tripping over them, but now, when I needed one, there were none to be found.

“At first. For nearly a decade,” Lynn admitted. “Then I gave up for a while. I thought maybe you were dead—how else could Tracker after Tracker fail to find you?”

“Did Jake know?”

“Of course not. If he’d known about you, he would have wanted you. To
raise
you. I only knew because Julia told me. To hurt me. On the morning of my wedding, that bitch leaned in like she’d hug me and instead told me that my husband had a lover and a bastard daughter.”

She’d known all along? She and Julia had
both
known about me?

“I made him swear an oath, right then and there, that he’d never touch another woman. I had it sealed in blood and everything. He didn’t know why, because he didn’t know about you. I guess I came off looking like a jealous, paranoid bride, but I wasn’t going to take the chance of him fathering any more of
you.
”

“My family...” I sank onto the chair arm again, struggling to think through this barrage of information. “Julia didn’t...”

“She tried to find you and your family, but she never could. I found your mother’s name and info in her stuff. In the documentation from when she’d tried to find them herself. And when I tried, I got lucky. You’d left for college.”

Leaving my family vulnerable, without me there to jam their psychic signals...

It was all my fault.

“You had them killed on the
chance
that I’d be there that weekend?”

Julia chuckled and stepped over the threshold into the living room, Sean close at her back, threatening me with his very presence, while Gran chopped ingredients, evidently oblivious. “That was another stroke of luck. My plan was to flush you out by killing them. Who else would you have had to turn to then, other than your real family? I didn’t know you were there that night until the man I hired showed up for his money.”

That’s why he didn’t look for me.
Curtis hadn’t expected more than one daughter.

“So, what now? You’re just going to kill me? So your son can inherit?”

Before Lynn could answer, a streak of movement from behind her caught my eye. Sean made a strange, pain-filled sound and when Lynn turned, I saw Gran standing behind him, her hand still around the hilt of the knife she’d buried in his neck.

My heart nearly burst through my rib cage.

Gran let loose a primal scream of rage, then shoved the dying man at Lynn, who instinctively tried to catch him. But he was heavy, and she was wearing heels. She stumbled beneath his weight and went down on one hip. Without dropping my gun.

Gran stepped around her and I grabbed her hand, then hauled her down the hall with me, away from the psychotic bitch with the gun. “Good timing!” I said, following her into her room.

She frowned at me, confusion shining in her eyes. “Nikki’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Yes, Gran. I’m sorry. But thanks to you, so is that bastard in the kitchen.” I closed the bedroom door and twisted the doorknob lock. And jammed Gran’s rocker beneath the doorknob, for what little good it would do.

Then I lurched across the room toward the window and jerked it open. “Can you make it through?” I asked as Gran stepped into her slippers to protect her feet.

“I’m not that damn old, child!” She bent—she was nimble for a seventy-four-year-old—and I helped her get one leg out of the window, then the other. I lowered her slowly until her feet hit the ground, then handed her the cell phone from her dresser.

“Call Kris!” I said as the first bang of Lynn’s fist shook the bedroom door.

“Sera!” Lynn shouted. “Come out now, or I’ll go find Kenley.”

“You can’t kill her.” For the same reason Julia couldn’t—that would break the bindings she wanted her son to inherit.

“No, but I can
take
her. And if I do, she won’t be sleeping on silk sheets. I’m not going to pamper her like Jake did. I watched him for years, Sera. I saw every mistake he made.”

“You’re going to take her anyway.” I said it as soon as I realized it, and I believed it the moment the words left my lips. She needed Kenley alive and in custody just as badly as she needed me dead.

“I will, unless you come out and stop me.” Her footsteps retreated, and I recognized the creak of the floorboard in front of the closet—and the soft click as she turned the light on, locking Kris and Kori out.

Shit!

I glanced around Gran’s bedroom until I found the lamp with the infrared bulb, which was kept on at all hours. I turned the lamp off, then flipped the regular light switch next to the door, throwing the room into darkness, except for what moonlight shone in from the open window.

Then all I could do was hope that Kris would find the pocket of darkness I’d left for him. And that he’d bring an extra gun.

I’d found the woman responsible for the slaughter of my family—evidently the third time really is a charm—and this one, too, deserved a bullet.

But when Kris failed to materialize more than a minute after I’d given him darkness, Lynn’s steps retreated down the hall toward the living room. And the staircase, leading to Kenley’s room. Surely Kenley had heard the commotion.

Surely she knew to hide.

But I couldn’t take that chance.

When I heard the landing creak with her weight, I eased Gran’s door open and tiptoed down the hall, careful to avoid the noisy board in front of the closet. Lynn was halfway up the stairs, but I snuck past her to the body still leaking blood on the carpet where he’d fallen half-out of the kitchen. Surely Sean was armed.

But he was not. Or else Lynn had already relieved him of his weapons.

Crap!

She was almost to the top of the stairs.

“Lynn!” I ducked behind an armchair when she turned, already aiming at me. “Leave Kenley alone.” Lynn didn’t have a way out of the house anyway, unless she’d already called in another Traveler. How was she planning to get Kenley out?

Her footsteps came closer, down the stairs, but I didn’t dare peek for fear of getting shot in the head. I had no idea how good her aim was.

I could only listen as she descended the stairs, squeaked on the landing, then stepped onto carpet. Her pant legs whispered against each other as she came toward me, and I circled the chair slowly, still squatting, trying to stay out of view.

“You have nowhere to go,” she said, but her taunt sounded more like a statement of fact. “You can’t get out of this boarded-up house. You have no weapon and you’re hiding from an armed woman. And before you decide you can take me, you should know that even if you killed Julia, you weren’t her real downfall. Her biggest mistake was underestimating me.”

I didn’t doubt that for a moment.

She came closer, and my heart thudded in my ears. I circled the chair to my right as she followed on my left, and my thighs burned from holding a squat for so long.

Then Lynn lurched into view on my left, grim smile in place, aiming my own gun at me. “Stand up, Sera. At least face death like an adult, and know that your sacrifice will mean the world to your brother and sister, when they’re old enough to understand.”

I stood, because my legs were cramping. And because she was right. What kind of dignity was there in being shot on the floor?

“At least your death will be more merciful than your sister’s. I promise I’ll aim for your head.”

“You bitch!” I lunged for her without thinking, aiming low, like my dad had taught me as a kid. My shoulder caught her in the chest, but only because I’d surprised her. She went down on her ass, but it only took her a second to regain both focus and aim.

I froze, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I was facing my death when I’d only just rediscovered life, and all it had to offer. Kris. Family. Freeing people and taking down bad guys.

“Fine. A graceless death it will be.” Lynn frowned up at me from the floor, taking aim two-handed. The world came into crystal-clear focus as the last seconds of my life ticked away, and I saw her finger tighten on the trigger.

Then sound erupted around us, and the side of her head fucking
exploded.

I stumbled back in shock. My ears rang. My pulse raced. The gun fell from Lynn’s hand, and her body hit the floor, half on its side. Bits of her brain dripped down the screwed-shut front door.

My breath came and went so fast the room started to spin around me. Then I saw Kris standing on the landing, still aiming at the dead woman, and the world came back to me. Everything went still, and he seemed to cross the room in slow motion.

“How...” That was all I could manage.

“Kenley let me in through her bedroom.” He reached down to pull me up, and then I was in his arms, and I was alive, and he was crying, but he looked so happy. “I thought you were dead. I thought you were both dead.”

“Is she okay?” Kenley asked, and over his shoulder I saw her at the foot of the stairs in a thick bathrobe, holding Vanessa’s .22 like a kid with a water pistol.

Kris pulled away enough to get a good look at me. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, and tears spilled down my face. “I’m good. I’m
so
good.” He wiped my cheeks with both hands, but more tears followed. “She killed my family, Kris. It was her, not Julia.”

His brows rose in surprise, then a smile grew on his face, which felt odd, considering the dead woman at his back. “So...I really did kill your bad guy?”

I nodded, still crying. “You did. Thank you.” I kissed him. Then I kissed him some more. And when I finally let him go, it was only so that I could say the most wonderful sentence ever. “I think we did it. I think we actually just put the Tower syndicate out of business. For good.”

“You rat bastard!” Kori shouted, and I pulled away from Kris to see her standing halfway down the stairs. Staring at the stain in the carpet formerly known as Gwendolyn Tower. “
I
wanted to take out the last of the Towers! I’ve fucking earned it!”

Kris laughed. “No one’s taking out the last of the Towers.” He pulled me closer. “We’re gonna keep her.”

“I’m not a Tower,” I insisted. But Kevin and Aria were. I hoped with every cell in my body that it wasn’t too late for nurture to overcome nature for them, as it had for me. And I fully intended to give it my best shot. With Kris at my side.

Kori stomped down the rest of the stairs and propped her hands on her hips, looking down at the corpse. “I’m not cleaning that shit up. He who spills the brains cleans the brains. You know the rules.”

“I tell you what,” Kris said, and his grin was irrepressible. “If you clean up this one teeny little corpse for me now, I’ll let you take out Cavazos all on your own. Bargain of the century, Kor. Act now—this offer won’t last long!”

“Go fuck yourself,” Kori grumbled on her way into the closet, presumably to bring Gran in out from the cold. “Both of you.”

Kris laughed so hard I was afraid he’d choke.

“Don’t mind her,” Kenley said, clicking the safety on her little pistol. “That’s how she says ‘I love you.’”

“Well, in that case, she can go fuck herself, too,” I said. But I secretly hoped she was already gone and hadn’t heard me.

“So, now what?” He tugged me away from the cooling corpse still oozing gray matter onto the carpet. “What will you do now that your mortal enemy’s dead, her kingdom in ashes scattered over her corpse?”

“I want to give it all back, Kris.” I stared into his eyes and saw my need reflected in his. “The money. The house. It’s all stained in blood, and the only way to clean it is to use it for good. For your kids.”