Shadow Bound (Unbound) (17 page)

Ian stared down at me, green eyes practically shining with amusement, and my pulse spiked when I realized how small the bathroom was, and how close together we stood. “I dare you.” The words were soft, his voice intense, like he was challenging more than just my proclivity for profanity.

I had to reach around him to drop the first handful of wet paper towels into the trash, and for one dizzying second, the full length of his body was pressed against mine, because there was nowhere else to go. “What are we, twelve?” I asked, desperately hoping he didn’t notice the tremor in my voice.

“No self-respecting twelve-year-old would balk over a simple dare.”

“I’m not balking,” I insisted, suddenly short of breath now that the shocking cold of spilled water had given way to the body heat building between us in the small space. “This is not what I look like when I balk.”

“You’re right.” He tilted his head, pretending to study me from another angle. “This is definitely the face of cowardice. It’s a subtle difference.”

“Smart-ass.” I took the next handful of tissues as he offered them. “Fine. But for the record, this is a stupid fucking dare. What are the terms?”

“It’s a bet, not a contract negotiation.” He shrugged. “Don’t cuss. If you do, you lose.”

I frowned up at him, trying not to see the flecks of brown in his green eyes, almost mesmerizing from such a close vantage point. “You’re a piss-poor negotiator. Do yourself a favor. Take a lawyer with you when you meet with Jake.”

“I kind of feel like I need one now.”

“You and me both. State your terms.” Was the air-conditioning even on? How could I be so warm now, when I was freezing a minute earlier?

“Twenty-four hours. No cussing. No exceptions.”

“What about life-and-death situations? No one could keep from cussing with a knife in her back or a bullet lodged in her chest,” I said, plucking at the wet material clinging to my legs—until my hand brushed his thigh, and I froze, half embarrassed, half…intrigued.

“Are you planning to be shot or stabbed in the next twenty-four hours?” he asked, like he hadn’t even noticed, and I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved by that or insulted.

“Were you
there
in the alley? If I get hurt, it’ll be in the line of duty, keeping your ass from getting poached.”

“No exceptions,” Ian insisted. “But if that’s too much for you…?”

I frowned up at him. “You are such a child. Fine. No cussing for twenty-four hours. Starting now.” I pulled my phone from my pocket to glance at the time. “Two thirty-four p.m. What do I get when I win?”

He smiled and spread both arms, and for a moment, I thought he was offering himself as the prize, and I flushed at the thought. For just a second. “My undying respect.”

I didn’t even bother to hide my disappointment. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

His left eyebrow rose. “My respect has no value to you?”

“That’s not what I…” In fact, for no reason I could explain, considering that we’d just met, I
did
want his respect. But I also wanted free will, a billion dollars and a bathtub full of Häagen-Dazs, and I wasn’t going to get any of those, either. “How ’bout we assume the fair market value of your undying respect is…a bottle of Grey Goose. The big one. Because your respect means that much to me.”

He laughed. “Oddly, I’m flattered.”

“But are you ready to put your money where your mouth is? I dare you to go the rest of your visit without slacks.”

His mouth actually dropped open a little in surprise. “You want me to take off my pants?” he said, and when I realized what my dare had sounded like, I could feel my cheeks flame. But I couldn’t make my tongue work right.

“That’s not what I… I mean, I dare you to wear jeans for the rest of your visit, instead of slacks. And no tie. I bet you can’t go the next four and a half days without your stuffy, corporate zombie clothes.”

His grin seemed to warm his face, like he might still be thinking about that first misinterpretation of my dare. “Why four and a half days? You’re only on the hook for twenty-four hours.”

“To make up for the difference in the degree of difficulty. Unless you don’t think you can do it.”

“You’re on. And if I win?”

“What do you want?” I asked, and regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth.

Ian stared down at me again from inches away, so close I could feel the heat from his skin through both layers of clothes. I could see what he wanted—some hint of it, anyway—in his eyes. And again, my breath deserted me.

“A compliment.”

“What?” His answer was so unexpected I couldn’t even make sense of it.

“If I win, you have to tell me what you like best about me. With a straight face.”

“That’s it?” Was his ego that malnourished?

“That’s it.” His smile was a quiet challenge, and I couldn’t help wondering if this was some kind of trick.

“Fine. Let’s get out of here.” I unbolted the door and turned off the light, and his hand slid into mine like he’d been planning that since the moment he’d closed the door behind us. I stepped forward—there was only room for a single step—and he walked with me. A second later, we were in the bathroom of his hotel room, left dark on purpose that morning.

He let go of my hand and pulled the door open, and light poured in from the bedroom, but I stayed put when he stepped into it. “I have to go change, and I need to report to Jake after that. Will you be okay for a couple of hours?”

“I’ve been staying home by myself since I was nine, Kori.”

“So you’ve got it down by now, right? I’ll see you back here at four.”

Ian nodded and started to close the door, then stopped and looked at me, and there was something in his expression I couldn’t quite identify. “Will we be working together?” he asked. “If I sign with Tower?”

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “Probably. But you never can tell with Jake. Why? Is that a deal-breaker?” I was joking. At least, I was trying to. But he didn’t laugh.

“Quite the opposite. I think that may be the only thing that would make wearing his chain links bearable.”

Ten

Ian

I
don’t know why I asked her that. It wasn’t fair. And it didn’t matter, because I wasn’t going to sign with Tower. Kori and I would never work together.

The damn dare was a mistake, too. If she won, I’d have to present her with a bottle of vodka, right around the time I killed her sister, like some kind of morbid condolence for the crime I’d committed. I’d be lucky if she didn’t beat me to death with it.

What the hell are you doing, Ian?

When Kori was gone, I glanced at my watch, then picked up my cell phone. Aaron answered on the second ring. “Hello?” he croaked into the phone, and springs creaked as he rolled over in bed.

“Get up. I need a lift.”

“Night shift, man. I gotta get more sleep.”

“This is the only chance I’m going to have, and I have to be back in two hours. Get dressed.”

More springs creaked, and Aaron groaned. “Where are you?”

I gave him the hotel’s address and the room number, then hung up. Five minutes later, the bathroom door creaked open and Aaron padded into the living room of my hotel suite in huge, dog-shaped slippers and a pair of navy boxer briefs.

“Where the hell are your pants?”

Aaron shrugged. “You said you were in a hurry, so I rushed right over.”

“Did anyone see you?”

Aaron scowled on his way to the minibar. “Do I look like an idiot?” When I only glanced at his slippers, he rolled his eyes. “Do I
normally
look like an idiot?” Before I could answer, he knelt in front of the minibar and opened the fridge. “I need a drink.”

I slammed the fridge closed. “You can make coffee when we get there. There’s a robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door.”

Aaron put the robe on, then stepped into the bathroom while I pulled my phone from my pocket and autodialed Meghan’s number. “Ian? Why isn’t it done?” she said into my ear, after only a ring and a half.

My eyes closed.
Of course
she knew it wasn’t over. She’d be able to feel it when the binding was broken. “Turn off the light. We’re coming over.”

Meghan hung up without a reply, and Aaron turned the bathroom light off as I pushed the door closed. He took my arm, bared by the sleeve I’d rolled up, and a second later we stepped into another bathroom thirty miles away, in the suburbs.

This bathroom felt familiar, even with the lights off. It smelled like fruit-scented shampoo, bleach and the slightly scorched scent of every scrap of blood-soaked material that had ever been burned in the old-fashioned iron tub. When I stepped forward and reached for the light switch, my foot landed on ceramic tile, not as old as the tub, but older than I was, by several years. The tile was yellow, like the wallpaper exposed when I flipped the switch and let the light in.

The floors in the rest of the house were real wood, scarred from use and warped in places from the spills and drips of three generations. Aaron and Meghan had grown up here, as had their mother. This house was as safe a rendezvous point as any other, and a good deal safer than Aaron’s apartment in the city.

Meghan stepped out of a bedroom and into the hall, pulling the door closed behind her. She waved us into the living room without a word, and she didn’t even seem to notice that her brother wasn’t wearing pants.

We followed her down the hall, through the living room, and into the small eat-in kitchen, where Meghan sank into a chair at the table and scrubbed her face with both hands. Long brown hair tumbled over her shoulders, and Aaron paused to set one hand on her head—a wordless, comforting gesture—on his way to the coffeepot.

“How is he?” I asked, and I regretted being the one to break the silence before the words had even fallen from my tongue.

“No better. A little worse, maybe,” Meghan said, and for the first time in more than two weeks, the exhaustion in her voice outweighed the accusation. She couldn’t do this for much longer. Not on her own. But it would be over soon, one way or another. If I couldn’t kill Kenley Daniels and break the binding, he wouldn’t last much longer anyway.

But no one wanted things to end like that, least of all me.

“Can I see him?”

“I don’t want to wake him up. He doesn’t sleep much anymore.” Meghan sighed, and the weight of the world slipped a little on her shoulders. “What happened?” she said, as Aaron filled the pot and poured water into the reservoir. And the accusation that was absent from her voice found its way to her eyes, where it simmered quietly, waiting for the moment to flare into true flames and roast me alive.

I sank onto the chair opposite her and rubbed one hand over my head, trying to decide where to start. A minute later, the scent of coffee drew my thoughts into some semblance of focus. “Remember my brilliant plan to get Kenley Daniels assigned as my tour guide-slash-recruiter for the duration of my visit?”

“I take it that plan’s proven less than brilliant in hindsight?” Aaron took a mug down from the cabinet and leaned against the countertop as the machine spit the first drops of coffee into the carafe.

“I stand by the simple brilliance of the plan. The flaw is in the execution. Kenley has an older sister who fits the same general physical description.” Though the more I got to know Kori, the less she looked like her sister, at least to me.

Aaron turned with the pot in hand. “Korinne Daniels is Kenley’s sister?”

“Who’s Korinne Daniels?” Meghan said, glancing from her brother to me, then back.

“Tower’s guard dog bitch. But she’s dead.” Aaron glanced at me with both brows raised. “Didn’t we already determine that? Every source we spoke to said the same thing.”

I shrugged. “She’s a little less dead than the rumors indicated.”

“You got the
wrong sister?
” Meghan demanded, and I nodded.

“The same thing happened to Jacob in the Old Testament,” Aaron said. “He worked seven years to earn Rachel’s hand in marriage and got her sister Leah instead. That poor fool then worked
another
seven years just to earn Rachel as his second wife. If you think about it like that, you got a bargain.”

“This isn’t the Old Testament, Aaron,” Meghan snapped.

Aaron poked the pause button on the coffeepot and filled his mug without turning. “All that means is that Ian’s not gonna get to bed both sisters.”

Her fist clenched around the edge of the table. “This isn’t funny!”

“Maybe not ‘ha, ha’ funny, but we’re in some pretty deep shit here, sis, and if we lose our sense of humor, what do we have left?” Aaron said as he poured dried creamer into his cup.

“Nothing.” Meghan folded her hands on the tabletop, but she couldn’t keep them from twisting, as if her fingers were trying to tear each other apart. “I’ll have nothing left, without Steven.”

Aaron frowned over the implication that he meant nothing to his sister, but we both knew that wasn’t what she’d intended. She was too tired to think clearly.

A moan echoed from behind the bedroom door Meghan had closed, and I stood, but her hand landed on my arm. Her fingers were cold, her skin was pale, and her eyes were damp, but she never hesitated. “Let me.”

I started to argue, but Aaron shook his head at me over her shoulder, and I sank back into my chair as she crossed the living room toward the hall again. “She needs to do this,” he whispered, once his sister was out of sight.

“If Steven wakes up to find her dead of exhaustion, he’ll kill us both,” I said, and Aaron gave a bitter laugh, no doubt picturing Steven just as I was. Healthy, happy, in good humor, and willing to slay any dragon for Meghan.

“It’s your job to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Aaron said, sinking into his sister’s chair with one dog-slippered foot crossed over the opposite knee, the hotel robe gaping over his thin chest. “So what’s this Leah like? Is she going to be a problem?”

“Her name is Kori. She’s smart, but she doesn’t know it. She’s funny, but I don’t think she knows that, either.” I shrugged, trying not to see her in my mind, a little frightened to realize I could picture her with almost perfect recall, down to the freckle on her left cheek, about an inch in front of her ear. “She’s a little thin, but she makes one hell of a temptation. Which is exactly what Tower’s paying her to be.” The carrot dangled in front of the ass, guiding him toward the farmer ready to put him to work.

Naturally I was the ass.

“Well, that’s more than I asked for.” Aaron’s brows rose, like he’d heard more than what I’d actually said. “Can you use her?”

“Do I have any other choice? I’m almost twenty hours into this mission and the only time I’ve even been in the same room with the target is when I shook her hand at that damned party, in front of two hundred other people.”

Aaron shrugged and sipped from his cup, then swore beneath his breath when he burned his mouth. “That’s an easy fix. Just tell Leah—”

“It’s Kori,” I corrected again, leaning back in my chair.

“Fine. Tell
Kori
that you want to meet some of your future associates. Have her get a group together. If she’s any kind of sister at all, she’ll invite Kenley, and you can get her alone and put a bullet in her head. Problem solved.” He leaned back in the chair, cradling his coffee and looking quite satisfied with himself.

An unexpected flash of anger licked the base of my spine. He wouldn’t be so indifferent if we were discussing shooting
his
sister.

“Yeah, that might work,” I snapped. “If not for the fact that Kenley is under twenty-four-hour guard, to prevent exactly the kind of idiotic plan you just rattled off. I might be able to put a bullet in her, but not without taking a few myself.”

Dying for the cause was the worst-case scenario, and things hadn’t gotten quite that bad yet.

“Oh, right. You wanted to survive.” Aaron shrugged and blew over the top of his mug. “So what are you going to do?”

“The fastest, easiest solution I’ve come up with is to get Kori to bring her sister along on a tour of Jake’s side of town. Surely Tower will let her come without her usual bodyguard, since Kori has security experience and more motivation than anyone to make sure Kenley is safe.”

But when I thought about that for too long, I started feeling nauseated. This wasn’t some armed, hostile insurgent or terrorist. We were talking about killing someone’s little sister.

Kori’s
little sister.

That part shouldn’t have bothered me any more than the rest, but it did. In fact, the more time I spent with her, the more the whole thing bothered me. But if I didn’t kill Kenley, Steven would die, and if she refused to give up on him, Meghan would die with him.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to shoot her in her sleep?”

“Yeah. If I knew where she slept. But that’s the bit of classified information Kori is least likely to give up.”

“Maybe so, but she’s not going to let you near her sister—even in broad daylight—until she trusts you completely. Can you make that happen?”