Shadow Bound (Unbound) (43 page)

“I’m not asking anything of the sort.” Because she couldn’t. She was no doubt contractually prohibited, just like the rest of Jake’s employees.

“But you can speak in hypotheticals, right?”

“As can you,” she said, and I let her go.

“If Jake were out of power, you could help Kori?”

“I could.” She rubbed her neck with her free hand, but her gun remained pointed at me.

“Why should I believe you care one way or another about what happens to her?”

“I don’t.” Julia shrugged, like that should have been obvious. “I care about what happens to me.” Her brows rose in question, silently asking if I was understanding the things she wasn’t allowed to say.

“You’re not happy under your brother’s reign?”

“You mean under his thumb? I’m chained to him just like Korinne is, only I’ve been serving since I was sixteen. Since before service came with a time limit.” She lifted her left sleeve to show me her binding marks, which seemed to ring her entire arm. “As long as these marks are live, I’ll never have a family or a home of my own. I can’t leave the city without authorization, which never comes. I can’t even leave the
room
without permission. All because of one stupid oath I took as a kid, in exchange for my older brother’s protection.”

“Protection from what?”

Her lips pressed together for a second before she answered. “There’s a skeleton in every closet, Mr. Holt.”

“Fair enough. What about his heir? Do you honestly think it’ll be better with Jonah pulling your strings?”

Her brows rose again, and her smile was back, small and reticent this time, like she was about to tell me a secret. “I can handle Jonah, Mr. Holt. His bark and his bite are both fierce, but I know how to leash him.”

I thought about that for a moment, weighing my options and her sincerity. “If I were to give you that opportunity, you’d make sure Kori goes free? Immediately?”

“You have my word that if Jake is removed from power, Kori Daniels will go free immediately.” I wasn’t sure I believed her, but since I planned to kill both Jake
and
Jonah anyway, Kori would go free whether or not Julia kept her word. What I really needed to know was…

“Can you get me a second alone with Jake?”

She nodded without hesitation. “My contract predates time-in-service limits, but it also predates the stricter obedience clauses. I have more leeway than most employees. But I’m going to need some reassurance from you, Mr. Holt. A handshake won’t do.”

“What do you want?”

“Protection. When people find out that I helped rid the world of Jake Tower, those loyal to him—or to his wife—will be out for my head. I want your word—signed and sealed—that you’ll protect me until that threat is gone.”

“No bindings,” I insisted. Kori’s bindings had gotten her tortured. Kenley’s had gotten her caged. Steven’s had nearly gotten him killed.

“Then no deal,” Julia countered. “It’s a simple promise, Mr. Holt. Not a service agreement. Jake’s secondary Binder is bitter about being replaced by Kenley Daniels and he’s loyal to me.”

Secondary Binder? A glimmer of an idea surfaced on the horizon of this new complication. “Is his name Barker?”

Julia frowned. “Yes. And I assure you, he’s heavily guarded. Especially with Kenley currently on the run. Though that won’t last long.”

“I have no plans to harm your Binder.” Big lie—if Kori couldn’t take him out, I damn well would. “In fact, I’m looking forward to working with you both.” Smaller, obvious lie, to cover the larger fib.

Julia rolled her eyes, and I knew I had her. “I know you don’t want to be bound, Mr. Holt. But I assure you this is the least painful solution for all involved. I’ve already drafted the binding, and we can strike through and initial minor points of compromise before we sign. Then when we get to Jake’s house, you will play your part. After that, you and Kori can walk off into the sunset, if that’s the kind of cheesy, happy ending you sentimental types like.”

“Just like that?” I studied her face, searching for the catch. “It sounds too good to be true.”

“I assure you it’s not. Jake knows how to defend himself, and even if you’re successful, you’ll have to fight your way out. I’ll do my best to rein Jonah in immediately, but in moments of passion and fury, men are often uncontrollable.”

A fact I was personally familiar with. But if Jonah was so uncontrollable, what made her think she could control him? Especially once he’d inherited her binding from Jake?

There was something she wasn’t saying, and I wouldn’t trust Julia Tower even if my
own
marks had been tattooed on her arm.

“This Binder? How far away is he?” I asked as that idea on the horizon came into even clearer focus.

“Less than a mile.” She pressed a button on the glass separating us from the driver, then gave him an address. “I’m pleased we could come to an agreement.”

* * *

Barker turned out to be a grizzly looking man in his mid-sixties who subsisted on nothing but pizza and beer, if the garbage covering his kitchen counters was any evidence.

I was sorely tempted to kill him where he stood, to free Kenley, which would cut Kori’s last tie to Tower. But if I killed Barker, Vanessa was as good as dead, and Kenley would never forgive me. Which meant Kori might never forgive me. So I watched in silence as the Binder read aloud from the document Julia had produced from a briefcase taken from the trunk of her car.

The document was short and to the point. It said that I would protect Julia Tower from any threat rising from the demise of her brother until such threat was over. I insisted that Barker add an expiration date—Julia wanted five years, but I whittled her down to two, max—as well as a statement that both Vanessa and Kori would be released from the basement the moment Jake Tower died.

I tried to end their terms of service, too, along with Kenley’s—why not shoot for the moon?—but Julia insisted she didn’t have the authority to do that. And we both knew she wouldn’t have freed them even if she could have.

The phrasing was all very careful, because Julia could not actually ask me to kill her brother or offer to reward me directly for that service.

Julia signed. I signed. Barker stamped the agreement with a bloody thumbprint, symbolizing his own will to seal the deal. And after several tense moments, we agreed to leave the document with him, because neither of us was willing to trust the other with it. Then we got back in the car and rolled steadily toward Jake Tower’s fortress of a home, while I tried to think about exactly how I wanted to end his life instead of how dirty I felt, like I’d just signed over a piece of my own soul.

Thirty-One

Kori

“L
et me the hell out of here or I’m going to rip your head off and finger paint with your fucking gray matter!” I shouted, roughly the twentieth variation of the same threat. Plausibility and creativity had expired about six versions earlier.

“That’s gonna be kinda hard to pull off, with you in there and me out here,” Jonah called back over the intercom, and I pounded on the glass again.

“Then come face me like a man!” My demands were useless—the glass pounding even more so—but I was alive with rage that had no outlet. My fists
itched
for Jonah’s face. I was finally free to fight, but couldn’t reach the target.

“Honey, if I go in there, only one of us is coming back out,” Jonah said.

“That’s the general idea!”

Silence answered me, and my rage burned on, unspent. I whirled around and scanned the cell for something to throw. Something to break. But there was nothing. I couldn’t even tell if this was the same room I’d occupied before, or just a neighboring look-alike.

Either way, there was nothing that wasn’t bolted to the floor, except for the worthless two-inch-thick mattress and… My gaze hovered over the toilet, one of the few differences between Jake’s homemade prison and a real one. This toilet was commercial, not detentional. The tank had a lid. A heavy, porcelain lid.

Someone was going to get his ass reamed for overlooking that security risk.

I picked up the tank lid and hefted it, getting used to the weight. If it would kill a Hollywood zombie, it would kill an actual asshole.

“You’re scared, aren’t you?” I demanded, stalking closer to the glass, my porcelain weapon hanging at my right side. “You’re scared to face me, now that I’m armed and free—” I bit off my own words in a sudden belated spasm of common sense. They didn’t know I was unbound, and telling Jonah would mean giving up my only advantage.

“Now that I’m free to fight back,” I finished instead. Because Jake hadn’t ordered me not to, this time. “Does your brother know what a sniveling coward you are?” I pounded the glass with one fist. “Is there anyone else out there? Can you guys actually
see
Jonah’s balls shrivel up and retreat indoors, or are they so small to begin with that you can’t tell any difference?”

“Keep talking, Kori,” Jonah said over the intercom, fury riding his voice like light rides a bolt of lightning. “Every word you say buys you a little more pain.” But beneath his worthless threats, I heard what I really wanted to hear. Laughter. He wasn’t alone, and the other men were laughing at him. Helping me taunt him into disobeying orders, at least long enough to open the door to my cell.

I glared at the one-way glass, pissed off that my reflection was all I could see. “A
little
pain, huh? If memory serves, a little’s about all you have to offer.”

I couldn’t hear the laughter that followed from the peanut gallery, but I could practically feel it.

“You know you’re in there because of your own stupidity, right?” Jonah said over the staticky intercom, obviously trying to claim the verbal upper hand. “You walked right into a trap.”

Unfortunately I couldn’t argue with that. But…

“It wasn’t your trap, though, was it? Leaving me in the dark last time wasn’t your idea, either, right? Was it Jake? No, it was Julia, wasn’t it? The ideas come from Julia. The orders come from Jake. But what good are
you,
Jonah? What do you contribute to the Tower team effort?” I paused to give him time to answer, but I wasn’t the least bit surprised when he didn’t.

“Nothing. That’s what you contribute,” I shouted. “They could give your job to a fucking monkey and the result would be the same. How does it feel to know you contribute
nothing?
”

The intercom buzzed with static for a moment before he spoke. “It’s not going to work. I’m not coming in there.”

“Because you’re a fucking coward!” My vision started to darken with fury and I swung the tank lid without thinking, smashing it against the glass. The glass cracked but held. The porcelain shattered into several large chunks and a zillion tiny slivers of white glass.

Shit!
My fearsome bludgeoning weapon had been reduced to half a dozen mediocre stabbing weapons. Still, any one of them was sharp enough to open a vein if wielded with enough enthusiasm. But to even have a shot at Jonah, I’d have to get him in the room.

“Are you gonna cower and quake out there with your guns and knives because you’re scared of one unarmed woman? Did Jake actually
say
you couldn’t come in, or are you using your binding as an excuse to cower out there in the hall? We all know you bend the rules when you want to. You thread the loopholes like a seamstress threads a fucking needle. Don’t tell me you don’t!”

In another fit of fury, I reared back and kicked the glass, but it didn’t budge. The crack didn’t even widen. So I kicked it again. And again. And finally the crack started to spread, and a jolt of triumph burned the length of my spine.

Then the door opened.

Jonah stood in the doorway, one hand on the butt of his gun, like the idiot deputy from any old spaghetti Western. His jaw was clenched in fury and his eyes were narrowed in rage. “Are you trying to make me kill you? Because you know death is the only way out of here.”

I squatted without taking my focus from him and felt around on the ground for a large chunk of broken toilet tank lid, desperately wishing I had something to wrap it with, to keep it from cutting my hand. The last thing I wanted was to leave a sample of my blood behind—Jonah had taken my pocket-size bleach bottle along with my weapons.

“You’re bigger and better armed,” I said, hoping the men in the hall could hear. “But I’d lay money on me to win, any day of the week.”

“Arrogant little
bitch!
” But he didn’t move. And that’s when I realized he actually
did
have orders not to touch me. Or at least not to shoot me.

Jake still needed me, no matter what he’d said about me being obsolete. He needed me to draw Ian and Kenley back into the fold.

I couldn’t let that happen.

I clutched the three-inch splinter of porcelain and curled my other hand into a fist. I could kill Jonah caveman style, but I’d need his gun—and a lot of luck—to take out whoever was watching from the hall.

But before I could rush him, Jonah pulled the handheld radio from his belt clip and pressed a button. “Go ahead,” he said, and I froze when Jake’s voice invaded the cell, staticky, but perfectly audible.

“Why do you do this to yourself, Korinne?” he asked. But he didn’t wait for my answer, and Jonah didn’t let go of the button, which would have let him hear me. “You know the drill. Don’t fight back. And don’t touch the damn glass.”

For a moment, the old terror washed over me, and it actually took me a moment to remember that I didn’t have to obey Jake. His orders were worth less than the breath it took to say them, forgotten before the last syllable even faded from my ears.

Jake held no power over me. But my initial thoughtless fear probably saved my life. If I hadn’t looked scared, Jonah would have realized something was wrong, and my advantage would have faded into nothing, like Jake’s worthless order.

“Thanks,” Jonah said into the radio, teeth clenched in resentment. He hated needing his brother’s help.

“Move her to another cell and this time don’t leave the fucking toilet tank lid. Mess this up again, and you’ll be in the cell next to her, where you’ll have plenty of time to think about the fact that you can’t control one small woman without needing her muzzled first.”

Jonah seethed and clipped the radio to his belt again without answering. I waited. Watching him. Trying to remember how I’d looked and acted when I was actually scared of him. The memories were there, but they were disjointed and clouded by fear.

“Let’s go.” Jonah stalked toward me, even angrier than usual because of what I’d just overheard.

“Don’t touch me.” I backed up until my spine hit the wall, then slid the hand clutching the shard of porcelain behind my thigh, even as I scooted to the left, avoiding his reach like I had no better options.

Jonah grabbed my arm and a slimy smile appeared at the corner of his mouth—an instant mood-lift in response to my fake fear. He hauled me across the cell and I let him, biding my time.

When he got close to the door, I began to drag my feet, resisting, but not truly fighting back. Jonah jerked me forward and pulled the door open with his free hand.

I sucked in a deep breath and swung my right arm as a primal screech of rage erupted from my throat. His eyes widened, but I buried the three-inch chunk of white porcelain in his jugular before he could make a single sound. “There’s a reason I was his bodyguard and you were his lapdog,” I said as his mouth opened and closed, gasping uselessly.

Blood dribbled between my fingers, most of it his. He gurgled and grasped at my fingers, but he was already weak from massive blood loss.

“Don’t fight back,” I whispered, throwing Jake’s words at him as I pulled the glass free and stabbed him again, and when he slid to the floor, propping the door open with his weight, I knelt with him. “Beg me to stop.” I didn’t realize I was crying until the first tears dripped onto his shirt. “Does it hurt? Tell me how much it hurts.”

He blinked up at me, his eyelids sluggish, and then he stopped breathing. He just
stopped,
and my tears fell faster.

Finally, it was over.

Distantly, I heard men shouting my name, rounds being chambered, safety switches clicking off.

I hunched over Jonah’s body, my back to the other men, crying tears of joy and relief they no doubt mistook for some weaker, more primal emotion. And while they watched me sob, waiting for me to stand and face the inevitable consequences of my actions, I pulled Jonah’s gun from his holster and checked the chamber, then flicked off the safety. Then I stood, the pistol hidden by my own body. I turned slowly, sliding the weapon behind my thigh, and counted the men aiming guns at me while I sniffled, displaying my trauma.

There were only three.

“Kori, we need you to turn around and put your hands behind your head,” the guy in the middle said. Roscher. I’d known him since he signed on two years ago, but now he was talking to me like I was a child. Or insane. They thought I’d lost it.

I could work with that.

“He was right,” I said, letting my voice go light and shaky as I stepped forward. “Death was the only way out.”

“Stay there,” Roscher said, as they all three aimed at my chest. “Turn around and show us your hands.”

“My hands?” I stepped into the hall and took a moment to be grateful they were all on my right. As was the exit. No one could sneak up behind me. “You want to see my hands?” I held up my left hand, red and slick with Jonah’s blood. “See?”

When they all glanced at my bloodstained hand, I dropped into a squat and swung Jonah’s gun up, firing twice in rapid succession. Roscher and the man to his left stumbled back, hit, their bullets whizzing over my head.