Blood Bound (22 page)

Cam scraped the peppers from the cutting board into the skillet. “Well, if it’s on his hard drive it isn’t called ‘top secret keys to invading my privacy,’ or anything else convenient. And I didn’t find a notebook or calendar, or anything it could have been written on.”

I set Hunter’s laptop on the bar next to Cam’s and pressed the power button. “Nobody writes anything down on paper anymore. But what’s the one thing people never leave the house without?”

Cam looked up from the skillet, challenging grin intact. “Underwear. Or would you like to prove me wrong?”

I rolled my eyes and logged in to Cam’s wireless network. “Cell phone. Most of them have a notepad feature, and you know what most people keep on it?”

“I’m guessing passwords?”

“Yup. And grocery lists, and reminders, and anything else they need access to. Although, personally, my phone calendar is much more incriminating than my notepad.”

“So, if I want to know where you’ll be this Friday night, all I have to do is steal your phone?”

“Well, that, and figure out the code to unlock it. But his phone isn’t locked.” I opened a browser on Hunter’s computer, then clicked the drop-down menu listing his favorites. And sure enough, after three listings for what could only be porn sites, he’d bookmarked the power company, the water company, his mobile service provider and…his bank.

I clicked on the bank link, and while the page loaded, I scrolled through his cell-phone notes for anything resembling passwords. There weren’t many choices, and the third one, titled FNB, consisted only of a seven-digit alphanumeric code with a pound sign at the end.

“First National Bank. Got it.” Hunter turned out to be no smarter than the average bear.

I typed his account number into the bank site, then his password, and when the site had “verified” my stolen identity, I clicked on My Account. Where I discovered what I already knew—until the week before, Mr. Hunter had been in dire financial need, even more so than I. But his banking activity since the big deposit was sparse.

The bank had auto-removed the overdraft fees he owed, and he’d paid a couple of utilities online. But other than that… “Nothing.” I looked up to find Cam chopping peppers on a plastic cutting board. “There are no big withdrawals. His bank balance is just over $49,500. Nothing in savings.” I frowned as he scraped the peppers from the cutting board into the skillet. “So, what? The transfusions were free?”

“Or he paid by credit card.”

“There were no credit cards in his wallet, and based on his banking history, I’d say that’s because his credit is less than stellar.”

“So maybe the transfusions were free for
him.
”

“Someone else paid….”
Shit.
The only reason someone else would pay for Hunter’s superpowers was to help him carry out a job they’d commissioned. Which meant… “The Tower syndicate paid for Hunter’s upgrades. They didn’t just hire the monster—they created him.”

Fourteen

“D
id you know about this?” Liv watched carefully for my reaction, obviously fully aware that my body language might say things my mouth wasn’t allowed to.

But this time, I had nothing to hide. “Nope. Whatever Tower’s up to, it’s above my pay grade.”

She looked as if she wanted to believe me. As if she was working really hard to convince herself that I could be trusted. But we both knew I couldn’t be. Not so long as my enforced loyalty to Tower trumped everything else in my life. Including her.

But I was telling the truth.

Frustrated, I set my butcher knife on the counter and met her suspicious gaze with an open one of my own. “Liv, if there’s something I can’t tell you, I just won’t say it. But I’m not going to outright lie to you.” That much, at least, hadn’t changed.

“Unless Tower tells you to. You’d have to lie then, right?” Her brows rose in challenge, and suddenly I hated Jake Tower more than I’d ever hated anyone in my life. Including previous incarnations of my own hatred for him.

“Yes. If he told me to lie to you, I’d have to. But unless he got really creative with the orders, I wouldn’t have to make you believe it. I’m not going to go out of my way to make him happy, after what he’s done to Anne and her family.”

She almost smiled, and some small bit of tension inside me eased. “So, you’re working under protest now?”

“Silent protest. But yes.” Because open protest would only get both of us killed. “And anyway, I haven’t had any communication from Tower directly or indirectly all day.” Which was interesting, considering the fact that I’d been seen all over the west side of town with her.

“What do you think that means?”

I shrugged and resumed chopping. “I think it means that we were allowed to track and kill Hunter because that benefited the syndicate—we were cleaning up their mess. But if we step over whatever line they’ve drawn for us, they
will
redirect my attention to something Tower considers more worthy. More syndicate-spirited.” And Liv’s interest in syndicate business would be noted. And monitored.

Nothing good ever comes from being monitored by the Tower syndicate.

“That means we’ve hit a dead end on the money trail for now, then?” she said. “Because if we keep digging into their involvement, they’re going to hit your manual reset button.”

I laughed. “Pretty much.” And the reset button, for the record, was the back of my sku I set the spatula down and met Liv’s gaze, letting her see that I was serious. “But I’m not saying we should give up on the money trail
or
the transfusions. I’m just saying that if we dig for clues directly beneath the syndicate, we’re going to come up right under Tower’s feet. And he’s going to stomp on us.”

“So we should approach them both from another angle? Pursue leads that don’t originate within the syndicate?”

“Exactly.” While the skillet sizzled behind me, I picked up Hunter’s phone. He hadn’t gotten a single call since his fortunate demise, which was no shock, considering he’d only been dead a couple of hours. “I suggest we start with this. Maybe someone he knows can tell us where he got the transfusions, or who actually hired him. Even if they don’t know what they’re really telling us.”

I slid the phone across the counter to Liv and plugged my food processor in on the peninsula as she scrolled through the entries on the phone.

“He only got eight calls in the last week, two of them from the same number. And he only made three calls. Not exactly a social butterfly.” She pulled my laptop closer and started typing. “With your computer, my credit card and an online reverse phone book, I should be able to put a name with most of these numbers.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to just call them?”

“Definitely.” She glanced at me over the screen. “And calling his friends, relatives and ‘professional’ associates would also be the easier, cheaper way to raise a bunch of red flags, put Tower’s men on our tail and get us both shot for our troubles.” I stared at her, and Liv laughed. “New to this part of the game, huh?”

“Yeah.” I dug three tomatoes from the vegetable drawer and rinsed them in the sink. “Most of my work involves name-tracking, not computer snooping. I usually call in Van for that kind of thing.”

Liv’s fingers attacked the keyboard, rapid-fire clacking, as if she could pound the answers from the internet by force. “I think we should leave Van out of this, for her own safety.”

“Agreed.” I cored the tomatoes on the cutting board, then dropped them into the food processor and started on the cilantro. “Any luck?”

“Yeah.” More clacking, then she picked up the notepad and spoke as she scribbled. “One of the outgoing calls was to his bank, on the day of the big deposit. I assume he was calling to make sure the money landed safely.”

I nodded and scooped the leftover onion into the food processor with the cilantro and tomatoes.

“The second call went to a man named Gavin Payne, no address listed.” Liv glanced up when I started chopping again. “I hate jalapeños. They’re all heat but no flavor.”

I kept chopping. “This is a smoked poblano. You’ll like it. Trust me.”

She looked skeptical, but went back to her typing with no complaint. I ran the food processor, and a few minutes later, I poured fresh salsa into a bowl shaped like a hollowed-out red pepper.

Livn the cut when I pushed the bowl toward her. “Okay, I can’t find anything on the third number, even on four different sites claiming to have access to unlisted landlines and cell-phone numbers.” She picked up a corn chip from another bowl and dipped it into the salsa. “Wow.” She finished the chip and dipped a second. “When we were together, it was all takeout, all the time.”

“I’ve had some free time lately.”

“Well, it’s paid off.” She turned back to the screen, crunching into another chip. “Of the numbers that called Hunter’s phone, two look like they’re from his mother, calling once from her home phone and once from her cell. I wonder if Mrs. Hunter has any idea that her little boy grew up to be an attempted murderer of small children?”

I shrugged and turned off the stove. “I blame the parents.”

“Me, too.” Liv snagged another chip while I pulled the steak from the skillet to slice on a fresh cutting board. “The repeated incoming number was Gavin Payne, and the one that called most recently was the same unidentifiable number Hunter dialed last night. The other three incoming calls were from his building superintendent, his pharmacy and a telephone survey company.”

“Bastards. They always call during dinner.”

Liv laughed as I slid the sliced steak onto a platter and topped it with the sautéed vegetables. “Forget crime lords and corrupt politicians—telemarketers are the root of all evil.”

“Now you’re getting it.” I took a twist tie off a bag of flour tortillas and set a clean plate in front of her. “So, unless he’s in cahoots with Walgreens or his landlord, the only real possibilities are this Gavin Payne and the unknown number.”

“Yeah. But I still have to check his texts.”

“Let me.” I took the phone from her and replaced it with her empty plate. “You eat.”

Liv hesitated, then reached for a tortilla.

Hunter hadn’t sent any texts in the past week, and he’d only received one, a couple of days earlier. An address. “Shit.”

“What?” Liv looked up from her empty fajita, and I turned the phone around for her to see.

“That’s Anne’s address,” I said, when she showed no recognition. “I was there with her this morning when she gathered the blood samples.” Was that really less than a day ago? It felt like a week.

Liv took the phone from me and compared it to the notes she’d taken. “It’s from that same unidentified number. Let me see your cell,” she said, her dinner already forgotten.

“Why?”

“Because I know you’re not allowed to tell me if you know whose number that is. But if you do, it might be in your phone. Right?”

Smart girl.
“In theory. But I actually don’t know that number.”

“And you won’t care if I verify that, right?”

I handed her my phone. “Do you mind if I eat while you openly distrust me and invade my privacy?”

“I’m sorry, Cam.” But she pressed a button to wake my phone up, without hesitation. Not that I could blame her. “Password?” she said, eyeing me expectantly.

I piled steak and peppers onto a tortilla and answered without looking up. “Zero-one-zero-four.”

Her finger hovered over the last digit, and I could practically feel her gaze on me. “That’s my birthday.”

“Huh. Weird.” I dropped a glob of sour cream on my fajita, then folded the tortilla over its contents and took a bite without waiting for her response. Not that she had one, other than a slight flush not caused by the spicy food.

I watched as Liv navigated her way through my phone menus. She never looked up at me, which was how I knew she really wanted to.

After less than a minute, she held my phone up so I could see my own contacts list, and the only number listed there. “How the hell did you get my personal number?”

I took another bite, then spoke around it. “It’s listed.”

“No, it isn’t. And I change it every year, to make sure it isn’t just floating around out there, through random people I called years ago.”

I shrugged. “It’s listed
somewhere,
or how else could I have it?” Of course, it wasn’t in any
public
listing I’d found, but I knew people—like Van—who knew how to get things.

Liv frowned. “Is that it? What about all your syndicate buddies? What about Van?”

I slid the meat platter toward her, and she finally picked up the tongs. “We’re not allowed to program syndicate numbers. They all have to be memorized. And we delete the recent-calls list daily.” All to keep from incriminating one another, of course. It was part of my nightly routine.

Set alarm. Brush teeth. Purge the call lists from my phone…

“And you’re sure you don’t recognize this one?” Liv spun the notepad around so I could see the unidentified number she’d jotted down. The one that had called Hunter, been called by Hunter and later had texted Anne’s address to him.

“Nope.” I took the tongs from her and loaded her tortilla myself, since she obviously wasn’t going to. “But that doesn’t mean anything. I don’t have the personal phone numbers of every initiate in the city.” Thank goodness. And since most of my work was done at Tower’s personal request, very few of the other initiates had my number, either. “Check my recent calls, if you don’t trust me.”

I tried not to be hurt when she only hesitated a second before taking me up on my offer. Then she slid the phone back to me, having obviously learned what I already knew, that in the past twenty hours—as far back as my current call list went—I’d only called Van and Anne.

“Do you know Jake Tower’s personal number?” she asked, picking up the fajita I’d rolled for her.

“Oneof them—and that’s not it. But I’m sure he has at least a couple. There’s no way the number his wife and kids call is the same one his employees use. And that probably goes for anyone in the top tiers.”

“Great. Another dead end.”