Blood Bound (32 page)

For one long moment, I could only stare at her, drowning in a very private horror, and an even more private rage. I got homicidally pissed off thinking about the limited groping rights Cavazos had now. The thought of what he’d be able to do to her—or make her do—in six months sent bolts of protective rage surging through me, obliterating all rational impulses. My teeth ground together. My fists clenched so tightly my hands cramped. But I couldn’t find words to express any of that. They were all tangled up in the bitter lump in my throat, refusing to budge.

What came out instead was, “Why the hell would you let him seal a mark like that?” People all over the world were having their free will stolen or sold out from under them, like what had happened to Van. But Olivia had intentionally signed hers away!

Liv grabbed an unopened bottle of water from the coffee table and threw it at me, grunting with fury. I tried to duck, but the bottle hit my shoulder then fell to the ground, leaving a deep throb in the joint. “Why would I sign on for that? Why would I sell him my service, and my body, and my fucking
free will?
I did it to
save your ass!
”

I blinked in surprise. “To save…? What the hell does this have to do with me?” Other than my renewed determination to burn her contract to ashes, even if that meant dousing Cavazos with gasoline and lighting a match.

“You said you had a run-in with Ruben once,” she said, her eyes blazing with some toxic combination of anger, fear and some small measure of resentment. “Would that have been about eighteen months ago?”

“Yeah.” Confused, I sank onto the nearest bar stool. “Tower sent me to the south fork to pick up some loser who’d flaked on a loan extension. But when I got there, the target was… Well, I don’t know where he was. I’d tracked him there, and I could feel him there somewhere. But Cavazos’s men were
everywhere.
Evidently I got in the way of something they had going down, and his goons hauled me in.” One of them had smashed me over the head with a bat, and I’d woken up somewhere on Cavazos’s private property, tied up and bleeding, being questioned by the man himself.

Liv shook her head. “You didn’t get in the way—you were set up. Your target knew you were coming for him, so he sold you out to Ruben, in exchange for enough cash to pay off his debt.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense. They messed with me for a while and asked me a bunch of questions I couldn’t answer, but then they let me go a day later. If he wanted me badly enough to pay for me, why would he just let me…?” My words faded into silence when she stared at the floor to avoid my gaze. “Liv, what the hell did you
do?
” I stood and tried to touch her, but she backed out of reach again.

“I traded my services for yours. You know how I’m tracking for Cavazos using only a name?” she asked, and I nodded again, stunned when the pieces began to fall into place. “That’s why he wanted you. I’d only dealt with him a couple of times, but I’d seen enough to know I didn’t want you to have to sign with him.” She barked a bitter laugh. “Of course, the joke’s on me—I didn’t know you’d already signed with Tower. I thought you were freelancing. Like me.”

And suddenly the devastating weight of my own unwitting involvement was too much to bear. I sank onto the couch, stunned. “You signed with Cavazos to…?”

“To keep you from having to,” she finished for me. “It was my fault you were in the city, and I thought you were freelancing in the south fork to stay close to me. I was…trying to protect you.”

She was trying to protect me.

My head spun a little, then the room spun a lot more. “You gave yourself to Ruben Cavazos—with no restrictions—to protect
me.
”
Son of a bitch!
My fist slammed into the coffee table and an empty water bottle fell over, then rolled onto the floor. “Why would you do that? Why the hell would you ever think I
wanted
you to do that?
I’m
supposed to protect
you.
”

Liv’s gaze hardened again. “Right after you drag me back to the cave by my hair, right? Damn, you can be a real asshole sometimes.”

“Then why would you sign over the rest of your life for me?” I demanded, standing, even though the room still felt a little unstable.

“Because I love you!” she shouted, anger flashing in her eyes, as if loving me was some kind of bitter curse. And maybe it felt that way, after everything she’d been through. “Because that’s the only way he would let you go. He knows you’re better with names, so trading my services for yours didn’t benefit him. He wouldn’t make the deal without knowing he stood to gain something if I failed. But I still have six more months to find his…missing person, before he can collect on the penalty.”

“Can you do it? With this relative’s blood sample?” Because I couldn’t have. Liv’s talent with blood went
way
beyond anything I could have done.

“I don’t know. If I’m close enough to feel the pull…probably. Maybe.”

“How close do you have to be?” She advertised her services with a range of eighty miles, but she’d been better than that when we were together in college—back when she was still an amateur, not even regularly using her Skill.

Liv hesitated, but only for a moment. “Three hundred miles, give or take.”

Holy shit…
I sank onto the couch again, stunned. That was nearly double the range of the next best blood Tracker I knew. If Cavazos knew how good she really was, he’d never let her go. He’d find some way to keep her, even if she fulfilled her contract.

She shrugged. “I know it sounds like a lot, but considering that the target could be anywhere in the world, my range could be a thousand miles, and I’d still be useless without something else to go on. I have to narrow down the possibilities before tracking even becomes an option, and I’ve been trying to do that for the past year and a half with no luck.”

“Okay…” I nodded, my brain racing so fast my head was starting to hurt. “But that means we still have six months to destroy your contract.”

Liv barked a bitter laugh. “You think I haven’t thought of that? I have no idea where he keeps his signed contracts. For all I know, they’re not even in the country, and they’re most definitely stored in a fireproof vault, under armed guard, and probably shielded by the best Jammers in the world. Those contracts are Ruben’s lifeblood. He’d put everything he has into protecting them. We’re never going to find them, and even if we did, we’d never get to them.”

“The hell we won’t. I’m not just going to let him have you, Olivia. And neither are you.”

She exhaled slowly. “The only way out of this is to fulfill my contract.”

“And you can’t tell me who he’s looking for?”

She shook her head.

I shrugged. “That’ll make it harder for me to help, but not impossible.”

“There’s nothing you can do, Cam. I can’t even give you the name I’m tracking.”

Another shrug. “So I’ll get it from someone else. You sold your soul for me, and I’m going to help you get it back.”

She shook her head, slowly, sadly, and sank onto the couch next to me. “I love you for trying, but it won’t work. No one else knows the name I’m tracking.”

I felt my brows rise as what she was saying sank in. “No one?” She shook her head, and I frowned. “No one in the whole world? Just you and Cavazos?”

This time she nodded, eyes narrowed as if she’d just stumbled upon my train of thought. “No one knows this name, other than me, except for Ruben Cavazos. He’s the
only
one,” she said, eyeing me meaningfully.

And the only possible way that Ruben Cavazos could be the only one in the world to know someone’s name was if… “It’s his kid,” I said, and Liv’s sudden smile brightened her entire face. “That’s why you only have one name. You’re tracking the middle name he gave his own kid.”

“I cannot confirm that,” she said, grinning like a fool. “I can’t even discuss it.”

“Yet I can’t help noticing you’re not denying it.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Then let me follow that path a little farther….” I closed my eyes, thinking. “He doesn’t know the rest of the kid’s name, so that means he’s probably never met him. You said it’s a him, right?” I said, and she smiled again. The kid was a son. “And I’m guessing you would have tried tracking the boy’s middle name with the last name Cavazos.” Again, no confirmation. She couldn’t discuss it. “And based on the fact that you’re still tracking a single name, I’m assuming the mother—whoever she is—gave her son a different last name. Probably her own.”

Liv shrugged and sat on the coffee table in front of me. “That, I honestly don’t know. I have no clue what the mother’s real name was—the one she gave Ruben was fake. But I know, as of this evening, that Meika had her killed years ago.”

“That’s what you were talking about earlier….” When she’d said Cavazos’s wife had his first mistress killed. “Which means this son must have been conceived years ago. So why is he just now looking…?”

“He didn’t even know—” Liv flinched and one hand flew to her forehead, obviously the source of the pain. “Okay, evidently that’s prohibited information.”

Yet I could finish most of that sentence myself. Cavazos hadn’t even known he had a kid with this other woman until…something. Something Liv obviously couldn’t explain to me.

“Just like me…” I whispered, without thinking that through. Then I realized I hated having something in common with Ruben Cavazos. But not as much as I hated the thought of having to share Liv with him.

“You really think Hadley’s yours?” she asked softly, from inches away now.

“I honestly don’t know. But if there’s even a chance of that, I have to admit I understand why Cavazos would be so hell-bent on finding his kid.” I hated not knowing whether or not I was a father. And feeling guilty that I might have accidentally abandoned my own child for the first five years of her life. And I was pissed at the thought of how many things I’d already missed, that I could never get back. “I guess that’s at least one thing a woman can never understand—if you have a kid out there somewhere, at least you know it.”

“Yeah, I guess.” She looked as if she wanted to add to that—or maybe argue—but then her phone rang and she dug it out of her pocket to read the text. “Anne’s downstairs with Hadley. Will you get Kori while I bring them up?”

I nodded and when she disappeared into the hall, I grabbed my own phone and texted Kori. Get back here, bitch.

A second later, she walked out of my unlit hallway and leaned against the peninsula separating the kitchen from the living room, watching me with undisguised mischievous curiosity. “What’d I miss?”

“Only the chaos of your own creation,” I said, and she laughed out loud. “I was going to tell her, you know. I just wanted to do it my way. In my own time.”

Kori shrugged. “Your own time should have come a little sooner.”

“Mind your own business, Korinne. Or I might decide to tell a couple of
your
secrets.”

Her laughter died a sudden, quiet death. “Don’t threaten me, Romeo. Our checks may be signed by the same man, but Liv had my back way before she met you, so if I have to choose between the two of you, she’ll win every time.”

I rolled my eyes at her. “Don’t try to sound all noble—we both know you were just making trouble out of habit.”

She shrugged and managed a grin. “I’m not sayin’ it wasn’t fun. But if you’d told her like you should have,
when
you should have, I couldn’t have had any fun at your expense, now could I?”

Before I could argue, my front door opened behind me, and I turned to find Liv leading a child into my apartment.

And maybe into my life…

Twenty-One

L
iv led Anne and her daughter into my living room, carrying two backpacks, presumably full of on-the-run essentials. I glanced at Anne, looking for some sign in her eyes to tell me whether or not I was a father. Whether or not my boss was trying to kidnap and drain my own daughter. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at Kori.

“Holy crap, it
is
you.”

“You, too.” Kori’s gaze passed over Hadley for a single, fleeting instant. “Plus one.”

Liv laughed nervously. “It’s a regular reunion. All we need now is Noelle.”

“I could go get a Ouija board….” Kori offered. Anne flinched and visibly paled, and I realized this was the first time the three of them had been in the same room since the night of the infamous party.

“We should probably get going….” I said, to nudge things along, and Liv nodded.

“First, brief introductions.” Anne held one hand out to Hadley, and the child let herself be pulled forward, huge green-eyed gaze capturing mine. Were my eyes that color, or just a shade darker? Wasn’t my skin paler, except during the height of summer? Or was I looking for dissimilarities that weren’t really there?

“Hadley, this is my friend Kori Daniels.”

Hadley stared up at Kori, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “If you’re friends, how come my mom never talks about you?”

I glanced at Anne in surprise. Hadley was very well-spoken for a five-year-old—not that I had any ruler to measure her by….

Kori started to answer, but I was afraid of what might come out of her mouth, so I stepped in. “They haven’t seen each other in a long time,” I said. “Since before you were born.”

Hadley studied me for a moment, and I wondered if she was seeing those same dissimilarities. Or if she saw something more? Did a kidknow when she was looking at her father?
If
she was looking at her father?

Her green eyes peered up into mine. “Who are you?”

Did that mean she didn’t recognize me, on a biological, cellular level? Or just that she didn’t know my name?

“This is Cam Caballero,” Liv said. “Another…friend. The three of us are going to keep you safe until we can figure out what’s going on and make all this go away.” Hadley nodded solemnly, still clutching her mother’s hand, and Liv continued. “Kori’s going to take you and your mom and Cam to my apartment. She’s going to take you through the shadows. Do you know what that means?” Another nod from the child, and this time I thought I saw a slight spark of interest in her eyes. “Good. We’re going to hang out there with all the lights on for a while so no one else can get in while we figure a few things out. So…you ready to go?”