Blood Bound (7 page)

I threw it back and closed my eyes, half wishing the alcohol still burned. I’d tried drinking before my weekly report to Cavazos once, and once was all it took. Turns out I don’t really want to be relaxed around him after all.

“What’s wrong with you?” Cam demanded, sinking onto the couch with his elbows on his knees.

“I had a rough morning, and based on your presence in my office, my afternoon isn’t looking much better.”

His blue eyes narrowed in anger, and I had to swallow my own regret before it surfaced as an apology—I couldn’t afford to let him in again. “When did you turn into such a bitch?” he growled, and my urge to apologize dried up and blew away.

“About a year and a half ago.” I poured another shot and pushed the bottle toward him.

Instead of taking it, he watched me slowly turn the shot I’d poured for myself, staring down at the contents. “Are you going to be like this the whole time?” he asked.

“Nope. Sometimes I’ll be irritable and unpleasant.” I downed the shot and reached for the bottle again, but he bo out of my reach.

Cam tilted the bottle to read the label, then set it on the desk again with a disgusted look. “I guess you really don’t work for Cavazos. He pays better than this.”

“What, you’re too good for my whiskey?”

“Yeah, and so are you. When this is over, I’ll buy you a real drink.” His arched brows were a challenge, but his eyes were serious, and so was the question he hadn’t really asked.

“I might let you. Because I like whiskey.”

He leaned back on the couch, crossing both arms over his chest. “Is that the best I’m going to get?”

“From me? Today? Yes.” I screwed the lid on the bottle and put it back in the drawer. “Where’s Anne?” I asked, when the fact that I was alone with Cam became too much to think about.

“You were late and she had to pick up Hadley. She left these for you, though.” He picked up a plastic grocery bag I hadn’t even noticed and tossed it onto the desk. I opened it and looked in to find several clear plastic bags, each smeared with blood on the inside from their contents.

“She took these herself, didn’t she?” I asked, trying not to be horrified by the thought of Anne on her hands and knees, taking samples of blood from the scene of her husband’s slaughter.

“She wouldn’t let me help.” Cam glanced at the floor between his knees. “She seemed to think she owed it to him personally.”

Damn.

I spread the bags out on my desk, looking for some kind of order, but they weren’t numbered or labeled, as police evidence bags always were. There was a swatch of cloth that might once have been plaid, an uneven square of excised carpet, a patch of stained denim and a formerly white athletic sock.

“Have you tried any of them?” I asked, turning the first bag over to examine it.

Cam shook his head. “You’re the blood expert.” Which is what had brought me to Cavazos’s attention…

I unzipped the first baggie—the plaid cloth—and reached inside with my bare hand. The blood was room temperature and still sticky. Fresh enough to be viable, and readable from a decent distance.

As the metallic scent of blood filled the room, I pulled the cloth from the bag and closed my eyes, fingering the material, focusing on the feel of the blood between my fingers, and the feel of it in my head. That mental scent. The energy signature of whoever’d spilled it.

It came from a man. Gender was easy to discern, but race and age took more experience—exposure to and study of a variety of samples. Fortunately, I’d had plenty of experience.

The blood came from a man of Asian descent. I couldn’t pin down his age without a fresher sample, but I knew two things for sure. The blood held no power, which meant its owner was not Skilled. And the blood held no pull—no psychic thread connecting it to the man who’d spilled it, through which I could Track him. Which meant the owner was dead.

“It’s Shen’s,” I swhoeveresealing the cloth in its bag.

Cam sat straighter. “How sure are you?”

“As sure as I can be, without having met him. It’s either his, or another dead Asian man with no Skill.” Which could easily have been one of about a billion other people—if we didn’t already know Shen’s killer was a Traveler.

I stood without touching anything and crossed into the bathroom to wash my hands with the bar of lye soap on the left side of the sink. It was hell on my skin, but lye destroys blood, which would keep me from confusing one sample with another.

In my chair again, I opened the second bag—the denim—and knew almost immediately that the blood in this one was also Shen’s.

Another hand scrub, then I opened the third bag. The carpet. And that one was interesting. Shen’s blood was there, but it wasn’t alone. Two people had bled on the carpet, and the second person’s blood held both power and pull. He was both Skilled and alive. But with the samples so thoroughly mixed, I couldn’t tell what kind of Skill it was, nor could I get any specific direction from the pull. I didn’t even know for sure that the owner was male.

I sealed up the carpet and washed my hands again, then sat down with the last sample—the sock. “The carpet, I understand. But how the hell did Anne get bloody clothes from a crime scene? Why didn’t the police take them for evidence?”

Cam sighed and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “The house was locked up tight when Shen was found, and his keys weren’t missing. The cops know the killer was a Traveler, and they know they’ll never find him with only county resources.” He shrugged. “It’s no surprise they’re not dedicating much time or effort to a case they know they can’t solve.”

And there were more of those every day, it seemed. Sure, some cops were Skilled, but the police department couldn’t legally use resources that weren’t officially recognized by the government, which meant they were crippled in the investigation of any crime obviously committed by a Skilled perp.

Victims and loved ones who could pay would come to people like me for answers the cops couldn’t give them. Some independent Trackers—like Spencer and his associates—also offered vigilante justice, of the variety Anne had requested, for a huge fee.

Those who wanted justice but couldn’t afford it in monetary terms would turn to either Tower or Cavazos, who were happy to take payment in the form of an IOU—a dangerously vague contract sealed by one of their own Binders. And just like that, one by one, private citizens fell into debt to one syndicate or the other, signing away their souls—or at least their free will—for one short moment of visceral satisfaction.

What they didn’t know was that half the time, the very syndicate they turned to for help was responsible for the crime they wanted avenged. I’d seen it happen. If Cavazos wanted a Traveler or a Reader who refused to sign on, he’d have the target’s spouse or parent killed—never a child, thank goodness—then sit back and wait for a desperate knock on the door.

And people kept falling for it, devastated and naive in the face of engineered tragedy.

I held up the bloody sock, mentally crossing my fingers that what had happened to Anne was nothing of that sort. That this was something we could put an end to without making powerful enemies. Then I closed my eyes and inhaled.

Score.

One bleeder, with both power and pull. This blood almost certainly matched the second bleeder from the carpet, and with only one scent to concentrate on, I was able to pin down some details.

“Male, and he’s a Traveler.” Just as Anne had guessed. I’d found the killer. Or, at least, I’d found his blood, and since it hadn’t completely dried, the pull from it was strong.

Cam sat straight again and glanced from the sock to my face. “Anything else?”

“A general direction.”

He was already on his feet, keys in hand. “I’ll drive.” I glanced at him, my gaze narrowed in suspicion, and Cam scowled. “What, you don’t trust me? Don’t you think it should be the other way around? How do I know that you’re not just going to ditch me again and move to another city, without even a goodbye?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I snatched my worn satchel from the couch and filled it with supplies from the cabinet behind my desk so I wouldn’t have to look at him.

“Well, then, why don’t you tell me?” he demanded, and when I didn’t answer, he grabbed my arm and tried to turn me around. “Why are you so angry? You’re pushing people away. People who care about you. What happened to you, Liv?”

I jerked my arm from his grasp and met his gaze reluctantly. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
Yet.
But he didn’t understand that, and I couldn’t explain it. “Fine. You can drive. It’ll be easier for me to concentrate on the blood that way anyway.” Which was probably the reason he’d offered in the first place.

The last thing that went into my satchel was a spray bottle of ammonia, then I zipped the bag and set it on the desk. I shrugged into my good holster and pulled my jacket on over it, then checked the clip and the safety on my favorite 9mm and dropped it into the holster. I sealed the sock back into its bag and shoved it into my right jacket pocket. With my phone in the opposite pocket and my satchel over one shoulder, I shooed Cam out the door and locked it behind us.

“It’s good to see you again,” he said, following me down the narrow staircase at the end of the hall. “Even if you’re not talking to me.”

“I
am
talking to you.” I pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairs and stepped into the bright parking lot, squinting against the glare of the sun. I’d rather work at night, when there were fewer of Cavazos’s eyes around to see me with Cam, but Anne’s blood sample wasn’t getting any fresher.

“You’re talking, but you’re not really saying anything,” Cam insisted, digging his keys from his pocket.

“You’re doing enough of that for both of us.”

His car—the one he’d tracked me down in the night before—was parked near the end of the front row, and as we approached, he unlocked it by remote.

“What do you want me to say?” I asked, dropping into the passenger’s seat.

“It’s been six years, Liv. I don’t even know you anymore.” When I didn’t know how to respond, he sighed and started the car. “Is this what you do now? Freelance Tracking?”

I nodded, and the knot of tension inside me eased just a little. Work questions, I could handle. “I was on Adam Rawlinson’s team for three years. They taught me to shoot and fight—Rawlinson himself trained me on the nine mil—and I quit last year and went into business for myself.”

Cam stopped at the parking-lot exit, the car’s V8 rumbling all the way into my bones. “Which way?”

I set the sock on my lap and opened the bag, then ran my fingers over the damp, sticky material and closed my eyes. “West.”
Shit.
Tower’s side of town. Not a promising start to the afternoon.

“What happened with Rawlinson?” Cam asked, turning left onto the street. “You didn’t like the company?”

“No, it was nice.” Good money, decent benefits and an upstanding boss. Rawlinson had a sterling reputation and got the bulk of the business from anyone who didn’t want to get tangled up with either Tower or Cavazos. Including a lot of unofficial police “consultations.”

“So why’d you quit? You obviously took a cut in pay….”

I laughed, and it almost felt good. “Is that a dig at my liquor cabinet?”

Cam smiled. “That wasn’t liquor, it was swill. And that wasn’t a cabinet, it was a drawer.”

“The money will come, once I get my name out there.” For too many years, I’d been known only as Rawlinson’s top Tracker, “You know, that girl.” I’d almost started answering to the unofficial title.

“So you quit over money?”

“No.” I glanced at him, looking for judgment in his eyes, because there’d been none in his voice. “I wanted to be my own boss.”

The irony of my lie stung. Good thing I wasn’t bound to tell the truth.

I’d quit my job after Cavazos inked his mark on my thigh and ruined my whole life. I did it to keep Rawlinson and the rest of his employees safe. He would have fired me anyway if he’d found out. No syndicate-bound employees—that was both company policy and common sense. Never hire someone whose loyalty belongs to someone else. Especially someone with the power not only to kill you, but to make the world forget you ever existed. And that was only one of the reasons I had to keep my binding secret.

“Well, then, I guess you got what you wanted.”

Hardly.
I stared at my lap. I hadn’t gotten a damn thing I’d wanted since that night six years ago.

When the road curved to the right, I looked up. The blood wanted us to go straight. “Take the next left and veer toward the market district,” I said, staring out the window to avod looking at him. Being with Cam was harder than I’d thought it would be. Some things hadn’t changed—he still smelled like good coffee and cheap shampoo—and some things were totally different. Like that dark, scruffy stubble, as if he hadn’t gotten a chance to shave. And maybe he hadn’t. The stubble made him look older, and at first that had bothered me, because it reminded me how much had changed since we’d been together. But now that stubble was kind of growing on me.

Wonder what it feels like…

I’d actually pulled my hand from the plastic bag before I realized what I was doing, and when he glanced at my bloody fingers, I felt myself flush.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did you lose the pull?”

“No.” I shoved my hand back into the bag and ran my fingers over the stiffening material, staring straight out the windshield. He couldn’t guess at my thoughts if he couldn’t see my face. “Just keep heading west.” Deeper and deeper into Jake Tower’s side of town…

“So…how long have you been bound?” Cam asked, when I motioned for him to take the next left.

My heart jumped so high I could practically taste it on the back of my tongue. “I told you, Cavazos doesn’t—”

“I meant Anne. How long have you and Anne been bound to the others?”

Oh. Yeah.

I tried to relax, but that was hard to do, considering I was clutching the bloody evidence from a murder scene, riding into the territory of a man who’d kill me as soon as look at me and sitting next to the man I’d thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. “Fifteen years. Since I was twelve.”