Shadow Bound (Unbound) (39 page)

“How?” Her mug shook in her hands.

“Let her go, Kenley. Break the binding keeping her here.”

Her head swiveled back and forth, her eyes wide with terror. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. You’re the
only
one who can. It’s time to set her free.”

She shook her head, and I could see her thoughts flicker over her face before they fell from her tongue. “I can’t. I can’t be here alone. I’m not strong like she is.”

“Bullshit.” My hand slammed into the counter. “You pulled a gun on me, then stole my blood. You are as strong as you need to be, and you
can
survive this place. I couldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it was true, right?” I said, holding up my palm to remind her of the binding she’d sealed without my consent. “You can even survive the basement. But if you free Kori, she and I will do everything within our power to make sure you never wind up there. You know she’d never abandon you, and she’ll be even better able to help you when she isn’t bound to obey Tower. Do this for her. Do this for all three of us.”

Kenley studied whatever she saw in my eyes for one long moment, then she closed her own in thought. Or maybe in prayer. “Yes,” she said finally, and when her gaze met mine again, I recognized the determination shining in her eyes. I’d seen that same look on Kori at least a dozen times since we’d met. “What do I have to do?”

“I’ve heard that a Binder can break her own seal if she remembers enough specifics about the particular contract.” Which was what worried me about Steven’s binding—if my hunch was correct, she’d never even seen the binding her blood had sealed.

But Kenley shook her head. “I’ve tried. I tried for years to break the seal binding Kori to three of her friends, and I can’t do it. And I remember every word of that oath. I wrote it.”

“Try it,” I insisted. “Just think about Kori’s contract, as specifically as you can, and remove your will from the seal.”

“Okay.” She set her coffee down and took a deep breath, then closed her eyes and laid her hands flat on the counter. Her forehead furrowed and her lips pressed together. And she sat like that for nearly a minute, her eyes rolling behind closed lids as she thought.

Then, finally, she looked at me again, and I could read the outcome in her slumped shoulders and the disheartened way she rubbed her forehead, fighting resistance pain, because what we were attempting was no doubt a violation of her oath of loyalty to Tower. “Try it again,” I said, before she could tell me she’d failed. “You have to do it. You have to set her free, or she’s going to die.”

“I tried!” Kenley’s eyes watered, and though she and Kori were only two years apart, she suddenly looked much younger than her twenty-six years. “I don’t know how to remove my will. I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means you have to want to break the seal.” And as soon as the words left my mouth, I realized what was wrong. “You don’t want to, do you? Deep down, you don’t want to break the seal because you’re scared of being alone here.”

She blinked and those tears rolled down her cheeks. “What they did to her in the basement—they broke her. And if they can break Kori—the strongest person I’ve ever known—they can break me. I want her to be free. But I’m terrified of being here without her.”

“Okay.”
Patience, Ian.
I’d been a soldier when I was younger than Kenley, and Kori had obviously been fighting all her life. But we were the exceptions, right? Kenley’s fears were rational; who wouldn’t be scared of what Kori had been through? She just needed the proper motivation—a dose of the raw truth.

“If you don’t set her free, you’re going to be alone anyway, because they’ll kill her. They’ll fucking kill her, Kenley, and then you
will
be sent to the basement. And there’s nothing she can do for you from beyond the grave.”

More tears fell, and her chin started to quiver.

“Try it again,” I insisted, and she closed her eyes as the first tear rolled down her cheek and fell onto the countertop. “This is what she needs,” I whispered, as she breathed slowly in and out. “This is what
you
need. You
have
to want this.”

“I’m trying…”

“Try harder,”
I demanded. “If you don’t free her, they will lock Kori in a basement cell and they’ll put you in the one next to her. They’ll shoot her, or stab her, but somewhere not immediately fatal, because they want her to suffer awhile. They want you to hear her scream.”

“Stop,” Kenley whispered, clutching the edge of the counter.

“That’s good. Get used to saying that, because it’ll be the last thing Kori hears. You, screaming for it to stop. Because whoever Tower sends into that cell with you will beat you to within an inch of your life. He’ll strip you and humiliate you. He will fuck you while you scream, and Kori will hear it all while she bleeds out on the floor in the room next door, and she’ll know exactly what’s happening to you, because that’s what happened to her.”

“Stop it!” Kenley cried, tears pouring down her face, the guard outside forgotten.

“
You
stop it!” I hated myself for what I was saying almost as much as I hated her in that moment. I hated us both for our inability to help Kori, not to mention Steven and Meghan. For our weakness, where they had nothing but strength and sheer determination to live. But their own strength wasn’t enough to save them. They needed help. “
You
make it stop, Kenley. Only you can do it. Free her so she can fight, and we can help her. Break the binding, for both of your sakes. Save your sister. You owe it to her.”

Kenley gasped, and her eyes flew open. She turned to me, eyes wide, jaw slack, tears still running down her face. “I think I did it. Something…snapped. Inside. I think I broke the seal.”

A rustling noise drew my gaze up, and I found Kori staring at us from across the room, a gun clutched in each fist, the back of one hand pressed to the chain marks tattooed on her upper arm. “What the
fuck
did you just do?”

Twenty-Seven

Kori

F
lames licked my upper left arm, a brief burst of pain that died almost as soon as it had flared to life. I tried to touch it, to feel the heat, but I still held Harris’s gun, and that was just as well, because the burning had already stopped. But I could still feel the shape of it, like an echo on my skin, in the form of two chain links.

My headache was gone, in spite of the guns I still held. My stomach felt fine, though I’d disobeyed Jake on purpose this time.

My marks were dead.

“Kenley? What happened?” I demanded, trying to process her tears, and Ian’s look of shocked relief, and the newly dead marks on my arm, all while the clock ticked in my head, counting down the minutes until either Jake or the police came looking for me.

“Where’d you get those?” Ian rounded the end of the counter and crossed the room toward me, eyeing my new double handfuls of death. “Whose are they?”

“Jake sent a couple of men back with me. I ditched them at your hotel. What just happened to my arm?”

“Kenley broke the seal on your oath.”

I blinked, stunned, though I could feel the truth of his statement.

“You’re serious?” I hadn’t expected to see my marks die. Ever. I’d been sure
I
would die first.

“Of course I’m serious. Are Tower’s men alive?” Ian took Milligan’s gun from my left hand, checked the safety, then tucked it into the waistband of his pants.

“They were when I left. Hope you didn’t need anything from the suite. Pretty sure it’s all being logged into police evidence as we speak.” Ian’s eyes widened. “Don’t worry.” I stepped past him on my way to the kitchen, where my sister was bent over the counter clutching her head in both hands, eyes squeezed shut in pain. “They know you had nothing to do with it. I left a conscious witness.”

“Kori, what the hell happened?” Ian demanded, staring after me.

I set Harris’s gun on the counter, then pulled a clean rag from the drawer to the left of the sink and ran cold water on it. “Jake told me to bring you in. Immediately.” I helped Kenley onto the bar stool and pressed the cold rag to her forehead, offering what little comfort I could for what was obviously severe resistance pain from breaking her oath of loyalty to Jake.

I could hardly even process what she’d done, but I knew exactly how badly she must be hurting. “You okay? I need you to breathe through it, Kenni. We’re leaving in five minutes and you have to pack.”

“I’m trying.” Kenley took the rag from me, and her hand shook. “Are we running? There’s nowhere to go.” She moaned and clutched her stomach, and her rag fell to the floor. Then her hand slid into her back pocket and pulled out a folded scrap of paper, which she set on the counter, then pushed toward Ian. “Burn it.”

Ian grabbed a match from the box on the counter, then lit it and set the paper on fire. When the flames reached his finger and thumb, he dropped the charred scrap into the sink and exhaled slowly.

“What was that?” I asked, bending to pick up the rag.

“Nothing. How long will this last?” Ian asked, watching Kenley.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her disobey before, and she picked a hell of a way to start. Fortunately, it’s a terminal breach of her oath, so if she can ride this out, she’ll be fine.” Unlike an ongoing breach—such as refusing to obey an order—for which she’d suffer until she either gave in or died.

I contorted my shoulder for a good look at my left arm, where the two interlocking chain link tattoos had faded from iron-gray into a dull, muted gray. “How’d she do it? Did she burn my contract?” How the hell had she even gotten hold of it?

Kenley shook her head, one fist pressed against her gut, as if she could physically stop the pain. “I unsealed the binding.” Her voice was strained and her legs were shaking on the stool. “You’re free, Kori.”

I blinked at her. Then I glanced at Ian, brows raised in question. He nodded. I burst into tears. “How? Why?” Sniffling, I wiped my cheeks, but the girly fuckin’ tears just kept coming.

Kenley was crying now, too, but obviously trying to hold it back. “He said if I didn’t break your binding, Tower would kill you and put me…” Her words faded into unspoken thought and her mouth twisted into a grimace beneath another wave of agony. “So I just… I stopped wanting you to be bound to him.”

“What?” When had she ever wanted me bound to Jake?

“She removed her will from the seal,” Ian said as I rewet her rag and blotted her face. “The only way I could explain that to her was to tell her she had to stop wanting you to be bound to Tower.” He shrugged, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, claiming no credit for an event he’d obviously set into motion. “So, now you’re free.”

I smiled—I couldn’t help it—and for one short moment, I enjoyed the most wonderful words I’d ever heard.

Then I realized that in securing my freedom, Ian and Kenley had just screwed things up for his brother.

“Jake will never help you now.” I rubbed the dead marks on my arm, horrified by what my freedom had cost him.

Ian glanced at the ground, and guilt left deep lines in his forehead when he met my gaze again. “I don’t need him,” he said, his voice soft and low, like he was making a confession. “I never did. I need her.” He glanced at Kenley again, and I frowned as her grip on the countertop began to ease, the resistance pain finally ebbing.

Kenley’s mouth opened, and I could almost see the question hanging on her lips, but before she could ask what we both wanted to know, her front door opened and the guard-of-the-day stepped into the living room, gun drawn, but aimed at the floor.

“I’m supposed to take you all to Tower. Now.”

Shit.
I was hoping to be gone before Jake got his ducks in a row.

“And if we won’t go?” I stepped in front of Harris’s gun on the counter, so he wouldn’t see it. If I used it, others would hear and come running. Ian had Milligan’s gun—also absent silencer—tucked into the back of his pants, out of view unless he turned.

“I shoot you and take them,” Kenley’s guard said. “You’re acceptable collateral damage.”

“Always good to hear.” I turned toward the hall. “Just let me grab my phone.”

“Stop.” He raised his gun, aiming for my chest, and I tried not to look like my breath had frozen in my throat. “One more step and I’ll shoot you.”

“I need my fucking phone. I want to talk to Jake on the way.”

“Let her get it.” He nodded at Kenley, his aim never wavering from my chest. “Jake said not to let you two out of my sight,” he added, glancing from me to Ian, who looked alert, but seemingly unarmed with his hands at his sides.

“Fine.” I turned to Kenley, so that the guard couldn’t see my face. She sat up straight, carefully hiding the last of her resistance pain. “The phone’s on my dresser. It’s on silent.” I didn’t dare emphasize that last word—even a stupid guard might pick up on what I was really asking for—so I lifted both brows instead, hoping she understood.

Kenley nodded solemnly, eyes wide with fear, hands still shaking as she stepped into my bedroom. The light went on, and I turned back to the guard, ready to capture and hold his attention.

“I can’t believe they let you carry a gun. I mean, how can you see where you’re aiming, with your head stuck so far up Jake’s ass?”

The guard glared at me and started to speak, then something over my shoulder caught his attention. He raised his gun, but before he could squeeze the trigger, a
thwup
echoed behind me and he stumbled backward into the door, one hand over the new hole in his gun arm, blood pouring between his fingers.

He started to raise his gun again, in spite of the pain. I turned and took the silenced nine millimeter from my sister and squeezed the trigger twice more. Two new holes appeared in the guard’s chest, and he slid down the door to sit on the tiled entry, his eyes sightless, his mouth hanging open. His fingers relaxed, and the gun fell to the tile between his thighs.

Something thumped behind me, and I turned to see my sister on the floor, leaning against the living room wall. “Kenley?” I crouched next to her as I flicked the safety on my gun, and Ian was there with us in an instant.

“I shot him,” she mumbled.

“Your aim’s definitely improving.”

“Kori, I
shot
the man who was here to protect me.” Her hands were shaking harder now, and I couldn’t tell how much of that was from resisting standing orders from Jake and how much was shock.

“You didn’t kill him,” Ian pointed out. “You just kept him from shooting Kori.”

“Anyway, he wasn’t here to protect you. He was here to do whatever Jake told him to do, and Jake told him to bring you in. That’s the opposite of protecting you.” I reached down for her arm and hauled her up. “Hold it together, Kenley. We have to get out of here.”

She tried to pull her arm free, but I held on to it, looking right into her eyes to emphasize the importance of what I was going to say. “Call Van, if you want to bring her with us. It’s her choice, but if you can break my binding, you can break hers, too, right? And your own? We’ll all run, and when we’re safe, we’ll see what we can do for Ian’s brother.”

My range wouldn’t be great with three other people in tow, but I could take them, even if we had to make several layovers to get where we were going.

“What’s wrong with his brother?” Kenley asked, already digging her phone from her pocket. But before I could answer, Ian shook his head.

“She can free…Van?”

He glanced at my sister, and she nodded. “Assuming she sealed Van’s contract and remembers enough specifics about it. But I’m guessing Kenley didn’t seal her own binding.” He turned to her again for confirmation, and Kenley nodded again.

“Barker did it.” He’d been Jake’s top Binder until Kenley was recruited as a naive, twenty-year-old prodigy.

“Then only Barker can break the seal.” Ian frowned at her. “How do you not know any of this?”

“Jake wouldn’t teach her anything she could use against him,” I said as the ramifications of what Ian had just explained sluggishly came together in my head. “So wait. I’m free, and Van can be free. But Kenley can’t?”

“Not right this minute, no.” Ian sighed and met my gaze with a somber one of his own, and the clock in my head kept ticking, driving me as surely as my own pulse did. “There are three ways to free Kenley. We can find her contract and burn it. We can kill the Binder who sealed the contract. Or—and this is a long shot—we can convince him to break the seal himself, just like Kenley did for you.”

“Okay, we don’t know where the contract is, and I don’t want to kill anyone,” Kenley said.

“Do you know where Barker is?” Ian asked, and we both nodded.

“Tower keeps him protected, but he’s not as hard to get at as Kenley is.” Especially for me.

“Do you think you can convince him to break the seal?”

I held up my silenced nine millimeter. “I can be pretty damn convincing.” But I was running out of places to stick guns. I needed a holster. A double.