Oath Bound

Instead of giving Sera my pistol, I grabbed her hand and pulled her with me into the closet.

She screamed, and I threw the door shut.

“Kill him!” Julia shouted.

“No!” Lynn screeched.

I fired twice into the ceiling, killing both the visible and the infrared lights at once. Then, as the first bullets ripped through the closet door, I pulled Sera into the shadows with me.

I took the woman in the yellow scarf.

Three

Sera

His eyes were a pale bluish gray. They were the first things I noticed after Lynn Tower opened the office door over my aunt’s protest.

The next thing I noticed was his weapon, and the two men bleeding on the marble tile in the foyer. Bile rose to my throat at the sight of so much blood pooling on the floor, and brutal memories tried to surface, but I shook them off. None of the bystanders were hurt. He’d only shot people who’d aimed guns at him.

This man may have been a killer, but he was no murderer. The distinction was small, but important.

The man aiming his gun at me looked furious, pale brows furrowed, jaw clenched, aim unwavering. He was looking for someone—I’d missed the specifics, thanks to the alarm—and was obviously willing to do whatever it took to find … whomever. He looked desperate.

But not crazy.

Those blue-gray eyes seemed to see everything all at once—every guard aiming a gun at him, every witness watching, and every possible escape route. He was too calm to be crazy. And if he was sane, he could be reasoned with.

He had to be reasoned with, because if Julia had him shot and his finger twitched on his own trigger, he’d blow a hole right through me, and no one other than Gwendolyn Tower seemed particularly concerned by that possibility.

My heart thudding in my ears, I held my hand out for his weapon, demanding focus and calm from myself as I mentally counted the shots I’d heard. But I couldn’t be sure of the number, thanks to the alarm.

He glanced at my scarf, then at my hand, and for a moment I thought he was actually going to give me his gun.

Instead, he grabbed my hand and dragged me into a supply closet, nearly hauling me off my feet. Startled, I screamed when he kicked the door shut, but then he raised his gun and shot into the ceiling, once, twice.

The closet went dark and glass rained down on us from the broken fixtures. Too shocked to speak, I tried to jerk my hand from his grip, but he pulled me again, and I stumbled after him, one step, then two.

The last thing I heard was gunfire coming from the foyer. They shot at us. They knew I was with him, and they’d fired anyway! On Julia’s command!

That bitch!

Then there was silence, except for the sound of my own panicked breathing—too fast and too hard.

The darkness was absolute, and I couldn’t see a thing. I couldn’t feel a thing, except for his hand tight around mine, and the body heat that told me this room was smaller than the last, and that he was standing much too close.

I opened my mouth to scream again and he dropped my hand. A door opened and he stepped out of what I could now identify as an empty coat closet, his gun aimed at the floor.

That blue-gray gaze found mine again from a narrow hallway outside the closet. He was staring, as if something about my face made no sense.

“What the hell just happened?” I demanded, torn between the need to know exactly where I was and reluctance to venture beyond the closet into unknown territory.

“Traveling. Colloquially known as shadow-walking.”

“I know what it means. Where are we? Who are you?”

“I’m the man who just saved your life.” He holstered his gun. “You’re welcome.” Then he turned left and marched down the hall. “You want a drink? I’m having one.”

“Wait!” I wrapped one hand around the door frame and leaned into the hall as he turned to face me from a living room full of dated furniture. “Are you damaged? You didn’t save my life. You nearly got me killed!”

He crossed his arms over a well-defined chest put on display by a snug blue T-shirt. “I pulled you out of the line of fire.”

“I wouldn’t have been in the line of fire, if it weren’t for you. And if it weren’t for me, they would have killed you!”

“They tried. They shot at us both.” His wary focus narrowed on me until it felt invasive. “Sera, right?” he said, and I declined to answer. “Why were they willing to kill you, Sera?”

I blinked, scrambling for a response that wouldn’t actually tell him anything about me. “Where are we?” I demanded when I couldn’t come up with any answers of my own. “What am I doing here? Who are you?”

“Who am I?” Anger hardened his features and furrowed his brows. “Who the hell are you, and where’s Kenley?”

“Who’s Kenley?”

His anger visibly swelled in response to my question and he marched toward me, fists clenched at his sides, warning echoing in every step as his heavy boots clomped on the wood floor.

My heart lurched into my throat. I backed into the closet, peering through deep shadows for something to use as a weapon, but there was nothing. The closet was completely empty.

He was two steps away when I pulled the door shut, my pulse whooshing in my ears, then held the knob, using all of my weight to keep the door closed. What the hell was I thinking, jumping in the middle of syndicate business? I should have let Julia kill him….

The man growled, then the door was ripped from my grasp so fast I stumbled into the hall after it. He caught me before I could fall, but I shoved him off so quickly I almost missed the change in his expression.

“You’re not a Traveler.” He exhaled and the relief lining his features echoed within the sound. “I thought you’d disappeared through the shadows.”

If I could have, I would have, but even without having grown up in the Skilled subculture, I knew better than to confirm or deny my own abilities.

I backed away from him, past the open closet door, hands open and ready to grab the first potential weapon I came across. “Let’s try this again. Who are you?”

Anger resurfaced behind his eyes, but was quickly replaced with confusion. “You really don’t know?”

“Why should I?”

He shrugged, and his jacket rose to reveal his holstered gun. “Well, if you work for Julia Tower—”

“I don’t.”

“Then what were you doing in her office?”

“That’s none of your business.” Being related to Jake Tower was dangerous, and having that fact known could be deadly. My mother had made sure I understood that, and Julia had just reinforced that lesson with a lethal spray of bullets.

His gaze narrowed. “Why would she tell her men to drop their guns at your request?”

Shit. So much for revealing nothing about myself.

New plan: reveal as little as possible.

“Because she wants something from me.”

“What does she want?”

She wanted me to sign away my rights to the Tower legacy, not to protect her niece’s and nephew’s interests, but so that the wealth and power would remain under her fist, at least until they came of age. But … “Again, that’s none of your business. Who is—”

He reached for me, and before I realized he wanted to brush aside a strand of hair caught on my scarf, I knocked his hand away and took another step back. My fists rose automatically. He glanced at me in surprise. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“That’s a true statement.” I was ready to fight.

He blinked, startled, then looked kind of disappointed. “No, I mean, I don’t want to hurt you. You don’t need to defend yourself from me.”

“Right. You just shot several people and hauled a strange woman into a strange house against her will. Naturally I should assume you mean me no harm.”

“Okay, I know how that sounds.” He held both hands up, showing me he was unarmed, yet his gun still peeked out at me from its holster. “But I promise this is not that kind of abduction. If you don’t believe me, look behind you.” He gestured to something over my shoulder, and my need to know what was behind me warred with my need to keep him in sight.

I turned and pressed my back against the hallway wall so I could see both him and … the old woman asleep in a recliner in the room next to the closet I’d just stepped out of. Her ample chest rose and fell silently. Several melting ice cubes floated in a glass of watered-down tea on the small table next to her.

“Who’s that?”

“My grandmother. She’s a pretty deep sleeper, thanks to her medication, but she will wake up if you keep shouting, and I’d appreciate it if you’d let her sleep.”

“You’re serious?” What kind of armed killer kidnapped strange women and took them home to Grandma? What kind of family was this?

Although, considering the branch of my own family I’d just met, I didn’t really have room to criticize.

He shrugged again and shoved his hands into his pockets, trying to look harmless; but even with his grandmother asleep in the next room, that was impossible to believe. He’d taken down at least four of my aunt’s guards in just a couple of minutes, and his aim at me had never wavered, even with half a dozen guns pointed at him. The man had nerves of steel. He may have been many things—including a devoted grandson—but harmless was not one of them.

Yet he hadn’t laid a hand on me.

“Why am I here? Who are you?” Why would he shoot to wound men who would readily have killed him? Why would he kidnap me at gunpoint, then claim to have no violent motive? Why would he think I knew his name, then refuse to give it to me?

Normally I’d assume I understood the destructive, violent nature of a home invasion. I’d become an unwilling expert on the subject when I’d lost my entire family a few months before, and getting caught in the middle of this one should have sent me over the edge.

But the Tower estate was no ordinary home, and the man in front of me was no ordinary invader. He hadn’t broken in to kill someone, he’d broken in to find someone, and I was inexplicably fixated on the differences between his crime and the one that had shattered my entire reality.

Or maybe I just really needed those differences to exist. Maybe I needed him to have a good reason for what he’d done—what he was still doing—because I hadn’t seen one damn thing in the world worth living for since I’d become an orphan and an only child, well into adulthood.

This man, whoever he was, had something worth living for. Something worth fighting for. Something worth dying for. And I really wanted to know what that was.

“Who were you looking for?” My voice was barely a whisper, but he heard me. In fact, he seemed to hear the need behind the question.

For several seconds he only watched me. Studying me, as if he was trying to decide whether or not he could trust me—an irony, considering that he’d just dragged me through the shadows. Finally he exhaled slowly and met my gaze with a heavy one of his own. “Julia Tower took my little sister, so I broke into the Tower residence to get her back.”

I closed my eyes and an ache radiated from the center of my chest as my own sister’s smile haunted my memory. My next inhalation hurt. I’d never seen his sister and I still didn’t even know his name, but I understood his pain. I would do anything to get Nadia back, if that were possible, but …

“You broke into the Tower estate.” It sounded just as crazy when I said it as when he’d said it. “There are easier ways to kill yourself, you know.” Yet hadn’t I done the same thing—minus all the gunfire?

Another shrug from the man with no name. “I figured that was the last thing they’d expect, thus the thing they’d be least prepared to defend against. Turns out I was right.”

“No, you were lucky.” As was I, but I’d known going in that they’d want to talk to me.

He scowled. “I make my own luck.”

“You nearly made yourself a used-bullet receptacle. When did your sister go missing?” Please, please don’t let his sister be an actual child. Surely he was too old for that. But then again, I’d just met two young siblings of my own …

“She didn’t just ‘go missing.’” He leaned with one shoulder against the wall, two feet from the end of the hallway. “Someone pulled her through the shadows a few minutes before I … met you.”

“Well, then it couldn’t have been Julia. She’s—” At the last second I realized she wouldn’t want me telling strangers what her Skill was. Not that I cared what she wanted, but pissing her off wouldn’t make her any easier to deal with. “She’s not a shadow-walker. Anyway, I was with her when your sister disappeared. It wasn’t Julia.”

“It wasn’t her personally,” he agreed. “She doesn’t do her own dirty work. But my sister was taken on her orders, and Julia knows where she is.”

There wasn’t a single glimmer of doubt in him. Not in his unflinching gaze, his steady voice or the confidence in every word he spoke. And when I considered the bullets flying through that storage closet and Julia’s apparent willingness to slaughter me in cold blood to keep me from inheriting her fortune, it wasn’t hard for me to believe my aunt capable of abduction.

But then, obviously so was the man who’d kidnapped me.

Anger flamed up my spine with the sudden realization of where I fit into his storm-the-castle routine. “So, what, when you couldn’t find your sister, you took me instead? What am I? A hostage?”

“No, I …” His cheeks flushed, and for the first time since he’d dragged me through the shadows, he seemed unsure of what to say. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“It’s complicated?” Unless he’d just discovered he’d inherited millions in ill-gotten gains from a crime-boss father he’d never met, making him the target of a crime-boss aunt he wished he’d never met, he couldn’t possibly understand the meaning of the word complicated. Not the way I understood it, anyway.

“Look, I’m the last person Julia Tower would be willing to trade your sister for.” Though she might strike a bargain for my corpse—not that I had any intention of admitting that to a man desperate to rescue his sibling. “So, I need you to take me back. But I swear if I hear anything about your sister, I’ll let you know what building you should break into next. So why don’t you just give me your name and number, and I’ll—”

“Sera, I can’t take you back there.” He held my gaze, and his statement had the grave finality of some indisputable truth. “They tried to kill you.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, reeling from the irony. “You can’t let someone else kill me, but you’re fine with the fact that you kidnapped me?” What kind of weird-ass moral code was he following?

“I didn’t really kidnap you.” He glanced over my shoulder into the bedroom where his grandmother was now snoring loudly in her recliner. “I just … removed you from a dangerous situation. You’re welcome.” He mustered up a grin, obviously trying to diffuse my mounting anger and frustration, but it didn’t work.

“For the last time, it wasn’t dangerous until you got there, and I didn’t ask to be removed.”

Still, he had a point. I didn’t want my father’s dirty money, but would Julia even listen long enough to let me say that, or would she shoot me on sight?

I exhaled through clenched teeth. “Fine. Take me somewhere else then. Drop me off downtown.” Where I could regroup and decide how best to proceed with my homicidally estranged aunt. And get my car back.

“I can’t.” He rubbed his forehead with one hand. “I’m sorry, but you have to stay here until I figure out what to do with you. So … make yourself comfortable.” He twisted to wave one hand at the living room, and indignation began to smolder deep in my gut. “I’m guessing you’re about ready for that drink now?”

“You can’t be serious.” I followed him into the tiny living room, where a couch and several armchairs surrounded a worn coffee table, all facing a small television.

“I am,” he called over one shoulder as he crossed the living room toward the kitchen. “And could you be quiet for a minute? I need to think …”

“No I can’t be quiet!” That smolder deep inside me burst into a blaze, and I felt as though I could breathe fire. “I’ll tell the whole damn neighborhood I’ve been kidnapped if you don’t take me someplace public, right now!”

“There’s no neighborhood.” He turned to face me from the kitchen doorway, infuriatingly calm, and gestured to the sidelights flanking the front door.

I glanced through the glass and groaned. No other houses. No other buildings. No traffic. Nothing but starlight and a narrow gravel road, illuminated by the porch light. Where the hell were we?

“And you’re not kidnapped,” he continued when I turned, ready to roast him alive with the power of my rage. “You’re just … borrowed. I’m gonna put you back.” He frowned and his gaze dropped to the floor for a second. “Well, probably not back where I found you, but … My point is that you won’t have to stay here forever.”

“I don’t have to stay here at all. You can’t just borrow people!”

He glanced around the empty room, as if expecting someone to agree with me. “Kinda looks like I can. You want some coffee? Or are you thinking something stronger? I’m thinking something stronger.”

“What is wrong with you?” I demanded when anger defeated my attempt at something more articulate.

“My sister’s missing, my grandmother has Alzheimer’s, Julia Tower wants me dead and you’re turning out to be kind of a pain in the ass.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have kidnapped me!”

He rubbed his forehead, then raked one hand through his blond waves. “Well, hindsight is worthless, so could you just shut up so I can figure a few things out?”

“What things?” I demanded, but then I figured that out for myself. He’d broken into Julia’s house, guns ablaze—surely an unforgivable insult to the head of a Skilled crime syndicate—but she had yet to return the favor. Which surely meant she didn’t know where he was. “If you’re worried that I’ll tell Julia where you are, or something like that, you can relax. I don’t know who you are, or where we are, and she hasn’t exactly inspired my loyalty today.”

“Loyalty is compulsory when you’re bound.” He hesitated, but just for a second. “Are you bound to her?”

“No. I’m not bound to anyone.”

“And I’m just supposed to take your word for it?” His frown deepened and he glanced at my left arm, covered by my long-sleeved shirt. “I … um … need to see your arm.”

But even if I’d felt obligated to show him my unmarked arm—and I didn’t—I couldn’t have complied without taking my shirt off. And that wasn’t gonna happen.

“No.” Was this what my mother’s obsessive caution had spared me? A lifetime of suspicion, and dangerous loyalties, and lives defined by the color of the marks on my skin? By the constant need to prove I had no syndicate marks and served no one but myself?

“I’m asking nicely,” he said, but there was a warning threaded through his voice.

“And if I refuse nicely?” I backed up several steps, blindly aiming for the front door while my heart pounded in my throat. “Are you going to get less nice?”

Was I going to have to get less nice? He was bigger and stronger, but I had no problem fighting dirty, and I had nothing left to lose.

“No.” He exhaled in frustration. “Look, you don’t have to take anything off. We can cut your sleeve, or you can change into something of my sister’s. I just need to know that when I let you—” He stopped, then started over. “That when you leave, you won’t be obligated to go back and tell Julia everything you saw and heard here today.”

My heart thumped painfully. “Can’t you just take my word for it?”

He looked kind of sad. “I wish we lived in the kind of world where I could, but we don’t. Can’t you just show me? If you don’t have a mark, why is this such a big deal?”

That question cut straight to the heart of the matter, and suddenly everything seemed really clear. “Because I don’t have to. Because you don’t get to see anything I don’t want to show you. Because you don’t have the right to keep me here and make demands. Because the fact that I don’t have a mark means I don’t have to take orders from anyone. Including you!”

He blinked at me in surprise. Then he nodded. “All valid points. And in a perfect world, they’d matter, but here, they don’t. I can’t take you anywhere until I know you pose no threat to me and mine.” With that, he turned and stepped into the kitchen while I fumed from the middle of the living room floor.

“Fine.” My jaw already ached from grinding my teeth. “I’m guessing your range is no more than a few miles, so we can’t have gone too far.” I had some cash, my only credit card and my phone. No reason I couldn’t walk back to civilization on my own.

“Why do women always err on the side of underestimation?” he mumbled, pulling a bottle from an overhead cabinet as I headed for the front door. “My Skill could be huge, for all you know.” He had his back to me. He wasn’t even watching.

A second later, as I twisted and pulled on the front doorknob to no avail, I saw why.

“The door’s nailed shut!” Furious, I bent to examine the nails and my teeth ground together when I noticed the tiny crosshairs. “Those aren’t nails, they’re screws!”

And half of them had been countersunk. No one was getting through that door without an electric drill, a Phillips head bit and a spare half hour.

“Did that myself,” my kidnapper called from the kitchen. “Of course, we can probably kiss the security deposit goodbye. Ironic, isn’t it, considering that I actually made the house more secure.”

I stood to glare at him through the kitchen doorway, fingering my phone in my pocket. If I didn’t dread explaining the circumstances of my abduction, I’d have already dialed 911. “Look, I don’t recognize your particular psychosis, but trust me when I say this is a very special kind of crazy. Why the hell would you screw the front door shut?”

He shrugged, leaning with one hip against the counter, a half-empty bottle of whiskey in one hand. “We don’t use that exit.”

My focus found the door behind him, which presumably led to the backyard, and before I could decide whether or not to make a break for it—which would involve running right past him—he shook his head. “We don’t use that one, either.”

Both exits were screwed shut because he and his grandmother had no use for them? Bullshit.

He was prepared to house a prisoner, which meant this was premeditated. How could I have misread him so drastically? The fact that he cared about his sister didn’t make him less dangerous; it made him more dangerous. If his rash invasion of the Tower estate was any indication, he’d do anything to get her back. He’d gone in planning to take a hostage. The bastard wasn’t going to let me go until he got his sister back!

But … that didn’t make any sense. Why trade me, if he didn’t want me to go back to Julia? Was that just an act? Or had he planned to kidnap someone she valued—someone she would bargain for—but got stuck with me instead? If so, what was the new plan? What good was a hostage who couldn’t be traded?

No good at all.

Panic raced through me like fire in my veins. This was real. The psycho with nice eyes had taken me, but had no use for me. Even if he truly had no plans for violence—and his grandmother’s presence seemed to confirm that—he had no intentions of letting me go, either.

Knowing the doors didn’t function made my skin crawl, as if I were trapped not just by this house, but by my own body. My own mind.

I needed fresh air. Space. Now.

Logically, I knew that was the panic talking. There was plenty of air, and the house wasn’t that small—the foot of the staircase in one corner of the living room meant there was an entire second story I had yet to see. And the hum of the air conditioner told me the ventilation was fine. Being locked up wasn’t going to kill me.