Oath Bound

But being stupid might.

Think.

Assuming he truly loved his grandmother—and I’d seen no reason to doubt that—he wouldn’t leave her alone if she couldn’t get out of the house. What if there was a fire?

There had to be a functioning exit.

I took a deep breath and swallowed my panic. “Fine. If you don’t use the doors, how do you get out of here?”

He didn’t even look up from the soda he was pouring into a short glass, over an inch of whiskey. “The same way I brought you in.”

Damn it. “You’re both shadow-walkers?”

“Not all of us. But enough.”

All of us? How many were there? “And I assume the windows are …”

“Screwed shut. Which is overkill in some cases, because about half of them were already painted shut. This place is pretty old.”

Great. No one could get in or out of whatever weird-ass house he’d dragged me into without the ability to travel. Or something to throw through a window, and a good head start.

I’d call that Plan B.

Plan A needed to be smarter, and a little more tech-savvy. While my kidnapper rattled pots and pans in the kitchen, I dug my cell from my pocket and sank onto the couch. I opened the GPS function on my phone and waited while the map loaded, slowly, slowly, slowly narrowing down my location.

Cell phone reception in his stupid, screwed-shut house sucked.

“You still alive in there?” he called from the kitchen, after about a minute of silence from me.

I considered not answering, but then he’d come looking for me.

“Alive and pissed off!” I called back.

“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t plan this, but now we’re kind of stuck with each other for a bit.”

Yeah, right. And finally, the GPS centered on my location.

I didn’t recognize any of the street names, but that was no surprise, considering I’d never been to the city before and I’d let my car’s GPS navigate the whole way to the Tower estate.

I zoomed out on the map, searching for familiar landmarks, and when I couldn’t find any, I zoomed in again, hoping to narrow my location down to a street address. Or at least a close cross-street. Then I’d call the police and have this grandma’s-boy, kidnapping son of a bitch arrested.

I didn’t have to press charges, or even explain how I’d wound up in the House of Crazy. I just needed the cops to come open a door.

But there didn’t seem to be any cross-streets. We were truly in the middle of nowhere.

The loading icon spun and spun as the map tried to refresh, and I stared at it in mounting frustration and anger. My hand clenched around the phone so hard the plastic case groaned and my knuckles turned white, but finally the new map loaded, and—

My cell was ripped from my grasp.

“Hey!” I stood and reached for my phone, but he stepped back and my nails clawed his forearm instead, drawing four white lines, but no blood.

“Sorry. Can’t let you do that.” Then the bastard dropped my phone and stomped on it, grinding with the heel of his hiking boot until shards of metal and plastic were hopelessly embedded into the worn carpet.

Fury sparked the length of my spine and my right hand curled into a fist. I swung before I even realized what I’d intended, and my fist slammed into his jaw. “You owe me a phone!”

He stumbled back in surprise, rubbing his face, and I ignored the ache in my hand as I knelt to scrape up the remains of my cell, just in case. But it was trashed.

“This isn’t funny!” I shouted.

“Agreed.” He stomped into the kitchen and a second later I heard ice rattle.

“You can’t keep me here. If you think I’m going to twiddle my thumbs as your hostage, you kidnapped the wrong damn woman.”

“Would you please calm down?” He appeared in the living room again, this time holding an ice-filled plastic sandwich bag to his jaw. “I’m the one with everything to lose here, and you’re the one throwing punches. You’re not a hostage, and you’re not in any danger. In fact, you’re safer here than you were with Julia Tower, so please sit down and shut up!”

I heard his words, but I couldn’t process them. I wasn’t a hostage? I was in no danger? The facts didn’t support those statements—he’d dragged me through the shadows and locked me up in a strange house. My entire family died in a locked house. Their own locked house.

No exits, no neighbors and no phone. I was screwed. Unless …

Maybe there was a landline. Some people still had those.

When a glance around the living room revealed no phone, I stomped into the kitchen, and he only watched me, still icing his jaw. “What are you doing?”

There was a phone on the wall by the fridge. A really old phone, connected to the handset by a long, curly, yellow cord. I picked up the handset and started to dial—until I noticed there was no dial tone.

“We never hooked it up.” He picked up his drink, drained it, then set the empty glass on the counter next to an open box of macaroni and cheese. “No need, with cell phones, right?”

Speaking of which … I could see the outline of his in his back pocket. Maybe I could hit him with something, then take his phone and lock myself in another room long enough to call for help …

“It’s passcode protected,” he said when he turned and caught me staring at the seat of his jeans. “More useful as a paperweight than as a phone, if you don’t have the code. Or were you just staring at my butt?”

“I wasn’t …” I stopped, angered anew by how flustered I was. “Unless your phone is ancient, it’ll still make emergency calls.”

“True.” My kidnapper pulled the phone from his pocket and held it up. “Do I need to smash mine, too?” He looked reluctant, but willing. I shook my head because I couldn’t steal it later if he busted it now.

He pulled a clean rag from a drawer and wrapped his ice pack in it, then pressed it to his jaw again. “You throw one hell of a punch.”

“You smashed my phone.”

“Sorry. I couldn’t let you call Julia.”

“Julia?” I scowled and backed slowly toward a microwave cart on the other side of the room, where several steak knives were spread out on a folded towel, evidently set out to dry. “I told you I don’t work for her. I was calling the police.”

He shrugged. “Well, that’s almost as bad. I’m sorry about your phone, though.”

“What kind of kidnapper apologizes? And lives with his grandmother? And forgets to take away the victim’s phone?” My spine hit the cart and I slid one hand behind my back, feeling for the handle of a knife. “You’re the worst kidnapper ever.”

He watched me closely, but stayed back. “I’m not a kidnapper.”

“My unwilling presence in your home says otherwise.”

“Okay, yes.” He acknowledged my point with another shrug. “But there are extenuating circumstances. Why don’t we sit and discuss this over a drink? Or are you hungry? I’m not much of a cook, but I can handle boxed mac and cheese, if you’re interested.”

I wouldn’t eat or drink a damn thing he gave me, but …

“What happened to the stove?” I glanced pointedly at the front of the ancient appliance, where all four of the burner-control knobs were missing. Was nothing normal in his house?

“Oh. Gran nearly burned the house down yesterday, so we had to take the knobs off the stove, and now I can’t remember where Ian hid them …” He turned and took a cookie jar from the top of the fridge, and when he peered inside, I let my fingers skim the cart at my back, searching for the knives.

My kidnapper huffed in frustration and put the jar back. “They were in here yesterday, but now they’re gone …”

My fingers closed around the handle of a knife and my stomach roiled when I brandished it at him, trying not to think about the damage a different blade had done behind my parents’ locked doors. Could I do to my kidnapper what was done to my entire family? Even though he hadn’t laid a hand on me?

Yet.

He hadn’t laid a hand on me yet. And he claimed not to want me to return to Julia Tower, but hadn’t he already proved he’d do anything to get his sister back? Why wouldn’t he trade me for her? I’d do it in a heartbeat, if our situations were reversed.

“Give me your phone, or I swear I will gut you.” By some miracle, my hand was steady. The same could not be said for my stomach. I hate knives.

His pale brows rose and he crossed his arms over his shirt. “Then how will you get out of here? You don’t know where you are, and it’ll take the police forever to trace a cell phone. My grandmother doesn’t have one. And she’s not a Traveler.”

I frowned and glanced at the kitchen window, mentally working on a Plan C.

“You could break the glass and shout for help,” he suggested. “But I can’t let you go, and even if you tried, you’d cut yourself trying to climb out.” Only an idiot would leave her blood lying around for anyone with the requisite Skill to use against her. “And there’s no one around to hear you scream for help. The nearest neighbor is more than a mile away.”

More than a mile between houses? Either he was lying—though the lack of traffic noise said he wasn’t—or his range was much better than I’d guessed.

Either way, I had to get out, and I had to do it before his friends came back and my odds got even worse.

“Why don’t you calm down and have a seat?” He glanced at the kitchen table and the four chairs around it. “If I put my gun down, will you put your knife down?”

“Hell, no! I’m not going to put the knife down, I’m not going to sit, and I don’t want to talk to you. So you can either let me out of here, or you can get ready to bleed.”

I scanned the kitchen, looking for something light enough to lift, but heavy enough to break glass.

“Sera …” His tone resonated with warning as he set the ice pack on the counter, tense now, as if he might pounce if I made one wrong move. “Whatever you’re thinking … don’t.”

My gaze landed on a ceramic napkin holder shaped like two halves of a pineapple, sitting on top of the microwave. The kidnapper took one step toward me, arms out at his sides, as if I might rush him at any moment.

Instead, I grabbed the napkin holder and hurled it at the nearest window.

Glass shattered and a jagged hole appeared in the pane. Both halves of the pineapple landed on the dark grass outside, about a foot apart.

“Damn it,” he swore.

“Kris?” a woman’s shaky voice called from the other end of the house, and recliner springs groaned as his grandmother sat up in her chair.

“It’s okay, Gran. Go back to sleep,” Kris—finally the kidnapper had a name!—said without taking his gaze from me. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he whispered, and anger flickered across his expression.

“I probably shouldn’t do this either, then, right?” I grabbed a wooden rolling pin from a stainless steel canister of large utensils and swung it at what was left of the window. Glass exploded outward, onto the grass.

“What the hell are you doing in there?” his grandmother demanded, and the chair groaned again. “If one of you hellions put another pool cue through my—”

“It’s fine, Gran,” he called back. “Stay in your room.”

I kept swinging and glass kept breaking. I knocked as much of it out as I could, to make the window safe to crawl through, and he only watched me, his eyes narrowed in irritation, a red blotch growing on his chin where I’d punched him.

When the glass was gone, I met his gaze, trying to decide whether to relinquish the bludgeoning weapon or the stabbing weapon—I’d need at least one free hand to climb through the window.

“Please don’t do this,” he said, and the earnest note in his voice actually made me hesitate. For about a second.

Then I threw the rolling pin at him and lunged for the window while he ducked.

I was halfway out when he wrapped one arm around my waist and tried to drag me back in. My heart beat so hard my chest almost hurt. I clutched the window frame and swung the knife behind me. The serrated blade caught on material and when I jerked it free from the snag, he swore again. But he didn’t let go or stop pulling, and I wasn’t strong enough to keep him from hauling me back into the house. At least, not without the use of both hands.

In the kitchen once again, he pinned my left arm to my side with his other arm wrapped around my waist. I shoved the knife in my right hand backward, hoping to catch a vital organ, but he caught my wrist before the blade made contact.

“Please drop the knife, Sera. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Sorry I can’t say the same.” I tried to twist my arm free, but his grip was relentless and I couldn’t reach anything with the blade.

“Kristopher, what the hell is going on?”

My shoes brushed the floor when he spun with me still in his grip, evidently as startled as I was to find his grandmother standing in the kitchen doorway, her stern frown aimed at us both.

“Call the police,” I demanded, tossing hair out of my face. He grunted when my skull smashed into his … something. “I’m a hostage being held against my will.”

Her frown bled into a sympathetic smile. “Oh, hon, you’re not being held, you’re being moved. We’re the good guys. But I need you to hold it down, so you don’t wake up the rest of the kids.”

“The rest …” Fresh panic made my pulse trip faster. “How many other hostages do you have?”

“None.” Kris groaned in frustration. “She’s not a kid, Gran. We don’t have any kids right now, remember?” He shifted, and his next words were softer, spoken near my ear. “You’re not a hostage. She’s confused.”

The old woman propped wrinkled fists on ample hips. “Kristopher, let her go. That’s no way to earn her trust.”

“I can’t let her go. She has a knife.”

“Good. I hope she skewers you with it.” His grandmother marched past us both, glanced in obvious irritation at the stove with no knobs, then pulled a mug from the cabinet above the coffeemaker. “You can’t keep bringing them in with no notice, Kris. We don’t have a bed for her right now. One of the boys will have to sleep on the couch until we find someplace safe to send her.”

Boys?

Kris groaned again. “She’s not a kid, Gran. She’s fully grown.” His declaration carried equal parts appreciation and frustration over that fact, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. “And we’re not sending her anywhere.”

“What the hell are you people talking about? I haven’t been rescued, I’ve been kidnapped.”

Kris’s grandmother shot him a questioning look over her mug, as if I were the one who made no sense.

“I didn’t kidnap her. Exactly,” he said. “But if I let her go now, she’ll stab me. Again.”

Again? Was he already bleeding?

The grandmother pulled the full carafe from the coffee machine. “Is this decaf? You know I hate decaf.”

“It’s fully leaded,” he said, his mouth inches from my ear, his grip on me unrelenting.

“What is wrong with this family?” I demanded when the hard kick I landed on his shin did no good, and she made no move to help me.

Gran gave me a stern frown and poured coffee into her mug. “We have a strict no-weapons policy for the residents. He’ll let you go as soon as you put the knife down, but not a moment sooner.”

My grip on the knife tightened. “Who are you people?”

“Don’t tell her anything,” Kris said, hauling me backward when I tried to kick the nearest cabinet. “I think she works for the Towers.”

Gran’s eyes widened. Then she blinked and gave her head a little shake, as if she’d just woken up and needed to clear the cobwebs.

I kicked backward again, and again I caught Kris’s leg. He grunted, but didn’t let go. “I don’t work for anyone,” I insisted, but no one was listening.

His grandmother looked up from her mug, scowling fiercely, and everything about her was suddenly different, from the harder edge to her voice to the stiffness of her posture. “Kristopher Daniels, tell me you did not bring a Tower employee into this house.”

Kris groaned into my ear. “Gran, my name is top on the list of things you weren’t supposed to tell her!”

“Take her back.” Gran blew calmly over the surface of her coffee as I kicked her grandson over and over again, growing angrier each time he only grunted and squeezed me tighter. “If she works for the Towers, she’s dangerous.”

“Taking her back won’t make her any less dangerous. And anyway, I can’t take her back.” Kris oofed when I threw my head back and my skull caught his … chin? But his grip around my waist never loosened. “They tried to shoot her. Right now, I can’t really blame them.”

“Why would they shoot their own employee?” Gran asked.

“I don’t work for them! And they weren’t shooting at me, they were shooting at him.” Though they were clearly willing to count me as collateral damage. “Let me go!” I shouted when my anger crested, and I shoved the knife back with all the strength I had.

The blade snagged on material again, and Kris gasped, then grunted in frustration. “Damn it, Sera!” He let go of my waist, but before I could do anything with my freed left arm, he spun me around and slammed me against the front of the refrigerator.

Air burst from my lungs, then his forearm pressed into my collarbone through my sister’s yellow scarf, pinning my shoulders to the fridge. Panic tightened every muscle in my body. I fought blindly as memory obscured reality and it became hard to focus on his face.

His free hand curled around my right one, which still gripped the blade. His angry blue-gray gaze bored into me, his legs pinning mine so that I couldn’t kick. “Please drop the knife, Sera! You got me. I’m bleeding. You win.”

“Open the door and let me out,” I growled through clenched teeth.

He exhaled heavily. “I can’t. I’m sorry you can’t see that, but I can’t let you leave yet, for your safety and for ours. I have to ask you some questions, and you have to answer them. But it doesn’t have to be this hard. Please, please, please let’s do this the easy way.”

“Fuck you.” I glared into his eyes from inches away. “I don’t owe you anything.”

His expression hardened. “Fine. We’ll do it the hard way. Just keep in mind that that was your choice.” He squeezed my left wrist, but I gripped the knife in spite of the growing pressure and pain until I actually lost control of my own fingers.

The knife slipped from my failed grip and clattered on the floor. He kicked it across the linoleum and it thunked into something I couldn’t see. In the second my left leg was free, I tried to knee him in the groin, but he deflected the blow with the outside of one very solid thigh.

He was just plain too big to fight, unless I was willing to fight dirty—and I was—or I could catch him by surprise. Which became the new Plan D.

His eyes narrowed, his gaze cautious. “If I let go, are you going to play nice and show me your arm?”

I stared back at him. “Are you going to hand over your phone and power tools?”

His grandmother laughed from the kitchen table, and I realized she’d been watching us the whole time. Sipping her coffee.

Kris groaned. “Are you this much of a pain in the ass every time someone asks to see your marks?”

“No one’s ever asked to see my marks. And again, I don’t have any.”

“How have you never been asked to prove that? What, are you from Mars?”

“Worse,” his grandmother said, and I saw her watching us over his shoulder, a shrewd gleam in her eye. “Suburbia. There isn’t much syndicate activity in the outskirts, Kris. You know that better than most.”

He did? What did that mean?

“Yeah, I do.” His grip on me loosened and his gaze softened, but he didn’t let me go. “Okay, I get that you’re out of your element, and you’re obviously clueless about the way this city operates. So let me give you some survival advice. Stay out of the east side unless you want to deal with Cavazos. Stay out of the west side unless you want to deal with Tower—which you evidently do.” His disgusted expression told me exactly how dumb he thought that decision was, and I bristled beneath his judgment. “And when someone asks to see your arm, you show them your damn arm, so they know whether or not they’re allowed to fuck with you. They won’t all be as nice about it as I’ve been.”

“You call this nice?” I snapped.

He stared at me for a second, apparently gauging the sincerity of my question, while his grandmother shook her head slowly at the table. My naïveté was evidently confounding.

“This is the kid-glove treatment,” Kris said. “There are people out there who would have cut your clothes off the first time you refused.”

“My shirt,” I corrected, and he shook his head.

“The left arm is the most common place people are marked, but it’s not the only place.”

Chills raced up my spine, then down into my hands, which began to shake. I glanced at his grandmother for confirmation, and she nodded solemnly.

Kris’s gaze narrowed on me again, and he seemed to be studying me from a new perspective. “What the hell are you doing here, Sera? Girls like you don’t belong in the city.”

“No one belongs here,” Gran said, and I let her answer stand for me.

“Now, I’m going to let you go, and you’re going to turn around and pull your left arm out of your shirt and show it to me. You can keep everything else covered, but your left arm is non-negotiable. Got it?”

“How am I supposed to prove I’m not marked anywhere else? I’m not taking anything off.”

“No need.” Gran chuckled into her coffee, and I couldn’t believe the change in her from a few minutes earlier. “A whore would never be so hard to undress.”

“Whore?” I blinked at Kris in incomprehension.

“Cavazos marks his prostitutes with a red ring on the inner thigh.” He chuckled a little at my shocked expression. “Don’t worry. I’ve never met anyone less likely to bear a red mark in my life.”

I wasn’t sure whether or not that was a compliment.

“I’m going to let go and back up, and you’re going to show me your arm. Ready?”

“If I do, you’ll open the front door?”

He frowned. “No, but showing me your arm will put you one step closer to that. Here goes …”

He let go of my right hand and removed his left arm from my shoulders. Then he backed up several steps, still watching me.

My heart thumped in my ears as I turned slowly, reluctant to put him at my back, even with his grandmother in the room. My focus raked the counter next to the fridge in search of a weapon. But there was nothing within easy reach.

I would have shown him my arm, if that would have gotten me released. But since it wouldn’t, I couldn’t see the point in capitulating. In letting him think I could be pushed around.

Instead of pulling my arm free from my sleeve, I spun and launched myself at Kris. I rammed him in the chest with my shoulder, just like my dad had taught me when I was twelve.

Air burst from his lungs and he stumbled backward into the table, which slid across the floor and into the far wall without even spilling his grandmother’s coffee.

Gran cackled as he tried to stand, holding his spine where it had hit the table, and I ran for freedom. I had both hands wrapped around the window frame when he grabbed my arms from behind.

I lost my balance when he jerked my arms behind me and would have fallen headfirst out the window if he hadn’t hauled me back in, pinning my wrists in one of his hands.

“Let go!” I twisted and kicked backward, but a second later something cold and hard wrapped around my wrists. A soft zipping sound froze me in place, and the plastic around my wrists got tighter. “Are you serious? A zip tie?” Why would he even have those if he wasn’t planning to take a hostage?

He spun me around to face him again, anger drawn in every line of his face, and when I tried to pull free, his grip on my arm tightened. “Just FYI, this is not the easy way.”