Oath Bound
Page 111

“She doesn’t.” Ian pulled a piece of paper off the fridge, and the watermelon-shaped magnet that had been holding it in place clattered to the floor. “She wants you.” He handed me the note. “Careful. It’s still wet.”
An inarticulate sound of disgust bubbled up from my throat as I realized that the note I now held had been written in blood. Literally. Chase Curtis’s blood, if I had to guess—there was plenty of it available.
But my disgust melted in the face of both fear and rage when I read the still-dripping words.
Let’s trade. Sera for Kris. I’ll be in touch.
“Is that irony?” I stared at the note, reading it for the third or fourth time. “I think that’s irony.” I’d thought Kris wanted to trade me for Kenley, but now Julia wanted to trade me for him.
“Okay. So...I’ll go. I mean, I was going to go in anyway.”
Kori shook her head, her jaw clenched in fury. “Doesn’t matter. She’s not going to trade him. She’ll kill him as soon as she has you.”
“No, she won’t. I won’t let her. She can’t hurt me and she has to do whatever I tell her to, right?” Surely the infamous bindings were going to work in our favor, for once....
Ian shook his head that time. “There are too many loopholes. She’s bound to you by the same contract that kept her bound to Jake—the same contract she worked around to have him killed. She could do the same to you.”
“And that could be as easy as not being there in person when we go for the trade,” Kori added. “If she’s not there, you can’t give her orders. And if her people have orders to kill whoever shows up, she’s not specifying that they kill you—thus she’s not violating her contract—but you’ll still be dead.”
Which was exactly how and why she’d had my family killed—hoping to catch me in the crossfire without actually putting a hit out on me.
“Shit.” How was it possible that the contracts and system of loyalties were so complicated, but the ways around them were so frustratingly simple?
“Okay. So, if she’s not going to give him back, we’ll have to take him back. Along with Kenley.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Kori knelt for a better look at Curtis, and my stomach churned. “Sorry you didn’t get your revenge killing. I know how bad that sucks. But you’re welcome to share mine. Julia Tower’s as responsible for what happened to your family as Curtis was, which means we both have a claim on her life.” She stood and met my gaze in the dull light from the table lamp. “Help us get Kris and Kenley back, and I’m willing to share the kill.”
“You couldn’t stop me from either one if you tried. How do you think she’ll be in touch? And when?”
“I don’t know, but we’re not going to wait—” Before she could even finish her sentence, Kori’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She frowned and pulled it out, then turned the cell around so Ian and I could see the screen. The text was from Kenley’s phone, but we both knew the Binder hadn’t sent the message.
Bring Sera to the warehouse at the corner of Bonner and Lexington. I will trade her for your brother.
“It can’t be that easy, right?” I said as Kori pocketed her phone without even considering a reply. “I know she’s not really going to trade, so what are the chances he’s really in that warehouse?”
“Slim to none.” Ian scrubbed one hand over his short-cropped hair. “We can try tracking him, but I’d bet my life she has a Jammer sitting right next to Kris. If he’s even still alive.” The words looked almost as painful for him to say as they were for me to hear, but he didn’t shy away from them.
“He’s alive,” Kori said. “She’ll know we’ll want proof of that before we agree to anything. And she won’t offer Kenley as part of the trade because she knows we’ll recognize that as a lie.”
“So, we find her and we take them both back.” I leaned against the fridge, careful not to touch anything for fear of leaving fingerprints at the scene of a crime. “We know where she’s not.” The warehouse on the corner of Bonner and Lexington. “That only leaves...the entire rest of the city for us to search.” I hoped I didn’t look as frustrated as I sounded.
Ian turned to Kori. “I assume she’s not at Tower’s house. For one thing, that’s too obvious. For another, if the viral campaign worked, they may have run her off. We have to assume she still has some loyal employees, otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to take Kris. But it’s entirely possible that she doesn’t have Kenley anymore.”
“Then who does?” Kori stepped over the pool of blood surrounding the Curtis brothers and sank onto the arm of their couch. “If she lost enough employees to lose control over Kenley, how long do you think it’ll be before whoever’s running the blood farm figures out that killing Kenni will free them all permanently? What if that’s already happened? Can it happen?” She stared at the shadowed carpet, lost in thought. “I can’t remember whether or not my oath to Jake prohibited me from killing his Binder— I wouldn’t have hurt her anyway.”
“I think it’s time we make some calls and find out exactly what our viral campaign has done to the Tower infrastructure,” I said, and Kori looked up at me, drawn from her thoughts by the possibility. “Worst-case scenario—we’ll find out it failed entirely. Which means Kenley’s still alive and Julia has her. And if it hasn’t failed, I can get information from anyone whose binding was transferred to me.”