Oath Bound
Page 96
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I couldn’t find any holes, so I picked up the binoculars. She’d shredded the paper man’s groin.
“Classy.” I set the binoculars on the table, and she laughed.
“Now try that on a moving target, and I’ll be impressed,” Kori said, and we turned to find her leaning against the door to the shed we used to Travel into the house.
“You couldn’t hit a moving target when you first started,” I reminded her.
“Yeah. I was also twelve.” Kori glanced from me to Sera, then back to me, her left brow arched in amusement. “Isn’t this a little cliché? You wanna teach her to hit a golf ball next?”
“Watch out, or I’ll teach her to hit you.”
“No lessons necessary,” Sera mumbled, and I couldn’t hide a grin.
Kori laughed out loud. “So, is she ready to be thrown to the wolves?”
“She’s getting there.” But I wasn’t going to throw her to the wolves. Everyone else may have been willing to let Sera march into Tower territory on her own, to find our Kenley, but I wasn’t. I was going with her. Whether she agreed or not.
“Gran says if you don’t come eat, she’s going to throw your dinner down the drain.”
I huffed. “If by drain, she means her own gullet.”
“We’ll be in in a minute,” Sera said, and Kori must have been feeling generous, because she took the hint and retreated indoors.
“Thank you.” Sera ejected the chambered round from her gun, just like I’d shown her.
“No problem. I like guns.”
“That’s not what I meant. Thanks for helping me, beyond the guns.”
I concentrated really hard on putting the unspent .40 rounds back into the box. “I like you, too.”
“Now you’re just messing with me.”
“I’m really not.” I met her gaze, letting her see the truth. “And I don’t want you to get killed trying to find my sister.”
She held up the gun, safety engaged, aiming downrange. “Thanks to you, I just may walk out of there alive.”
But the gun was no guarantee. The fact that she didn’t seem to understand that scared the living shit out of me. I couldn’t lose her. I didn’t even have her, but I already knew that I couldn’t survive losing her, and that was the scariest thought I’d had since the day I’d decided my life was worth living, even without Noelle in it.
Eighteen
Sera
After dinner on my third night in the House of Crazy, Kori and Van started their anti-Julia viral campaign, jokingly referred to as “Off With Her Head.” Though I truly hoped no one actually planned to decapitate Julia Tower. A bullet through her brain was enough for me.
Ian held the master list of names and phone numbers they’d compiled—an act worthy of punishment within the syndicate itself, where writing criminal details down was highly...discouraged. Kori and Van each took half of the list and texted every number with a prepared statement, declaring that Julia was actually Tower’s regent, not his heir, and naming me as the oldest of my biological father’s children.
No one texted back with a response, and I was tempted to see that as the failure of our scheme, but they all assured me that the opposite was true. There would be doubters, of course, but if no one believed the text so many people were getting, there would definitely have been a response.
After that, while all phones remained conspicuously silent, we went out back to Kris’s homemade gun range again, but this time the entire household came with us. We drew faces on our black silhouetted targets with neon markers and Wite-Out pens, then tacked them to trees on the edge of the woods behind the house.
Since there were so many of us shooting at once, Kori brought out a plastic tub full of mismatched sets of headphones she’d evidently taken one at a time from every gun range she’d ever visited. I didn’t want to know how she’d gotten out the door without turning them in.
Then I realized she probably hadn’t gone out through the door at all.
On the third try, I shot the button nose off the demented teddy bear Kris had drawn on my new target—he was pretty damn good with a marker—and I was feeling pretty good about my new skill, until Kris and Kori pulled down everyone’s first target and handed them out.
Neither Daniels sibling had missed a single mark. In fact, Kori had hit the center of her target’s forehead so many times that there was only one big hole where his poor paper brains had once been.
Kris went for the heart. And he hit it every single time.
For our second round, I drew shaggy white facial hair on Kris’s target man, and when I turned to hand it to him, I found him bent over the card table with a sparkly sliver pen—I have no idea where he got it—drawing on my target as if the rest of the world didn’t exist.
I took one look and wanted to hide the one I’d done before he saw it. His soon-to-be-destroyed art was incredible. “Holy shit,” I breathed, and Kris chuckled. I recognized Julia’s sparkly scowl staring out at me from the face of my target guy with a single glance.
He held the paper up. “I thought you might like the inspiration.”
“That’s incredible. I’d say it’s beautiful, but...it’s Julia.” My biological aunt was not unattractive in real life, but I would never think of her as pretty, because I would always know what lay behind the blessings genetics had given her. But Kris had drawn her so well I almost hated to shoot her.
“Classy.” I set the binoculars on the table, and she laughed.
“Now try that on a moving target, and I’ll be impressed,” Kori said, and we turned to find her leaning against the door to the shed we used to Travel into the house.
“You couldn’t hit a moving target when you first started,” I reminded her.
“Yeah. I was also twelve.” Kori glanced from me to Sera, then back to me, her left brow arched in amusement. “Isn’t this a little cliché? You wanna teach her to hit a golf ball next?”
“Watch out, or I’ll teach her to hit you.”
“No lessons necessary,” Sera mumbled, and I couldn’t hide a grin.
Kori laughed out loud. “So, is she ready to be thrown to the wolves?”
“She’s getting there.” But I wasn’t going to throw her to the wolves. Everyone else may have been willing to let Sera march into Tower territory on her own, to find our Kenley, but I wasn’t. I was going with her. Whether she agreed or not.
“Gran says if you don’t come eat, she’s going to throw your dinner down the drain.”
I huffed. “If by drain, she means her own gullet.”
“We’ll be in in a minute,” Sera said, and Kori must have been feeling generous, because she took the hint and retreated indoors.
“Thank you.” Sera ejected the chambered round from her gun, just like I’d shown her.
“No problem. I like guns.”
“That’s not what I meant. Thanks for helping me, beyond the guns.”
I concentrated really hard on putting the unspent .40 rounds back into the box. “I like you, too.”
“Now you’re just messing with me.”
“I’m really not.” I met her gaze, letting her see the truth. “And I don’t want you to get killed trying to find my sister.”
She held up the gun, safety engaged, aiming downrange. “Thanks to you, I just may walk out of there alive.”
But the gun was no guarantee. The fact that she didn’t seem to understand that scared the living shit out of me. I couldn’t lose her. I didn’t even have her, but I already knew that I couldn’t survive losing her, and that was the scariest thought I’d had since the day I’d decided my life was worth living, even without Noelle in it.
Eighteen
Sera
After dinner on my third night in the House of Crazy, Kori and Van started their anti-Julia viral campaign, jokingly referred to as “Off With Her Head.” Though I truly hoped no one actually planned to decapitate Julia Tower. A bullet through her brain was enough for me.
Ian held the master list of names and phone numbers they’d compiled—an act worthy of punishment within the syndicate itself, where writing criminal details down was highly...discouraged. Kori and Van each took half of the list and texted every number with a prepared statement, declaring that Julia was actually Tower’s regent, not his heir, and naming me as the oldest of my biological father’s children.
No one texted back with a response, and I was tempted to see that as the failure of our scheme, but they all assured me that the opposite was true. There would be doubters, of course, but if no one believed the text so many people were getting, there would definitely have been a response.
After that, while all phones remained conspicuously silent, we went out back to Kris’s homemade gun range again, but this time the entire household came with us. We drew faces on our black silhouetted targets with neon markers and Wite-Out pens, then tacked them to trees on the edge of the woods behind the house.
Since there were so many of us shooting at once, Kori brought out a plastic tub full of mismatched sets of headphones she’d evidently taken one at a time from every gun range she’d ever visited. I didn’t want to know how she’d gotten out the door without turning them in.
Then I realized she probably hadn’t gone out through the door at all.
On the third try, I shot the button nose off the demented teddy bear Kris had drawn on my new target—he was pretty damn good with a marker—and I was feeling pretty good about my new skill, until Kris and Kori pulled down everyone’s first target and handed them out.
Neither Daniels sibling had missed a single mark. In fact, Kori had hit the center of her target’s forehead so many times that there was only one big hole where his poor paper brains had once been.
Kris went for the heart. And he hit it every single time.
For our second round, I drew shaggy white facial hair on Kris’s target man, and when I turned to hand it to him, I found him bent over the card table with a sparkly sliver pen—I have no idea where he got it—drawing on my target as if the rest of the world didn’t exist.
I took one look and wanted to hide the one I’d done before he saw it. His soon-to-be-destroyed art was incredible. “Holy shit,” I breathed, and Kris chuckled. I recognized Julia’s sparkly scowl staring out at me from the face of my target guy with a single glance.
He held the paper up. “I thought you might like the inspiration.”
“That’s incredible. I’d say it’s beautiful, but...it’s Julia.” My biological aunt was not unattractive in real life, but I would never think of her as pretty, because I would always know what lay behind the blessings genetics had given her. But Kris had drawn her so well I almost hated to shoot her.
