“Voice recognition is an inferior technology,” Cavazos said. “We tried it for a while, but I got locked out of the house every time I got a cold. And most syndicate members aren’t willing to have their fingerprints on file anywhere.” For obvious reasons. “Retinal scanners are still prohibitively expensive for most people, even considering the benefits.” He shrugged. “We had three of them installed last month. However, I have it on good authority that Tower has yet to make the switch.”
I frowned. “How the hell do you know that?”
“I took a Reader with me when we went to price the units we just had installed, to make sure we were getting the best possible deal on the best possible equipment. At that time, Tower hadn’t placed an order from any of the top three manufacturers. And even if he’s placed an order since then, he hasn’t had time to get them delivered and installed.”
“So how do you unlock his darkrooms?” Anne asked, clearly fascinated.
Another shrug. “He’s probably still using key cards, like the system we just replaced. The digital code is changed every morning, and there’s a card coder right outside each darkroom. You just run a fresh card through the coder before you leave, and it’s good for that day.”
“What about an employee coming in for the first time that day?”
“He would have to use the intercom,” Michaela said. “There’s a button by the door, and when you press it, the lockdown light comes on so the security camera can see who’s there. Say your name into the speaker, and if you are approved, the guard will unlock the door, and you can grab a key card in the hall. If you’re not approved…” She shrugged. “Start holding your breath.”
The possibilities tumbled around in my head. “So…we need a key card. Preferably one less than a day old…”
Anne sighed and ran one hand through her hair. “We have to get into his house to get a key card. But if we could get into his house, we wouldn’t need the damn card in the first place. What’s that called? A paradox?”
“It is called good security,” Michaela said.
“Wait a minute…” My pulse jumped a little in reaction to my new idea—not a certainty, but certainly a possibility. “Why don’t we just have the key delivered, by someone who would definitely have one, if there’s actually a key to be had?”
“Kori?” Anne’s brows rose over the possibility, and I nodded slowly. “She’s not just going to hand her key over. Assuming she has one.”
“No, and if we take it from her, we can’t let her go back and report to Tower.”
“Who the hell is Kori?” Meika asked, and I could swear I saw the fingers of her right hand clench around air, as if she were wishing for the blade Ruben had confiscated.
“Another friend of…” At the last moment, I decided not to mention Elle. Surely that would have been the fastest way to bring Meika’s inner bitch roaring back to the surface. “Ours,” I finished lamely. “She’s one of Tower’s Travelers.”
Michaela’s expression darkened like a cloud had just rolled across the sky. “How many friends do you have on the west side of town?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t know I had any, until today. But the point is that I think I can get her here. I might need some help subduing her—” which I hated to do at all, considering she probably wanted to help us “—but after that, keeping her here should be as easy as tying her to a chair and leaving the lights on.” I met Cavazos’s gaze steadily, hoping he wouldn’t decide this was one of those times I was fun to mess with. “But you have to swear you won’t let anyone hurt her.”
“Why would I want her hurt?” he asked, not even trying to look innocent.
“Because she works for Tower? Because she took your daughter to him? Because she’s a beautiful woman who does really interesting things when she’s mad? Take your pick. Just swear you won’t let anyone hurt her.”
“What will I get in return?” he asked, his voice low and intimate enough to make his wife scowl.
“Your daughter,” I snapped.
Finally he nodded. “I swear I won’t let anyone hurt her if she plays nice.” Unfortunately, nice wasn’t a descriptor I’d ever heard used in reference to Kori. But that was the best I was going to get. “Fine.” I sighed, then gulped the last of the water from my bottle. “She’ll be traveling into the bathroom, so I’ll text her there.” Because otherwise, she could show up before we got into place. Or…she could make us wait in the dark for an hour. “I’ll need some help.”
Michaela shrugged and stood, but I shook my head. No way was I going to stand alone in the dark with her. Not after she’d nearly nicked my femoral artery the last time. She couldn’t have changed that much in the past hour.
I glanced at Anne and sighed again. She couldn’t do it. She may be able to shoot a stranger in immediate defense of her daughter’s life, but she couldn’t hit a friend when no one was in right-this-minute mortal peril. And, honestly, I kind of liked that about her. It was nice to finally have someone in my life who balked at the idea of killing someone.
Cam was out of the question, of course, so that only left…Cavazos, who stood waiting for me to come to that realization. “After you.” He gestured toward the hall, and I sucked in a deep breath, then reluctantly led the way into the shadows.
Twenty-Eight
In the dark, with the door closed, I sat on the edge of the tub holding a roll of duct tape in one hand and my phone in the other. Cam had left the tape on the counter when we’d taped up the window earlier. “Here.” I handed the roll to Ruben when he sat on the tub next to me, his thigh and shoulder touching mine. “Tear off a strip to go over her mouth.” That way she couldn’t ask me or Anne for help, which would ruin our entire plan.
“My pleasure.” His voice resonated with sincerity, and I hated him a little more, having heard it. “If she’s smart, she won’t come,” he said, as he ripped a length of tape from the roll. “Tower will kill her for this, when he finds out.”
“She doesn’t know what we’re planning,” I whispered. “But she’d come even if she did, if she could possibly find a way. She feels bad enough about giving Hadley to Tower, and she wants to make it right.”
“That sounds more like you than Kori.”
“You don’t even know her!” I snapped, my thumb hovering over the text-message icon on the disposable cell phone I’d borrowed from Cam. I couldn’t use mine, because I’d already texted from it, and she’d recognize my number.
“But I know you.”
I looked up at him, wishing he could see in the dark so he’d know how thoroughly pissed off I was. “You don’t know me. Don’t ever think you know me. The only things you know about me are the things you made me do, and that illustrates your character, not mine.”
Cavazos laughed softly. “I didn’t make you take the mark on your thigh. That bond was your idea, to free Caballero. And I didn’t make you risk my anger and your own life by bringing your friends here, even before you knew Hadley was mine. You did that on your own, to help a child you barely know.”
“Shut up.” I didn’t want to hear his assessment of my character.
“Your hard shell protects some very soft innards, Olivia. That’s what makes you so much fun to play with. If that shell had cracked, even just once, I might have been done with you then and there. Well, I would have fucked you first, then I would have been done with you. But the more I poke at your armor, the stronger it gets. Just like Michaela. Only there might be just a bit too much pressure on her shell,” he admitted, finally.
“I don’t think you give a shit what’s behind my ‘shell,’ Ruben. I think you just want to crack it for your own amusement.”
He laughed again. “Isn’t that what I said?”
I closed my eyes, trying to mentally block him out and concentrate on the task at hand. Then I opened my eyes and started typing, which was a real pain in the ass in the dark, on the new phone’s numeric-only keyboard.
It’s Cam. New phone. Need to see you at Liv’s love n
est. now.
I17;d hesitated to tell her Cam got a new phone, even though I was impersonating him on my own, because she might have to tell Tower that before she came over. But then I realized Tower had probably already figured that out, when Cam stopped answering his old number, which had surely been called after Kori brought Hadley in.
“Not sure how long this’ll take,” I said, flipping the phone closed, suddenly acutely aware of how cold and hard the tub was. But that was better than Ruben’s evil warmth any day.
“Olivia—” he began, and he sounded so serious I was sure I wouldn’t want to hear whatever he had to say.
“Shh. If she hears us talking when she gets here, she’ll just walk straight back through the shadow and we’ll be screwed.”
Cavazos made no reply, and I attributed his uncharacteristic moment of cooperation to the fact that he wanted his daughter back.
We sat like that in silence for several minutes and by the time my eyes adjusted to the tiny crack of light bleeding beneath the door from the hallway, each breath either of us took sounded like the hiss from a closed air vent—intrusive, harsh and obvious. The wait was excruciating.
Then, all at once the air felt different. A silhouette stepped into existence right in front of us—a darker, human-shape among the shadows. Tall and slim, long hair that would have been pale and straight in the light. Definitely Kori—as if I’d had any doubt.
Cavazos was off the tub before I even knew he was going to move. He grabbed her arms and Kori grunted in surprise as I lunged past them both to flip the light switch on the wall. When I turned, Cavazos held her from behind by both elbows. White-blond hair had fallen over her face, but her dark-eyed gaze was still piercing through the pale strands of hair.
“We got her!” I pulled open the bathroom door, belatedly hoping that Cam hadn’t heard me through whatever music he was playing. He needed plausible deniability, or he’d have to turn himself in to Tower. And probably take Kori with him.
“Liv, what the fuck?” Kori demanded, tossing her hair to clear her line of sight.
“I’m sorry.” I snatched the strip of tape Ruben had left hanging from the counter and slapped it over her mouth, catching a strand of hair in the process. Then I reached for her front pocket as footsteps headed toward us from the hall. Yelling something unintelligible from behind her gag, Kori threw her hips back to avoid my hand and nearly knocked Cavazos off balance, but he recovered quickly and tightened his grip on her arms. Kori groaned when he wrenched her shoulders, glaring at me wordlessly.
Anne stared at us from the doorway and Kori continued to buck while I pulled her gun from her shoulder holster, then dug into her pocket for her phone.
Kori’s eyes went wide when she saw Anne, and though I couldn’t understand her individual words, her inarticulate demand to be released came through loud and clear.
“Sorry, Kor,” Anne whispered. “You shouldn’t have taken Hadley.” Then Anne headed into the living room, cradling her own stomach, as if seeing Kori gagged and restrained actually nauseated her.
“Let’s put her in a chairI said, pocketing Kori’s phone. I checked the safety on her gun, then stepped into the hall, where Michaela stood waiting like a child about to meet Santa.
“Better search her first,” she suggested, a creepy but confident light dancing behind her eyes. “That’ll be harder once she’s strapped down.”
Kori’s brows rose in wordless question and she craned her neck for a better look at Meika, obviously trying to place the face. When Cavazos ordered his wife out of the way, Kori stiffened visibly and I realized she’d thought Cam was holding her.
Ruben forced her down the hall and into the living room with a series of short shoves, and she stared at Michaela the whole time, still clearly trying to identify her. Then, finally, her eyes widened again, and she started shouting behind the tape. She’d recognized Meika.
Kori twisted viciously in Ruben’s grip to face me, wordlessly demanding an explanation even as he jerked her around again.
“Hadley’s his daughter.” I reached between her backside and his pelvis—not a pleasant place to be—to search her pockets, while she shouted inarticulately, and this time I thought I heard her say, “Elle.”
“Yeah, she’s Elle’s, too. I know it’s weird.” But that was all the explanation I had time for. Her left pocket was empty, except for a convenience-store receipt for an overpriced pint of ice cream.
Kori fought Ruben’s grip even harder, kicking the air, trying to throw us all off balance as I slid my hand into her right back pocket. She understood now—I could hear it in her voice, feel it in her struggles. She knew she’d brought the two most powerful syndicates in the country into a head-on conflict. And that her boss had no idea it was coming.
Finally, I pulled a blank white plastic key card from her right back pocket and held it up for everyone else to see. Anne looked relieved, and Meika looked…aroused—a fact I decided not to focus on.
I handed Kori’s gun to Anne—couldn’t risk Meika picking it up—and searched Kori myself, because I didn’t trust either Ruben or his wife not to find a way around his promise not to hurt her. But when my gaze met hers, she finally stopped struggling and just blinked at me. Then said what might have been “please” behind her duct-tape gag. There was something she needed to say. Maybe something I needed to hear.
I exhaled slowly, trying to decide. “If you ask me or Anne for anything, I’m going to let Ruben knock you out. Do you understand?”
Kori nodded eagerly. So I peeled the tape from her mouth.
“Liv, please—” She stopped suddenly, biting off an instinctive request, then started over with a rephrase. “You can’t do this,” she said, as I removed a knife from the sheath strapped to her belt. “If I don’t go back, he’ll take it out on someone else.”
“Hadley?” Cavazos jerked her arms hard enough that Kori grunted in pain.
“No. She’s fine. Playing video games on a fuckin’ sixty-inch flat screen. He doesn’t want to hurt her, I swear.”
I removed two more blades from Kori’s boots—electing to ignore the hungry look Meika eyed them with—and gestured toward the chair Anne had pulled out from the table.
“We need cuffs. Or rope,” Meika said, eyeing her husband. “Bedside table drawer?”
Cavazos nodded, and my stomach churned with sudden nausea at the thought of…whatever he’d had planned for the two of us in that bedroom. “There may be a ball-gag.”
“You’re sick,” I spat, as Anne edged closer to me and farther from him.
Ruben chuckled. “That’s a matter of perspective. Fear and adrenaline heighten other physical sensations, you know.”
I palmed Kori’s largest blade, getting a feel for the weight. “They just make me want to kill someone.”
He shrugged. “I’m not taking anything off the table.”
A minute later, Meika returned from the bedroom, accompanied by inarticulate sounds of surprise and disgust from Cam. “Just swear they’re not for Liv!” he shouted down the hall.
Kori heard him and opened her mouth to shout, but Ruben slapped one hand over it.
“No, I’m fine!” I called back.
“’Kay. Carry on,” Cam said, then the door closed and—presumably—he put his headphones back on.
“He’s kinda hot when he blushes,” Meika said, glancing back toward the bedroom.
“Bitch!” Cavazos snapped, and for a moment I thought he was talking to his wife, until I looked up to find him shaking his right hand, flinging small drops of blood all over the pale Berber. Kori grinned and licked a single remaining drop from her upper lip.
“Is it just me, or does blood always seem to fall on white carpet?” Meika said, ripping a long strip of duct tape from the roll.
“I’ll clean it in a second.” Cavazos shoved Kori into a chair and secured her hands at her back with the handcuffs Meika had set on the floor at his feet. They were the real kind—no fuzz or padding. Not what I’d choose
for play. If I were to choose such a thing for play.
Meika shoved Kori’s ankle against the leg of the chair and reached up for the strip of tape her husband held ready. Kori’s free foot shot up. The toe of her boot slammed into Meika’s chin. Meika fell backward with an “oof” of pain, then rolled onto her knees holding her jaw, eyes flashing in fury. “Puta!”
She stood, fist pulled back for a blow, and I stepped in front of Kori, hoping she wouldn’t kick me, too. “Meika, back off! You’d do the same thing in her position.”
“I will go through you to get to her.”
“No, you won’t,” Cavazos said, and when Anne gasped, I glanced up to find him holding a knife to Kori’s throat, her chin gripped tightly in his other hand. I didn’t think he’d really kill her, but he’d definitely cut her if he had to. The boat had sailed on “playing nice.” “Tape her legd keep your hands to yourself.”
“Liv, what’s your plan?” Kori asked while Meika taped her to the chair, her words kind of mushed together by Ruben’s grip on her face. “If you go in guns ablazin’, they’ll mow you down.”
“They’ll never know we’ve been there until Hadley’s back with her mom. After that—” I glanced at Cavazos and he released Kori’s head while I threaded a second holster onto my shoulder harness at the table “—I don’t care what you do to Tower. Stomp him into the ground. Just don’t touch the kids.”
“No!” Kori shouted. “You can’t kill Tower!” she insisted, and the thin thread of panic in her voice rang a harmonic note in me. I glanced up to find her eyes swimming in fear as she strained against the chair she was taped to.
“Oh, I assure you I can.” Cavazos knelt in front of her, hands on her knees for balance. Or maybe just because he wanted them there. “And I plan to enjoy it.”
Kori craned her neck to see me around him. “Liv, if Tower dies, his bindings will all be transferred to someone else. To his successor.”
Blood Bound Page 35
