Oath Bound (An Unbound Novel)

by Rachel Vincent

  “My sister is Kenley Daniels, and you motherfuckers took her. My sister is a part of me...” He glanced at the guard’s name tag. “Ned. Losing her is like losing my own hand, and if I don’t get her back, unharmed, poste fucking haste, you’re gonna find out what it’s like to lose one of your parts....”

  The guard swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed above the barrel of the gun. “I swear I don’t know your sister, or where she is.”

  “He may be telling the truth,” I said, and the man’s unfocused, red-rimmed eyes rolled in my direction.

  “I’m perfectly willing to believe that this idiot knows almost nothing, in the larger sense. But he was bound to Jake Tower, which means he knows more than he wants us to think he knows.” Kris stared into the man’s irritated eyes. “Isn’t that right, Ned?”

  “I swear, I don’t—”

  “The real problem will be making him tell us something he’s been contractually prohibited from revealing. That’s where this gets interesting.” He turned back to Ned. “When did you reenlist? How long ago?”

  “Three years.” Ned answered quickly, and with no sign of resistance pain, and I realized that meant we hadn’t yet hit the classified information. I’d never seen anyone suffering from serious resistance pain, and I have to admit, I was a little curious.

  “Then you know my sister. She was Tower’s top binder, and by the time you reenlisted for your second term, she would have been doing most of his bindings. Petite. Blonde. Answers to the name Kenley Daniels.”

  I saw recognition in his eyes, as if a light switch had been flipped behind them. “Yeah. I never heard her name, but that’s her. Quiet thing. Kinda intense.”

  “Much better,” Kris said. “Did you see her here? It would have been today. This afternoon.”

  “Kris,” I said when the man shook his head, obviously confused. “She was never here. Julia wouldn’t have had enough time to put her here, realize that was a mistake, then move the entire operation. There’s no telling how long ago they moved the...project.”

  Kris frowned, thinking through what I’d said, and I shifted to face the guard. “Do you know what they did here, Ned?”

  He didn’t shake his head, but he didn’t answer either, and when his entire body tensed, I realized he was waiting for pain—either from a blow from Kris or from resistance pain. Which surely meant we were very close to information he wasn’t allowed to give us.

  “Did you see any of it, before they moved everything?” I squatted next to Kris, and the guard nodded, but his mouth never opened. “You don’t have to give us specifics,” I said, and he looked marginally relieved. “We already know what Tower was doing. But here’s the part you do have to answer.”

  He tensed again, immediately, and I paused to see if Kris wanted to take over, but he seemed content to let me ask the questions. Ned was obviously less intimidated by me. Maybe because I was a woman. Or maybe because I didn’t have a gun pressed into his throat.

  “What we really need to know is where they went. Do you know where the project has been relocated?” Because if Kenley was with the donors—even if they weren’t actively bleeding her—she’d be wherever they were.

  “I don’t know. I swear that’s the truth.”

  “He’s lying.” Kris’s finger tightened on the trigger, and my heart thumped harder. “See how scared he looks?”

  “He’s scared because you’re seconds away from shooting his head clean off his body. Shut up for a minute and let me talk to him.”

  Kris’s eyes narrowed in irritation, but he didn’t object.

  I turned the man’s head by his chin, so he was looking at me, though he didn’t seem to actually see me. “Did you help them pack and load?”

  “Yes!” Ned was obviously relieved to have an answer in the affirmative for us. He looked like a man clinging to a life raft in the middle of the ocean. “There were vans, and—” His word ended abruptly in a groan of pain as his forehead wrinkled in a grimace. Resistance pain. He’d hit the silence barrier.

  “Did you hear anything while you were loading? Did anyone say anything about where they were going? Anything at all?”

  “I don’t know.” Ned shook his head. “I can’t remember.”

  Kris pressed the gun harder into his throat. “Think. Think like your life depended on it.”

  Ned swallowed again and closed his eyes.

  “Did they seem to be expecting lots of gas or bathroom breaks?” I asked. “Did anyone mention getting car sick on long trips or back roads? Were they worried about hitting rush-hour traffic? Anything like that?”

  Kris glanced at me in surprise and—if I’m not mistaken—respect. Which irritated the hell out of me. Why was he surprised to find out I wasn’t brain damaged?

  “No. Nothing like that. But one of the nurses was complaining about warehouse bathrooms. Something about poor lighting.”

  “That’s it?” Kris glared down at him. “That’s all you’ve got? They moved to a warehouse? That could be anywhere. Tower must own dozens of them.”

  “What do you expect?” the guard demanded, suddenly almost bold in spite of the gun still pressed into the base of his throat. “I’m the guy they left behind to guard an empty building. How high would you expect that guy’s security clearance to be?”

  “He’s got a point.”

  Kris groaned in frustration. “Fine.” He withdrew his gun and backed away from the guard slowly, still aiming at the man’s head. “The rest of this is up to you,” he said, and it took me a minute to realize he was talking to me, because he was still looking at the guard zip-tied to the refrigerator.

  “What’s up to me?”

  “Whether he lives or dies.”

  The guard stiffened again, and my heart slammed against my chest as I stood and backed away from them both. “Why? Why is that up to me?”

  “Because you have the most to lose if we let him live. Julia already knows what I’m up to. Your participation in our mission to destroy her will be news, and not the kind of news she’s going to take well. So...your call. Shoot him or leave him?”

  As far as I knew, the guard didn’t deserve death. He hadn’t actually shot at Kris. He’d been cooperative to the best of his ability, in spite of restrictive bindings. But Kris was right. If we left him, he’d have no choice but to answer any question Julia asked, assuming my understanding of his bindings was anywhere near accurate. Then she’d know that I...

  That I what? What could she learn from interrogating Ned? That I wasn’t being held hostage anymore? That I was willingly working with the enemy? Those conclusions couldn’t be hard for her to draw on her own, considering that she’d been willing to kill me not once, but twice—she had to know I was the one who’d snuck back in to raid my own car.

  “Let him live.”

  Kris’s aim didn’t drop. “You sure?” he asked, and I nodded, but he only frowned. “Can I talk to you in the hall, please?”

  I followed him out of the room reluctantly and pulled the door almost closed in the all-white hallway. “What?”

  “I just want to make sure you understand how dangerous leaving him alive really is.”

  “Because I’m a simpleton, who can’t be trusted to make a decision without a man’s guidance and supervision?” Ass-hat.

  “Calm down, Wonder Woman. That’s not what I’m saying.” He leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms over his bare chest, lowering his voice to a whisper. “I’m just saying that if you’re new enough to the workings of the Skilled syndicate to be unfamiliar with the color-coding system, you may be even less familiar with the level of cruelty and depravity that goes on within the privacy of the Tower estate.”

  “Okay. Fair point. But I figure that—worst-case scenario—leaving him alive will give Julia Tower reason to want me dead. Right?” I asked, and he nodded. “News flash—that already appears to be the case. Which means we have no legitimate reason to kill the poor asshole bound into her service.”

 
Into my service, if...

  If what? What would it take to claim my inheritance? If I could claim the bindings she had temporary control of, could I then break them? Could I release the people Kenley Daniels had bound into indentured servitude?

  A new world of possibilities blossomed before me, and my head swam as they swirled around me in a vortex of blood, and oaths, and death, and freedom. Beneath all that, Kori’s insistence that sometimes freedom only comes through death made me nervous, both for Ned and for myself.

  Kris’s gaze narrowed on me, and I couldn’t tell if he approved of my logic. The part I’d explained aloud, anyway. And finally he nodded. “Okay. We’ll let him live. Let’s find some bleach and clean up, so we can get out of here. I’ll text Kori for an update on Ian.”

  “There’s bleach in the bathroom,” I said, already on my way back into the snack room to retrieve it. Kris was pressing Send on his phone when I handed him the jug of bleach and a roll of hand towels. “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on Ned. Unless you’re as bad at cleaning as Gran says you are at cooking.”

  His brows rose. “Trick question. Either I admit incompetence, or I get stuck with the dirty work.”

  “You catch on quick.” I gave him a smile that felt like a lie on my lips, then gestured for him to hurry.

  Once he’d disappeared into the room where Ian had been shot, stepping over the dead guy in his path, I quietly closed the break room door and knelt next to Ned, armed with his gun. He didn’t need to know I had no idea how to use it.

  Ned scowled at me. “What, you’re going to shoot me now, after you talked that psycho into letting me live?”

  “He’s not a psycho. Though I understand the mistake. I thought the same thing when I first met him.”

  “Did he tie you to a refrigerator and hold a gun to your throat?”

  “No. He kidnapped me and trapped me in a house with no exits. So I know he’s an acquired taste. But this...” I waved the gun for emphasis, and he flinched as if it might go off in my hand, which made me suddenly nervous, even though the safety was engaged. “This has nothing to do with him. I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”

  “I’m guessing I have no choice but to answer?” he snapped with a glance at the gun, and I shrugged.

  “That’s what we’re about to find out. Do you know who I am, Ned?”

  He shook his head and tried to reposition his arm, which was still zip-tied to the refrigerator handle over his head. “Why? Should I?”

  “Do you know what happened at the Tower estate yesterday?”

  “No. What happened?”

  “Kris Daniels—the guy who just agreed to let you live—broke in through the darkroom and shot three of the guards. It was kind of—” badass “—a big deal. Julia didn’t...send out a bulletin or something? Some kind of security alert? Isn’t that the kind of thing she’d want people to be aware of?”

  The guard shook his head slowly, his forehead furrowed as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to believe me. “That’s exactly the kind of thing she wouldn’t want anyone else to know. Because it makes her look weak. Vulnerable. Something like that could never have happened when her brothers were alive.”

  But, of course, it had happened to them, too. Obviously Jake had stomped out any rumors before they could spread. Julia must have been taking notes.

  “Assuming any of that actually happened...” Ned added.

  “It did. I was there, and when he escaped through the shadows, he dragged me with him. Thus—” I shrugged “—the kidnapping.”

  Ned looked unconvinced, but I didn’t have time to try to rectify that. So I pressed on. “If Julia were to tell you to...I don’t know...sing the national anthem, would you have to do it?”

  He nodded, obviously confused. “That, and anything else she wanted. Why? What’s this about?”

  I took a deep breath. Let the great inheritance experiment begin....

  “Ned, my name is Sera Tower. My father was Jake Tower. I’m his oldest living...um...”

  “Child” felt too familiar—I’d never known him as a father and I wouldn’t change that for the world. But “descendant” felt too distant, as if Jake and I had lived in different time periods. So I went with...

  “...offspring. I’m his oldest living offspring. And as such, your binding actually belongs to me, not to Julia Tower.”

  “Yeah. Right.” Ned snorted, then shifted again, trying to take pressure off the arm tied to the refrigerator. “And I’m a midget in forty-eight-inch heels.”

  “It’s true. That’s what I was doing there yesterday. That’s why Julia’s trying to kill me—because if people find out she hasn’t truly inherited her brother’s kingdom, she’ll be out on her ass.”

  Ned’s focus narrowed on me, more in interest now than in skepticism. Everyone loves a scandal. “If you’re Jake Tower’s heir, why have I never heard of you?”

  “Because I’m a secret. Probably an embarrassing one. Jake Tower, the family man, had an illegitimate child.”

  “Why the hell would he leave everything to an illegitimate child no one’s ever heard of?”

  “I don’t think he meant to.” I shifted on my heels. Squatting on the linoleum was getting uncomfortable. “In fact, I don’t think he knew I existed. My mother spent most of my life hiding me from him, and I’m starting to think she was very, very good at that.” No reason for him to know that I was even better at hiding myself—and anyone within my jamming zone. “This inheritance seems to be the result of a sloppily phrased last will and testament. But the only thing I’m really sure of is that Julia Tower wants me dead. If she gets her way, you may never be free of her.” I was taking a gamble with my next statement—assuming he wasn’t happy with his current state of employment. “If she doesn’t...if I inherit the bindings...I’ll let you all go.”

  Ned rolled his eyes and pushed himself into a straighter sitting position with his free hand. “Right. You’re just going to break every binding your father ever had sealed. Dissolve his life’s work. Give up unbelievable fortune.”

  I knew I had him when he called Jake my father.

  “Yup.” I nodded firmly. “I don’t want to run the mafia.”

  His gaze narrowed until his eyes were mere slits, staring at me more in puzzlement than in disbelief now. “You’re serious. You’d give it all up? Why?”

  “Because I don’t have any criminal inclination, nor do I have the right to control your life. But I am going to ask you to help me out with a little test.”

  “What kind of test?”

  I stood and pulled open the last kitchenette drawer, where I’d found a box of plastic forks. They wouldn’t have been much good as a weapon, when I’d needed one, but they’d be fine for the job I had in mind. I pulled one fork out and dropped it on his lap, careful to say out of reach of all three of Ned’s unbound limbs. “Stab your right arm.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Pick up the fork in your left hand and stab your right arm, between your elbow and your wrist.” My theory was that in making him understand and believe that I truly was Jake Tower’s heir, I’d taken his binding back from Julia Tower, without her even knowing it. But the only way I could think of to test that and be sure he wasn’t faking—playing along, so he could report back to her—was to ask him to do something he’d never do, unless he really had no choice but to obey me.

  No one who understood how much power blood truly holds would ever willingly spill his own in front of a stranger.

  “I’m not gonna—” Ned flinched, and his left hand flew to his forehead. Resistance pain; it was easy to recognize. Whether or not he was faking was harder to determine. “You’re a bigger bitch than she is! Julia Tower never made me spill my own blood!” he insisted, still rubbing his forehead.

  “Sorry about that. Can’t be helped. Do it. Now.”

  His hand shook, hovering in the air between his forehead and the fork on his lap, and I watched, fascinated, as he silently weighed his opti
ons.

  Then I heard faint footsteps in the hall, and my pulse raced so fast I got dizzy for a second. “Sera? You okay?”

  “Yeah. Fine,” I called through the door. Then I turned back to Ned. “I don’t have time for you to think this through. Stab yourself in the fucking arm. Now!”

  Ned groaned in pain, but his hand picked up the fork, squeezing it so tight his skin turned white from the pressure.

  “Do it!” I repeated in a fierce whisper.

  “Aaahh!” he shouted, resisting mentally, even as his body obeyed. Even as he stabbed himself in the arm, halfway between his elbow and the wrist lashed to the refrigerator door handle.

  The fork stuck in his skin, standing up like a tower in the middle of his arm, blood welling slowly around the four buried tines.

  “Sera!” Kris’s footsteps grew faster and louder. “Sera!”

  “I’m fine!” I shouted, staring in fascination as dark drops of blood dribbled down the side of Ned’s arm and onto his pants. His breathing was ragged. Uneven. But that had to be from his efforts to resist—the fork hadn’t penetrated deeply enough to do any real damage.

  “Fucking bitch!” he growled through clenched teeth, and I almost shouted in triumph. He clearly hadn’t wanted to stab himself. Which meant he’d had no choice. Which meant that his binding had transferred from Julia to me. “You are one of them.”

  I blinked at him in surprise. Then in horror. I wasn’t one of them. Not in the way that he meant it.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, my words running together in my haste to say what had to be said before Kris got there. “Don’t tell anyone what I’ve told you. Ever. Other than that, you are a free man. I release you from your binding.”

  Ned’s eyes widened and he craned his neck, trying to see something on his arm, and as Kris threw the door open behind me, I saw what Ned couldn’t. The marks on his arm had faded to a muted gray.

  Shit! Kris would see. I lurched forward and pulled the flap of his sleeve over the mark as Kris’s arm wrapped around my waist and hauled me away from Ned.

  “Are you trying to give him back his gun?” Kris demanded, setting me on my feet out of the guard’s reach, which is when I realized I still held the pistol. And that Ned had been reaching for it with his left hand when Kris pulled me out of reach.