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Kenley and our brother, Kris, were all I had left, and Kris had his hands full with our grandmother. Kenley was my responsibility, and I couldn’t let her down. Even if that meant conning some clueless asshole into service at Tower’s whims.
“Kenley would make a terrible tour guide,” I said, more to myself than to him, still watching my sister play the wallflower. She wouldn’t give Jonah any excuse to touch her. “She doesn’t get out much.”
“Out of what?” Holt asked, and I forced my mind back to the conversation at hand.
“Outside. Jake keeps her close at hand. Because of the nature of her work.” And too late I realized how that probably sounded.
“Your sister lives here? In Tower’s house? Do they …? Um …?”
I scowled. “No, my sister isn’t screwing the boss.” Nothing could be further from the truth. “She’s his top Binder—the only one he really uses anymore—so he keeps her close to keep her safe. She has a small apartment near here.” And she was always under guard.
“Oh.” Holt looked relieved, and briefly I wondered why he cared who Jake was screwing. Was he a prude or a perv?
“I used to live here, though,” I said, picking at the seams of his reaction. “In this house.”
“You used to …?” He glanced from me to Jake and back, and I could practically see the gears turning behind his eyes as he tried to puzzle out a polite way to ask a crude question.
I rarely bother with polite. Makes things much simpler.
“Were you and he …?” Holt let the question trail off to its obvious conclusion.
“Do you ever finish a sentence?” I asked, and his cheeks darkened slightly as his brows rose in challenge.
“Do you ever think before you speak?”
I blinked, surprised. Jake said impulse control was my biggest character flaw. I’d always assumed he meant my tendency to hit first, then survey the situation as an after thought, but Holt was clearly caught off guard by the verbal version of that.
“That’s your problem.” I backed slowly toward the foyer, leaving him to follow. “You think too much.”
“I don’t consider caution and forethought a problem.”
“It takes you forever to order at a restaurant, doesn’t it? And to pick out a tie?” I stepped closer and flicked his obnoxious little bow tie, then turned and stepped into the foyer, desperately hoping Kenley’s stupid stilettos didn’t seize that moment to betray me on the slick marble. Why do women insist on crippling themselves with footwear obviously designed by sadists?
Holt caught up with me, his mouth open to reply, but I spoke over him. “I tell you what. If you can dig up enough nerve to ask what you really want to know, I’ll answer the question.”
“Nerve isn’t the issue.” He stared straight into my eyes, practically daring me to argue. “What makes you think I care, one way or another?”
“The fact that you think too much. You overanalyze everything, like life’s one big puzzle you can solve, if you can just find the pattern, and now you’re thinking that neurotic tendency will help you figure out where you stand with one of the most powerful men in the country. You asked for a blonde liaison, and he gave you a blonde, so you’re thinking—correctly—that that means he really wants you.”
“You’re on track so far,” he admitted, amusement peeking around the edges of his skepticism.
“I know.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re a Reader now?”
I almost laughed. “Hell no, I’m still just a Traveler.” Readers, like Julia Tower, read the truth in a person’s words. I read people. Their posture. Their expressions. The things their brains didn’t even know their bodies were saying. That was the one quality I had that might actually come in handy for a recruiter.
Holt looked relieved, and I wasn’t surprised. Readers make people nervous. Everyone lies, and no one wants to be called on it.
“So what else am I thinking?” he asked, and his grin said this had become a game.
I was not a fan of games, but when I played, I liked to win. So I swallowed my trepidation over the direction the discussion was headed and pressed forward, wearing my game face.
“You know Jake wants you. But now it’s a little more complicated than that, right? If I’m Jake’s sloppy seconds and you take a big bite, it’s gonna look like you’re satisfied with his leftovers. And that’s going to lower your value. But on the other hand, he’s given you what you asked for, and turning your nose up at a gift from Jake Tower could look like a massive insult. And you wanna play hard-to-get, not difficult-to-stomach, right?”
Holt’s green eyes were huge. “And you think I overanalyze things?”
But I was right. I could see that much in the irritated way he crossed both arms over his chest, wrinkling his expensive jacket. He’d expected to study Jake, and his offer, and his people, but he hadn’t expected a common escort to study him back. Much less be good at it.
I shrugged and smiled, then turned away from him and started across the foyer, calling softly over one shoulder, “Fine. Then don’t ask.”
His shoes squeaked after me on the marble, and I knew I had him. “Okay, I give up,” he called, grabbing my arm from behind. I froze at his touch and had to remind myself that it meant nothing. I was flirting with him—albeit under orders to seduce him on behalf of the entire syndicate—so I couldn’t justify freaking out over evidence that I was getting the job done.
But neither could I stop myself from pulling my arm from his grip, though I tried to disguise the movement by ducking into an alcove, drawing us both out of view from most of the rest of the party. “I admit it,” he said, stepping close enough that I wanted to back up, but there was nowhere left to go. “I want to know.”
With the wall at my back and Holt blocking my path, I felt like the world was closing in on me. My pulse raced with encroaching panic. But I’d brought us here, out of sight, and I was still in control of this little word game.
“Then grow some balls and ask,” I said, staring straight up into his eyes, silently daring him.
One eyebrow arched in response to my challenge. “Were you sleeping with your boss?”
I shook my head solemnly. “I have never once fallen asleep in Jake Tower’s company.” In fact, it was tempting to try to blink one eye at a time when he was around, so I could keep the other one on him at all times.
Holt rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“I know what you asked.” I couldn’t tell if he was adorably old-fashioned, hopelessly shy, or simply reluctant to offend a syndicate representative with a question about a very powerful man’s personal life. “If that’s not what you wanted to hear, then say what you mean.”
“You’re bossy.”
I laughed. “And you’re nosy, so get it over with. No more euphemisms. Bite the bullet, or I’m gonna have to tell Jake you don’t have the balls for this job.” That was a total bluff, of course. Jake would like him better with neither a mouth, nor the balls to use it.
That time when Holt frowned, I couldn’t tell if he was pissed off or intrigued. Until he stepped closer, leaving no room between us at all, and I realized he was a little of both. “Did you fuck your boss?” he demanded, his voice lower and grittier than it’d been a moment before.
“Hell no.” I slid along the wall, sidestepping him, and my heart didn’t slow to normal speed until I’d regained personal space, and both flight and fight seemed possible again. Just in case. “Jake doesn’t screw around on his wife.” He wouldn’t, even if he weren’t contractually prohibited from touching another woman. At least, that was the rumor. “And FYI, he’ll have you shot for looking at her for more than a few seconds at a time, unless she’s talking directly to you.”
“That’s crazy.”
I shrugged. “That’s love.”
That hint of a grin was back. “Isn’t that what I said?”
“Ah, a cynic.” I sank onto a gold-padded bench against one wall of the foyer. “You may fit in here after all.”
Holt sat next to me. “So, why did you live here, if you weren’t … with him?”
And, the euphemisms were back. “Jake used to keep a small staff on hand at all times. But he moved everyone out a few weeks ago.” The day after I’d accidentally punched a hole in his home defense system and gotten him shot. “Now it’s just his family, the nanny, and whichever guards are currently on duty.”
“Smart.” Holt nodded thoughtfully. “And he really doesn’t cheat on his wife? At all?”
“Nope. Not once, that I know of. Why?”
“I want to know who I’ll be working for. If I sign on.” He glanced to his right, toward the party still going on in the main part of the house. “A man like that, with plenty of money, in a position of extreme power over dozens of beautiful women …” He glanced at me, as if to say I was one of those beautiful women. Or maybe he was pointing out that I was powerless. “It has to be tempting to sample the goods. It’d be easy to get away with. In certain circles, it’s practically expected, right?” he said, and I could only nod. “But Tower’s loyal to his wife. That says something, doesn’t it? Something about him, as a man?” Holt watched me closely, studying my reaction, and an uneasy feeling churned deep in my stomach.
Most syndicate employees didn’t have the luxury of caring what kind of man Tower was, or what kind of business he did. They signed on because they were desperate for something they couldn’t get for themselves. Usually money, protection or services only a syndicate could provide. Why else would you sign over even part of your free will to someone who doesn’t give a damn whether you live or die, so long as you do both in service to the syndicate?
But Holt was different. He actually gave a damn. Which could make him very hard to recruit.
“Doesn’t that also say something about the way Tower runs his organization?” He waited for my answer, staring into my eyes like he wanted to see past them and into my thoughts, and suddenly I recognized the ploy, and my teeth ground together.
Ian Holt wasn’t naive enough to believe that a man with Jake’s power and breadth of influence had climbed to the top of the hill without stepping on a few heads. Or that fidelity to his wife translated into any kind of integrity in business. He knew what the Tower syndicate was like—at least, he thought he knew—and this was a test to see which I would choose: loyalty to my boss or honesty to the potential recruit.
Assuming I had any choice in the matter. And he had no way of knowing whether or not I did.
He’d see through a lie—he seemed to be expecting one anyway—but I couldn’t exactly tell him the truth about Jake and the syndicate, even if he already knew most of it. Or even some of it. Which brought up an even bigger problem.
If Holt already knew what kind of man Tower was and what kind of business he ran, why did he accept Jake’s invitation in the first place? I could only think of two possible reasons. First, Holt had no moral qualms about syndicate business or lifestyle. Or, second, he couldn’t afford the luxury of indulging whatever moral qualms he did have. Which meant he was either corrupt or desperate.
But then a third, even worse possibility occurred to me and that uneasy feeling in my stomach swelled into a roiling discomfort. What if Holt was neither of those? What if he was just some curious, greedy asshole looking to get everything he could out of Jake before politely turning down our offer and walking away with his free will intact?
If that happened, I would have to harvest Holt’s blood instead. And if I handed over nothing but blood from a venture this expensive, when what Tower really wanted was Holt’s service, Jake would kill me. But first he’d give Kenley to Jonah, down in the basement, so that the last thing I ever heard would be my sister screaming.
Bile rose in my throat, and I swallowed a sip of warm champagne to keep it down. And when I looked up, I realized that Holt was still waiting for my answer to a question I’d almost forgotten.
“Does Jake’s fidelity to his wife say something about how he runs the organization?” I said, rephrasing the original question, and Holt nodded. “Yeah, I guess it does. There’s nothing Jake wouldn’t do for his wife, and even less he wouldn’t do for the syndicate.”
Including kill me and torture my sister.
The thought of damning someone else to the hell I was living in made me want to light my own hair on fire and take a bath in gasoline. But I would do it. I’d do whatever it took to make Holt sign.
I had no other choice.
Four
Ian
“Which is it you dislike, parties or champagne?” I asked, nodding pointedly at the virtually untouched flute in her right hand, as the party buzzed on without us.
Kori blinked, obviously struggling to refocus her attention, and twisted to face me on the ornate gold couch, both an expensive eyesore and an uncomfortable perch. “It’s parties with champagne. And food served in bites too small to taste.”
I laughed. “You’d rather drink from a trough and eat from a bucket?”
“I’d rather eat from a paper wrapper and drink from the fuckin’ bottle.”
“And your bottle of choice?” She had yet to say anything I’d expected to hear, and I couldn’t help wondering what would come out of her mouth if we got a chance to talk about something more meaningful than appetizers.
“Vodka.”
Any of the waiters could probably have gotten her whatever she wanted to drink, but I couldn’t really talk to her surrounded by two hundred other partygoers, and if I couldn’t talk to her, I couldn’t make her trust me.
“And since you used to live here, you’d probably know where Tower might keep a bottle of vodka …?”
“I might.”
“So maybe we could grab that and go for a walk on the grounds, free from the intrusion of pointless small talk as well as bite-size snacks.”
Kori hesitated, and for a second, I was certain that she didn’t want to be alone with me. Then she glanced at the guard stationed on either side of the front entrance. “They’re never going to let you wander around the property without an escort from security.”
“Aren’t you an escort from security?”
She huffed, and I wondered what I was missing. “It’s complicated. I protect you, but they protect Jake and his interests, which would not be served by giving an unbound man free access to the grounds. We could sneak out, but the patrol would probably find us.”
“Then it sounds to me like we have two options. We can ditch the party entirely and forage for a bottle of vodka elsewhere—”
“Jake would be pissed if we leave without telling him …” she said, and I nodded, not surprised.
“Or we could go upstairs, which—I’m willing to bet—isn’t being patrolled.”
She gave me a conspiratorial grin. “That’s because no one’s allowed upstairs. Jake’s kids are asleep in the family wing, so there’s a guard at the foot of both staircases.” She glanced over her shoulder, and I followed her gaze to the closer of two mirror-image staircases, where a huge man dressed all in black stood directly in front of the bottom step, arms clasped at his back. He was obviously armed, and if his expression was any indication, he suffered from a severe lack of personality.
“But you used to be a guard, so you could take one of them, couldn’t you?” I teased. “If I were to snatch a butter knife from the kitchen, you could bisect him from neck to groin in a single stroke, right?”
Her smile spread slowly, and her brown eyes practically sparkled. “Hell yeah. But Kenley will kill me if I get arterial spray on her dress.” She slid one hand over her own hip to where the dress ended above her crossed knees, and my gaze traced the path, before I realized what I was doing.
Oh, hell no.
Don’t believe a word they say. Don’t let your guard down. And do not make friends.
I’d heard it over and over, from Aaron. Hell, I’d said it over and over to myself. I couldn’t get personally involved. I couldn’t afford to see any of them as real people. They were a means to an end. Tools for me to use, like a wrench, or a hammer. Kori Daniels was the hammer I’d have to swing to smash through Jake Tower’s defenses and gain access to his prized possession, and you couldn’t be attracted to a hammer. Right?
But she’d have to think I liked her, or she’d never trust me. And if she didn’t trust me, she’d never let me near her sister. Kenley Daniels. The woman whose blood had the power to ruin lives—or end them.
“Okay, blood splatter is a problem,” I admitted. “But you’re a Traveler, right? So, you could just walk us both through a shadow down here and out of one up there, couldn’t you?” I glanced at what I could see of the second floor for emphasis.
Kori shook her head. “Infrared grid. There isn’t a true shadow in this entire house, except for the darkroom. None deep enough for me to step through, anyway.”
“What if there was?” I glanced around to make sure no one was listening, then I stood and started to tug her into the alcove she’d led me to minutes earlier. But she stiffened before I could touch her, and I realized I hadn’t imagined her pulling away from me before. But I didn’t understand it.
She was just a hammer to me, and I was just a job to her. An assignment. Korinne was the bait sent to reel me in, and for all I knew, she did this on a weekly basis. She flirted and cajoled, in a teasing, I-dare-you kind of way, clearly gauging my interest, and she probably knew far better than I did how to stay detached. How to attract without being attracted. How to engage without engaging your emotions, or even your desires.
So why the physical distance?
Was that part of Tower’s pitch? Show me the menu, but don’t let me order until I’d officially signed on? Or was Kori defining her own boundaries between work and play?
I was almost jealous of how well she played the game. And I was more determined than ever to keep in mind the fact that this was a game. A charade, of sorts. The woman, the party, the champagne and fancy clothes—they were nothing but a pretty mask covering an ugly beast that, behind its beguiling smile, waited to devour me.
“What if there was what?” she asked, standing without my help, and I had to drag my thoughts back on topic. Again.
“What if there was a true shadow upstairs? What if I could make a shadow? A real one? There’s no way we could both get past the guard, but if you distract him, I could sneak up and make a shadow for you to walk through. Then you could find that bottle, and we could both forget about the crowd for an hour or so.”
