Blood Bound (16 page)

Cam and I had not.

“Not yet. But we know where he lives, we have most of his name, and we found a fresher sample of his blood.” And we had tested the pull of Hunter’s energy signature using both his blood and his name on the way to meet Anne. Both were very strong signals, leading deeper into the west side. Hunter was still alive, and he almost certainly knew someone was after him. Yet he hadn’t left the city.

The fact that he’d stayed made me nervous, and it was one of the biggest factors in our decision to update—and question—Anne before going after Hunter again.

Anne sipped from her mug and watched us from across the table, oblivious to the Friday-night dinner crowd just starting to filter in at the end of the nine-to-five shift. “So what’s the problem?”

I glanced at Cam to see if he wanted to take the lead—he was the one bound to Tower, after all—but he gestured for me to go ahead.

“Anne, was Shen involved with the Tower syndicate?” I whispered, leaning across the table to make sure we wouldn’t be overheard. “In any way at all?”

She choked on her coffee. “No,” Anne croaked, blotting her mouth with a paper napkin. “Absolutely not.”

“Are you sure?” Cam asked. “If he was, he might not have been allowed to tell you. Did you ever see him with anyone who had a chain link tattooed on his arm. Or her arm?”

Anne leaned closer, brows drawn low over eyes shining even greener than usual with exhaustion. “Living in the suburbs doesn’t make me an idiot. I know Tower’s insignia, and I would know if my husband were working for him. Or meeting with someone who worked for him.”

Cam gave her an awkward little grin, obviously trying to soften the coming blow. “You might not.” He slid his right hand beneath his left sleeve, as if he had an itch to scratch. “I’m a third-tier initiate.” He lifted the hem of his sleeve quickly and subtly, just long enough for her to get a peek at his marks, then let the material fall.

Anne set her coffee down carefully, deliberately, but she couldn’t hide the tension in her grip. “You work for Tower.” It wasn’t a question. It was a stunned statement of new facts, spoken to try to convince herself of the reality.

I knew exactly how she felt.

“He’s being modest,” I said, unable to keep the bitter edge out of my voice. “He’s actually Jake Tower’s top Tracker. Even got a step promotion last year. Isn’t that
swell?
”

Cam’s jaw tightened, but just because he didn’t like the truth didn’t make it not true.

Anne focused on him with an iron glare, and I realized she was about to make me proud. “I’m going to forgo the whole ‘what the hell were you thinking?’ speech in favor of something even more obvious,” she snapped in a harshisper. “You should have told me that up front. I
never
would have involved you in this if I’d known!”

“That’s why I didn’t tell you,” he said, with a meaningful glance at me. “I wanted to help.”

Anne took a deep breath and another sip from her mug. “So, what does this mean? Why are you asking about Shen in relation to Tower? You think someone killed him because they thought he was…one of you?” she asked, with a censuring glance at Cam.

“Not exactly…” he mumbled, and I exhaled slowly.

“Anne, someone in the Tower syndicate paid to have your husband killed.”

In the silence that followed, the ambient restaurant noise seemed to close in on us, amplifying Anne’s shock and denial, Cam’s obvious confliction, and my own kaleidoscope of anger, fear and dread.

“Why?” she said, when she’d recovered the ability to speak. “Why would they want Shen dead?”

“I don’t know.” And I wasn’t sure I
wanted
to know. “Are you sure he never had any business with the organization? Could he have been working with or for someone you didn’t know about?”

Red hair tumbled over her shoulder as Anne shook her head slowly, clearly giving it serious thought. “We both worked from home. We shared an office. There’s no way he could have kept something like that from me. No way he
would
have.”

“Then I don’t know,” I repeated. “Cam, any insight? Why might your brothers in crime have a suburban software engineer capped?”

He scowled at me, but didn’t even try to deny the illegal nature of most of his employer’s business. “It could have been anything. To stop him from working on whatever he was working on. Or, if they wanted him to do something and he refused, this could have been a reprisal. It could even have been intended to scare someone else he worked with into falling into line. Or it could be completely unrelated to his job. Maybe he saw something he shouldn’t have. Maybe he borrowed money he couldn’t pay back. But based on the amount of money someone put out for this, and the fact that they hired someone outside of the organization, I’m guessing this was both personal and important to someone pretty high up. And that’s all I can say. But for the record, it’s also all I know.”
This time.

He didn’t say that last part, but we all heard it.

“This doesn’t make any sense.” Anne still looked so stunned I was surprised she could form complete sentences. “He didn’t owe any money. We’re not wealthy, but our savings are intact. And he didn’t see anything unusual—he would have told me if he had.” I started to argue that he might not have, to keep her safe, but she amended her own thought before I could. “Or maybe he wouldn’t have told me, but I would have known if he was upset about something. But everything was
fine.
” Anne closed her eyes and visibly paled. Her hands shook as she pushed straight red hair back from her face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, though the answers seemed too numerous and obvious to be stated.

“I just realized that Hadley could have been home when it happened. Any other Thursday night, she
would
have been. She would have seen him die. Or worse.”

“What was unusual about yesterday?” Cam asked, and I leaned closer to listen. Any variation in their normal routine could hint at why Shen was killed.

Anne picked at the fingernails of her left hand. “It was Hadley’s best friend’s birthday. I dropped her off at the party on my way to the gym. Any other night of the week, we all three would have been home. Any other Thursday, Shen and Hadley would have been home together.”

I laid my hand over hers on the table. “Okay, I think you should focus on the fact that she
wasn’t
home. Neither of you were. Focus on that and be grateful. And leave the rest of it to us.”

“You’re still going to…finish this?” Anne’s eyes shined with feverish hope. Dark desperation.

“We can—and will—still go after Hunter,” Cam said. “He’s not a member of the syndicate, so I have no official conflict of interest. But that’s as far as I can go. I can’t take any action against the organization, and I can’t know for sure that either of you are going to, or I’d be obligated to stop you. So please take this seriously—do
not
move against Tower.” He turned to me then, as somber as I’d ever seen him. “And if you choose to ignore that warning, as I’m fully aware that you will, do
not
discuss it in front of me. Wait until I’m gone.”

“We’re not moving against Tower,” Anne insisted. “That would be suicide. Just get Hunter—that’s all I have any right to ask.”

“Wait…” I turned to Cam, choosing not to point out that Anne didn’t actually have the right to ask for Hunter’s life, either—she was neither judge nor jury. “How do you know Hunter isn’t syndicate?” Surely Cam didn’t personally know everyone bearing Tower’s mark.

“An initiate wouldn’t have been paid like that—he would just have been ordered to make the kill. He might have gotten a bonus after the fact, if he really rocked the execution, but it wouldn’t have been even half what Hunter got paid. Someone hired an independent to keep this from being traced back to the syndicate.”

“But we traced it back to you guys pretty easily,” I pointed out.

“No,
Van
traced it back to Tower. Because she works on the business side of things and is already familiar with the accounts. An outsider would have had a bitch of a time finding the source of that money, I’d bet you anything.”

“Okay, I think the best thing for you to do is to go back home and be with your daughter. And forget about the Tower syndicate,” I said to Anne, pushing my own mug toward the middle of the table while Cam dropped a twenty-dollar bill next to his. “We’ll call you when it’s done.”

Anne nodded, still gripping her mug.

I glanced back at her from the front of the restaurant as Cam pulled open the door. She still sat there, staring at the tble. Shaking. Gone was the steel-spined widow who’d walked into my office demanding justice. Things had changed. She was in over her head.

And so were we.

Eleven

“W
hy would he stay?” I asked, as Cam flicked on his left blinker. At the moment, the pull of Hunter’s name was stronger than the pull from his blood, so I was letting him take the lead in tracking, so long as his path didn’t contradict the pull I felt. And so far, it hadn’t.

“If he were an initiate, I’d say he’s being shielded— Tower put the word out that he’s not to be touched. Or maybe he put Hunter in a safe house. But he’s not a member, and I would have heard about him being shielded. Thanks to Nick, the organization knows you and I are working together, and that we’re looking for Hunter. If the syndicate had any problem with us killing him, they’d have already stopped us.”

We were still on the west side, but headed east now.
Huh.
Hunter was on the move.

“So, what, they don’t care if we kill him, because then they don’t have to drop the second half of his payment?”

“Maybe.” Cam shrugged and took another left, and I verified our direction privately with another feel of the stiffening bandage in my pocket. “Also, whoever hired him is probably happy to have us clean up loose ends for him.”

I would have been much more comfortable if those loose ends weren’t winding through the center of Jake Tower’s territory. The blood pull of Hunter’s energy signature was very strong now, and based on the confidence with which Cam navigated the streets, the name pull was even stronger. Which didn’t make much sense. Even if he’d died in the three hours since we’d found blood in his apartment, the blood pull should have been just as strong.

“Do you know this neighborhood?” I asked, as Cam slowed the car to a crawl and the setting sun blinded me in the side-view mirror. We were close now. Close enough that we’d overshoot it if we weren’t careful.

“Yeah, and so do you. We were here this afternoon.”

We were? I sat straighter, glancing around for something I recognized, but saw only a narrow backstreet—an urban alley bordered by rear garage entrances and tiny backyards fenced with chain link. “This doesn’t look familiar.”

“The back of his building’s about half a mile ahead. We’re coming at it from another direction. I know this way better.”

His sudden glance out the driver’s side window told me there was something he wasn’t saying. So, of course, I asked. “Why are you familiar with a residential neighborhood backstreet, when you live in an apartment on the main drag?”

“I used to know a girl who lived in that house.” He pointed to a small, run-down, white-sided house with a big dog fenced into a small yard. “But I don’t think she lives there anymore.”

I swallowed the bitter taste on the back of my tongue at the thought of him with someone else. It was inevitable. Six years is a long time, and Cam…he wore it very, very well. Of course other women would want him.

“Was she syndicate?” I asked, and he glanced at me with a look I couldn’t quite interpret. Was he surprised that I’d ask? Or that I cared? Or that I thought he might go out with someone outside of the organization? Or the opposite?

“No. I don’t…socialize with coworkers. That’s too complicated. And dangerous.”

“You’d give up on a relationship because it’s dangerous?” Maybe he
would
understand why I’d left…

But he mistook my hope for a criticism.

“Not a relationship,” he clarified. “Sex. No momentary pleasure is worth the risk that she might be looking to sleep her way up the tiers. Or that she might think I am. Or that she may be bound to someone who outranks me, but she’s unhappy with his performance. And it’s even worse if
she
outranks
me,
because then I’m tiptoeing through a minefield where orders and requests get confused.”

My stomach churned. “It sounds like you’ve learned through experience.”

“Six years is a long time.” He turned left onto one of the major streets, then met my gaze. “Are you jealous?”

“No,” I answered too fast.

“You never used to lie to me.”

Speaking of minefields…
I exhaled slowly and made myself hold his gaze. “I shouldn’t have asked. It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m jealous. Do I like thinking about you with other women? Of course not—”

“Then why’d you ask?”

“Because…”
I’m an idiot. A masochist.
“I don’t know why I asked.”

“I do.” He exhaled, then shifted into Park right there in the street, sitting idle at a stoplight. “Would it help to know that I tracked down and beat the shit out of the asshole you moved in with a couple of years ago? The one who stole your car.”

I felt my jaw drop open, but words wouldn’t come. I could only gape at him. “Are you serious?” I asked at last and he nodded solemnly. “Over a
car?
”

He blinked, but his gaze held mine captive. “It had nothing to do with the car, Liv.”

“Did you… Is he…?”

“He lived.” Cam shifted into Drive again when the light changed and we rolled through the intersection. “But I don’t think he’ll be looking either of us up again anytime soon.”

“I can beat up my own exes, thank you.”

He laughed. “Not like I can.”

“That’s not the point.”

you
were jealous because you still want me.”

“No…” I said through clenched teeth. “The point is that we have a job to do, and that job has nothing to do with who either of us has slept with or pounded on since we broke up.”