Read the book: «Blood Bound»

Praise for the novels of

New York Times bestselling author

RACHEL VINCENT

“I liked the character and loved the action. I look

forward to reading the next book in the series.”

Charlaine Harris

“Vincent is a welcome addition to this genre!”

Kelley Armstrong

“Compelling and edgy, dark and evocative, Stray is a must read! I loved it from beginning to end.” Gena Showalter

“I had trouble putting this book down. Every time

I said I was going to read just one more chapter,

I’d find myself three chapters later.”

—Bitten by Books on Stray

“Vincent continues to impress with the freshness of her

approach and voice. Action and intrigue abound.”

—RT Book Reviews

Blood Bound

Rachel Vincent

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Find out more about Rachel Vincent by visiting

mirabooks.co.uk/rachelvincent

and read Rachel’s blog at urbanfantasy.blogspot.com

Also available from Rachel Vincent

The Shifters series

STRAY

ROGUE

PRIDE

PREY

SHIFT

ALPHA

Soul Screamers series

MY SOUL TO TAKE

MY SOUL TO SAVE

MY SOUL TO KEEP

MY SOUL TO STEAL

And look for the thrilling second instalment in

Rachel’s new Unbound series

SHADOW BOUND

Available in 2012

To #1, who understands that a writer can never really leave her work at work. I live in my own head, constantly distracted from the real world by the ones I make up, and it takes someone special to put up with that. I hope you know how special you are. And I didn’t even have to make you up.

Acknowledgments

Thanks first and foremost to my husband, my #1 fan, for listening to all the crazy brainstorming that went into this book without betraying any hint that the author may be as crazy as the ideas. You’re the most wonderful sounding board ever.

Thanks as always to Rinda Elliott, my longtime critique partner and the first to see every book I write. You’re my second pair of eyes, and I always appreciate the fresh viewpoint.

Thanks to my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, for guidance and patience. And for pronouncing this manuscript “twisted,” then liking it anyway.

And thanks to everyone at MIRA Books, who made it all happen. There are so many more of you behind me than I would ever have guessed when I was first starting out, and I sometimes think books should get credit reels, like movies.

One

Only two-thirty in the morning, and I already had blood on my hands. The most messed-up part of that? It was the hour that bothered me.

“You sure it’s him, Liv?” Booker swiped one hand over his sweaty, stubbly face as we stared at the lit window on the third floor. The apartment building was long and plain, like a cracker box on its side, and the moonless night only smeared the sides of the featureless building into the ambient darkness.

I nodded, shoving both cold, chapped hands into my jacket pockets. It was warm for early March, but still cold for me.

“How sure?”

My eyes closed, and again I clutched the blood-stiffened swatch of cloth in my right pocket, inhaling deeply through my nose, and the world exploded into a bouquet of scents. Relying on years of training, I sorted through them rapidly, mentally tossing aside those I couldn’t use. The metal tang of several huge trash bins. The chemical bite of Booker’s cologne. And the pervasive, ambient smells of life east of the river—motor oil, fried food and sweat.

What was left, with those more obvious smells out of the way, was the trail I’d followed all over town, as much a feel as a true scent, and a virtual match to the blood sample in my pocket.

I am a Tracker. More specifically—and colloquially—I’m a bloodhound. Given a decent, recent sample of your blood, I can find you no matter where you hide. Officially, my range is about eighty miles—on the high end of average. Unofficially … well, let’s just say I’m good at what I do. But not too good. Too much Skill will get you noticed. And I know better than to get noticed.

Booker cleared his throat and I opened my eyes to find myself staring up at the lit window again—the only occupant still awake. “Ninety-five percent. It’s either him or a close male relative, and that’s the best you’re gonna get with a dry blood sample,” I said, as water dripped from a gutter somewhere to my left. “Tell Rawlinson I’ll send him a bill.”

Booker pulled his black ski cap over his ears. “He’s not gonna like that.”

“I don’t give a shit what he likes.” I turned and walked back the way I’d come, listening as my steel-toed work boots echoed in the alley. I was exhausted and pissed off from being woken at two on a Friday morning, yet still pleased for the excuse to charge nearly double my usual rate. Office space in the south fork doesn’t come cheap.

“Warren!” a deep voice barked from behind me, and I groaned beneath my breath. I turned slowly to see Adam Rawlinson step out from behind a rusty Dumpster, his dark hair, skin and expensive wool coat blending into the thick shadows. No telling how long he’d been there. Watching. Listening.

Travelers—shadow-walkers—were notorious for shit like that. They can step into a shadow in their own homes and step out of another shadow across town a split second later. You never know they’re coming until they’re already there. It’s a convenient Skill—except when it’s annoying as hell.

“Hey, Adam. Kinda late for a stroll, isn’t it?” Especially considering that his home address was at least two tax brackets above the inner-city grime now clinging to the soles of his dress shoes. “What? You don’t trust me?”

Rawlinson scowled, his frown exaggerated by deep shadows. “Ninety-five percent isn’t good enough, Liv.”

I shrugged, my arms crossed over my dark jacket. “You’re not going to get a hundred-percent certainty without a better blood sample or his full name to flesh out the scent.”

He nodded; I wasn’t telling him anything new. “But you’d know for sure if you had a current sample to compare it to, right? Something fresh?”

“I don’t get my hands dirty anymore. You know that.” I follow the blood scent, and I can track by name if I have to. But that’s where my job ends—no reason for me to be there when the action starts. My life was messy enough without adding blood spatter.

“Booker’s here for the takedown. I just need you to get close enough for a positive ID,” Rawlinson insisted. “We don’t know his name, and we’re not going to get a better blood sample. I played hell getting that one out of the evidence room as it is. This is personal, Liv.”

Damn it. Booker was working without a partner and Adam Rawlinson had come out to see the show. This one was off the books. “Is this about Alisha?” Rawlinson’s daughter had been killed in a carjacking the week before. He’d shown up for work the next day as if nothing had happened. As if her death meant nothing to him.

Here was proof to the contrary. I was almost relieved.

His gaze never wavered. “The cops had a near miss, and one of them winged the bastard last night. The sample’s from the passenger’s seat he bled all over.”

I exhaled, watching him closely. “Why do I get the feeling you’re not going to turn this asshole in?” Rawlinson’s operation had a rock-solid reputation. Official bounty-hunting in cooperation with bail bondsmen and the proper authorities, all on the up-and-up. He would turn in the target, collect a check for freelance services from the city, then pay the rest of his crew. Which used to include me.

But this time …

“Because you’re a very smart girl.” He started walking toward the building, and I followed reluctantly. “You know, I’d love to have you back on the crew full-time.”

“That’s because your new Tracker couldn’t find his own dick in the dark.” I hesitated, and the night was quiet, but for our footsteps on cracked asphalt. “You know better than to start shit east of the river without a work order, Adam. What if someone sees you?”

“That’s why you’re here.” He met my gaze, and I had to respect his honesty, even if it pissed me off. “Everyone knows you’re working for Ruben Cavazos, so no one will think to report this if you’re with us.”

“I work for myself.” And myself had to pay rent on a shitty apartment and a tiny office, repairs on a car saddled with more used parts than Frankenstein’s monster, and interest and principle on student loans for a degree I’d never once put to use. “I freelance for Cavazos just like I freelance for you.” And everyone knew that black hats paid better than white knights. “Having me with you isn’t going to keep your feet cool while you walk through flames, Adam. You need to let the police handle this.”

“We both know there’s nothing they can do.”

But that wasn’t true. They could do plenty—but they wouldn’t. Not as long as the courts refused to recognize Tracking as a legal form of identification and discovery. The world knew about us—the Skilled had been dragged into the spotlight almost thirty years ago—but the government had yet to officially recognize our existence. We were the biggest open secret in history. We had no rights and no protection under the law, beyond those afforded us as natural-born citizens.

What that meant in legal circles was that no government office could officially hire Binders to draft or seal contracts. Nor could they use evidence gathered via Trackers, like me. Everything involving the dozen or so Skilled abilities had to be unofficial consultations and contract work. And completely off the books.

What that meant in criminal circles was the gradual formation of the single most profitable—and ruthless—black-market system in history. Because the government didn’t officially recognize our Skills, they couldn’t regulate or police them, which left a huge gap at the top of the power pyramid. A gap that had been filled by various Skilled crime syndicates across the world, but most notably—and locally—by rival black-market kingpins Jake Tower and Ruben Cavazos, who together controlled more than two-thirds of the city.

Think of my city like a giant peace sign, divided by the river. Everything east of the river is controlled by Cavazos, everything west of the river by Tower. And on the south side, cradled by the fork in the river, you can live, eat and breathe without lining the pockets of either organization—but you’ll do it at a much higher price, because those who understand the world they live in and can afford the rent will pay to avoid picking a side.

“Okay, look. Now that you’ve found him, you should just watch him until he makes a mistake, then go after him legally. Stick to what you’re good at, Adam. Anything else would just be dripping blood into the shark tank.”

“Wait for him to make a mistake?” Rawlinson demanded softly, and I nodded, already feeling guilty for the suggestion. “How long will that take, if it even happens? Coming in here once, with you, to take care of business—that’s one thing. But if we loiter, just waiting for this bastard to commit another crime … Well, that’s just not an option on the east side, is it?” His gaze pleaded with me, and I resisted the overwhelming urge to stare at the ground. “She was my daughter, Warren,” Rawlinson said, and the rare glimpse of his raw pain made me groan on the inside, even as I spoke the question I shouldn’t have asked.

“What do you want me to do? Go in and prick his finger?” My hand clenched around the stiff cloth in my pocket.

“I don’t care how you ID him. Just get close enough to tell for sure, and we’ll handle the rest.”

“That’s going to cost you.” Sympathizing with his pain didn’t change my bottom line—freelancers don’t get benefits, and I was currently without health care, a dangerous position to be in, considering my line of work.

“Fine. Bill me.”

Against my better judgment, I led the way into the dark, quiet building with Rawlinson and Booker at my back. Most of the apartments were empty. Rumor had it the city planned to knock the eyesore down as soon as they managed to relocate the last six tenants—and convince Cavazos to sell the building. They probably had no idea there was a squatter on the third floor.

We crept silently up the stairs, the stiff bit of cloth clutched in my right hand, my fingers rubbing over and over the rough spot. I could feel him, so long as I was touching his blood. I could smell his sweat and taste his fear, both manifestations of the smear of psychic energy people leave behind with every drop of their blood.

For me, it’s a little harder working from only a name, but it can be done. And it’s easiest with both a name and fresh blood. But that rarely happens. UnSkilled criminals are much more careful than the unSkilled general population, and in hiding from police forensics labs, they’re inadvertently hiding from Trackers.

Even stupid criminals don’t want to be found.

The door between the stairwell and the third-floor hall was long gone, so we could see the light pouring from the crack beneath his door the moment we stepped onto the landing. The energy signature was stronger here, but no clearer. I was going to have to see the bastard to confirm his ID. Damn it.

I snuck down the hall silently with Booker and Rawlinson on my heels until we stood in front of the lit apartment. I gestured for them to give me some space, and they stood to either side of the door, backs pressed against the grimy walls, out of sight from the occupant, unless he actually stepped into the hall.

Then I took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

When I’d worked for Rawlinson, I’d done both the tracking and the takedown, and back then, I would have looked the part—harmless, vapid young woman who needed jumper cables, or a telephone, or a big, strong arm to open a jar of pickles. Anything to get close enough to use a Taser on the target and collect a paycheck.

It’s amazing what a few years’ experience and the threat of mortal injury with no health insurance can do to change your perspective. Especially with the clock ticking in my ear and the certainty that I had no time to be incapacitated by injury.

Footsteps clomped toward me from inside the apartment and the door squealed open to reveal a tall, thick man with two days’ growth on his chin and suspicion shining in his eyes. He was armed—the handheld behind his right thigh was a dead giveaway—probably with the gun that had killed Alisha Rawlinson.

“Hey, sorry to bother you so late, but—” I let my right arm fly, and my fist smashed into his nose.

The target gave a wet gurgle of surprise and pain, and swung his arm up, too stunned to actually aim his pistol as blood poured from his ruined face. I ducked below the gun and smashed his wrist into the door facing as hard as I could. Bone crunched. The target screamed again and his fist opened. The gun thumped to the floor and Booker kicked it down the hall.

I stepped back and let him take over, wiping the target’s blood from my face with the tissue Rawlinson offered. “It’s him.” I handed the tissue back as Booker pounded the target into unconsciousness in the doorway. The rest of this floor was empty, and even if one of the few tenants heard something, they wouldn’t come out to investigate. Not on this side of town. Not in the middle of the night.

Not if they had any wish to see daylight.

“Thank you, Liv,” Rawlinson said, as Booker dragged the unconscious man into his apartment.

“Don’t thank me. Pay me.” I peeled off my bloodstained jacket and handed it to him. “And if this doesn’t come clean, you owe me one just like it.” Then I took off toward the stairwell without looking back, trying to ignore the repetitive thud of fist hitting flesh echoing in the hall behind me.

On the street again, I exhaled, then glanced back at the building behind me. Silence, except for my own footsteps and the highway traffic two blocks away. True to his word, Rawlinson was keeping things quiet.

I crossed the road in a hurry, digging in my pocket for my keys, but froze when I spotted my car—and the man leaning against the hood. He was built of shadows, untouched by the streetlight on the corner, but I’d know that silhouette anywhere.

“Hey, Liv.” Cameron Caballero stood, and the past six years without him suddenly seemed surreal, as if I’d dreamed the whole thing, and now I’d finally woken up to the truth. To how my life should have gone.

But then a car engine started, stalled then restarted in the distance, and my life—the gritty reality—snapped back into place like emotional whiplash, leaving me gasping for breath.

Him showing up like this again wasn’t fair. But fair had never been less relevant.

“Not tonight, Cam.” Mentally steeling myself, I clomped toward him and my car, assuming he’d move when I tried to unlock my door. But instead of sliding out of the way, he stood, inches away now, intentionally invading my personal space. I could step back, but that would be acknowledging that being so close to him still affected me. Or I could stand my ground and make him back down.

“You know, someday you’re going to have to tell me what happened,” he said when neither of us moved, his voice an intimate, familiar whisper. “Why you left.”

“Today isn’t that day. Move.” I wanted to shove him out of my way, but touching him would have been a very bad idea. Maybe the best bad idea I’d ever had. “Don’t make me hurt you. I’ve already broken one face tonight.”

“I heard you were breaking faces professionally,” he said, still watching me as if nothing in the world existed, beyond whatever he saw in my eyes. “Then I heard you quit.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but as always, when I ran out of words, he still had plenty. “Would you really hit me?”

“Would you really make me?” I eyed him boldly and he sighed, and I could see that spark of possibility—of a rekindling—die in his eyes.

“No one makes you do anything, Olivia,” he said, and my chest tightened with the desperate wish that he were right. “A friend wants to see you.”

I reached around him and unlocked my car door, but he still leaned against it. “I don’t want to see your friend.”

He stared down at me from inches away, and I knew his eyes would be dark, dark blue, if they weren’t swimming in shadows. “Not my friend, Liv. Yours. She came to me looking for you. I think you should hear her out.”

But I couldn’t do anything that meant spending time with Cam, for both of our sakes. It was the same every time I ran into him: a jolt of memory, a spark of resurrected heat and a huge dose of regret I was sure he could see. That regret was what kept bringing him back.

It was what still drew me to him, even as I pushed him away.

“I don’t give a shit what you think,” I said, too late to be believable. I didn’t bother asking how he’d known where to find me. Cam was a Tracker—the best I’d ever met, other than … well, me. But whereas I was good with blood, he was good with names. Given a full, real name, he could find anyone, anywhere, and his range rivaled mine. And I’d made the mistake of telling him my full name—which no one else in the entire world knew—years ago. When I’d thought we’d be together forever.

That was one of the most foolish mistakes I’d ever made, but one he hadn’t given me reason to regret. Until now.

“Last chance, Cam. Move, or I’ll move you.”

He shoved his hands into the pockets of a snug pair of jeans and gave me this sad little smile, as if he missed me and wanted me gone, both at once, and I knew exactly how that felt. Then he stepped aside and watched while I slid into the driver’s seat and slammed the door.

As I pulled away from the curb, I glanced in the rearview mirror to find him still watching me, unmoving, until I turned at the corner and drove out of sight.

I unlocked my office door and shoved it open, then trudged across the small space toward the tiny bathroom. I had no waiting room and no fancy chairs. Just my desk, two cheap, upright cabinets full of my stuff and one old leather couch, stained and ripped, and more comfortable now than the day I took it from an ex’s house along with my own things—restitution for the car he’d stolen and nearly a year of my life wasted.

In the bathroom, I pulled off my top and grabbed a clean T-shirt from the cabinet over the toilet. The sun would be up in a couple of hours. I’d crash on the couch until dawn, then get an early start, because if I went home and crawled into bed, I’d lose most of the day to sleep, which would lead to me losing the job I’d just bid on to Travis Spencer, the runner-up, and his two meathead associates.

With a quick glance at my pale, blood-splattered reflection, I ran warm water on a clean rag and scrubbed my face until I could no longer smell the energy signature of the blood I’d been tracking. But as I turned away from the mirror, the squeal of hinges bisected the silence, and my heart beat a little faster.

Someone was in my office. At four-thirty in the morning. Without an appointment.

I dropped the rag into the sink and squatted to pull a 9mm from the holster nailed to the inside of the cabinet beneath the sink. Aiming at the floor, I disengaged the safety and stood, ready to elbow the door open. I wasn’t expecting trouble, but honestly, I wasn’t surprised by it, either. Spencer had been gunning for me ever since he dropped the ball on the governor’s missing mistress, and I picked it up and ran for the goal.

“Once upon a time, four little girls, best friends, took an oath of loyalty,” a woman’s voice said through the door, and I flicked the safety back on. It can’t be …

Annika. Cam had sent her alone. Smart man.

We hadn’t spoken in six years, but hearing her voice was like peeling back layers of time until my childhood came into focus, gritty and rough around the edges—was I ever really innocent?—yet somehow still naive compared to what time and experience had since made of me.

“They promised to always help one another, whenever they were asked,” she continued, as I fell through the rabbit hole, flailing for something solid to grab on to. “They signed their names, and—”

“And they stamped their thumbprints in blood.” I pushed open the bathroom door to find Annika Lawson watching me, green eyes holding my gaze with the weight of shared youth and the long-since frayed knots of friendship. “That’s where those stupid little girls went wrong,” I said. “They disrespected the power of names and blood.”

And look where it got us—my entire life ruled by one careless promise the year I was twelve.

“We didn’t disrespect the power, Liv.” Her gaze was steady, holding me accountable for every truth I’d ever tried to hide—that much hadn’t changed, even after six years apart. “We just didn’t understand it.”

Because no one had told us. We didn’t know we were Skilled, because our parents thought they were protecting us with ignorance. Insulating us from the dangers of our own genetic inheritance.

In the first years after the revelation, people sometimes disappeared. Government experiments or eager private industry research, no one knew for sure, but the disappearances terrified already worried parents into a perilous silence. They could never have known that Kori’s little sister was a Binder, or that at ten years old, she’d be strong enough to tie us to one another for the rest of our lives.

“Well, the power understood us.” And our ignorance didn’t make that binding any less real. Or any easier to undo. We’d bound ourselves together so tightly that as we grew up, the bonds chafed, wearing away at our friendship until nothing was left but resentment and anger.

I pulled the bathroom door closed and sank into my desk chair, fending off a battery of memories I’d thought buried. It felt weird to see Anne in my office, out of place in my adult life when she’d been a central figure of my youth. Part of me wanted to hug her and get caught up over drinks, but the stronger part of me remembered what went down that night six years ago, the last time we’d all four been together.

A reunion wasn’t gonna happen. Ever. And not just because Elle was dead and Kori was MIA. Anne had disappeared when I’d needed a friend. I could have tracked her, but why, when a dozen unanswered calls and messages said she didn’t want to talk to me? So I’d struck out on my own, and never once looked back at the past. Until now.

“What are you doing here? Is a third ghost from my past going to show up and take me to my own grave?” But that possibility struck a little too close to home, and I had to shrug it off.

She sank onto the couch and her composure cracked, then fell away, revealing raw pain and bitter anger, and suddenly I wanted to hurt whoever’d hurt her. In spite of what she’d done to me—what we’d all done to one another—I wanted to protect her, like Kori and I had looked out for her as kids, and that impulse ran deeper than the oath connecting us. Older. All the way back to the day Anne and I had first met, before Kori and Elle even moved to town.

But it wasn’t that simple. I knew what she was going to say, even though it shouldn’t have been possible.

“I need you, Liv. Will you help me?”

No! Shock sputtered within me, synapses misfiring in my brain as I tried to make sense of what she’d just said. Of what she shouldn’t have been able to say.

“How did you …?” But my voice faded into silence as the answer to my own question became obvious. “You burned it. You burned the second oath.” Damn it! “We swore, Anne. We swore to let it stand.”

In spite of unshed tears shining in her eyes, Anne’s gaze held no hint of shame or regret. “You’re the only one who can help me with this and I couldn’t even ask you with the second oath binding me.”

“That’s why we signed it!” I leaned forward with my arms crossed on the desktop, and my chair squealed in protest.

That second oath was our freedom. It couldn’t truly sever the ties binding us, but it prevented us from tugging on them. In the second oath, Anne, Kori, Elle and I had sworn never to ask one another for help, because once asked, we were compelled to do everything within our power to aid one another. Which, we’d learned the hard way, could only lead to disaster. And resentment. And expulsion from school. And arrest records.

“I’m sorry. I really am,” Anne insisted, tucking one coppery strand of shoulder-length hair behind her ear. “I know you probably don’t believe that, and I can’t blame you. But I truly had no choice. Will you help me,

Liv?”

“Hell no, I’m not going to help you!” But as soon as I said the words, breaking my oath to her, the pain began. It started as a bolt of white behind my left eye, shining so bright that everything else seemed dim by comparison. When I closed my eyes, the light sent pain shooting through my skull, and in less than a second, it was a full-blown migraine. Then came the muscle spasms—a revolt of my entire body, the consequence of going back on an oath signed voluntarily and sealed in blood by a child who’d turned out to be the most powerful Binder I’d ever met.

Defaulting on an oath sealed by an amateur—or even a weak professional—could put you in the hospital. Defaulting on an oath sealed by anyone with real power and/or training could kill you.

First, your brain sends warnings in the form of pain. Migraines. Muscle cramps. General abuse of the body’s pain receptors. Then it starts turning things off, one by one. Motor control. Bladder and bowel control. Sight and scent. Hearing. But never the sense of touch. Never the nerve endings. They remain functional so you can feel every second of your body’s decision to self-destruct.

I’m a little fuzzy on the order of betrayal by my own internal organs, but among the first to go are the kidneys, liver, gallbladder, intestines and pancreas, any one of which would probably kill you eventually. Then the big guns. If you hold out long enough, you’ll lose respiratory function, then circulatory. And without those, of course, your brain has only minutes—minutes—for you to try to think through the pain and humiliation and decide whether you’re going to stick to your word, or die breaking it.

Most people never get that far. I’ve never gotten that far, as evidenced by the fact that my heart continues to beat, in spite of several times I would have declared it broken beyond repair. But everyone has a limit. A point past which you can’t be pushed.

“Please don’t do this, Olivia,” Anne said, when my fingers began to twitch on my desk. A second later, my legs began to convulse, banging against the bottom of the pencil drawer, but I only stared at her through the ball of light in the center of my vision, breathing steadily through the pain. “I’m not going to take it back, Liv,” she insisted, leaning forward on the couch. “I can’t. Not this time. Will you help me?”

Her repetition of the original request escalated the process, and I gasped at the pain deep in my stomach. I couldn’t identify it, but I knew what that pain meant. One of us would have to back down in the next few minutes, or the last thing I saw would be her bright green eyes, full of tears and regret, and her stubborn lips sealed against the sentence that could make it all go away.

“Please, Liv,” Annika begged, and this time her voice came from behind me. Water ran in the bathroom. A second later, she leaned my chair back and laid a cold, wet cloth over my eyes and forehead, and my hands twitched violently in my lap. “You don’t even know what I need you to do.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I gasped, helpless to keep the rag from slipping down my face. Until I gave in to the compulsion to help her, I would feel nothing but the systematic shutdown of my entire body. But still I fought it. She had no right to make me do something I didn’t want to do, no matter what stupid mistake we’d made as children! The compulsion was like having my free will stripped. It was humiliating, and infuriating, and it was the reason we’d all gone our separate ways after high school without even a glance in the rearview mirror. “The point—” I growled through a throat that wanted to close around my words “—is that I … have … no … choice.”

Leather creaked as she sat on the couch again, and the hitch in her breath said she was fighting sobs. “I’m sorry, Liv. If I could ask you without compelling you, I would, but I don’t have that option.”

She was right—her very request triggered the compulsion—but that didn’t help. And neither did the regret obvious in her voice. “What do you want?” I whispered with all the volume I could manage, as pain ripped through my stomach again, and my arms began to contract toward my torso.

“I need you to find someone.”

No surprise, considering I was a Tracker, both by birth and by profession.

The rag slipped from my eyes and I saw her wipe tears from her cheeks with an angry stroke of one hand. “I need you to find the bastard who killed my husband and return the favor.”

Two

For a moment, I could only stare at her, and as my resistance began to fade in the face of surprise, so did the pain, though it wouldn’t completely subside until I’d said the magic words.

“Whoa, you got married?” I couldn’t picture it, and I hadn’t even noticed the wedding band that now seemed glaringly obvious on her left hand. Did she have a house in the suburbs? A mortgage? A dog in the backyard?

I frowned and sucked in a deep breath, relieved to feel the convulsions in my arms downgrading to mere spasms.

“Yes. Then I got widowed,” she said, and more tears fell, even as her jaws clenched in some powerful combination of rage and devastation. “I need you to track the murderer and kill him.”

“That’s … that’s not really what I do, Anne,” I said, careful not to refuse—so soon after that last refusal, anyway. I stared at her, surprised by the vengeful impulse in a woman who, when we were kids, was a turn-the-other-cheek kind of girl. “I just find people.

That’s it.”

Anne blinked, as if she hadn’t heard me. As if she didn’t want to hear me. Then she plucked her purse from the center couch cushion and dug through it with trembling hands. “Here.” She produced a wallet-size photo album and flipped to the second page, already pulling a picture out before I realized what she was going to do.

“No, don’t … “ Show me a picture of your dead husband … That was a low blow. But before I could finish my sentence, she’d leaned forward and slid the photo across my desk. I looked at it, against my better judgment, and found a handsome Asian man with a nice smile, one arm around an obviously happy Anne.

It was like staring at a ghost, though I’d never even met the man.

“His name was Shen Liang. He was thirty-four, and the nicest man I ever met. He wrote proprietary software for a company here in the city, but they let him work from home. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to kill him.” The tears were back, and I stared at my desk to avoid seeing them.

“What did the police say?”

“They’re investigating. But, Liv, his killer was Skilled. A Traveler. The police aren’t going to be able to find him, and even if they could, without traditional physical evidence, they can’t make the charges stick. You know what they’re up against.”

Yeah. I knew. Nearly half my business came from victims trying to catch people the cops couldn’t identify. “I’ll find him for you.” I had no choice about that. “But the rest.” The killing … “It’s not that simple.” Even if I found the suspect, and even if I was one-hundred-percent certain that he was guilty of cold-blooded murder, I couldn’t just kill him—not if I valued my own life—until I knew for sure what his connections were. Who, if anyone, he was bound to. “We have a daughter.”

“No …” I shook my head when she started digging in her purse again. No more pictures …

“Hadley.” More tears, and when her jaw began to quiver, something inside me twisted painfully. “She’s five years old, and tomorrow I’m going to have to tell her that her daddy is dead. I can’t let her grow up knowing the man who killed her father is still out there. You have to help me. I need you to find Shen’s killer and kill him. I’m asking you, Olivia.”

I groaned out loud. Those were the magic words. This had gone beyond a general request for help: it was now a specific request that I commit murder, regardless of the cost to me, personally. Now, unless I could somehow talk her out of it without actually refusing to do what she’d asked, I’d have to either kill her husband’s murderer or die fighting the compulsion. Or die when the police caught up to me. Or wish I’d died if the murderer turned out to be connected and his connections caught up to me.

Motherfucker!

“Annika, I’m asking you to rethink this.”

There. Two could play that game. Or—technically—four, since there were four bloody thumbprints on that old oath, wherever it was.

Anne flinched, and her hand twitched. She was resisting, and I could practically see how badly she wanted to rub her own forehead. So I tossed her the cool rag.

“Fine. State your case.” She leaned back on the couch and placed the folded rag over her forehead and tear-swollen eyes.

I took a deep breath, but was careful to keep it silent. I didn’t want her to know how important it was for me to get out of the assassin part of the favor she was asking. “I don’t have a problem with your husband’s murderer dying for his crimes.” The state would give him the death penalty anyway, if they could prove his guilt. “And I’m perfectly willing to find him for you. But once he’s found, you need an expert for … whatever comes next. And I’m no assassin, Anne.”

I was an amateur at best….

She sat up, clutching the rag in one hand. “Olivia, I don’t need you to cut his throat with a scalpel and frame the governor’s personal physician. I don’t need the best. Hell, I can’t afford the best. Proficiency will suffice, and from what I’ve heard, you’re more than proficient.”

What? “I don’t care what you’ve heard, I do not kill people for money!” Much. Anymore.

Not just for money, anyway.

My head throbbed again, but this headache was stress-induced. She wasn’t backing down, and I couldn’t tell her why I needed her to. And thanks to the original oath, I couldn’t just ask her not to ask me to kill someone. Noelle had called that the no-wishing-for-more-wishes clause—like a contractual paradox. It couldn’t be done.

Anne frowned. “But you work for Ruben Cavazos.”

“Freelance. I freelance for Cavazos.” Which was precisely why her request was so dangerous for me. “And for Adam Rawlinson, and for anyone else who can pay.” Except for Jake Tower. Working for both sides of the Skilled black market would be like putting a bullet in my own head—only more prolonged and painful. “But all I do for them is find people.” Usually. “What the client does with the target after that is their business. I don’t get involved with that side of it.” Not without a very good reason—and money doesn’t count.

“So Cavazos doesn’t … own you?” She blinked through her tears, watching me carefully, and if I hadn’t known her most of my life, I might not have realized what she was doing. What she was looking for in my eyes.

Anne was a Reader—a human truth detector—born with an ability most law enforcers worked years to develop. Only her Skill was virtually infallible, and it couldn’t be turned off. Which was why she hadn’t dated much in high school—turns out sometimes ignorance really is bliss. Or at least temporary consolation. Shen must have been the most honest man on the face of the planet.

“Say what you mean, Annika.” I knew what she meant, of course, but … “If you’re going to come in here and pull on the strings of a fifteen-year-old oath, you could at least have the guts to ask me what you really want to know.”

“Fine,” Anne said, and I recognized the rare flash of temper in her eyes. “Olivia, are you bound to Ruben Cavazos? Because that’s what they’re saying about you out there.” She nodded toward the window overlooking the street below. “They’re saying you quit Rawlinson’s team because you’re bound to Cavazos and he’s taking a cut of your freelance fee—along with whatever else he wants from you.”

My temper burned like indigestion, and I fought the need to stand in defense of my reputation—the only real asset a freelance Tracker has. “Who’s saying that?”

Anne glanced at her hands again, stalling. Then she looked at the door I still hadn’t locked. I followed her gaze as the glass panel swung open and Cam stepped in from the hall.

Damn it!

“Lurking in dark hallways?” I said, my hands hidden in my lap to hide how tightly they were clenched. “Isn’t that a little cliché, even for a stalker—I mean Tracker?”

“You wouldn’t have heard her out if you knew I was here,” he said calmly, and I couldn’t argue.

“You told her I’m bound to Cavazos?” I had to force my jaw to unclench as I stood, leaning with both palms flat on my desktop. “You used to be above spreading unsubstantiated rumors.”

“Those with Skills live and die by the word on the street, Olivia. Especially in this city.”

Yeah. It was that dying part that worried me.

“Look, I may be country mouse in the big city,” Anne started, still seated while Cam and I stood, “but I’m not stupid. I know Cavazos is selling blood and names on the black market, and I know he has his homegrown army out there doing the dirty work.”

But if that was all she knew, she really was country mouse.

“He’s not the only one. Jake Tower has this city by the balls, and everyone west of the river’s so afraid of his men—”

Anne stood, interrupting me smoothly with that same quiet confidence I’d envied in childhood, then hated in adolescence. “What I need to know from you is whether you’re part of that army. Is Ruben Cavazos pulling your strings, Liv?”

“Right now, you ‘re pulling my strings.” And pushing all the wrong buttons. “You need to back off, Annika. Before I have to push you back.”

“She has a right to know what you’re tangled up in, Liv,” Cam insisted quietly, and I exploded, as always, the roaring fire to his smooth, hard ice.

“Screw her rights. What about mine? You two can’t just ambush me, make me work for you, then question me like a criminal so you can be sure none of my dirt’s going to rub off on you.”

“Ask her to pull her sleeve up,” Cam said to Anne, though his gaze never left mine. “To see if she’s marked,” he added, when she hesitated in obvious confusion.

Anne sighed, but even the weary grief that had moved me earlier couldn’t calm me now. “Are you going to make me ask?” she said softly.

Hell no. I wasn’t going to give her—or anyone else—any more power over me, if I could possibly help it. “You wanna see?” I spat, gathering the hem of my T-shirt in both hands. I jerked the material over my head and dropped it into my chair, then stood watching them both, in only jeans and a bra. “Fine. Look.”

Cam swallowed thickly—the only outward sign that the sight of my bare skin still affected him—then his focus zeroed in on my arm automatically. “Cavazos’s first mark is a small black ring on the left bicep. She’s clean.”

I was clean? As opposed to dirty? “Fuck you!” Cam flinched, and I recognized the regret that flickered across his expression before he could hide it. “That’s not what I … I just meant …” He closed his eyes while I tugged my shirt back over my head, glad for the half second it shielded me from their scrutiny and judgment.

When I sank into my chair, dressed, but still pissed, Cam settled onto the arm of the couch. “I made Anne promise to let you out of this if you were bound to one of the syndicates.” Because, having lived in the city almost as long as I had—I was pretty sure he’d followed me there—he understood how dangerous and complicated her favor could make things for anyone sworn to serve on one side of the black-market divide.

It was very … compassionate of him, and it took real effort for me to deny the sudden rush of my own pulse. Because compassion was the last thing I needed from Cam Caballero. “I don’t want your pity, or sympathy, or whatever this is.”

“Fortunately, it looks like you don’t need it,” he said, with another glance at my now covered arm. “So let’s move on.”

Irritated that he seemed to be taking control of things, I turned back to Anne. “I’ll find your husband’s killer, and I’ll take you to him. But you can kill him yourself,” I said, careful not to actually refuse to do the second part of her request.

Anne paled, and Cam stood, scowling at me across my own desk. “No, Olivia.”

“What, she’s brave enough to come in here demanding vigilante justice, but not brave enough to do the job herself?”

Anne glanced back and forth between us, her purse trembling in her grip, but Cam answered before she could even open her mouth. “She’s never even held a gun. Even if she had any chance of actually pulling this off, can you really send her back to her half-orphaned daughter with blood on her hands?”

His point was subtle, but it still stung. Anne wasn’t like me. We’d started on the same path, sure. Parents, school, friends, college. Then Anne had continued down that path toward a respectable career, civil responsibility and family, while I had jumped the track entirely and derailed my own life with violence, under-the-carpet jobs and solitude.

If I made Anne take the shot herself, I’d be dragging her from her mostly tidy suburban life into the gritty reality of my own existence. Most people can’t commit murder then go on living their lives, even if that murder was actually justice. And I had no doubt Anne was one of those people.

But I was not. And Cam obviously knew that.

“Fine. I’ll do it.” I sighed, finally fully resigned to her request, and the last of the resistance pain faded. “You have a name or a sample of his blood?”

“Well, he didn’t leave a business card,” she snapped, her anger currently winning the battle against grief. “But I can get you several blood samples from the house.” She sniffled, then visibly swallowed tears. “They found Shen holding a bloody knife, so I’m hoping at least one of the blood samples will belong to his killer.”

But that made no sense. Why would a Skilled killer—especially a professional—leave his own blood at the scene? Maybe he was interrupted?

“The police left a huge mess, and obviously I haven’t had time to have it cleaned yet,” she continued.

Obviously? “Annika, when did he die?”

“Tonight.” She frowned and glanced out the window, where the first rays of daylight had changed inky black to deep, dark blue. “Last night, I guess.”

“Last night?”

“Around eight o’clock”

“Your husband’s been dead for less than ten hours?” I rubbed my forehead, then let one hand trail though my hair. “Don’t you think you might be reacting before you’ve had a chance to really think about this?”

“No.” For the first time since she’d walked into my office, Anne looked at me as if she didn’t even know me. As if I was just some stranger she’d hired from an ad in the phone book. “And I would rather have this whole thing over with before I go pick up Hadley. I don’t want to have to think about this while I’m trying to decide how best to explain what happened to her father without scarring her for life.”

“Okay.” I didn’t know what else to say—I wasn’t sure rationality would have had much attraction for me, either, in her position. I opened my mouth to name my one condition, but she beat me to the proverbial punch.

“Liv, there’s one more thing …” Anne hesitated, and I knew I wasn’t going to like whatever else she had to say. “I want you to work with Cam.”

I sucked in a long, slow breath, hoping she would deliver the punch line to the world’s worst joke before I had to actually say something. But she only watched me, waiting. “No,” I said finally. “No way.” I turned to Cam for support, but could find no resistance to the idea in his expression. Instead, I found … satisfaction. “This was your idea, wasn’t it?” I demanded He crossed both arms over a still-broad chest. “Does it matter? Is it going to kill you to work with me on one job? For Anne?”

Yes, it just might kill me. Or him. But there had never been a less appropriate time to explain why I’d left him. Why working with him could be more dangerous than hunting and killing a murderer on my own. And it didn’t help that while my brain protested on the basis of logic, the rest of me ached for this excuse to be near him again, if only in a professional capacity.

But that was a bad idea. The key to resisting Cam Caballero lay in avoiding temptation—a concept he seemed to personify for me more with every glance I avoided, every memory I buried.

“No.” I turned back to Anne, wearing my business face. The one that got me the rates and bonuses I demanded. The one that usually kept creeps off me when I followed criminals down dark alleys and through abandoned buildings. “No. That’s a deal-breaker.”

“There are no deal-breakers when you’re bound,” Cam pointed out calmly, and suddenly I wished I’d hit him when I had the chance. “You’ll do it, or you’ll die trying to resist the compulsion.”

“I haven’t actually asked you yet,” Anne reminded me, echoing the infuriating calm that Cam exuded like radiation—a slow, vicious poison. “But I will if I have to. Your choice.”

“So, I either work with him because you’re asking me to, or I work with him because you’re threatening to ask me to. What kind of choice is that?” I demanded.

“It’s better than the choices I’m facing right now. The rest of my day includes picking out a casket and a black suit.”

Another low blow. “Why Cam?” I asked, hoping to talk her out of it before she caught on and actually compelled me.

“Because I’m short on cash but rich on resources, Liv.” Meaning the two of us, of course. “But if you’re willing to subsidize this project financially and you know someone better than Cam, then by all means.” She extended one arm toward the window and the city just now waking up. “So … do you know anyone better than Cam?”

Damn. “Other than me? No.”

Cam laughed out loud. “Still arrogant …”

“Confident,” I corrected. “And willing to back that confidence up with results.”

“Good.” He nodded, in what may have been the first look of respect I’d seen from him in more than six years. “Let’s go.”

“Um …” I hedged. “I have something to take care of first, and we’ll need those blood samples before I can get started.” I glanced at Anne with both brows raised, and she nodded, already standing. “So, I’ll meet you here at noon?”

“Liv, I really want to get this over with,” she repeated.

“I know, but I have a previous commitment.” I hesitated, dreading the next part. “Oh, and … urn … I’m going to need a retainer.”

“What?”

“You’re going to charge her?” Cam demanded, and that respect I’d seen was long gone. “She’s your friend.”

I bristled, even though I’d expected—and understood—his reaction. “A friend who’s compelling me to work for her.” And with you. I hated what they probably thought of me now, but I had no choice—a state of events I was starting to truly resent. “You need my help? Fine. But I need a retainer. It doesn’t have to be much. Five or ten bucks. Just … something to make it official.”

Anne looked as if I’d just danced on her dead husband’s grave, but she dug in her purse without a word. Something snapped open, and she handed me a five-dollar bill. “I don’t carry much cash, but I can get you more, later,” she offered, in spite of the hurt clear on her face.

“Don’t worry about it. This is plenty.” I paper-clipped the bill to a blank invoice and stuffed it into my desk drawer. Never in my life had I been more relieved to lose sight of a payment.

As they left my office, Cam glanced at me with a look of confusion and disappointment so strong it burned deep in my chest. But all I could do was stare back and hope he wouldn’t decide to put into words what his gaze was accusing me of.

I hated how he saw me now, and I hated knowing that his opinion of me would only worsen, if I kept my secrets. But my secrets kept him safe, and that was more important than what he thought of the life I’d chosen.

His safety was more important than anything to me. Even if he would never know enough to understand that.