Blood Bound. Rachel Vincent

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