Ruben rose and as we retreated, as silently and carefully as we’d come, a spot on my inner thigh began to burn—a tiny ring of fire—and I smiled through the minor pain. My mark had just died. I was no longer bound to Ruben Cavazos.

I hadn’t truly believed it would happen until that moment. In the back of my mind, I’d always assumed something would go wrong. I’d fail to actually physically hand the child to her father, or to jump through whatever crazy hoop I didn’t remember from the contract I’d signed. Or—Heaven forbid—Hadley would get caught in the cross fire and die before she’d officially been returned to her father.

But now that was all over. I was unbound. I was free of Ruben. Free to be with Cam. And cedo nulli had regained its meaning for me. All that was left was to lead our little expedition safely out of enemy territory, and I could start trying to free Cam from his binding, so we could live the rest of our lives however the hell we wanted.

We turned the corner onto the hallway connecting the two wings and with Hadley’s hand in Anne’s and that fresh, blissful burn on my thigh, I was feeling cautiously optimistic for the first time in a year and a half. Thanks to Elle’s foresight, Kori’s unwitting but heartfelt assistance and Anne’s determination to get her daughter back, I’d done the impossible—I’d found the child with no name and rescued a friend’s daughter. I felt invincible.

Right up until the alarm started shrieking all around us.

“Shit!” Meika shouted, but I could hardly hear her over the high-pitched screeching pouring from overhead. Hadley started crying, and Anne pulled her daughter close, eyes wide with terror, trying to see everywhere all at once.

Cavazos drew his gun and pressed his back against the wall, motioning for the rest of us to do the same. Then he leaned closer to be heard over the alarm. “Lockdown!” he shouted into my ear, and my head swam from the cacophony. Gone was his typical look of amused schadenfreude, and in its place I found an even scarier mercenary determination. “The darkrooms won’t work now. We’ll have to find an exit and make a run for it.”

But less than a second later, Kori stepped around the corner ahead, a gun in one hand, a handheld radio in the other. She aimed the gun in our general direction—a wordless order to stop where we were—and shouted something I couldn’t hear into the radio. A second after that, the alarm died, but its screeching echo lived on in my head.

“Found them!” I heard Kori shout into her radio, once the ringing in my ears had mostly faded. “They’re in the back hall. Four adults and the girl.”

I turned to head back the other way and a steel panel slid out from one side of the wall and slammed into the other, a security measure out of some over-the-top spy movie, meant to divorce the family living quarters from the danger. It worked. We were cut off from both sides.

“Who do we have?” a staticky voice demanded over the radio, while Ruben and I aimed at the floor near Kori’s feet. I was starting to wish we’d given Meika a gun.

“Anne Liang,” Kori said through clenched teeth, staring at me in some intense combination of anger and remorse. “Olivia Warren. Ruben Cavazos and his wife, Michaela.”

“Cavazos? What the hell is he doing here?” the radio voice asked, and as the last of the ringing faded from my ears, I recognized the voice as Tower’s. The man himself was on the way.

“The girl is Cavazos’s daughter, sir.”

“Son of a bitch,” Tower roared, and we all breathed through a single moment of tense silence while he recovered from the shock. “Get the girl. Kill the rest.”

Hadley screamed and Anne pushed her between us, trying to guard her from all sides, while Ruben stepped in front of us all, drawing Kori’s aim and ready to fire in return.

Kori’s jaw tensed and her forehead crinkled with obvious pain. “Can’t, sir. Contractual conflict with two of the intruders.” Her voice was taut with the conflict, and for one brief moment, I thought it might all work out okay. She couldn’t kill me or Anne—at the very least, that should give us a few extra seconds to work with.

Then Tower’s voice crackled from the radio again. “Fine. Shoot those you can. Caballero, kill the rest.”

I froze in shock as Cam stepped around the corner to stand next to Kori, aiming an unfamiliar .45 in our direction. “I’m so sorry, Liv,” he said, so softly I could barely hear him. “Tower called my new phone. I had to answer.”

Fuck! That was my fault. I’d called Kori from Cam’s new number. She’d obviously given it to Tower before she walked into our trap—she’d probably had no choice.

“Liv, help us.” Anne squeezed my arm and I pulled it from her grip to keep from compromising my own aim.

And in that moment, all of Elle’s planning swirled around in my head, winding rapidly toward a single point of darkness that was this specific instant in time. She’d seen this. Me and Cam, guns pointed at each other across the gulf of our divided loyalty.

He’d kill me because he had to.

I’d kill him to protect Anne. Because I had to. I’d have to even if I weren’t bound to her, because she was innocent, and so was Hadley.

Light flashed from the end of Kori’s gun, and an instant later I heard the thwup. Anne and I lunged in front of Hadley. Cavazos threw Meika against the wall, covering her with his own body, even as he returned fire. Kori’s bullet split the air between me and Ruben. He fired again. Kori screamed and lurched to one side, then grabbed her left shoulder. Blood poured between her fingers and over the grip of the gun she still clutched.