The document was short and to the point. It said that I would protect Julia Tower from any threat rising from the demise of her brother until such threat was over. I insisted that Barker add an expiration date—Julia wanted five years, but I whittled her down to two, max—as well as a statement that both Vanessa and Kori would be released from the basement the moment Jake Tower died.

I tried to end their terms of service, too, along with Kenley’s—why not shoot for the moon?—but Julia insisted she didn’t have the authority to do that. And we both knew she wouldn’t have freed them even if she could have.

The phrasing was all very careful, because Julia could not actually ask me to kill her brother or offer to reward me directly for that service.

Julia signed. I signed. Barker stamped the agreement with a bloody thumbprint, symbolizing his own will to seal the deal. And after several tense moments, we agreed to leave the document with him, because neither of us was willing to trust the other with it. Then we got back in the car and rolled steadily toward Jake Tower’s fortress of a home, while I tried to think about exactly how I wanted to end his life instead of how dirty I felt, like I’d just signed over a piece of my own soul.

Thirty-One

Kori

“Let me the hell out of here or I’m going to rip your head off and finger paint with your fucking gray matter!” I shouted, roughly the twentieth variation of the same threat. Plausibility and creativity had expired about six versions earlier.

“That’s gonna be kinda hard to pull off, with you in there and me out here,” Jonah called back over the intercom, and I pounded on the glass again.

“Then come face me like a man!” My demands were useless—the glass pounding even more so—but I was alive with rage that had no outlet. My fists itched for Jonah’s face. I was finally free to fight, but couldn’t reach the target.

“Honey, if I go in there, only one of us is coming back out,” Jonah said.

“That’s the general idea!”

Silence answered me, and my rage burned on, unspent. I whirled around and scanned the cell for something to throw. Something to break. But there was nothing. I couldn’t even tell if this was the same room I’d occupied before, or just a neighboring look-alike.

Either way, there was nothing that wasn’t bolted to the floor, except for the worthless two-inch-thick mattress and… My gaze hovered over the toilet, one of the few differences between Jake’s homemade prison and a real one. This toilet was commercial, not detentional. The tank had a lid. A heavy, porcelain lid.

Someone was going to get his ass reamed for overlooking that security risk.

I picked up the tank lid and hefted it, getting used to the weight. If it would kill a Hollywood zombie, it would kill an actual asshole.

“You’re scared, aren’t you?” I demanded, stalking closer to the glass, my porcelain weapon hanging at my right side. “You’re scared to face me, now that I’m armed and free—” I bit off my own words in a sudden belated spasm of common sense. They didn’t know I was unbound, and telling Jonah would mean giving up my only advantage.

“Now that I’m free to fight back,” I finished instead. Because Jake hadn’t ordered me not to, this time. “Does your brother know what a sniveling coward you are?” I pounded the glass with one fist. “Is there anyone else out there? Can you guys actually see Jonah’s balls shrivel up and retreat indoors, or are they so small to begin with that you can’t tell any difference?”

“Keep talking, Kori,” Jonah said over the intercom, fury riding his voice like light rides a bolt of lightning. “Every word you say buys you a little more pain.” But beneath his worthless threats, I heard what I really wanted to hear. Laughter. He wasn’t alone, and the other men were laughing at him. Helping me taunt him into disobeying orders, at least long enough to open the door to my cell.

I glared at the one-way glass, pissed off that my reflection was all I could see. “A little pain, huh? If memory serves, a little’s about all you have to offer.”

I couldn’t hear the laughter that followed from the peanut gallery, but I could practically feel it.

“You know you’re in there because of your own stupidity, right?” Jonah said over the staticky intercom, obviously trying to claim the verbal upper hand. “You walked right into a trap.”

Unfortunately I couldn’t argue with that. But…

“It wasn’t your trap, though, was it? Leaving me in the dark last time wasn’t your idea, either, right? Was it Jake? No, it was Julia, wasn’t it? The ideas come from Julia. The orders come from Jake. But what good are you, Jonah? What do you contribute to the Tower team effort?” I paused to give him time to answer, but I wasn’t the least bit surprised when he didn’t.

“Nothing. That’s what you contribute,” I shouted. “They could give your job to a fucking monkey and the result would be the same. How does it feel to know you contribute nothing?”

The intercom buzzed with static for a moment before he spoke. “It’s not going to work. I’m not coming in there.”

“Because you’re a fucking coward!” My vision started to darken with fury and I swung the tank lid without thinking, smashing it against the glass. The glass cracked but held. The porcelain shattered into several large chunks and a zillion tiny slivers of white glass.

Shit! My fearsome bludgeoning weapon had been reduced to half a dozen mediocre stabbing weapons. Still, any one of them was sharp enough to open a vein if wielded with enough enthusiasm. But to even have a shot at Jonah, I’d have to get him in the room.