There were only three.

“Kori, we need you to turn around and put your hands behind your head,” the guy in the middle said. Roscher. I’d known him since he signed on two years ago, but now he was talking to me like I was a child. Or insane. They thought I’d lost it.

I could work with that.

“He was right,” I said, letting my voice go light and shaky as I stepped forward. “Death was the only way out.”

“Stay there,” Roscher said, as they all three aimed at my chest. “Turn around and show us your hands.”

“My hands?” I stepped into the hall and took a moment to be grateful they were all on my right. As was the exit. No one could sneak up behind me. “You want to see my hands?” I held up my left hand, red and slick with Jonah’s blood. “See?”

When they all glanced at my bloodstained hand, I dropped into a squat and swung Jonah’s gun up, firing twice in rapid succession. Roscher and the man to his left stumbled back, hit, their bullets whizzing over my head.

“Drop it!” The third man called, aiming at my head, no doubt picturing how grateful Jake would be when he’d caged me where his coworkers failed.

His mistake.

I fired again, and a hole appeared in his shirt, right over his heart. He was dead before he hit the ground, and his bullet shattered the glass I’d already cracked.

I felt bad about killing them. But not too bad. They would have locked me back up. They would have helped Jake use me to get to Ian and Kenley. They would have let more bad things happen to Vanessa. And if our positions had been reversed, they would have killed me in a heartbeat.

Pulse racing, I snatched the key ring from Jonah’s belt and checked the other basement cells one by one until I found Vanessa, huddled in the corner on her bed in her underwear, holding one arm out from her body, because of the series of bright red cuts marching up her forearm in neat, bloody rows. She had a black eye and bruises on both legs. But she looked intact.

Van burst into tears the moment she saw me.

“Are you okay?” I asked as she crawled to the edge of the bloodstained mattress.

She nodded, in spite of obvious pain. “Are you alone?”

“Not anymore. Cover your ears.” She put both hands over her ears and I shot into the ceiling, using bullets four through six from Jonah’s full clip to shatter at least three of the infrared bulbs. Then I helped her off the bed and leaned outside the door to flip the switch controlling the regular lights. Her cell fell into shallow darkness, and I felt my way into the only patch of true dark, beneath the hole in the infrared grid. There was only room for a single step.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and squeezed her hand. Vanessa stepped into the deeper darkness with me and out into the bathroom in Olivia’s office.

Someone yelped, startled, and I opened my eyes to find myself staring at my brother, Kris, who’d been about to step into the bathroom. I hadn’t seen him in nearly two years, but nothing had changed except for his hair, which he now wore in short, dark blond waves. “Kris!” I dropped Vanessa’s hand and threw my arms around my brother.

He hugged me back, so tight I could hardly breathe. Then he let go and held me at arm’s length. “Why are you covered in blood every time I see you?”

“Be fuckin’ grateful it’s someone else’s,” I said, smiling in spite of the grim circumstances of our reunion.

“Still got that dirty mouth,” a gruff, shaky voice said, and I looked over Kris’s shoulder to find my grandmother frowning at me in gray slacks and a cardigan over a white blouse.

“I learned every four-letter word I know from you, Gran,” I said, and couldn’t resist a smile, even as I leaned closer to whisper into Kris’s ear. “Why the hell did you bring her here?”

“She thinks it’s 2004. Where was I supposed to leave her?” he asked, and I shrugged, conceding the point, then tugged him away from our grandmother.

“Have you talked to Kenley?” I asked, sinking onto Olivia’s office couch as Van followed my grandmother into the office.

“Yeah.” Kris sat next to me while Olivia handed Van a spare set of clothes. “She’s in a lot of pain, and that Meghan woman’s about out of juice.”

“Okay, Ian wasn’t in the basement when I was there, so I’m going back for him—”

“Who’s Ian?” Kris asked before I could finish my sentence.

“He’s…complicated. But he saved Kenley’s life and he helped her break my binding to Jake, so I’m not going to leave him there.”

“Okay. What can I do?”

“Um…get me George Barker, Tower’s other Binder. He’s the one who sealed Kenley’s oath. We’ll give him a chance to unseal it voluntarily and save his own life. If he won’t…there’s always plan B.”

“The B stands for bullet?” Kris said, grinning.

“What else. I’m going to take Gran and Vanessa to Kenley, then I’m heading back to Jake’s, through the hole I punched in his infrared grid in the basement.”

“How much security does Barker have?” Liv asked, perching on the edge of her own desk while across the room my grandmother was interrogating Vanessa under the misguided assumption that she was Kris’s new girlfriend.

“Probably more than usual, now that Kenley’s MIA. Kris could use another gun if you’re interested.” But I wouldn’t ask her. I wouldn’t force her to help me, when I could very well be leading us both to our deaths.