Seventeen

Kori

“I assume you know why we’re here,” Olivia said.

Cam flexed his fingers at his sides, like he wanted to be holding his gun, and I knew the only thing keeping his hands empty was his respect for me and the six years we’d both spent chained to Tower. Though we’d rarely actually worked together, Cam was the closest thing I’d had to a friend in the syndicate.

Until he’d left.

“You’re here because Cavazos’s first attempt was laughable.” And because I’d dared him to send someone more worthy, hoping he’d choose at least half of the pair now facing us. This was my only opportunity to talk to them without disobeying a direct order from Jake, and I needed to talk to them. I needed to understand why Liv had used me and Cam had abandoned me.

Yes, they’d been under orders, but so had I, yet I’d done everything I could to help them. And I’d paid for that in the basement.

“Olivia Warren?” Ian asked, and I actually looked away from the double threat of my former friends to glance at him in surprise. If Olivia and Cam hadn’t also been caught off guard, my mistake might have cost me my life.

Jake would kill me if I lost Ian.

Liv frowned. “How did you…?”

“Your reputation precedes you,” Ian said, and I did a quick mental inventory of every conversation we’d had since meeting at the party not quite forty hours earlier. I hadn’t told him Olivia’s last name. Names are power, and I wouldn’t have given him that much power over a friend. Even a friend who’d ambushed me, tied me up, stolen my key, and ruined both my career and my life. “I’m guessing this isn’t a friendly visit,” Ian said, and Cam actually chuckled over the understatement.

“This is business. But we’re free afterward if you want to get a drink.”

“I’m sorry, Kori,” Liv said. “This isn’t how we want it.”

“Any chance you could just claim you never found us?” Ian asked. “As a favor to an old friend?” He glanced at me for emphasis.

“That’s not how it works.” Olivia sighed, a sound heavy with reluctance, and directed her next words to Ian. “Ruben Cavazos extended an invitation, and it went unanswered. Come with us now and meet with him voluntarily. Pretty please.”

“And if I decline?”

“If you decline, there will be weapons and threats. Inevitably Kori will say something she doesn’t really mean and Cam will get his feelings hurt, and I don’t think anyone wants that kind of drama in a public park.”

“Is she serious?” Ian asked, and I nodded.

“Is she armed?”

I nodded again, my own fingers itching from lack of a weapon. “Gun on her right hip, blade on her right ankle. Unless something’s changed in the last two months.”

“A lot has changed,” Olivia said. “But not that.” She pulled her jacket back to reveal a pistol in a holster on her hip, then raised one brow at me in challenge. “As long as we’re playing nice, what’s your count? Three blades and a nine mil?”

“We’re unarmed,” I admitted, because she’d figure it out soon anyway, and Olivia laughed out loud.

“She means it,” Cam said, studying my eyes, and I realized he knew me better than Olivia did. I’d gone to school with Liv, but I’d truly grown up in Tower’s service, with Cam. “Jake won’t use her as security anymore, after what happened.”

“No thanks to you,” I snapped, my temper wound so tight I was afraid that if I inhaled too deeply, something would pop, and I’d just explode. “I have yet to earn back the right to bear arms.” No matter what the second amendment said. But I could use whatever I took from them until this little conflict was over.

“Sorry, Kori.” Olivia pulled her gun, aiming at the grass between us, but I held my ground and directed my reply to Ian, who looked just as calm now as he had in the alley the day before.

“She’s not going to shoot you, and she can’t shoot me,” I said softly, glad none of the other park-goers were close enough to see Liv’s weapon. But if things escalated, we were in for some very public trouble.

“Because of the childhood binding?” Ian asked, and Olivia glanced at me in surprise.

“Have you been telling stories, Kori?”

“Only the ones that are true.” My next words were for Ian, though I couldn’t take my attention off Liv’s gun. “She can’t intentionally hurt me, and if I ask for her help, she has to give it. Which, I’m willing to bet, would put her smack in the middle of two conflicting compulsions. Right, Liv?”

Olivia’s eyes narrowed, but both her gun and her voice held steady. “That sword cuts both ways, Kori. Don’t make me ask you for help taking Holt to Cavazos,” she said, and I groaned, mentally.

“I don’t think it’ll come to that,” Cam said, pulling his own gun smoothly.

“You’re not going to shoot me,” I insisted, desperately hoping I was right.

Olivia shrugged. “He shot me.”

“He was under orders.”

Cam took aim at my leg. “That hasn’t changed. Holt comes with us, or I shoot you. Don’t make me shoot you, Kori.” He didn’t want to spill my blood in a public park—more blood than I could possibly clean up—but he would.

“You owe me. Both of you.” I could hear the fury in my voice, and saying that was like popping the top on a shaken can of soda—the rest just came shooting out. “You used me. You got me shot, then you left me there to—” I bit my sentence off before the words could fall out into the daylight and leave me exposed by the truth. “You defected, without a word. Kenley heard it from one of the da—” Another pause, while I rerouted my sentence and I barely noticed Cam’s surprise over the aborted expletive. “From one of Jake’s secretaries.”