Blood Bound Page 87


“You sedated her?” I repeated, hoping I’d heard him wrong. But he only nodded, opening the freezer to shove several still mostly frozen pizzas inside. “With what?”

“Diazepam.” He lined up the food boxes on the counter next to the fridge, in descending size order.

“What’s that?”

“Valium. Liquid solution, in a glass of Coke,” Cam said, and he spoke over me before I could ask where the hell he’d gotten liquid valium. “It’s left over from what the doc gave me for Van, when she was…hystericalked the on’t worry, it’s mild, and I gave her a low dose. She’ll wake up in a couple of hours.” When I only watched him, silently demanding more of an explanation, he sighed and leaned against the short kitchen bar. “I had to. She was flipping out, threatening to kill me and go after Hadley herself. I couldn’t just let her storm out of here and get herself killed. And I was afraid the neighbors would hear her shout.”

I closed my eyes and sank into one of four chairs around the small breakfast table. “Okay…” He’d done it to keep her safe, and even if that wasn’t how I would have handled the situation, I couldn’t fault his intent. “Talk while we work.” I bent to pull two rolls of duct tape from my bag and tossed him one. “What’s the best way to get to Hadley? Do you have any idea where Tower would keep her?”

Cam shrugged and turned the tape over in his hand, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. “I assume he’d keep her wherever the project is headquartered, but I have no idea where that is.”

“It’s for the windows,” I said, holding up my own roll. I crossed into the living room and stood on a chair to tape the thick blackout curtains to the wall on first the left side, then the bottom, then the right, leaving the top open, because it was higher than the glass. Cavazos’s men wouldn’t be able to see anything that way.

“Won’t this look suspicious?” Cam asked, moving to help me tape the second living-room window.

“Nah. I tape my own windows sometimes, when I know he’s watching. They’ll assume I just want some privacy.”

“You should know I’m fighting an overwhelming urge to pull Cavazos’s intestines out slowly, though a small hole in his navel.”

I scrounged up a small smile. “You should know I’m fully committed to that same urge.”

Together, we taped the small bathroom window and the one in the only bedroom, then started turning on lights. I’d spent a grand total of ten minutes in the apartment before, but I remember thinking when I first saw it that it was perfect for keeping Travelers out. Of course, at the time, I’d assumed I was seeing the home of a target I’d need to track, and that he or she had been hiding from Travelers. But now I’d become that resident, hiding from Travelers—yet desperate to get my hands on one shadow-walker in particular.

The only bed, where Anne was cringing in her sleep, was built on a base of drawers, so there were no beneath-the-bed shadows to worry about. All of the closets were equipped with hardwired lights, so eliminating shadows there was as easy as pushing all the clothes—Cavazos had furnished some kind of creepy Barbie dream-date wardrobe for me—to one side. The kitchen cabinets all had glass fronts, which let light in and killed potential shadows. I pulled back the shower curtain and opened all the bathroom cabinet doors—you can never be too careful.

None of the living-room furniture cast a shadow big or dark enough to let someone in, and I’d just turned on the light in the small pantry when Cam spoke up from a bar stool behind me. “Maybe we should leave an opening,” he said. “For Kori.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, watching him. “You really think she’ll just bringadley back?”

He shrugged. “She won’t have any choice once she hears Anne’s message. And even if she doesn’t, I don’t think Kori wanted to take Hadley in the first place. I think she’ll be looking for an opportunity to make this right. We’ll have to trust her.”

“Like we trusted her half an hour ago?”

“She’s in a tough spot, Liv,” he insisted, but I could see beyond what he was saying to what he was actually thinking—his inner conflict was clear, from the deep lines carved in his forehead.

“Just like you are.”

He looked up, and his gaze was heavier than I’d ever seen it. “If she was given a direct order, she had no choice.”

“And you think this hypothetical order justifies what she did?”

His gaze hardened and he leaned forward with both elbows on the counter. “First of all, that order isn’t hypothetical, or theoretical, or mythical in the least. We both know Kori would never do something like this if she had any choice. She’d never hurt a child.”

Well, I couldn’t argue there, even though the facts seemed to be arguing for me.

“And second, no, I don’t think orders justify what she did. There’s no way to justify that. But I think she’s eager to make it right. To make up for it, if possible.” He hesitated. “We owe her the chance to do that. Leave her a way in, Liv. We’ll work on finding Hadley from our end, but we need to leave Kori a way to bring her back, if she gets a chance.”

I thought about that for a second, then nodded. “Fine. She can have the bathroom. But if someone else shadow-walks into this apartment, you better be prepared to shoot.”

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