“I am trying to help,” Liv insisted. “But Hadley’s not a random target. Someone planned this, and paid for it, and is probably pissed off that his hired gun misfired. And if I’m going to keep the next guy from succeeding where Hunter failed, I need to know why someone high up in the Tower syndicate wants your daughter dead.”

“I don’t know!” Anne cried. “She’s just a normal little girl. Happy, healthy, friendly. Loved by anyone who’s ever met her.”

“Is she Skilled?” I asked, without truly thinking the question through. A child of two Skilled parents would inherit the abilities of one or the other, or possibly the Skill of a grandparent. But a child of one Skilled parent had only a fifty-percent chance of inheriting that Skill. If Hadley was a Tracker, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that she was mine.

“I don’t know yet,” Anne said miserably. “She’s still so young….”

“Okay, you need to hide,” Liv said, and I could tell from the slump of her shoulders that she’d given up on the paternity angle, at least for now. “Take Hadley and your parents, and go somewhere random. Someplace you have no connection to. Pay in cash and don’t tell anyone where you’re going.” That was so she couldn’t be easily found through traditional means. But what neither of us wanted to say aloud was that if Tower sent another Tracker, they’d eventually be found, no matter what.

“Leave your cell phones behind,” I said, glad to finally have something helpful to contribute. “You can get prepaid ones on the road. And don’t use your real names.” That part was obvious, but couldn’t be stressed enough. “If you have access to a car you don’t own, use it.” Tower had contacts in the police department, and if he wanted Hadley badly enough, he’d use them. “And don’t tell us where you’re going.” Because then Tower could use me against Anne without even making me track her.

“But check in with one of us every hour,” Liv added, and in spite of the circumstances, that tight feeling in my chest eased a little. She wasn’t trying to get rid of me—yet, anyway.

“Okay…” Furniture springs groaned over the line again, and Anne’s footsteps echoed on a hard-surface floor. “I’ll call you back in an hour, from the road.”

“Good luck,” Liv said. Then she hung up and turned to me, gaze heavy with the weight of what we’d stumbled onto, and what had yet to be said. “I need to do something about this….” She held up her injured arm. “Then, I guess I owe you an explanation.”

I nodded and opened my car door, then sucked in a deep, cold breath. Yes, Liv owed me some information, but I wasn’t the only one in the dark about what had really happened that night, six years ago, and if she showed me hers, I’d have to show her mine. That was only fair.

But I couldn’t think of a single good way to tell the woman I wanted to be with more than anything in the world that I’d slept with her best friend.

Thirteen

I followed Cam into his apartment and he closed the door behind us. The scrape of the dead bolt sliding home sounded louder and more final than it should have—a reminder that I was somewhere I shouldn’t have been, doing something I shouldn’t have been doing, even though I was no longer being compelled. Anne had never officially asked me to help protect Hadley. But I couldn’t just let a five-year-old—not to mention the family hiding her—get slaughtered. And I couldn’t protect Hadley from the Tower syndicate without whatever information Cam would be able to give me about his own employer.

And that was assuming I’d be any good to them at all. At the moment, with an open, bloody wound, I was a walking target for any blood Tracker. My arm stung, and ached, and throbbed, and every movement pulled the makeshift bandage, which tugged on the wound itself.

“Have a seat, and I’ll get my stuff.” Cam pulled out a bar stool on his way past the kitchen, and I sat, resting my arm on the counter. He opened the front closet and hauled out the huge duffel bag taking up most of the floor space, then hefted it onto the bar with a solid thunk, while I surreptitiously studied the way his arms and still-bare chest bulged with each movement.

Training agreed with him. A lot. So much, in fact, that I had to focus on the pain in my arm and the duffel bag on the counter to keep from staring. Again. He was going to have to put a shirt on.

“That’s your first-aid kit?” I glanced at him in amusement. “You could fit a body in there.”

“Most of one, anyway,” he said, and it took me a minute to realize he was joking. Cam unzipped the bag and started pulling out supplies. Alcohol, gauze, medical tape and several small bottles I didn’t recognize. “There’s some extra bandages and splints and stuff in the bathroom.”

“Do you really need all this?” Or had somebody turned into a hypochondriac?

Cam’s brows rose in amusement. “My job’s a little more adventurous than your average nine-to-five.”

So was mine, but my first-aid kit would have fit in a bread box. Of course, I was free to turn down the jobs most likely to get me killed, but Cam wasn’t free to do much of anything.

“Okay, let’s take a look….” He sat on the stool next to mine and gently peeled the duct tape from my arm. The paper towels had started to stick where the blood was dryingwinced when he carefully tugged them free. “It looks like the bleeding’s mostly stopped. Which is good. But we have to clean it, so it might start up again, a little.”