“It could be worse.” Kenley wadded up the bandage and dropped it on the floor. “The stitches have dissolved and it’s only a little red.” Which kind of figured, because the rest of me was black and blue. “Get cleaned up. He’s sending an escort for us in a few minutes,” she said, while I stepped out of my underwear and dropped my grimy bra on the floor. Kenley kicked them into the opposite corner, then stuck one hand under the water and grimaced. “They could at least make it warm.”

But they wouldn’t. The basement cells weren’t built for comfort. They were built for isolation and torture. They were built for hour after hour of darkness and silence, because when you can’t see anything and you can’t hear anything, you have no choice but to think about what you did, and how you would never, ever do it again.

But here’s the thing. I would do it all over again, if I had the chance. I would take the gunshot wound, and the silence, and the darkness, and the worst Jonah could throw at me, if it meant sending Noelle’s kid back home where she belonged.

I stepped into the shower and gasped as freezing water poured over my face and body. I let it soak my hair, then I opened my mouth and drank just a little, one hand propped on the tile wall for balance, because I hadn’t eaten in days, and the room was starting to spin.

While I washed my hair slowly, shocked wide-awake by the cold water, my sister pounded on the one-way glass. “She’s gonna need something clean to wear. Actual clothes, this time! And a towel!”

I lathered the cracked bar of soap while water and shampoo suds ran down my body to swirl through the drain at my feet. It felt good to be clean on the outside, even if I might never be truly clean on the inside, ever again.

Five minutes later, clean and still damp, my hair dripping on clothes that weren’t mine and didn’t quite fit, I stepped out of the cell I’d spent almost six weeks in with one arm around my sister, as she half held me up. Milligan didn’t look at me, and neither did either of the grunts Tower had sent to escort us to Kenley’s apartment. But as the door swung shut behind me, literally closing on a chapter of my life I never wanted to reread, a man stepped out of the shadows in the hallway and crossed beefy arms over a barrel chest.

“Won’t be the same around here without you, Kori,” Jonah Tower said, cruel laughter echoing behind every syllable, and at the sound of his voice, my heart thumped painfully, pumping remembered pain and fear along with the blood in my veins. He stepped closer and whispered into my ear, too softly for Kenley to hear. “But I think you’ll be back. And if you can’t give Jake what he wants, I get to end you. Then the younger Miss Daniels and I are gonna get to know each other real well.”

Kenley shied away from the hand he laid on her shoulder, and I stepped between them, close enough that I could smell the beer on his breath. “I’ll be back all right, but you’re not gonna see me coming. And if you’ve laid a finger on my sister, I’m going to tear them off one at a time and shove them down your throat until you choke on your own sins.”

Two

Ian

“Have I told you you’re an idiot?” Aaron asked, staring through the windshield at the tall iron gate and the even taller house behind it. If such a monstrosity could even be called a house. It was more like a modern fortress.

“About twenty times since my plane landed.” I flipped down the driver’s-side sunshade and checked my tie in the mirror.

“Has it sunk in yet?”

I glanced at him in the thick shadows of the car’s interior, lit only by the green numbers scrolling across the radio’s display in the dashboard. “Your puny verbal barbs are no match for my thick skull.”

“You do have a freakishly thick skull,” Aaron said, flipping through the stations on my rental car’s radio. “But that won’t stop a bullet. They may look civilized in tuxedos and sequins, but they’re really monsters in men’s clothing, every single one of them. They’re going to eat you alive in there, Ian.”

“Then may they choke on my corpse.”

Aaron punched the button to turn off the radio, uncharacteristically serious in concession to the job at hand. “Eight years since you left, and nothing’s changed. You’re still ready to charge in half-cocked and make the world bend to your will, consequences be damned.”

“That’s not true.” The kid I’d been back then was idealistic but soft. Smart but naive. That kid had been burned by the real world—roasted alive—and I’d risen from his ashes, ready to breathe fire of my own. “Now I’m fully cocked, and well aware of the consequences. As are you.”

He nodded at the somber reminder. “You sure you don’t want me to go in with you? I could grab a monkey suit and be back in a second.” Aaron was a Traveler, which meant he could step into the shadow of a tree outside my car and into his own bedroom in the space of a single breath, and be back just as fast. “You’re gonna need someone you trust at your back.”

Unfortunately for Aaron—or fortunately, depending on your perspective—traveling was one of the most common Skills in the world. Aaron’s range was a little above average, but his accuracy was questionable at best, and unless his motivation was personal, no one would ever call him punctual. Which meant he had no value whatsoever to the Skilled syndicates.

That fact had kept him safe from their interest for years. So safe, in fact, I’d often wondered if he was faking his own incompetence for that very reason. He wouldn’t be the first to try it. Hell, I’d tried it. But that wasn’t why I couldn’t use his help.