Oath Bound (Unbound) - By Rachel Vincent Page 0,27

turned slowly, reluctant to put him at my back, even with his grandmother in the room. My focus raked the counter next to the fridge in search of a weapon. But there was nothing within easy reach.

I would have shown him my arm, if that would have gotten me released. But since it wouldn’t, I couldn’t see the point in capitulating. In letting him think I could be pushed around.

Instead of pulling my arm free from my sleeve, I spun and launched myself at Kris. I rammed him in the chest with my shoulder, just like my dad had taught me when I was twelve.

Air burst from his lungs and he stumbled backward into the table, which slid across the floor and into the far wall without even spilling his grandmother’s coffee.

Gran cackled as he tried to stand, holding his spine where it had hit the table, and I ran for freedom. I had both hands wrapped around the window frame when he grabbed my arms from behind.

I lost my balance when he jerked my arms behind me and would have fallen headfirst out the window if he hadn’t hauled me back in, pinning my wrists in one of his hands.

“Let go!” I twisted and kicked backward, but a second later something cold and hard wrapped around my wrists. A soft zipping sound froze me in place, and the plastic around my wrists got tighter. “Are you serious? A zip tie?” Why would he even have those if he wasn’t planning to take a hostage?

He spun me around to face him again, anger drawn in every line of his face, and when I tried to pull free, his grip on my arm tightened. “Just FYI, this is not the easy way.”

He pulled me into the living room. When I refused to sit on the couch, he gave my left shoulder a small shove, and I fell onto the center cushion, my hands trapped behind me.

He sat on the coffee table facing me, at eye-height again, and that’s when I saw where he was bleeding. My blade had sliced across his right forearm in two different places.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a total pain in the ass?” He rolled back his sleeve and flinched with one look at the long, shallow cuts. “I’m sorry about the zip tie. I don’t usually tie women up, but I don’t know what else to do with you.”

“Don’t apologize because I’m a woman. Apologize because you’re an asshole!” I shouted.

His grandmother laughed out loud from the kitchen doorway, holding her still-steaming mug of coffee. “I like her, Kris. I doubt Vanessa will, though.”

Who the hell was Vanessa?

Kris’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t even glance at his grandmother. “Just so we’re clear, the zip tie isn’t the only equipment at my disposal. I’m also fully prepared to tape your mouth shut.”

In reply, I leaned back on the couch and kicked him off the coffee table.

Four

Kris

The closet door opened down the hall as I was rinsing my cuts in the bathroom. I went for my gun out of habit, trailing water across the floor and blood across my arm.

“Kris?” Kori called, and I slid my gun back into its holster and stepped out of the bathroom with a clean white towel pressed to my arm. “What happened? Liv said you went after Kenley, but she lost your scent.”

She meant my psychic scent—the personal energy signature given off by my blood, which blood Trackers, like Olivia and Cam, could use to find people.

“No surprise there. The Towers’ nanny is a Jammer, right?” Being near a Jammer is like being in a psychic dead zone—you can’t be tracked, either by name or by blood. That’s a benefit those who can afford it will gladly pay for, but it comes with a couple of obvious disadvantages, as well.

“You went to Jake’s house?” She lifted the towel from my arm and her pale brows furrowed over eyes as deep a brown as our mother’s had been. “What the hell were you thinking? It’s a miracle you walked out of there with only—”

“Hey!” Sera shouted from Gran’s bedroom—the only one on the first floor.

I groaned. There was no good way to tell Kori about our new guest, but letting Sera deliver the news herself was number one on a long list of bad ways to get the job done.

Kori’s focus shifted from my wounds to the closed bedroom door. She dropped the rag into place on my arm and her hand