as mine,” a man’s voice said, and I stopped in my tracks. Either she’d actually found someone, or the other half of her split personality was decidedly unfeminine.
“You can call me Sera,” she said as I pushed that last door open, my pulse rushing so loud in my ears that it threatened to drown out her soft words. How close was she to getting shot? Why wasn’t she dead already? Was it true that he couldn’t kill her—whoever he was—and if so, why not?
“What else?” Sera said as I stared at a vaguely person-shaped outline in the last shadowy office between me and the bathroom. “Can you lie? That’s a stupid question, isn’t it? Even if you say no, how do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“I can lie, unless you tell me not to,” the man said as I aimed my gun at the person-shaped shadow. It didn’t move, so I pulled a penlight from my left pocket and flinched when the power button clicked beneath my thumb. But neither Sera nor the man with her heard, and the shadow turned out to be a custodian’s uniform hung on the top handle of a filing cabinet.
“Okay, then, let’s try this out. Are you here alone?”
“No,” he said. “My partner took the other wing.”
“Just one man?” Sera paused as I snuck back across the hall, and I had the feeling she was considering. “He doesn’t stand a chance.”
I’d come to the same conclusion. Kori and Ian could dispatch a lone gunman in their sleep. What I couldn’t figure out was why Sera was still alive.
“Okay. I suspect our privacy is nearing its end. Tell me where they put Kenley Daniels, and I’ll let you go. You have my word.”
“Like you let Ned go?” At the mention of the dead man, I glanced at him, still propped up across from the bathroom, less than a foot from me now. “You can see how well that worked out for him.”
I could see the speaker by then, through the crack where the bathroom door hadn’t quite closed. He was tall and fair-skinned. Reasonably thick, like most of Tower’s musclemen. But he had to be Skilled, to have gotten into a warehouse locked from the inside. Had he come through the bathroom, after we’d left it? Was that why she’d turned the lights on? To keep a Traveler from escaping?
But that made no sense, because he still had his gun, which should have meant he was the one in power. Yet his gun was aimed at the floor, and he showed no more inclination to use it than she showed fear of it.
“That wasn’t my fault. I set him free,” Sera insisted, and on the wall, the shadow of her hand pushed back the shadow of her hair, hanging over her silhouette.
“Which is exactly what got him killed,” the man insisted. “You broke his binding, and she has no use for those she can’t control.”
She? Julia? How the hell could Sera have broken Ned’s binding?
That was the last unanswered question I could take. I shoved the door open and aimed at the man’s head. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Sera gasped, and the man swung his gun up in my direction.
“Stop!” Sera shouted, and he took his finger off the trigger. “Put your gun down. In fact, give me the damn thing!”
To my absolute shock, Julia Tower’s muscleman clicked the safety switch on, then handed his pistol to her by its grip.
Sera held it with the caution of someone who’s never pulled a trigger in her life. But to her credit, she didn’t set it in the sink behind her or drop it in the toilet to her left. Though she might have ejected the clip, if she’d known how.
“What the hell is going on here?” I demanded, still aiming at the man’s head. “How did you break Ned’s bindings?”
“Kris, stand down,” Sera said. “Mitch isn’t going to hurt anyone. Are you?” She glanced at the man with one brow raised, and Mitch shrugged.
“That’s up to you.”
She frowned. “Well, then...don’t hurt anyone.”
“Ever?” He stared back at her in challenge and seemed to enjoy her moment of confusion. “Even if someone tries to kill you, you want me to just stand there and let it happen, if the alternative is hurting him?”
“Of course not.” Sera glanced at me, then her tense focus slid to my gun before she turned back to Mitch. “Just...don’t hurt anyone until I say otherwise. Okay?”
That time a shrug was