Oath Bound (Unbound) - By Rachel Vincent Page 0,128

this is over?”

“I think she’d be bored in the Outback, and I’m not leaving here without her.” He glanced at my show of skepticism and exhaled slowly. “We’re going to end it, Kris,” he confessed at last. “Not just Julia and the Tower syndicate. Cavazos, too. Kori can’t go on with her life knowing that other people are still suffering the same things she went through. This won’t be over for her until they all fall down. And if they don’t...well, she’ll die trying to make it happen. We both will.”

“And after we take down Cavazos?” Because they weren’t doing it without me.

“Then we’ll head to the West Coast and fight the good fight with a view of the ocean.” Ian shrugged. “At least that’ll keep us busy.”

That it would. And they wouldn’t be alone.

“So, what’s with the nightcap?” Ian closed the laptop with a soft click. “Post-coital regret?”

“Not even kinda.” I would never regret a single moment I’d spent with Sera. Except for kidnapping her. “I just need to think.”

“Do you find that easier, staring at the bottom of a bottle?”

“Not always.” I sipped from my glass, relishing the mild burn.

He pushed the computer toward the middle of the table. “You’re more like Kori than you know.”

“I’m older,” I insisted. “Which means she’s more like me.”

“You both have big hearts. The only difference is that she hides hers behind guns and a foul mouth, and you hide yours behind guns and a smile. So...where’s the smile?”

“I must have left it in bed.”

“Sera’s?”

I took another sip. “You all seem to be forgetting that it’s actually my bed.”

“Not when she’s in it,” he said, and I had to concede the point.

I drained my glass, then set it down and studied him critically for a moment. “I need to talk about what just happened with Sera. You game?”

Ian chuckled. “Of course. Should I reciprocate, to cement our friendship?”

I flinched. “Please don’t do that.”

That time he laughed. “I promise that was an empty threat.” He poured another inch into my glass. “So. What’s up with you and Sera?”

“Everything. Up there, we just—”

He put one hand flat on the table between us, and the gesture felt very much like a stop sign. “I know what you did. No need to elaborate.”

“Not that. Well, there was that, too.” I frowned, wondering if I should start over. “But this isn’t about sex. Before that, she showed me something. She let me in.”

“Still sounds like we’re talking about sex...”

“Well, we’re not. I owe her, Ian.”

Ian frowned and crossed both arms over his chest. “Was she that much better than you in bed?”

“Ha, ha,” I said when his grin told me he was kidding. “She likes me, Ian. I think she likes me a lot, and I don’t want that to change.”

“What makes you think it will?”

How could it not, once she found out that I’d failed to stop what happened to her?

“I was supposed to do something, a while back.” I took another sip from my glass, then started over from the beginning. A beginning I hadn’t even realized our story—mine and Sera’s—had until that moment. “For years, I’ve been wondering about Noelle. About why she picked me. My bed. My ears. My pencil. I’ve always felt like there must have been a reason, but I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t make any of the lines make sense, and I couldn’t stop anything they warned me about. I couldn’t even understand the warnings.”

“And now?”

“Now...” I frowned and looked up from the table to meet his gaze. “I know this sounds crazy, but I think it was about Sera all along.”

His dark brows rose. “You think Noelle slept with you off and on for six years because of Sera?”

I shrugged. “Well, I hope she had a more personal motivation for the sex part of the equation, but I think she stayed and talked in her sleep with me because of Sera. Her name’s all through that journal, Ian. Noelle warned me over and over, and I couldn’t see it. I was supposed to stop him. I was supposed to protect her and her family. I was supposed to save her baby, and her body, and her future.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah.” I nodded, just to underline my certainty. “Maybe Elle knew I’d wind up with Sera. Maybe she didn’t. But she knew I was supposed to be there three months ago when that bastard shoved a knife through her belly and through her baby.” I drained my glass while he