Oath Bound (Unbound) - By Rachel Vincent Page 0,43
And that Kori used to be security for Jake Tower. That’s it.”
His gaze narrowed on me in suspicion. “She never said she worked security. How did you know that?”
“Because after being locked up with you nutcases for the past couple of hours, I finally realized where I’ve seen her. In nearly every photograph of Jake Tower ever taken. As his bodyguard.”
“Why were you looking at pictures of Jake?” Kori asked.
I exhaled heavily and folded my hands on the table. “Research. I wasn’t about to walk into the Tower estate and ask for a favor without already knowing everything I could possibly find out. No matter what you might think about me, I’m not an idiot.” But I’d evidently said something wrong. Kris had been staring at me for the past ten minutes, which was unnerving enough on its own. But now his gaze looked feverish. Eager, like a cat who’d just caught a mouse.
“Favor? You went to ask them a favor? Not to hire them? Why would the Towers owe you a favor?”
Shit. But it was too late to backtrack. “They don’t owe me a favor. I just thought it was worth a shot.”
No one bought that. Hell, I didn’t even buy it.
A second earlier, Vanessa and Gran had looked ready to curtail his line of questioning, and maybe even let me go. But that all changed in a single heartbeat. And too late, I realized I’d forgotten to be careful around the Reader.
“She’s lying.” Anne sat up straight in her chair. “They do owe her a favor. She believes they do, anyway.” And suddenly everyone was looking at me as if I’d grown a second head.
Damn, I hate Readers.
“Why would the Towers owe you?” Kris demanded, and I could feel their interest like a living thing, ready to burrow deep inside me and feast on my secrets.
“They don’t.” My mind raced as I tried to decide what I could say to make them let me go. “I was totally over the line, asking them for a favor. I never met any of them before this afternoon. I swear on my full name.” Which—with any luck—they would never know.
“Anne?” Kori said.
The Reader frowned without taking her gaze from me. “I don’t taste anything false, but that doesn’t make sense. Why would you ask the Towers for a favor, if you don’t have any connection to them? That takes one hell of a set of balls.” Yet she looked less impressed than incredulous.
“How did you even get in to see Julia?” Kori asked. “Kris said you were in her office, with just her and Lynn?” She glanced at her brother for confirmation and he nodded. “Jake didn’t meet with strangers in his home. Not even prospective clients. That’s too much of a security risk. I can’t see Julia veering from that policy, especially considering that we’re not the only ones who want her dead, thanks to rumors that she was involved in her brother’s murder.”
“Rumors?” I couldn’t help but ask. The Towers were my business now, at least until I figured out what I’d actually inherited from my biological father. “Does that mean they’re not true?”
“Oh, those rumors are one hundred percent true,” Ian said, and I glanced at him in surprise. “She asked me—in a circumspect, but very obvious kind of way—to kill Jake. I was happy to oblige. For my own reasons.” His smile was for Kori, and Kori alone, and for one short moment I envied the intimacy the smile demonstrated, even in a room full of people.
But then his point sank in.
“That’s right. You killed Jake Tower.” Kori had told me that, but I hadn’t yet mentally connected the gun that had fired the bullet with the trigger finger of the man sitting in front of me. The man who’d killed my biological father, who—by all accounts—had received a much better death than he’d deserved.
How could I have known so little about the man who contributed half my DNA? How was it possible that I knew more about him now, three months after his death, than I’d ever known in life?
But I felt guilty about that thought as soon as I’d had it. I hadn’t known much about Jake Tower because he hadn’t mattered. My real father was my mother’s husband. My sister’s father. They were all the family I’d wanted, and if I’d never lost them, I wouldn’t need to know the family that didn’t want me. I wouldn’t care about what the Towers owed me,