Oath Bound (Unbound) - By Rachel Vincent Page 0,74
“Beans are the magical fruit, or so the boys in my third-grade class told me.”
One more step, and we were less than a foot apart, and the very air seemed to sizzle between us. “Love is the international language, death is the great equalizer and no is the word most likely to turn a good man into just a friend, a drunk man into a jackass and misdemeanor-class asshole into a felon. But please...” He shrugged. “Please works no miracles at all.”
With that, he reached past me for the cup, his arm brushing mine, his lips inches from my cheek. When he turned on the faucet and filled the cup with cold water, without ever breaking my gaze, I realized I was breathing too hard. As if I’d just run a marathon.
And in that moment, I became determined to pull the word please from Kris Daniels’s mouth and show him just what kind of magic it could do.
“This is the fun part,” he whispered, so close I could practically feel his heartbeat through his bare skin and my shirt. My fingers skimmed his stomach before I even realized my own intention, and he exhaled against my neck, then just...lingered.
He was right. This was the fun part.
Then Kris pulled back and grinned at me. He dropped into a squat next to the unconscious man, his blue-eyed gaze sparkling with heat, and mischief, and beneath that, single-minded determination to do what had to be done.
Oh. That was the fun part. Interrogation. I felt my cheeks flush.
“Ready?”
It took me a second to realize he was talking to me. I nodded, still trying to puzzle my way through whatever had almost happened between us. Then Kris tossed water from the cup into the guard’s face.
The man sputtered and blinked, and as soon as he was awake, he hissed in pain. “My eyes...” he moaned. “They burn. I can’t see.”
“That’s too bad.” Kris looked up at me and smiled one more time. “The view’s amazing,” he said, and my heart beat too fast. Then he pressed the barrel of his silenced gun into the hollow between the man’s collarbones, and everything about him changed. Hardened. “Where the hell is my sister?”
“What?” The guard sputtered, then licked his lips, staring at nothing, the whites of his eyes an angry red color. “I don’t know. Who’s your sister? Who are you?”
“My sister is Kenley Daniels, and you motherfuckers took her. My sister is a part of me...” He glanced at the guard’s name tag. “Ned. Losing her is like losing my own hand, and if I don’t get her back, unharmed, poste fucking haste, you’re gonna find out what it’s like to lose one of your parts....”
The guard swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed above the barrel of the gun. “I swear I don’t know your sister, or where she is.”
“He may be telling the truth,” I said, and the man’s unfocused, red-rimmed eyes rolled in my direction.
“I’m perfectly willing to believe that this idiot knows almost nothing, in the larger sense. But he was bound to Jake Tower, which means he knows more than he wants us to think he knows.” Kris stared into the man’s irritated eyes. “Isn’t that right, Ned?”
“I swear, I don’t—”
“The real problem will be making him tell us something he’s been contractually prohibited from revealing. That’s where this gets interesting.” He turned back to Ned. “When did you reenlist? How long ago?”
“Three years.” Ned answered quickly, and with no sign of resistance pain, and I realized that meant we hadn’t yet hit the classified information. I’d never seen anyone suffering from serious resistance pain, and I have to admit, I was a little curious.
“Then you know my sister. She was Tower’s top binder, and by the time you reenlisted for your second term, she would have been doing most of his bindings. Petite. Blonde. Answers to the name Kenley Daniels.”
I saw recognition in his eyes, as if a light switch had been flipped behind them. “Yeah. I never heard her name, but that’s her. Quiet thing. Kinda intense.”
“Much better,” Kris said. “Did you see her here? It would have been today. This afternoon.”
“Kris,” I said when the man shook his head, obviously confused. “She was never here. Julia wouldn’t have had enough time to put her here, realize that was a mistake, then move the entire operation. There’s no telling how long ago they moved the...project.”
Kris frowned, thinking through what I’d said, and I shifted to face the guard. “Do you