“Two is the perfect number.” She unscrewed the lid on the snack mix and offered me the jar. “You have enough rank to avoid static from the bottom two rungs, but not enough seniority to obligate you to do … things above your pay grade.”
I took a handful of pretzels and peanuts. “Things like what?”
Kori just scrounged up a small smile and shook her head. “Even if I knew what my superiors’ duties were, I couldn’t tell you. Some things—many things—you can’t know until you bear his mark.”
I wanted to pursue the issue. I wanted to ask her if Tower had ever given her an order she didn’t want to follow. If he’d ever made her do something that made her skin crawl or rotted a bit of her soul. But picking at her emotional scabs—making her talk about things she obviously didn’t want to remember—seemed cruel. Too cruel, considering what else I had to do. I hadn’t come into Tower’s territory to be recruited by Kori Daniels.
I’d come to kill her sister.
Five
Kori
I’d said too much. I could tell from the way he was sipping his second glass of Scotch, looking at me like I was some code he’d already started to crack. Like he could rearrange the words I’d spoken until they said what he needed to hear.
Holt knew what to ask. He knew what not to ask. I wasn’t sure whether I was playing him or being played by him, and that scared the shit out of me. I had to regain the upper hand, or Kenley would pay for my failure.
“You done with that?” he asked, and I followed his focus to the bottle of Goose.
“Almost.” I uncorked the bottle and took another swig, then pushed the cork back in.
“Well, you might as well take it with you,” Jake said, and I turned so fast the room spun around me. He stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame like he’d been there all night. “No one else is going to want any, after your mouth’s been on the bottle.”
I wondered how much he’d seen. How much he’d heard. But I got nothing from his expression, as usual.
“The alcohol will kill any germs,” I said, but I took the bottle with me when I stood. Never let it be said that I turned down good vodka. The shit under my bed at Kenley’s would take paint off a car.
“Are you ready to rejoin the party?” Jake said, as Holt finished his drink, still seated, and evidently unhurried.
Holt set his glass down, the remaining ice cubes small enough to swallow now. “Actually I’m kind of tired from my flight. I think I’m going to call it a night.”
Jake nodded. “Kori will drive you to your hotel. But I’m sure Nina and Julia would like to say goodbye before you go.” He stepped out of the doorway to let Holt pass, and when I started to follow, Tower blocked the doorway with his arm. “Korinne will meet you at the front door.”
Holt glanced at me, then nodded and headed down the hall.
Jake closed the door behind him, and my hand clenched around the neck of the bottle I still held. “Explain,” he ordered.
“You said to do whatever it takes.”
“And recruiting Holt required Scotch from my personal liquor cabinet, in the off-limits portion of my home?”
I shrugged. “He has good taste.”
“Shall I assume the privacy helped you get to know each other?” he asked, and I nodded. “And does he like you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does he want you?”
“I don’t—” I started, and Jake frowned. “Yeah, I think he does.” There’d been this look in his eyes a few minutes ago … “But it’s not personal. Anyone will do. We could send one of the girls to the hotel with him—”
Jake shook his head. “He rented a seventy-five-thousand-dollar car and drank my fifty-year-old Scotch. He’s either putting on airs or living beyond his means, but either way, he doesn’t want a common whore, Korinne. He wants something worth more. Someone with a little class. So dig deep and scrounge some up.”
I didn’t give a damn about the insult. I’d been called much worse than classless. But Holt had already seen me barefoot, drinking straight from the bottle. If classy was what he wanted, I wouldn’t be able to fool him. But I couldn’t tell Jake that, because if he thought I was worthless, I was as good as dead.
“Drive him to his hotel and walk him up to his room. Eat a breath mint, say please and thank you, and don’t trip over the damn heels,” he said, running one finger over the toes of the shoes I still held in my left hand. “Act like you’re worth something, and he might just believe it. And Korinne?”
“Yeah?” My cheeks were flaming now. I could feel it.
“If you ever come upstairs in this house again without my permission, I’ll put you back in the basement and let the guards draw straws. David’s eager to pay you back for the broken nose.”
It took every ounce of willpower I had to keep my hands from shaking. To pretend nothing he said could scare me. Jake didn’t buy it, but that didn’t matter.
What matters is the face you show the world, not the quaking mess behind it.
Twenty minutes later, I pulled up to the entrance of the Westmark Hotel and shifted into Park. The valet was waiting when I stepped out and handed the key to him, and the doorman had Holt’s luggage out of the trunk before I’d even rounded the car. He followed us inside with the bags while I led Holt to the elevator. I’d checked him in and picked up his key cards that afternoon.
Tower had reserved a three-room suite for him. It was nice enough to tell Holt he was valued, but not nice enough to inflate his ego. The suite said “we want you, but not as much as you think we want you.” And that might have worked, if I hadn’t already told him that he could pretty much get whatever he wanted in exchange for his signature—my little fuck-you to the puppet master pulling my own strings. Jake would get Holt in the end, but he would pay out the ass for him, if I had anything to say about it.
On the twenty-third floor, I tipped the bellhop, then closed the door behind him and made a mental note of all the rugs likely to trip me in Kenley’s stilettos. Then I began the tour.
“This is Jake’s favorite hotel,” I said, pulling back the curtains to show off the view. “They have twenty-four-hour room service. If you want something that’s not on the menu, just use Jake’s name. They’ll get you anything you want. And there’s a Jammer on duty ‘round the clock, so you can’t be tracked while you’re here.”
“Wow.” Holt stared out the window at the city, and even I had to admit the view was amazing. You could see the river from his room, and all the boats were lit up, like a string of white Christmas lights. And if you squinted just right, you could see where the river split, dividing the city into three parts: the east side, the west side and the south fork, like the bottom third of a peace sign. I rarely ventured out of the west side—Jake’s territory— because the chain links on my arm could easily get me killed east of the river, on Ruben Cavazos’s side of town.
“There’s no place like home, I know, but you’ll only be roughin’ it for a few nights,” I said, turning away from the window to take in the leather couches, thick rugs and huge flat-screen television. “Think you can manage?”
Holt pulled the curtains closed. “Only if the chocolate on my pillow is Swiss and the bottled water was flown in from France.”
“Hand-collected by crippled orphans from the fountain of youth itself,” I said, and he laughed, while I headed for the bedroom. I pushed open the double doors and sucked in a deep, shaky breath at