Cover me? I mouthed to Cam, and he nodded, a silent vow of ironclad support. “Okay, I swear,” I called into the bedroom. “You can come out now.”

“Be more specific,” Hunter insisted, and I had to admit he wasn’t a total moron. “Swear you’re not going to shoot me. Or kill me in any other way,” he amended.

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I swear I will in no way harm you. Now grow some balls and stand the hell up. If I have to track someone else down tonight, I’d like to get going.”

That last bit did it—that touch of authentic weariness and impatience convinced him I had no more time to waste on him. Hunter stood slowly, and I stood with him, each of us still aiming at the other.

“Put the gun down, Eric,” I said. Cam waited on the opposite side of tht="0%" wid, gun pointed at the ground, a fraction of a second from taking the kill shot. But he wouldn’t do it while Hunter still had me in his sights.

“You first.” Hunter had a wide stance and a steady, two-handed grip on a Beretta 9mm, and I couldn’t tell whether or not the safety was engaged. But I was betting it wasn’t. He may not know how to destroy blood or walk through shadows, but he knew his way around a gun.

“I can’t shoot,” I insisted. “I just swore I wouldn’t.”

“Then you shouldn’t mind putting the gun down.”

Too late it occurred to me that I should have made him swear the same oath. If he believed it would work on me, he’d believe it would work on him, too, right? Had I just been played?

Shit. If I didn’t lower my gun, he’d know I wasn’t bound, and he’d shoot me. But if I lowered my gun, he’d shoot me anyway.

Sometimes having no good choices brings things into crisp, clear focus.

I lurched to one side and squeezed the trigger. The gun thwupped loudly and the recoil threw my arms up, because I was already in motion. I stumbled. Blood sprayed from Hunter’s right shoulder. His gun flashed in the dim room. Something slammed into my left arm, throwing me off balance again. My knees crashed into the ground.

Cam’s silencer thwupped from behind me. Hunter fell against the wall at his back, then slid to sit on the floor, gurgling with each breath. A thick trail of blood led up the wall behind him.

Cam stepped over me and fired twice more. Hunter’s gurgling stopped.

“Damn it!” I twisted to sit on the floor, but the impact ache in my knees was still vicious as I glared up at Cam. “You couldn’t let him make a dying confession? I had more questions for him!”

Cam thumbed the safety, then dropped the gun, silencer and all, into his custom holster. “I just saved your ass. You’re welcome.”

“Thanks.” I flicked the safety on my own pistol, then tried to unscrew the silencer, but stopped at the sudden sharp, hot pain in my left arm. “But he wasn’t after Shen, he was after Anne, and we need to know why.” I tried to push myself to my feet, but my left arm was reluctant to move. In fact, my fingers were oddly numb. But the rest of me felt fine. Better than ever in fact. With Hunter dead, the geas from Anne was gone, and I was once more free from compulsion.

“Well, we’re not going to find out from him. But on the upside, you’re still breathing.” Cam knelt next to me and gently peeled my fingers from the gun, then set it to the side.

“If Tower—or whoever—sent one man after her, he’ll send another,” I insisted. We’d have to hide her somewhere. Would Cam even be able to help me protect her, or would that mean breaching his contract to Tower? Should I let him help me, even if he could? If he knew where she was, he could be forced to tell Tower. Why the hell would Jake Tower want Anne dead, anyway?

“I know. And as soon as we get you taken care of, we’ll call and warn her. But right now, I need you to stand up and try not to mve your arm.”

I frowned, irritated by his lack of concern. “Cam, your boss is trying to kill one of my best friends.” Or former best friends. Or whatever. “Couldn’t you act like that bothers you, just a little bit?”

Cam blinked at me, blatant surprise brightening his eyes. “Of course it bothers me. But right now, I’m a little more worried about this.” He lifted my left arm by my bent elbow, and pain shot through my bicep. When I looked down, I was surprised to see blood staining my shirt and welling through a hole in the material. “You’ve been shot, Liv.”

Oh. How the hell had I missed that?

Twelve

“Well, the good news is that the bullet went in one side and out the other,” I said, dropping the bloody hand towel onto the table with the bandages I’d found beneath the bathroom sink, all of which were now soaked in Liv’s blood.

“How is that good news?” She flinched when I pressed a folded paper towel against the front of the bullet hole. Between his own previous injury and Liv’s gunshot wound, Hunter’s first-aid supplies had been thoroughly exhausted.

I set the paper-towel roll on the table and tried not to think about the fact that Liv had to be shot to let me touch her for more than a couple of seconds at a time. “Through ’n’ through means I won’t have to dig the slug out of your arm.” I placed her right hand over the makeshift bandage. “Press and hold.”

The dinette chair had no arms, so she rested her elbow on the tabletop, watching while I folded another makeshift bandage. “What’s the bad news?”

“I’m going to have to find the slug and destroy every drop of blood you lost. Quickly.” All three of the guns used had silencers, so the noise wouldn’t have echoed beyond Hunter’s apartment. That would cut down on the chances that someone called the police—as would the fact that we were on Tower’s side of town, in a building he owned. But someone had probably called in somebody, and hanging out at the scene of a crime you’ve just committed is never a good idea. “Unfortunately, Mr. Hunter isn’t very well equipped for triage.”