Rachel Vincent - Oath Bound

“Why do women always err on the side of under estimation?” he mumbled, pulling a bottle from an overhead cabinet as I headed for the front door. “My Skill could be huge , for all you know.” He had his back to me. He wasn’t even watching.

A second later, as I twisted and pulled on the front doorknob to no avail, I saw why.

“The door’s nailed shut!” Furious, I bent to examine the nails and my teeth ground together when I noticed the tiny crosshairs. “Those aren’t nails, they’re screws!”

And half of them had been countersunk. No one was getting through that door without an electric drill, a Phillips head bit and a spare half hour.

“Did that myself,” my kidnapper called from the kitchen. “Of course, we can probably kiss the security deposit goodbye. Ironic, isn’t it, considering that I actually made the house more secure.”

I stood to glare at him through the kitchen doorway, fingering my phone in my pocket. If I didn’t dread explaining the circumstances of my abduction, I’d have already dialed 911. “Look, I don’t recognize your particular psychosis, but trust me when I say this is a very special kind of crazy. Why the hell would you screw the front door shut?”

He shrugged, leaning with one hip against the counter, a half-empty bottle of whiskey in one hand. “We don’t use that exit.”

My focus found the door behind him, which presumably led to the backyard, and before I could decide whether or not to make a break for it—which would involve running right past him—he shook his head. “We don’t use that one, either.”

Both exits were screwed shut because he and his grandmother had no use for them? Bullshit .

He was prepared to house a prisoner, which meant this was premeditated. How could I have misread him so drastically? The fact that he cared about his sister didn’t make him less dangerous; it made him more dangerous. If his rash invasion of the Tower estate was any indication, he’d do anything to get her back. He’d gone in planning to take a hostage. The bastard wasn’t going to let me go until he got his sister back!

But … that didn’t make any sense. Why trade me, if he didn’t want me to go back to Julia? Was that just an act? Or had he planned to kidnap someone she valued—someone she would bargain for—but got stuck with me instead? If so, what was the new plan? What good was a hostage who couldn’t be traded?

No good at all.

Panic raced through me like fire in my veins. This was real. The psycho with nice eyes had taken me, but had no use for me. Even if he truly had no plans for violence—and his grandmother’s presence seemed to confirm that—he had no intentions of letting me go, either.

Knowing the doors didn’t function made my skin crawl, as if I were trapped not just by this house, but by my own body. My own mind.

I needed fresh air. Space. Now .

Logically, I knew that was the panic talking. There was plenty of air, and the house wasn’t that small—the foot of the staircase in one corner of the living room meant there was an entire second story I had yet to see. And the hum of the air conditioner told me the ventilation was fine. Being locked up wasn’t going to kill me.

But being stupid might.

Think .

Assuming he truly loved his grandmother—and I’d seen no reason to doubt that—he wouldn’t leave her alone if she couldn’t get out of the house. What if there was a fire?

There had to be a functioning exit.

I took a deep breath and swallowed my panic. “Fine. If you don’t use the doors, how do you get out of here?”

He didn’t even look up from the soda he was pouring into a short glass, over an inch of whiskey. “The same way I brought you in.”

Damn it . “You’re both shadow-walkers?”

“Not all of us. But enough.”

All of us? How many were there? “And I assume the windows are …”

“Screwed shut. Which is overkill in some cases, because about half of them were already painted shut. This place is pretty old.”

Great. No one could get in or out of whatever weird-ass house he’d dragged me into without the ability to travel. Or something to throw through a window, and a good head start.

I’d call that Plan B.

Plan A needed to be smarter, and a little more tech-savvy. While my kidnapper rattled pots and pans in the kitchen, I dug my cell from my pocket and sank onto the couch. I opened the GPS function on my phone and waited while the map loaded, slowly, slowly, slowly narrowing down my location.

Cell phone reception in his stupid, screwed-shut house sucked.

“You still alive in there?” he called from the kitchen, after about a minute of silence from me.

I considered not answering, but then he’d come looking for me.

“Alive and pissed off!” I called back.

“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t plan this, but now we’re kind of stuck with each other for a bit.”

Yeah, right . And finally, the GPS centered on my location.

I didn’t recognize any of the street names, but that was no surprise, considering I’d never been to the city before and I’d let my car’s GPS navigate the whole way to the Tower estate.

I zoomed out on the map, searching for familiar landmarks, and when I couldn’t find any, I zoomed in again, hoping to narrow my location down to a street address. Or at least a close cross-street. Then I’d call the police and have this grandma’s-boy, kidnapping son of a bitch arrested.

I didn’t have to press charges, or even explain how I’d wound up in the House of Crazy. I just needed the cops to come open a door.

But there didn’t seem to be any cross-streets. We were truly in the middle of nowhere.

The loading icon spun and spun as the map tried to refresh, and I stared at it in mounting frustration and anger. My hand clenched around the phone so hard the plastic case groaned and my knuckles turned white, but finally the new map loaded, and—

My cell was ripped from my grasp.

“Hey!” I stood and reached for my phone, but he stepped back and my nails clawed his forearm instead, drawing four white lines, but no blood.

“Sorry. Can’t let you do that.” Then the bastard dropped my phone and stomped on it, grinding with the heel of his hiking boot until shards of metal and plastic were hopelessly embedded into the worn carpet.

Fury sparked the length of my spine and my right hand curled into a fist. I swung before I even realized what I’d intended, and my fist slammed into his jaw. “You owe me a phone!”

He stumbled back in surprise, rubbing his face, and I ignored the ache in my hand as I knelt to scrape up the remains of my cell, just in case. But it was trashed .

“This isn’t funny!” I shouted.

“Agreed.” He stomped into the kitchen and a second later I heard ice rattle.

“You can’t keep me here. If you think I’m going to twiddle my thumbs as your hostage, you kidnapped the wrong damn woman.”

“Would you please calm down?” He appeared in the living room again, this time holding an ice-filled plastic sandwich bag to his jaw. “I’m the one with everything to lose here, and you’re the one throwing punches. You’re not a hostage, and you’re not in any danger. In fact, you’re safer here than you were with Julia Tower, so please sit down and shut up! ”

I heard his words, but I couldn’t process them. I wasn’t a hostage? I was in no danger? The facts didn’t support those statements—he’d dragged me through the shadows and locked me up in a strange house. My entire family died in a locked house. Their own locked house.