“I’m sorry. I don’t recall giving you the impression that I’m a damsel in need of saving who you can tuck away when you feel like it.”
He blinked in surprise, even as his friend tried to hide a quick smile. “Are you taking the fucking piss?”
“Last I checked, you said they were coming for me. If they sent Oscar, they’ll send others. If you’re going to go out doing whatever mercenaries do, I’d rather be there than here by myself.”
“Oh, now you want my protection?” He stepped closer until he was only a hair’s breadth away.
That was the thing about Synek.
He was easy, mellow even, but not always. He could get intense, like now.
Iris stood firm, even as she had to tilt her head back to meet his dark gaze. “I’m merely taking you up on the offer you forced on me.”
“You don’t trust that I’m handling this?”
Six and a half feet of pissed-off man loomed over her. “No offense, but would you trust your life in my hands, Syn?”
“Oh, piss off,” he said, not unkindly. “That isn’t the same thing.”
“No? Go on then, give me one of your special knives you love so much and wherever Rosalie’s hiding and let me take care of it.” She held her hand out, wiggling her fingers for emphasis. “I can handle myself.”
His glare morphed into a look of censure. “Is this some sort of feminist bit? ’Cause hand to God, I know plenty of women in the trade and never doubt them for a second.”
For a moment, she actually wondered if he heard the things that actually came out of his mouth, or if he just went with the first thing that popped into his head. “Bottom line, if we’re going to be a team, let’s act like it.”
He was so close she could almost see the steady pulse at his throat. “I don’t need the distraction.”
“I wouldn’t be a distraction.”
“You’re distracting me now.”
Iris blinked, realizing he meant every word of that. “That sounds like a compliment.”
“Is that what you took out of that?” he asked dryly, the question making her smile.
“Am I wrong?”
A muscle worked in his jaw and his eyes narrowed, but he didn’t utter a word. His silence made her smile.
“You’ve got a mean bark, Syn,” she said tapping his chest, “and an even meaner bite, but I’m not afraid of you.”
“Yeah,” Synek’s friend said from across the room, casually stretching out on the couch. “She’ll do.”
* * *
Iris would be the fucking death of him.
He’d shared too much the night before, let his defenses crumble until he’d been comfortable enough to share, but even now, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked to someone.
Told someone about his life and the choices he’d made.
Since leaving the Wraiths, he’d lived in a fog—an endless bubble of alcohol that left him numb. He lived day to day, week to week, existing and nothing more.
Synek had spent a matter of days with her, most of them violent, yet she was the only person he’d ever had the urge to talk to.
That wouldn’t do. He needed to get her out of his head.
“Iris, this is Red.” The Russian gave a salute from the sofa, still looking far too amused. “Red, meet my complication.”
“And I thought we were becoming friends,” she called over her shoulder as she turned and moved toward the living room where Red was.
“She set me up to be tortured by the men you got to meet this morning.”
Red’s left brow hit his hairline.
“I also saved his life by shooting my old boss in the shoulder. Not to mention I did it at the expense of my own life, considering he threatened me with bodily harm.”
Cheeky bugger. “If you’re done?”
She shrugged as she sat, propping her legs up on the side, drawing his gaze down to the tights she was wearing. The crisscrossing bands across the front offered tantalizing peeks at her tan skin.
Knowing what she had done should have been enough to dampen whatever lust he’d felt during that first night together, but while he might have wanted to forget what happened in the alley, the rest of him didn’t.
“These are the next targets,” Synek said as he grabbed the remote from the table and turned on the projector, the bare wall across from them now illuminated with two rows of photographs featuring eight men. “She’s last,” he said of the woman whose picture sat above all of them.
Red nodded, scanning each face. “Why does that one look so familiar?” he asked, gesturing to the man in the second picture on the first row.
Ricky Carter.
He’d been one of six Johnny used to send off on jobs before Synek had come along and taken his spot. Ricky was proficient at what they did for a living, but he’d been on another level.
They hadn’t taken well to Synek replacing him, though there was little he could have done about it. Regardless, once he’d left, Ricky had returned to his former role with eagerness.
But the thing about second string, they were never as good as the hitter in the number one spot, and over the years, he’d gotten sloppy.
“You remember that job about two years ago when we’d needed to infiltrate the Stargate hotel in Indianapolis?” Synek asked, waiting for the flicker of remembrance to light his eyes before continuing. “He was responsible for that.”
“Are you the reason the Kingmaker told us to stand down from that one?”
He nodded.
His work with the Wraiths had been a heavily guarded secret that he would have killed to protect—not because he was ashamed of who he’d been or what he was, but because he didn’t need the reminder.
When he had first walked into the Den, he hadn’t made the best first impression—especially after being locked in a tiny four-by-six room in pitch blackness that had made his skin feel like it was crawling for weeks.
Worse, they’d left him there for days.
By the time he was let out again, Synek’s only thought had been that of murdering whoever stood on the other side of the door. The last thing he’d wanted after he’d come down was to be further affiliated with being the savage he could be at times.
“Any other surprises you want to lay on me?”
“For now? No.”
“Then who the hell is she?” Red asked in Swedish, speaking his mother tongue.
Not many knew that little bit of information about him since he never gave his full name, and he’d adopted the accent of his mother without meaning to, but Red had been around during those early days with the Den, and he’d heard him mumbling to himself a time or two.
Iris’s narrow eyed gaze shifted back and forth between the two of them, correctly assuming they were talking about her.
Truthfully, he didn’t know how to describe who she was to him. She wasn’t a friend nor an enemy, nor a one-night stand or lover. She was something he couldn’t quite put a name to.
“It’s rude to talk in another language in front of someone,” Iris said to him, as if he’d been the one to start this conversation.
“I’ll explain later,” he told Red in the same language, never taking his eyes off her, smiling wider when her gaze darkened further.
“Was it her apartment you sent me to the other night?”
“It was,” he answered. “You kept the stuff for me?”
She’d been right when she told him they’d needed to leave before the police arrived, but what he hadn’t said was that he’d already taken care of it. Once he’d entered her old apartment building, not only had he brought in a device that temporarily disabled cell phone networks—preventing anyone from calling out—but he’d called on Red to clear the place out.
Surprisingly, the Russian had agreed with little prompting, though he had required a hefty fee.
“Back at my place.”
Synek nodded. He’d sort through it before he gave it back to he
r. She was cagey and held her secrets with an iron grip. He was slowly coaxing the truth out of her, and he’d learned far more than he anticipated, but he doubted she would ever tell him everything there was to know about her, and he was too impatient to wait.
And he knew, if he pressed her on it, she would ask the very question he’d been asking himself.
Why do you care?
“I’ll tell you who she is as soon as I figure that out myself.”
Iris sighed. “My disdain for you is actually growing. I didn’t think that was possible.”
“I won’t be able to use you for Ricky,” Synek finally said in English, lessening Iris’s ire slightly. “He’s currently holed away in the Roosevelt Hotel behind bulletproof glass. I’ll have to get to him the old-fashioned way.”
“Up close and personal?” Red asked.
“It’s the best strategy, but I’ll need a few favors from the Irishman.”
Red whistled. “Celt’s on vacation. He’s threatened murder if his phone rings.”
“That’s why you’re calling. He’ll be less mental if it’s you.”
“Great,” Iris said, brushing her hair over her shoulders. “There’s more of you.”
“He’d be expecting you, though, yes? Considering the four we took care of earlier.”
He would, which meant he needed to approach this differently.
“If it’s a matter of getting to him, I could take care of that.”
Synek’s gaze jerked in her direction, willing a modicum of patience to settle over him. He didn’t know why the thought bothered him, but it did all the same. “I’ve got this, dove.”
“If bulletproof glass is preventing you or him,” she said with a nod of her head in Red’s direction, “to get to Ricky, then obviously that means you have to confront him in person. We all know he’ll run as soon as he sees you. And if he’s half as paranoid about you, I suspect he wouldn’t let Red here get within ten feet of him. So let me. Men very rarely suspect women.”
He knew that to be true all too well. “He might recognize you,” Synek answered.
“I’ve never met him, and as you said, they’re probably looking for you more than they’re looking for me at this point.”
That was … true, even if he didn’t want it to be.
It had to be done.
Chapter 18
It was nearly two nights later when Synek finally came to her and told her to get ready.
Iris wasn’t sure what the wait was for exactly, but she hadn’t questioned his disappearing for a few hours at a time, only to return and disappear into his room again. She’d thought he had every intention of just leaving her there while he went off and hunted the Wraiths.
And strangest of all, she found herself waiting for the moments when he came back, when she heard the door open and close before the sound of his boots on the stairs had her blowing out a breath in relief.
She wasn’t supposed to feel relief that he was back.
She didn’t need to be thinking about him period, but that didn’t stop her from waiting. It didn’t stop her from thinking about him when she should have been working.
Even when he’d come in her room to tell her they were going after Ricky, she’d been thinking about him. And maybe, if she had been working, the sight of him in war gear might not have surprised her as much as it did.
He hadn’t made a sound when he came in. Not even the door had squeaked before the sight of him greeted her. Instead of the grunge Wraith he usually dressed like, now he looked more like a mercenary in his bulletproof vest and gear.
What was it about him that commanded so much attention—her attention. She’d easily ignored the opposite sex for years, yet he had managed to get under her skin without trying.
It didn’t make sense.
Iris dressed in a blur before joining him downstairs, coming up short as his expression went from relaxed to intense in a matter of seconds.
“What do you think?” she asked, worried what his answer might be considering the way he was looking at her. She didn’t have much with her, limited by what little wardrobe she’d brought with her from her apartment, but a little black dress never failed, nor the black lace beneath it.
“Is this what you do? Dress up like a man’s wet dream to lower his guard.”
She wasn’t sure what to make of the question, simply because she wasn’t sure what he wanted her to say.
“That was my job, yes,” she answered, figuring the truth couldn’t hurt her now. “It was a role I had to play.”
He came closer, slipping on a pair of leather gloves. “None of it’s real then?”
“Not always.”
She hadn’t meant to slip and tell him as much.
“Mmm.”
That sound.
That delicious little sound that wasn’t supposed to be sexual in any way but immediately dragged her back to that night. She wasn’t supposed to drink with him, or engage with him any more than it took for her to get him to the extraction point, and she definitely should have never let him pin her to a wall and kiss her.
She remembered everything about that night with stark clarity.
“Just a job,” she said in a tiny voice, wishing she could inject some strength into those words.
His smile was equal parts warm and challenging. “We’ll see.”
* * *
Contrary to what she’d thought before, there wouldn’t be another mercenary joining them.
Instead, after she was ready and they had left the brownstone, Synek had stopped by a loft in Brooklyn where he picked up a number of gadgets he tucked away inside a backpack.
One she recognized as a mini camera, then comms, and finally, what looked like a portable scanner, but not in a common sense. It could have easily been mistaken for just a card holder had he not shown her how it worked.
“When you get the chance, scan his card, and I’ll be able to make a key to his room remotely.”
The corner of her lips turned up in surprise. “Where do I get one of those?”
“Celt’s your guy. He loves all this shit.”
Maybe once this thing with the Wraiths was over, she’d see if she could procure one for when she went after Spader.
“Take it easy, yeah?” he said once she readied to exit the car, passing her one of the earpieces to wear. “And if you need me, don’t try to handle it all on your own.”
“Don’t worry yourself, Syn. This isn’t my first time.”
He made a sound in the back of his throat that made her smile as she stepped out of the car, adjusting the long coat she wore that did very little to hide her black dress.
Men, both young and old, responded to red for reasons she never cared to know—so long as it worked in her favor, she didn’t need to know the specifics. Even Synek, who’d reacted just as strongly when she’d worn tight jeans, couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her as she walked toward the entrance of the hotel.
By the time she was nodding at the doorman, he was only just pulling away from the curb and around the building.
The lobby was warmly lit, yellow light reflecting off the beige tiled floors and antique wallpaper. Iris had never been in this particular hotel, though she had always longed to visit when she was a little girl. It was as beautiful now as it had been then, reminding her of the opulence of a palace within the four walls of a staccato building in the city.
She was surprised any of the Wraiths would be holed away inside this place—especially with what she knew about them—but she understood why when she got her first look at Ricky sitting at the bar, entertaining a young girl standing to his right in towering heels and a barely there dress.
There was no leather on any part of his body. He wore an expensive looking suit that was about a size too big for his frame, reminding her more of the gangsters of old rather than a modern criminal. Thinning dark hair was combed back extremely, only highlighting the sheen of his forehead.
She could see the hints of the Wrai
ths beneath the careful veneer—his stare was a little too pointed, a few scars decorating the underside of his jaw whenever he jerked his head up.
He was also several years older than Synek was, and if she’d had to choose who she would rather send on a job, it would have definitely been Synek.
Looking away from him, she focused on the chair opposite him, casually removing her coat as she went, knowing the moment his eyes came to her. She could practically feel his stare as she crossed the room, sliding onto a stool two down from his own. From the moment she sat down, she never took her gaze off the bartender polishing a glass behind the bar who stared unabashedly down the front of her dress.
“You’d think he’d never seen a pair of tits before,” an annoyed voice barked in her ear.
It was almost disconcerting having Synek in her ear—the way it almost felt as if he was right there, whispering in her ear. “Club soda,” she ordered with a smile, waiting until he was busy making her drink to respond to Synek softly, “I don’t see how that’s remotely helpful. And if I recall, you were just as captivated.”
Beyond his annoying commentary, she was thankful that the camera he’d carefully placed on her was working if he could see the bartender staring at her breasts.
“Never said it wasn’t a good rack, dove,” he said wryly.
She was sure he was the only one who could manage to make that sound like a compliment rather than a smarmy remark.
But she didn’t have time to entertain his words, not when Ricky had sent away the girl he was sitting with and moved closer to her. He didn’t ask if he could join her, nor did he attempt to hide that the only interest he had in her was the body she had covered in black silk.
Already, she was resisting the urge to frown and smack that look off his face, but she pressed her thumbnail into the palm of her hand—a reminder that she had a job to do and couldn’t afford to fail it.
She could do this.
Think of Synek.
The thought struck her out of nowhere, making her vastly more aware that she still wore the earpiece and the very man she was thinking about was sitting somewhere not too far away. He couldn’t very well hear her thoughts, but that didn’t stop her from picturing the smug look he’d give her if he knew.
Den of Mercenaries [Volume Two] Page 41
