Iris. (Den of Mercenaries Book 7) Read online

  He laid her on the sofa, covering her with the same blanket she’d covered him.

  Soon, he thought as he straightened and headed back over to the gently whistling kettle. Soon there wouldn’t be anything to keep them up at odd hours and only sleeping when they were too exhausted to do anything else.

  It was the unspoken promise he’d made to her.

  He doubted his demons would ever truly go away—that he would ever lead a completely normal life—but Iris quieted his mind. She helped him think clearly, breathe easier, and feel like he wasn’t losing a battle with his own mind.

  He wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything, even his own sanity. And if he had to take on a fucking army to make sure she stayed by his side, he would.

  Once he had her settled, Synek fixed his tea and walked back into the bedroom to survey her progress.

  Now that he was significantly more awake and alert than he had been before, he got back to work.

  For a man who spent a great deal of time transcribing their lives, Z had fuck all on Grimm’s latest job. Considering there had even been a report card in one of Synek’s earlier jobs with three little words written on the first page—cruel, lonely, and vicious—he expected to find more on Grimm, who had been there longer.

  Z could be a judgmental little prick when he wanted to be, and while he hadn’t disapproved of Synek entirely, he always worried that Synek was too unstable to do the job that the Kingmaker needed the mercenaries for.

  He wasn’t entirely wrong. Synek could be bad for business if left to his own devices for too long. Even he didn’t remember much of those early days beyond the brief flashes of memories that came and went.

  One would think that everything would be okay now that he wasn’t having to deal with mind games from the homicidal bitch who liked to sleep with him, or a mother who thought beating him would purge him of his “sins,” but it took far more than a new job to do that.

  He’d been in a dark place for years and was only just finally getting out of it.

  Focusing on the task at hand, Synek tried to make sense of what she had laid out on the bed, following the circle of facts in the way Iris saw them rather than what he thought to be true.

  If she hadn’t arranged it in the order she did, he would have never put it together this way. There was no chronological order between the cases, rather a number from the past year he had seen, and the rest scattered across at least five years

  And it seemed, just as they were looking for Grimm, the other man had been hunting something of his own as well.

  But what?

  The sound of footsteps had him looking up, spying Iris stumbling toward him even as she rubbed her eyes. He could tell she was exhausted, especially after he had already kept her up well into the night before waking her again, yet she refused to stay in bed.

  An unbidden smile turned his lips as he reached for her without thought, catching her before she could stumble into anything else and pulling her down onto his lap.

  “You should be sleeping,” he said, tossing the papers he’d been reading to the side to better turn her in his arms.

  “So should you,” she said after a yawn, “but here we are.”

  Iris finally managed to pry her eyes open and take in the organized chaos she had left behind the night before. As quickly as she had seemed fatigued, she was wide-awake now as she launched into the meaning behind every choice she had made, connecting the dots for him until he understood what she had found that he had never thought to see.

  Even after she had trailed off and he still stared down at everything she had put together, he didn’t realize she was watching him until he looked at her. She had a habit of doing this when she was thinking something important, but lately, she hadn’t been sharing her thoughts with him. Even when he could tell with a glance at her face that she wasn’t telling him the truth.

  But he didn’t pry. He had plenty of time to figure out her secrets.

  “What was he like?” she asked suddenly, drawing him from his own thoughts until he focused on her. “Grimm, I mean. It’s obvious you care about him a lot, but you’ve never really talked about him.”

  That was because it didn’t even make sense to him, at least not completely.

  Grimm had been the one to train him when no one else wanted to even step near him. And Synek remembered all too clearly what he had been like during those early days in the Den when he’d wrought a path of destruction that could hardly be contained. But the other man had had a death wish.

  Clearly.

  Why fucking else would he bother?

  It was for both those reasons that Synek was determined to find him. He owed the man a debt for helping him when he hadn’t any idea how to help himself and he wanted to know Grimm’s motives behind it.

  He was most curious about that.

  “He was a pretentious bastard,” Synek answered after a while, conjuring an image of the man in his mind. “Ex-special forces from what I understand.”

  Though no one had been able to tell him whether he was American or British. Synek thought he could spot a fake a mile away, but Grimm’s accent was flawless on both sides. And depending on who was asking determined which nationality he gave.

  “He didn’t like to talk about himself, or even the reason he ended up with the Den.”

  “Did he know about you?” she asked, her expression falling. “Did he know about how you came to the Den?”

  It wasn’t something he had talked to many about, though they had all drawn their own conclusions with the secretive way he had entered the fold. But Synek knew all about him, and that was even before he’d voluntarily told the man the information.

  “He was there the day the Kingmaker came to recruit me and the day I walked into the Den.”

  Grimm was there during some of the lowest moments in his life. It wasn’t so much a mystery about why he felt as if he owed him when he thought back to how much the man had helped him over the years.

  For whatever reason, the other man had taken pity on him and had not ostracized him as so many others had.

  Synek brushed a hand through his hair. “He found the family I sent Winter to live with.”

  It would have been impossible, in the midst of his training and work, to effectively raise an eleven-year-old girl, especially in his condition. He’d barely been able to keep himself together, and if left with him, he might have fucked her up more than he’d intended.

  But Synek hadn’t trusted anyone with Winter, not when she had been the lone light in his life at the time.

  “He’s saved my life more than once,” Synek went on. More times than he probably deserved. “I owe him a debt.”

  “We’ll find him,” she said, offering him a smile when he brushed the pad of his thumb across her lips. “I’m good at finding people, you know.”

  Yeah, he knew that all too well.

  Chapter 6

  Synek was back in his regular uniform of dark denim, motorcycle boots, and a leather jacket the next day. His hair was unkempt like she liked it, and she didn’t have to look to know that his cigarette was in place.

  Sometime this morning after they’d both woken up, showered, and gotten dressed, it hit her that something was rather domestic about them now. Whether it was showering together, which always ended with needing another, or watching him make his tea—they weren’t just two people working on a goal.

  They were in a relationship.

  Funny that she had never expected it to happen this way. She’d always imagined those cliché but special moments when the man would ask her outright and she would either agree or deny him.

  That wasn’t remotely what happened here.

  There was no need for questions or a full-blown conversation about it; she was his, and no part of her thought otherwise.

  His one, as he liked to say.

  “What’s that thought you’re having?”

  His voice brought her around to him and the way he was staring. The si
ght of him managed to bring a smile to her face.

  Everything about him was distinctly masculine. The way he stood, the hair on his jaw, the tattoos she could see through the thin shirt he wore. Yet in his much larger hands, he held a dainty cup of tea.

  “What?”

  “You smiled at me,” he said. “What were you just thinking about?”

  “Relationships,” she answered, grabbing an orange from the basket in front of them and going in search of a knife.

  A curious expression crossed his face as he ventured over to her, setting his tea down to pluck the orange from her hands. “What about them?”

  “I’ve never been in one.” And now that she thought about it, she had never seen a particularly healthy relationship either. “My parents didn’t really get along, and they were only together sporadically as far as I can remember. And even when they were on, things were always a bit … tense.”

  They might have been able to make her, and both loved her in their own way, but her parents’ relationship defined dysfunctional. Despite her desire for a family, she knew they were better off separate rather than together.

  “So is it what you’ve imagined?” he asked, expertly peeling the orange far better than she would have managed on her own, even as simple a task as it was.

  It wasn’t a question for him either.

  Iris smiled. “The sex is great. No denying that.”

  That managed to get a burst of laughter out of him, and the carefree sound made her smile. He might not laugh often, but when he did, his entire face lit up, and it might be completely mushy of her, but she loved seeing his smile and that dimple in his left cheek, and hearing that unguarded moment of happiness.

  He peeled off a slice of orange, extending it to her like an offering. Of all the things he probably knew how to do with that knife, he was feeding her.

  “I think I’ll keep you,” she said as she bit into the orange.

  “You say that like you have a choice.”

  No, it was starting to feel like she didn’t, yet she didn’t mind it.

  She plucked the rest of her orange out of his hand. “I don’t?”

  “You could leave,” he said with a smile that was more threatening than anything else, “but I’ll find you.”

  Only he could make a threat like that sound so tempting.

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Now, shouldn’t you be getting ready to … do whatever it is you’re doing with the Den?”

  After the fundraiser, she had been working on the governor solely while he handled things with the Kingmaker. She wasn’t sure exactly what he and the other mercenaries were up to, but she could guess while she was working this angle, they were still keeping tabs on the governor himself.

  “Plenty of time for that. I’m more concerned about you.”

  Yeah, she was starting to realize that. And worse, he didn’t seem to realize how cute she found it that he was expressing this level of concern when she was merely going to be in the presence of Shepherd housewives.

  “I can handle myself.”

  “Of course, luv”—but that didn’t matter to him in the end—“Winter is ...” He stopped speaking. His gaze intent on her face.

  If there was one thing she didn’t like about Synek, it was how he was able to read every emotion on her face even when she didn’t want him to. Worse, she’d tried not to make a face at the mention of the hacker, which probably only made her discomfort more obvious.

  “What was that look for?”

  “Would you drop it if I said I didn’t want to talk about it?”

  She expected him to say no.

  “Reluctantly.”

  It would have been easy to just tell him she didn’t want to discuss it—that there was nothing to talk about—yet she found herself opening her mouth anyway. “Winter doesn’t like me.”

  “Nonsense,” he said, waving that away. “She—”

  “Made it abundantly clear that she doesn’t,” she finished for him.

  Which was fine.

  She still believed that as long as Synek trusted her and felt about her what she felt for him, nothing else mattered, but just the expression on his face made her wonder how true that was.

  For a moment, Synek looked as if he wanted to argue, but maybe it was her expression that told him there was no misunderstanding. “She just needs some time, I reckon. It’s … complicated.”

  Complicated.

  Yeah, she was beginning to hate that word.

  “She’ll come around,” Synek finished with a shrug.

  Right … she’d just keep that in mind in the interim. “Okay.”

  He used the hand holding his knife to scratch at the beard he’d yet to trim. She wasn’t complaining. “What’d she say to you?”

  Iris thought back on their conversation in the boutique, remembering the fire in her eyes when she proclaimed how she didn’t trust her with Synek. “I think she’s worried about you mostly.”

  She had a feeling Winter wouldn’t like anyone Synek was with. She tried to remember that instead of taking it personally, but it was hard. Especially because she knew that if anyone’s opinion could sway him, it would be hers.

  Synek didn’t look as if he wanted to drop it, but in the interest of time, considering he really did need to leave, he let the subject drop. “She’ll make sure you get a chance to look around, yeah?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  He pressed a kiss to her lips, fast and hard. “Stay safe,” he said in a way that brought a smile to her face.

  “It’s just brunch.”

  “With people we can’t trust. If you need me for anything, ring me, yeah?”

  “I will,” she said even as she knew she wouldn’t.

  Not because she could take care of herself, though that was true as well, but because she didn’t want to call him away from something the Kingmaker had asked of him. From what she knew about his handler, he didn’t like to wait and he didn’t like to be defied.

  As Synek disappeared out the door, Iris stared after him a moment before she went to get dressed.

  He wasn’t the only one with a job to do.

  An hour after she had gotten dressed and left the brownstone—courtesy of the same car they’d driven in the night before—Iris drove to the governor’s place on the Upper West Side.

  The traffic was light, and after only a half an hour, she was slowly cruising down the street looking for a parking space.

  She found one between a Mercedes G-Wagon in an interesting shade of rose gold and a Lamborghini.

  Iris didn’t get out right away. She remained in the comfortable confines of the car as she inserted the comm into her ear and made sure the camera fixed to the front of her dress was working properly.

  “Stop fidgeting with it.” Winter’s voice came over loud and clear.

  Not nearly as pleasant as when it was Synek in her ear.

  “Are you picking everything up?”

  “Yep.”

  Good.

  Then she’d leave it at that.

  Iris climbed out of the car and straightened her dress, glancing at her reflection in the windows to make sure she looked presentable before she started across the street.

  There was a small square patch of grass in front of each brownstone, all with a manicured rose bush in the very center. The homes on this street were very much like the ones where she and Synek were staying, but nothing like his actual apartment.

  Which did he prefer?

  The question had plagued her ever since he’d taken her there days ago, and she’d seen the state in which he was living. He might have spent his time in London for the most part, or bouncing from city to city for the Kingmaker, but even if that was the case, he still deserved something more permanent.

  Somewhere that was actually home and not just another place to crash.

  It broke her heart to think he thought that was good enough for him—that he didn’t need much. They had spoken of what would come after this, once
the governor was arrested and her father was freed, but while she knew she wanted him when this was all over, she hadn’t considered anything else beyond that.

  It wasn’t that his apartment was a deal breaker. She just wanted him to have more, and if he wasn’t willing to give it to himself, then it was up to her to do it.

  They might not have asked the night of the fundraiser, but here at the brunch where it was a bit more intimate, Iris found herself telling the fifth person the name of the designer for her shoes.

  Half of what she said was a repeat of what Calavera had told her, but she didn’t think the ladies were actually listening. Most were just tripping over themselves to talk about when the next collection was launching.

  After ten minutes of standing there, she quietly excused herself and made her way over to the bar. She grabbed one of the carafes and poured a drink, her gaze sweeping the room to make sure no one paid attention to her as she slipped up the back staircase.

  “Is anyone up here?” Iris muttered.

  “Nah,” Winter’s reply was immediate and dry. “You’re good.”

  Even if she wasn’t happy about it, she was a good resource to have.

  The floorboards only creaked slightly as Iris made her way down the hall, recalling the layout she had memorized. The door the farthest down to the left was the governor’s home office.

  With one last glance behind her, Iris tried twisting the door handle but only managed an inch.

  Locked.

  Plucking two of the hair pins from her hair, she made a quick pick set and lowered to her haunches. She slowly worked the locked, smiling once it clicked open.

  The office was designed in deep shades of brown from the mahogany desk and sturdy chair to the bookcases taking up three of the walls—all filled with encyclopedias and books on politics.

  The last wall, however, didn’t have books or trinkets of any sort. It had a large-scale printout of a world map. In some places, the map was a brilliant gold, but she found the matte black in other areas curious.

  As she drew closer to it, she ran her fingers over it, feeling the dip and change in texture when she traced over two different countries. She picked at the black, soon realizing that it was meant to come off.