Kings Falling

by Ronie Kendig

  “I want a sister, Mama,” Taissia announced without preamble.

  Startled, Iskra tried not to eye Leif, who was standing on the rooftop terrace, looking out over the city. “Eat your pizza,” she said, deflecting the topic. Hopefully he hadn’t heard that pronouncement, his mind already occupied. “I’ll be right back.”

  She came up behind him at the rail and slipped her arms around his waist. Rested her cheek on his muscled back. Here. Here she was safe. Happy. Despite the tension between them.

  “Do you want more kids?” His question rumbled through his torso.

  “You heard,” she said. More than a little embarrassed by the topic, Iskra shifted to his side and watched a cab roll around the corner below. Did she want more kids? “I do not know,” she finally admitted. “Before you, I vowed never to end up in that condition again.”

  Taissia had not been planned, and since Iskra had feared what Hristoff would do when he learned of the pregnancy—especially since Taissia wasn’t his—for many months, she didn’t want the baby. It was a cold, unfeeling truth. Not wanting more children after all that seemed a natural progression.

  “You still never call her ‘my daughter.’”

  “I do,” she said. “But it is hard to let her exist and thrive when for so long I feared we would be ripped apart.”

  Leif had transformed a lot of things in her life. With him, she might just be willing to face pregnancy again. But that was leaping far, far ahead. She was not even sure about marriage. Or if he was interested.

  “You’ve been quiet since we got back,” she murmured. When he did not answer, she peered up at him. She wasn’t an expert, but he’d been especially focused on one thing the doctor had said. “When she mentioned the dreams, you seemed curious.”

  Leif shifted on his feet. “Yeah.”

  Sometimes, Iskra felt like she needed a sledgehammer to open his personal vault. She propped her hip against the rail, debating whether to push.

  Gripping the bar, he sighed. His gaze bounced over the horizon. “She said Carsen told her the dreams felt like someone else’s.”

  The tension squirming through his expression concerned her. This time she knew to wait, because whatever he was thinking, Leif was fighting it or wrangling it into something manageable.

  Frowning, he met her eyes. “That’s how my dreams feel. That one nightmare that nearly had me take you down? I couldn’t figure out how to describe them, but what she said is right—they seem like someone else’s.” He clenched his jaw, lips flat. “But they’re not. They’re mine.”

  She wanted to make it go away, to ward off the evil that had infected his life and stolen his gregarious nature—well, what she suspected was once a gregarious nature. His intensity had worsened to a dark shade since he’d saved her and Taissia. “Tell me about the nightmares.”

  His gaze snapped to hers, then he tucked his chin and looked back at the city. And as if he’d flipped a switch, lighthearted Leif was back. A smile touched his eyes. “My mom had six kids,” he said, bending to lean on the rail. “We had a big family, and I never thought twice about it. In fact, I assumed it’d always be big and tight.” He shrugged, something weighted in his expression. “Things sure change. We’ve all gone our own ways. Canyon and I are the only ones within driving distance now.”

  Anger cloyed at her tolerance, tempting her to rage over his change of subject. But there was a storm consuming his life, one seemingly left over from the mission that had brought them together.

  She could be that nagging voice in his head, or she could simply be here for him. “So.” She forced a smile into her voice and face. “Do you want kids?”

  His gaze bounced over the city as quiet settled between them. Perhaps that was his answer, which stung. She lowered her head. She just couldn’t win. Maybe she wasn’t strong enough to bring him back from this vortex devouring his life.

  “I do.” His words were barely audible. “I want it all,” he said louder. “Marriage, kids—the whole shebang.” His expression tightened, pulsing through his jaw muscle.

  Surprised, she wondered what the problem was. What kept him from that dream. Was it her?

  He glanced down at her with a huff. “Think about what I did to you the other night. How can I—” He shook his head and looked away again. “I will not have a family just to end up harming them.”

  “Leif,” she said, slipping her arm through his and pressing into his space. She rested her face against his chest, forcing him to hold her. “There is time. And answers will come.”

  “They’ve been telling me that for four years, and I’m no closer to the truth.” He wrapped his arms around her.

  “It hurts me to see you like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Pulling away. Sad, angry.” She shrugged. “You’ve changed a lot since Russia.” She wanted to be for him what he had been for her with Hristoff. But for him, the abuser was the nightmares. There must be a way to alleviate the desperation in the voice of a man rarely vulnerable.

  “I can’t risk having a nightmare and hurting you or Taissia. I just can’t.” He kissed her head, and they stayed there for a while. “Do you have nightmares? You went to hell and back under Hristoff’s grip. Does that plague your dreams?”

  “No,” she said quietly, guiltily. She could not explain why she didn’t, and it made her feel bad. As if something was wrong with her. Then again, hadn’t Leif told her once that she was broken? One of Hristoff’s lackeys had called her damaged goods.

  Leif let out a long breath. “How do you not have nightmares?”

  “I don’t know.” But she did know. Besides compartmentalizing what she had gone through, it was the man standing before her now. She glanced up and touched the side of his face, aching for the reassurance of him. “You.” She smiled, her gaze falling to his lips.

  As if reading her thoughts, he caught her mouth with his, and urgency sped through them both. Relief pushed her deeper into his arms. Savored the strength of him as passion roared and tethered them to each other. He was an anchor for her, and his touch proved electrifying.

  He kissed a trail across her jaw and down to the crook of her neck, sending skitters down her spine. He buried his face there, crushing her against himself. “That night,” he murmured over her throat, “with you in my arms . . . it was the first time I slept without nightmares.”

  Cupping the back of his head, she ached for him to know peace. “I wish you’d tell me. Let me help. I want to be there for you.”

  “That’d be nice . . .”

  “Tell me about them.”

  He sighed. “I can’t.”

  “Convenient.”

  “But true,” he said and slumped back against the rail.

  “Then you will understand my silence about what I’m doing for the director.”

  He considered her for several long seconds. “Understand, yes. Like, no.”

  “Likewise.”

  His gaze slid over her and into the living room. He shifted around her. “Where’s my Taissia?”

  He moved inside and scooped her daughter into his arms and blew raspberries on her belly, eliciting peals of laughter.

  Yet grief tethered Iskra to the spot, sad that Leif still did not trust her with whatever was tormenting him. They had made an agreement, one that did nothing to soothe the ache.

  An hour into another animated movie and more of Leif’s avoidance, his phone buzzed. Then hers. They didn’t need to look at the screens to know they were being called in. She wrapped Taissia in a hug and kissed her, knowing she could not keep rushing off to save the world when her world was right here in her arms.

  CHAPTER 17

  REAPER HEADQUARTERS, MARYLAND

  “Okay, listen up. Short and sweet,” Iliescu said. “We have new intel on the next possible Neiothen.” He nodded to Cell, who moved his laptop.

  “We’re still working with piecemeal information from the corrupted USB that Iskra gave us, but combining that new intel and pain
staking research—”

  “Are you wanting a pat on the back?” Lawe asked.

  “More like smack on the head,” Saito countered.

  “—we’ve managed to tie,” Cell ground out, “the code name found in the Book of the Wars, Wu, to one Arlen Dempsey. We have not been able to figure out much except that Dempsey holds dual citizenship—Ireland and U.S. Similar to Kurofuji, Dempsey has been doing contract work with a cybersecurity company in Taiwan—convenient, considering the Chinese maneuvering. This after six years in the Defence Forces of Ireland.”

  “Okay, explain to me,” Culver said, stroking his beard, “how we’re tying these guys to the Book of the Wars again? This is making my brain hurt, because I know the name Arlen Dempsey wasn’t in the book.”

  “It’s not us connecting them,” Cell said. “Recall that in the Book of the Wars, we found random letters. We took those letters and discerned they were in order, creating a series of what we believed were code names. And then we used that code name mentioned in the book and plowed through file after file until our eyes bled to find a connection in some military or government database.”

  “Do you ever get multiple hits?” Devine asked.

  “Unbelievably, no. Not yet.” Cell seemed pleased.

  “Anyway,” Iliescu said, “Leif and Saito will deploy as the advance team to scout the sites and last-knowns, then the rest of the team will head down so that if we’re unable to weed Dempsey out, you’ll all be boots on ground.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ideally, we want to intercept him before he’s either initiated or activated. I wish we knew more about how that worked.”

  Lawe shrugged. “If they don’t know when they’re activated, how on earth are we supposed to tell?”

  “At this point, we can’t,” Iliescu admitted. “We just need to interdict, hopefully before anything happens.”

  ***

  BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

  Sitting on the shag rug in her apartment, back against the sofa, Iskra cradled a sleeping Taissia, who had clung to her from the moment she’d been picked up from school. The missions were getting harder on both of them.

  The innocence and sweetness of her daughter—ha, take that, Leif—did something strange to her on the inside. Tracing Taissia’s face, she could see so much of Valery—the fair skin, the temper, but also his intelligence. While living in Hristoff’s house, she never had the chance to sit and cuddle her daughter, because she had done her best to convince him that Taissia did not matter. Otherwise, he would have used Taissia as a pawn. In the end, that was exactly what he had done.

  Mercy brought the cupcakes and cookies from the island and set them on the coffee table, where her laptop was still humming. “How do you handle it? I don’t think I could if I had a little one.”

  Iskra smoothed a hand over Taissia’s forehead, brushing back brown strands. “I’ve promised to finish what I started. So I will do this only until the Book of the Wars is recovered.” Would Leif be ready then?

  Mercy slumped onto the floor next to her. “Okay, so what are we hacking?” She lifted a chocolate-frosted cupcake and peeled the paper away.

  “I met with Veratti—”

  “Wait. Is he alive? You’re alive.” She screwed up her face. “I’m confused.”

  “I did not kill him.” Iskra sighed with a rueful smile. “He wants me to find the book.”

  “But Reaper wants it.”

  “Yes.”

  Mercy’s brows dove toward her pert nose. “So, are you a double agent?” She frowned. “Or is that triple . . . ?”

  Iskra propped her arms on her legs to thwart the aches in her muscles, but the bite of pain was worth this moment with her daughter. “It works to my benefit that he wants the book as well, but it does make it harder, because there is no doubt he monitors my every move.”

  Face white, Mercy gaped. Her gaze skipped around the room.

  “I meant digitally. He knows I have resources, so he set me on the hunt. And he will have someone track my movements to see if he can preempt me.”

  “Why would he do that if he asked you to find it for him?”

  “Because he doesn’t trust me, and I am certain there is someone else looking, too.”

  “This makes so much sense.” Mercy’s hesitance was frustrating but understandable. “So, where are we starting?”

  “Can you show me the footage from that secret facility near Cuba, when the storm came and the book disappeared, possibly with Andrew?”

  “Sure.” Mercy tugged her laptop closer. “But you know my vendetta against Andrew, so I’ve already been over this a million times. None of the angles caught him taking or escaping with it.”

  “I want to see him enter, leave, and everything in between.”

  “Probably should’ve brought a bigger stash of sugar,” Mercy said with a laugh as she pulled up multiple files. “This is going to take a while.”

  “I am going to put her in bed.” With Taissia in her arms, Iskra struggled off the floor, onto the couch, then upright before delivering her daughter to the bedroom. She took a moment to admire this precious child, then kissed her cheek. “Soon we will be free of this, my sweet. Until then, forgive me.” She returned and settled beside Mercy, reviewing the files.

  Over and over she watched the footage.

  Mercy eventually started working on a second laptop she’d brought. Iskra focused on the facility files. Then she asked for the satellite images of when Andrew had shown up in Burma, stills that were grainy and unhelpful.

  “Did you want this, too?” Mercy offered, angling her screen toward Iskra. “It’s of him in the Bahamas watching the guys. Nothing important except him getting into a vehicle.”

  “Wait.” Iskra’s heart staggered. “Look!” She pointed to the green truck.

  “Right,” Mercy said, giving her a frown, “getting into a vehicle.”

  “And here,” Iskra noted, “when he and the men are spotted in an Army truck at the facility—they’re unloading these plastic crates.”

  “Okay . . . ?”

  “In Burma—check the crates.”

  Mercy gasped. “You have to be kidding me! How did I not see this?”

  The truck in the Bahamas. The crates at the facility. The food stores from Burma. All marked with the same logo of a bird in flight with an arrow in its beak.

  Mercy’s fingers flew over the keys. “Got it. Logo belongs to Worth Your Salt, a company that’s been doing a lot of charity work in third-world countries to help supply potable water and nutrient-rich foods.”

  “Which is probably why we had their supplies in Burma.”

  “Mm.”

  “Who owns it?”

  Long auburn hair dangling as she leaned forward, Mercy narrowed her eyes, searching. “Okay, it looks like Salt is a subsidiary of Frankfurt & Stuttgart Biologics, with an office in—boom!—New York City.” She pinched her lower lip as she rifled through the information. “They have numerous locations around the world, but I can’t find who . . .” She sucked in hard. “Owned by Rutger Hermanns.”

  “That man is a plague. He is part of ArC, but I wonder about that, since Veratti called him his enemy and has me going after him to get the book.” Iskra nodded at the laptop. “Can you get into his company’s system?”

  Mercy was typing. “Already on it.” She slowed and grunted.

  “What?”

  “I . . .” She paused, still working and navigating, then shook her head. “I can’t do it from here. It’s a SCIF—Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. Means it’s not connected to the outside world.” Dropping back against the sofa, she shoved her hair from her face. “I have to be on-site and get into their server room.”

  “Then I guess I’m going to New York.”

  “Don’t you mean we?”

  “I must do this. Veratti told me Rutger has the book. If he has it, then perhaps it’s there. Or maybe something in their system will lead us to it, or to this Andrew who keeps showing up at the same time
that logo does.” Iskra squinted, thinking. “There are too many connections to this company and Rutger not to pursue it.”

  “True,” Mercy said, “but unless you know how to hack a system, I’m going with you. All I need is a few minutes at a terminal and we can dust that place.” She indicated the hall. “What about your little one?”

  Iskra cursed herself. She kept promising not to leave. “I . . . I can ask Leif’s family if they can help again.” Her stomach churned at the thought. “Since we’d be in and out quickly, we could be back before nightfall tomorrow.” The trip had to be short and fast. Not only because of Taissia, but because in two days Mercy and the team headed to Taiwan.

  ***

  NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

  “This place is entirely too people-y for me,” Mercy muttered as they hurried up the sidewalk, skating the eastern edge of Central Park. She nodded to the thick green vegetation. “And that’s mind-blowing. You get deep enough in there, and you don’t even know you’re in a city with millions of people and cabbies who honk more than geese.”

  “Stay on task,” Iskra said. “Remember—stumble and lift. Most men will miss the obvious when you lean into them.”

  “You do realize I’m not you, right?”

  “But you’re still beautiful. Just be light and fast.”

  “You should—”

  “Be confident, like you belong there.” Iskra focused on the objective. “Okay, let’s split up.”

  “We still have four blo—”

  Without another word, Iskra hustled across the street, leaving Mercy. She could feel Mercy’s nerves, which was why she had separated sooner than planned.

  Iskra squared her shoulders and lifted a phone from her purse. She put it to her ear and started chatting like the majority of people in this dirty, cluttered city. People raved about the wonders of New York City—and there were a lot of them—but Mercy was right. There were too many people. Which made it perfect for operatives. This wasn’t her first mission here, and it probably wouldn’t be her last.