The discord between the Den and the Wild Bunch had simmered down, but considering Celt would undoubtedly hold a grudge to the man they all considered a brother, it was unlikely he would get over it anytime soon.
“And who went and invited them, eh?” Celt asked, though his gaze immediately went to Synek and narrowed. “This was your doing, wasn’t it?”
“You spend a lot of time in Romania?” Synek asked, not even bothering to hide his amusement. “Because fuck if I have, and this lot grew up there. It’ll save us time if we know where we’re going.”
Not to mention, as personal as this all was for them, it was personal for Winter too. The Romanians were stubborn—arguably as stubborn as Synek would be if he were in their shoes—but Winter wasn’t. She knew, even if they hadn’t wanted to admit it, that they wanted to find the Jackal.
If Grimm was in Gheenă, then there could be clues as to the Jackal’s whereabouts as well. And even as she had never met the man, she knew that the Wild Bunch wanted to find him.
If only before Celt and the Den did.
Synek didn’t care very much about what ultimately happened to the Jackal—whether he was found and brought back or if he remained a ghost—but he did care about Winter. And for her, he would do what he could.
“You would think they’d mellow with age,” Skorpion commented dryly as he kept in step with Synek. “They’re getting worse.”
Synek laughed.
The man wasn’t wrong.
Winter broke away from the Romanians to walk over to him. “I owe you for this.”
“Nonsense,” he said and meant it. “It’s the least I could do for you.”
She’d done far more for him than he could put into words.
Besides, she probably needed to save her thanks for later. They all had to make it back in one piece without killing each other.
As they drew closer, Fang was the first to acknowledge him with a jerk of his chin before he headed up onto the plane, the others following. Tăcut was the only one to linger, undoubtedly waiting for Winter.
“Looks like we’ve got company,” Skorpion said, his gaze on the approaching car.
Synek looked over in confusion but realized very quickly who had arrived.
Calavera stepped out of the car, shades shielding her eyes and a backpack over her shoulder.
She didn’t falter until she was nearly upon them. “What?” she asked, her eyes narrowed. “For the love of ... not you too.”
It was clear when neither he nor Skorpion moved that she knew she wouldn’t be winning this one.
“I’m pregnant, not handicap.”
“Not happening,” Skorpion said, meeting her glare with a frosty one of his own. “We can handle this ourselves.”
“He was my friend too, and last time I checked, we were all a team. If you’re going to go find Grimm, I’m going with you. End of story.”
Yet they still didn’t move.
Her glare lasted a second longer before she rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll stay with Winter.”
Which meant they would both be tucked away in the plane without getting even remotely close to any of the action.
Fair enough.
Synek was the first to step aside, smiling to himself as she grumbled under her breath and brushed past him.
This would be a fucking riot.
Snow stretched as far as the eye could see, a blanket of white that might have been blinding had it not been for the goggles Synek wore.
Two hours they had been in Romania, having landed more than thirty minutes away from Gheenă’s supposed location, yet the only thing he had seen in all that time was barren trees and wilderness.
During the drive, Synek had thought for the second time that it was a good idea to bring the Wild Bunch along. Sure, the map in Spader’s office had given them an approximate location, but they would have been wandering for hours, if not days, trying to find ... well, whatever it was they were looking for.
They knew, though it had never been confirmed, that Grimm was being held in a black site. Some place remote with limited internet connection, which meant it was virtually undetectable by conventional means.
But as Fang sat in the front, pointing Celt in the right direction, Synek was sure the man had led them to the right place.
Almost opposite the sign that proclaimed this barren place to be Gheenă, ravens scattered from the treetops, and Synek was sure he saw an animal skull half buried within the snow.
“I’ve got heat signatures on your left, fifteen meters out,” Winter said over the comms they all wore. High above, a drone provided her with all the visual she would need.
“Red has them,” Celt said without taking his eyes off the road, a second before there was a thump on the roof as Red got into position.
From his position in the back of the truck, Synek didn’t have to see to know when he heard the sharp crack of two bullets firing that Red had hit his targets.
The man didn’t miss.
“You’re free and clear for another fifty yards,” Winter said a moment later.
For more than a decade, Synek had gone on many a job, all varying in difficulty. All never inspiring anything more than mild irritation in him. He wasn’t nervous when he did his job, not when he knew how to do it well.
And definitely not when he wasn’t alone.
But today ... he was nervous.
It wasn’t just about getting Grimm out of this place no matter the costs; he was thinking about what it would take to ensure he made it home in one piece and back to Iris.
The closer they came, the more his heart raced, but even as adrenaline coursed through him, giddiness followed on its heels.
There was nothing like a little violence to look forward to.
Iris didn’t often walk around with a gun sheathed at her back, but for the time being, she would.
Maybe if every news station in the state wasn’t talking about the Kingmaker, she might not have been so nervous, but knowing that Belladonna had won and the man would be out looking for revenge, she preferred to be safe.
While she still didn’t know how long it would be until Synek returned—hopefully before her father was released—she could make herself useful, though her first idea wasn’t going to prove as time-consuming as she initially thought it would.
Between glancing at the clock every few minutes or checking her phone, and mindlessly watching television, and waiting for any word from Synek, she wondered if this would be her new reality.
Blowing out a breath, Iris got to her feet, grabbing the baseball hat that Synek insisted she wear everywhere—after she had taken a pair of scissors to her hair and cut it shorter—figuring it wouldn’t hurt if she went out to get some fresh air.
Gone were the fancy hotels in the city that had been her homes over the past eight years. Now, she was inside a motel room in a sketchy part of the city, but one where most people made it a point to look the other way.
Everyone was minding their own.
Here, she didn’t have to worry so much.
Iris tucked her hands into her pockets once she was out of the motel hallways that smelled faintly of tobacco and something else cloying, starting down the street toward the bodega at the corner. The owner hardly ever looked up from small television he kept behind the counter, especially when his games were on.
His hand shot up in a dismissive wave as the bell sounded when Iris entered, but he didn’t bother to even look in her direction. She hadn’t come here to buy anything in particular, but now that she was walking up the aisle, she figured it wouldn’t hurt to grab a soda or one of the spicy pickles in the bag. She couldn’t get enough of them even though Synek glared at her anytime she ate one.
Damn Brit.
She bent at the waist a bit to get a better view of the different flavors before finding the one she wanted. She’d barely gotten it into her hand before a voice to her right nearly startled the life out of her.
“Iris.”
Sh
e nearly knocked down the display before closing her eyes and counting back from ten to calm her racing heart. “This is really getting old.”
If the woman was offended at all, she didn’t show it. Instead, she offered a patient smile, as she always did, and clasped her hands in front of her ... as she always did.
It was a shame that Iris had familiarized herself so much with the other woman, especially considering she was supposed to hate her. But while she wasn’t sure how she felt about Belladonna, she knew that it wasn’t hate.
“Don’t worry yourself, Iris. I won’t be staying long.”
“Why are you here at all?” she asked.
Belladonna should have been gone. Iris hadn’t expected to see her again after the press conference when she had quite literally broken the news channels.
“I came to offer you restitution.”
“I’m sorry,” Iris said with a blink. “You what?”
“Uilleam and I ... We’re bred of the same monster, but while he offered sums to his mercenaries for the dangers he put them in, I hadn’t offered the same to you or Ada.”
Ada ... Skorpion’s fiancée.
Iris had only ever seen the woman once—courtesy of a picture in the man’s phone—but she didn’t know the full story behind her.
“I manipulated some events, hoping it would lead me here, and while everything went as I had hoped, that doesn’t mean you haven’t suffered. So I’ve wired a sum of eight million pounds into this account,” she said, passing her a small notecard with a series of numbers on it. “For you and your father.”
Iris didn’t know what to say.
“Take care, Iris,” Belladonna said with a formal nod of her head. When she turned her back, fully intending on leaving once more, Iris forgot all about caution.
“I’m curious,” Iris called after her, waiting until she paused and looked back to speak. “Why didn’t you kill him? You had every opportunity.”
“I couldn’t,” she answered. “And I had no reason to.”
She said that with such calm efficiency that Iris almost believed her. Almost. Because while she didn’t know the Kingmaker as well as Belladonna or any of the others, she knew that he might have been willing to be done with the mercenaries, but he wasn’t done with the woman in front of her.
Not by a long shot.
And she wondered, oh how she wondered, what would become of them once they were all gone. Once there was no one else they could face but each other.
As she watched the woman disappear out the doors, Iris tried to imagine what could have possibly happened between those two to bring them to this point.
Synek was the first through the door, taking out anyone who wore a guard’s uniform and those who didn’t quickly scatter out of his way. Though he had no idea where he was going, it was easy for him to navigate the halls as it was similarly designed to a two-story prison.
“Take the left corridor.”
Whatever resistance met him was quickly disposed of as the cell doors opened one by one. The prisoners fled from their cells, raging against their captors, which made Synek’s job even easier.
“Is this you?” he asked Winter, happily showing one of the prisoners his favorite knife when he looked at him a second too long.
“I’m not opening the cells,” she answered, sounding every bit as confused as he felt.
“Somebody else is here,” he muttered gravely, quickening his step.
Iris might have trusted Belladonna to keep her word that once she did what was asked of her, that would be the last time they spoke, but Synek didn’t. Because, for whatever reason, she had chosen to kidnap and hold Grimm for years compared to the minutes she’d spent with each of them.
Grimm meant something, and he doubted it was in a good way.
“Right hallway.”
He followed Winter’s direction, entering a darker, more secluded section of the black site. These cells, unlike the others, were smaller, only holding a single bed each, and the men inside them didn’t look half-starved mindless.
Their eyes were clear, their stance straight.
They watched him with the same impassiveness as he watched them.
What the fuck was going on?
He couldn’t stop, though, not when he didn’t know why the other prisoners were being released or even who was in charge of the facility. Instead, he picked up the pace, scanning the cells as he passed, looking for a familiar face in the sea of men.
Synek was nearly to the door when a small charge went off, blowing the doors off two cells, smoke and debris flying out.
“Grimm!”
He forgot all about training as he raced forward, fearing the worst. He could almost hear Winter screaming in his ear, but the words were drowned out as the ringing in his ears grew louder.
A blond man with a beard came stumbling out of one of the cells, his gaze immediately latching onto Synek and narrowing. There was a tattoo inked up the side of his neck—a snake, if he saw correctly.
“Incoming,” the man said, his voice distinctly American.
Synek might have let him be had he not came at him.
Instead, he had no choice but to dodge a well-thrown punch that barely missed his jaw. He launched a fist of his own, first to the man’s side—though he hardly made a sound or moved back a step despite the power Synek had behind that hit—then another to his face, but before he could connect, a foot landed soundly in his side.
He flew across the room, his ribs protesting the treatment and all he saw was red.
He lurched back around, ready to fight, barely taking in the grisly visage of the man with too long hair and a beard that was in desperate need of a cut.
Synek was swinging before he even got a good visual.
But someone caught his fist.
“You’d think I hadn’t taught you how to fight.”
All at once, the rage fled him as he reared back, blinking up at the man who released him a second later.
He couldn’t have fought a grin if he tried. “Grimm bastard.”
He smirked behind his beard, the same man he’d always been, if not for the tightness around his eyes. “What took you so fucking long?”
Synek laughed.
If only the man knew.
He touched his fingers to his ear, not willing to take his eyes off Grimm for a moment lest the man disappear again.
“Target acquired.”
Iris was seconds from chewing off her thumbnail when she heard the mechanical whirring at the door a second before the lock turned and the heavy wood swung open. Synek walked in, still in his gear, though he was a little worse for wear.
That didn’t stop her from racing across the room and checking over the rest of him to make sure that he wasn’t too injured besides the bruises and cuts she saw on his face.
But he only gave her a second to look her fill before his mouth was on hers and she forgot about everything else that wasn’t him.
“It’s good to be home,” he said, holding her so tight she could burst.
But Iris didn’t mind.
She squeezed him back.
“I’m glad you made it back. Did you find him?”
Part of her was afraid his relieved expression would disappear, and sadness would take its place, but it didn’t. He smiled. Smiled so brightly that she knew they had found him before he even said. That his friend and mentor and the man he’d been searching for, for years was alive and well.
The job really was done.
“What now?” she asked, brushing her fingers through his hair.
“Now? Now, we fuck, and I pass out for a few days.”
Sounded like a plan.
Chapter 25
While there were benefits to being dead, it was also a hassle.
Like the fact Iris had to remain tucked in the back of a car with tinted windows well down the road from where the prison sat and the row of reporters waiting outside it. Most had fallen off the trail of the mysterious man known only as the
Kingmaker when there was very little to find, but others were still hounding for the story.
Of course, her father wouldn’t know anything about the Kingmaker or his business or anything really, considering he had been locked inside this facility without any contact with the outside world, but they didn’t know that.
And worse, she hadn’t been able to explain to him what all had happened since the last time she saw him.
Which meant he would soon be finding out about her fake death.
She was squeezing Synek’s hand, Iris realized too late, loosening her grip on his fingers as she looked over at him apologetically. “Sorry.”
He merely smiled, not bothered at all. “You’re excited,” he said with a shrug. “Nothing wrong with that.”
And nervous, though she didn’t voice that thought aloud.
She didn’t think with the way she was feeling that excited was the right word. What she felt was more akin to peace. Ease at the knowledge that there was nothing left to worry about.
No more enemies.
No more sleepless nights feeling as if she were failing and destined to lose a battle she didn’t completely understand. She no longer felt the weight of responsibility on her shoulders. And after Synek came home three nights ago, she saw that he felt the same.
He seemed lighter. The shadows in his eyes not as oppressing. His tension gone.
They were free of it all.
“You know,” Iris said as they waited, “you didn’t have to wear that. My father is going to love you regardless.”
Even if only because she did.
Synek was unlike any other man she had ever met in her life. He could be vicious and angry, but he could also be remarkably kind with a charm she would never get tired of.
He was her one.
And because he had wanted to make a good first impression, he’d worn a bow tie. He hadn’t considered that his face was bruised, his lip cut, and he naturally wore an expression that promised violence.
The bow tie, he said, would make all the difference.
Iris. (Den of Mercenaries Book 7) Page 28