Syn.

by London Miller

  Thinking it might have been her software malfunctioning, she typed in Red’s phone number, just to check, and within seconds, his icon popped up in Brooklyn, so the tracker had to be working fine.

  Was Synek ignoring her?

  Even if he didn’t know exactly what she was doing, he still knew that she could locate people through the GPS on their phones. There was a chance he had turned it off in an attempt to prevent her from finding him.

  But what if he hadn’t …

  Dragging her fingers through her silver hair, Winter set the laptop aside and got to her feet, heading to the kitchen to give herself a chance to think. Her mind was spinning with possibilities, and the last thing she wanted was to panic when there was no reason to.

  Grabbing one of Răzvan’s bottles of Gatorade—then another when she heard him coming down the stairs—she turned to face him as he rounded the corner, a hand towel tossed over his bare shoulder.

  His hair glistened with sweat, the dark strands thick and shoved back out of his face.

  Even now, after months of getting used to the sight of it, she tried not to smile and barely resisted the temptation to run her fingers through it, though she was always careful not to accidentally pull on it.

  For years, he’d worn his hair tapered close, having spent years with kids and adults alike who liked to tug on it and make him cry, but now, he was gradually letting it grow back.

  All because she’d been curious what he looked like with hair.

  He might have towered over her and had the muscle mass of a heavyweight MMA fighter, but Răzvan was a sweetheart.

  “Good workout?” she asked, shamelessly looking him over, taking ridiculous satisfaction in the knowledge that she got to keep him all to herself.

  He gave her an amused smile, still not used to compliments she showered him with.

  —You should come up with me next time.—

  “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I give up tacos, Răz. The only workout I need is with a keyboard.”

  Besides, the last time she’d ventured into his gym upstairs, he’d tried to kill her with the number of crunches he’d wanted her to do.

  No thanks.

  His shoulders shook with laughter as he pressed a kiss to her forehead, reminding her why she loved him endlessly. — What’s bothering you?—

  “What makes you think something’s bothering me?” she asked, even as she turned away to head back to her laptop.

  It didn’t make much of a difference. He could read her without trying.

  Whether it was something as trivial as a broken nail or a stud missing from her favorite Jeffrey Campbell Lolita boots, he wanted to know why she was so upset so he could fix it.

  Even as she sat back on the couch, there was no escaping Răzvan and his inquiry, but while Synek had been on her mind constantly over the past week, she had never mentioned it to him.

  To say the pair of them didn’t get along was putting it mildly. There was the little fact that Synek hadn’t just tried to kill him once—courtesy of three bullets in his bulletproof vest—not twice—this time with a knife pressed against his jugular—but three times, the last of which she hadn’t been privy to since it had all gone down in the Hall.

  Considering she and Synek had both worked for the Kingmaker, and Răzvan worked for the Kingmaker’s brother, Nix, the two were bound to cross paths eventually, but she didn’t want to fan the flames.

  Răzvan came around, sitting across from her on the table, and shut her laptop before she could get her hands on it. —Tell me, or I’ll make you tell me.—

  “Sexually?” she asked, a little hopeful.

  That managed to get half a smile out of him, which meant she wasn’t entirely wrong.

  —You know what I mean.—

  “Fine, if you insist. I’m worried about Syn. I haven’t heard from him, and with everything that’s going on with the Kingmaker and Belladonna, I just don’t think now is the best time for him to be left to his own devices. He has a tendency to act a little rash.”

  —You mean when you’re not there to hold his hand and keep him in check?— he asked, his face giving nothing away.

  Yep, still a little bad blood there. “I wouldn’t say that,” she hedged, even if it was partially true.

  Though Synek was older than she was by several years, Winter was usually the one wrangling him in and keeping him in line.

  She kept him sane as he liked to say.

  Swiping a hand over his whiskered jaw, Răzvan’s gaze moved past her for a moment before returning. —I’m assuming you tried to call him?—

  “He didn’t answer.”

  —Checked his phone.—

  “Won’t even turn on.”

  —Have you checked his usual spots?—

  “Not yet,” she answered, crossing her legs. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.”

  —Then we’ll start there tomorrow, yes?—

  We, he said.

  Always at her back, even when the person she was looking for irritated the hell out of him. “Thank you.”

  He waved her words away. It was never a problem. —Come on.—

  “Where are we going?” she asked, even as she stood, accepting the hand he held out for her.

  —To bed.—

  “I forget you like to live like an old man,” she said with a playful frown.

  He twined his fingers with hers, leading her up the spiraling metal staircase that led to the top floor of the loft that had recently been converted into their much larger bedroom. —We’re not sleeping, Îngeraș.—

  Her eyes widened marginally, now understanding that look on his face—the one that spoke of dark promises and a long, long night.

  She was looking forward to it.

  Chapter 7

  Iris couldn’t say what drew her back to the Wraith compound—maybe it was her curiosity about Synek, or maybe it was the lingering guilt she felt, but all the same, at around eight that night, she walked inside and headed for the bar.

  She needed a drink—or two—before she ventured anywhere near him.

  Iris wasn’t surprised to find Bear perched on one of the many barstools, one of his long legs kicked out in front of him, his intense gaze focused on one of the girls sweeping the floor a few feet away.

  Wren, Iris thought her name was.

  She’d popped up nearly three years ago, her brother having owed a debt from what she understood, but that was the case with most of the girls on the floor and working behind the bar.

  Either their family needed to pay back a loan or the debt was their own, but until the balance was paid back, they were stuck here, doing whatever was asked of them.

  Most didn’t make it six months.

  Bear didn’t slant his gaze in Iris’s direction until she slid onto the barstool one over from his own, and judging from the expression on his face, her presence wasn’t welcome.

  “Didn’t think I would see you back in here,” he said as he looked away from her and back to Wren. She seemed oblivious to his attention.

  Iris wished she had an answer good enough to explain why she wanted to see Synek again, but she didn’t. It didn’t even make sense to herself. “I never asked,” she said, ignoring his statement altogether. “Was he really as bad as they say?”

  “Syn? He was worse.” Bear gestured Margo over with a crook of his finger; her eyes lighting up when she saw it was him.

  Bear could be considered attractive if one were to ignore the bad attitude, rude disposition, and the look of judgment he always wore. Beyond that, the beard was nice, and the hair that was mussed in the middle and shaved on the sides was a sight to see.

  But Iris had never been attracted to him or any of the Wraiths. Maybe because she’d spent too much time with them. She saw them at their worst, and the deplorable things they did.

  Yet, despite herself, she’d been attracted to Synek—if that was even the right way to explain it. The word felt too mild to describe the way her heart had raced
and molten heat swept through her the moment he’d grabbed her to kiss her.

  Even now, the memory was enough to make her blow out a breath, her skin feeling too hot.

  She’d known all about him before that moment—both from Rosalie and from the file Belladonna had left behind—but it hadn’t seemed to matter to the rest of her once they were outside the Hall.

  The cold, winter air should have been enough to cool whatever bad intentions the liquor had inspired, but she hadn’t been able to blame it on the drink.

  Not only had she only had the one, but she’d had every chance to push him away, to distract him in some other way until the Wraiths arrived in the van.

  But it was that first kiss, that first moment of contact when he’d made her forget her own name that had her forgetting everything there was to know about him.

  He hadn’t been a traitor to the Wraiths at that moment; he’d just been a man.

  A man who was fucking ridiculously attractive with a mouth that made her soul sing.

  Clearing her throat, Iris focused back on Bear. “Define worse.”

  Bear tossed back a shot of bourbon before passing her one—a Wraith custom. “He did everything. All the bad shit you can possibly think of, he was in charge of it. The shit everybody else was afraid to do.”

  She thought of the jobs she’d seen others back out of—the ones where it almost meant certain death if you took it on. “Why? What did Rosalie have over him?”

  “You’re asking a lot of questions,” Bear mumbled, a new expression on his face that she couldn’t read. “A little late for that, ain’t it?”

  “She made him seem like some sort of savage—all of you did—but when we were at the Hall, he just seemed …”

  Normal?

  A little intense, maybe, but nothing she hadn’t seen before—and not even the worst she’d seen.

  Bear scoffed, as if he knew exactly what she was struggling to put into words. “You forget, Rosalie can make a monster out of men. This place,” Bear went on, finishing his shot before gesturing around, “shows you the worst you’re capable of.”

  She didn’t verbally agree, but she knew exactly what he meant.

  When she’d first come to the Wraiths years ago with nowhere else to turn, Iris had never doubted that she would be able to slip in and out of the role Rosalie had placed her in.

  But since then, she had focused less on the vendetta that was most important to her and more on her position as a bounty hunter of criminals.

  Day after day, and month after month, she’d set aside times when she could have been surveilling the governor or gathering evidence in favor of hunting down those who had crossed the Wraiths.

  Some part of her had even grown to enjoy it.

  “Then why’d he leave?” Iris asked, not quite understanding. “If he was who he needed to be to survive in here, why did he leave?”

  Bear’s jaw tightened as she spoke, but not because of anything she said—his attention was on Wren and the way one of the recruits kept trying to draw her into a shadowed corner even though it was clear she didn’t want to.

  “Bear?”

  “What?”

  Right … he was obviously no longer in the mood to entertain her questions, but she pressed on anyway. “Why did he leave the Wraiths?”

  “His last order could have been someone he didn’t want to kill, or maybe it was just because he was tired of sticking his dick in Rosalie. I don’t know. Only person who knows for sure is chained up back there. You wanna go back there and ask him, be my guest.”

  She remembered the last time she’d been in a room with Synek, his threats, and the fear she felt even as he’d been restrained. No, she wouldn’t be asking him anything.

  “He was your best friend, wasn’t he? I’m surprised you haven’t gone to see him.”

  “You make it sound as if I have a choice in the matter? Rosalie wouldn’t let me within a mile of that room.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m the person he’s least likely to kill when he gets free.”

  Bear stood then, dismissing her entirely as he walked toward Wren, who’d been slyly trying to back away from the recruit who hadn’t seemed to notice her resistance—or maybe he had and just didn’t care.

  The man was a second too late as his eyes widened dramatically. Bear had his hand twisted in the man’s shirt before shoving him back with enough force to shove him up against the wall with one hand.

  Iris might have entertained the display longer, but her mind finally caught up with what Bear had said.

  Not if Synek got free, but when …

  The thought bothered her more than it should have.

  Now, she was officially fucking worried.

  He hadn’t traveled back to London, and none of the other mercenaries had seen him stateside—it was as if he’d completely disappeared off the face of the earth.

  Winter tried not to panic at the thought, knowing her panicking wouldn’t bring him back—she needed a clear head.

  First, she needed to think like him.

  If there was one thing about him, Synek was a creature of habit. He didn’t bar hop or venture to any place that wasn’t familiar and comfortable. If he was in New York, he went to the Hall—and after a little digging through his aliases, she’d found that he’d bought a plane ticket to New York.

  A fact that surprised her, considering she would have heard if he was back in town for this long… not to mention how much he hated the state entirely.

  The moment she’d found his itinerary, her thoughts shifted to his past and the things he didn’t like to talk about unless absolutely necessary.

  But even distracted, Synek was always careful enough not to leave any trace of his presence behind when it came to avoiding the Wraiths.

  Before her mind could run away with that thought, Winter had gotten dressed and headed to the Hall, Răzvan right beside her.

  “When was the last time you saw him?” Winter asked Dismas, watching as he circled around the bar, holding his infamous ledger in his hand.

  “A week ago … maybe longer.”

  “You don’t know for sure?”

  He gave her a bland look before setting his ledger on the bar top and flipping it open to the last page. “When you’re here, I see you. When you’re not, I don’t give a shit.”

  Dismas had a rather hands-off approach in the business—out of sight, out of mind was his philosophy. As long as no one brought trouble to his doorstep, one could be whoever they wanted inside his four walls.

  “Oh, come on,” Winter said, walking closer, “you can give me something better than that. You and I both know if Syn ever steps foot in here, you’re making sure he’s not breaking anyone. We already promised to pay you back for the wee bit of damage he and Tăcut inflicted.”

  The expression on Răzvan’s face said he had no intention of paying anything back.

  “Listen, doll, I’d help you if I knew anything, but after he left with the brunette, I wasn’t paying attention anymore.”

  “Brunette? What brunette?”

  Dismas shrugged. “Dark hair. Dark eyes. Tan with a nice ass. That’s about all I can tell you.”

  The most basic description and not even a very good one. “Anything else?”

  “Look,” he said, dropping his pen in the middle of the book, “even if I had seen anything worth noting, you know where I stand. Syn is good people, but if I go and break my rules for one of you, others will expect the same treatment. Good luck tracking him down. You know better than I do that if he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be.”

  Yeah, unfortunately she did.

  Realizing he wasn’t going to be any more help, Winter turned for the door. “I’ll call you when I find him.”

  Where the hell was she going to start now?

  Without any trace of him, and the vague description of the woman he’d been with, there was nowhere else for her to look.

  Winter dragged her fingers through
her hair, trying to come up with a solution when Răzvan’s sudden hold on her arm had her looking in his direction, before pinpointing what had his attention.

  They already knew, before it stopped, who the sleek black truck belonged to. What concerned her was why the Kingmaker was here in the first place.

  She hardly ever saw him, but when she did, it was always prearranged via a phone call—he’d never sought her out personally.

  As the truck rolled to a stop, the back window cracked just far enough for her to make out his profile and his sunglasses. “Get in.”

  There was no use in ignoring him—the Kingmaker usually found a way of getting what he wanted. “As much as I’d love a new job right now,” Winter said as she slipped into the back seat, “I’m a little busy.”

  The Kingmaker completely ignored that. “I have a job for you.”

  “Isn’t that line usually reserved for the mercenaries?” she asked, remembering one of many conversations she’d had with Synek.

  “Mercenary or hacker, you all work for me, so it’s all the same. Now”—he pulled a photograph from his pocket, handing it to her— “I need you to find me everything you can on this woman.”

  It was hard to see much of anything thanks to the rather large tree the woman was sitting in her car under, but Winter could make out the majority of her face, and her scanner could get a better look.

  “Who is she?”

  “If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t need you, would I? I expect an answer within the hour.”

  “That’s not how it works. Facial recognition can take a while.” Not to mention, she was busy with something else. “I can—”

  “In less than an hour after I came across her, she managed to upload a picture of me. While I trust you did your job well enough to ensure she can’t find anything on me, I would prefer no one have my image readily available to them.”

  Fair enough.

  Since she’d known him, Winter had learned rather quickly that he had to be one of the lone attractive people in the world who hated to have their picture taken.

  “Must’ve dropped the ball earlier. Spidey senses weren’t tingling?”