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THIRTEEN
Garrison
As the trainroared along the tracks toward New York City, Dess kept her usual calm, cool poise in the seat across from me, but I knew her well enough to mark the signs of tension in her shoulders and her jaw. She ran her finger across her lips, drawing my attention to where it really shouldn’t be while we prepared for this detour of a mission.
She’d wanted to come alone, but Julius had insisted that I come along, since I was the one who knew the most about our contact and had handled the negotiations as a middleman. You’ll still be delivering the favor and earning hers on your own, he’d told Dess. But it’s important to us that everyone knows the Chaos Crew has your back.
Dess must have been a little nervous, because she’d agreed without any further argument.
“Anthea Noble,” she said now, adjusting her position as she turned the woman’s name over on her tongue. “And she specializes in discreet crimes?”
I nodded. “The word that’s gone around is that she’s the one to turn to if you need a murder set up to look like an accident or an innocent illness—or if you need to investigate an accident or illness that you think might have actually been murder. Checking the chemical compounds in a soil sample, especially for anything that hints at a crime, fits right in with that. I heard that one time she took down an enemy by lacing his rosebushes with some kind of undetectable poison.”
Dess grimaced. “A gun to the head or a knife to the throat is much simpler. Clearer. Are you sure we can trust her?”
I shrugged. “As much as we can trust anyone in this world. She’s well-established and connected—the aunt of the head of a major gang in a county called Paradise Bend that’s a few hours away from New York. And she seems to care about her reputation, which is that she’s cutthroat when she needs to be but fair with those she feels have earned her loyalty. I don’t think she’d stab us in the back for no reason. If she does… I’d bet you can deal with her.”
A glint of humor lit in Dess’s eyes. “I can definitely shoot her before she can slowly poison me.”
I let out a laugh. “And good thing, too. But I really don’t think it’ll come to that. She knows you come with the Chaos Crew’s support, and we’ve got quite a reputation too. The best-connected people don’t turn down new connections among the upper echelon. They’ve gotten where they are by forging solid alliances. She’ll see us as just as useful to her as she is to us.”
“And this gang she’s associated with? Are they going to want a cut?”
“She didn’t mention anything about that. It appears that she mainly operates independently, without needing permission or guidance from them.”
“All right.” Dess leaned her head back in her seat with a sigh. My gaze was drawn to the soft, pale stretch of her neck with the urge to run my mouth across it, but I doubted she’d welcome a PDA.
Was she worried more about the stranger we were going to meet or about what that stranger might tell us about the Maliks?
I didn’t know how to ask her that, so I settled for a teasing question instead. “So, here you are about to embark on your first solo mission without the household behind you. No cold feet, I hope?”
Dess let out a dismissive huff. “I was always alone in the household anyway.” Her eyes went momentarily distant before refocusing. “They might have funded and backed my missions, but they weren’t there to make sure I survived. I relied on no one but myself during those operations just as I’ll be doing on this one.”
“You’re getting to call the shots about what and who you do this time, though. Moving up in the world.”
She glowered at me through narrowed eyes. “Are you trying to pump me up or take me down a peg?”
I grinned. “Can’t it be both at the same time? We wouldn’t want your head to get too big.”
She patted her hair. “I think it suits me just fine as it is.”
The truth was, I was going easier on her than I might have if I couldn’t have told that she wasn’t totally confident in this new role. It was the first time she’d taken on a solo job as a totally free agent.
And really, she should feel proud of where she’d ended up. She’d endured trainers who only cared about how well she could use the weapons they’d put in her hands, no family to speak of in her entire living memory, and death-defying missions from her childhood. But those trials had only honed her into the strongest woman I’d ever known. Even now, knowing what she did about her past, she hadn’t let it shake her all that much.
The sudden urge gripped me to open up a part of myself as deep and painful as the losses I knew she’d faced. My chest constricted at the thought. I never let down all my walls, never let the all-too-real agony spill out of me.
But I could give her something real. Something I could say honestly without sarcasm or jokes to deflect the impact.
I drew in a breath and steadied myself, forcing my voice to come out with genuine warmth rather than its usual wryness. “I’m looking forward to watching you kick ass on this mission without the pretense of anyone controlling you. I can’t wait to see what you’ll do on your own.”
Dess looked at me, and the softness in her eyes showed that she knew how significant those words had been. She leaned toward me in a burst of motion, taking me by surprise as her lips collided with mine. Her hand wrapped around the back of my head and tugged the hair at the base of my skull.
She didn’t really do gentle, not when it came to physical intimacy. From the hints she’d dropped when we’d hooked up that one evening, I knew the reason was something that’d make me want to tear apart the world to avenge her.
But she hadn’t shared the details, so I wasn’t going to pry. Not yet, anyway. I just kissed her back with equal passion. My hand fell to her thigh and squeezed, and she let out a muffled moan.
Then she pulled back. The passengers across the aisle from us were watching, not that I minded. Let them see how much I cared about this woman and how much she wanted me.
