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6
Declan staredthrough the windshield of the rented Land Rover, trying to keep his eyes on theroad.
It wasn’teasy.
The peaks of the Esja, a volcanic mountain range that loomed outside of Reykjavík, had dominated the view since the moment they’d landed. As they made their way toward Hólmavík, that view had given way to vast stretches of emptiness, rolling hills, and icy bluefjords.
“It’s so beautiful,” Kate said next tohim.
He looked over at her in the passenger seat and tried to ignore the apprehension that had settled in his stomach since he’d agreed to let her come to Iceland. “Itis.”
She’d taken off her jacket for the three-hour drive, and her gray sweater made her eyes gray-green, as mysterious as the water of the fjords. Her fiery hair was pulled back into a ponytail, the starkness of it highlighting the delicate line of her cheekbones, the lush fullness of hermouth.
“How much longer?” Nick asked from the back of theRover.
“Twenty minutes less than the last time you asked,” Declan said. “Jesus, check yourGPS.”
He looked down at the map app and slowed down to make a right turn off the highway, which had grown less and less crowded with cars the farther they got fromReykjavík.
They’d passed the turnoff for Hólmavík ten miles earlier, opting to head straight to the house where they’d be staying rather than stop for supplies. The flight had taken nearly six hours. Then they’d stopped for dinner outside of Reykjavic where they parted ways with Ronan before continuing on the three hour drive toHólmavík.
They were all ready to stretch out andsleep.
“Wow, there is nothing out here,” Nick said, his face turned to the window in thebackseat.
Declan couldn’t disagree. It was almost one in the morning, but he would have expected a few lights from distant houses at least. Instead, the darkness seemed to go on and on, mountains and hills nothing more than shadows under themoonlight.
“That’s a good thing. Less people means less questions,” Declansaid.
He glanced at the GPS and turned off the main road, then cracked his window. He got a whiff of salt air as they bumped along a narrow road, the headlights illuminating the space in front of the car and not muchelse.
The GPS said the house should’ve been almost right in front of them, but the surrounding area was as dark and featureless as it had been since they’d turned off the highway. Then he rounded a curve at the base of a hill and two golden orbs came into view, lights shining at the top of thehill.
“There it is,” he said, leaning forward to get a better look as they started up a steep driveway leading to thehouse.
“Looks big,” Kate said, following hisgaze.
Details were hard to muster in the dark, but she was right. The house was a hulking mass nestled into the hill, the lights flanking a massive frosted glass door at the top of a stonestaircase.
He pulled in front of the garage and turned off the car. “We’ll pull the car in once we getinside.”
They opened the doors and piled out of the car. Nick moved to the back of the Rover, popped the hatch, and unloaded their bags before coming to stand next toDeclan.
“Looks nice,” he said, looking up at the house. “Smart to set it in the hill like this. It’s probably impossible to see from the approaching road, even indaylight.”
Declan didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t the behemoth looming over them. Hólmavík had been a quaint fishing town, with smaller, older houses that looked like they’d been sitting in the seaside town for hundreds ofyears.
Now that they were on top of it, Declan could see that this house was an architectural marvel, a mix of modern and rustic that included an entire wall of glass, a sleek counterpart to the steeply pitched roof and warmth of the cedar that made up the rest of itsconstruction.
The house was on loan to them from Nolan Burke, although Declan had had the feeling it was the property of the Syndicate rather than Burke. He’d made the call to Burke on a whim, hoping to get the lay of the land on potential problems in Iceland. Neil Curran had never seemed the type to have ties to organized crime, but after everything that had happened, Declan didn’t want to take anything forgranted.
If he’d hired private security, they probably would have been connected to the Syndicate’s operations. Either that or he would have hired someone known to the Syndicate, who had a line on every criminal in every city in the world, from aspiring kingpins looking to skim some of their business to the pickpockets who targetedtourists.
Burke hadn’t heard anything about Curran. His offer to loan MIS the house in Iceland had surprised Declan, both because MIS’ dealings with the Syndicate had been few and because Declan hadn’t expected the underground criminal organization to have property in a place like Iceland, let alone an obscure town likeHólmavík.
He should have known better. The Syndicate’s cyber labs in Paris and New York rivaled that of the NSA, and their business interests had expanded to every corner of the globe in the years since Nico Vitale had staged a hostile takeover of theorganization.
Kate crossed her arms over her chest and shivered. She’d put her jacket back on after getting out of the car, but it was cold enough that they could see theirbreath.
