Assassin's Promise, The Red Team Series, Book 5 (22 page)

“Let’s go through your stuff here and find out why they’re after you.” He walked into the living room, where boxes were stacked on top of boxes. “So what is all this stuff?” he asked.

Remi knew it looked like some hoarder’s nirvana. She’d long meant to tidy it up, but instead she’d just kept adding boxes to the stacks. “When my mom and I first got out, I started to do some research on the group we’d just left. It led me to info about other similar groups. And then I was lost. I studied all of them, collected files on them, built portfolios on them. This is all my early research and my more recent stuff.”
 

She reached into one of the boxes and pulled out a blue folder thick with lined paper and handwritten notes. “I analyzed each group, summarizing their culture, management, membership requirements, philosophies, benefits, punishments, family structures. Everything.” She ventured a look up at his warm eyes, then put the folder away. “It helped me understand what happened to me, that I wasn’t the only one who’d been raised in the way I was.”

He smiled down at her. “You were born to be a sociologist.”

She shrugged. “I guess. I certainly knew what I wanted to be when I entered college. One year, I learned about groups that admitted former white supremacists into their communities.”
 

She started rearranging boxes, handing the upper ones to Greer to set somewhere else. “That discovery sent me down a summer-long rabbit hole of research into white supremacist groups.” She straightened and looked over at him. “I wasn’t your normal, hormone-driven teenager.”
 

Greer smiled and said, “A deficiency that you’re making up for now.”

“I like the freedom to do what I want to do now.”

“So do I.”

She looked at the odd jumble of boxes. “These were my friends. These kept me sane.” She glanced at Greer, but looked away before she said, “I was the weird one at school.”

He touched her arm, capturing her attention. One side of his mobile mouth lifted in a sexy, masculine curve. The corners of his eyes crinkled. “I would have liked you.”

A warmth slipped down her spine, coiling between her hips. She turned back to the boxes she was rearranging. “I would have shut you down. My life plans don’t include settling down.”
 

“I’m still trying to figure that one out.”

 
She straightened and looked over at him. “It’s cult-like, tying yourself to someone else, expecting your interests to head in the same direction…or surrendering your own life plan for your spouse’s when things don’t turn out as planned. I’ve earned the right to be me. I’m not giving that up.”

“You’re lucky.”

“How so?” It didn’t feel like luck. It felt lonely.

“I am what I’ve become, but you are what you’ve intended to be. That’s powerful.”

That observation took her by surprise. “Are all mercenaries as self-aware as you?”

He grinned that sexy, male smile of his that made her breath hitch. “The ones I know are.” He shrugged. “The ones I’ve ended weren’t.”

Remi returned her attention to finding the cases she was looking for. Two more boxes down, she found it. “Here they are. A group in Montana and another in Utah. They seemed similar, so I put them in the same box.” She looked around at the other boxes. “There might be others that are part of what’s going on, but I haven’t made that connection yet.”

* * *

Greer watched Remi sleep hours later, caught up in the innocence of it. They’d been digging through the files for twelve hours. She had to be exhausted to let her guard down enough to crash in front of him.
 

He went into her room and turned down her covers, then came back into the kitchen for Remi. She didn’t stir when he lifted her legs and eased his hand around her back. God, he liked the feel of her in his arms. She curled into him even tighter, lifting an arm around his neck, pressing her face against him. He felt the cool draw of air as she pulled in his scent.
 

“How is it that an assassin can smell so good?” she mumbled as he stepped into the shadows of her room.
 

“It’s a lure I use to draw my victims in close.”

She sniffed him again. The hairs tightened on the back of his neck. “Mmm. Do you kill many women?”

“I haven’t yet, but I have no gender preference when it comes to victims. I kill enemies. Period. So far, though, they’ve all been male.”

“Maybe you should specialize.”

“Why?”

“Because you smell like a snickerdoodle. An assassin cookie. Women would be helpless to fight you.”
 

He chuckled, wondering now if she was really still asleep. He eased her down to the mattress, reluctantly emptying his arms. “I’ll give that some thought. Might be a good strategy.” He pulled the blankets over her. She rolled onto her side, away from him. “Night, doc. I’ll lock the door behind me so you won’t worry about me coming back in.”

Greer went back to the living room and started rummaging around in the other boxes. Remi needed to get this info scanned and stored in a systematic, retrievable system. Maybe he’d help her with that when this was all over. He discovered a pattern of symbols she used as meta category labels. Some had peace signs. Some had crosses. Some had swords. And some had swastikas.
 

He checked all the boxes, then pulled out the ones with the swastikas. He got through three more boxes before fatigue made his eyes jump across the pages, scrambling what he was reading. He’d sent some of the information—the stuff Remi had approved, anyway—back to Max. They could work on finding the links, if there were any, between those groups and the Friendship Community when he got back to Blade’s.

He returned those boxes to the stacks and was about to quit for the night when the label on one of the boxes snagged his attention. The Grummond Society. Greer stared at the box. It pulled and repulsed him. He checked over his shoulder to see if Remi’s door was still closed.
 

He’d read everything he could find online about the group that was still active in southern Colorado. It was a reclusive group. Even the Feds had little data on them. The only pictures that he’d seen of the residents were taken with telephoto lenses from a good distance away.

He lifted the box and carried it over to the table. He flipped through the different folders, scanning Remi’s notes, newspaper clippings, a handful of photos, photocopies of permits the group had pulled for wells, and other public documentation.

He went back to look at the few photos. Some showed women in pastel hand-sewn dresses standing on balconies on the upper floors of various houses. Their hair was pulled back in neat buns and covered with white caps of some sort. There were lots of kids. The men wore white cotton shirts, black trousers, suspenders, and black boots.
 

A photo dropped out of the file onto the floor. He picked it up. It was a pic of several men, in traditional garb, standing in a cluster talking while women brought food to what looked like one of their celebration feasts. Hard to tell what time of year it was. The trees were green. Sometime in summer or early autumn.
 

His gaze drifted off, settling in an unfocused way on Remi’s kitchen island before returning again to the picture. It was hard to imagine Remi in this setting. She was intelligent, independent, self-sufficient. He wondered how he was going to get her to open up to him about her experiences there. He wanted to hear the story about how she got out.
 

He focused on the picture, looking at each community member’s face. “Sonofabitch!” he snarled, tilting the pic to hold it under better light. He snapped a picture of it and sent it over to Max in a text.
 

A minute later, he had a response.
“Fuck. Me.”
And then his phone rang.
“What the hell is Senator Whiddon doing in the Friendship Community? It is the Friendship Community, isn’t it?”

“No. This is from Remi’s group—the Grummonds. I think we know why they’re coming after Remi. The photo came from the file Remi made on the group she grew up with. You think King knows about this?”

“Don’t know. Does Whiddon have the power to mobilize the WKB without him?”

“Another good question. Look, Remi has an apartment full of research she’s been doing for more than fifteen years. I think we need to get it transferred up to headquarters so that we can go through it and see what else is lurking in the files.”

“She gonna let you do that?”

“I’ll convince her.”

“I’ll let Kit and Owen know. Can we fit it in the SUVs, or do we need to rent a truck?”

“I think we can get it in the vehicles.”

“Copy. I’m out.”

Greer leaned back in his seat as he stared at the picture in his hand. A familiar chill crept down his spine. Without moving, he lifted his eyes and sent a look around the shadowy interior of Remi’s apartment, searching for the source of dread filling him. He saw nothing, but he knew he wasn’t alone. If Remi had come out of her room, he would have heard her unlock her door.

A sound outside the window caught his attention. He ditched the light in the kitchen. Remi’s apartment was one of three on the fourth floor of a nineteenth century red brick building. It overlooked the roof of the building next door. It was two a.m. No one would normally be out and about. Her building was two streets off the main drag—nowhere near the bars.
 

He pushed aside the curtain. What he saw on the roof next door lifted the hairs on his neck. That damned girl he kept seeing was standing there, looking up at his window.
What. The. Fuck.
How did she find him?
 

He went back to the papers spread across the kitchen table. He stacked them and put them back into the box, then set it with the others in the living room.
 

He went to the window again as a chilling realization jelled. This girl wasn’t human; she was a ghost. She was the one haunting him. He lifted the curtain to take another look, but she was gone.

He glanced around the apartment, checking to see if she appeared. All was quiet…until an orange-red ball smashed through the kitchen window and spread flames across the table where he’d just been sitting.

Chapter Twenty-One

Greer grabbed the fire extinguisher that Remi had on the kitchen wall. He’d barely gotten it in hand before men dressed in black, their faces masked, slammed into the apartment. The smoke alarms sounded from the fire on the kitchen table. In only seconds, Remi would be up and out of her room and open to attack. He had to end this fast.

Greer made his way over to the hallway beside the kitchen and met his attackers at a spot of his choosing. The first to charge him got an iron canister to his forehead, dropping him in place. The next lifted a gun with a silencer as the first guy fell. Greer ducked behind the wall as a bullet thudded into the jamb of the kitchen door.
 

Another thug was waiting for him just inside the kitchen. The guy caught him by the neck and banged him against the wall. Greer sprayed the guy’s face with the pressurized spray from the extinguisher, causing him to step back. Greer kicked him in the gut, followed by one to the head, the force of which landed him against the kitchen island. Stunned, he slumped down the side of the island.
 

Greer was vaguely aware of Remi rushing out of her room. She reached for the fire extinguisher. He handed it to her and shoved her to the ground behind the kitchen island.

“Forget the fire. Stay down.”

Remi stayed on her knees but began spraying the fire anyway. Two guys were left—one had a gun. They both came into the kitchen. One went for Remi. Greer ran then slid feetfirst into the gunman. Twisting his legs through the gunman’s, he dropped him fast. His gun skidded across the floor. Greer slammed his fist into the guy’s face, incapacitating him.

He turned to help Remi. She had sprayed the other guy with the fire extinguisher, freeing herself. He scrabbled for the loose gun. Greer reached him first and flipped him over, then slammed his head against the floor until he we went limp.

Greer looked back to make sure the fire was out. Smoke, steam, and the stink of retardant foam blanketed the room. He sought out Remi. “Shout out, Remi. You okay?”

“I’m not hurt.”

Greer smiled. Even in the middle of a shitstorm, she still managed to properly qualify her answer. “Stay put.”
 

Searching under the sink for the plastic trash bags, he grabbed a couple. He had to immobilize the guys fast, else they’d be gone long before the cops got there. He cut two bags in half longways, then used the makeshift strips to bind their arms behind them.
 

“Max, read me?” he said into his comm unit. “We got a situation.”
 

“Go, Greer,”
Max’s voice came over his comm unit loud and calm.

“The doc’s apartment was just hit by a handful of thugs. I’ve secured them, but the cops are on their way. Lobo’s going to want these guys.”

“Roger that. You or Remi hurt?”

The sirens got loud out front, then stopped, leaving only flashing emergency lights. “No. Tell Kit I’m gonna need bail money.”

“Team’s on their way. I’ll have Kit call Lobo.”

“Copy.”

“Get their IDs?”

“Not yet.”

“On the ground! On the ground, now!” the first couple of cops through the door shouted. “On the ground!”

Greer put his hands on the back of his head and slowly knelt. The cops were all over Remi, who was stiff with shock and didn’t follow the instructions fast enough.
 

Greer looked around the room, calibrating an escape plan in case any of the cops were on King’s payroll. He and Remi were at their most vulnerable right then. He stayed quiet, however. Any argument he put up might have the effect of getting them separated.

Two of the cops pulled them to their feet and led them roughly over to a spot in the hall. One of them picked up the gunman’s weapon.

He looked over at Greer. “You want to tell me what happened?”