Red. (Den of Mercenaries #1)(44)

Gone was the frizzy red hair that she kept up in a bun, now bone-straight and a deeper shade of auburn. Her breasts where fuller, her hips wider. No, she was just as beautiful as she’d always been.

There was one significant difference between her then and the version standing more than a dozen feet away in her place of business.

Her eyes.

What had attracted him to her in the first place was just how innocent she had looked, how she hadn’t seemed tainted with all the shit that life threw at you. Now? Something, and he wasn’t quite sure what that something was, had made her hard.

Maybe it was good he came back when he did.

Niklaus remained there until she finally ventured out, pulling her coat closed around her, then locked up, dropped the gate, and headed down the block pocketing her keys.

Call it paranoia, but he followed behind at a safe distance, scanning the street for any threat. The likelihood of her being in danger was slim, especially since no one knew of her connection to him, but he couldn’t curb the impulse to make sure she got home safely.

These streets had taught him that.

Finally, after walking two blocks, she stopped at a nondescript building that looked like it was in its prime two-handed years ago. It was painted a pale green, the building connected to it on its right, pink, and the other on its left was undergoing renovations. A man smoking a cigar sat out on the fire escape, staring down at her, the television inside his apartment blaring loud enough for Niklaus to hear. Reagan paid him no mind as she punched in the code on the keypad, slipping inside her building, the door slamming shut behind her.

Niklaus waited, wanting to see what the man would do now, but he remained in his spot. When a light came on two floors up, he looked to it, waiting to see if he could catch another glimpse of her, but he could only make out her shadow behind the closed curtains at her window.

She might have told him to walk away, and maybe she had every reason to be upset with him after what he had done.

But he had found her at a bad time, one when he wasn’t ready to contemplate a life with anyone else, working too hard on old promises that needed to be fulfilled. Even now, he wasn’t sure he was open for that.

He was too hard.

Too jaded.

But whether he wanted that something more, he hadn’t been able to fight his impulse to seek her out.

Maybe they could be friends, if such a thing were possible.

But even as Niklaus headed back for his car, he was already rejecting that idea.

He didn’t do friends.

In this life of his, his friends winded up dead.





Chapter Nineteen





Reagan’s apartment was nothing to write home about.

It was smaller than what it was worth, had a steady leak whenever it rained hard, and neighbors a floor above her that had to be wearing shoes made of concrete with the way they stomped around. But there was one thing Reagan loved about it: it was hers.

That wasn’t to say she had hated living with her parents, but after a while—especially after she was old enough to want to do her own thing—it got tiring coming home to her father questioning where she had been and with who. Then, after his drinking had progressed, she almost missed those days, definitely preferred them over his raging.

After she had opened the pub, and they were finally a step above poverty, she took what little money she had left over and found this place. And despite wanting to stretch her wings, she still hadn’t gone too far.

From here, she could walk to the pub, and when she was feeling up to it, even to the two-bedroom apartment her family had lived in.

No, she still hadn’t been able to leave them behind.

Dropping her bag on the chair, she shrugged out of her jacket, tossing that as well before pulling the band from her hair, running her fingers through it. It had been a long day, and that was even before she got to the pub.

She had contemplated everything she had overheard, what little there was, and the cryptic things Liam had mentioned after he had dropped her off. Rourke had mentioned a problem, and if she was right, that problem would be presenting itself soon enough. She had no doubt.

But currently, her only problem was a 6’4 Russian who she knew nothing about, but cared for like she had known him her entire life.

God, had it only been a couple of weeks that they spent together all those years ago?

And of that time, she had spent most of those days in his bed, but in that short period, he had consumed her, taking every last bit of her that he wanted until there was nothing left. Reagan knew better, had even warned herself that she didn’t need to get attached to someone like him, but at some point, the rational side of her brain had clicked off, replaced with someone that was too intrigued to walk away.

But he had walked away from her. No note. No promises of calling her. Had she not gone by his motel room days after the last time she had seen him, she would have never known that he was gone in the first place.

That was why she couldn’t—and wouldn’t—believe that he was suddenly back in the Kitchen for her.

And yet, that still begged the question as to why he was back.

She knew for a fact that he wasn’t from around these parts, not even from the north at all. If she recalled correctly, he’d said he was from Florida. Maybe he was a traveling salesman, and came up here for business of some kind.

And he just happened to find her in a city this big?