Remi smiled, feeling a little jealous of his life. “That’s all so normal.”
Tension shimmered across Greer’s features. “Yeah. Until you wash away the shine and look at the ugly beneath.”
“Do they know what you do for a living?”
His gaze locked on hers. All softness vanished from his face. “They know. I stay away to spare them.”
Remi’s eyes widened. She’d loved her mother. Always. Without fail. She even felt that her mom had surrendered her life for Remi’s. What kind of relationship did Greer have with his family if it was easiest to simply stay away from them?
“Can you control it—the thing you do?” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “When you fight, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. What happens when you get mad, really mad at something?”
“Nothing makes me flip, Remi. I am always aware, always on, always watchful. There is nothing without self-control. You learn to rein in your fear and anger, to hold all of your emotions in check. Every step, every movement is calculated.”
“So you’re not like a mad dog that flips into snarling beast mode without warning?”
“I didn’t say that. I move fast, but never without cause or provocation. If you’re worried that I’ll turn on you, I won’t. Unless you’re one of the bad guys, in which case you can kiss your ass goodbye.”
“What if I am a bad guy? What if I brought this on myself?”
“What, like a rape victim who asks for it?” He shook his head. “The victim is never the one to blame.”
Remi slowly smiled. It was so easy talking to Greer. He never pretended to be something he wasn’t; he never expected her to, either.
“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?”