The Chaos Crew: The Complete Series (Devil’s Dozen Box Sets Book 2)

I STRODE to the locked door that led to the stairs, typed in the code, and let it swing open, already feeling rejuvenated by the mere idea of meditation. I was just stepping out into the first waft of fresh air when Dess’s voice followed me.

“Where are you going?”

When I glanced back, she was leaning over the side of the sofa where she sat beside Talon. She’d been watching the way Talon knitted so attentively that I hadn’t thought she would notice me leaving.

The casual way she spoke to me gave me a weird sense of relief despite the way she’d reacted to me the one time I’d gotten particularly close to her. She hadn’t shown a single particle of violence toward any of us since then, and obviously I hadn’t damaged her trust in me irreparably. She seemed to have brushed that moment aside as if it’d never happened, and I was happy to let her do that.

I tipped my head toward the stairs. “I’m going up to the rooftop deck. You haven’t seen that yet, have you?” I paused and then decided it was safe to ask as long as I remembered to keep my hands to myself, which I didn’t think was going to be a problem after the lesson she’d taught me the first time. “Want to come?”

She sprang to her feet with the effortless yet practiced grace I couldn’t help admiring. “Get out of this place for a bit? Hell, yes.”

I opened the door wider for Dess as she approached, and she gave me a quick smile as she passed me before studying the stairwell on the other side. “These stairs lead to the roof?”

I pointed upward with a nod. “You’ve got to have some kind of outdoor space, or it’s not much of a home, as far as I’m concerned. I try to get up there every day, at least for my ten minutes of meditation.”

Dess had already started up the steps. She glanced back at me over her shoulder with an arch of her eyebrows. “You don’t strike me as the meditation type. But then, I wouldn’t have pegged Talon as a knitter either.”

“I aim to surprise,” I said in an automatically teasing tone, and caught myself just before I flashed her a flirty smile. I was too much in the habit of turning on the charm, and she made way too appealing a target for it. But she’d made her interest—or lack thereof—very clear.

“Julius taught me,” I added in a more subdued tone as we tramped up the stairs, Dess in front of me. “He has a whole yoga routine he does, actually. He showed me all the moves, but the meditation part was the only thing that stuck. It helps me keep my focus for the rest of the day.”

Dess hummed to herself but didn’t ask anything else. Her focus was fixed on the door at the top of the stairs.

That one wasn’t locked. There was no point, since no one could get up here anyway—we’d made sure of that.

As we stepped out into the warm summer sunlight, I made a quick scan of our security measures. The entire space was as big as the common room downstairs. The seamless wooden wall that surrounded it stood ten feet tall, and no structure nearby rose high enough to give a view inside. The outer walls of the apartment building itself were sheer and designed to avoid offering enough ledges or footholds for a person to climb up. The only way anyone was getting a peek or a toe onto our deck was by helicopter.

That was also the only way anyone was going to get off it, other than by going back down the stairs. Dess might have had amazing skills, but she couldn’t scramble down a fifteen-story building that offered nothing to hold on to. And I didn’t think she was going to be summoning any helicopters.

The space was safe both from intruders and from her making another escape attempt.

I rolled my shoulders back, relaxing with the mental confirmation of what I’d already known, and dragged in a deep breath of the warm air. Being up here was way better than the stuffy greenhouse-style yard at the safe house we’d left behind.

Dess took in the space with the same calm alertness she seemed to approach almost every situation. She ambled across the patio tiles and sank onto the wicker sofa near the door. After a moment, she tipped her head to the sky with a small smile.

The look suited her. In the full sunlight, she glowed with artless beauty. The light shone across her silky black hair, the faint breeze stirring the waves against her shoulders. Her smooth skin seemed to soak up every ounce of the sun’s rays. Had any of the other guys seen her in this light, or was I the only one privileged enough?

It was a privilege.

I forced myself to look away, moving toward the center of the sun-warmed deck where I most enjoyed sitting. I settled there with my legs crossed and got started on my meditation.

With each deep breath, I let go of more and more of the thoughts in their constant whirl in my head. Vaguely, I sensed Dess stand up and move around the roof, but I didn’t let her draw too much of my attention. A certainty filled me that even if she did pull off an impossible escape, I’d find her. I had before, and I would again.

Even knowing this, she had too much presence for me to completely ignore her, so I allowed my awareness of her to take a fundamental role in my meditation. Stillness had always been my enemy—something I couldn’t quite capture—but the movement of the world around me gave my mind an outlet for its frenetic energy. A car honking below, the occasional shouts from the street, Dess’s slow circuit of the deck. All of it centered me in a way I couldn’t anywhere else.

Keeping myself still yet in tune with the motion around me despite the chaos in my life gave me a sense of calming reassurance. I could process and release all the input, and it grew sharper with each moment I breathed through the meditative exercise. When my mind latched onto a thought, I released it and allowed it to flow back out of me.

I’d missed my sessions here while we were staked out at the safe house, and now that I was back, I already felt more capable of tackling the world. I felt invincible.

I concluded with a few final deep breaths, adjusting to the shift in my thoughts and my sense of my body, no longer quite so restless—for now. Then I opened my eyes.

Dess was leaning against the wall near Garrison’s telescope, watching me with her brow knit. I didn’t acknowledge her expression as I stood and stretched, releasing the last dregs of tension that remained in my body. With a great sigh, I finally met her gaze fully. “That’s better.”

She gave me a smile that looked a little puzzled, and her gaze shifted to the telescope. She stepped closer, cocking her head. Garrison would have thrown a fit seeing her running a finger down the sleek black surface of his prized possession.

“Are you a stargazer too?” she asked.

I shook my head. “That’s Garrison’s department.”

“Really?” She studied the telescope a little longer and then dropped onto one of the nearby deck chairs.

I followed suit, picking up a Rubix cube I’d left up here one day or another. My fingers fell into place around its surface, twisting one row and then another. It drove Garrison crazy that I didn’t care that I never actually “solved” one of these. I just liked seeing the different arrays of colors that ended up appearing.

“Have you ever used one?” I asked, indicating the telescope.

Dess shook her head and looked up at the sky, exposing the sleek line of her throat. “I’ve never spent much time outside,” she admitted. “And I’ve never even seen one of these in person. You can really make out that many more stars than just with your eyes?”

“Yep,” I said. “And planets and moons and that sort of thing too. I’ve got to admit, I don’t really know what Garrison gets out of it. I can find prettier pictures of space on the internet in two seconds flat.”

Dess let out a soft laugh. “Of course you can.” She turned back to me, watching the swift but aimless flicks of my fingers over the Rubix cube. “So, what is it you like about meditation? It looks pretty boring from the outside.”

I had to let out a laugh of my own. Her bluntness was as refreshing as the air up here. I could tell she wasn’t trying to be insulting, only making an honest observation.

“I’d bet it does,” I said. “Have you ever tried meditating?”

“No to that as well. Apparently I’ve missed out on a lot of things.”

I thought about how to best explain it. I could have given her the response that Julius would have used—the one that claimed that yoga and meditation relaxed the body and improved potential. It allowed for cleaner fighting and a clearer mind.

But I didn’t use meditation for those reasons.

I set the cube down on my lap. “Well, the idea is that it’s supposed to ground you. It stills the world around you, and it allows you to simply exist without being affected by thoughts of the past or the future.”

She made a sound of acknowledgment, picking up on my framing. “But for you it’s different?”

“Yeah. I can’t be still, not really. I’ve never been able to completely slow down. When I meditate, I can focus on the moving world around me, and it feels like it brings a sort of balance inside me. Recognizing that I’m surrounded by as much energy outside as I have inside me helps to still me in a way, I guess.”

Dess nodded, giving me a thoughtful look. “You do seem to move around an awful lot.”

I glanced down at my foot, which had begun to tap against the tiles, and grinned. “My mom always said I was full of beans. The doctor said I probably had ADHD, but my parents never really pursued that. They figured I should get it under control through self-discipline or whatever. Which is a lot easier to say than do. I pissed off a lot of the other kids at school, always running around, talking their ears off. We won’t get into how many times they kicked my ass.”

And worse things that I didn’t want to think about. I’d moved on from all that.

“That’s awful,” Dess said, sounding offended enough on my behalf to gratify me.

I shrugged. “Kids being kids. Grown-ups refusing to do their jobs and rein them in. I figured out some things, made use of the skills I developed to put a few people in their places, and now I’ve put all that behind me. People can judge me as much as they want, but I am who I am. Take it or leave it.”

“So, you just…don’t care what people think about you?”

“Well, I care about the people who matter, like the guys I work with, in whatever areas are relevant. But otherwise, no. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks. I lived too long trying to be who people wanted me to be and beating myself up for not fitting their preferences. It was miserable—I won’t go back to that. Now, I’m happy with myself. I live my life to the fullest and enjoy every twist and turn along the way.”

Dess’s gray eyes darkened. “But you’re a cop—you’ve got to be chasing down criminals and figuring out murders and the rest all the time. How can you enjoy life like that?”

The question sounded genuine, and it tugged at my heart. “There’s more to life than work. I’m sitting here chatting with you right now, aren’t I? And I chose this career because I get a thrill out of a lot of it too—tracking people down, figuring out what they’re up to.” We’d just avoid the subject of what the crew really did with that information.

Dess nodded, but her expression stayed bemused. The idea seemed foreign to her, almost like a fantasy novel full of fictional characters that could never exist in reality.

Did she really have no concept of how to enjoy herself? God, what a number that prick of an ex-boyfriend had done on her.

“I’m sure you can enjoy your life too, Dess,” I had to say. “I don’t know the details of what you went through before you ended up with us, but after this case is over, you can go do whatever you want. It’ll be your choice now.”

Assuming the client didn’t decide she was a loose end we had to deal with.

Dess smiled, but a trace of sadness lingered in it. What had she endured that made her believe that life wasn’t worth taking pleasure in?

I knew so little about her. She’d mentioned a bad relationship, and we’d killed her friend during Viper’s job, but that was it. I knew nothing about her past, and I had no idea what could make things better for her.

I examined her stormy eyes and found a restlessness and… something else I couldn’t identify.

“I guess I’ve always been focused on satisfying other people’s expectations,” she said slowly. “Doing what they asked me to do as well as I could. And sometimes I liked that. But I’ve never really had a chance to make all that many decisions on my own.”

I could hear the honesty in her voice, and it brought an ache into my chest, bittersweet. No one should have a life like that, but she’d trusted me enough to open up to me.

I leaned toward her, intending to grab her hand but stopping myself. She didn’t like being touched, so I wouldn’t touch her. But I could still help.

“Well, what’s something that makes you happy?” I asked. “Just for you, not because you know someone else will be happy about it too.”

“Just for me…” She trailed off, and I could see the wheels turning in her mind. Again, unwavering sadness washed through me as she struggled to come up with a single thing that made her happy for its own sake.

“I like chocolate,” she declared, a smile springing to her face that looked almost triumphant, as if it was a victory for her to land on that one thing. Maybe it was.

I remembered the hot chocolate that Garrison had made and shared with her. She had looked shocked and utterly delighted when he’d given her some. That was an easy thing for me to offer, whether Garrison liked me dipping into his collection or not, and I had every intention of making sure she had plenty for as long as she stayed with us.

“What else?” I prodded.

She answered a little more quickly this time. “Exercising makes me happy. The adrenaline rush and feeling how much I can do with my body. Sparring and coming out on top.”

Which I’d bet she did most of the time. I wished she’d pummeled that boyfriend of hers good before she’d taken off on him.

“What about entertainment?” I asked. “Like—movies, music, TV, books?”

She brightened up so fast my pulse skipped a beat. “Oh! There was this TV show I saw once… Years ago, and I think it was already kind of old. I just happened across it one day when I didn’t have anything else to do at that moment, and then I got sucked in and couldn’t help watching the whole thing. It was about a spy and her husband solving crimes.” A crease formed in her forehead. “I missed the title sequence, though, and I never could find it again.”

But it’d stuck with her all this time. I stood up, abruptly energized. This was something I could do for her, something no one else in the penthouse could, at least nowhere near as easily. And it’d be so worth it to give her a little more of the happiness she’d obviously been sorely lacking.

I beckoned for her to follow me. “Come on. We’re going to find your spy show.”

Dess leapt to her feet, her eyes widening. “Just like that? How—”

I grinned at her. “You’ll see.”

I marched back to the penthouse with Dess at my heels. Talon had moved to the kitchen where he was making himself a cup of coffee. He didn’t comment when I grabbed my laptop and stole his spot on the sofa.

Dess sank down next to me. “Do you really think you can find it?”

There was something almost childlike about her hesitant excitement, something that contrasted sharply with the lethal fighter I’d witnessed in the safe-house attack. Yet again, I found myself wondering just how this woman had become who she was… whoever that was exactly.

“I know I can,” I told her with total confidence, flexing my fingers over the keys. “All I need are a few details about the show—the plotline in the episode you saw, the characters, the setting—as specific as possible. We already know it had a woman who was a spy and her husband… was he a spy too?”

Dess frowned, tapping her lips. Somehow she got even more gorgeous when her expression went distant with thought, still lit with hope, the black waves of her hair tumbling around her face.

“I think he might have been a doctor?” she said hesitantly. “There was one part where she got shot and her arm was bleeding, and he had to give her stitches. He had some kind of medical experience, anyway.” An amused gleam came into her eyes. “Maybe he picked it up in the army like Julius.”

“Could be.” I added that note to my first search string. “Did you recognize any of the actors? That would help narrow it down too.”

She shook her head with a sheepish grimace. “I’m not very up on celebrities and that sort of thing. I remember she was blond, and he had dark hair. Both slim and fit. I think…” Her eyebrows drew together with concentration. “His name was Ron—Ronald. He hated it when she called him by his full name, so she did it to tease him sometimes. I can’t remember what her name was… It might have started with H?”

Now we were getting somewhere. My fingers flew over the keyboard, typing in all that information, tweaking a word here and there as the search results spilled out across the screen, narrowing by date because she’d said the show had looked older—ah ha!

I clicked on an image of the DVD cover to enlarge it and turned the laptop toward Dess. It was a campy ‘60s show that’d only run two seasons, with a blond spy named Helen and her husband, a dark-haired paramedic named Ronald. They were posed in the image back-to-back beneath the title, Spy Time, her with her fingers held up in front of her in the shape of a gun and him looking shocked.

It wouldn’t have struck me as the kind of show I’d expect Dess to be into, but her mouth dropped open immediately. “Wow. That’s it. You just—it only took you a couple of minutes.”

I waggled my fingers, flushing with pleasure. “The magic of the internet and a healthy respect for search algorithms. Now that we’ve found it, how’d you like to watch an episode?”

A small laugh tumbled out of her. “Can we really?”

“Of course. Your wish is my command. Just give me another minute or so…”

I sent my computer scanning through the hordes of legit and—being honest—mostly illegitimate media sites out there and found one that was streaming Spy Time. It was so simple I grabbed the TV remote and clicked it on at the same time. Dess scooted forward on the sofa, glancing between me and the TV. A couple more clicks, and…

The first episode started playing in front of us. Peppy ‘60s music spilled out of the speakers as the characters romped from one crazy scenario to another in the opening sequence.

Dess’s lips parted. She gazed at the screen with an expression that could only be described as rapturous. Then she shot me a quick glance, her eyes shining. “Thank you. I really do appreciate it.”

Her obvious delight sent a flutter through my chest. I’d done something good today.

“I was happy to,” I said honestly. “Now watch!”

She smiled again, with a softness I wouldn’t have expected to ever see from her either, and relaxed back into the corner of the sofa. She pulled up her knees in her usual closed-off way, but this time, she didn’t seem like she was guarding herself, only getting comfortable. As she watched the show play out, the saddened expression that came from a life of hardships—I had to assume—transformed into perfect contentment.

What a sight.

One of the main characters cracked a joke on-screen, and Dess laughed loudly, covering her mouth as if even she was startled by the sound. The smile didn’t quite fade from her eyes.

She could watch her show all she liked. I couldn’t stop watching her. I didn’t know when I’d see that joy again, and while it lasted, I couldn’t look away.

I’d embrace every last second of it, and I already knew I’d do whatever I could to make it happen again.