by Lea Griffith
Blade laughed low. It was an ugly sound. “Beckett came back for Bullet. I do not think you will return for Bone, and that is sad to me.”
“Why?” Dmitry asked from a voice with holding in his emotions.
“Because she killed your mother for you. Because she killed your scourge of a father—and if you ever doubt what your father was, please come to me. I will tell you exactly who your father turned into. Also because she sang to Ninka and took every single punishment for your sister…and Asinimov? They were brutal. Last but not least, it is sad because Bone did it for you.”
He closed his eyes, hearing every word, seeing the hazel of her eyes, the jade-splintered glass calling to him.
“Joseph will not kill her.”
She laughed again, loud and full and Dmitry hated her. When she stopped and the silence was left ringing in his ears, she stood and walked to him. Each of the women of First Team was stunning, this one no more or less than the others. She was taller than Bone but much shorter than Arrow. She wore a black unitard and there was a bag…wait…it was Bone’s bag, strapped across her shoulders.
“He is killing her, slowly and meticulously.” She opened the bag and pulled something out. It was a leather-bound copy of a book. She stroked over the frail, aged leather and handed it reverently to Dmitry. “She would want you to have this. A remembrance, she would say. I do not think you deserve it, but she would want you to have it.”
Blade turned then and walked to the door. “You will not go for her?” Dmitry asked harshly.
“She would not want me to and that is another vow we made when we started this journey. If we had to give our lives to destroy Joseph, we would. We helped you when Beckett returned for Bullet because it was convenient. Bone set the charges and created a diversion. But I have other steps to take and now that Bone has fit her pieces of the puzzle, it is my turn. There will be no diversions for Bone.” She shrugged then and glanced back at him once more. “Out of us all, Bone is the strongest. She would expect us to keep our vow and it is loyalty to her that prevents me from going for her. Her control is a thing of beauty. Then you came into her life and she weakened. The one thing we have never known has destroyed her.”
“What is that?” Dmitry called out.
Blade stopped and her head drooped. She stood straight and proud seconds later and left him with a single word before she became the shadows and disappeared.
“Love.”
•●•
Two hours later and Dmitry was broken. He’d stood there for a long time once Blade left before the leather of the book he held in his hands reminded him. He’d walked back into his room, the room that still carried just a hint of her apricot fragrance, and opened the book.
It was a copy of the Torah, but in between each page was a single sheet of paper, dated and filled with a beautifully flowing script. For the last ten years of her life, she’d journaled. Most entries were innocuous though some held personal recollections of contracts she’d taken, almost as if she needed to go back and remember who she was—why she’d killed. The ones that had shredded his heart in the confines of his chest were the ones that began five years ago—when she’d initially been given the contract to kill Dmitry.
He read her observations about him and his heart bled because in every word there was a single theme…need. She had grown to need Dmitry Asinimov long before she stood behind him in London. She had researched him, written everything down day after day and even though she’d continued to kill, she’d returned each night to her journal and remembered Dmitry. She knew his strengths, weaknesses, his likes and dislikes. She knew him better than he knew himself.
Joseph would kill her, but it was Dmitry who had broken Bone. He’d thought her splintered and the truth was in her own words—from the moment she’d been branded by his heat, inhaled his scent and granted him life on a London street, he became hers.
Her strength had been used against her. Her need for him to remain alive was the thing killing her now.
He walked painfully downstairs, into the library where the voices of his friends led him. There was no Bullet or Arrow.
“Bullet is swimming and Arrow has locked herself in a darkened room,” Adam told him.
“They grieve,” Dmitry bit out. “Blade was here.”
Rand nodded. “We know.”
“You spoke to her?” Dmitry asked.
“We did not even see her,” Rand acknowledged. “But she told her sisters about Bone.”
“If I do not go for her, she will die.” Dmitry drew in a rough breath, and the rightness of his decision flowed through his veins. Already she had suffered too much because of him, might already be gone from him. He wouldn’t let Joseph have her. She was Dmitry’s.
“The plane is ready when you are,” Adam said firmly. “And of course we will be there with you.”
Dmitry nodded. “Thirty minutes,” he said and returned to his room, carefully stowing Bone’s journal under his mattress. He dressed in silence, not making a sound when the pain was nearly unbearable.
If she could be strong, he could too.
He did not pray. He hadn’t been raised in a loving, religious household, did not even know the rudiments of how to speak to God, but he went to his knees and he prayed.
He prayed he made it to her in time.
Chapter Sixteen
Bone was so tired. Weary of the struggle to live amongst death and so close to giving in, taking a deep breath and just…falling.
It would be easy. Joseph had used Minton’s ropes, stringing her up as he taunted her with reminders of how she’d failed. And he smiled. She hated him but he’d weakened her to the point that she could not defend herself. He’d drugged her and let his men have a round each with their fists. She’d fallen but only after she’d taken at least five of his guard with her. The ropes chafed, the rough braided hemp’s prickly fibers dug into her skin and burned.
She was dying, but she hadn’t failed. She’d saved Dmitry and she’d seen through her plays in the game to defeat The Collective and destroy Joseph. So while he’d laughed at her, mocked her pain and suffering, she had smiled too because that was what killers did.
The sun was shining now, sinking into her skin and warming the surface but not reaching her soul. It had all come to this. High up on this peak in Arequipa…she would die. The morning Ninka had been killed Bone acknowledged she would perish in these mountain. She would never again feel the hot sands of Jericho under her bare feet and she would never again know the poignancy of Dmitry’s kiss.
The fog came every morning without fail and Bone realized some things never changed. It seemed even the hawk that floated on the air currents above her was the same from that morning so long ago. She still hated him.
She wished she could see the boy once more. She would stroke his hair, hold him close and tell him that killing was not all there was. He could be more than his making. He could know love. Through him Bone, Blade, Arrow, and Bullet could be redeemed.
But Bone was about to be no more. She would hold on within the grip of these ropes until she could hold on no more, but she would end here. No one was coming for her and that was as it should be.
Her sisters would assure Joseph’s end and Bone would meet him as he passed over to wherever killers went when they died. She would be waiting patiently, as she’d waited for twenty-two years, and she’d make sure he suffered in death as he had not in life.
Her body hurt. She’d been shot before Joseph captured her and that had been on top of the beatings she sustained at Svetlana’s orders. Joseph had compounded her physical agony with more beatings, a few brandings, and a caning. “But I will not cut your hair, Bone Breaker. You remind me of your mother like this and I find I rather like it. The picture sustains me in the face of your betrayal,” he whispered in her ear. He’d been hoping for a response that would pit them against one another in combat. But Bone had known something he hadn’t—broken or not, she would kill him if they fought and he wasn’t
only hers. He was also her sisters.’ She wouldn’t take his death from them.
Fever had sapped her reserve energy. Lack of food and water were doing their part to rush her to death. So while her body was giving up, succumbing to the torture and pain, her heart and soul rejoiced because she had found the one thing she had never known.
Love.
She pictured Dmitry, his tall body, broad shoulders, and those heart-rending eyes undoing her. She couldn’t feel his hands on her anymore and it was sad. So sad she sobbed aloud. The sibilant snap of rope teased her and she ceased her crying, pushing her pain down. For just a little while longer she wanted to imagine she was in Jericho, or at the plateau of Masada, maybe in her lover’s arms. And when the truth bit deep and reminded her it was time, then she would inhale and ride the currents like the hawk until she crashed to the rocks below.
Would anyone find her body? If so, she wanted to be buried next to Ninka. Time continued to pass, the sun beating down from a sky so cerulean it hurt. In the distance, dark clouds skirted the blue signaling rain. It wouldn’t be long now. Not long at all.
“Bayu-bay,” she whispered, breath barely moving through her body. “I see your blue-blue sky, Ninka. I am coming…”
Chapter Seventeen
They arrived in Arequipa nine hours after takeoff. Dmitry stepped off the plane, ready for anything. He was met by Grant Fielding.
“Well, well, well, three of Trident’s finest,” Grant mused, tipping his hat back and grinning like a fool. “Bullet called me—told me to get ready. So ta-da, here I am.”
“Fuck you, Fielding,” Adam returned caustically.
Rand said nothing.
“Figured you’d need some transportation,” Grant said.
Dmitry grimaced. “You figured right.”
Grant shook his head sadly. “Can’t believe my girls didn’t come.”
“They aren’t yours, motherfucker,” Adam bit out.
“They have always been mine,” Grant returned. Dmitry shivered at the possession in the other man’s voice. It was at once comforting and eerie as fuck.
Along with the possessiveness was a truth none of the men wanted to decipher. Not right now. None of them cared about Fielding’s pain. He and the United States government allowed Joseph to act with impunity. Grant Fielding had allowed their women to be hurt, to suffer.
“Let’s get on it then, she’s not for this world much longer. The ropes are fraying and it’s supposed to rain later. She won’t make it,” Fielding said and the note of finality in his voice made Dmitry want to pound something.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“On the upper cliffs,” Fielding said by way of answer. Grant looked at him then. “You know about her punishments?”
“I know she was punished and that Joseph used heights,” Dmitry admitted roughly.
Grant inhaled deeply. “You’ll have to see it to believe it.”
Dmitry wanted to drive his fist into Fielding’s face but stayed his hand. Rand and Adam got into the dilapidated Jeep Grant was driving and Dmitry followed, sitting next to Fielding in the front.
“How do we know you aren’t laying us out as a sacrificial offering?” Adam called from the back.
“I only offer virgins,” Grant told him.
Then they were off, traversing mountain passes and slick hillsides. Grant stopped them at one point and pointed to a mountaintop shrouded in clouds. “She’s up there.”
Dmitry’s heart stopped for a single beat. “It’s fucking freezing.”
“Joseph doesn’t care. He has never cared,” Grant said, starting the Jeep back up and driving on.
“Why haven’t you gotten her down?” Dmitry asked.
Grant sighed. “That wasn’t the deal we struck. I made her a promise a long time ago that if it came to this, I’d let her go. It would have damn near killed me, but I keep my promises.”
An hour later and they’d reach a level plain. Grant slid out of the Jeep and glanced around. “He knows you’ve landed but I doubt he thinks you’ll come straight here. Regardless, keep a lookout. Joseph knows I’m not his man any longer but he is so arrogant he thinks I remain under his thumb.” A moment’s silence and then, “The rocks are slippery so when you see her, be very careful. The ropes she’s tied with are frayed and it would only take a single breath for them to spill her to the river below.”
Dmitry’s mind struggled to overcome the blanket of fear the other man’s words coated it in. He’d waited too long…
“Goddamn him. What has he done to her?” Rand asked in a hard tone.
“He’s punishing her,” Grant answered and turned to Dmitry. “Click this,” he ordered, handing Dmitry a switch of some sort, “when you have her in your arms and I will begin the diversion. You’ll have to run over the mountain pass and there will be another Jeep waiting on that side. You make it to her, Asinimov. You save that girl.”
Dmitry said nothing, just took off in the direction Grant pointed.
It took him ten minutes to reach her and when he did his heart plummeted.
“Son of a bitch,” Rand whispered, coming to stand beside Dmitry.
“Oh, Great Spirit, no,” Adam said harshly.
Horror tore through Dmitry. She’d been strung up like a pagan offering.
There was an outcropping of boulders that hung precariously to the side of the mountain they stood on. Above that was a sheer cliff face. Attached by a bevy of ropes crisscrossing her body to the cliff face was Bone. The moon was out, though clouds buffeted most of its light. She was nude and her head hung, chin touching her chest. Dmitry could not tell if she was awake or not. Alive or dead.
“Do not call her,” Dmitry warned. “She might startle and it could be the action that sends her to the river.”
Rand and Adam nodded.
Dmitry made his way to the top of the cliff, standing over her and looking down to the river some three hundred feet below. The clouds now completely covering the moon did nothing to hide the bruising on her body. The ropes holding her were dark in some places and Dmitry knew it was her blood.
“You cannot go down,” Rand warned. “Not with your hand and shoulder.”
“It will be me,” Dmitry told him. “If she falls, I will be with her.”
“No!” Adam whispered ruthlessly.
Dmitry looked at his friend. “You would do the same for your Arrow. Bone is mine. I may have waited too long. It will be me, Adam. No one but me.”
Adam’s face showed his struggle but in the end he ceded to Dmitry, nodding his head in understanding.
Rand unwound the rope Grant had brought with them making a harness of sorts which Dmitry stepped into, then he wrapped the rope around his waist. Rand and Adam wrapped the other end around their arms and Dmitry began to lower himself to Bone.
Rocks dislodged from the face of the cliff, falling to the river below. It would not be her. He would save her.
“Bone Breaker,” he called out softly when he had lowered to right in front of her. His feet were wedged in footholds cut into the rock. Joseph had planned this punishment so well it seemed. But what he had created for pain Dmitry would use for her salvation.
She did not stir. Dmitry reached for her hair, the long locks tangled and matted with blood and dirt. Her chest did not rise and fall and he panicked. Until he put his finger under her nose and felt the air of life moving.
“Bone Breaker, you will live,” he said firmly.
Her eyes darted to and fro behind her closed lids.
“Etzem, wake up,” he demanded gently.
Her eyes opened slowly, as if the weight of her burdens was too much to carry. She was so still, so calm, and it hurt him to see it. How long had she been here? How many times had Joseph done this to her that she was conditioned to barely even breathe?
“Dmitry,” she whispered from dry, cracked lips. “I have seen the blue-blue sky.” She smiled then and said, “I am shavur.”
“You are broken but I will piece you back
together, Etzem. I will show you how to live and I will show you that even broken you are stronger than any I have known.”
“I am so cold, Dmitry. I am dying. Leave me here in this place where I was created,” she pleaded, eyes closed, lips barely moving. “Leave me with the others.”
“I cannot,” he admitted. “This place was never for you.”
She sighed and to Dmitry it was full of endings. “Ibadti et haderekh sheli.” Her voice held the tones of her homeland.
Dmitry cupped her cheek gently. “And I have found you.”
Her eyes opened then. “How?”
“Where you are, I will be also.”
She started to shake her head and fear crossed her face. Her movement was the catalyst that ended the ropes hold on her. They snapped and she fell into his arms. Then they were both falling for several feet until Rand and Adam gained control and pulled them up. She did not make a sound.
It was slow going but he did not let her go. She had passed out, was truly dead weight but Dmitry had seen the condition of her body and knew she would have been unable to help anyway.
“We have to hurry,” Rand bit out. “I hear hounds in the distance.”
Dmitry remembered the switch and as Adam took Bone from him, Dmitry flipped it. As soon as his thumb depressed the switch it seemed the entire forest behind them exploded. Dmitry grabbed Bone in his arms and took off heading west to the mountain summit.
Rand and Adam stayed behind him and they did not stop until they crossed just beneath the summit and hit another stretch of forest. They found a path and a few minutes later they found the Jeep Grant had promised them.
Dmitry had just put her in the Jeep when a single shot hit the dirt at his feet. He turned, pulling his Desert Eagle from his waistband and pointing in the direction the shot had come from.
“She will live,” a soft voice called out. “It is as it should be, nesti. Tell her I’ll be waiting.”
Bear. Dmitry froze. The accent was his homeland. Only one person had ever called him that nickname and she was buried in these mountains somewhere.