by Lea Griffith
“She’s dead. Why wouldn’t she shut up?” Bone asked as she sat down beside Ninka’s still body.
“She was breaking,” Arrow answered.
“We can’t break,” Bullet said as she wiped wetness from her cheek.
“She was a stupid girl and we are already broken,” Bone replied in a tired voice.
Blade bent over Ninka’s head, lifted it, and placed it in her lap. “We can bend. Like the steel that is used to make my long blades, we can bend.”
“We have to hide her so nothing can hurt her anymore,” Arrow said as she sat down too and began to stroke Ninka’s dirty hair.
“Then we’ll have to say a death prayer, but the God of my fathers doesn’t listen to my prayers anymore, so someone else will have to,” Bone replied.
Bullet rubbed her chest. Her heart really hurt. She wanted to fold her hands and pray, talk to the person named God so he could take away the cold in her bones. Instead, she kneeled beside Ninka’s body, moved in close, and grabbed her hands, flattened them between her own, and bowed her head. Blade stroked Bullet’s hair, too.
Time passed, and there was a shadow of warning in Bullet’s brain—they should hide Ninka and get back to the camp before the black-eyed man came for her and took away the rations she’d earned a few minutes ago. Arrow whispered in a foreign language. It sounded like the same thing over and over, but Bullet didn’t speak like Arrow did, so she didn’t know what the other girl was saying. Bone stared at the ground, but her hand was on Ninka’s arm, squeezing and letting go, squeezing and letting go.
They were all there, but Ninka was gone from them. Five had become four. Bullet looked up at the sky, the very blue color so bright it pierced her eyes, made them water again. Then she leaned over the girl’s head which still rested so peacefully on Blade’s lap, placed a kiss on her brow, and whispered, “I’ll kill them, Ninka. I’ll kill them all.”
Chapter One
Seattle, Washington
Present Day
Remi watched the rain dance and slide along the barrel of her rifle, and lowered her eye to the scope. She’d been on this observation deck for five days, waiting. Her target was due to leave in another hour. He’d depart from the front entrance of the Columbia Center along Fifth Avenue, and attempt to enter a limousine that had been scheduled two days ago to take him to the airport.
He wasn’t going to make it to the airport. He wasn’t even going to make it to the limousine. She toyed with the phone at her side, breathed deeply. Once the kill was made, she’d have roughly six minutes to get out of Smith Tower. She’d be cutting it close, but there was no way the men with her target would sit around and wait on the cops. They’d come for the shooter.
She pulled the tarpaulin tighter around her. It’d rained every minute she’d been in this city. The sky wept, but surely it wasn’t for the man she’d come to dispose of. She was stiff with the waiting. The only time she moved was to use the bathroom in a little container she’d brought for just that purpose. Eating had been put on hold the last two days though she kept hydrated with her camel-pack.
She’d give most of what she owned for the rain to stop. Most. But not all. She shifted her weight to her left hip, settled the rifle, and once again peered through the scope.
She’d studied Rand Beckett for a year. The man had a very interesting past, but the bottom line was he was an enemy to her employer. His company, Trident Corporation, had been a thorn in The Collective’s ass for nearly eight years. Remi would have thought the loss of his wife and daughter would have ended the man’s mission to destroy The Collective.
It hadn’t. If anything, it had made him more tenacious. He and his brother-in-law were both slated for termination. It’s why she’d been sent here to begin with. She sighed, Mr. Beckett’s face floating through her mind. Rough-hewn features, strong jaw, high cheekbones, and the most startling shade of indigo eyes she’d ever seen. They’d taken her breath when she’d first seen his picture seven years ago. Joseph had watched her closely, as he always did when he gave her an assignment, and in his pitch black eyes there had been a flash of interest at her reaction. She’d masked it quickly, but with Joseph it was hard to hide everything. Not that it mattered this time. Bastard.
Her left hand clenched and she felt the phone. She had a four-minute window from the time it rang with confirmation of the target’s departure before she’d make her shot. She’d have one of those minutes to set her objective in motion.
She closed her eyes, felt the rain glide against the exposed skin of her right wrist. It was cold, bitterly so, but she’d endured worst. Five days of waiting and scoping had given her time to come to grips with her decision. Too many deaths weighed on her soul now. It had ceased to matter that those deaths were warranted, that the people she’d killed were more-than-likely rotting in hell.
She’d pulled the trigger and sent them there. The heaviness of that was staggering. She’d recently begun to falter under its load. It was time to make sure old wrongs were righted, and then she could rest. The others agreed.
The phone vibrated against her hand.
“Yes?”
“Your four minute window is confirmed,” a woman said in a calm voice.
“Affirmative,” she replied and disconnected.
She moved back to her stomach, settled in, and gazed through the scope once more, making infinitesimal adjustments so her range wasn’t off.
Movement behind the large glass doors of the Columbia Center gave credibility to her caller’s information. Remi lifted the phone and punched in a number she’d memorized a week ago for just this moment. One minute more and she’d press dial, give him the only warning he’d ever get from her.
She breathed in deeply, felt the cold air move through her body, settling all the places that needed to be cold for this moment.
“Bayu-bay, all people should sleep at night,” Remi whispered and smiled to herself. “I see you. . ."
Rand’s phone rang, and he glanced at the readout. It was a number he didn’t recognize.
He answered it anyway. “Yes?”
“I would suggest you duck,” a woman’s lyrical voice said through the phone. Her voice stroked him from the inside out.
“Who is this?” he demanded as he walked out of the building. Two members of his security team were with him, one in front and one behind.
“That isn’t important. What is important is that you duck,” she responded, and in the tone was a touch of frustration now.
He wanted to smile for some odd reason. “Look, whoever this is—”
“Fine,” she huffed. “But I’m only making one shot and if I take you out with him, it’s on you.”
The hair on the back of his neck prickled. He was in the crosshairs. Rand turned swiftly, pushed the man behind him down, and ducked. In the next instant a shot rang out. Had the bullet been meant for him, he would have been way too late. As it was, Donnie Parker’s head exploded in front of him, and the man fell lifeless to the ground.
“Fuck!” He took cover behind the limo. “Dobson, get back in the building and call Ken,” Rand instructed the other security man.
“Yes, sir!” Dobson yelled, and raced back into the building.
Rand looked around, and in a split second made a determination of where the shot had come from. “Get in the building and call the police,” he instructed the shocked limo driver. The man just sat there, dazed and confused.
“Call the fucking police, goddamn it!” Rand yelled to get the man’s attention, and then he gave up.
The shot had come from somewhere southwest of his location. He began to move, calculating distance and looking for anything out of the ordinary. She’d said one shot. He obviously hadn’t been the target, which made zero sense. Parker hadn’t been with him long, but he’d been clean.
Rand made it across Fifth Avenue, making sure to keep cars between him and any straight line of site. He zigzagged, narrowly avoiding a city bus, the entire time feeling the sting of adren
aline course through his body. Everything sharpened, tapered. His breath quieted, though his lungs expanded to draw in more air. His every aim and intent was to get to the towered building a block north of his location. There were sirens in the distance but no other shots split the late morning. He ran once he reached the cover of the buildings across from Columbia Center.
He came to Smith Tower and halted against a column outside the entrance. People milled to and fro, seemingly oblivious to the fact that a man had just had his head blown to kingdom come a street over. His gaze searched for anything out of the ordinary. It had been less than five minutes since the shot. He reached for his phone and dialed Ken.
“What the fuck’s going on, Rand?” Ken’s voice was controlled, but a vein of fury wound through it.
“They made a play. You need to get to Seattle now,” Rand responded as his gaze explored every shadow and corner. The rain continued to fall, though he was shielded from the drops by the building’s overhang.
“I’m on my way.” Just that, nothing more.
A cab pulled up to the front just as Rand zeroed in on the corner of the building farthest from him. A woman, petite with striking long red hair, walked out of the far entrance, umbrella in hand and a large handbag on her shoulder.
Something about the way she walked, so fluid and relaxed, nothing out of place on this cold, rainy day, made everything in Rand go on alert. She was too calm, too composed. But her eyes—they never stopped moving, touching on her surroundings ceaselessly. When her gaze landed on him, it skimmed and returned. Something sliced through the brilliant blue orbs. An infinitesimal widening of her eyes, a small moue of her lips, and the feeling of alertness inside him ramped up to dangerous levels.
Rand tensed as his body hardened in a rush, every muscle drawing tight in preparation for a fight. The nameless something was veiled as quickly as it appeared, and their moment of connection was broken as she stopped and stepped into the taxi.
Rand hit the last number that had shown up on his phone. The one that had called and offered the warning. He waited while it rang.
The woman, a beautiful sliver of light in the abysmal conditions, settled into the cab, and Rand was offered a tantalizing view of pale, slim calf before the door closed.
The woman spoke to the driver, and he began to pull away. Then lightning struck Rand as she lifted her phone and looked directly at him, beautifully painted red lips moving, drawing his gaze.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
Chapter Two
She could taste the shock of his presence on her tongue, slightly bitter, but tinged with a certain sweetness she couldn’t place. Remi licked her lips and took a deep breath.
He was a gorgeous man. His pictures hadn’t done him justice, but the heat that shimmered along the bridge of sight between them had her heart beating in triplicate and her lungs laboring for air. This is not good, Remi. Not good at all.
“Shouldn’t have done what?” he demanded, voice hard but curling through her body like warm butter.
End the conversation, damn it. “Come after me,” she whispered into the phone.
The cab passed him. He hadn’t moved from his position beside the column, hadn’t come after her in any way. A shiver passed up her spine and settled a warning in her brain. The man was too controlled by half.
Her heart squeezed, nearly closed off her throat. His gaze tracked her and the connection between them was tangible. So much so that she almost had the cabbie stop so she could step out into the arms of the man who’d raced after a sniper.
She shook her head.
“Lady, I don’t know who the fuck you are, but I’m going to do more than just come after you. I’m going to hunt you down and repay what you’ve just done ten-fold.”
He meant it. Could his conviction lead him to her? She was a ghost. A figment of reality. Nothing but a harbinger of death.
She turned in her seat, looked over her shoulder, and watched as he finally walked to the curb, staring hard after her departing taxi. She shuddered as his hand flexed and his eyes, even from this distance, smoldered with rage.
“You can try,” she replied softly. Then she lost her ever-loving mind. “I’ll welcome the challenge.”
“That was a good man you just sniped. Donnie Parker had done nothing to you. Tell Joseph I’m coming for him too. I’ll kill you all,” he promised in a voice dark with all things retribution.
She snorted at his assertion about Donnie Parker. “Perhaps you didn’t know Mr. Parker as you think. Perhaps you should dig a little deeper into your employees’ pasts before you trust them with your life, eh? Perhaps,” she paused and inhaled slowly, deeply, “you should thank me for not taking your head instead of his?” She laughed with no humor, the sound dull and lifeless to her own ears. “You may hunt me, Mr. Beckett, but I think in the end it will be to thank me for sparing you today. Goodbye.”
“What the fu—”
Remi disconnected before the epithet completed. He would never thank her, but they’d meet again, sooner than he thought. She turned away from the back window. He’d disappeared from her view as they’d turned left.
“Take me to King Street station, please,” she requested of the cabbie as she broke open the phone and destroyed the inside of it. She wiped it down and within seconds tossed it out the window.
He glanced at her in the rearview and nodded. “Locker number four-five-four. I do not know your next destination,” he informed her in heavily-accented English.
“Ce n’est pas grave, non?” He didn’t respond and she leaned her head against the back of the seat. Her hands shook and she tried to center herself. Joseph would know very soon, if he didn’t already, that the primary target hadn’t been hit.
Her entire world had just gone the way of Mr. Parker’s head. She smiled and felt a piercing satisfaction that her journey had begun so smoothly.
Remi reached for her bag, knowing within minutes things would again change, this time irrevocably. Once her hands touched the cold black metal of her Gemtech silencer, they calmed. Her heart settled and her breathing steadied.
The interaction with Rand Beckett moments ago was placed into her lockbox of memories for analysis at a later date. The matte-black beauty of her Walther P22 sang to her, and she reached for it, cradling it in her palm, letting the frigidity of the metal ice over the parts that had warmed at thoughts of Mr. Beckett.
She loaded the silencer onto her baby and waited. It wouldn’t be long now.
The cabbie slowed, darted a glance both left and right, before he reached with his right hand to the seat beside him. He turned and her world slowed as the cab rolled to a stop in an alley, everything coming at her as if underwater.
“Joseph says you’ve let him down. He won’t allow—”
The hole bloomed in his forehead, neat and round, smoking even as the blood began to dribble down his brow and over his nose. His eyes had widened in knowledge that split second before his brain had been ravaged by the hollow point. She did not regret this life-taking. She couldn’t afford to.
Fuck what Joseph would or would not allow. She wasn’t his anymore, would no longer be a pawn in his games.
“I know you can hear me.” Though she whispered, her words were loud in the silence left by death. It wasn’t the man slumped over in the front seat she spoke to. It was the one far away who even now sought to control his creation.
Rain dripped down from the gray sky above, tiny ticks of frozen ice pelting the glass. It was cold outside. She placed her baby back in her bag and grabbed the door handle. “You won’t see me, but I’ll be the second to the last thing you ever know, I promise.” She let the quiet invade her soul, gave a few moment for her words to sink in. “We’re coming for you, Joseph.”
She stepped out of the idling vehicle, put her bag over her shoulder, and reached for her umbrella. The sirens wailed several blocks over. Remi didn’t know what panic felt like. Fear either. Those memories, the flavors of those emotions, wer
e too distant to recall.
She didn’t open the umbrella, keeping it close to her side instead as she began to walk north. A cop car sped past her, but she maintained her pace, walked with ease even in the cold rain. Ahead another cab pulled down the street and she waved it over, settling in when he stopped.
“SeaTac, please,” she murmured.
“Sure, lady. Lemme turn around up here, and I’ll get you right there,” the gruff-looking older man replied. “Something big went down a few blocks over, and I wanna avoid that location like the plague.” He chuckled, mumbled something about degenerates and lowlifes, then turned the car around.
“I wonder what happened?” Remi knew this game backward and forward. She had to blend in, appear to be nobody in particular, a curious non-entity.
It was second nature, like a skin she wore until she could shed it in the real light of day. She laid her head back against the headrest and watched as the buildings passed her by in a blur. Seconds became minutes as they made it to the expressway and began their journey to Seattle’s airport. The silence in the car was ominous. A curious tightening in her limbs warned her that all was not as she was hoping it would be.
She lifted her head, met the cabbie’s gaze in the rearview, and a flash in their rheumy depths triggered her to action. She ducked, covered her head as the car careened into the guardrail, smashing at almost full-speed into the retaining wall at the side of the highway. She heard the screech of metal, felt the concussion as the engine exploded and flames shot through the wreckage. Pain took her breath, the impact having thrown her to the floor, causing her to hit her head. Glass pelted her face and hands, brought blood.
Her ears rang, and smoke consumed what was left of the interior. She had to get out, and as she lifted up, she noticed the rear passenger doors were gone. She was trapped between the front and back seats, the car having caved in from the force of the hit. She wiggled, felt her hands slide on the leather in front of her, and recognized she had injuries.