by Lea Griffith
“Help me, Gretchen,” Ninka cried out reaching for the one she clung to in the night.
Julio kicked her again and she squealed in pain. Butterflies made that sound when caught in a spider’s web. If you were quiet enough you could hear it.
“No,” Bullet whispered.
Yes, Bullet. Do it. Arrow honed the thought, breathed on the hot coals of her rage, and sent it flying toward Bullet.
Over and over Julio kicked until the sounds of his boot meeting the small girl’s body were more than Arrow could bear. Ninka was all that was right and pure. And he was hurting her so badly.
“Do it, child,” the black-eyed man taunted.
Do it, Bullet.
“Stop,” Bullet whispered.
Arrow fanned the flames higher and shot the thought over and over toward Bullet. Help her. We are tied!
Arrow turned her head then, let her eyes help in her quest to force Bullet to action. Indecision would get them all killed today unless she acted. It may already be too late for Ninka.
But her thoughts halted as she watched Julio lean down and grasp Ninka’s head. He faced away from Arrow but she thought he looked at Minton, who simply nodded. His breaths were choppy, excited, and Arrow compressed her lips, forcing herself not to speak.
Ninka, Ninka, Ninka…death was calling, sighing all around them in a rumble of thunder.
He squeezed her little head. He squeezed until Arrow felt the pressure herself. Julio began to twist Ninka’s head, it seemed in slow motion. Then a cymbal’s clang announced the end of death’s symphony, and Julio fell to the ground.
But so did Ninka, still and unmoving. Now there was silence.
And there stood Bullet, the barrel of a gun smoking in the early morning chill, her eyes deadened and a smile on her lips.
The black-eyed man murmured something to Bullet, and she handed him the gun. Arrow blinked back the moisture in her eyes, wondering where it came from, knowing her tears would do Ninka no good.
“Good, child. Now do as I’ve said and get back to camp,” he said to Bullet, and then he and Minton were gone.
Bullet untied them all, taking care not to hurt them, but the damage was done. There was nothing Bullet could do to any of them that the black-eyed man hadn’t just handled.
“My hands are cold, Arrow,” Bullet whispered as she worked on the knots.
“Look at me, Bullet.”
The other girl refused.
“Look at me, Bullet.” Arrow infused enough command into her voice that Bullet looked at her.
“You did what we are all called to do at one time or another. You made a good choice. Do not fear, this was not the end of Ninka,” Arrow assured her.
Bullet said nothing, but it took her a long time to get them free. All of them banded together to pull Julio’s heavy dead body to the edge of the clearing, and then they walked back to the tiny Russian child’s body.
“She’s dead. Why wouldn’t she shut up?” Bone asked as she sat down beside Ninka’s still form.
“She was breaking,” Arrow answered. And it was the truth.
“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, stroking the flaxen locks that reminded Arrow of a yellow butterfly’s wings. Would she too be caught in the spider’s web?
“We can bend. Like the steel that is used to make my long blades, we can bend,” Blade whispered.
“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.
Arrow wondered if the one called God even knew she existed. She thought not. All she’d ever known was hell. And now He allowed Ninka to be taken brutally and without mercy. What kind of God did that?
Bullet kneeled beside Ninka’s body, moved in close, and grabbed her hands, flattening them between her own and bowing her head. Blade stroked Bullet’s hair, too. Occasionally Arrow’s hand would touch Blade’s and the warmth there startled Arrow. Against the backdrop of Ninka’s cold flaxen locks, it was a blast from a fire. The hate was deep in Blade. As deep as it was in any of them.
Arrow needed to control that. Hate caused ripples over the water and that could not be allowed. Her chest felt as if a band snapped around it, pulling tighter and tighter with each breath.
A sigh of warning skated down her spine. They should hide Ninka and get back to the camp before the black-eyed man came for them, took away their rations, or tasked them once again.
“Hi wa kiyurédomo tô-shin wa hiyédzu,” Arrow whispered again and again. It was the only prayer she could offer up. Though the flame be put out, the wick remains.
What the black-eyed man had sown here would revisit him a thousand-fold.
They were all there, but Ninka was gone from them. Five became four. Arrow glanced at the children around her, recognizing like and kindred hearts. Her eyes threatened to leak again, and she stopped them. Bullet 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.”
There was no doubt Arrow would be right beside her.
“Watashi wa, Ninka sorera o korosu. Watashi wa sorera subete o korosu,” she echoed Bullet’s words, felt them do something all the meditation in the world had never done—center her.
As the sun rose and burned off the lingering fog, the promise was made in her soul. She would grow strong so she could pierce the snake’s heart.
She would live for death.
Chapter One
The sounds of the busy outdoor café permeated Adam’s thoughts. A car backfired, people chatted, and the clank of silverware against plates was loud as he waited for her arrival. The smooth purr of a street bike hovered over the background noise. And then she was there.
The woman parked the sleek Suzuki Hayabusa 1340 and took off her helmet. Long, ebony hair, pin straight and so shiny, so soft looking his hands itched to grab hold of it, fell down her back, skimming the top of her luscious ass. His body hardened. Fuck.
She lifted a leg over the bike, and Adam’s hand tightened on the mug he lifted to his lips. She moved like water. Fluid, easy, and flowing—every movement a testimony to her training and something else Adam could not name. It was indefinable, but it spoke of a decided lack of worry, indeed an overabundance of confidence. Even as he recognized the seductive curve of her hips, the gorgeous, clean lines of her body wrapped in tight black leather, his mind struggled to reason with his body. Everything she was should be abhorrent to him.
But it wasn’t.
Her smell still taunted him, a phantom in his nose and over his tongue. He’d been in Vancouver once as the plum blossom trees were blooming. Their sweet, honeyed fragrance called to the wildness in Adam back then. Her scent had done the same four weeks ago.
He’d stood beside a woman who’d faced down over twenty-five armed men and dared them to save her sister. She threatened him, hell she’d threatened them all, and then she’d walked away, disappearing into the fog. He’d been marked that day by her golden eyes and hardened soul. Adam hadn’t been the same since.
It had been four weeks since they’d rescued Bullet from a water pit in Peru. They’d been the longest four weeks of Adam’s life, all because of the woman he now watched making her way toward a family of five.
It would be four when she walked away. If anyone nay-sayed her, the family would be wiped off the face of the earth altogether.
Adam couldn’t let that happen. Bullet begged him to go after Arrow. What she hadn’t known was he’d been planning on doing just that anyway.
He set his mug down carefully. The heavy afternoon heat of Mexico
City didn’t faze him, yet nobody gave the woman a passing glance. Odd, considering she was decked out in full leathers and the temperature soared well over a hundred degrees today. But she seemed to fit into the tableau, the control she wielded somehow morphing the setting to her whim.
Heat be damned, she was a cold, calculated killer. The very air she stirred filled with her intent to eliminate life. And Adam hated death. At least unnecessary death. Sometimes the Great Spirit called on his people to do things for the continued good of the human race. Adam answered the summons on many occasions. But Arrow took any life she was paid for and simply kept moving.
Like the water her walk reminded him of, she flowed from one job to the next, never rippling, never rushing. The thought of what she was, what she did, left a sour taste in his mouth. He didn’t understand his irrational need to stop her and refused to delve too deeply into it right now.
She was about to set into motion events that would destroy relations between the United States and Mexico, and that Adam could not allow. The fact that Mexico’s President was in Joseph Bombardier’s pocket was irrelevant. That the man abused young Hispanic girls in ways that defied morality was disgustingly irrelevant. If he went down, so did the barrier between the number one drug cartel in Mexico and the United States. The dead bodies of innocents would litter the streets of every single town at the US/Mexican border.
The man needed to die, but not until this country was more stable. Still she walked, unhurried.
“Hey, chica!” some young boy yelled in her direction. “Ven aquí chica geisha.”
Adam winced. Come over here, geisha girl? Poor kid had no idea he’d just taunted one of the most deadly women in the world.
She ignored the kid, floating over the hot, pocked pavement as if she didn’t have a care in the world. She stopped about fifteen feet from the family and leaned against a wall in the shade. The President’s guards were being especially lax today. People milling by on the street stopped to meet and shake hands with their leader. It was unheard of.
Slowly and methodically Arrow rolled her right sleeve up to mid-forearm and then pulled an object from her backpack. She didn’t glance around, and the cadence of the rise and fall of her chest never changed. She was ice cold.
Adam cocked his head, and everything around him faded. His gaze sharpened on the object she strapped to her hand and everything clicked. He’d wondered how she would get a bow and arrow so close to her target without being seen by someone on the busy street.
But the wrist-mounted weapon she’d just strapped to her arm and loaded was her answer. Son of a bitch!
He stood carefully, taking a last sip of his bitter coffee before setting the mug down once again. Adam straightened his suit jacket, ran a quick hand through his hair, and began to move around the tables scattered on the sidewalk. His gaze narrowed, every movement she made raising the hair on the back of his neck.
She tilted her head and Adam froze. No way she’d seen him. He was like the water too. A smile ghosted her ruby-red, perfectly bow-shaped lips, and his breath stopped, clogging in his throat as a bead of sweat trickled down his back.
Their gazes clashed and emotion cut between them, potent and vicious. Her eyes sucked him in, and for a second he wondered if she was magic, drawing him to her—he the fly, she the spider’s web.
Adam shook his head, but the cloying effect of her gaze remained. She blinked, veiling her eyes, and the spell was broken. Then she raised her arm. He was too far away to stop her.
“Saya!” He let his voice rise above the din of the city around them. “Don’t do this.”
It wasn’t much, just a small flinch at the corner of her eye, but it was enough Adam knew she’d heard him. He’d used her name. That had to feel like a sucker punch.
“Leave,” she said, never taking her eyes from her target.
“I will not.”
“Then you may die with him today,” she whispered. But he heard her, and his heart kicked into a furious beat.
Her wrist flexed and the first arrow was swift to its target. A muted thud as it found its mark, and then the screams of the president’s wife and children. There was a suspended moment of stillness as death rode high above the city and looped down to take away its prey. It seemed even the heat did nothing more than shimmer for a hanging second.
Then with a whoosh, noise and activity bombarded the area. Adam’s gaze left her for just a moment as he catalogued escape routes. When he returned to the spot where she’d been lounging against the wall, she was gone.
Between one breath and the next…gone.
“Goddamn it,” he muttered, and then visually searched the rooftops around them for a fleeing slice of blackness.
“You took your eyes off the target,” she murmured softly against his neck.
Her heated breath caressed his nape and rage pumped through him, filling his muscles with adrenaline. He’d not heard her. He’d not felt the air shift as she crept up on him from behind. Who the fuck was this woman?
He grunted. “Maybe.”
She laughed. The husky tones skewered him. “Oh, I think you did. And it’s cost you, Mr. Collins. You never said in Arequipa, but perhaps you’ll tell me now: are you a good man?”
“You ask this as if you already know the answer.” He’d be damned if he’d play her games. She’d started a war today and thousands of innocents could die as a result.
“I do. But sometimes the fastest way to know a man’s soul is to see if he realizes the truth,” she said. There was no inflection, no flavor of curiosity. There was only cold, hard demand layered into her words. “My arrow lies against your kidney right at this moment. One flex of my finger and you will meet the Great Spirit your ancestors called to.”
Adam stayed silent. She’d researched him. That was interesting. Had he become her target then?
“Answer my question, Mr. Collins,” she bit out.
“There are no good men, Saya. There are only men.”
“Your truth saves you,” she said. “Do not search for me. You will find only death.”
Sirens rent the air and people were screaming for help. Bodies crushed and pressed around them, the stench of their fear acrid in Adam’s nostrils. Then sweetened honey floated on the wind…plum blossoms.
There was the sharp point of her arrow one moment, and the next, nothing. He turned and sought her, but the people around him blocked his view. He started to move and stepped on the motorcycle leathers she’d left at his feet. The Hayabusa was still there at the curb, and he raced to it, determined to get to her before she fled.
There! A flash of white among the throng of multi-hued outfits. Adam turned the key on the sleek blood-red bike and pressed the ignition button. The machine hummed beneath him, and he took off in Arrow’s direction. She wore a hat now, but the way she moved betrayed her. He’d never had someone get the upper hand on him so easily. That she’d held his life in her hands alternately pissed him off and made him grin ruefully. He’d never let his guard down again with her.
Within seconds he was at the point he’d last seen her, but she’d disappeared between two buildings and he pulled between them, gaze searching for any spot of white. Nothing. There was absolutely nothing but a dead fucking end to the alley.
As quickly as he’d found her, he’d lost her. He got off the bike, uncaring that it fell to the concrete beneath him. He needed to ditch it and get gone. Any westerner within spitting distance would be flagged and questioned. Mexico’s president had just taken an arrow to the throat. Hell was about to break loose.
Adam pulled out his SAT phone and hit a button. “She’s in the wind,” he said when Ken Nodachi picked up.
“Find her. It’s imperative,” Ken responded harshly.
Adam cursed. “The deed is done. We’re best to prepare the border towns for war,” he said, and pinched the bridge of his nose. His fucking head hurt.
“There are others on her list. Find her, Adam. And do it pretty damn quickly.”
/> Adam disconnected. Finding her would be like dancing between raindrops and not getting wet—impossible. But there was no choice. He pulled out the small piece of paper Bullet had given him and marked through the first line. The next name on the list would send the entire Eastern hemisphere into panic. Destabilization of the Chinese region would be globally catastrophic and exactly what she wanted.
What the women of Joseph’s First Team were capable of was mind boggling. He glanced up into the blue sky and prayed like he hadn’t prayed since Afghanistan. He prayed he made it to her in time.
•●•
Arrow watched him from across the street. Her palms tingled and she dug her nails into them, letting the small pain wash over and ground her. Adam Collins was a dangerous opponent. Not because he could move faster than her, was stronger than her, or seemed to know a helluva lot about her.
He made her heart beat heavily. He stirred her calm waters into waves that crashed and beat against the tranquility she’d established long ago. She’d known within the second their gazes met in Arequipa he could prove perilous to her ultimate goal. And she could not allow that to happen.
Bullet was worth the risk of Arrow being harmed by Rand Beckett’s men. It was why she’d approached them. She, Blade, Bone, and Bullet established the rules years ago. Should one of them be captured, the others wouldn’t risk the prize by rescuing her themselves. They’d decided with Bullet they would do everything in their power to make sure the one she’d almost given her life for did the rescuing. It had been a close thing. That their sister gifted her loyalty to a man who’d faltered about rescuing her pissed them all off.
Then Arrow walked into that clearing, met the nightfall gaze of Adam Collins, and her world tipped. She’d caught herself quickly, but the sight of him remained emblazoned on the nooks and crannies of her brain. She’d dreamed of him in the days between then and now.
It had been many, many years since Arrow had dreamed. She wanted to hate Adam Collins, recognized the emotion was too destructive. How had he known she’d be here today? Had Bullet given him the information?