by Lea Griffith
Adam left his gun where it was holstered and waited. Nothing to do but let it play out. He had an idea where Arrow would immediately head. He just hoped he could get there before her.
“Don’t do this, Saya.”
“Do not call me that, Mr. Collins. You do not have the right to call me by that name.” She turned then, took four steps, and stopped at the open door of the shed.
“Then do not do this, Arrow.”
She stiffened her shoulders, the lines of her body rigid in the glow of the meager light. “I made a promise. Perhaps you should remind Bullet she did too. Maybe Rand Beckett and Trident Corporation have fogged up the mirror of her heart. As for me, I will do what I’ve set out to do, and you, Mr. Collins, will not be able to stop me.”
She stepped out of the shed.
Grant Fielding held a solid looking lever-action rifle on Adam and he smiled. Adam clenched his hands, barely holding to the leash of his rage.
“They’re a mite bit to handle, aren’t they?” he asked as he nodded. “Yeah, they are and you probably shouldn’t try. Arrow’s different from the others.”
Adam narrowed his gaze at the man. “How’s that?”
Grant Fielding pulled his hat back down over his head and sighed. “Bullet, Blade, and Bone have a conscience. That fucker, Bombardier, never managed to torture it out of them. But that one, Mr. Collins?” He shoved a thumb in the direction Arrow departed. “That one has nothing—no soul, no conscience. Hell, she has a heart because she’s alive, but even that’s a dead thing in her chest.”
Adam remained silent. The fine hairs on his arm rose and the very air stilled, suspending all of life for the next moment of revelation.
Fielding cocked his head. “She was born for war and death. It’s why he took her to begin with. There’s just nothing there, Mr. Collins, and she’ll eat you alive if you try to find it.”
Adam grunted. “I appreciate the warning, Fielding.”
Fielding nodded and stepped to the door.
“Yeah,” Adam bit out and Fielding stopped. “I appreciate it but you should know, just in case we meet again. You hold another fucking gun on me, you better shoot to kill. Because if I make it to you first, you’re a dead man.”
“So noted,” Fielding said and disappeared.
Adam took off but was too late. He ran out of the shed, but they were gone, vanished, as if they’d never been there. He cursed but pulled out the SAT phone once again.
“Yeah?” Rand Beckett barked.
“I’m headed to Beijing.”
“Fuck.”
Adam pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d been doing that a lot today. “I might need Ken on this.”
“Head here first. I’ll have the jet fueled and Ken ready,” Rand said. “We’ve got Mexico handled. The CIA had been working with a successor, almost as if they knew what was about to go down. Interesting huh?”
“Fuck yes, it is. Fielding was here. He helped her ass get away from me the second time.”
Rand chuckled. “The second time?”
“Shit’s not funny, Rand.”
Rand took a deep breath. “Oh, if anyone knows this, it’s me. We’ve got to find her, Adam, and bring her here. Gretchen is withdrawing from me and I’m afraid she’s going to leave, go after her sisters on her own.”
“I’ll be there in a few hours,” Adam said, and disconnected.
Rand lost his wife and child to The Collective. Whatever Adam had to do, he would to ensure Rand didn’t lose Bullet too. He’d even chase a crazy-assed, hotter-than-hell, arrow-wielding assassin around the world.
He got in the Range Rover and headed away from the airstrip Bullet told him about. Thank God she had, because he’d have been screwed. Arrow had melted into the night and disappeared.
He hit the steering wheel once but smiled. For the first time in a long time, Adam was looking forward to something. That it was tracking down a killer didn’t matter. That the killer had eyes that mocked Adam’s soul didn’t matter.
He was looking forward to finding her just so he could say, “I won.”
Chapter Three
“Where is she?” Rand asked Dmitry as he walked into the kitchen.
Dmitry grimaced. “Pool.”
Rand nodded at his friend and headed to the workout room. She’d demanded the cast come off yesterday saying she needed to workout. Dmitry argued with her to no avail. The portable x-ray machine Rand purchased for the medical wing showed her arm was healing, laying down new bone, but it was fragile. Gretchen was fragile. His hands tightened into fists. They’d broken a bone in her body, and Rand wanted to break them all into tiny pieces.
In the end he’d relented. Gretchen was a force of nature and would’ve taken the son of a bitch off herself if he’d given her too much shit about it. She’d agreed to use a brace, but Rand hadn’t anticipated she’d start off her exercises with swimming. He winced and his steps quickened.
He hadn’t touched her in nearly four weeks. She slept in his bed, ate his food, and wore the clothes he’d purchased for her, but she hadn’t given in to him, hadn’t given him the words he needed. And he recognized there was a chance she never would. That she turned to him in the night, that she mumbled his name in the midst of her “remembering,” was enough right now.
Unfortunately, it would never be a complete meet-in-the-middle with her. Give and take was something she was slowly growing accustomed to, but Rand was afraid.
He was scared to fucking death she’d take off to fight The Collective on her own. And if she got away from him he’d play hell trying to catch her again. The only reason he’d caught her last time was because she’d come to him. Part of her grand plan to allow him a measure of revenge while forwarding her ultimate goal as well. No, if she decided to skip out on him, he’d move heaven and earth to find her, but he realized it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. All of First Team had been taught how to hide, stay hidden, and most importantly, how to kill.
He punched in the code for the workout room and made his way to the pool area. The muted sounds of her slicing through the water made his heart clench in his chest. She was the bravest woman he’d ever met.
Rand hunkered down beside the pool and waited. He was glad to see she’d put on a suit. More often than not she had to be reminded and it was okay. As long as he could see her, smell her, know she was near, Rand was okay with having to remind her to put clothes on.
He didn’t doubt she knew he was there; it was encoded in her DNA apparently that she knew everything about her surroundings. He’d never managed to catch her off guard. That was another fist squeezing his heart. As he watched her swim lap after endless lap, he reflected on the last two months. How had he fallen in love with a killer?
Ultimately, it had been very easy. Because underneath the façade of death, she was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman. He would forever love Lily and mourn his family’s loss, but Gretchen grabbed his soul as it’d been on the brink of sliding into hell. She’d become more to him than any other.
“Your thoughts are heavy, Mr. Beckett.” Her voice floated to him over the barely rippling water. She moved through her space that way. Silent, invisible, barely a rush of air as she passed through it.
He nodded. She made her way to the edge of the pool and hovered there.
“Heavy thoughts make a man strong,” she said, then cocked her head, light blue eyes drilling into his skull.
He swore she could read his mind. “Then I’m the strongest man in the universe.”
She nodded and placed her broken arm over the edge, holding herself up with her good one.
“How’s your arm?” Rand knew better than to berate her. It made her angry, which always seemed to fuel his lust.
He hadn’t pushed her since they’d returned, but his body always hardened around her. Hell, he hardened at thoughts of her. She deserved time to recover from what Joseph had done to her before he’d thrown her in that fucking pit.
“It’s better
,” she replied as she levered herself up and out of the pool, sitting on the edge and cradling the injured limb to her stomach.
Plumeria floated to him and he swallowed. The blacks and blues of violence still marked her flesh. Her cuts and burns healed nicely, but they still marred her skin and it made him crazy. He got up suddenly, unable to be so close without holding her.
And the only time he was allowed to do that was when she turned to him in the night.
“Arrow will come here,” she said softly.
Rand stilled. “Yeah? Why?”
Gretchen shrugged her shoulders. “I betrayed her. She’ll want to know why.”
“Are you afraid?” Because if she was, he’d kill Arrow before she had a chance to breathe the same air as Gretchen.
She laughed and it was hollow, dead. He rubbed his chest.
“I am not afraid of Arrow simply because I’m not afraid of death.” Gretchen got to her feet then.
If he admired the play of her sleek muscles under the ivory of her skin who would admonish him? She was his.
She cleared her throat. “I’m telling you this, Rand, because she has no compunction about killing, and if she harms you, I will react in a way that will set the world on fire.”
His breath stopped in his chest. “I am nobody to fight with your sister over, Gretchen.” He said the words and meant them, but she’d started a storm in his body with her statement.
She gazed up at him then and his world tilted on its axis, everything he felt mirrored in her eyes. Goddamn, he had hoped…prayed.
“You are more to me than anyone else has ever been. She is my sister, same as Blade and Bone, and I made a promise to them, to Ninka, in the midst of Hell. It is a promise I would keep, but there are new rules. None of them will harm you and escape my bullet.”
She took a step toward him and placed her head on his chest. Her body curled into his and it didn’t matter that she was soaking wet and dripping all over him. He lifted a hand carefully; she was a wild thing, after all. Rand cradled her against him, his heart thumping slowly, the air heavy with so many unspoken things.
Joseph cut the hair from her head thinking it would detract from her beauty. If anything, it made her even more beautiful to Rand. His hands cupped her head, thumb stroking softly over the myriad of wounds they’d left behind. Her hair would grow back, yet with or without it, she was his.
“I have claimed you, Rand Beckett. You saved me and I claimed you,” she murmured.
“And so you will be mine as I am yours,” he whispered and then placed a kiss on her forehead.
Let Arrow come, he thought. Right now he had Bullet.
Chapter Four
The darkness had a feel…a flavor. Arrow was drowning in a slice of black and the taste of endings. She inhaled deeply, let the night wind through her torso, allowing the crisp air to dispel the fear.
Would it have hurt Bullet to leave a light on? She almost laughed. Her sister knew her, had deliberately left the outside lights off because that’s when Arrow moved. Even though it cramped her stomach and punctured her chest, darkness was when Arrow traveled. It covered, and though it smothered too, she accepted its cloak as her due.
The only thing she did not do in the darkness was take life. It was murky enough where her targets were headed and Arrow couldn’t bear knowing she’d killed in the absence of light. Once was enough.
Her neck tingled and she clenched her hands into fists. She’d come to Virginia unarmed. Though unarmed for a member of First Team was most people’s locked, stocked, and loaded. The colloquialism put the smile back in place.
“I can see you, Bullet,” she whispered to the sky.
A feminine grunt sounded to her left. “Not up there you can’t.”
“Awareness need not have sight to know where you are,” Arrow admonished.
“Ah, you’ve come bearing wisdom. How have I managed to even wipe my ass without you by my side?”
There was a shade of humor in the tones of Bullet’s voice that had Arrow cocking her head.
Arrow snorted. “I’m sure it was trial and error for a time.” She let the quiet grow between them, and then heard what she’d been listening for. A hitch of breath but it was enough. “Does your arm still pain you?”
“Yes,” her sister murmured.
“Does your man know?” Arrow kept her voice softer than the wind. Who would have guessed the nights could be this chilly in the Southern US? Arrow made a mental note.
“He does now,” a hard voice came from Arrow’s right. Rand Beckett.
Arrow laughed and drew a deep breath, preparing for attack. “Mr. Beckett, so delighted you came to greet me. Let’s see, I think the last time we met you were complaining about my sister scalding you with her bullet. We told her you could be the death of her.” She paused. “She has never listened well.”
“Why are you here?” Bullet asked. There was warning in the depths of her voice now. She had fallen so far from where she’d begun. But for Gretchen Dearborn, falling past hell was a vast improvement in circumstance. Perhaps she’d even fallen up?
Her sister’s tiny frame, newly bald head, and big blue eyes dominated Arrow’s vision. Bullet’s countenance wavered and Arrow cleared her eyes by force of will. She’d almost lost another one. It was unacceptable. A ripple shook her and she stilled. “Charbonneau is no more.”
Bullet gasped and Arrow got an even deeper indication of how much this sister fractured. For her to exhibit any emotion was tantamount to breaking conditioning. But Arrow couldn’t seem to care. Bullet had been there for Ninka when the rest of them ignored the small Russian child’s needs. Yes, they’d all shared rations with the starving kodomo, but it was Bullet who’d comforted her in the darkest hours of the day as the child’s mind fragmented under the pressure of Joseph Bombardier.
“He was mine,” Bullet rasped.
Arrow shrugged. “He was ours the moment he broke your arm. And I took him entirely too quickly. He deserved to strangle on his own vomit for what he did to you… to the babies. We each marked him, have no fears, and since we are one, it was if your bullet touched his forehead.”
Rand stepped around Arrow, far enough away but too close. She ground her teeth. Her instinct was to strike out, eliminate the threat he presented. She inhaled slowly, calmed the need to destroy. And then someone else made themselves known by stepping into the small clearing aglow with a half moon. Mr. Collins.
Bullet inclined her head. “Merci, Saya.”
The woman in front of her had changed. Arrow held up her hand and Rand stepped in front of her sister. Her smile disappeared. “Do not thank me, Bullet. Tell me, sister, have you grown weak in the face of the challenge?”
A hissed in breath. A flag of red over ivory cheeks. Eyes narrowed, a scoping glance promising death. Arrow ignored Bullet’s reaction. “Joseph’s men even now patrol this area. He’s sent Damon to hunt. I can smell him on the wind. Yet here you stand in the open. What is that if not weakness?”
“She has me. She has Trident,” Rand said and his voice was harsh, deep. “No one can get past the security we have in place.”
“I did,” Arrow whispered.
Bullet put her hand on Beckett’s shoulder and Arrow felt some constriction around her throat ease. It was good she’d found a protector. Because the truth remained that Bullet was broken. Once she’d given her heart to the hard man at her side, she had splintered.
“My loyalty is being questioned?” Bullet’s gaze was hard.
Arrow shook her head. “Not your loyalty, sister. Never that. But you have broken and we would know if you’re able to continue?”
“Only my body, Arrow. Never my honor,” Bullet affirmed. “Our goal hasn’t changed.”
“It is good then. Should you decide in the future to give away my plans, do me the courtesy of a call, yes? I almost killed your Mr. Collins. I can guarantee Bone or Blade will not be so lenient.”
The air stirred and he was behind her. His warmth called to
her, his big body a beacon in the cold night. Her gaze met Bullet’s and in them was an awareness Arrow refused to acknowledge. She shook her head and Bullet smiled.
“You came nowhere close to killing me, Saya.” His voice was potent whiskey, shooting straight to her abdomen.
“My arrow at your kidney told a different story, Mr. Collins. Perhaps we can dance again and see who emerges victor?” It was a taunt and Arrow wondered why she felt the need.
This man was nothing to her. Less than that.
Liar, a part of whispered. Had she been able to locate that part she would have bludgeoned it.
Silence met her words and for that she was grateful. Until heat caressed her nape.
“We could dance, Saya. But I think you’d rather fight,” he said at her ear.
It was shocking to Arrow how much sound of the name she’d given herself coming from his lips shook her. Unsettled her. Her forefinger and thumb rubbed together and she tried to calm her rapidly beating heart.
He laughed and the husky sound ripped a hole in that calm, burning it up like fire on silk.
“I think the fight is what you live for, what you crave. You’re like an animal only knowing death and pain. I would offer you a reprieve, but that’s not what you want from me, is it? You want to fight because it centers that piece of you which remains forever out of your grasp.”
His breath was a benediction against her chilled skin. She caught a moan before it escaped. Her body was nearly boneless from his tone and proximity. She’d never felt the like. Decided she hated it even as she found herself leaning back into him.
“What piece is that, Mr. Collins?” she asked softly.
“Do not, Adam,” Bullet said in a low voice.
“Your soul,” he whispered.