The car stopped and Dmitry opened the door, getting out immediately and drawing in breath after breath. It took a few seconds for her to be at his side, staring into the vast blue of the frothing Atlantic Ocean, hands fisted at her sides. There was a storm brewing, a late fall tropical storm that would leave its mark on these beaches over the next day or so.
“He made me watch as Minton strung my parents from the tent’s poles, wrapping them in ropes the color of midnight, so tight they couldn’t move. Joseph held my head, made me watch as Minton stepped up to their rope-wrapped bodies swaying from the tallest poles of tent. He made me watch as he sliced each of them at the wrist and thigh.”
She took a deep breath, the wind off the sea wreaking havoc with her hair. Joseph’s mark was revealed, a stylized C intersected by a bone. Right behind her ear it wouldn’t have been visible had the wind not been blowing. He felt pain then. It wasn’t a foreign emotion but the depth of it was staggering. How dare that bastard mark her skin.
She wasn’t Joseph’s goddamn it. She was…
He squeezed his eyes closed and silence reigned for a bit longer as the wind continued to blow, rushing past his ears and playing in her hair. Sometimes the strands brushed his face but he stayed where he was. Bone looked up at him then.
“They swung and bled and bled and swung, their blood dotting the sand at my feet and the walls of our tent. Their blood was so crimson it seemed as black as my new god’s eyes. The sand was hungry that night, ravenous, and it drank their life until it was full. Then the sand offered up something it had created in gratitude for the meal it received.”
She would break his heart with the pain she fought to hide. But he wanted her to know he was there and he’d listen to every word she said regardless of how it hurt him. “What did it offer?” he asked hoarsely.
Her gaze slid away. “Me.”
She walked then, over the dunes and down to the water where she crossed her arms and gazed out over the ocean.
And as she stared at the water, Dmitry stared at her, memorizing her face and form, committing her to his heart.
He was going to kill Joseph Bombardier.
Joseph was his.
Chapter Six
Her heart settled the moment she saw Bullet and Arrow. Her sisters waited in the driveway, hands at their sides, gazes locked on the arriving vehicle. Bone got out as soon as the car stopped and walked to them, not embracing but staring at them, assessing their health and mental status.
Bone herself was still rocked by her admissions to Dmitry Asinimov. She’d never told her sisters of the night that brought her to Arequipa. They’d had too much to deal with themselves. As they’d grown, Bone’s rage had evolved into a wicked thing, living and breathing under her skin, in her sinew and muscles. It wouldn’t have been contained. The others had their own burdens, and she would never add to them.
Bone held each of her hands palm up. Bullet and Arrow slid their hands into hers and then they were holding each other as much as they could allow. Then, as one, they dropped their hands to their sides.
“Sister,” Arrow acknowledged, the sibilant tones of her voice stroking Bone’s eardrums.
“Bone Breaker,” Bullet quipped in her soft, dead voice.
Bone nodded at them. “Blade is well?”
She hadn’t talked to her other sister in over a month, missed the one whose laughter made her smile. Out of them all, Blade alone had the capacity to feel joy. It was rare to witness it but it had saved Bone many times over the years. Saved her from flinging herself off that cliff in Arequipa.
“She is angry,” Bullet returned.
Bone sighed. The boy had been taken and Blade was searching for Ken Nodachi now. Ken had taken the boy on a cold morning in Shanghai, when the woman First Team picked to watch over him had been slain.
He’d dared take something of theirs and he would pay for his folly.
“We are all angry.” Arrow’s voice carried the millennia. Ancient and smooth, it never failed to stoke Bone’s need to kill. She did her best to stay away from Arrow as much as possible, though she would give her life for her. The demons Arrow carried inside stalked Bone as well.
“She will find him,” Bone whispered. She shifted her gaze to Bullet, moving over her shorn hair, which did nothing to detract from her beauty, and meeting her eyes. “Your Mr. Beckett doesn’t know where his brother-in-law is?”
Bullet shrugged. “He would not tell me if he did.”
“Loyalty is a commodity, Bullet. You should be proud of him,” Bone responded.
The gazes of the men in the courtyard were a tactile nudge at the base of her skull—Dmitry, Raines, Adam Collins, and Rand Beckett. There were others, armed and ready.
“I shouldn’t smile, but the thought that these huge men around us, armed to the gills, are afraid of three small women—it does make my mouth curve,” Bone told them.
“It is done?” Arrow asked, switching topics effortlessly.
Bone nodded again. “I will return soon and finish my part. She will need time to regroup after losing Vadim. It is my hope she returns to the Urals though I hold no assurance. I will go after Dostoyev to get her attention.”
“Does Dmitry know the truth?” Bullet questioned.