“Mother,” Bone guessed.
“It is also the one place we get complete freedom from ears listening to every word. This house is a home of sorts but still a prison,” Arrow murmured.
“Until Joseph lies rotting in his grave, no place will be home for us. Prison is all we will know. But it will be good to see where Mother rests,” Bone replied.
They walked in silence, lightning ripping cracks in the tenuous fabric of the night sky and thunder rumbling in the distance. She saw the headstone atop the ridge and her heart stopped.
Mother had been Bone’s favorite. Jesuit had been Bullet’s. Neither Arrow nor Blade had dealt with the young ones for very long. Most of their contracts took them away from Arequipa for months at a time. For ten years the babies, as Bullet called them, had been mostly under Bone’s watch. She dispatched her kills with a quick thoroughness that allowed her to return and keep her eye on them. Though she had been unable to save them, she watched over them, keeping them alive as long as she could and daring Joseph to take what she considered hers.
That Mother lay cold in the grip of the earth replaced the calming pleasure she’d known in Dmitry’s arm, filling her with volcanic wrath and reaffirming her purpose. Mother was but another life taken in Joseph’s quest to re-create the perfect killer.
She walked to the headstone, saw that it read the child’s name in her native Hebrew and went to her knees. She bowed before the stone and said the Death Prayer. She had not spoken the words the night her mother and father had been murdered before her—they had not deserved it. She had not spoken them the morning Ninka had died. She had been too angry at the God who had abandoned her. But she said them now for a child who’d been taken before life had a chance to begin. Her voice was broken, the words stilted and at times so low she couldn’t hear them herself, but she said the prayer and when she was finished, she kissed the dirt above Mother’s body and lifted her face to the dark sky.
“For Mother I would don sackcloth and throw ashes over my head. I would wail to Heaven and tear at my skin. But You do not listen to my prayers. If ever I earned a favor, Hashem, please walk with her to the Tree of Life and give her peace,” Bone said to the roiling clouds above her.
The wind stopped, the thunder ceased and the darkness held sway. Then a single bolt of lightning ripped the veil of the night. The jagged illumination a clear indication to Bone of how God felt about her.
“If that is your answer, I must accept it. But you will see me eventually. I would brave even the halls of Heaven for Mother. We will have our reckoning,” Bone whispered.
“Sister, we must go inside. The storm is growing worse,” Bullet said from behind her.
Bone stood and the wind once again whipped and tossed her hair and clothes. Arrow’s dark hair was a silky ebony curtain against a backdrop of midnight. Bullet’s face was drawn, sorrow written on her features and Bone was sure her own held the same emotion.
“Ninka was Dmitry’s sister,” she said above the rising noise of the whipping trees.
Bullet and Arrow both looked at her, eyes narrowing. But they did not question why she had not previously given her sisters this knowledge. Perhaps this was nothing more than verification of things they had already guessed. Though they were a unit, each of them remained individuals and each of them had secrets. Nothing that could harm the others—their bond wouldn’t allow for that—but definitely things the others didn’t know.
Bone nodded. “He has searched for her from the time he was eighteen. If you could, give him your remembrance of his sister so he will have something to carry of her through his life.”
“Does Trident know?” Bullet asked in a dead voice.
Bone narrowed her gaze on her sister. “It is not our truth to tell. He had his reasons though if I know him even the smallest bit, he is even now telling your men the truth of it all.”
“I will speak to him of his sister,” Arrow promised. “Watashitachi ni ushinawa reta mono wa, wareware ga mottomo oboete iru monodesu.”
“Yes, they are. His search led him to Joseph and once he happened upon Trident, he joined them but always there was the hope he would find her,” Bone affirmed.
“You took her punishments, Bone,” Bullet reminded her. “Does he know what you suffered for his sister?”
Bone glanced at Bullet, trying to understand what her sister wasn’t saying. “He knows what we all did for his sister.”
“He is yours now?” Bullet asked.
“He is his own. The things I hold back from him will destroy any trust he has in me. But it will be as it is meant to be. My path has always been difficult to walk, but I will not cease the journey until my duty is done.” Bone didn’t know how to process the feelings coursing through her—possession, pain, rage—they were debilitating.