He opened his eyes as far as the swollen tissue would allow and she was able to see a slice of blue. Then his split lips curved. “I do not swim.”
She had no more ammunition and couldn’t reload if she did. Another shot rent the air, this one biting into the muscle of her thigh. She grunted and made the mistake of looking down. They were so high and suddenly she was back on the cliff in Arequipa. Another shot, this one with a rubber bullet right to her shoulder. That arm went dead and she dropped the gun, switching to hold him with her left arm.
“Let me go,” Dmitry whispered.
Always the height taunted her. “The ropes will hold,” she answered and realized she was talking to her past. She shook off her reverie and grimaced.
“I have done all I can, Asinimov. I am sorry for not telling you of your father or your mother.” Her grip was slipping. “Live for revenge, moye.”
The men behind her were yelling for her stop.
She wasn’t going anywhere. Not now.
“Bone Breaker, child, it is time to come home,” the black-eyed man said. Joseph was here. There was no such thing as hope any longer.
She closed her eyes, accepted her lot and looked once more into Dmitry’s eyes.
“You will tell my sisters,” her voice broke, tears streaming down her face, “you will tell them that I am going home but I will remember them forever. I will see you on the other side, da?”
Bone used all the strength left her, bones grinding, pain overwhelming her, and swung him out as far as she could from the tower’s face, making sure he would hit the water. When she could do no more, she let him go. Their gazes met once more and she saw everything she could have had disappearing. He hit the water, remained still for several moments and then he swam down, deep into the frigid waters of the Moscow River. He would live.
Bone turned, went to her knees and did something she hadn’t done since before her parents gave her up to Joseph. She prayed.
She prayed to the God of her fathers for the end.
Chapter Fifteen
He woke in a blinding rush of pain, his dreams following him into wakefulness, the brush of them against his mind cruel and cutting. Her hazel eyes haunted him. Her words ripped through him with every breath. You. Will. Live.
She was gone. Bone had been taken by Joseph and though he wanted to hate her for her lies and subterfuge, all Dmitry knew was fear. It ate at his insides like worms, gnawing and rabid. She had given her life for his.
I will see you on the other side, da?
She was gone and he wanted her back. For what he didn’t know.
“She is in Arequipa, Asinimov,” a soft voice said from the dark corner of his room.
Somehow, someway, Grant Fielding had been in a boat on the Moscow River. He tracked Dmitry after he’d fallen into the murky water and dragged him up, saving him. Now he was back in Virginia recuperating. But Bone wasn’t here.
“Did you hear me, Russian?” she asked and Dmitry thought her voice truly lovely. It didn’t have the husky quality of Bone’s, the ancient tones of Arrow, or the deadly threat of Bullet’s, but it was still lovely.
He did not know who this woman was though and tried to sit up, failing before he drew in a deep breath and sucked up the pain.
He sat up and moved his legs off the bed, sitting on the side and staring into the darkness. “I heard you.”
“She is dying,” the woman said. “Much like Bullet almost gave her life for Beckett,” she said his friend’s name as if it was shit in her mouth. “Bone is giving hers for you.”
Agony pierced his chest then. He swallowed but could only cough. “She is dead?”
“Not yet.” A long pause. “Soon.”
The woman stepped into the meager light of his bedside table and he saw who she was then. It was the one they called Blade. “We continue to replay the same scenario over and over and over with Trident. I have asked myself why women worthy of so much more than what you have given them continue to offer their lives for you.” She shook her head, the spiky blond hair on her head reminding Dmitry she had been punished not too long ago by Joseph.
He always cut their hair. As if taking away their locks took their strength. It was another testament that Joseph had no idea what he had created.
Dmitry had no answers for her. He could not understand it himself but he was also still dealing with the fact that he’d given his heart to a woman who’d been lying to him from the beginning.
“She lied to you,” Blade affirmed.
Dmitry looked at her then, anger taking root in his pain. “Do all of you read minds? Are you sure you’re even human?”
Blade shrugged and sat back down in the corner, crossed her legs like an executive at a meeting and leaned back negligently. “We bleed.”
Dmitry winced.
“She was shot holding your ass above the Moscow River, making sure you didn’t give your life. She had been beaten for a full day prior to that, fought with a killer much like she is, and you are angry that she lied about your bitch of a mother and your assassin of a father? You are all stupid,” she said hatefully.