“Not today,” Bone answered.
She was getting stronger every day. The infection was gone and her injuries healing well. Joseph hadn’t broken any of her bones—but he had cut and whipped her until her flesh burned and bled. The gunshot wound to her thigh was also much better. It hadn’t hit anything vital though it continued to hurt like a bitch.
Bone was growing antsy. With the exception of Arequipa, she’d never been in one place this long. She’d been in Virginia for a little under a month and it made her skin crawl to think of how vulnerable they were not moving from place to place.
It would have been much easier had Dmitry not been present. Indeed, she’d spent most of the last two weeks avoiding him.
The days had been easy. She trained and he did whatever it was he did for Trident. But the nights were…difficult. The darkness somehow shed light on her memories and the feel of his hands on her body, the taste of his mouth on hers and the sound of their breathing as they’d strained together in ecstasy was closer, louder. She’d tried turning on a light. She’d attempted meditation. But nothing took those memories away and Bone had finally given into the realization she didn’t want them to go anywhere.
Should she have a future she would need to fill it with those remembrances of his body on hers. It would be all she had to warm her frozen heart.
He had left a few days ago with Adam and Rand. He hadn’t said a word to her. No doubt, she mused, they were headed to Sydney. Because of their endgame and the slight difference in their motivations from First Team’s, her sisters remained here.
It still blew her mind that Bullet and Arrow had settled enough to be together in one place for very long. But as Bullet said, if Joseph was coming for them, better they were together than separate at this point.
The men of Trident had headed to find Nodachi. He had the boy and the boy was First Team’s. Nodachi could run and he could hide, but Blade would find him and it would be on then.
“They will be returning tonight, but they haven’t found Nodachi,” Arrow murmured.
Bone snorted and glanced at her sisters. “I don’t care when they return. What have you two become? All you’re missing is knitting needles and yarn.”
Bullet laughed and Bone’s jaw dropped.
“It doesn’t happen often so make sure you remember it,” Arrow told Bone.
“Fuck you both,” Bullet remarked shyly.
“The Kremlin was Blade’s work.”
Arrow glanced at her, her eyebrows lowered and a frown tugging her mouth. “You need to train.”
Shock coursed through Bone. “Why do you say that?”
“Because you’re rambling,” Bullet offered. “Telling us things we already know.”
Bone shrugged and got up, walking to the window and glancing out. Why she picked that moment to look out the window she had no idea, maybe it was intuition or the universe giving her a heads up for all the shit it had given her over the years. Whatever the reason, she didn’t miss the glint of sun on glass.
“Scope, ten o’clock,” Bone said dropping down and crawling to the space between the two huge picture windows in the study.
“Another one, two o’clock,” Bullet’s hard voice came from the doorway.
“Get down,” Arrow called.
Then Bone heard a sound she’d heard many times before but only in war zones. As the RPG screamed through the window and detonated, everything went silent. Shrapnel bit into her skin and her vision hazed. Gunfire sounded and as she looked for her sisters, she saw Arrow down on the ground, not moving, eyes closed.
She crawled to her, her surroundings shredded and still unable to hear anything but continued gunfire and incessant ringing.
“Bone!” It sounded as if her name floated to her from a thousand miles away. She looked left and saw Raines there gesturing her toward the doorway.
“Get the babies in the panic room,” she ordered. Smoke poured through the room now and she made it to Arrow, pulling her by the underarms to the hallway.
Bullet had disappeared but then she was there, her rifle in her hand and her eye to the scope.
“Raines! Take Arrow to the panic room,” Bone commanded.
“But—”
“We do not need you here. Take Arrow to the goddamn panic room and lock yourselves in. You keep them safe!” Bone yelled in his face.
He didn’t hesitate, just scooped an unmoving Arrow into his arms and took off disappearing down the hall before he took the stairwell down to the panic room.
“You’re sure the panic room is a separate entity from the house?” she asked Bullet.
“Yes. They have their own air flow system and it’s completely underground. They will be safe,” Bullet assure her.
She fired a single shot and glanced at Bone. “There are at least thirty men out there, Bone.”
Bone pulled her knife from its scabbard at her back. She was not in good shape but she’d fought with worse. “Are they Joseph’s?”