Bullet bit her lip and nodded her head. “Come to think of it Bone, I am pretty fucking pissed.”
The man spread his legs, his stance wide. His soldiers stood at least ten feet from them now. Bodies littered the floor behind them and the house continued to burn. She tsked and then tsked again.
“What is it, sister?” Bullet asked calmly, as if they were having a simple, everyday conversation.
“I’m thinking these fine, upstanding American soldiers have zero idea who they’re dealing with. Tell me, sir, did you tell them this mission was unsanctioned and just who you were coming here to murder in cold blood?” Bone asked him inquiringly, her tone level and still pleasant.
“I am here on orders from the President of the United States of America. You are hereby determined to be enemy combatants and you can either surrender your weapons or die here at my feet.”
Bone sighed. “So much for talking.” She wiped a hand down her face and wiped it on her pants. “Look, the whole surrender or die thing might work for y’all,” she said, making sure to get the inflection just right, “But that doesn’t work for me.”
Bullet shook her head. “Me either.”
“And besides,” Bone continued, “I have no weapons on me.”
She slid a foot closer to him and the bastard was so ill trained he didn’t even notice.
“Now see, I know all about y’all. You’re killers. Assassins. And Rand Beckett has been harboring you here. You’re plotting and planning terror on American soil. That makes you the enemy. Surrender or die,” he finished.
Bullet nodded slightly. Bone winked at her and between one breath and the next, Bone was behind the leader, his head in her hands.
Bullet now held his rifle pointed directly at this heart.
The sound of every gun the soldiers held chambering a round was almost lovely to hear.
Bone pushed the leader to his knees. “You came into this house, threatening innocents. That was your first mistake. Your man holding a gun to my sister’s head was your second. Now how do you recommend we resolve this, sir?”
He opened his mouth and Bullet relocated the rifle to press deep inside it.
“Well, lookee there, Bullet. You done shut him up but good,” Bone said in the best damn hick accent she’d ever heard. “Call your men off. Now,” she whispered in his ear, voice dead. She allowed the promise of pain to linger in the notes and he stuttered in a breath.
He tried to speak but the barrel of his rifle prevented it. Bullet made an impatient noise and removed it.
“Retreat,” the man ordered immediately.
The soldiers lowered their weapons and began streaming out from an enormous hole in the side of the house
“Stand up,” Bone ordered roughly.
He stood. Bone pulled his hands behind his back, cuffing them with her own, and then she led him to the destroyed doorway. “This is how it’s going down. You will cooperate and for every order I give that you disobey or do not hasten to perform, I will make you suffer. Let’s start off easy, shall we? Have your men go to their knees and raise their arm to clasp behind their heads.”
He did as she demanded. “Now you,” she ordered.
Again, he did as she demanded. She met Bullet’s gaze and nodded. Her sister turned to leave, took two steps and turned back, firing a single shot and dropping one of the soldier to the ground, a smoking hole dead center of his forehead.
She pulled the leader’s hands up so far behind his back his shoulders popped. He screamed at the pressure she was putting on the joints, begging her to stop. “That’s what will happen every time you try something,” Bone called out. To the man at her feet she said softly, “So if you like your shoulders attached and your men’s brains inside their heads, don’t move.”
Bullet left then and it was just Bone. She had gone over every escape avenue available with her sisters the last two days. She’d known what Dmitry refused to acknowledge—Joseph was worried and worried men pulled out all the stops in times of need.
“I know who sent you,” she told the leader.
He didn’t say a word.
“I’m going to send you back to him with a message,” she said prolonging the conversation as long as she needed to allow the babies and her sisters to escape.
She stood behind the man and pulled out her knife again. The sound of the metal Blade had honed for her sliding over the leather of its scabbard was quite lovely against the backdrop of silence.
“I know this will piss you off, but I’ve held you here, at my mercy, with nothing more than my hands. It is ironic to me that your guns and knives could not do what my bare hands have managed to accomplish.”