Bone Deep (19 page)

Her sob came from somewhere in her past.

“Do not do this,” he pleaded.

“I wanted to die, Asinimov, but it is the truth I wanted to kill more,” she said on a near scream. “And so I held on for death.”

She had lost control but instead of striking out she clung to him, climbing up his body and wrapping herself around the man who offered her safety in the midst of her memories.

Long minutes passed, her sobs subsiding and leaving her fatigued and unsure. He held her through it all, stroking her back, kissing her neck and murmuring soft words to her.

She both hated him and wanted to live in his arms forever.

“You are not what he made you,” Dmitry said at her ear.

“That is all I can be,” she responded firmly.

“Serdtsa muzhchinam razbivaet ne nachalo i ne konets, a to, chto praishodit mezhdu,”
he told her. “I will make your in-between more than what you have known if you will let me.”

“I will not break,” she murmured at his neck.

“I know,” he said, taking her lips.

He walked her to the bed, sat down and simply held her. For how long she didn’t know and the passage of time wasn’t as important as what he offered her with his actions. Nothing was as important to her in those moments but that one thing.

Hope
.

She did not kiss his lips. She did not stay and watch over him. Bone glanced at Dmitry’s sleeping form, noticing how his skin stretched taut over his heavy muscles, seeing how his eyes darted under their lids from the effects of his dreams. She inhaled once, the scent of pine and juniper taunting her.

And then she walked out of the room.

She dressed silently in the darkness, grateful her sister had delivered cargoes, a tank top, a sweatshirt, and combat boots to the room earlier. She braided her hair and washed her face, though she refused to wash his scent from her body. Bone accepted what it was and what it could never be and then she kissed her bag, hung it up in the closet and walked down the stairs.

The walls of the house seemed to hold secrets Bone would likely not live long enough to try and solve. She did not want to remain here, close to her temptation, because her goals would not be met by holding Dmitry in her body, feeling his kiss on her neck and his warmth in her soul.

Death could not live where hope resided.

She needed the cold. She stopped at the base of the stairs, skin tingling as she sought the darkness for her sisters.

She raised her chin. “It is time.”

“Be safe,” Arrow whispered.

“Kill them all,” Bullet urged.

The silence around them was absolute. She found herself torn, ripped in two at the thought of leaving the man who’d stolen a piece of her.

Bone nodded. “I will.”

“Nodachi has been found,” Bullet told them softly.

“So Blade’s
rince leis an lann
will begin soon. That’s as it should be. The boy is fine?”

“She has no visual on the boy yet. There is another stalking her as she stalks Nodachi. And Grant—she has seen Grant many times in Sydney,” Bullet imparted.

“Nameless,” Bone said firmly, knowing in her gut it was the woman from that black night so long ago. Grant’s presence solidified it.

“Surely it is. I can only wonder if she suspects the truth of it all…if Grant told her what was done in the darkness of her pain,” Arrow mused. “You have the phone we left for you?”

She nodded. She’d attached it to her side under her clothing.

“Call us when it is done, sister, or we will worry,” Bullet demanded.

Adam Collins stepped from the shadows, his midnight eyes narrowed on her. “He will follow you, Bone.”

“I understand. It is who he is,” she admitted, meeting his gaze unflinchingly, hearing his warning and shrugging it off. “But he will not catch me.”

Bullet sighed. “We will delay him as long as possible, but if he goes after the other head of the
Bratva
, he will learn what you have hidden from him and just how deep his family’s betrayal has gone, Bone. Can you do this?”

“Sister, our plans come before everything else. That our paths have diverged to include others is irrelevant. Joseph is ours. I can do all things that lead us to his demise.”

She stepped to the door and channeled her pain and rage. She was death. It was all she knew.

As she left the house, she did not look back. She welcomed the shadows, let them hold her close and she became what she’d always been meant to be.

Bone.

Red Square was lit by a million lights it seemed, people milling to and fro and a million more snowflakes falling from the gray sky above. She did not like Russia simply because she hated the cold. Bone much preferred the plains of Jericho with its heated sands and endless sunshine.

The man she’d come to watch hadn’t shown yet so she hunkered into her heavy, down-filled coat, keeping her hat low and her eyes trained on the ice rink in the middle of the square.

He would be bringing his daughter to the rink. He would most definitely not be expecting Bone.

Her reconnaissance had given her all the information she needed within hours of landing in Moscow. The female head of the
Bratva
was here, meeting with the Russian President in the hopes of securing land on the outskirts of the city. President Putin kept his enemies very close indeed, because The Collective’s aims did not line up with Mother Russia’s. In fact, were he to look too deeply into the eyes of that monster he would see The Collective’s intent was to own Russia, not just some property on the edge of its capital.

Putin’s arrogance would get him ousted were it not for First Team. And while Bone hated dealing with any devil, The Collective was a much worse entity than an arrogant president trying to hold onto his power.

She’d been here for two days, settling in to a small apartment she’d purchased three years ago under an assumed identity. No one suspected that the tiny old woman living in apartment 2D was actually a killer. Bone moved in this city as if it were her home.

She glanced to her right as a man sat down and began looking through a paper. He rifled through it without even trying to appear as if he was reading.

Guard, she thought, elation curving her lips as she realized her objective was close.

Bone stood casually and walked away from the rink, keeping her gaze trained on nothing in particular as she sought Dostoyev in her periphery. There, to her left, a short, round man with a small girl at his side, holding his hand and smiling.

He’d brought his child into harm’s way thinking no one would dare attack him in public. That he relied on a child for safety disgusted her. He thought her tiny form would save him.

It would not.

Bone didn’t kill children but she had no compunction about killing their parents. Especially if their parents were as evil as Vladimir Dostoyev. She crossed the street and wandered aimlessly for almost an hour, giving the man plenty of time to play for the last time with his child. He would be busy over the next couple of days and then his eternity would start. It was the least she could do.

She walked into a store, took off the coat she wore and the heavy, baggy clothing under it to reveal more clothing, this tighter, more conducive to her motive. She left the coat and clothing in the bathroom of the store and called out a cheery goodnight to the women at the checkout desk. They did not call back, not that any of it mattered anyway.

She walked back to the Square and straight to the rink. He remained there on the edge of the ice, watching his child go round and round and round. Her face glowed with joy and Bone rubbed her chest. Had she ever know that kind of joy?

Yes
, her heart whispered. With Dmitry she had.

She pushed thoughts of him away, glancing around the rink and finding each of Dostoyev’s guards. It was humorous to Bone that the head of the
Bratva’s
guard needed guards himself. If he couldn’t keep himself, or his family, safe, how was he going to protect his leader?

Each of his guards, including the one who’d sat beside her earlier, were now stationed around the rink, watching, waiting. Occasionally they would talk into their wrist communicators, trying to act covert though anyone with any training would know who and what they were.

The little girl skated to the edge of the ice, ready to come off, and Bone moved toward them. She lowered her hand and shook it slightly, feeling the weight of a blade fall into her palm. It was cool, though it had been against her body.

She smiled again, this time at one of Dostoyev’s guards as she stepped up to her prey and pulled him close. She shoved the knife into his side deep enough that he would feel it—deep enough for him to realize she wasn’t playing.

He glanced at her, eyes wide, jaw going slack. He started to turn back to his child.

“Tell her to keep skating, comrade,” Blade demanded harshly in English.

“
Derzhite kataniye, dorogaya,”
he called out, voice wavering, fear rising in a stench off his skin.

“She is a pretty child. She reminds me of others you’ve sold into the hands of the devil—you remember them, yes?” Bone pushed a little deeper and he grunted.

He didn’t answer but she knew he spoke perfect English and understood her question. So she shoved the entire tip of the knife into his pudgy side. She wasn’t close to anything vital…not yet.

“You remember them?” she asked again, keeping her voice low.

His guards had noticed how close she was standing to him, noticed his face, and the mask of fear upon it.

“I don’t remember them,” he admitted and she smelled the pungent aroma of urine.

“You disgust me, Dostoyev. Perhaps we should send little Layla to The Collective. I wonder how long your child would last in the hands of pedophiles and murderers. She is especially sweet and her laughter—ahhh, she would be a delight for them to break,” Bone mused aloud.

“You will not take my child. I will give you anything, but not my child,” he stammered.

“I want nothing you have to give me. Your presence here was enough,” she muttered as the cold steel of a gun barrel pressed into her neck. She leaned toward Dostoyev’s ear and whispered, “Thank you. Make sure you take her home before you come visit me, yes? I would hate for her to be harmed. I would hate for her to watch you die.”

Then she dropped her knife and stepped away from him raising her arms. His guards took her down immediately and she allowed it. She had not come so far to waste Dostoyev’s death. Oh, he would die, but after she made it into
Bratva
headquarters under St. Basil’s Cathedral.

Always they used religious sites for their business. It was abhorrent to her.

His guards didn’t say a word, simply trussed her arms behind her back and lifted her up roughly, pushing her toward a waiting vehicle. Bone glanced back once, seeing the little girl’s face, confusion and fear lining the chubby planes.

Bone smiled and one of the guards slapped her. The inside of her cheek split and she spit out blood and saliva, continuing to smile.

“Ona skhodit s uma,”
one of them said
.
She is crazy.

“
Da
,”
she responded with a laugh.

“
I vskore ona budet mertva
,”
another chimed in.
And soon she will be dead.

Not until she was finished, she thought.

They shoved her into the blacked-out SUV, pushing her head down between her legs and taking off. There was no conversation between them after that and the trip was short. They were taking her to the cathedral.

Bone had planned this for years and it was going as she’d envisioned. She’d be a fool to think it had nothing to do with luck. They could have taken her somewhere else. But she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The SUV skidded to a stop and the men got out, pulling her to the ground and dragging her down a set of stairs. Bone glanced up to the sky, saw the onion-shaped domes of St. Basil’s glowing eerily and she smiled again.

It seemed she was doing a lot of that lately.

She forced her mind away from Dmitry. He had no place here. She’d come to Moscow for one reason—to eliminate the other head of the
Bratva
. And she was close now.

She remained still as they dragged her through a series of tunnels, the moldy, wet smell telling her they were getting close to their destination. The Moscow River bordered the Kremlin and the Red Square. It was the origin of the water she was being hauled through.

They pulled her into a large room and threw her on the ground. She glanced up and around, taking their number and waiting.

“Who are you?” the first question came from the man she’d stuck in the side with her knife.

“No one,” she whispered, the smile never leaving her face.

Another shot to the side. “What are you?”

“Nothing,” she responded automatically.

She was so close. Her body was ready for what they would dish out here tonight. They thought to break her. It was nothing but pain. She was going to show them strength.

He stepped to her and slapped her full on the face.

“If that is the best you have, Dostoyev, I wonder how you climbed the ladder to
Pervichnaya Okhrannik
,” she said, spitting out more blood.

He kicked her then, in the head and she fell to her side, absorbing the blow and loosening her muscles. She had a hard head. It was yet another part of her training with Master that she’d become accustomed to blows to the head.

“How do you know me?” he asked in a hard voice.

“I know you all. I know your mothers, fathers, children, and I know your leader,” she whispered.

They were on her then, at some unseen signal from Dostoyev. At least three of his men began a systematic round of kicks and punches. She took them all and when her eyes were swollen and her ribs screamed, she glanced up at Dostoyev and she smiled once more.

“You are crazy,” he murmured as he crossed himself.