by Lea Griffith
The bullet ripped through Remi’s left shoulder leaving fire in its wake. She fell, arm now completely useless as she crab-scrabbled backward toward her rifle.
Another shot, this one cutting instead through the flesh of—son of a bitch—her upper left arm. She hissed.
“Oh, Phina. You really shouldn’t have done that,” Remi murmured. She bit her lip, felt her teeth rip through the tender flesh there as she held in her pain.
Phina laughed and it was an ugly, childish sound. “I find it humorous that it’s going to be a bullet that ends you. So long, he’s held you up as the standard. You and your sisters,” she sneered as she drew closer. “Always so perfect, so deadly.”
She walked close, too close, and Remi waited. That was how she worked. It was always best when your prey had no idea you were about to strike. Phina held the gun in front of her, the silver of the barrel glinting. “We are, Phina,” Remi whispered.
Phina reared back to kick, and that’s when Remi struck. She stabbed the knife deep in the fleshy part of Phina’s thigh, right above the knee, and the woman fell, a startled grunt the only sound she made because within seconds, Remi had the other woman’s throat in her hands.
She came over Phina, squeezed as she pushed her head deeper into the sand beneath them. Remi felt something in her shoulder give and agony had blackness swimming in her vision, but still she choked Phina and pushed. Phina punched, threw sand, tried to buck Remi off, all to no avail.
Remi didn’t have long. Her vision was funneling to a pinpoint. She took a deep breath and pressed against Phina’s carotid. The woman winked out like a candle, good and snuffed.
Remi couldn’t kill her and knew she’d come to regret it. She couldn’t kill any of them. She staggered to her feet, swayed, everything in that instant so sharp and pure she wondered how she could stand the perfection of it. The tang of the ocean in her mouth, the smell of her own blood sharp in her nostrils, the wind pushing white-capped waves at her feet, and the pain.
For a moment she was warm. As warm as she’d been in the before time. Before Joseph. Before Ninka. Before her Mama and Papa and baby sister had died a painful death.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, but clarity had long-since fogged and her strength was almost gone. She ignored the prickle at her nape and breathed deeply of the air. Remi dug her bag and rifle out of the sand, and began walking. She had less than twenty-four hours to make it across the continental United States.
She had a date in Virginia. It was time to go.
Chapter Five
One step in front of the other, Remi. That’s how you do it. She just had no idea how many more steps she’d have to take before she reached her destination. Not that the number of steps mattered. In the end it was whether your objective was met that determined success. Setting goals was a part of proper planning. She’d had to reshuffle hers to include Rand Beckett, and now she was paying for it.
The rumble of thunder had her glancing skyward. The pale pinks and peaches of the Virginia evening were about to give way to the smoky black storm clouds that gathered on the horizon. Everything was a bit hazy at the moment. She’d somehow managed to get from one coast to the other riding a Greyhound bus, of all things, but she’d used her last medicine syringe four hours ago and the pain was creeping in, clawing fingers raking down her arm.
She’d filched some clothes from a Wal-Mart in the city of Bellingham, Washington where she’d eventually caught the bus. From there, she’d ridden nonstop until coming to Virginia Beach, Virginia. Rand had headed home, to his turf, and no doubt whatever he had planned for her was going to be nasty. She stumbled, righted herself, and fought to hold onto consciousness.
She’d studied him for a year prior to Seattle. Though her plans had been in motion for much longer, she’d made sure she knew everything Joseph had on Rand Beckett. Middle son of a former tobacco grower, he’d entered the Army at the age of eighteen, become a Ranger by twenty, and served two tours on a Spec Ops team in Afghanistan by twenty-seven. He’d married his high school sweetheart at the ripe age of twenty-four, and they’d had one child.
Shortly after that, he’d crossed paths with Joseph Bombardier in a poppy field in southern Afghanistan, and his life had irrevocably changed. He’d lost everything by the age of twenty-eight; everything of value anyway. He’d held his commission until shortly after the death of his wife and daughter, and then he and his brother-in-law, Ken Nodachi, had begun Trident Corporation, a security organization specifically designed to be the antithesis of The Collective.
He was a gorgeous man, if maybe a bit too hard around the edges. Remi sat down on a marble bench that looked like it’d been there for a hundred years. She was just grateful it was there at all. It’d been hell scaling the ten foot fence surrounding his property.
Hell. She laughed, the sound humorless in the cricket-filled afternoon. Yeah, the fence had been hell. Wetness leaked down her arm and without looking she knew her sweatshirt was soaked to the wrist in her blood. She’d used her last packet of QuickClot about ten hours ago. The bullet was still lodged inside. She’d not taken care of herself, though what it mattered now she didn’t know.
She wondered if the others were safe. Had they began their journeys? She had no way of knowing and had no idea when she’d be able to contact them. She’d buried her bag and umbrella nee rifle under a bush on this property, hoping against hope that she’d be able to return to it. If nothing else, the GPS tracker would tell them her last location. Maybe they’d be able to find her body.
Thunder boomed again, and as she looked skyward, streaks of lightning lit the eerie darkness of the encroaching clouds. The purple blackness of them reminded Remi of his eyes. Deep, dark eyes that crinkled at the corners almost as if he’d smiled too much in his lifetime. Rand Beckett was everything a man should be. Everything maybe Remi herself could have wanted in the before time. Black hair he kept longish, strong cheekbones, and a square, unforgiving jaw. He was probably the single most stubborn man on the planet with a jaw like that. His nose had an enticing bump in the bridge that in no way detracted from his face. It rounded out a mask of rugged features that, when put together with long black eyelashes and full lips, made him beautiful in a harsh way.
He had broad shoulders, strong arms, and a thick chest. No fat she’d been able to notice. His muscles had flexed under her hands as she touched him in the water. He was tall, probably a good foot taller than she, putting him around six two. He’d made her feel weak.
How she hated that he’d made her feel weak.
“I won’t break,” she said to the sky.
A fat raindrop fell beside her feet. Even the sky cried sometimes. The breeze was cold, and though it’d been in the high sixties with the sun out, it was still fall in the south, and it was becoming pretty damn chilly.
She wrapped her arms around her midsection, ignored the burning and tearing in her body. Maybe the rain would wash it all away. Another deep boom rocked the sky, resonating into the earth, and Remi shivered. Nothing moved after that solid crack in the heavens, not even the wind.
She heard him long before she saw him. She pushed to her feet, determined to meet him standing.
It was the last thought she had before he appeared between two swaying magnolias and the ground rushed up to meet her.
She looked like a lost waif. Broken and tiny, she’d crumpled before he could reach her, not a single sound passing her dry, cracked lips. He picked her up gently, though it made him angry that he felt the urge.
He’d alternated between rage and panic over the last day. She may have thought he’d left that night in Washington, but the reality was he hadn’t. He’d watched the fight between the four women, had nearly lost his mind when one of them had shot in her direction three times. He’d been unable to tell if she’d been shot or not, though she’d moved like she was fine. A little stiff but that was to be expected.
Rand had seen pictures of the burned-out wreckage she’d fled the day before.
She was lucky to be alive at all. When she’d taken the other women out, he’d breathed in heavily, the weight that had been crushing his chest lifted.
Like today, those softer feelings toward this woman filled him with wrath. He’d ghosted her movements as she’d left, watched her steal a car, and he’d followed her in one he’d stolen himself. That he’d been able to follow her told him she’d been less than full strength.
For an incredibly trained, top-notch assassin, she wasn’t on her A-game at all. He’d caught a plane to Virginia once he’d confirmed she’d taken a bus headed in the same direction.
Then he’d come home, to this house he’d built for a yellow-haired goddess and their sunny-haired child. A house that had remained empty for seven years.
Ken had made sure everything was in place—security, an interrogation room, food, and weapons. His friend had taken up residence in the west wing of the house, determined to be close to the woman who was their only link with The Collective.
Rand knew she was Collective. She had it literally tattooed on her neck, behind her right ear. A scrollwork C with, in her case, what looked like a pistol woven into the design. He knew each of their assassins was marked in a certain way. He’d once mailed a flap of flesh off a dead one to The Collective’s main office.
His grip tightened automatically at that thought. She winced and settled back down.
She was so small, weighed next to nothing, and she was passed out cold. Rain dotted his skin, dripped on her face, caught on her long brown eyelashes. They looked like silken fans against her wan cheeks. Her lips were bloodless, the bottom one looking like it’d taken a round in a meat grinder. Another rumble of thunder, and she twisted. He nearly dropped her she was so quick, but she settled back down, curving into his chest as he walked toward the house.
His heart thumped heavily, the blood in his veins hot, but for what reason? Anger or something more insidious? He rejected those thoughts. There was only room for vengeance in Rand now. When they’d taken his wife and daughter, they’d left him empty of anything save the desire to destroy Joseph Bombardier and his entire group.
And this woman, out of all of the women in the world, was his enemy. She’d killed. If she were left alive, she’d kill again. He glanced down, gaze sweeping over the curve of the cheek not pressed against his chest, and his heart tripped.
Mother fucker! He increased his pace, legs eating up the distance to the house as his mind whirled. He entered through the portico, swiftly moving down the steps near the doorway and taking a left at the bottom.
When he’d built this house, it had been with the intention to keep his family safe. Rand had never been an overly paranoid guy, but he’d seen things during his tours that confirmed the world was a nasty place. With Lily bringing their future into such an unsafe and trying time, he’d wanted to make sure his family had someplace safe to go in the event of danger. So he’d dug the basement, and more specifically, created a panic room.
He’d had such plans. He’d returned at his daughter’s birth and immediately known he couldn’t be away from her for very long. He’d determined to resign his commission after that last tour, set up a security firm with his brother-in-law, and live a life for his wife and child.
He came to the room that had once been created to protect life, and he placed the woman, the assassin, on a stone slab in the middle of it. The floors were tile with drains inset periodically for easy cleaning. The walls were brick and there was no window. He’d dug this out of the earth himself and it had once been a place he and Lily had been proud of.
Now it was a place of death. This woman wasn’t the first killer he’d brought here. If he had his way, she wouldn’t be the last.
Though pain, rage, and guilt rode him hard, he found himself positioning her for maximum comfort on the raised platform. Her left arm slid off the slab and as he picked it up to move it, his hand came away tinged crimson.
He lifted his finger to his nose, the metallic, iron smell making something greasy move through his gut.
He unzipped her hoodie, found another beneath it, and yet another beneath that. Nothing could have prepared him for the sight that greeted him once he unzipped the last sweat jacket. The tank molded to her frame was thick and cloying with her blood. She moved then, some instinct awakening a long-bred need to fight.
She swung out with her right arm and clipped him in the temple, rendering him stupid for a few seconds before his vision cleared. But by the time he got his bearings, she was huddled in the far corner of the room, head down, body shuddering as she hunched into herself.
What. The. Fuck.
He walked toward her, and it seemed the closer he got, the further she tried to meld into the brick wall. The eeriest thing about her actions was the lack of sound accompanying them. She was silent, not a grunt or groan of pain with any of her movements, though he damn well knew she was hurting.
What kind of discipline did that take? What the hell had she been through to condition her to that type of silence? Red hair, lank with sweat, covered her face, and she looked a wild thing, dangerous and scared.
He approached slowly, heard the door open, and waved Ken to remain where he was.
“What the hell?” Ken said into the quiet of the room.
Not even her breathing could be heard in the absolute stillness. Goose bumps broke out on his arms. He moved toward her, careful to be slow and non-threatening. She was still wearing clothes, and he had no idea what she had on her.
Shit! He hadn’t even checked her for weapons, so wrapped up in thoughts of the past he’d been lost to the present. She squatted in the corner, fisted hands on her knees, face turned into the wall. Her back rose and fell as she took desperate breaths, but there was no noise to mark the passing of the air through her body.
“Let me come from the right, Rand,” Ken said.
Rand shook his head and made a motion with his hand. Ken’s footsteps whispered against the tile as he left. Something warned Rand that both of them coming at her would be a bad mistake. The woman before them was a weapon, trained and molded for one thing . . . destruction. If that annihilation was her own because she’d been captured, he had no doubt she would take care of it.
But she’d come to him. He harbored no illusions about her agenda, but self-termination was a very real threat. He had no idea if she’d broken enough to kill herself. She was obviously rogue. How rogue was the question.
He came to within three feet of her, and gave it another minute to see if her breathing slowed and she calmed. It didn’t take that long.
“Stand up,” he ordered.
“Fuck you,” she breathed out.
He rolled his eyes at that even as his mouth kicked up at one corner. It wasn’t in amusement, never that with this woman . . . this killer. It was anticipation. She may not be broken yet, but when he finished with her, she would be.
“I said stand up!” Louder now, more forceful, accompanied with a sharp clap.
She didn’t even flinch, just lifted her light blue gaze to his and stared. He watched as understanding broke over her features. Her mouth closed, tightened into a thin line. Fire flashed in the clear depths before her eyes went carefully blank.
In the silence after his clap, the drip-drip-drip of her blood on the floor pulled his attention.
Rage filtered through him, poignant yet vicious. “You’re bleeding like a stuck pig.”
She stood finally, swayed, and locked her knees. Goddamn, she was strong willed. Something niggled at him, bit deep into his mind, and he pushed it away. This was no time for pity, and he refused to feel it for a woman who had blood on her hands.
His gaze dropped to her left arm, which still dripped blood onto the tile beneath their feet.
“Never seen blood before?” Her voice was weak, as if her strength dropped to the floor along with the red liquid.
He grunted. “I’ve never seen yours, and while it should bring me joy, I simply find it distasteful that the blood of a killer dot
s my floors.”
“Touché,” she whispered and turned to face him, arms going loose as her stance widened. She tossed her head, hair moving away from her face, and for a split second, it was Rand who lost his breath.
She had the smoothest skin and it glowed opalescent in the low lighting of the panic room. Pearl smooth and dotted with sweat, it shone magnificently in the meager rays, and his fists tightened at his side. Her brow wrinkled for a moment and her eyes narrowed. What was she thinking? He damned himself for wondering, and still his gaze tracked across her face.
Her eyes were tilted up ever-so-slightly, and dark brown eyebrows framed the brilliant blue gems. Her pixie-like nose turned up slightly at the end. Her cheekbones were high, but her face was rounded with a stubborn chin. Her lips made him have evil thoughts. He cursed loudly, and almost turned away.
She chose that moment to lick them, and the ever-present angst he felt around her reared its ugly head. For a second red hazed his vision, and he wanted to smash things, namely the woman in front of him.
Any other time, he’d not have hesitated. She worked for an organization that had crushed his dreams. He hardened himself against any remorse for her and stepped closer.
“I have it.” Ken had returned.
Rand nodded, and felt more than heard Ken move further into the room. The woman didn’t look away from Rand, yet her body stiffened imperceptibly, repressing a shudder as she prepared herself.
This wasn’t going to be easy.
“I thought for some reason you’d play fair.” She shook her head slowly and clicked her teeth. “No compassion, eh, Mr. Beckett?” She smiled then, the curve of her lips ugly and mean.
He almost lost his composure, retaining the leash by a thread.
“I believe I told you it would be ten-fold,” he said in a low, guttural voice.
She cocked her head, and to his amazement, she winked. “Then we should get started I’m guessing?”
She was fucking crazy. “Lady, you do realize you won’t leave here?”
