Bullet to the Heart (10 page)

But she’d remembered another little girl, and she’d refused. Refused to the let the man with the black eyes defeat her.

“I hate you,” she whispered, lost in the recollection.

“You could never hate me as much as I hate you,” Rand spit down at her. “Where is Joseph?”

She glanced up, vision clouding as her adult body began to succumb to the elements. “He is everywhere. You must be very quiet before he hears you.” She wanted to recall the words, recognizing she’d just given the man standing so tall above her information she’d never given another. Would he use that information in his quest to break her?

The moonlight touched her skin. She imagined that it warmed her and knew then she was lost.

Something changed in his demeanor, some humanity replacing the icy coldness of moments before, but she was too far gone to hope. She fell to her knees. The water sloshed, entering her nose and clogging her throat.

“Dmitry!” he yelled.

She watched Rand rip the bamboo covering off the hole even as she sank deeper into the pit, face almost completely submerged. She would give herself a rest on the ledge in a minute. She was so tired right now.

He yelled again, and she wanted to tell him to be quiet lest the black-eyed man punish them all.

Then she knew nothing at all.

His heart seized in his chest. Was she trying to kill herself? What the fuck was this, some attempt to get him to release her?

The water closed over her face, her eyes dull and lifeless in the shine of the moon, and he recognized she was beyond this place. She would die if he left her in the pit much longer. He yelled for Dmitry, ripped the bamboo fencing off the hole, and attached the ladder to the stakes in the earth.

“What the hell?” Dmitry called as he ran from the house, Ken close on his heels.

He had to get to her. He lifted her up once his feet met the bottom of the pit. His legs began to numb immediately even though the level was only to his thighs. She was naked and so much smaller than him. How the fuck she’d survived for the last three hours, he had no idea.

She was slack in his arms, head lolling on her neck, body like an ice cube. What the fuck had he done?
How
had he done it? Stuck her in a pit filled with freezing water—what the hell had he become?

“Hand her to me,” Dmitry demanded.

Rand did, her deadweight causing his chest to constrict and his throat to close. Ken and Dmitry lifted her out, though Dmitry held onto her. She damn well wouldn’t die on him. She was his only lead.

Fuck that, he thought viciously. It had become about much more than Joseph. When she’d given him her breath underwater in the Pacific, she’d ripped a hole in him, and she was going to pay. Somehow, someway she was going to pay for making him
feel
.

“I fucking told you, Rand. She’s too small, too weak for this,” Dmitry bit out. Ken remained silent, his face blank as he looked anywhere but at the woman.

Rand climbed out of the hole and grabbed the woman from Dmitry’s arms. The other man looked at him like he’d lost his mind, but Rand started into the house, bypassing the stairs that led to the panic room, and moving instead to the stairway that led up to his suite.

“Where are you taking her?” Ken asked a note of warning in his voice.

She was so cold, lips tinged blue, body muddy and dripping. “Upstairs,” he replied, and his tone brooked no argument.

“We can care for her downstairs.” Ken’s tone was hard, uncompromising.

Rand ignored him and took the steps that led up to his suite two at a time. Mud dripped along the floor; he didn’t care.

“You need to get her warm,” Dmitry said from directly behind him.

“I will,” Rand replied.

He entered his room, headed for the bathroom, and then he turned holding her out for Dmitry to take. At the last second, he pulled her back to his chest and nodded at the tub.

Confusion played on Dmitry’s face, but he turned on the water in the enormous garden tub, and before a minute had passed, steam was rising from its depths.

Rand’s gaze tracked over her body. She was filthy and the long skeins of her hair were icicles against his arm. Her face was pale, and he wondered if he was too late. Dmitry checked her pulse, and the sight of the other man’s hands on her neck gave Rand pause.

Irrationally, he wanted to crush Dmitry’s hand for daring to touch her skin. The sibilant emotion snarled in his throat and he tried to breathe through it, but found the task impossible. Dmitry glanced at him but quickly lowered his eyes.

“The water’s ready,” the Russian murmured.

“Get out.”

Dmitry threw him a look full of warning but left. Rand stepped into the tub, clothes and all, holding her against his chest and sinking down into the depths of the warm water.

She stirred immediately, mumbled a garbled “no,” and then quieted. He was burning up, but her skin was frigid even after long moments in the heated water. He settled her between his legs, laid her head against his chest, and began lifting water to clean her face.

The steam continued to rise, but Rand knew he’d have to get her clean and wrapped up. She smelled to high heaven, and Dmitry would have to reclean her wounds. Her head drooped to the side, and he turned her body slightly. Her hair trailed in the water, and he did his best to filter water through it. What was in the tub was now muddy.

His hands roamed her collar bones, over her shoulders, and just once his hand slid over a breast, the nipple taut. He froze, hand itching to shape the perfect mound, mind rebelling in disgust that his cock was hardening behind the wet fly of his jeans.

But his heart stuck in a pounding rhythm. He had to get her away from him. Now. This was wrong. So very fucking
wrong
.

He stood, holding her tightly against him, water puddling on the floor as he stepped out and reached for a robe. He covered her with it before he yelled, “Dmitry!”

The door opened and Dmitry was there. The man knew. Somehow, the quiet Russian was aware of what Rand was feeling. “Take her.”

Rand handed her to him and Dmitry grunted as her weight settled against him, but he turned and quickly strode from the room. Rand didn’t give himself time to dwell. He walked back downstairs, sodden steps echoing eerily in the silence and headed to the hole he’d pulled her from.

He stripped out of his clothes, climbed down into the freezing water, and stayed there for as long as he could handle the anguish of it.

He lasted less than thirty minutes.

Muscles locking, he had to have help from Ken to get out, and then he collapsed as his best friend stood over him, a look on his face Rand had never seen.

“Don’t do this,” Ken murmured.

Rand closed his eyes against everything Ken left unspoken and took deep breaths as his body rebelled at the cold. After long moments he was able to stand, and he walked painfully back into the house.

“Rand, don’t do this.” Again, only this time an edge of desperation in the words.

Rand stopped and turned. “I think it may be too late, Ken.”

The other man’s face tightened, and then he hung his head and turned away from Rand, staring into the night.

Rand made it in, showered, and lowered himself into bed. He refused to think about what his words to Ken meant. It wasn’t possible, yet it was. His body felt beaten and his mind was in turmoil, but begged for rest. He closed his eyes, centered his breathing, and willed himself to find sleep.

Tomorrow would be soon enough to deal with the woman.

She slept sitting up and against the wall behind the door. Rand entered expecting just about anything, but when he finally located her, his heart turned over. He thrust the emotion aside and sat down on the bed, waiting for her to awaken.

It was time to take a new approach with the determined Bullet. He was hoping he could beat a path through her hard inner core and find the woman who had to be there.

Two days had passed since he’d pulled her out of the water pit. He’d used the time to distance himself from any and all sympathy for the experience he’d put her through. Dmitry had been the only one to have contact with her, and that had been to dress her wounds, give her medicine, and make sure she ate.

Rand ordered clothes for her, and once they’d arrived, he’d sent them to her through Dmitry. They were mostly sweats, but he’d had one of the housekeepers pick up some undergarments as well.

He sucked in a breath as the vision of her naked body ran through his mind. When had she become more than a killer to him? The distance he’d achieved over the past two days disappeared in a flash. He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut, but the image of silky skin and generous curves taunted him.

He opened his eyes and found her staring at him. In the dawning light, her eyes nearly glowed, but she moved slightly, and it left her face in shadows. He drew in a deep breath, and with it came the scent of plumeria. Soft and invasive, her smell made his heart jerk and his palms sweat.

He stopped breathing through his nose immediately. It didn’t matter. He realized he would forever associate the scent with her. Goddamn it.

Several more minutes passed, and she didn’t move a muscle. Still, quiet, like prey that senses a predator is near, she remained in the darkness that hadn’t been touched by the sunlight and waited.

“I will not apologize to you,” he said in a hard voice.
Where the fuck did that come from?

“And I will not break. Does this make us even?” Her voice, naturally husky, was even raspier than normal. Dmitry had told him she had congestion and would be lucky if it didn’t set up into pneumonia.

“You and I, Bullet,” he inclined his head as he said her name, “You and I will never be even.”

She didn’t respond, and he recognized his need to goad her. It was what it was.

“Why did you come here?” The question had been burning in his mind for days now.

“I will not answer that question,” she responded, and her voice was stronger this time.

“I could physically make you.” He shrugged and continued, “But it is a waste of my time and your effort. So instead, I’m forced into a position I loathe. Compromise.”

She chuckled, the sound hoarse and painful, almost as if she’d never done it. “Compromise? I wasn’t aware you knew the word, much less what it meant. Tell me, Mr. Beckett, have we reached the part of the date where you tell me I can call you Rand?” She raised her head and speared him with a look so intense his breath caught and held in his lungs.

“You are a first class bitch, aren’t you?” He sneered and sought to clear the anger she stirred up relentlessly.

“I assure you, Mr. Beckett, I have been called much, much worse.” She cocked her head, though her gaze never left his face. “I believe you asked me why I came here, but I think there are other questions better suited to your agenda.”

He snorted. The woman was a fucking pill and not the make-you-feel-happy kind. “Well then, since you know the questions I should be asking, perhaps you can both ask and answer them.”

“I would like an opportunity to hear about Lily and Anna first,” she whispered into the stillness of the morning.

His heart stopped beating. “If you need absolution, you won’t get it from me,” he managed to get out around the pain in his throat.

She looked directly at him, no quarter in her expression. “I never expected it from you, Mr. Beckett.”

He stood then, unable to stop the need to move, to purge. How dare she ask about his wife and daughter? He walked to the big picture window and stared out into the day.

“This was to be my daughter’s room.” He shuddered but once he started speaking, he couldn’t stop. “She was all that was sunlight, and Lily wanted her to always wake up to it.”

He heard her get up, felt her attention like a stroke along his skin, and wondered why she wanted to hear this, why he felt compelled to share it?

“My wife—” He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “My wife and I met in high school. Lily was everything I thought I’d always wanted. She reminded me of my mother, quiet, disciplined, and pretty much willing to do whatever I wanted her to do if it made me happy. She let me run off and play G.I. Joe, and was always there to welcome me home.”

He put his hands in his pockets and sighed. “She really deserved better than me, but she loved me and I loved her . . . completely, totally. We made plans to build this house shortly after we married and found out we were pregnant.”

The back of his neck tingled. Her attention was a tactile caress.

“I finished my first tour right before Anna was born. We were over the moon happy. I had a beautiful wife, a brand new baby, and we were building this house. I got sent out for my second tour, and that’s where I ran into Joseph Bombardier—in a poppy field in Afghanistan. But you know that don’t you,
Bullet?
”

He didn’t say anything for several heartbeats, and finally she spoke.

“What did Lily look like?” she asked softly.

Disbelief shot through him and he glanced at her. What the fuck did she want from him? What was this about?