Bullet to the Heart (6 page)

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and set her eye to the scope again. She had to give him enough time to disappear. That meant she had to get creative.

To her left came the sound of softly shuffling feet in the sand, grains shifting under a rubber sole. She inhaled deeply, sifted through the sand, wind and surf, finding a pungent aroma of sweat and fear. Joseph was desperate. He’d sent a novice to do a woman’s job.

She centered herself. If she had to take out a young one, she wanted to be sure she had no other options. “I can smell you, Phina.”

The soft shuffle of sand stopped. The fear was sour in Remi’s nostrils.

“Turn around now and I’ll let you live. You didn’t ask for this assignment. You aren’t ready for me,” Remi called out softly, her voice barely carrying above the waves that crashed just feet away.

“You’ve betrayed him. I won’t be the last he sends,” a small voice responded.

“I will kill you, Phina. Turn around, go back to Joseph, and tell him you failed.” Remi made her voice hard. She did not want to kill a seventeen-year-old girl on the cusp of womanhood.

But she would. Goddamn it, she would.

“I cannot go back there. The things he will do—no, I cannot. Stand and fight,” Phina said in a stronger voice.

Remi shifted, placed her weapon beside her bag, and covered them both with sand. “Who’s with you, Phina? Who’s left?”

“You’ve killed them all. They were shadow and you found them.” Subterfuge was woven in Phina’s dulcet tones.

There were at least two . . . maybe more. Remi stood slowly. They wouldn’t shoot at close range. The young ones were so full of vim and vigor, always searching for ways to claim they were better than the ones before them.

“I killed three. There are two more,” Remi laughed lightly, let it carry to the younger woman. The rain had suddenly stopped, and the moon picked that moment to unveil its face. Three silhouettes, standing proudly under the meager light of a waning moon. “Joseph never sends the babies out alone.”

“You haven’t been home in several months. We’ve become stronger,” Phina said, pride a clear veil over her words.

Remi spread her stance, relaxed her joints, and prepared for a serious fight. Thoughts raced through her mind. She was hurt on the left side, cut deeply on the left upper arm, and still having difficulty moving that arm at all because of her shoulder. She pulled her knife out of its scabbard at her low back and moved it to her right hand. “Then we should dance, don’t you think?”

The moon disappeared and Remi closed her eyes, sight no longer anything but a detriment. Sand was aplenty here, and having it in her eyes would cause unnecessary pain all the way around.

The first move came from the girl on the right. She ran and jumped, kicking a foot at Remi’s head. Remi ducked, grabbed the girl’s foot in midair, and wrenched hard. The girl dropped like a stone and Remi punched her in the solar plexus, following it with a sharp tap to her throat and the girl went lax.

The next move came from the other girl, a quick in and out jab after she threw a handful of sand at Remi. “Now, you’ve pissed me off. It’ll take me hours to get the sand out of my hair,” Remi said lightly as she struck out, catching the girl by her hair and tugging.

Remi wrapped the hair around her fist and cuffed the girl on her temple. She, too, dropped like a stone and lay unmoving.

Remi turned and waited. “Come on, Phina, are you ready?”

“I am. But I think you give me too much credit. I don’t play fair anymore,” Phina whispered, the sound foreboding.

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.

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.