Arrow to the Soul (3 page)

Like the water her walk reminded him of, she flowed from one job to the next, never rippling, never rushing. The thought of what she was, what she
did
, left a sour taste in his mouth. He didn’t understand his irrational need to stop her and refused to delve too deeply into it right now.

She was about to set into motion events that would destroy relations between the United States and Mexico, and
that
Adam could not allow. The fact that Mexico’s President was in Joseph Bombardier’s pocket was irrelevant. That the man abused young Hispanic girls in ways that defied morality was disgustingly irrelevant. If he went down, so did the barrier between the number one drug cartel in Mexico and the United States. The dead bodies of innocents would litter the streets of every single town at the US/Mexican border.

The man needed to die, but not until this country was more stable. Still she walked, unhurried.

“
Hey, chica
!” some young boy yelled in her direction. “
Ven aquí chica geisha
.”

Adam winced. Come over here, geisha girl? Poor kid had no idea he’d just taunted one of the most deadly women in the world.

She ignored the kid, floating over the hot, pocked pavement as if she didn’t have a care in the world. She stopped about fifteen feet from the family and leaned against a wall in the shade. The President’s guards were being especially lax today. People milling by on the street stopped to meet and shake hands with their leader. It was unheard of.

Slowly and methodically Arrow rolled her right sleeve up to mid-forearm and then pulled an object from her backpack. She didn’t glance around, and the cadence of the rise and fall of her chest never changed. She was ice cold.

Adam cocked his head, and everything around him faded. His gaze sharpened on the object she strapped to her hand and everything clicked. He’d wondered how she would get a bow and arrow so close to her target without being seen by someone on the busy street.

But the wrist-mounted weapon she’d just strapped to her arm and loaded was her answer.
Son of a bitch!

He stood carefully, taking a last sip of his bitter coffee before setting the mug down once again. Adam straightened his suit jacket, ran a quick hand through his hair, and began to move around the tables scattered on the sidewalk. His gaze narrowed, every movement she made raising the hair on the back of his neck.

She tilted her head and Adam froze. No way she’d seen him. He was like the water too. A smile ghosted her ruby-red, perfectly bow-shaped lips, and his breath stopped, clogging in his throat as a bead of sweat trickled down his back.

Their gazes clashed and emotion cut between them, potent and vicious. Her eyes sucked him in, and for a second he wondered if she was magic, drawing him to her—he the fly, she the spider’s web.

Adam shook his head, but the cloying effect of her gaze remained. She blinked, veiling her eyes, and the spell was broken. Then she raised her arm. He was too far away to stop her.

“Saya!” He let his voice rise above the din of the city around them. “Don’t do this.”

It wasn’t much, just a small flinch at the corner of her eye, but it was enough Adam knew she’d heard him. He’d used her name. That had to feel like a sucker punch.

“Leave,” she said, never taking her eyes from her target.

“I will not.”

“Then you may die with him today,” she whispered. But he heard her, and his heart kicked into a furious beat.

Her wrist flexed and the first arrow was swift to its target. A muted thud as it found its mark, and then the screams of the president’s wife and children. There was a suspended moment of stillness as death rode high above the city and looped down to take away its prey. It seemed even the heat did nothing more than shimmer for a hanging second.

Then with a whoosh, noise and activity bombarded the area. Adam’s gaze left her for just a moment as he catalogued escape routes. When he returned to the spot where she’d been lounging against the wall, she was gone.

Between one breath and the next…
gone
.

“Goddamn it,” he muttered, and then visually searched the rooftops around them for a fleeing slice of blackness.

“You took your eyes off the target,” she murmured softly against his neck.

Her heated breath caressed his nape and rage pumped through him, filling his muscles with adrenaline. He’d not heard her. He’d not felt the air shift as she crept up on him from behind. Who the fuck was this woman?

He grunted. “Maybe.”

She laughed. The husky tones skewered him. “Oh, I think you did. And it’s cost you, Mr. Collins. You never said in Arequipa, but perhaps you’ll tell me now: are you a good man?”

“You ask this as if you already know the answer.” He’d be damned if he’d play her games. She’d started a war today and thousands of innocents could die as a result.

“I do. But sometimes the fastest way to know a man’s soul is to see if he realizes the truth,” she said. There was no inflection, no flavor of curiosity. There was only cold, hard demand layered into her words. “My arrow lies against your kidney right at this moment. One flex of my finger and you will meet the Great Spirit your ancestors called to.”

Adam stayed silent. She’d researched him. That was interesting. Had he become her target then?

“Answer my question, Mr. Collins,” she bit out.

“There are no good men, Saya. There are only men.”

“Your truth saves you,” she said. “Do not search for me. You will find only death.”

Sirens rent the air and people were screaming for help. Bodies crushed and pressed around them, the stench of their fear acrid in Adam’s nostrils. Then sweetened honey floated on the wind…plum blossoms.

There was the sharp point of her arrow one moment, and the next, nothing. He turned and sought her, but the people around him blocked his view. He started to move and stepped on the motorcycle leathers she’d left at his feet. The Hayabusa was still there at the curb, and he raced to it, determined to get to her before she fled.

There! A flash of white among the throng of multi-hued outfits. Adam turned the key on the sleek blood-red bike and pressed the ignition button. The machine hummed beneath him, and he took off in Arrow’s direction. She wore a hat now, but the way she moved betrayed her. He’d never had someone get the upper hand on him so easily. That she’d held his life in her hands alternately pissed him off and made him grin ruefully. He’d never let his guard down again with her.

Within seconds he was at the point he’d last seen her, but she’d disappeared between two buildings and he pulled between them, gaze searching for any spot of white. Nothing. There was absolutely nothing but a dead fucking end to the alley.

As quickly as he’d found her, he’d lost her. He got off the bike, uncaring that it fell to the concrete beneath him. He needed to ditch it and get gone. Any westerner within spitting distance would be flagged and questioned. Mexico’s president had just taken an arrow to the throat. Hell was about to break loose.

Adam pulled out his SAT phone and hit a button. “She’s in the wind,” he said when Ken Nodachi picked up.

“Find her. It’s imperative,” Ken responded harshly.

Adam cursed. “The deed is done. We’re best to prepare the border towns for war,” he said, and pinched the bridge of his nose. His fucking head hurt.

“There are others on her list. Find her, Adam. And do it pretty damn quickly.”

Adam disconnected. Finding her would be like dancing between raindrops and not getting wet—
impossible
. But there was no choice. He pulled out the small piece of paper Bullet had given him and marked through the first line. The next name on the list would send the entire Eastern hemisphere into panic. Destabilization of the Chinese region would be globally catastrophic and exactly what she wanted.

What the women of Joseph’s First Team were capable of was mind boggling. He glanced up into the blue sky and prayed like he hadn’t prayed since Afghanistan. He prayed he made it to her in time.

•●•

Arrow watched him from across the street. Her palms tingled and she dug her nails into them, letting the small pain wash over and ground her. Adam Collins was a dangerous opponent. Not because he could move faster than her, was stronger than her, or seemed to know a helluva lot about her.

He made her heart beat heavily. He stirred her calm waters into waves that crashed and beat against the tranquility she’d established long ago. She’d known within the second their gazes met in Arequipa he could prove perilous to her ultimate goal. And she could not allow that to happen.

Bullet was worth the risk of Arrow being harmed by Rand Beckett’s men. It was why she’d approached them. She, Blade, Bone, and Bullet established the rules years ago. Should one of them be captured, the others wouldn’t risk the prize by rescuing her themselves. They’d decided with Bullet they would do everything in their power to make sure the one she’d almost given her life for did the rescuing. It had been a close thing. That their sister gifted her loyalty to a man who’d faltered about rescuing her pissed them all off.

Then Arrow walked into that clearing, met the nightfall gaze of Adam Collins, and her world tipped. She’d caught herself quickly, but the sight of him remained emblazoned on the nooks and crannies of her brain. She’d dreamed of him in the days between then and now.

It had been many, many years since Arrow had dreamed. She wanted to hate Adam Collins, recognized the emotion was too destructive. How had he known she’d be here today? Had Bullet given him the information?

It was the only answer that made sense. Her sister betrayed her. And for Bullet to have betrayed her there must be a reason—they’d been through too much for Arrow to give up on her now. No, there was a reason. She needed to figure out what it was.

Adam pulled out his phone and spoke to the person on the other end. He was frustrated. The lines of his big body tensed and coiled. She’d seen a picture once in the Louvre depicting a Native American Chieftain from years long past. Adam Collins could have been the one posing for it. He emanated a strength few men she’d ever encountered could, as if he was able to pick up the world, shake it, and rearrange it to his purpose.

The man really was magnificent. He towered over her, and she was a tall woman at five eight. He had a good six inches on her. His hips were lean, but his chest and shoulders were broad, corded with muscle. She watched those muscles flex under his Armani suit, saw the pulse at the base of his throat, and she wanted, irrationally, to lick there.

Her gaze roved at will, and Arrow couldn’t stop her visual assessment even though she was in quite a sticky situation. Nothing mattered but seeing him…watching him. His skin was naturally bronzed, a gift of his Sioux ancestry and what she imagined were many hours spent in the sun. His face made her chest ache. As if sculpted from granite, the planes of his cheeks blended perfectly down into a square jaw line. His eyes were the color of the deepest part of night.

She inhaled slowly, fear trickling down her spine. Arrow abhorred the dark but his eyes didn’t speak of pain. His eyebrows were the same shadow color slashing over his dark orbs. Adam Collins’ lips were a gift from his creator. His mouth caused her stomach to tighten. The full lower lip enhanced the curve and taunt of the upper one, and she wanted to taste him, feel his kiss.

Arrow had never been kissed. She found the yearning to engage in the activity with this man beyond her frame of reference.

She closed her eyes and opened them, searching for her center. He destroyed her ability to reason, clouding her mind with desires best left to other women. Unencumbered women.
Whole
women. Because Arrow was not whole. She had a heart, recognized it was so because she felt it beat, heard the blood rushing through her veins because it contracted within her chest. But she had no soul. The simple truth was she’d been born without one, and the lack of it allowed her to do what she did—mete out death.

The man she’d just killed deserved to suffer before he passed. In Arrow’s opinion, he deserved to feel every pain he’d ever inflicted on a child. But there had been no time, and she was sure the
Oni,
the demons of the pit, took him straight to hell anyway. She hoped he was reborn time and time again to suffer in each successive life for the hell he’d wreaked in this one.

She slowed her breathing as she watched Adam talk. She needed to move. He slammed the phone shut, stuffed it into his suit pocket, and ran a hand over his close-cropped midnight hair. It was as dark as hers, and she wondered if it was soft to the touch. Her forefinger and thumb rubbed together.

His gaze traveled up the street and back down, passing over her and then shooting right back, unerringly finding her amidst the crowded restaurant she’d sheltered in.

He cocked his head and smiled. A slithering emotion curled in her gut. No way he knew. No way. He started toward her and she remained still, knowing if she moved she would completely give herself away. She lifted a hand to her wig, brushed back the gold strands, and smiled. The silicone mask she wore conformed perfectly to her features. She was a white woman with sunny golden hair and blue eyes right now. It had taken less than a minute to transform, and her work was flawless.

But as Adam drew closer to her, she realized he saw well beneath the mask.
Damn it!
She got up leisurely, picked up her bag, and made her way to the back of the restaurant. Sirens continued to wail, and most everyone in the restaurant was glued to the windows or the televisions. She glanced over her shoulder once and saw him enter, the look on his face enough to freeze hell.

She headed toward the first man she saw.
“Disculpe, ¿me pueden ayudar? Hay un hombre que en este momento que es muy peligroso. Temo por mi vida. ¿Me pueden ayudar?”

If he thought it odd that a white woman was in his country speaking fluent Spanish, he didn’t say anything. He did look over her shoulder and alarm entered his gaze. He nodded. “
Corre a la parte posterior. Voy a llamar a la policía.”