Bone Deep (15 page)

She turned and walked to him, not questioning how the man knew what she’d been thinking, simply entering his embrace without wondering the why of it all; acceding to the need to do so. He was warmth. He was fast becoming her port in the storm.

Bone did not know how long they stood there. It wasn’t until he shifted that she raised her head from his chest.

“It is raining,
moye
.”

Mine
, he called her. It was as good a name as any she supposed.

Bone stepped from him, recognizing her need for him was a weakness that would be used against her. Joseph was a master manipulator and though he was on the run, trying to cover all his bases, he was a plotter seeking every way to hurt them and bring them to heel. Bone wasn’t ashamed to say she thought that even in death Joseph Bombardier would seek to destroy them.

Dmitry grabbed her hand, pulling her from her musings. She allowed him to tangle their fingers and as she glanced down at their entwined hands there was a curious wrenching in her chest. She shook her head, ignoring what her mind demanded she recognize.

She followed him into the house, up the stairs to the west wing of the house but then she dropped his hand and walked to her room.

“It will happen,” he said at her back.

She gave her response to the door in front of her.
“Ja slishkom mnogo poterjal, ot menja nichego ne ostalosj.”

“Then I will give you me to replace what you have lost,” he told her simply.

She stood there, forehead on the wood door, heart in her throat. His door closed and still she stood, unable to move lest she break into a million pieces.

She had never known love but as close as a killer could come to the emotion, she was there.

“I will not break,” she whispered.

And the truth mocked her. She entered her room, sat on the floor, and began to pray as she had never prayed before. Maybe in her time of greatest need, He would listen.

Dmitry woke to the mother of all storms. He glanced outside and in the intermittent flashes of lightning witnessed trees swaying so hard their canopies touched the ground. Leaves and dirt spun in every direction and thunder roared in the night sky.

His clock display confirmed it was pretty fucking early—two in the morning. He rotated his shoulder, decided against working out and simply threw on some jogging pants and a T-shirt before heading to the library. He’d just poured a snifter of vodka when Rand walked in, dressed similarly to Dmitry and rubbing a hand down his face.

On his heels was Adam. He had avoided talking with them earlier, telling them only he needed to speak with them soon. It looked like his reckoning had arrived.

“We having a party I wasn’t aware of?” Adam asked as he scratched his chest.

“No?” Dmitry answered the question with one of his own before tossing back the cool, clear liquid.

“You asking me or telling me, Russian?” Adam said, his eyes clearing of sleep instantly.

“Neither. Pour yourself a drink and let’s chat,” Dmitry said. He couldn’t keep the tone of command from his voice.

Rand glanced at him as he poured a shot of bourbon and carried it to the window. “The National Weather Service says the storm is weakening and moving up the coast at a fast clip. We’re in for more storms, but nothing like what we thought,” he mused before he tossed back his bourbon and headed to the bar for another.

Dmitry took a seat near the window and gazed into the tempest. He had resolved himself to feeling more for a killer than he’d ever experienced for anyone else. It wasn’t going to be an easy path, he was sure. Yet he could not shake the feeling she was worth it.

Whether he called her Bone or Togarmah, she was going to be his.

“What is on your mind, Russian, that you’re prowling the halls this early in the morning?” Adam questioned as he took the seat opposite Dmitry.

There was a small light on Rand’s desk that illuminated the room with a soft, yellow glow. Not that Adam required light…the man had a hell of a set of eyes on him.

Dmitry really needed another vodka. He took a deep breath instead. Better to get it over with now. “You are both aware I was Russian Secret Service prior to signing on with Trident?”

Both men, men he considered not simply co-owners of Trident, but also friends, nodded.

“And you are aware that I brought to the table certain information on Joseph Bombardier that led to us capturing at least two of his assassins, thereby bringing us more information?”

Rand and Adam glanced at each other. “We are,” Rand said firmly.

“There is more to the story of how I came to be here with you. I had motivations I have not shared before and would do so now,” he told them plainly.

“Go on,” Adam said in a dark voice, full of warning. If he didn’t like what Dmitry said, he would try to kill him.

All the men of Trident were evenly matched, but Dmitry wasn’t going to die today.

Not today.

“I was born in the Ural Mountains of Siberia. My father, Sacha Asinimov became a prominent leader of the Russian mob and retained his position for years. When I was young, my sisters and mother were taken from us. My father searched but was unable to find who was responsible. It wasn’t until I was eighteen that I took up the search myself and it was that search that led me to The Collective.”

He remembered locating a single operative who’d given up information about The Collective and what he’d told Dmitry still had the ability to send chills down his spine. Child prostitution, slavery, death, arms dealing—all of these were the bread and butter of The Collective’s operations and at the head? Joseph Bombardier.

A few years after that encounter a female assassin stood behind him on a London street and told him she was granting him a reprieve but that if he didn’t leave questions about Joseph alone, she would come for him again and next time she would not be so lenient.

It was the same assassin he’d held in his arms earlier that night, tasting and kissing…
loving
. Dmitry shied away from the word as soon as his mind gave it voice. It was too soon. His heart laughed at the dismissal.

Rand and Adam waited patiently and when he realized he’d simply withdrawn into his thoughts he continued. “I had been trained from the time I was six years old to be an enforcer for my father. I was sent abroad to study among masters. My father was very good at killing, you see, and wanted his sons to be equally so. Unfortunately, even the best become a target. Five years ago he was killed on orders by one of his own, his blood-brother Vadim Yesipov.”

“You went to Russia for Yesipov?” Rand asked in a hard voice.

“It was but one reason. It is important to note here that from the time I signed on with Trident, I have been your man. It is this company’s interests that have held sway in every decision I’ve made. That doesn’t mean I didn’t do my own searches for my father’s killer and the people who took my sisters and mother.”

“And?” Adam demanded harshly.

“I was made aware of Trident as I searched for a group of female assassins known as First Team. They were whispered about in the underground circles as the preeminent assassins. Expensive, but if you approached The Collective through the appropriate channels, they could be paid to dispose of anyone for the right price. If I could get my hands on them perhaps they could help me discover what had happened to my sisters. It has always been my feeling Joseph Bombardier was wrapped up in it all somehow.” Dmitry stood, walked to the bar and poured another vodka. He drank it in one swallow, let the burn track a path to his gut and then he sat back down. “Anyway, Trident was looking for the same women and it made sense to join with you as our goals lined up. What began as a way to discover more about The Collective became a friendship and now a partnership with some of the best men I know. But I have information to share with you now and it may change how we view things from here on out.”

“So you weaseled your way in under false pretenses and have operated under the radar waiting for the right time to make your move on the ones responsible for your father’s death?” Rand asked in a silky tone.

Dmitry nodded. He would not lie. “Yes.”

Rand sighed. “You have done no more and no less than any of us have in our quest to end The Collective. Your motivations are your own and you have more than proven that Trident is your number one concern. But I would hear your information and I will tell you that if you lie to us again, you will pay for it, Russian. My stake in this fight has risen dramatically and while that’s not something I ever expected, I will kill for Gretchen.”

Dmitry got up and walked to the window. “Understood,” he said. And then, “Minton was revenge and a warning for Joseph. When Bone killed him and her sisters watched, it was simply another way to get payback and goad Bombardier. But then Bone took Yesipov’s life in Russia and I realized that was First Team’s next move. But Bone is not finished. There is another head of Joseph’s Russian snake and she will go back soon to set that move in play. I thought Yesipov was mine so when your women asked me to follow Bone, I was more than ready to do so in the hopes I could take Yesipov and bring Bone back—as you Americans say, easy peasy, no muss, no fuss. But Bone took him and I let her because she gave me something I’d been searching years for—she gave me Ninka.”

Rand’s dark eyes speared Dmitry to the spot. “Ninka is the lost one they speak of. Bone yelled her name as she broke Minton’s neck. What is she to you?”

Dmitry nodded, the pain fresh and vicious. He remembered his sister. Remembered her fair hair and bright smiles. Her blue eyes, so like his own, so like their father’s, had been filled with happiness and laughter. He remembered her sweet voice and laughter. To know Joseph had cut her down like chafe sent hot burning pokers burning straight into Dmitry’s heart.

“Ninka was my sister and she was with Bullet, Arrow, Bone, and Blade before she was killed.”

Saying the words hurt. But it was an ending he’d expected for years. Many times he’d prayed for his sisters to have died rather than suffer the hell of childhood slavery or prostitution. Apparently, his prayers for Ninka had been in vain.

“There is more, Dmitry. Something else you’re holding back,” Adam said intuitively.

“There are more killers after First Team. Joseph calls them his
Sciariorum
.
They are the male equivalent of First Team. Bone fought two of them in the woods surrounding Yesipov’s mansion. They are mean. They are vicious,” Dmitry parlayed.

“But they are not First Team,” Rand acknowledged.

Dmitry shook his head. “They are and they are not. They have an entirely different skill set. The fact that they are stalking First Team tells me one thing.”

Adam laughed. It was low and ugly. “Joseph is scared.”

Dmitry nodded this time. “That is all I know—all I have kept from you and all the new information I have. I searched for my sisters and now I know that one was killed soon after she was taken. Your women, Bone and Blade, did as much as they could to save her but in the end she was too fragile for Joseph Bombardier.”

“She was too good for that place of death, Dmitry Asinimov. She was too pure and beautiful for the hell we were created in,” Arrow’s voice sliced through his pain, bringing fresh blood but also cauterizing his wound.

Dmitry glanced to where Arrow stood and noticed Bullet and Bone beside her. He’d not heard them enter. They were almost too good at what they did, who they were.

“I sang songs to her. She enjoyed lullabies and up until her end she sang a particular one…”

“
Bayu-bay
,” Dmitry said automatically.

Arrow nodded. “I could not sing it well, she would say. She complained that my voice was not right, but Bone with her affinity for inflections picked it up and when my voice would desert me Bone would sing that one to her and she would laugh, Dmitry. Oh how she would laugh.”

“I held her hands, like so,” Bullet said, lifting her hands together as if in prayer.

Dmitry wanted to pull his heart from his chest and stomp on it. Maybe then the pain would stop.

“I asked her once if she was praying and she told me no. She said she was just cold and her brother, she called you
nesti
, always held her hands like this to warm them up. We shared our rations with her, Dmitry, as best we could. Bone took her punishments and Blade took her kills. She was our light and in the end she was our salvation. What you might never understand is that Ninka is why we survived. When the weakest of us all shattered that morning in Arequipa, we were formed from her ashes, from her pain. Without her we would have taken our own lives. Ninka gave us a reason to live,” Bullet finished in a whisper.

Bone walked to stand beside her sisters. “Joseph did not break her soul, Asinimov. She had tried so hard to be strong until that morning, but she never gave up her soul to him. Her body was destroyed but she left singing her lullaby and looking to the blue-blue sky.”

“It took us years to understand that. Even though it seemed her mind fractured, she was simply looking for a way to deal with what she didn’t know. When we pulled her small body to the edge of the clearing where she was killed we prayed over her and we became united. She is our beacon and revenge for her death has kept us moving, killing,” Arrow imparted, her voice dark and low.

“Who killed her?” Dmitry asked, the question pulled from his chest.

“It doesn’t matter because within seconds of the act he was dead also, a bullet to the center of his forehead,” Bullet told him.

“Thank you,” Dmitry said.

Bullet shrugged. “She was ours.”

“Mourn her as you knew her, Asinimov—lovingly and without reservation,” Bone urged.

He nodded.

“Goddamn him. What kind of monster does that to babies?” Adam bit out.

“He is a man filled with desire and drunk off power. We have waited years to take what is owed to us,” Arrow told them. “We have saved the ones we could.”

“Who is next?” Dmitry asked, shoving his sorrow down deep. Now wasn’t the time to mourn his sister.