Bullet to the Heart (30 page)

“What’s that, Mr. Beckett?” she asked in a low tone without opening her eyes.

“The end.”

Her eyes flew open, the blue that normally shone like diamonds, lifeless. “That’s all there’s ever been for me. So yes, now the end begins.”

Rand unbuckled his belt and moved away from her. He was afraid if he sat there any longer, he’d try to shake some sense into her. Or take her in his arms and fuck her into acknowledging what had transpired between them was real. He took a seat two rows up from her and closed his eyes, praying for sleep.

“Adam finally managed to dig up some information on your Gretchen Dearborn,” Ken’s voice cut through Rand’s temporary quiet. Ken took the seat beside him.

Rand remained silent.

“We think she’s the daughter of Alain and Lucie Dearborn. Alain was the Ambassador to the U.S. and the Director of Military Intelligence for France until he, his wife, and their youngest daughter were killed when gunmen stormed their summer home in Cote de Argent. It was a bloody scene apparently—they were assassinated along with the entire contingency of his armed guards. He was replaced by Deputy Director Jean-Luc Charbonneau, who is still the DMI.”

Rand finally glanced at his friend and lifted an eyebrow.

Ken sighed but continued. “There are no pictures readily available of any of the family, but according to friends, the oldest child was never found. In fact, there was barely an outcry to find her. No one seemed to care that a child was missing. An interesting fact about Alain Dearborn,” Ken trailed off, raised an eyebrow.

“This isn’t goddamn Jeopardy, Ken. What the fuck are you trying to tell me?” Rand questioned between clenched teeth.

“He was one of the best snipers ever rated in the French military.” Ken dropped his bomb and let the fuse burn down before he said, “Sound familiar?”

“All except the part about the entire contingency of armed guards being killed along with the family,” Bullet’s discordant voice broke the silence between the two men.

Her pain was an icicle in his heart. She tried so hard, but he knew her now.

“How’s it wrong, Bullet?” Rand whispered, aware that every man in the plane had their ears tuned to their conversation.

She breathed deeply, pulling the air in through her nostrils and blowing out fast. That he heard her doing it told him more than any tone of her voice could have. “There was one who lived that day, and he transported me to Joseph Bombardier. Jean-Luc Charbonneau, my father’s best friend and closest advisor. He was the one, you see, that set up my family’s assassination. He wanted something my father would have never given up.”

Rand sat forward, her agony at remembering nails in his ears. He lifted his hands, intent on covering them, until he realized what he was doing and grabbed his knees instead.

“What did he want, Bullet?” He used the name intentionally now, hoping to draw her from these memories and have her focus on the deed at hand.

“My mother. He loved my mother, and she apparently loved him. From everything I’ve been able to discover, my sister was the result of a liaison between Lucie Dearborn and Jean-Luc Charbonneau. The sanctity of my parent’s marriage mattered little to Charbonneau, and when he approached The Collective about an alliance, Joseph jumped on board, only he had his own plans. Joseph wanted killers, and who better to have in his stable than the daughter of the best sniper in French military history?” Her voice was gravel mixed with tears. It tore Rand into tiny pieces and left him sure he was bleeding.

“Stop, Bullet. You don’t have to go any further,” Rand bit out.

“Oh? Well, why stop now? Your men have done such excellent research. I tell you what, if I live through this,
I’ll
show you pictures of the massacre, how would you like that? Joseph gifted me with them for my sixth birthday. What grand presents my creator likes to give.” She’d stood at some point during her tirade.

Rand turned and found her beside him, red hair fire around her shoulders, face pale, but eyes burning with the fever of her rage.

“I’m sure you’d enjoy the pictures of my family as they lay bleeding out on the beach. Oh, it was painful I’m sure, for Charbonneau to realize he’d dealt with the devil. My mother and sister were to be spared, though to be honest, my sister was probably never a concern for either of them. But Joseph, as he will always do, found a way to get everything he wanted. My father dead because he refused to align with The Collective, firm control over Charbonneau, oh, and the most important thing—a little girl he could feed a daily diet of hate and pain, raise her up to be a good and proper killer.” She leaned up into his face, eyes brittle now, cheeks bright red.

She was fucking glorious. Even in the midst of unimaginable pain, she wrenched his heart from his chest with her beauty.

His hands fisted at his side. He wouldn’t take this anger away from her. She needed it right now. “Who was that girl, Bullet?” he asked softly.

A single tear tracked down her cheek. “It was me.”

He nodded and reached slowly to whisk that tear away. “It was you. It was Gretchen. And now Gretchen is Bullet and Remi, and whoever else Gretchen needs to be. But you’re different now. Do you know how?” he asked gently.

“I am different. I’m no longer a child. I am a grown woman, an assassin. There is nothing left of the little girl who watched her family cut down in a hail of bullets. She is long gone.” She turned away from him, and he had to struggle to hear her next words. “Do not do this thing, Mr. Beckett.”

He warred within himself.
Save her
, his heart whispered.
She is lost to you,
screamed his mind. “I cannot help but do this, Bullet.” He sighed deeply, and she glanced at him over her shoulder.

The blooded velvet of her hair hid her face. Rand moved closer to her and pushed it back. She hissed in a breath and nearly stepped away, but their gazes met and she stopped.

“You are different because you survived. You did what you had to do to live, what you had to do to make it to me,” he said, and she seemed to crumple into herself at his words.

Her shoulders drooped, and she looked away from him again. He took another step and brought his body flush with hers. He needed the contact.

Ken sighed and moved to the other side of the cabin. Rand glanced at the other men, and each lowered their gaze and sought to do something else.

“I didn’t want to.”

Rand had to lower his head to her to catch her words.

“What?”

She took a shuddering breath. “Come to you. But your eyes, Mr. Beckett, they called to me. I told you I yearned for you from the moment I saw your picture. And while that is truth, it is only a partial one.”

“Then, what is all of it, Gretchen?” Her hands fisted together, and her body trembled. He felt every tremor, absorbed them into his own, and continued to push her. “What is the whole truth?”

“I looked at you, and beyond the yearning, you made me
feel
.” She straightened, and it brought them into even closer contact. He wanted to hiss, unable to control his body’s response to her. She turned and took a step back, raised her head, and in the gesture was a strength he would probably never be able to comprehend. “For me, feeling is in direct opposition to everything I’ve been taught. Above that, it negates everything I am. I kill. I take life, and yet all I want to do when I look at you is—”

“Tell me, Gretchen,” he urged, and then winced at the gravelly edge of his voice.

“I cannot, Mr. Beckett. To do so gives you a certain power over me, and while a part of me would not mind that, my soul rebels. I will not be broken. I cannot be weak.”

Silence descended in the cabin. The others had heard her, but it was Rand who was left crying inside. Joseph had taken a precious child and broken her. While the woman who had formed in her place was stronger than anyone he’d ever known, she was still that wrecked child on the inside. Gretchen hid behind Bullet’s façade.

Rage spiked his heart rate. No one should ever have to struggle this mightily to exist. Torn between two realities, she was infinitely fragile, and in that moment, Rand wanted nothing more than to protect her forever.

But he knew he couldn’t. She was a killer, and he abhorred that part of her even as he recognized that it was who she was, not all, but a piece that would fracture her entire world should she lose it. She had her demons, and while he would slay any of her enemies if she but asked, in order for Gretchen to live, Bullet had to kill the one who’d created her.

He took a deep breath, restrained the urge to pick her up and carry her to the bedroom on the plane, and stepped away. “You were never weak, Bullet.”

She lifted her shoulders and sighed. “I’ve never been allowed to be.”

She shifted sideways and sat back down in the seat she’d vacated moments ago. Rand, in turn, took the one across from her, and they each resumed the avoidance of one another. He going over and over plans, she resting somewhere inside herself.

They had twelve more hours of flying before they reached their destination. Heaven help them all.

Andes Mountain

Arequipa, Peru

“You can step out now, girl. I can feel your eyes borin’ into my skull.” Grant’s deep voice rang out in the black of the night.

Remi glanced back at Rand. He nodded, and she moved into the circle of light thrown by Grant’s campfire.

“Old man, it’s been a long time,” she murmured, one hand at her side, ready.

He stood and tipped his scruffy Stetson back, the look on his beautiful face rueful. “Well now, that’s because you never call and you never write. And the only time I ever see your scrawny, flea-bit ass is when you want something.”

“Pot meet kettle,” she responded automatically.

He threw back his head and laughed. “
Touche, pichouette
,” he said with a smile.

That smile had gotten him into so much shit in the past, it was a wonder he was still alive. The man was gorgeous, no two ways around it. He was tall, maybe taller than Rand, and corded with sinewy muscle. His blond hair and blue eyes screamed “valley boy,” but his persona, and the cowboy hat, told a different story altogether.

Remi winced. “You continue to bastardize my native language, and I may have to shoot your ass.” She walked closer to him, watching his movements closely.

He opened his arms and said, “You couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. Now what the hell you waiting for? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen my favorite girl.” The tone of his voice was discordant in the still air.

She pulled out her Walther between one breath and the next, had it against Grant’s forehead soon after. “How close?”

“Been feeling the bead of a scope for about six or seven hours now. I’m itchy, Bullet, and you’re in the open.”

“Bullet?” Rand’s voice was pitched low enough that she heard it, but it didn’t carry very far.

“Who’s out there, Grant?” Remi bit out the question and pressed harder against his forehead.

“Get that goddamn gun outta my face right fucking now, Bullet, or I’ll gut you quicker than you can draw breath.” He made sure his voice carried.

Remi felt the tip of Grant’s knife in her belly, knew he’d stay true to form.

“Who’s out there?”

Grant rolled his eyes. “If I fucking knew, I’d have their head on the end of my knife,
little girl
. Now move the fucking gun.”

“Position?”

“Best guess, two thousand yards to your three o’clock,” he answered slowly.

She lowered the weapon and stepped back out of the range of his campfire’s light. “You should probably hide for a little while. I don’t know who that is or why they didn’t just fillet my brain with a bullet, but it can’t be good.”

“What the fuck’s going on, Bullet?” Rand stepped forward, face darkened by cammo paint.

“We have company,” Remi responded, keeping her voice low. “In the trees.”

“Fan out,” Rand said. Shadows coalesced, darker points of black in the ebony of the surrounding terrain as his men did as ordered. Remi was impressed. She didn’t even hear the scuff of a boot over the soil.

“You won’t find her,” Grant said smugly, but for her ears only.

Remi’s gaze shot to him. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s one of his, but I just—”

A shot rang out, the bullet whizzing to kick up dirt beside Remi. She aimed where the shot came from, fired, and watched in horror as the flash of another round leaving a muzzle lit up her vision.

Rand pulled her down, and she let him. Within moments they’d rolled to relative safety behind a large tree.

“They’ll find him. Just hang on,” he whispered.

She shook her head. “No, they won’t, and it isn’t a ‘he,’ it’s a ‘she’.”

Rand’s mouth fell open for a split second. “How the fuck . . .
goddamn
, Bullet, another one?”

She didn’t respond, just took a second to gain perspective as she absorbed the sounds of the landscape around her. There it was—the rustle of clothing against bark, the slide of skin over leaves. Much closer than Grant had suspected. Remi went cold. Intentional on his part?

Probably.

She peered around the tree, not expecting another shot as the sniper had lost advantage. Grant was inching toward the fire. She got up. The killer in the trees was long gone. Outnumbered and found out, he, or
she
, wouldn’t hang around for a suicide mission. She wasn’t Joseph’s. No way.

She walked over to Grant, who reached for a knapsack and got to his haunches. He opened the knapsack and threw a piece of paper to her. “Here. That’s all I’ve got. Take it and run, but if you ever get caught with that, I’ll deny I know you. In fact, I may stick you for getting caught in the first place.”

Remi ignored the paper, took another step, and stood over him now, gun at her side. “Who was it?”

“I don’t—”

She waved the gun. “Don’t you fucking give me that shit. Who is she?”

Grant struck out then, fisting his hand and going for her knee. She sidestepped and spun, kicking out with her foot and catching him in the jaw. She stunned him, but this wasn’t Grant’s first rodeo. In seconds, he was on his feet, towering over her, striking out with a short jab to her midsection, but she turned with the punch, taking it, but negating its impact. She made a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn, swinging her arm in an upward arc, and back-fisted him across the jaw. The blow knocked him off his feet.