Playing With Fire (Games of Chance Series Book 2)

by T. L. Cannon

  “Damn it!” Ethan muttered under his breath as he watched Kira disappear inside the tiny box of a room. Donovan’s heavy, restraining hand on his shoulder was all that prevented him from going after her. He was in the process of shrugging that hand off when the back door of the warehouse suddenly flung open. A second later the building was flooded with light. With his plan to go retrieve Kira effectively derailed, he reached into his jacket and retrieved his gun from it’s holster instead. He didn’t need to look over his shoulder at his brother to know that Donovan had done the same. Flattening his back against one of the two containers that he was sandwiched in between, his eyes flicked between the office partition and the two men who had now entered the warehouse as he readied his body and mind for action if it so much as looked like they were going to approach Kira’s hiding place. The rigid tension in his body abated only slightly as he watched the two men bypass the office entirely as they headed towards the containers, the distance making it impossible to see their faces clearly. Silently, Ethan inched further into the darkened crevice, tightening his grip on his gun as he listened to the advancing footsteps of the two men grow louder as they clicked against the concrete floor. The clicking sounds abruptly ended as the two men paused in front of the first container, their position putting them out of Ethan’s line of sight yet mere inches away from his hiding place.

  “We need to push up the timetable. I want this coke packed up and ready for distribution by the end of the week.”

  Even though Ethan couldn’t see his face, he immediately recognized the imperious tone of Jeremy Wong.

  “Speak English,” Jeremy commanded irritably when is companion responded to him in rapidly spoken Chinese.

  “That’s going to set back our meth production,” Gan replied as he began unlocking the container.

  “I don’t care,” Jeremy replied. “The 24K Triad are trying to cut into our coke business on the mainland and I want to put a stop to that as quickly as possible.”

  Gan sneered as he retrieved a brick of cocaine from one of the plastic bottles in the container. “There are more direct ways to deal with that problem.”

  Jeremy shook his head, “I’m too close to getting control of Gau Lung to risk blowing it by getting into a messy turf war.”

  Gan handed the cocaine to Jeremy and watched as he dipped his finger into the white powder and dabbed it onto his tongue. “Good?”

  “Good enough,” Jeremy replied as he handed the brick back to Gan.

  Still crouching below the vinyl partition of the office, Kira ventured another peek out of the Plexiglass window. Even from a distance, she recognized Jeremy’s peacock like plumage as he strutted through the warehouse in his garish bright red suit, making his way towards her hiding place.

  From his own hiding place, Ethan also saw Jeremy approaching the office. Fear and adrenaline coursed through him as he realized that Kira was just seconds away from being discovered. Refusing to allow that to happen, he tightened his grip on his gun and stepped out from between the two containers, determined to protect Kira even if it meant making himself a target. Having physically steeled himself for a battle, his body reflexively flinched when the warehouse was suddenly plunged back into darkness.

  Kira was sprinting out of the office seconds after flipping all the switches on the circuit breaker inside to the 'off ' position. She had already made her way out of the nearby exit by the time Jeremy and Gan had recovered from the shock of the unexpected loss of light.

  Seizing upon the opportunity presented to him, Ethan pointed his flashlight in Jeremy’s direction, further blinding him with it’s beam. Rushing through the darkened warehouse like a raging bull, he threw a full body tackle on Jeremy, knocking him to the ground, further dazing him. The sounds of a scuffle nearby let him know that Donovan had also taken advantage of the opening the sudden darkness presented them. Scrambling to his feet, Ethan leaped over Jeremy’s prone, motionless body and raced towards the open exit door.

  The sound of a gunshot stopped him in his tracks.

  “Move!” Donovan bellowed to Ethan as he zipped past him, letting Ethan know that he hadn't been the one on the receiving end of the bullet.

  Relief flooded through Kira as she saw Ethan and Donovan burst out of the doors of the warehouse. Grabbing Kira by the hand, Ethan half dragged her along the way as he ran towards the parking lot across the street. Running at full speed, she just barely managed to keep up with him. It wasn’t until she was scrambling inside her car that she gathered enough nerve to look back just in time to see Jeremy run out of the warehouse. Jamming his foot on the gas, Ethan peeled out of the parking lot on squealing tires. Following the lead of Donovan’s fleeing Jag, Kira and Ethan hurdled through the empty streets of the industrial park, making their escape.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Why can't we tell the police about Jeremy's activities?” Kira demanded to know as she stood in the middle of her living room with her arms crossed, her questioning gaze moving from Ethan to Donovan and then back again.

  “Well, first, there's the fact that we came about this information by breaking and entering into private property to contend with,” Donovan explained. “And then there's the little matter of the bullet hole that I put in Gan in the midst of our breaking and entering.”

  “Are you sure Gan's dead?” Ethan asked.

  “Positive,” Donovan replied with a certainty that left no room for doubt.

  “Bringing the current body count to four,” Kira pointed out, shaking her head in disbelief at all the violence that had occurred in her life in just a matter of days.

  “Look on the bright side,” Donovan offered. “With Gan dead, at least you don't have to worry about any more triad goons showing up at your doorstep. That is, assuming that Ethan is right about Jeremy not getting a look at him during their scuffle in the warehouse.”

  “I am right about that,” Ethan said confidently as he plopped down on Kira's sofa. “He'll probably assume that he and Gan stumbled upon somebody trying to jack his his cocaine shipment, so I think we're in the clear on that front. And now we know a lot more about what Jeremy has been up to at Gau Lung.”

  “And outside of Gau Lung. Based on the way he was barking orders at Gan, it's obvious that he is The Yellow Tiger Triad's Dragon Head,” Donovan pointed out, referring to the phrase used for a triad's elected leader.

  “But what good is all of this information if we can't tell the police about it?” Kira asked.

  “I'm sure that we can come up with a way to use this information to our advantage,” Donovan said with the same ice cold certainty with which he had spoken of Gan's death.

  Kira could practically hear the wheels in his mind turning and she didn't like it one bit. “Don't you have a murder weapon to dispose of or something?”

  Donovan flashed her a wry smile. “Actually, it's a self-defense weapon since Gan would have killed me if I hadn't beat him to the draw. But you're right, I do need to ditch it. I'll see you back at the penthouse,” he informed Ethan before letting himself out of Kira's apartment.

  “I don't like the idea of keeping what we discovered about Jeremy a secret,” Kira said to Ethan once they were alone. “As Gau Lung's troubleshooter, I have an obligation to protect the company from Jeremy's criminal activities.”

  Ethan sighed heavily, not liking where the conversation was heading. “It's late and we've had quite an eventful night. Let's talk about this in the morning,” he said as he rose to his feet.

  “Fine,” Kira agreed, silently acknowledging that she was too tired to argue about this with Ethan at the moment. “But I'm not going to feel any differently about this in the morning.”

  “I'll consider myself warned,” Ethan said.

  “So you're going to stay here tonight,” Kira noted as she watch Ethan begin to unbutton his shirt.

  Ethan's hands paused in mid-movement. “I had planned on it. If that's alright with you.”

  Kira hesitated only briefly before wrapping
her arms around Ethan's waist, refusing to let their disagreement about how to handle the Jeremy situation ruin the closeness they had re-established.

  “It's more than alright,” she said as she planted a kiss on Ethan's lips, pushing down the niggling doubts that were beginning to resurface in her mind.

  ***

  Kira grimaced as she read the headline of the newspaper in her hand. Feeling as if she had just been punched in the gut, she cautiously lowered herself onto one of the stools in front of the breakfast bar at the center of her small kitchen, the mug of piping hot coffee she had just poured herself completely forgotten as she read the article beneath the headline. When Ethan strolled into the kitchen, her eyes darted to him, pinning him with an accusatory stare that he recognized immediately.

  “What did I do this time?” Ethan asked cautiously as he fastened the last remaining buttons of his shirt.

  “I don’t know,” Kira replied as she handed him the newspaper. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  Ethan glanced down at the paper, his eyebrows arching in surprise as he read the headline. “So the dagger they pulled out of Yi’s back wasn't The Dragon's Breath after all.”

  “According to the police, it was a well crafted fake,” Kira replied as she eyed Ethan with open suspicion.

  “And naturally you think, I had something to do with it,” Ethan surmised as he tossed the newspaper onto a nearby counter.

  “I don’t want to think that.”

  “Then don’t,” Ethan said sharply.

  “That’s hard to do when you are the one who returned The Dragon's Breath to Yi after it was stolen. Or rather returned what we were led to believe was The Dragon's Breath.”

  “You have no idea when the fake dagger was substituted for the real one,” Ethan pointed out defensively. “For all you know the switch could have been made after I returned it, perhaps by the killer himself. For that matter there may have been no switch at all. The damn thing could have been a fake all along.”

  Kira silently conceded the point.

  “Of course, those possibilities would never occur to you since that would require giving me the benefit of the doubt,” he observed, unable to keep his growing bitterness out of his voice.

  “Giving you the benefit of the doubt is kind of hard to do given our history,” Kira admitted.

  Ethan sighed heavily. “I thought we had gotten past our history last night.”

  “So did I,” Kira replied softly, lowering her head, sharing the disappointment she saw on Ethan’s face.

  He reached across the breakfast bar separating them and lifted Kira’s chin, forcing her to look him in the eyes. “What’s it going to take for you to finally trust me?”

  The ensuing silence stretched long and perilous between them, like a high wire that neither dared to cross, ending only with the ringing of Kira’s cell phone.

  Ethan released his hold on Kira’s face as she grabbed her phone from the breakfast bar.

  “Hello.” Kira turned her back on Ethan as she spoke into the phone, grateful for the interruption. After a brief conversation, she hung up the phone. “That was Gabriel. He wants to meet with me to discuss some business matters.”

  “In jail?”

  “No, at The Wong Estate,” Kira said tersely as she hurried towards her bedroom.

  Ethan followed Kira to the bedroom. “So he made bail.”

  “I posted it yesterday,” Kira explained as she pulled a brown suit from her closet and inspected it. “I can’t wait to tell him what we learned about Jeremy last night.”

  “You can’t tell him,” Ethan said.

  Kira eyed Ethan suspiciously. “I understand why you don't want to go directly to the cops with this. However, Yi finding out that Jeremy was using Gau Lung to smuggle drugs into the country gives Jeremy the perfect motive for murder. This information could have a direct impact on the case against Gabriel so why shouldn't I tell him about it?”

  “Because we don’t know how he’ll react. We can’t risk having him do something to tip Jeremy off.”

  “He wouldn’t do that. In case you haven’t noticed there’s no love lost between Gabriel and his brother.”

  “He might not intend to do it but, given the amount of animosity between those two, something could slip out in the heat of the moment.” Ethan shook his head firmly. “There’s too much at stake to risk that.”

  “Too much at stake for whom?” Kira asked pointedly.

  Ethan inwardly flinched at the unmistakable note of suspicion that, once again, laced her voice. And, once again, bitterness laced his own in response. “Just what are you implying?”

  “That you may have ulterior motives for keeping Gabriel out of the loop.”

  “Boy, you really can’t bring yourself to give me the benefit of the doubt about anything, can you?” Ethan noted sadly, shaking his head.

  “I…”

  “Don’t bother to answer. That was a rhetorical question. I already know the answer.” Ethan snatched his jacket from the foot of the bed. “I’ll wait for you in the living room. When you’re ready, I’ll drive you to The Wong Estate.”

  “I'm perfectly capable of driving myself,” Kira said, hoping for a break from the escalating tension between them, tension made all the more painful by the closeness they had shared the night before.

  “I’m very well aware of that but I want to talk to Gabriel so I’m going with you,” Ethan said as he headed towards the bedroom door.

  “Is that the real reason you're going or is it that you don’t trust me not to tell Gabriel about Jeremy?’

  Pausing at the door, Ethan turned to face Kira, a look of resignation on his face. “Now that you mention it, I don’t trust you not to spill the beans to Gabriel so I guess that makes us even.”

  With a sad shrug of his shoulders, he walked out of the bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind him.

  An awkward silence accompanied Ethan and Kira as they drove to The Wong Estate. Not even the beautiful scenery afforded by their ascent up Victoria Peak could lift Kira’s spirits as she contemplated how quickly things had gone south between her and Ethan. If she were being brutally honest she would have to admit that she had been the one who had led them in that direction.

  What’s it going to take for you to finally trust me?

  The question continued to nag at Kira in the wake of Ethan posing it to her and for the life of her she still hadn’t been able to come up with an answer. Maybe that fact alone was her answer. Maybe the damage that had been done two years ago was too much to overcome. The possibility left Kira feeling depressed and more than a little irritable by the time that she and Ethan arrived for their meeting with Gabriel. Ethan’s words immediately upon entering the Wong’s living room did nothing to alleviate that irritability.

  “How long have you been sleeping with Jade?” he asked bluntly as his emerald eyes focused their laser-like intensity onto Gabriel.

  Clearly taken aback, Gabriel looked over at Kira. “You told him?”

  Ethan shifted his attention to Kira as well. Cocking his head to one side, he gauged her through narrowed eyes. “No, as a matter of fact she didn’t.”

  “Then how did you find out?” Gabriel asked as he sank into a nearby chair.

  “You haven’t been nearly as discreet as you thought you’ve been. Shortly after finding out that Gau Lung’s computers had been so easily breached, I had a hacker associate of mine take a whack at it.”

  “You did what?” Kira exploded, the irritation she had been feeling escalating into full blown fury. She didn’t know what she was most furious about, the fact that Ethan had had Gau Lung’s computers hacked or the fact that he had done so, apparently, without anyone at Gau Lung discovering this second breach.

  Ethan ignored the daggers that Kira sent his way with her eyes. “This associate of mine was able to tap into the feed from the security cameras and found footage of you and Jade in your office engaging in behavior that was anything but familial. Since this footage
was recorded prior to Yi’s death, it’s a good bet that Yi saw it as well.”

  “At the time I had no idea that father had cameras installed in my office,” Gabriel admitted by way of defending himself.

  “When did you find out?” Ethan asked.

  “The night that father was... died.” Gabriel stopped short of uttering the word murdered. “He summoned me to his office to confront me.”

  “The same office where he was found with a knife in his back later that night,” Ethan added.

  “I’m not the one who put it there,” Gabriel exclaimed defensively as he jumped to his feet. “I swear, I had nothing to do with my father’s murder. You have to believe me.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I don’t have to do anything.”

  “What about you?” Gabriel turned to Kira beseechingly. “You believe me don’t you, Kira”

  “I do believe you, Gabriel,” she replied without hesitation.

  Ethan shook his head at Kira’s unwavering faith in Gabriel as feelings of envy roiled within him. Unable to stomach the blind faith that he saw in Kira’s eyes when she looked a Gabriel, he rose to his feet and headed towards the front door. “I’ll wait for you outside.”

  ***

  “So when were you planning on telling me what you found out about Gabriel and Jade?” Kira asked as soon as she entered Ethan’s car, slamming the passenger door angrily behind her.

  “What difference does it make since, clearly you already knew about their affair,” Ethan countered as he started up the car engine.

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “Like hell it is,” Ethan proclaimed as he maneuvered the car out of the large, wrought iron gates surrounding The Wong Estate. “You have no right to get angry with me for keeping information from you when you’ve been doing the exact same thing to me.”