Cutting Cords

by Mickie B. Ashling

  Grabbing both plates, I moved toward the sofa to see if I could find anything on the pay-per-view. I wanted something in English that was mindlessly entertaining while I scarfed down my late dinner. I was so engrossed in my meal, I didn’t even notice the movement underneath the room service cart, nor did I see the figure crawling out like a repulsive cockroach.

  By the time I realized there was an intruder in the room, it was too late. A knife was pointed toward my jugular, and the fucking voice I thought I’d never hear again whispered in my ear. “You’ll bleed out in a second if you move an inch.”

  The adrenaline surged through me when I recognized Noriko’s voice. “How the fuck did you get through security?”

  Chapter 22

  “YOU IDIOTS continue to underestimate me,” she hissed.

  She was right. There were cops all over the place, and the bitch had managed to elude them and get in through the kitchen. I couldn’t see her because she had me in a choke hold from behind the sofa, but I was pretty sure she’d assumed the role of a cook’s helper and looked nothing like the diva I’d come to know and hate. The stink of smoke lingered on her, making me wonder if she’d also been burnt in the fire that had destroyed her plans.

  “What is it you want, Noriko?”

  “To kill you, for starters.”

  Terror flooded my veins as her words reverberated in my bad ear. The timbre of her voice was amplified at this close range, echoing loudly against my damaged eardrum. It was painful, and I jerked involuntarily, causing the plate I had balanced on my knees to tip over and fall against the coffee table. It spun for a second before settling at an angle, spilling my dinner on the carpet.

  Noriko tightened her hold. She was surprisingly strong for someone so slender, but I supposed her strength was fueled by rage. I’d summarily destroyed her dreams by turning her personal weapon of destruction into a sex-starved zombie. The idiot should have killed me the minute he’d received his orders, but lust had prevailed—thankfully. There would be no second chances tonight. Revenge was the only thing Noriko had left, and I was certain she would rather die than see me win. Nonetheless, I had to make some sort of attempt to talk her out of this.

  “Even if you kill me, the odds of you leaving this building undetected are pretty slim.”

  “Really? Tell it to that moron who didn’t bother to check the food cart.”

  “Score one for Noriko,” I said flatly. “Your streak of luck might run out if you kill me outright. Why not use me for bargaining?”

  “My boys are all I need; Cole will do anything to save them.”

  “You’d kill your own children to get what you want?”

  “Kill them? No, but since I’ll never get to raise them, I may as well sell them. I’ve got two desperate buyers already lined up. As soon as I deliver the brats, the money will be deposited into my account.”

  “People will do anything to have kids, and yet you’re willing to sell yours.”

  “Don’t moralize, you stupid fag. I’m young enough to have six more children if I choose. The twins have always been a means to an end. Cole would have turned them against me, so why not beat him at his own game. If he doesn’t want me to have them, fine, but he’s not keeping them either.”

  “Is there no point in reasoning with you?”

  “We’ve already tried that, and you had to go and muck it up.”

  “Don’t make this about me, bitch. You and your minions fucked this up from the beginning.”

  “How’s that?”

  I couldn’t believe she was actually engaging in a conversation instead of slitting my throat and moving on to step two of her mission. Her monstrous ego couldn’t accept any sort of failure, and her journey to America and what followed afterward was a monumental blunder in the eyes of her geisha clan. That she wanted to hear my take on the disaster was par for the course. Throughout my association with her, I’d come to find out she was the type of person who had to have the last word or die trying.

  “You should have taken Cole’s settlement and made a life in America. Even if your new plan succeeds, you won’t get very far. You’re bound to get caught and thrown in jail. I don’t know much about Japanese prisons, but back home, crimes against children aren’t tolerated, even by the most hardened criminals. I doubt you’ll survive a week behind bars.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Sloan. If that were to happen, I’d find a sponsor who’d protect me.”

  The door to our room opened, and Cole stepped out, looking puzzled. He was dressed only in pajama bottoms. “Sloan, who are you talking to?”

  “Me,” Noriko responded loudly. “Don’t come any closer, Cole, or I’ll cut his throat.”

  Cole sucked in a shocked breath. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come for my boys.”

  “They’re not yours to have.”

  She laughed derisively. “That’s where you’re mistaken.”

  “I’m willing to negotiate if it’s money you want, but I can’t let you take the children.”

  Freddie must have picked up on the building tension, and he started to growl. He was probably confused because he was sensing danger from Noriko, a familiar face who’d been a part of his life for the last few years. His instincts, however, were spot on, and the fur along his back stood on end while he bared his teeth.

  “Keep that stupid mutt away from me,” she ordered angrily.

  Cole ignored her and kept walking toward us. He had one hand on Freddie’s head and the other outstretched, hoping to connect with Noriko. I started to panic, knowing Cole hadn’t completely grasped the magnitude of the situation. He was probably hoping he could still talk her out of this, not realizing she’d crossed the line of sanity a while back. There would be no reasoning with someone who was completely unhinged.

  “Let me up,” I said, ignoring the knife at my neck and rising from the sofa.

  She pressed down, and I felt the tip of the blade pierce my skin lightly, not enough to do any real damage but enough to make me pause.

  “Sit down,” she screeched.

  “I need to go around so I can hold the dog,” I said in a reasonable tone. “You don’t want him attacking you.”

  She must have realized that if Freddie lunged at her, she’d be in bigger trouble, so she let me slowly sidestep my way to the other side of the sofa without removing the knife from my neck. When I stood between her and Cole, I warned him. “She’s got a knife against my neck, Cole. Don’t try to do anything heroic.”

  “All I want to do is talk.”

  “Too late for talking,” Noriko snapped. “Get the children, Cole.”

  “No,” Cole said defiantly. He grabbed my arm and tried to yank me away from her grasp.

  She hung on stubbornly and raised the knife, and just as she began her downward slash, Cole stepped in to shield me. She sliced him in a vicious diagonal swipe from his left shoulder to his waist. Cole cried out in shock, and when Noriko realized she’d cut the wrong person, she tried twisting away from Cole, who’d somehow managed to grab her arms and hold her in place.

  Blood ran down Cole’s torso, soaking his light gray pajamas and falling in macabre spots on the textured pile that covered the suite. I dropped to my knees and clutched Freddie, who was desperately trying to get to Noriko so he could tear out her throat. It would have been justifiable in my opinion, but I didn’t want him euthanized because he’d attacked a human. The law was unfair in that respect, and dogs were routinely put down, even when they were provoked.

  Noriko’s shrieking continued to rise as her level of frustration grew. She couldn’t get close enough to hurt me nor could she abandon us altogether and try to escape. Cole held on to her with an iron grip. Finally roused by the commotion, our security guard burst into the room with his gun drawn. Quickly assessing the situation—blood, knife, snapping dog, and a crazed kitchen helper screaming profanities in Japanese—he commanded her to drop her weapon. She managed to twist away from Cole and ran screami
ng toward the cop, waving the knife in front of her like a tiny sword. He raised the gun, aimed, and shot her in the chest. Noriko sank to her knees, and slumped forward, face planting on the carpet.

  She was dressed in a cheap cotton kimono, a far cry from the expensive silk outfits she’d worn in the past. Blood oozed from the fatal wound, a rapidly spreading blossom of deep crimson. Despite everything that had gone down, and my immense relief that we were no longer in danger, I was sickened by the gory sight and averted my eyes. Cole fell to his knees and groped around, searching for me. “Sloan,” he called desperately, “are you okay?”

  I let go of Freddie, who ran over to smell Noriko’s remains. I was too revolted by the sight to pull him away, and besides, I had to reassure Cole.

  “I’m right here,” I said, reaching for him. I turned to the cop, who was already on the phone. “I hope you’re calling an ambulance.”

  He nodded, and I turned back to Cole. “You’re going to need about three hundred stitches.”

  “Stop exaggerating,” he said softly.

  I wasn’t. His wound was deep in spots and gaped open, showing yellowish layers of fat and God knows what else. I’d had enough encounters with a blade to know if it was life threatening or not, and this clearly was. If they didn’t patch him up soon, I was sure he’d bleed out like a gutted deer.

  The door to the second room opened, and the two nannies stepped out, holding Niki and Keni in their arms. I ordered them back immediately so the children wouldn’t see their mother’s body on the carpet. Granted, they were barely two years old and Noriko was unrecognizable from the back, but I wasn’t going to take any chances and have them scarred for life. Growing up was tough enough without adding a long list of phobias.

  The moment they shut the door, I focused on Cole, who was fading in and out of consciousness. He was bleeding more profusely, and I removed my robe and pressed the terry cloth against his chest, hoping it would impede, if not stop, the crimson flow. He was cold to the touch and shaking, sure signs of shock. We must have looked quite the sight. I was down to my boxers, covered in surgical tape, gauze, and an eye patch, and dotted with burns across my arms and legs.

  The horror of what had just transpired finally sank in, and I started trembling as well.

  Cole was whispering something, and I had to turn my head to the right so he could talk into my working ear. “I want you to have the boys if I don’t make it.”

  “Don’t you fucking die on me, Shogun.”

  “I’ll do my best not to, but on the off chance, will you take them? I’ve already made provisions in my will so you can be their guardian.”

  “This conversation is completely unnecessary; you’re not going to die.”

  “Promise me, Sloan.”

  I bent down and kissed him softly on the lips. “Okay, and I’m sealing it with a kiss.”

  His lips quirked slightly. “Thank you.”

  “Have I told you lately that you’re the bravest man I know?”

  “Not recently,” he slurred.

  “Stay awake,” I said, shaking him frantically. Somehow, the thought of him drifting off to la-la land was frightening as hell. I couldn’t imagine losing him after everything we’d been through. I tapped his face gently, and his eyes fluttered open. “The kids will be so impressed when I tell them the story of their warrior father and his intrepid ninja hound saving the day.” A smile lurked in the corner of his mouth as he listened to my babbling.

  “Sloan?”

  “What?”

  “I love you.”

  I soaked up the sight of this man who’d meant the world to me for years and brushed his mouth with another tender kiss. “I never stopped loving you, Cole.”

  “You didn’t like me for a long time.”

  “I won’t deny that, but the love never went away. It shut down to sleep mode.”

  “Are you saying this to give me a reason to live?”

  “You have two beautiful reasons to keep on living.”

  He groped for my hand and squeezed. “Make it three, and we have a deal.”

  I nodded. “You got it, Shogun.”

  Chapter 23

  COLE WAS dispatched to surgery as soon as the ambulance pulled up to the emergency room. According to the doctors, the knife wound had cut through all three layers of his skin. He would require more stitches than I’d predicted to stop the bleeding, and the resulting scar would be a permanent reminder of Noriko. Not that we needed any reminders. It would take a lifetime to forget what happened since his father had brought the former geisha into our lives.

  While Cole was still in recovery and after I’d been assured he’d be okay, I returned to the hotel to check on the kids. Adachi had persuaded his wife to oversee the nannies to make sure everyone was on the same page, since their English wasn’t much better than my Japanese. The boys were fussing when I walked into our suite. The nannies seemed competent enough, but they were strangers, and the kids were probably missing their mother. They settled down as soon as they saw my familiar face. I’d been on babysitting rotation since they were infants, so I was as much a comfort as the tiny plush bears they hugged to their chests. The first thing I did was spend an hour playing with them to try to get things back to normal—as normal as anything could ever be after this train wreck.

  Adachi took care of the legal mumbo jumbo associated with my abduction and Noriko’s death. Our innocence in the entire matter was never questioned, but the police wanted details, starting with the ransom letter Cole had received. Adachi paved the road for an easy briefing, acting as interpreter and expert witness because he was in the business and familiar with most of the local cops and their methods. The pain from my own wounds took a backseat to everything else that needed attending, and I managed to function without heavy doses of narcotics.

  It was close to five in the afternoon by the time I returned to the hospital. I was napping on a chair by Cole’s bedside with Freddie curled up and snoring gently at my feet.

  “Sloan?”

  I sat bolt upright when I heard him calling and moved closer to the bed. “I’m here, Shogun.”

  He relaxed as soon as he heard my voice. I’d given him the special moniker years ago after finding the James Clavell novel Shogun by his bedside. It seemed appropriate at the time and had stuck. Throughout our years together, I’d used “Shogun” more than his given name and only stopped when we broke up. “Tell me what’s going on,” he said in his raspy postoperative voice.

  “You’re alive, so you can forget about me taking the kids. I’d have made a lousy dad.”

  “I disagree,” he said wryly, “but you’re off the hook. How bad is my injury?”

  “On a scale from one to ten, I’d say it was a nine and a half. I’m shaving off half a point because she managed to avoid any major blood vessels.”

  “I’m still trying to wrap my head around what happened.”

  “It’ll take a while.”

  “How are you doing? You must hurt like hell.”

  “I do, but I’m managing with pills. The most annoying part is this eye patch. I want it off.”

  “Did you ask the doctor?”

  “He said he’ll check my eye tomorrow.”

  “How long do I have to stay here?”

  “A couple of nights.”

  “Who’s watching the kids?”

  “Adachi’s wife is with the nannies. Should I look into hiring them for the trip home? I realize we’re more than capable of taking care of the boys, but not under these circumstances. I don’t think I could give them the attention they deserve.”

  “Neither could I,” Cole admitted. “It feels like an elephant is sitting on my chest. I can’t imagine how much it’ll hurt if I have to carry them.”

  “It’ll cost a bundle,” I commented, not that money was a real issue. Cole had saved three million dollars already. “Speaking of money, we need to retrieve the cash you stored in the hotel safe and redeposit to your account.”

  “
I haven’t forgotten,” Cole said. “See if the nannies will be willing to travel to New York. Tell them I’ll throw in a week’s vacation once we’re settled.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” I said, then cursed when I realized I had no phone. “Shit.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “No phone. I’ll have to wait until I get back to the hotel to talk to them.”

  “Get another one.”

  “As soon as we get to Tokyo. I didn’t realize there wasn’t an Apple Store in Kyoto. How in heck did you get me the replacement phone in the first place?”

  “I had them overnight the damn thing. I told you that when you were hospitalized.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Not your finest hour,” Cole commented. “Or mine.”

  “Remind me to never go on vacation with you again.”

  Cole nodded and closed his eyes. “What a fucking nightmare.”

  “Professor,” I said softly, “language.”

  He rewarded me with another one of his rare smiles. “It’s your good influence.”

  Ignoring the jab, I asked, “Is it okay if I leave you alone tonight? I should be with the boys.”

  “By all means. There’s no point in you being more uncomfortable than necessary. You’ve just had a life-threatening experience, Sloan. Don’t let my drama trump yours.”

  “This isn’t a contest.”

  “Just saying,” he said. “Go back, have a good dinner, and crawl into bed.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” I stood and motioned for Freddie to follow me. He didn’t have to stay when Cole wasn’t going anywhere for now. I bent down and kissed Cole lightly on the lips. “I’m taking Freddie.”

  “Okay. Sloan?”

  “What?”

  “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure, only next time, let’s try to do something a little more relaxing.”