In Shadows

by Sharon Sala

  Alicia sighed. “Thank you! You guys have a long and happy life. You deserve it.”

  The line went dead before Shelly could say goodbye. She replaced the receiver and then leaned back. Maybe goodbye wasn’t a word that worked between them anymore.

  But it made her remember something that happened to her when she was young.

  She had just turned seven when she learned her best friend had moved away over Christmas vacation, and she came home from school in tears. Her mother sat down in the rocker and lifted Shelly into her lap and wrapped her up in their old green-and-yellow granny-square afghan. The comfort of her mother’s arms, the afghan tucked around her and the lull of the rocker was the medicine she needed. She remembered feeling her mother’s hands smoothing the curls away from her face, and how she leaned down and kissed her.

  “You’ll make new friends,” her mother said. “That is how life works. Some people are meant to be in your life for a while, and then they leave, while others will be with you always.”

  Shelly remembered falling asleep within the warmth of her mother’s arms, and the smell of camphor from the afghan up her nose. That was how she felt right now. Sad, but accepting that Alicia had been a passing-through friend. Not the kind meant for staying.

  Then the door opened, and Jack walked in. She was still getting used to the short hair and dark beard, but he could never disguise his voice and those eyes from her.

  “Hey, baby. I was at the nurses’ station. The doctor left orders that if you don’t have any kind of setbacks today, he will let you go home in the morning.”

  Shelly clapped her hands. It hurt too much to smile, and Jack was still talking.

  “Barb Hightower called the nurses’ desk while I was there. She was going to leave a message for me to call her, but as luck would have it, I was already there.” He sat down on the side of her bed. “She wants you to know that she and her neighbor Ginny went over to our house and cleaned up the blood from where you were attacked. Your purse and keys were on the floor where you dropped them. Barb took your stuff, locked the house back up for you and is keeping them safe until you come home.”

  “Oh...never thought! Thank her?”

  “Yes, I did, and I don’t think I told you yet, but Barb witnessed your abduction. She saw it from the beginning, when Ito rolled under the garage door as it was going down, to them driving away. She was on the phone with 911 when they began backing out, and when she ran out shouting at them to stop, Ito shot at her.”

  Shelly’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Hurt her?”

  “No, she hit the ground before he fired, but if it hadn’t been for her, it might have taken us longer to find you. She gave us the identities and the getaway car.”

  Shelly patted his hand, then touched her heart.

  “Yes, I’m grateful, too,” he said. “I’ll tell her for you.”

  Shelly nodded, then took his hand and laid it against her heart.

  “Love you,” she said, then winced again as the stitches pulled.

  “I already know how much you love me,” he said. “You suffered all of this because you wouldn’t tell him I was alive.”

  She reached for his hand. “God gave you back. Couldn’t lose...again.”

  Jack groaned and lifted her hand to his lips.

  They had been given a second chance. He would never put her in danger again.

  * * *

  It was the duty of Homicide detectives to notify next of kin when a body was discovered, and it had fallen to Homicide Detective Ryan Trotter of the Houston PD to locate and notify Yuki Ito’s next of kin, even if it meant a phone call to Toyko, Japan. Just getting the number had been a hassle, and he also had to find a Japanese translator to deliver the news. Then Trotter looked up from his desk. That someone had just arrived.

  “Detective Trotter?”

  Trotter stood up to greet him. “Yes, I’m Trotter.”

  “Officer Michael Mendoza, Pasadena PD. My mother is Japanese. I speak it fluently. They said you need a notification of death made to Toyko?”

  Trotter nodded and handed him a typewritten page of info.

  “Take my seat. I’ll stand by in case they have questions for you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mendoza said, and sat down in the detective’s chair to make the call.

  * * *

  Ken Ito was spending a rare night at home with his wife. Ever since the renunciation of his sons, she had taken to her bed in grief. She wouldn’t talk to him and was refusing to eat. At first he’d ignored it, thinking she would come to accept what must be, but it was becoming apparent that he’d been wrong. She was all the family he had left now, and he could not bear to lose her, too.

  He’d spent the evening at her bedside, trying to coax her to eat, then reading to her from Kokoro by Soseki Natsume. It was one of her favorites, but he didn’t think she could hear him over the scream in her heart.

  He heard their phone ringing but ignored it, knowing one of the servants would answer. What he hadn’t expected was the sound of running feet and then a quick knock at their door. He frowned. They’d been told he was not to be disturbed.

  He laid the book aside and went to the door, ready to chastise whoever dared defy his orders.

  Their maid was rattled, her voice was shaking as she continued to apologize over and over for disturbing them, and then she got to the point. There was a call for him from the Houston Police Department in the United States of America. He must come, she said. “It is urgent,” she said. “They are on hold,” she said.

  “Stay with her,” Ken said, and went to his office to take the call.

  He answered the call in English, then got his message in Japanese.

  He stood without moving, hearing the words and knowing this news would end his wife’s life. And then he asked his first question in English.

  “Where is his brother?”

  “One moment, sir. I will let you speak to the homicide detective who worked the case. His name is Detective Trotter.”

  Mendoza handed the phone to Trotter. “He wants to talk to you. He speaks English.”

  Trotter took the phone. “This is Detective Trotter.”

  “Detective, I have a question. How did this happen, and where is his brother, Sota?”

  “Who?” Trotter said.

  Ken sighed. For a moment he’d forgotten. “Adam. He calls himself Adam Ito.”

  Trotter grimaced. This wasn’t going to make them happy.

  “For the time being, Adam Ito is in a prison hospital. The brothers kidnapped a woman. We don’t know why it happened, but we do know that your son Adam Ito killed his brother, Yuki.”

  Ken closed his eyes, but he couldn’t shake the image of what he was being told. He knew why the kidnapping had happened. Because he ordered it when he’d demanded Adam find his betrayer. And now one of his sons was dead. He took a deep breath.

  “You said Sota killed him. How was Yuki killed?”

  Trotter sighed. This man wanted all the ugly details. Some families did. Some families didn’t, but when they asked, they got the truth.

  “He was shot in the back of the head.”

  “And the woman they kidnapped?”

  “She was left for dead with him. However, she did survive.”

  “You said Adam is in a prison ward, recovering from his surgeries?” Ken asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Trotter said. “They were wounds incurred when the FBI found him.”

  “Of course,” Ken said.

  “I am very sorry for your loss,” Trotter said. “Will you be claiming the body?”

  Ken almost said no, and then it dawned on him that this might be what his wife needed. Even if Yuki was dead, she could still bring him home.

  “We will be flying in within a day or so. Are you the one I contact when we come?”

  �
�Yes, sir. I’ll help you through the process. If you give me an email address, I can send you the information.”

  Ken gave him a household email and ended the call, then walked straight to the wet bar and reached for the bottle of sake.

  He downed the first drink like medicine, tossing it back and swallowing without tasting. And then he poured a second drink, walked out to the koi pond bubbling near the stand of bamboo and stared down into the shadows.

  The koi were in hiding. Just like his sons had been. The demand he’d made of them had ended Yuki’s life, and probably Sota’s, as well. His heart was aching as he looked up. The night sky was clear. The stars were bright and dazzling, as his sons had once been to him. Then he shook his head, accepting the weight of his decision.

  “You were both men. You knew the consequences of your actions when you stole from me—from the cartel—and yet you did it anyway. You brought shame into this house...shame to me...shame to your mother...to the family name. But I am remembering you now as children who gave me such delight. It is the child I will visit in the hospital. It is the child whose body I will recover.” Then he lifted the glass of sake to the moon and poured it out onto the grass.

  His steps were slow, his conscience heavy with the guilt of bringing them into the cartel life. Even though they had shamed their name, part of the shame was his.

  He went back into the house, then returned to their suite. The maid left as soon as he returned, and he sat back down beside his wife’s bed. But he did not pick the book back up from which he’d been reading.

  She’d given birth to them. It was her right to know their fate.

  “Beloved, I have news I must share. It is about our sons.”

  For the first time in days, she rolled over and met his gaze, her dark eyes questioning the look on his face. “That phone call was from the police in Houston, Texas. Yuki is dead.”

  Silent tears rolled from her eyes. He saw the blame she directed at him, but she deserved to know all.

  “The police did not kill Yuki. Sota did.”

  She threw back the covers and sat up as the tears continued to fall. “They always fought. Adam was cruel as a child. Something is wrong with him.”

  Ken did not disagree. “Adam is in a prison hospital, recovering from wounds gained during his arrest by the FBI. I must go to the States to claim Yuki’s body. I do not want to do this alone.”

  She reached toward him, and when she did, he clasped her hand. “I will go with you,” she said. “We will bring our Yuki home together.”

  He sat down beside her and took her in his arms, holding her as she cried. The weight of her long hair was heavy on his arms, but not as heavy as the guilt within his heart.

  * * *

  Adam had not expected to recover from his wounds like this. He had envisioned a sparkling facility with the latest in medical marvels that Texas had to offer. Not this drab prison hospital.

  After he came out of surgery and had come to himself enough to know what was going on, he’d sent for his lawyer, only to be told the man wanted nothing to do with him. It had to do with the fact that the lawyer’s son was a soldier, and he wasn’t going to represent a man selling stolen military weapons on the black market.

  Then he learned that Mahalo made a deal with the Feds and told them everything he knew about Adam Ito and his business, and in turn received a lighter sentence and a transfer to another facility.

  No only did that piss him off, but it also left Adam with nothing. When you’re the top dog, you have no bargaining power. There was no one else to give up—not even the cartel. Other than the names, he knew nothing about their operations or how distribution was made, even though they ran everything from drugs and guns, to child prostitution and money laundering in places all over the world. They were already known by what they did, but hadn’t been caught in how they did it. That was him, before Jack McCann aka Judd Wayne showed up in his world, and look what happened.

  Being flat on his back in a hospital bed left him plenty of time to think, but all he could focus on was the reality of spending the rest of his life behind bars.

  Fifteen

  The swelling in Shelly McCann’s face was finally receding, leaving her with two black eyes. The rat bites on her legs were healing faster than anything else and had already scabbed over. Her broken nose was in a splint, and the stitches in her lips were still very painful. The first time she saw herself in a mirror, she cried.

  It took a while for Jack to calm her down, though he finally made it happen by reminding her how rare it was for people who’d been in situations like theirs to have been given a second chance.

  “Bruises will fade, bones will heal and scars are just proof of being a survivor. When I found you in that warehouse still breathing, I thought you were the most magnificent thing I’d ever seen. You didn’t quit, Shelly. You just didn’t quit, and because you were so strong, I still have you to love.”

  She put her arms around his neck.

  “You always say the right thing.”

  “The smartest thing I ever did was ask you to marry me. My blessing was that you said yes.”

  * * *

  That afternoon after she fell asleep, he took the opportunity to call Nolan Warren. He needed help getting his transportation traded so he could get Shelly home tomorrow.

  “I know it’s the weekend, but I need a favor,” Jack said, when Nolan answered.

  “Anything, buddy. Just ask.”

  “Looks like Shelly is going to go home tomorrow and I got here on my motorcycle. I need her car to bring her home, which is at my house. I know you ride, and I wondered if—”

  “Oh hell yes, I want to ride that Indian. I’ll have my wife, Linda, bring me over to the hospital right now. What room are you in? I’ll come up and get your helmet and keys.”

  “Sixth floor. Room six twenty-six.”

  “Hot dang...this is seriously more fun than mowing the yard.”

  Jack grinned. “Linda won’t be too happy with me if I’m taking you from a job.”

  “I have a teenage son. He can get off his butt and do it for me,” Nolan said. “See you in a few.”

  “Thanks, I really appreciate this,” Jack said.

  Shelly wanted to go home and sleep in her own bed, and Jack wanted to go home and shower and shave. It was time to lose the Shane Franklin look and put Jack McCann back in existence.

  When Nolan arrived, he was grinning like a teenager who’d received the keys to his first car. He tried on the helmet and gave Jack a thumbs-up when it fit. He listened to instructions, then returned a couple of hours later, quietly knocking on the door.

  Jack answered, then stepped outside into the hall so they could talk.

  Nolan gave Jack’s keys back as well as the keys to Shelly’s car. “I left your helmet and the Indian in your garage. Man, that is one sweet ride. And I got a chance to talk with your neighbor Barb. She’s a hoot. She’s talking about organizing a neighborhood watch, and she gathered up a change of clothing for Shelly to wear home. It’s all in this sack, she said.”

  “Oh man, I didn’t think of that. Good for Barb,” Jack said, as he gladly took the sack.

  “That’s what I thought,” Nolan said. “Anyway, the car is in valet parking. Here’s your ticket.”

  “I sure appreciate this,” Jack said.

  “I was happy to help you, man. We’re all still in disbelief about Charlie. I mean...we know he did it, but it’s just hard to rationalize his actions with the man we knew.”

  “I know what you mean,” Jack said.

  Nolan gave him a sideways glance and then came out and said it.

  “Wainwright said you’re resigning. Are you firm on that decision?”

  “Very firm,” Jack said.

  Nolan sighed. “What are you gonna do?”

  “Like I told Wainwright
, just something else. I don’t know what, but we’ll figure it out.”

  He nodded. “I can’t fault you. It’s one thing when it’s us. We chose this life. But when a perp messes with our families, that’s a whole other issue.” He looked a little embarrassed and then grinned. “I’d better hustle. Son is otherwise occupied, I learned, so I’m still mowing, and Linda is waiting outside.”

  Jack grinned. “Then don’t keep the boss lady waiting.”

  Nolan nodded. “That’s for sure.” And then he was gone.

  Jack went back into the room. One more night and they’d be home.

  * * *

  They passed the night the same as before, with Jack stretched out in the recliner beside Shelly’s bed. She fell asleep easily, but within an hour she had already begun to dream. Jack knew when he heard her crying that she was reliving something bad.

  He woke her gently.

  “Shelly, Shelly, this is Jack. Wake up, baby. You’re having a bad dream.”

  She woke up in the room’s half-light with tears on her face, struggling to sit up.

  “Wait, honey. I’ll raise the bed.”

  She eased back against her pillow, trembling from head to foot, rubbing the wound down the middle of her body.

  “I thought he was going to rape me when he cut my clothes. He cut me instead. He is in prison, right? They won’t let him out, will they?”

  Jack couldn’t bear hearing the tremor in her voice and slid onto the bed beside her and pulled her close.

  “No, he won’t get out. When you go to a federal prison, you serve your time. He committed murder. He sold stolen military weapons on the black market. And I’m sure there are a good dozen more charges they’ve tacked on. Besides, he has to get well enough to go before a judge, and I don’t think he’ll be walking anywhere ever again.”

  “What do you mean?” Shelly asked.

  “He didn’t feel inclined to tell me where you were, so I tied his naked ass to a chair and started shooting.”

  He heard her swift intake of breath and worried that he might have upset her.

  “I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t think how that might sound to you. I was desperate to find you and—”