I showed up fifteen minutes late—I wanted to make sure I wasn’t followed. Mack was sitting alone at a table near the washrooms, his backpack at his feet and his back to the door. I ordered a vanilla steamed milk and a piece of pumpkin pie and sat across from him, grinning like a goof. I gave him a quick once-over but saw only a few light bruises near one eye. “Man, is it good to see you!”
“Been a long time.” He frowned at me before he took a bite of his chicken-Caesar wrap.
I cringed. “I know … I’m sorry. I didn’t even check to see if you were OK.”
“I was freaking out when I didn’t hear anything.” He looked serious, not a normal thing for Mack. “And I was pretty pissed when you took off without a word.”
“I’m really sorry. Everything was so crazy.”
“Yeah, I called your house. Your dad told me you went to Japan.” He put his wrap down. “I don’t blame you for having other things on your mind. I saw the news the next day. The guys that jumped us—you really did that?”
I dropped my eyes to the table. “They were trying to kill me. I thought my grandpa sent them—accused him of it … Turns out he didn’t.”
Then I told him—at least the parts I could. I told him about my grandpa’s heart attack and that Walter was trying to take over the company. I left out the part about Izumo and the ninja and the map. I did tell him a bit about Shoko, though.
Mack mulled it over and leaned back in his chair. “This is nuts,” he said.
I was about to reply when I felt a disruption in the energy outside, like a leaf dropping into a stream. Men were gathering outside, and they were here for me.
I swore. “Mack, you need to get out of here.”
He looked confused.
“Pretend you don’t know me and get the hell out of here, now!”
He looked like he was about to say something, but he stood and walked away, making it to the counter with his empty plates as the first man came in, slamming the door open so hard it hit the wall and rattled the windows. Another guy leaned against the wall outside, watching the street. As Mack walked out, he brushed past Anthony Roacks, who was on his way in.
“Uh, what’s going on, guys?” the barista asked, almost cowering behind the espresso machine.
“Relax,” one of the men said. “Everything’s cool.” He stepped up to the bar and set what looked like a stack of bills on the counter. “We want to have a private gathering here. Close up shop and take a break. We won’t be long.”
The barista’s eyes lighted up. “Sorry, folks,” he called, “we have to close. See you again tomorrow.” The customers glanced up from their laptops and phones, grumbling.
“Move!” the man said.
They shuffled toward the door, glancing over their shoulders as they hurried out. The barista disappeared into the back room, and a moment later a door closed.
Anthony straddled a chair at my table and sat down. He looked tired and red-eyed. Two men sat at a table behind him, and a big guy circled around behind me.
“These guys are dangerous,” Anthony said. “It’s all we can do to keep them from killing you, after what you did to their pals.”
“This office boy is keeping you guys on a leash?” I shook my head. “That must be tough.” The expression on the men’s faces told me that their opinion of Anthony wasn’t far from mine. “I guess I should buy you boys a coffee—I don’t think Anthony’s bank card works anymore.”
“Yeah, and that there is a major problem,” a scar-faced man behind Anthony said. “I’m getting pissed, and that’s not good for either of you.”
Anthony glared at the man. “I told you, Jackson, I’ll get everything back.”
“Walter’s finished,” I said. “We’re auditing everything.”
The man named Jackson laughed. “Auditors aren’t going to find much. Not with those holes in their heads.”
I felt sick. “You think the police won’t figure this out?”
“I’ll be killing a lot more people if I don’t get paid.”
Anthony gave Jackson a nervous smile. “I told you, it’s not a problem.”
“Then get on with it, Tony.”
Anthony slapped my cup off the table, spreading foam across the floor. “Tell me the new passwords, now!” he shouted.
I smiled. “I’d rather stick a fork in my eye.”
“I’ll do it for you!” He snatched Mack’s used fork off the table and came at me.
I moved without thinking, and a second later, I had the fork. I slammed it into Anthony’s hand, deep enough to hit the tabletop. His eyes bulged and he let out a scream. He lunged across the table toward me. I don’t remember moving but Anthony crashed into the wall beside me and crumpled to the floor, the fork still protruding from his hand.
“Nice,” someone said.
No one stirred as Anthony struggled into a seated position against the wall, whimpering, while blood dripped from his hand.
“Mr. Müller paid me a visit today,” I said.
His eyes went wide. “You know Müller?”
“He said I can keep the money because his employer is very unhappy with Walter.” I shook my head and smirked. “You’re so screwed.”
“Who’s this Müller guy?” Jackson asked. “We may have to pay him a visit, too.”
“Good luck with that.”
The man behind me started to move, but Jackson stopped him. “Easy, Bubba.” Then he slid a business card across the table. There were two sets of numbers written in blue ink, one obviously a phone number. “We just want our payment,” he said. “Transfer two million into that account and we go away.”
“Two million?” Anthony cried. “Your fee is one!”
The man’s eyes never left mine. “Or we start collecting collateral.”
I thought fast. If I paid these guys, there’d be no one to protect Walter and no one to threaten me. But they represented something so wrong. “I don’t think so.”
Jackson sighed. “Then we’re going to take a ride. I’ve got something that should change your mind.”
That got my attention. “What?”
“It’s not a what, it’s a who.” He smiled, but there was no humor in it. “Your mommy.”
My fury surged and Bubba chose that moment to drop his hand onto my shoulder.
I grabbed two fingers, spun out of the chair, and felt his fingers and wrist snap. Then I ran toward the bathrooms.
The women’s-room door was open, and I darted inside and slammed the door. My heart dropped: there was no window. My heart was about to burst from my chest as I looked around for an escape. Heavy fists began pounding on the door as I climbed onto the toilet, and a moment later the door burst open with a loud crack.
“He’s not in here!” Bubba yelled.
Another crash came from across the hall. “The window’s open.”
“Get outside!” That was Jackson. I heard their retreating footsteps and the slam of the front door.
My arms and legs were shaking, but I didn’t dare let go yet. I was wedged between two walls of the narrow bathroom, hands against one, feet against the other, right above the door. I held on while my muscles screamed. I managed a deep breath and waited until I sensed they were gone. I dropped to the floor.
“Shoko, I need you,” I whispered.
CHAPTER
37
I sprinted home, all six blocks, not once looking back. I cut through the neighbor’s yard, cleared our back fence, and crashed to the ground near the dojo. A sensation of darkness lingered in the air, and then it was gone, like the shadow of a plane passing overhead.
The house was quiet. I listened for Okaasan and searched for her presence but felt nothing. Scared but angry, I was walking toward the house when I felt a dark wave of energy, followed by the crunch of feet on gravel behind me.
I spun, ready to fight.
“Shoko!” Relief flooded into me.
She ran toward me. “I heard you call.”
I started to tell h
er what had happened, but she stopped me with a finger to my lips. It felt like a kiss.
“Don’t worry. I’m here, I came back.”
“I’m glad.” I glanced at the back of the house. “Okaasan—”
“She’s safe inside.”
“But I don’t feel—”
“Trust me, Junya.” She flashed those long lashes of hers and her eyes crinkled that cute freckle under her left eye. “Who knows more about this, you or me?” Then she kissed me. The warmth of her lips spread through my body and filled me with more desire than I’d ever felt before. Mind you, I’d never been kissed like that before.
“Why …” I said as our lips parted.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?”
I nodded, but something didn’t feel right. There was no warmth to her touch, none of her usual positive energy.
She pulled me toward the back of the dojo, out of view of the house, and started kissing me again. When she took my hands and put them under her blouse on the bare skin of her stomach, I decided I must be dreaming.
But the stream was screaming at me. Something was wrong here.
“Shoko, … I’m not ready for this.”
“Are you sure?” I felt her hips press against mine, and suddenly I wasn’t sure. She kissed me again and then pulled back, grabbed my hand, and dragged me toward the dojo.
I hesitated. “Shoko, … maybe this isn’t … the best time.”
“I thought you wanted this.” She looked sad. “Junya, I came back here for you.”
Inside the dojo, she kicked off her shoes and started pulling my T-shirt off. I fumbled with the tiny buttons on her blouse. I was nervous and excited, but everything about this was so wrong.
She pushed my hands away and then stood back and gave me a sexy smile as her blouse fell open. I took a deep breath, so excited I could barely think, but I still felt that something was wrong—and this time I couldn’t ignore it.
She frowned. “Don’t you like me?”
“No—I mean yes, yes, but … I’m getting the weirdest feeling.” Something was very wrong here.
She knocked me down to the mats and straddled me like she had that day in the meadow. I looked up at her. There was an odd smell, sort of like … cars? Gas stations?
Gasoline.
I shoved her away and she toppled backward off me. For the first time, I took a good look around the dojo, squinting in the dim light.
Sparring gear lay scattered on the floor, the sword rack tipped over. There was a dark stain on the tatami.
I crawled past her. “Its blood,” I whispered. Near the stains were footprints, the crisp outline of a boot tread. I spun in a quick circle. Jackson’s men had been here, but Shoko had said—
I turned slowly and looked at Shoko.
She was upright on her knees now, her face expressionless, eyes like ice. One hand buttoned her blouse. The other hand held Okaasan’s best katana, its tip stabbed into the tatami like an exclamation mark.
“She fought back,” Shoko said, “but once they shot her, she was easy to take.”
I choked on my breath. “How do you know?”
“Because I watched.”
I sucked in a breath. “Why are you doing this?”
“The Kannushi has decided you must die,” she said in a conversational tone. “You can’t be trusted. He believes you’ll be corrupted by the Evil Ones and bring them across. It cannot be risked.”
My mouth gaped open. “Shoko, please.” I wasn’t having much luck choking back my tears. “Don’t do this.”
“You’re dealing with a war that’s been raging for a thousand years. You’re nothing but a grain of sand in the river of time. Your death—and your mother’s—will have no more significance.”
A lighter sparked, and an instant later a wall of flame circled me, following a track of fuel on the tatami. The heat and the smoke were instantaneous—I couldn’t see anything. My throat and nose burned, and I retched as the smoke seared my lungs.
“Good-bye, Junya.”
The flames spread at an unbelievable pace, feeding on the tatami and the paper shoji panels before attacking the dry straw of the roof. Burning embers hit my jeans and ignited them, hungry for more fuel. I threw my arms across my face and dived through the flames toward the nearest wall, hoping I’d break through.
The dojo was engulfed. Flames shot toward the sky, and billowing black smoke filled the air as I staggered toward the house, shielding my face from the heat. Somehow I made it to my bedroom. I grabbed my bokuto and energy surged into me as soon as I gripped the handle. I sucked in a deep breath, then another. My energy began to expand inside me. By the time I’d taken the third breath, I felt ready to explode.
I focused all my energy. Shoko was gone and so was Okaasan. As I stood up, bokuto in hand, I swore through gritted teeth that I’d make Shoko and the rest of the Gatekeepers pay for this.
The air was thick with smoke when I walked out my bedroom door. I heard sirens now. The dojo was gone, reduced to a pile of flaming logs, still roaring like a summer campfire.
On my way to the side door, I pulled a wakizashi out of the broom closet—another of Okaasan’s stashes—and fed it through my belt. Then I went over the fence, squatted in the bushes in my neighbor’s yard, and studied the street.
A huge ladder truck jerked to a stop with a hiss of air brakes. A pumper truck came down Arbutus Street, dragging hoses from the fire hydrant. What interested me most, though, was the black SUV parked up the block.
I started toward it, sneaking through the neighbor’s yards. When I was behind the SUV, I stepped into the open and strode toward it in the driver’s blind spot. There were two men inside, both from the café. Bubba was in the passenger side with his right arm in a sling. The driver’s arm dangled out the open window.
I swung the bokuto full force through the open window and felt it shudder as it connected, followed by a sickening crack. Then I yanked the back door open and climbed in. The driver was slumped over the blood-covered steering wheel, and Bubba was swearing and reaching for his gun, but his bandaged arm didn’t respond.
“Where’s my mother?!”
He stared at me, and in his eyes I saw disbelief quickly turning to panic.
I shoved my energy at him. “Answer the question!”
He blinked twice and his body jerked. “I don’t know.” His voice was flat, almost mechanical. “A different group hit here before we went to the café.”
“Where do you think they’d take her?”
“Probably to the warehouse by Crissy Field, on the Presidio grounds.”
“Why there?” It was an old concrete building, once part of the military base. Grandpa had bought it years ago. It wasn’t more than a mile and a half from here. I’d jogged to Crissy Field tons of times—the road was practically behind our fence.
“That’s where we’re staging out of.”
I pushed the back door open with my foot. “That’s enough. Now, you have a nice nap for a few minutes, and when you wake up you won’t remember me being here. Do you understand?”
He stared straight ahead. “Yes.”
“But you’ll feel guilty. You can’t live with all this on your conscience.” I pointed down the hill. “When you wake up, go to that police officer and tell her everything. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
I swung out of the SUV and looked at the cloud of gray smoke that hung over the neighborhood like fog. Then I ran north.
CHAPTER
38
As I ran up the curving road through the Presidio, I tried to push all thoughts of Shoko from my mind. I couldn’t believe she would be so heartless, so cold. And there had been something else different about her, something physical…
I jogged down the hill behind the old military barracks, a three-story Spanish-style building dwarfed by the elevated highway to the Golden Gate Bridge above it. Its windows were dark, but the parking lot glowed under amber streetlights. I stumbled down the grassy
slope and went to my knees on the damp grass beside a palm tree.
I blinked the sweat from my eyes. Crissy Field was empty, the grass uncut, the dew sparkling as the breeze off the bay swept over it. Beyond the field lay a narrow beach, a bright strip of sand against black water. The Golden Gate Bridge stood to my left, its lights blurred by a haze of fog.
As I concentrated my energy, I began to pick up messages. I jogged toward the warehouses, and the energy grew stronger with each step, a deluge of emotions and energy, all of it negative, all of it speaking my name. As if I’d summoned it, dark energy swept across the field, bending the grass like ripples on a pond. It surged and circled around me, spinning, menacing. This time it didn’t overcome me—I felt energized.
The closest warehouse—not Grandpa’s—was a featureless white concrete structure with two loading doors at the end. I considered my options. I could walk up the road beside the building, but if anyone looked, I’d stick out like a bug in a bathtub.
I looked up at the roof. There was a downspout, the old-fashioned sturdy, steel kind. I tucked the bokuto into my belt and checked my wakizashi and started climbing. I ran the length of the building’s flat roof and then went to my knees and peered over the edge.
Dim lights over the loading door of Grandpa’s warehouse illuminated a shiny black SUV. Two men, each toting a small submachine gun, stood beside it. One of them was smoking. Both looked bored. Both had their backs to me.
“Sergeant Jackson’s taking this personally,” one said.
The other man nodded.
“You think he’ll kill her?”
“Who cares?”
Anger surged inside me, too much for me to contain, and blasted from me like steam. A moment later I was on the ground, the bokuto already in motion. Both men crumpled to the ground, blood flowing from their ears and smashed faces.
When I touched the door frame of the old warehouse, the wood spoke to me. It had stood proud for six hundred years before men cut it and brought its pieces here. I closed my eyes and focused my energy. After a moment, I sent my mind into the warehouse, just like I’d done when I scouted the park outside Walter’s penthouse.
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