by Anne Stuart
“To get the Hayashi Urn, so I can complete my assignment. Don’t look at me like that. You know you’re a job. You were easier than I expected, but in the end it doesn’t make any difference. Everyone’s expendable, even your sister.”
“My sister?” she echoed through a blind haze of pain.
“The Shirosama has her, and he’ll be able to find out what he wants from her very quickly. And not as pleasantly as I did. We need to get to the urn before he does.”
“No…” Summer protested, but he simply moved forward, grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet. “She doesn’t know anything.”
“The Shirosama won’t believe that until there’s nothing left of her to prove it. You can take a shower and try to wash away what just happened, or you can go like that,” he said. “Either way, we’re leaving in another twenty-seven minutes.”
“How do I know you’ll help her? What if I refuse to go with you?”
He shrugged. So beautiful, so cold. “Then I suppose I’ll have to leave you here…I can make it fast and painless—you won’t suffer. But I’m not leaving you to talk.”
The room was like an ice locker; the chill that emanated from him reached into her bones. If she exhaled she’d probably see her breath. But she couldn’t breathe.
“I’ll be ready.”
He watched her go, staring after her for a long, contemplative moment. He’d told her nothing but the truth. In the long run the pride of one California princess was a small price to pay for the safety of thousands, maybe millions.
Though in truth she wasn’t that much of a princess. She might be connected to Hollywood power and status, but there was none of the air of privilege and entitlement he found in most of the beautiful women he met, both American and Japanese.
But then, she wasn’t, in fact, a beautiful woman. She was pretty, an odd sort of thing. Pretty eyes, pretty soft mouth that he would have liked to explore, warm skin and gentle curves. Pretty, but unremarkable. The perfect Japanese bride his grandfather had chosen for him would make mincemeat out of her.
But that was a different life, one Taka would deal with when the time came. For now he was on assignment, and all that mattered was getting what he’d been assigned to get, no matter the price.
He grabbed his small duffel bag he’d found in the closet and headed out into the hall. He could hear her shower running, and he paused, wondering if beneath the steady beat of the water she was crying again. She’d been dry-eyed when he’d come back into the bedroom. Had he done enough to her to make her cry?
He shook his head, moving on down the stairs. She was tougher than that, he reminded himself. She’d pulled the tattered remains of her dignity back around her, shutting out of her mind what he’d just done to her. Right now he had to stop thinking of her as anything but a liability. Did she have any other bombshells hidden? Two kimono and a book. They could just be the last remnants of a life, or something more important. And in a situation where nothing was as it seemed, he was guessing Hana’s legacy was more important than Summer thought.
He made fresh coffee, finishing up the sashimi in the refrigerator. He heard her come down the stairs, but he didn’t turn, reaching into the refrigerator for the heavy cream. “Do you want some coffee?” he asked in a neutral voice.
“No.” Her voice was equally expressionless, and when he glanced at her her face was calm, set. He looked at her, remembered the wild, keening sound she’d made when she came, and shoved that mental door closed a little too firmly.
She was dressed in baggy black jeans and a loose black T-shirt—the same kind of clothes he’d always seen her in. Who would think such a soft, responsive body hid beneath all those layers? Assuming she made it through the next few days alive, she needed to find someone who could take proper care of her. Someone to put her into better clothes and give her the kind of sex she needed.
Sex was no longer an issue, and he had to push it out of his mind. He had no doubt given her the first real orgasm—hell, the first two or three orgasms she’d had in her life. She might hate him for it, but at least now she knew that she could.
She waited until he moved out of the way, then opened the refrigerator and reappeared with one of her pink cans of soda and a tub of yogurt. He thought he’d have to make her eat, but she seemed perfectly calm and collected, finding a spoon and eating the yogurt as she stood in the kitchen as far away from him as she could.
Summer was practical—that was a good thing. She wasn’t going to weep and wail. She wasn’t going to acknowledge what had just happened between them at all. Women everywhere were good at the silent treatment, and it made it easier for him to concentrate on how he was going to get the two of them to Bainbridge Island as fast as he could.
Preferably before the Shirosama broke Summer Hawthorne’s teenage sister into a thousand little pieces that no one could ever put back together again.
So far they’d left her alone. Jilly sat on the narrow cot in her cell, perfectly comfortable despite her overwhelming craving for junk food.
As it was, they kept bringing her cloudy water that she didn’t want to drink, and piping the Shirosama’s creepy voice into the small room through invisible speakers. Invisible, because if she’d found them she would have smashed them.
She didn’t know what they expected from her. The droning voice went on in half a dozen languages, none of which she understood. She was relatively conversational in Spanish, but with the Shirosama’s accent the words were almost impossible to decipher, and if they were anything like the English version she didn’t want to know what he was saying. Just a bunch of New Age gobbledygook that made her long for the predictability and safety of science. She was pursuing a double major at the university—chemistry and physics—and the kind of pseudo-science mumbo jumbo he was spewing through the tiny speakers was grating on her nerves.
She stretched out on the cot, considering her options. They’d dressed her in the white pajamas that reminded her of a kung-fu mental hospital, given her a handful of granola bars, which she despised, and told her to await the Shirosama’s attention. She’d await it, all right. The old gasbag wasn’t going to get a thing out of her, and if he thought her parents would sit still for anything happening to their favorite daughter he was in for a rude awakening.
It wasn’t fair that she was the favorite, but then, as Summer pointed out to her, life wasn’t fair. Ditzy Lianne could get away with a lot in her pursuit of a higher consciousness, but when it came to her second born she could pull her head out of the clouds long enough to be a tigress. And no one should ever want to mess with Ralph Lovitz—he could terrorize the Mafia. One puffed-up, self-deluded cult leader would be child’s play for him.
Really, there was nothing to be nervous about. The True Realization brethren were far too interested in where Summer was, but since Jilly could honestly say she had no idea, it shouldn’t matter. Though when they started going on about some Japanese urn, her kidnappers lost her completely.
They’d told her this was a retreat, a safe haven for her, and she couldn’t dispute that the mysterious Petersens seemed to have been holding her as a drugged hostage. Not a whole hell of a lot different than being trapped in the Shirosama’s pajamas, without the benefit of chocolate.
She was in no particular hurry to get out of there; her father would eventually make his holiness wish he’d never been born, and for now she had nowhere else to be. If she was blessed with one thing, apart from her brain, it was her overactive imagination, and she could stretch out on the cot for many happy hours, daydreaming. Waiting for the time that Ralph Lovitz was going to tear his holiness a new one.
In the meantime, though, she’d kill for an Egg McMuffin.
13
The mind was an amazing thing, Summer thought, staring out the window as the sprawling southern California landscape sped by. Her sister was in the clutches of a messianic sociopath, people were dying and yet Summer was able to sit in the car beside her betrayer and not scream. Amazing.
>
She still didn’t know why he’d done it. He’d found out what he needed to know; after, there was nothing to be gained by stripping her down to such an elemental level. Maybe just to prove he could.
And maybe if she survived this she’d eventually have Takashi O’Brien’s head on a pike.
If it were up to her she’d give up. But she wasn’t going to let anything happen to her baby sister. He’d told her the Shirosama had Jilly, and yet he didn’t seem to be interested in doing anything about it.
She refused to look at him. When she did so she was filled with such a stomach-twisting anger she couldn’t think clearly, and she needed to be cool and self-controlled. Sometime later she could let go, right now she needed to be as deadly calm as he was.
“My sister,” she said, staring out the window.
“What about her?”
“Aren’t you going to do anything to help? You kept rescuing me—it’s what you’re good at.”
“My orders were to keep you out of the Shirosama’s hands. Your sister isn’t my job.”
Summer closed her eyes for a moment, picturing Jilly’s dear, stubborn face, and tried to think of a plan. They’d traded the SUV for the plain-looking sedan parked in the garage, but beneath its modest exterior it had the engine of a race car.
And Taka had a penchant for fast driving.
At least they weren’t on the freeway. They were on a lesser road, heading out toward the countryside. Were she to bail out, she might stand a chance—she didn’t give a damn whether he survived. She just needed to get away from him and go after her sister. Give the Shirosama what he wanted, in return for Jilly’s freedom.
Summer glanced around her surreptitiously, looking for any kind of weapon. Her bare hands were useless against Taka. Her only chance was taking him by surprise, and he wasn’t a man who surprised easily.
“Don’t.” His voice was flat, cool.
She refused to turn and look at him, keeping her eyes focused on the passing landscape. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t even think it. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
“What if I have to go to the bathroom?”
“I’ll go with you.”
“The hell you will.”
He said nothing—he didn’t have to. He was like an eight hundred pound gorilla; he could do anything he wanted and there was nothing she could do about it.
And she would have accepted that, given up, if her sister’s safety wasn’t involved. Did he have a gun somewhere in the car? In the last two tumultuous days she realized she hadn’t seen him with one—he didn’t seem to need one when he killed. Her stomach twisted again at the thought. He hadn’t killed to protect her at all. He’d killed to protect the knowledge she held.
She wondered why he was bothering to keep her alive now that he knew where the urn was. Unless he very wisely didn’t trust her. She’d tricked him twice with the fakes. Maybe he wasn’t going to get rid of her until he was certain he had the real urn.
The one thing she couldn’t tell him was where it had come from. Hana had never said a word about its origins; if it had come from some mysterious hidden shrine in Japan that secret had died with her.
Summer glanced around her on the floor of the sedan. Nothing. Maybe if she suddenly slammed her elbow into his face she might distract him—except that he was taller and his face would be hard to reach, plus she was pinned down by the seat belt.
The only thing movable in the front seat of the car was his steel coffee mug and her empty Tab can. Neither would do much damage, but the coffee mug was larger and heavier. If she could just slam it into his face it might force him to take his eyes off the road and his foot off the accelerator, long enough for her to open the door and roll out, with less chance of being totally screwed.
The more she hesitated the worse it was going to get. She reached for the coffee mug, and his hand shot out. She wasn’t quite sure how he managed it, but he got both her wrists in his grasp, imprisoning her. It hurt. A lot. She remembered a few short hours ago, when he’d hurt her into telling him the truth…and what he’d done afterward.
“I told you, don’t even think about it,” he said. He hadn’t slowed his speed even the tiniest bit—they were going about eighty. Certain death.
“I just wanted some coffee.”
“You don’t like coffee.”
“Says who? Just because I drink soda in the morning doesn’t mean—”
“You had no coffee in your house.”
“You don’t know everything I had in my house.”
“Want to bet? I know everything, including where you stash your porn.”
“I don’t have porn….”
“Your erotica, then, if you’re going to be squeamish. You have a taste for sci-fi sex—interplanetary kinkiness. Tell me, is it better when I did it for you? Am I alien enough for you?”
“I suppose it would be a waste of time to tell you how much I hate you,” she said in a tight voice.
“At least you’re honest.” He let go of her hands, and she pulled away, rubbing her wrists.
He glanced over at her. “And if you’re trying to distract me, I can think of more effective ways. You could try going down on me and see if it makes me slow the car enough for you to jump out.”
“You are such a rat bastard,” she said, sick at the thought. Sick, because she felt his words between her legs, and she wanted to lean over and see exactly what he would do if she tried it. Sick, because that wasn’t the reason why she wanted to.
The houses were fewer and farther between, the wide, flat countryside was starting to look desolate. If she somehow managed to get away from him there’d be no place to go, no place to hide. Why was he taking her out to the middle of nowhere?
Silly question. She was now just as expendable as her sister. He was taking her someplace where he could kill her, where no one would hear her scream, where he could hide her body…
“Cut it out.”
He’d startled her enough to make her look at him. He was staring straight ahead, concentrating on the almost empty road. “What?” she asked.
“Stop thinking about death. I liked it better when you were thinking about sex.”
She didn’t bother asking him how he knew what she was thinking. She’d worked long and hard on masking her feelings—it was far too dangerous to be vulnerable when you had a mother like Lianne. But Taka seemed to have the ability to know her inside and out, even before he’d known her body.
“And your likes and dislikes are of primary importance to me because…? And don’t say it’s because you’re the only thing that stands between me and the Shirosama. Right now I’d welcome him with open arms.”
“I’m sure you would. It would be a mistake.”
“Oh, I forgot. You’re so much kinder than he is.”
“Kindness has nothing to do with it.”
“I noticed.”
He’d slowed down again, almost imperceptibly, and turned onto a dirt road. She was toast, she thought. If she jumped out of the car she’d die, saving him the trouble. But then, she wasn’t particularly interested in saving him from anything, and if he could look into her eyes and choke the life out of her, then she’d come back to haunt him.
“How are you planning to do it?”
“Planning to do what?” He was barely paying attention to her, concentrating on the barren landscape.
“Kill me. I’ve never actually seen you kill—just witnessed the aftermath. Are you going to strangle me? Break my neck? Stab me?”
She made the mistake of watching him to gauge his reaction. His eyes met hers, and a faint smile touched his mouth. His beautiful mouth, which she wanted to smash with a two-by-four. “I’ll probably cut you up in tiny pieces, boil you and eat you.”
“Very funny. Are you telling me you’re not planning to kill me?”
His eyes slid away. “Not if I can help it. Not unless you’re really annoying.”
“Then if you’re not driving me
out into the middle of nowhere to kill me, why are we here?”
“Use your eyes, Summer.”
She didn’t like him using her name, but replying “Dr. Hawthorne to you” would be like something out of a Marx Brothers movie. She looked around as he slowed down, and realized the vast, empty field was exactly that. An airfield, and there were several small planes sitting over by a ramshackle metal building.
“I’m not getting on a plane,” she said in a tight voice.
“Afraid of flying?”
She was, but that had nothing to do with it. “I’m not leaving my sister. I’m not going anywhere until I know she’s safe.”
“You’re going to do what I tell you to do.” He pulled up beside the metal shack and turned off the car.
“You’re going to have to kill me first.”
He sighed, and for half a second she was certain he was going to do exactly that. “Someone’s taking care of your sister,” he said finally.
“Who? The Shirosama? I don’t think so.”
“A colleague is getting her out. You don’t need to worry.”
“A colleague? A member of the Yakuza is going to waltz right in there and snatch her away?”
“You’re forgetting that the True Realization Fellowship started in Japan, and almost a third of its worldwide membership is Japanese. I don’t imagine a Yakuza would have any trouble fitting in.”
“Unless they saw his tattoos.”
“A good proportion of the brethren are criminals from one country or another. A Japanese criminal wouldn’t be surprising. Now stop arguing with me. You’re still alive, and so is your sister. She’ll be fine.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before? I would have been less trouble.”
“You and trouble are synonymous,” he said wearily, unfastening his seatbelt. “Get out of the car, and if you try to run I’ll shoot you.”
“You don’t carry a gun.”
“Yes,” he said, “I do. And I have no problem using it.”