Ice Blue (11 page)

Taka loosened his grip slightly. "He hasn't. Trust me, if the urn was here I would have found it. Where else would he have put it?"

"I don't…" His grip tightened, and she let the words trail off. She swallowed nervously, feeling his palm against her throat. "He could have given it to someone else to hide."

"He didn't."

"I'm having a hard time breathing," she said tightly.

"Maybe you gave it to your baby sister," Takashi said. "No one would think you'd put her in danger, but people can surprise you. Maybe you don't care as much about her as you think, particularly when there's three hundred thousand dollars on the line."

"You're disgusting," Summer said.

"Then tell me where it is. Or am I going to have to ask your sister?"

Her eyes met his. They were cold, dark, implacable, and she wondered why she'd ever thought he was any kind of savior. If she wasn't so tired and frightened—if she wasn't sitting here in her underwear—she might be able to fight him. Right now she was no match, and the most important thing was to keep her sister out of it, at all costs.

And why the hell was she fighting him, anyway? She'd lost, and the stakes were much higher than she thought. This wasn't just about preserving a simple bowl of almost unearthly beauty that was a gift from the person who'd loved and protected her most, but the safety of her baby sister. A thousand priceless porcelain bowls were nothing compared to something so precious.

"I can find it," she said in a whisper.

He immediately loosened the pressure on her throat, then dropped his hand. "Do it," he said.

"Can I get my clothes on first?"

He let his eyes drift down over her body. "If you wish."

Of course he wasn't going to leave her while she dressed. He wasn't going to take those dark, unreadable eyes off her. She reached for her jeans and pulled them on, biting her lip rather than crying out when the soft denim rubbed against her burns. She yanked the T-shirt over her head—it was going to be cold, and she needed something warmer, but one look at his implacable face and she wasn't going to ask.

He was blocking the doorway into her bedroom. Odd that a man so lean and elegant could take up so much space. "I need to get my shoes," she said.

"Sneakers. We may have to run. And get a sweater. It's cold outside."

He never failed to surprise her. She could still feel his hand on her throat—for a moment she'd thought he could easily strangle her, and would if she'd fought him. And now he was worried about her getting cold.

Takashi moved out of the way, and she nodded, heading for the closet. She knew he'd searched there as well, even if he hadn't left any sign. She grabbed an old pair of sneakers and a baggy sweater. Vanity, never one of her major character defects, had completely gone out the window. He'd already seen her in practically nothing and been totally unimpressed. Not that she would want to impress him—that was the last thing she needed. But it was disheartening to feel so awkward and plain when confronted with such beauty.

And he was beautiful. She hadn't really had time to dwell on it while she'd been running for her life, but with his silky, straight black hair, his dark, unreadable eyes and full, luscious mouth, he was almost as gorgeous as the porcelain bowl he was so desperate to find. But there was something unsettling about his physical beauty. She'd been around Hollywood-handsome men for a great deal of her life, and good looks were nothing more than legal tender. Scott had been one of the best-looking men she'd ever met, and with her artist's eye she'd chosen him as the logical man to sleep with, to get over her fears.

That plan had backfired, of course. She'd used him, hoping she could fall in love, and in the end all she'd discovered was that consenting, adult sex was highly overrated, no matter how gentle the partner. She could happily do without.

So why did she look at Takashi O'Brien's starkly beautiful face and suddenly feel lost? In the end it didn't matter; once he got the bowl he'd leave—with any luck—grateful to be done with her. And she'd forget all about the irrational stirrings that she wouldn't have believed herself capable of.

She couldn't wait until that happened. "It's not in the house."

He'd flicked off the lights, plunging them into a darkness lit only by the faint glow from the hallway. "You wouldn't be thinking of a wild-goose chase, would you? It wouldn't be a very wise move on your part."

"I don't know how wise I am. What are you going to do when I find the bowl for you?"

"I told you, take it to Japan."

"And what are you going to do with me? Are you going to kill me?"

She'd managed to startle him. "Haven't I been doing my best to keep you alive for the last twenty-four hours? Despite your best efforts to get yourself killed?"

She couldn't argue with that. "I'm ready," she said.

"Let's go get your goddamn urn."

He was going to have to kill her, of course. He'd known it all along, but he didn't like the fact that she seemed to know it, too. He'd come close a couple of times, changing his mind at the last minute, but once he had his hands on the urn the safest thing to do would be to finish her. Quickly, painlessly, before she even knew what was happening.

Unfortunately, she already suspected him. Would she fight when the time came? He hoped not. Fighting would make it harder for her. She'd be better off just letting go. He could overpower her very easily—she was soft while he was hard and strong. He'd let himself get distracted in the bathroom for a moment, and he'd been a bit too rough because of it. He hadn't needed to grip her throat that tightly.

His powers of observation were well out of the ordinary, and he'd taken in every inch of her exposed skin in the brief glance he'd allowed himself. The scars on her wrists were no surprise—he knew she'd attempted suicide when she was a teenager, soon after Hana Hayashi was killed. He was more distracted by Summer's pale, creamy skin, smooth and soft. She had a mole above her left breast, and damn if he couldn't see part of a tattoo peeking up from beneath the black cotton underwear that covered her hips. He never would have thought she was the type for a tattoo, and he found himself wondering what it was. He could look, of course. After she was dead.

The thought made him feel slightly queasy, uncharacteristically so. He could blame the last mission for the fact that he was having a hard time making his move. Maybe coming so close to death himself had given him a new respect for it, a new fear of it.

No, that wasn't entirely true. He'd already killed four men in the last twenty-four hours, and they'd barely registered on what was left of his soul. He hadn't suddenly grown a conscience; they were dangerous animals who'd needed to die.

Summer Hawthorne was a different matter. She was dangerous, all right, but she had no notion why. No idea of the secret locked inside her head that could bring about the deaths of thousands of people. No idea that he simply couldn't afford to let her live.

He followed her through the house, turning off lights as they went, the shadows growing behind them.

It was after midnight. If she took him straight to the urn he could finish everything and be out on the first plane in the morning, making sure the Shirosama knew what Takashi was taking with him, and what he'd disposed of. Until this afternoon they would have had no idea who was helping their quarry, but now Heinrich Muehler would be able to describe him, and there were enough powerful people in the True Realization Fellowship to be able to put two and two together. There'd be people looking for him, even when he was traveling alone, and while he could easily transform himself into one of his alter egos, he'd still need to be very careful.

No, he couldn't afford to be sentimental over a soft little gaijin with more brains than common sense.

It was chilly in the night air, and Summer shivered when they stepped outside. He resisted the impulse to give her his jacket—he couldn't afford to risk getting blood on it. He asked no questions as she led him around the side of the house. With anyone else, he might wonder if he were being drawn into a trap, but with Summer he had no such fears. He was the danger in their relationship, not her.

Technically, they had no relationship, other than hunter and prey. Captor and quarry. Perp and vic, as they said on cop shows. Murderer and corpse.

They reached Micah's old garage, its tile roof partially gone. Whatever was inside would be exposed to the elements. Was she lying again?

There was only one car inside the structure, a large, anonymous shape covered by a tarp and a pile of dead leaves.

She headed straight for the hidden car and pulled the tarp off. For a moment he stood in awe. He had no particular reverence for cars, having always been more interested in performance than beauty, but he would have had to be a fool not to recognize the beast in front of him.

"This was here when Micah bought the house. It was just a pile of rust, but Micah worked on it for the past five years." Her voice cracked for a moment, but there were no tears. Only pain. "Poor Micah," she said in a whisper.

"You'd be better off worrying about yourself," Taka said.

It was a Duisenberg, circa 1935, perfectly preserved, the chrome shining, the body a dark, rich blue, the seats a matching leather. "Does it run?"

She opened the side door, not looking back at him. "Does it matter? We're not about to drive it, anyway. It probably goes fifty miles an hour if we're lucky." She disappeared into the back seat, her legs still sticking out, and he could see her butt wiggling as she searched around for something. And for some damn reason he got hard.

He leaned back against the wall behind him, waiting. It was a waste of time being angry with himself—he had a healthy appreciation of female flesh, and while he'd never considered himself much of a connoisseur of women's butts, there was no denying that hers was delectable, trapped in that pair of faded black jeans.

But getting hot for someone he was about to kill was someplace he didn't want to go. He'd known men, and women as well, who enjoyed sex and death, who got turned on by the thought of killing someone and would combine both acts. That kind of thinking, and reacting, was the first step toward a sickness of the soul that was terminal. Summer Hawthorne was a job, off-limits, and if she emerged from that behemoth of a car with the Hayashi Urn in her hand then she would then become a casualty of war.

And he could go out and see if he could find a deceptively fragile, blond gaijin with pale skin, freckles and a delectable butt, and get his rocks off that way. Saner, healthier, straightforward. He was, after all, a practical man.

She slid farther inside the car, thankfully, so he no longer had to watch her wiggling ass, and a moment later flipped over so that she was sitting on the floor inside. "Got it," she said.

He was not a happy man. They could have searched all night and he would have been content. They could have driven south and tracked down her sister. But push had come to shove, and he had no more reason for delaying. He had orders, a job to do, and he was going to do it.

He pushed away from the wall of the garage and approached the Duisenberg, filling the doorway, blocking out the light from outside. He could see two things inside the huge old car. She'd placed the long-lost Hayashi Urn on the leather seat beside her, and even in shadow it was beautiful. And then he looked at her, forgetting all about the ancient ceramic he'd been tracking for months, and other people had been tracking for centuries.

She had blue eyes, not quite the intense shade of the urn, but bright blue nevertheless, and her wet hair was beginning to dry. She sat there on the floor of the car, unmoving, as if she knew what was coming now that she'd finally given him what he wanted.

He had no choice. He climbed into the car as she tried to back up against the far door, and there was no missing the panic in her eyes. She knew.

And he couldn't let that stop him.

Jillian Marie Lovitz, only child of Raphael and Lianne Lovitz, stuck out her thumb. Her big sister would be horrified at the thought of Jilly hitchhiking, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and at the moment Jilly was most definitely a beggar, with exactly thirty-seven cents in her pocket.

Why anyone ever thought she'd just go off with the Petersens was something she couldn't quite fathom. Whoever came up with this little idea knew absolutely nothing about her.

Few people did know her, with the exception of her half sister, Summer. Her parents were blindly adoring, and she was very fond of them in a maternal way. Her mother had the intellect of a toaster oven, her father could only concentrate on making money, and both of them thought their little darling was an innocent princess.

Jilly hadn't been innocent since she was twelve years old and walked in on her mother doing the gardener. While her father watched.

Neither of them had seen her, thank heavens. And she'd reacted like a child, running away to stay with Summer until she could begin to see things clearly.

Summer had always been more like a mother to her, even though she was only twelve years older. Lianne tended to see her older daughter as a liability, disputing her own claims of youth, and her younger daughter as a fashion accessory. Ralph didn't pay much attention at all, except to give Jilly money.