Ice Blue (21 page)

"What harm can an ancient piece of ceramic do?"

He leaned against the wall. "Don't be naive. The urn is nothing more than a catalyst, a symbol. The current Shirosama and his followers plan to take it back to Japan, find the ruins of the temple and the remains of the original Shiro-sama and reunite the bones and the urn."

"So?"

"And then, according to legend, the new Shirosama will ascend in full power to the universe, Armageddon will follow, and the world will be cleansed by fire and blood."

"So they put the bones in the urn and nothing happens," she said, turning to look at Taka in the shadowy room. "And then everyone goes home disappointed and no harm done. Unless you actually believe in doomsday prophets?"

"The problem with doomsday prophets, particularly the ones we have nowadays, is they don't believe in their destiny enough not to give it a little help. Reuniting the urn and the bones will signal a wave of mass destruction that will be very hard to stop. You know what religious fanatics are capable of—the whole world has been watching what's going on in the Middle East, and trust me, the Japanese have always been more than ready to die in the service of their master."

"So you smash the urn and everyone lives happily ever after. Problem solved."

Easier said than done. Ostensibly, he could kill an innocent young woman if he had to, but he couldn't bring himself to destroy such a singularly beautiful piece of Japanese history. It was a simple fact.

"Could
you
destroy it?" he countered.

Her eyes met his in the darkness, and then she turned away again, facing the window. "I don't suppose I could. And you think I hold the key to where the ancient shrine is located? I've never been to Japan, even though I've wanted to go. It was something I was going to do with Hana, and when she died I just couldn't face the idea of it. Maybe if we'd gone she would have told me, but as it was she never said a thing about her family history. She didn't like to talk about it. The war was too painful."

"Nevertheless, she left the knowledge with you. In the book, the kimono. Somewhere."

Summer swiveled around on the bench, silhouetted against the open window and the moonlight. He couldn't see her face, and he didn't know whether that was good or bad. "And what did they tell
you
?"

"We'll figure it out," he replied enigmatically.

She turned away from him, and he fought back his sudden guilt. If she ran, if the Shirosama caught her, then the cult leader know that he wasn't looking for just the urn and the girl. There were other pieces to the puzzle.

"And then what will you do?"

"Stop him before he can set off a wave of attacks that would make 9/11 look like a minor incident."

"Why doesn't someone just kill him, if he's that dangerous?"

"The only thing worse than a cult leader demigod is a martyr. He has hundreds of thousands of followers around the world and the resources and equipment to create deadly havoc. His murder would signal the start of it all. The death toll might be lower—tens of thousands instead of hundreds of thousands—but it's still unacceptable."

She was silent for a long moment. "How high is the death toll now? There's Micah and the followers you…killed. And then maybe there's me and Jilly. How many will die before he's stopped?"

"I don't know," Taka said simply, not denying it.

She turned back to the window. "Tell me when you're ready to go," she said, dismissing him.

Run, damn it! Get the hell away from me while you can
. But she didn't move, and he could see defeat in the line of her body, her narrow shoulders. Didn't she realize she wasn't going anywhere? He didn't need her anymore. He had what he wanted. The safest, smartest thing to do would be to permanently silence her, and he was a safe, smart man.

He left her there, heading back into the bedroom to retrieve the antique kimono. He stripped a sheet off the bed to wrap it in, doing his best to clear his mind of anything but what he had to do. He could picture Summer in that huge old bed, sleeping, her hair loose around her. He still didn't know what his damn problem was—him or her. She was nothing, nobody, merely a part of a difficult job, and yet she got under his skin. Maybe he could blame it on the time he'd spent recovering from his last botched assignment.

Or maybe it was simply that the thought of killing an innocent woman was repugnant. Killing young women wasn't part of his normal duties. It was perfectly natural that he'd feel conflicted.

She was still sitting in the living room, staring out into the night, when he returned from the car. The rain was even heavier, blocking out the moon, and there were deep shadows in the house. Some things were easier to do in darkness. He came up behind her, looking past her, out into the damp forest. It was a chilly night, but she had the window open, and he could hear the sound of night birds, the rustle of the wind through the trees, the soft patter of the rain.

"I love this house," she said, in a quiet voice.

Her words surprised him. She hadn't volunteered much in the way of conversation since they'd left the bedroom in that suburban house.

"It's very beautiful. Very peaceful." He wasn't wearing gloves, but it didn't matter. His fingerprints weren't on file anywhere, and he wasn't going to leave the house standing. He'd already activated the device that he'd taken from the car, so there'd be no trace of anything once it went off. They might not even be able to identify her body.

He'd be on his way to Japan by then—probably even before the smoke cleared. And he wouldn't look back.

Summer wouldn't feel a thing. He had no more excuses, no more reason to delay, and she hadn't moved, leaving him no choice. If he left her alive the brethren could get to her, find out what she knew. Once they did, the Committee would have no way of stopping them. The Shirosama had stockpiles of chemical weapons—enough sarin gas to spread through the subway systems of every major metropolitan transit systems. Biological weapons to take care of the countryside, including trucks that could spread it into the air. They'd done test runs in Nigeria, the Chiba Prefecture of Japan, one of the small Hawaiian islands and the American Southwest. No one had caught on, because of the variety—plague spores in Arizona, hemorrhagic virus in Nigeria, a virulent, fast-moving strain of TB in Hawaii. Only the best scientists worked for the Shirosama, and their results were deadly masterpieces. One small woman was not that great a price to pay to keep the world safe from that kind of disaster.

He came up behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders. He would knock her out before he broke her neck—she would never know what happened—and she'd be in her peaceful, beautiful house on the island. It wasn't her fault that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That she'd kept Hana Hayashi's secrets too well.

Summer jumped slightly when his hands touched her, and then she stilled. She was wearing that same baggy black sweatshirt, and he wanted to touch her skin. He wanted to see her in colors, something other than funereal black. But that was the last thing he needed. He could feel the tension shimmering through her, her blood racing.

And then she leaned back. She let her back rest against his legs as he stood behind her, her head against his stomach, releasing all the tension in her body as she sank back against his. She turned her head to look up at him, and in the reemerging moonlight he could see her eyes clearly. Fearless, accepting.

The feel of her body against his shook him to the core. He stared down at her, his hands on her neck, and he did the unthinkable. He leaned down and put his mouth against hers.

He felt her shock vibrate through her, but she didn't pull away. She closed her eyes and let him kiss her, passive, accepting, and he realized in the short, endless time he'd known her he'd never really kissed her. Never more than the brief touch of his mouth against hers.

And suddenly that wasn't enough. It would never be enough. He stopped thinking, pulling her up from the bench and turning her in his arms. He caught her face in his hands and kissed her, full and open-mouthed, and her response was instant, powerful, the compliant woman vanishing. She put her arms around his neck, pulled him down to her and made a low sound of need as his tongue touched hers.

He picked her up, wrapping her arms and legs around him as he carried her across the darkened living room to her bedroom, setting her down on the stripped bed and covering her body with his.

Then he realized what he was doing. He started to pull away, but she clung tightly to him. "No," she whispered. "Stay with me." She tried to reach down between their bodies to touch him, but he grabbed her hand, pulling it away as he rolled off her, collapsing beside her on the bed. He couldn't do this. He didn't even understand why he'd started it, except that he'd been fighting his attraction since he'd left her alone in the bedroom that morning.

She tried to run then, too late, scrambling off the bed. But he caught her before she hit the floor, hauling her back under him, pinning her there. She closed her eyes, averting her face. "Stop it," she said.

"Stop what?"

Her eyes flew open, filled with rage and betrayal. "Stop pretending. You made your point this morning—you don't have anything more to prove. You don't want me, you can make me do anything you wish, and I'll be pathetically grateful for your attention, while you won't feel a thing…"

"You idiot," he said, his voice savage. "How blind are you?"

"Leave me alone."

He pulled her legs apart, pushing between them, fully clothed, the rigid length of his cock pressed up against her. Her eyes widened in shock.

"You can feel that, can't you? It's been like that all day. It's been like that almost since I first touched you. You make me crazy with wanting you, but right now doing what I want could get us both killed."

"No," she said. "You're lying. This morning you didn't—"

He rocked against her, and she shivered in unwilling response. "This morning I was so turned on that I came without touching myself. And five minutes later I was hard again. I need you. I need to be inside you, now, and it's too dangerous." He thrust against her, feeling the tremor of response wash over her, and he knew he couldn't stop, not until he made her come again, over and over…

She kissed him then, full and deep, wrapping her legs around his hips to bring him closer still, and the heavy material between them was maddening. He'd reached down to unzip his pants when he heard the sound of someone moving through the bushes, and he froze.

«
^
»

S
he felt the change instantly. He lifted his mouth from hers, his soft, beautiful mouth, and barely breathed the words. "Someone's out there. Stay very still."

He rolled off her, landing on the floor silently, and her body was hot and aching. Then she heard the sound as well, someone moving through the overgrown shrubbery outside. Someone was coming, and whoever it was would be even more dangerous than Taka.

"Get down!" he said, yanking her off the bed and onto the floor, shielding her body with his as something came crashing through the multipaned window. She could smell smoke, acrid, burning, filling her lungs with fire. She heard him whisper in her ear, "Get out of here!" before he leaped up, away from her.

She tried to sit up, but she couldn't stop coughing, and the smoke was too heavy to see more than a shadow play of violence. Taka moving among them, the battle a silent, deadly dance. She placed her hand on the bed, trying to pull herself to her feet, but her knees buckled beneath her and she went down again. With smoke billowing around her, she began to crawl slowly in the direction of the door.

There was a roaring in her ears, one she couldn't identify, and then she felt hands grab her—rough hands. And though her eyes were streaming from the thick smoke, she looked up and recognized one of the brethren, even dressed in uncustomary black like some bizarre ninja. He was immensely strong, and hurting her, and there was nothing she could do but let him drag her, until suddenly his face went blank, wiped clean of any expression at all, and he released her, unmoving. He collapsed in front of her, and Taka kicked him out of the way, reaching for her.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry and howl and run, with death and fire all around her, but instead she simply let him take her hand, pull her from the smoke-filled room, out into the rainy night.

The car was parked where he'd left it, with two men lying in the dirt and mud beside it. They didn't look as if they'd been touched, but they were clearly dead. Taka pointed the mobile phone at the car and the lights came on.

He kicked one man's body out of the way and opened the passenger door, pushing her inside and closing it before he moved around to the driver's side. Smoke was pouring out of her beloved cottage, but none of the intruders was following them. Taka started the car and began to pull away, and she felt the sickening thud as he drove over one of the bodies lying in the road. At the last minute he turned and pointed the cell phone at the house. A second later her cottage exploded in a ball of flames, the noise deafening. And they were speeding down the long, rutted driveway.

As they drove down the main road, they passed police and fire trucks, sirens blaring, lights flashing, paying no attention to the dark, anonymous sedan speeding in the opposite direction. At one point Summer turned back to look, and the flames were shooting high into the sky, taking her childhood with them.