Katana (32 page)

“Sure thing. What about dinner? Have you eaten yet?”

At the mention of food, my stomach roared to life. In all the excitement, I’d completely forgotten about eating. “That would be great. Could you bring extra for my friends?”

Whitley promised to grab everyone something from a drive-thru. After he took down directions to Braden’s house, he hung up.

“Well, this is going to be awkward,” I said, setting my phone down.

“Why’s that?” Braden asked.

I shrugged. “This whole Whitley thing. He’s such a sweet guy, and I had a really good time with him.” I shook my head. “Things just got so complicated, and now, with Kim—” I let the sentence hang as I lost the words to explain.

“Just be brutally honest, Ri-Ri,” Quentin said. “And when you leave him wounded and broken,” he swung his arms through the air, “I’ll be there to pick up the pieces.”

“Thanks, Q,” I grumbled.

He smiled. “I’m always there for you.”

“Well, I’m going to call Kim and let him know what’s up,” Braden said. He pulled out his phone and dialed a number. After waiting a moment, he touched the screen and ended the call. “Voicemail.”

“Is that good or bad?” I asked.

He shrugged, but his eyes couldn’t mask his concern. “Neither. Kim probably left his cell phone in the car.” He he touched the phone’s screen, dialing again. Another moment passed, and again he disconnected. “Drew, too,” he mumbled.

The knot in my stomach pulled tighter. “What do we do?”

“The only thing we
can
do,” he said. “Wait.”

36

R
ileigh, wake up. Whitley’s here.”

I opened my eyes to find Braden crouched in front of me. Startled, I pushed myself up from my slumped position. I’d just wanted to rest a moment. I hadn’t expected to fall asleep.

Whitley and his amazing dimples flooded my vision as he knelt down in front of me. “Hey there, Sleeping Beauty.” He held up a grease-stained paper bag. “I brought sustenance.”

I smiled at him as I stretched. “Thanks. That’s really thoughtful.”

“No problem.” He smiled and smoothed his hands along tied-back hair. He looked even more like a cover model with his chiseled cheekbones exposed. “It’s the least I can do. I guess you’ve had one hell of a week, huh?”

“That’s the truth.” I took the paper cup he offered me and sucked a long sip from the straw. I wrinkled my nose. “Is this diet?”

Whitley shook his head. “It shouldn’t be. I made sure to ask for regular.”

“Mine tasted funny, too,” Q said from his perch on the couch next to Braden. “I bet the syrup went flat.”

I shrugged and pulled a hamburger from the bag.

Whitley stood up and sat next to me. “Care to tell me what’s going on?” He placed a hand on my knee. “I’ve been really worried about you.”

I stopped chewing and stared at his hand. My skin underneath his palm crawled. Weird. I squirmed away, trying to mask the movement by placing my soda on the coffee table. When I sat back, he slid his arm around
my shoulder.

Quentin and Braden exchanged a glance.

No longer hungry, I balled up the rest of my burger inside the wrapper. “I guess I have a psycho secret admirer.” I stood up and threw the wad into the paper bag on the coffee table. Why was Whitley acting so weird? He was a perfect gentleman on our date, and now he wouldn’t keep his hands off of me.

“What makes you think this guy’s a psycho?” Whitley asked.

I sat back down next to him, making sure I was just out of groping range. “Well, you should know. You received a note, didn’t you?”

He nodded without looking at me. Instead, he reached over and stroked a lock of my hair.

“Whitley!” I jerked back. “What’s wrong with you?”

A French fry fell from Quentin’s gaping mouth.

Whitley grinned. “What do you mean?”

I stood up, but my world tilted off balance. I immediately sat back down to keep from falling over.

“Oh no, Rileigh.”

I glanced over at Braden, who had pressed his fingers against his forehead. Quentin lay draped across his lap. “We’ve been drugged,” he slurred. He slumped backward like a puppet cut free from its strings and braced himself on one arm. “We need … ” But he never finished. His head flopped back against the couch, unconscious.

I thought I heard Whitley say something, but I was sliding so far inside my body I couldn’t hear anything over the beating of my heart. I tried to stand, but only managed to swing my legs uselessly off to the side.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Whitley leaning back against the couch, very much enjoying the show. I tried to speak, but my mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton. Whatever drugs he had used, they worked fast.

I made one last effort to move but only succeeded in slumping over onto my lap. Slowly, my own weight pulled me over and I crumpled into a heap on the floor. The last thing I saw was Whitley’s reaching hand.

37

I
opened my eyes to black. Was I dreaming? The floor underneath me jumped and I hit my head on something slender and metal. I would have cried out, but my mouth was covered with duct tape. Nope. Definitely not dreaming. Locked in a car trunk. Crap.

Still groggy, I assessed the situation. I tried my arms—they were taped behind my back. My legs—taped too. This just got better and better.

The car slowed, the tires crunching over gravel before coming to a complete stop. The engine died, followed by the slam of a car door. With each footstep in my direction, my heart skipped a beat.

The trunk opened and Whitley loomed over me, framed by a starless sky. “We’re home,” he sang. His eyes were wide with excitement. He pulled me from the trunk and slung me over his shoulder like a sack. My heart sank as he walked up the short familiar sidewalk to the front door. He was telling the truth—I really
was
home.

Whitley walked right in. The door was unlocked, almost like it was waiting for him. He chuckled. “Bet you never thought I’d carry you across the threshold, huh?” He hummed the wedding march as he pushed the door shut with his back. When the latch clicked, he dropped me onto the floor. Waves of pain danced across my arm as my elbow took the brunt of the fall.

Ignoring my groan, Whitley stepped over me and paced around the room. “Don’t have much time. Need to prepare.” He paused, looked at me, and then vanished into the kitchen.

Once he was out of sight, I frantically tried to free myself from the duct tape, but only succeeded in tearing my skin. The sounds of my screams were barely audible through my covered mouth.

Whitley returned with a shoebox in his hand. He looked nothing like the guy I had gone to the coffeehouse with. His eyes were tiny black dots surrounded by an ocean of white. When he knelt next to me, I saw little beads of sweat perched on his upper lip. He dug into the box. “I need—I need … Aha!” He pulled out a syringe.

A needle! My heart somersaulted before swan diving into the pit of my stomach. Samurai or not, I simply could not handle needles. With every ounce of strength I could muster, I tried to break free from my bonds.

“Shh.” Whitley patted my convulsing body. “You need to relax. That’s why I’m giving this to you.”

Realizing I was wasting valuable energy, I stilled. As the needle drew closer, I closed my eyes, whimpering when the pointed edge bit into my skin. I inhaled sharply as a low burning sensation followed. The world went fuzzy.

I expected to fall unconscious, but instead I felt myself detach and float away from my body. I could see and hear, but my arms and legs were as useless as the air around me.

“There.” Whitley patted my head. “All better, see? Now I’m going to take the tape off of your mouth, so you need to promise to be good, okay? If I leave it on and you vomit, you’ll choke and die.”

I hoped my look was as dirty as I wanted it to be.

He picked at a corner of the tape, then ripped it violently from my face. Luckily, I was too numb to care. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” Whitley said, smiling. “All this time and you were right under my nose.” He playfully jabbed my shoulder. “I can’t believe I ever thought that
she
could be the one.” He looked over his shoulder and I followed his gaze to find a figure, limp on my couch.

Michelle! Despite the drugs working to keep me numb, I felt my veins frost over with fear. A dried ribbon of blood trailed down her arm and stained a deep crimson pool in the tapioca-colored carpet Debbie took two weeks to pick out. I wondered how anyone could lose that much blood and still—no, I couldn’t even consider it.

I stared at Michelle, waiting for a sign that she was okay. She didn’t move. And each second that passed, I felt an icicle hammer deeper into my heart. Michelle had to be alive. She
had
to. Even though she yammered like a three-year-old on espresso, she was my friend now, and I couldn’t let her die.

And then, as if my will alone made it happen, Michelle’s pinky finger twitched.

The tightening in my chest relaxed, but a sliver of fear remained. How long could Michelle hang on? I was no doctor, but I knew enough to know that she needed to get to a hospital. And by the looks of it, the sooner the better. I tried focusing all of my energy into my right hand. Seconds later, I was able to curl my index finger.

Whitley shook his head, pulling free from his own thoughts. “I’ve been looking for Senshi for a long time. When I heard about Michelle, the young martial arts prodigy from St. Louis, I had to come and investigate. But then there was another girl, a ditzy skater girl who fought off three attackers in a mall parking lot. You see my dilemma?” He looked thoughtful. “Two girls and only one can be Senshi. As you can see, though, I’ve already ruled out Michelle. I wonder what I’ll find inside of
you?”

He pushed me onto my side and unwound the tape from my wrists and ankles. “We have so much to do,” he mumbled. “The others are bound to come looking for you once they’ve figured out what’s happened. I bet your little friends are already awake.”

Another knot in my stomach loosened. If Braden and Quentin were awake, then they were alive.

“I don’t know how long it’ll be before they figure out where I’ve taken you, but by then it won’t matter. I’ll be more than ready to deal with them.” His lips curled into a sinister grin as he discarded the tape over his shoulder. “Yes, we have much to do.”

He picked me up and walked into my bedroom where he laid me on the bed on top of Nana’s handmade quilt. My throat tightened painfully around the lump of fear wedged there. Still unable to move, I glanced around for anything that might be of help. Shawnee, the stuffed Labrador on my dresser, smiled back. I was on my own.

Whitley knelt down by the bed, folding his arms on the mattress and resting his chin on them. How did I ever find him charming? He smiled and a shiver ran down the length of my spine. I thought about that—I could feel my spine. That had to be a good sign.

“Do you know who I am, Rileigh?”

I glared at him.

“I mean, besides the person you know as Whitley Noble. A long time ago you knew me by another name.”

My breath caught in my throat as the realization poured over me like a bucket of ice water.

“Zeami.” He exaggerated the name, as if savoring it. “Do you remember me?”

I continued to stare at him, hoping he wouldn’t realize that I was now curling and uncurling my index finger.

“No?” he asked in mock surprise. “Well, then, maybe this will help.” He ran a finger down the length of a glittering pink birthmark that crossed his left cheek. It was so slight that I had never noticed it before. “You don’t recognize that either?” He rose from the floor and perched on the edge of the bed. The skin crawled along my thigh, closest to where he sat. I welcomed the sensation.

“Funny thing about birthmarks,” he continued. “They are really scars carried over from past lives. This mark here,” he touched his left cheek, “was inflicted by you during the time we spent together in Japan.” He smiled. “But don’t you go worrying your pretty little head about it. I like it.” His eyes narrowed and his voice dripped with sarcasm. “I love waking up every morning and looking in the mirror, only to be reminded of you.” He spat through clenched teeth. “Every day. For the rest of my life.”

He reached forward and pulled up my tank top, exposing my midriff. I tried to recoil, but only succeeded in tightening my abs. This was also a good sign.

Whitley nodded to himself and circled a finger around a small birthmark to the right of my belly button. I was thankful I couldn’t feel his touch.

“This,” he said, jabbing the brown discoloration with his finger, “this proves it. Michelle doesn’t have a birthmark on her stomach.”

That didn’t make any sense. How did a blemish prove anything?

He continued to stare, as if mesmerized. “I can’t believe I was so off base,” he mumbled. “I really should have known, after what you did to Tony during our date.”

Tony … Omigod, he meant Devil-boy!