Sake Bomb (38 page)

She shouldn’t have stopped; should have kept
walking like she’d been doing the past two hours. But seeing the
girls cowering beneath their attacker’s raised hand wasn’t
something she could just ignore. At least that’s how she
rationalized darting into the darkened alley. Truth was, enough
adrenaline coursed through her veins to make her feel damn-near
invincible.

Too bad she hadn’t counted on the second
guy. Heavyset and reeking of grease. No idea what he looked
like—the coward attacked from behind, pressing his sweaty cheek to
hers and trying to grind his pelvis into her ass. His bulbous
paunch preventing that contact. Arms held overhead in a vice-like
grip that irritated her shoulder, his meaty palms pressed against
the base of her skull.

“Not so tough without your bodyguards,” Koji
said, standing so close she could smell the ass he must have eaten
for dinner. Blood seeped from the split in his lip where she’d
gotten a couple punches in first. He flicked Xander’s tilted
baseball cap from her head, let it fall to the ground. Wormy hands
groped her thighs as he searched her, finding both her cell phone
and Fay’s. That was all she’d grabbed when she left the hotel room.
No wallet, no ID. She’d hopped into dry clothes and left. Sure, she
would have to go back and face Xander’s anger at some point in
order to get her gear, but first she intended to search Fay’s phone
without the oppressiveness of his “caring.”

Or the confusion that came from knowing he
did.

Xander was playing her, right? He had to be.
Why would he let her take Harvey when he was in it for 6 million?
How could he care about her? Why
would
he care about her?
Simple. He wouldn’t.

He didn’t.

Greasy’s grip tightened. Were these guys
still here?

Koji tried turning her phone on and got
nothing. Fay’s screen lit, and he stuffed it into his back pocket.
A crooked smile on his thin lips, he ran his fingers down the side
of her face and she jerked away.

“What’s your name?”

She gave a bored sigh; took inventory of
Koji, looking for a bulge that might indicate a weapon. Not too
surprising there wasn’t one. Koji was all bark.

Kizzie was a biter.

“Your buddy’s gonna let me go. Then you’re
gonna give me those phones back….and stop hitting those girls.”

Koji frowned, looked at a spot over her
shoulder, and then he and his friend laughed. Raising her phone, he
crashed it down on the ground. It didn’t shatter. He tried to help
it along, stomping on the casing repeatedly. “Oops.”

She inhaled a breath, expanding her lungs as
far as she could.

“Think we should—”

Kizzie let her legs go weak, dropping her
center of mass at the same time she forced the breath out. Greasy
lowered too, chuckling until her hand found his middle finger where
it was clamped on her neck. She gripped it and pulled back hard. He
cried out; his hold slipped.

She sidestepped and angled away; faced him
in a half-crouch. His finger firmly in her control, Kizzie landed
leopard blows into his groin, three quick, cutting strikes. He
doubled over, howling in pain. She twisted his arm back and up at
the same time, rammed her knee into his diaphragm.

Greasy crumpled like a tin can, large body
jiggling on impact with the ground.

Grinning wickedly she turned to Koji. He
backed away a few steps and then paused. Good. Kizzie wasn’t in the
mood for chasing.

Koji went all Xena Warrior Princess, a
high-pitched scream accompanying his charge, arms flailing wildly.
She dodged his poor swipes, spun behind him and shoved him forward
with the heel of her sneaker on his ass. He stumbled, regained his
balance and came back for more.

Kizzie ran straight at him, dropped her
shoulder at the last second and dove into his chest. Koji lost
touch with the ground half a second and then Kizzie slammed his
back against the asphalt. Kneeling over him, she drew back her fist
and connected with his jaw, the punch so hard she slid off and
tagged concrete.

Another throw and she stood, kicked him
squarely between the legs. Then she yanked one arm, pulled it and
twisted.

“The thing about arms,” Kizzie said,
breathing hard, “they’re
really
hard to break. Take a lot of
time and torque.”

She turned some more, gripped his wrist and
forced his hand open. “Fingers though…”

Kizzie pulled back until she heard a
disturbing snap. Koji screamed bloody murder, the two girls joined
him.

“He told you I was the mean one,” Kizzie
hissed in his ear. She rummaged through his pockets, reclaimed
Fay’s phone and found his cheap wallet. Inside were three ¥10,000
notes—one disappeared into her pocket. “For my trouble. Now stop
hitting those girls.”

One last kick in the side set to the
soundtrack of Koji’s wails, Kizzie dusted off the black cap and
slammed it down on her head. Her phone was on the ground, casing
scraped. It survived much harsher working conditions than a couple
stomps from a wannabe pimp.

A harsh warning for the two girls and the
money divided between them, Kizzie took off.

Ten minutes later, she slipped into a room
in one of the “nicer” love motels—paid for courtesy of Koji—afraid
to grope around for the light switch. The things that went on in
these places could be heard at that exact moment in the form of
pounding against the thin walls. A bed in a nearby room squeaked. A
woman hit a falsetto and someone grunted.

Lovely.

Apart from the live baby-making concert, the
room was nothing spectacular: a desk, two chairs, and a queen-size
bed all glowing a garish yellow under the poor lighting. Her gaze
dusted over the comforter. Regardless of how tired she was, sleep
was a negatory.

With the surge of endorphins waning, her
hand throbbed. The knuckles were scraped and fat with bits of dirt
embedded in the torn skin. A mini-fridge sat beneath the table
holding the TV, an old tube set she also had no intention of
touching. Tossing the ball cap on the desktop, she checked the
fridge for a frozen section—no luck—but did find a pint of cheap
saké
that was relatively cool. It’d do.

The tumblers shifted in the door lock,
snapping Kizzie’s head up. Her heart rate followed. Whoever was out
there looking for a fun time had come to the wrong place.

The knob turned.

Bottle in hand, Kizzie darted to the door on
silent feet, pressing her back against the wall. Sticky. She pushed
the thought aside, lifted the weapon. Waited.

The door cracked open, stopped mid
swing.

“Classy digs.” Phil said poked his head
around the edge. “May I?” He stepped all the way inside and smiled,
closing the door behind him.

Kizzie came from her sad little hiding spot
and went to the table, Phil on her heels. Frowning, she picked up
the cap, folded down the lining. Nothing.

She watched him as her fingers traced each
of the seams where the triangular panels met. All were empty except
the last, which had a needle-thin ridge hidden inside. She followed
that to the flat silver disc just beneath the button crown.

Phil hadn’t made an attempt to stop her when
she stormed out, just tossed her the cap. In her haste she didn’t
even think about it. Stupid.

More interesting than her stupidity, why did
Phil have a tracer on Xander?

He dropped into the spare seat and reached
for her phone. Popping the flap on the side, he ejected a small
black square from a port. Had it been spyware or a hack into her
phone, a signal would have been relayed to Headquarters two seconds
before the device wiped its hard drive. Since her phone was working
fine, it could only be one other thing. A tracer.

She
was
losing her edge.

“Don’t feel bad. It’s short range and I
almost didn’t get it in, you flew out of that bathroom so damn
fast… Jacket collar.”

She lifted a brow.

“That’s all, I swear.”

“Your word’s a little…” She wobbled her
injured hand side to side. Then she located the tracer. Bad enough
she’d been tagged, now her swollen knuckles would hardly bend.
After a few attempts, she plucked the little bugger off and
returned it to him. “Why are you here?”

“Sure you want to be drunk for this?” He
nodded toward the
saké.

“Maybe.” Clearly being sober didn’t benefit
her rationale. Being tipsy might. “You know what they say: ‘What
saké
will not cure, there is no cure for.’”

“That’d be whiskey.”

“Don’t quibble, handsome. It’s been a really
long night.”

Phil grinned, reached into his pocket. “He
was pissed when you left Oman.”

“I have a job to—”

“Don’t defend yourself, not to me,” he said,
holding up his other hand. “But job or not, that doesn’t change how
X feels about you, Kizzie. So, you can come back with me, leave
this…uh…” he made a show of looking around, “palace. Or…”

A small blue booklet came across the table,
a plastic card protruding from one end.

“Still want to go, now’s your chance. The
gift card won’t be traced—you’ll have to take my word on it. Get
yourself a ticket out of here. Sorry I couldn’t grab your gear, but
anything else he’d notice. I’ll hold onto it for you…and then maybe
one day you’ll send me an address and I’ll ship it.

“Your call, Kizzie. Come back with me, or go
now and be free of him.”

That’s exactly what she needed. Forget about
what she thought she wanted and focus.

Track the Mistress.

Stop Harvey.

Get her edge back.

Be a good agent…Be a good agent…Be a good
agent….

She fingered the passport, flipped back the
cover and stared at the picture. Her but not her. The wig, the
heavy layer of makeup. The name: Tina Thomas this go ‘round.

Soluble…

Soulless.

“Why are you helping me?”

Phil touched his forefinger to a spot over
his brow, right where is scar began. Then he dragged it slowly down
the marred skin, across his eye and cheek. “A present…from Xander.”
He glanced away looking uneasy, met her stare again. “Maybe I do
want to walk away from this one day without looking over my
shoulder.”

The banging against the wall picked up
again, a discordant rhythm that didn’t match the high-pitched
screams.

“Back in Paris, if I wanted to stay, would
you have shown me Xander’s wife?”

“Who?”

“Hottie Mc’Hot Mama? At the café?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re
talking about.” Something like a smile hovered around his mouth.
“Now I have a question for you. The woman at the apartment. You all
right with that?”

Phil appeared genuinely concern. Kizzie was
no saint. People sometimes left her no choice but to take them out;
not her favorite part of the job—didn’t mean she wasn’t good at it.
But no one had ever asked her how she felt after.

And after that first time, she really didn’t
feel much at all.

She nodded.

“And Harvey? You walking away from it?”

She shook her head.

“Thought not. Akari’s laptop—she worked as
senior logistics manager for Hanabi. A shipment headed to the US
landed in California about a week ago. The final destination was
somewhere in Kentucky.” He pulled a folded page from another pocket
and handed it to her. “Driver never made it out of Missouri. Blunt
force trauma to the head. Then they ran him over. His haul was
ransacked.”

She studied the data on the page but didn’t
really see it. The silence stretched until Phil rapped his knuckles
on the table and stood.

“You need anything, you know how to reach
me. Take care of yourself, Kiz.”

In a half daze, Kizzie stared from the
passport to the card. She curled and uncurled her sore fingers
around the glass of lukewarm rice wine. Leaving had been the only
choice all along. Now was as good a time as any.

Footfalls brought her back from the future,
and she glanced up to see Phil’s retreating back.

The urge to go with him hit hard, but the
reminder of what she’d face on her return kept her rooted to the
seat. “You did warn me, right? No competing with a force like
Xander?”

“Unless you’re Kizzie Baldwin,” Phil said,
turning at the door. “Believe me, sweetheart, I know everything
you’ve been through, you can handle Xander. I was a little worried
about what he’d do to you, but now I’m worried about what he’s
doing to himself.”

M
aster Duquesne
stood at the table across the room, his back to her, deep in focus
on whatever was before him. Sumi couldn’t tell from the distance,
but she’d been staring since the man named Phil had come into the
room ten minutes earlier. They’d given her meaningful looks, sizing
her up, but neither spoke.

That scared her.

“
Be sure to watch this one,” the Mistress
said. The hate in her eyes was obvious, and beneath that something
like fear. “This…
Yūrei
. This…
Privideniye
. He is a
very dangerous man…”

The American.

Country of origin, name, and then face.
That’s how she’d been made to remember the men Sacha Sokoviev would
one day contact to sell the bomb. The photo of Master Duquesne was
from a surveillance camera at Papa Nikolay’s home in St.
Petersburg. Even in the grainy snapshot the American had a
commanding presence. Sumi would know him as a man of dominance if
she’d met him on the street.

She wished she had. Maybe this wouldn’t have
happened.

But if she had, she’d have missed those
precious moments with her Mistress Shinari.

“
What is the meaning of rope,
pet?”

“
It binds my Mistress and me,” Sumi said,
her throat clogged with tears. “From my Mistress it is a promise of
protection, love, and devotion. From me, a promise of obedience,
love and trust. Promises that cannot be broken.”