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She had no idea how long she sat there, curled up in a kind of mindless panic, but at least she wasn’t crying. She never cried—not since she’d been told of her Hana’s death in a hit-and-run accident. Summer had been fifteen. That made a solid thirteen years without shedding a tear, and she intended to keep it that way.
And she’d cowered enough. She grabbed hold of the doorknob and pulled herself to her feet, steeling herself to ignore the faint tremor in her legs. She peered out the window, but there was no sign of the sleek, low-slung sports car and her nameless rescuer. He was gone. If only she could rid herself of the almost physical feel of his eyes on her, still watching her.
She switched on a light and winced in the blinding brightness. She’d be happier in shadows right now, but shadows could hide scary things, and she had no intention of being scared anymore. She’d fought that battle once before, and she wasn’t going to let herself be vulnerable again.
Her feet hurt, and she realized belatedly that sometime during the night she’d lost her shoes. They were expensive, but uncomfortable, and good riddance. She was going to strip off her clothes and throw them out, too, get rid of anything that reminded her of this hideous night. But first she was going to eat something, anything, have a glass of wine and try to rid herself of the lingering touch of his eyes, watching her.
The Ben & Jerry’s had ice crystals, the raspberry yogurt was past its due date, the cheese had mold. She couldn’t find the wine opener, and the only beer she had in the fridge was Sapporo—no thank you. She didn’t want to think about anything Japanese and she walked through her living room with eyes averted, pushing the shoji screen aside. There was nothing she wanted more than to strip off her clothes and climb into the hot tub, but Hana-san had trained her well. Summer’s feet were grass-stained and bloody, and she wanted to get the feel of the night off her before she settled into the blessed warmth of the water. She showered quickly, then climbed into the big cedar tub just outside her bedroom.
It was a blessing. She closed her eyes and let the warm, healing water flow around her. For a few minutes she didn’t have to think, didn’t have to worry. For a few blessed moments of peace she could just be.
And try to rid herself of the irrational feeling that somewhere out there he was still watching her.
For a smart woman, Summer Hawthorne was annoyingly brainless, Taka thought as he skirted the back of her bungalow. He’d already checked it out several days ago and knew just how pathetic her security was. Her house had been broken into recently, and yet she’d taken no measures to fortify the place. All three locks on the back door were easy to pick, the chain would break with one good shove and she had no outdoor security, no sensors or alarms. He could slip behind the house, disappear into the overgrown shrubbery and no one would even notice.
Her curtains were pathetic, as well. The faux-Asian synthetic rice paper shades were practically useless. She’d left the lights on in her living room and kitchen when she’d disappeared into the bathroom, and she was soaking wet and naked when she reemerged and climbed into the wooden tub, closing her eyes in obvious bliss.
So he could safely assume that she hadn’t been lying—the Hayashi Urn was nowhere near her. He’d done a fairly thorough search the last time he’d been there, though far more discreetly than the Shirosama’s goons, and he doubted he’d have missed it, though at that point he hadn’t been specifically looking for it. He’d thought it was already at the museum.
He’d been looking for any kind of clue that would lead him to the shrine. If they found it before the Shirosama managed to discover it, the Committee could stop the cult leader’s plans cold. The Shirosama needed the sacred location for his crackpot rituals, and without it he and his followers would be too superstitious to move ahead with their plans. It was only a few days till the Lunar New Year, the date the Shirosama had decreed was the most auspicious for his mysterious ritual, and at least for this year his time was running out. If they could just stall long enough, keep Summer Hawthorne and the Hayashi Urn away from him for the next few days, they’d have an entire year to figure out how to stop him.
And then there would be no need to silence her before she spoke the truth she didn’t know she had.
The urn in the museum was an excellent forgery—Taka had enough of a gift at ceramics to recognize the hand of a master. It had been an error on his part not to recognize that the ice blue glaze had been a little too uniform, but then, he’d been concentrating on other things.
Too bad he couldn’t just let it go at this point. The Shirosama would steal the fake from the museum, never knowing the difference, but he still needed Summer Hawthorne. In truth, she might be the more valuable part of the equation, and Taka knew what his orders were. If necessary, he was to destroy a priceless piece of Japanese art, culture and history, and execute the woman who held the key to where it belonged. And he wasn’t supposed to think twice about it.
It was the “if necessary” part that was the problem. The Committee, and the ruthlessly practical Madame Lambert, trusted him to make that judgment call. But he wasn’t quite sure he could trust himself at this point.
Because he didn’t want to kill Summer Hawthorne.
If she was found floating in her hot tub, the Shirosama would know there was nothing he could do, and he’d be stopped cold.
It was simple. Practical. Necessary. Except that this scenario meant the Hayashi Urn would stay lost.
The bowl would stay in one piece, however. And sooner or later, maybe decades from now, maybe after they were all long dead, it would reappear. That knowledge should be enough to satisfy the committee.
Taka took less than thirty seconds to pick the locks. He moved through the house in complete silence—he could come up on her, push her under the water, and she’d never have a chance.
Drowning wasn’t a good choice. He wouldn’t be able to make it look like an accident, it took too damn long and she’d be frightened. He didn’t want to scare her if he could help it. He just wanted it over, if that’s what had to be.
She was sitting in the tub, her back to him, her long hair loose, dark with water. She was humming, some tuneless little song that was making this whole fucking thing even harder, but he couldn’t let himself hesitate. He moved so fast she didn’t have time to turn around, to know he was there, sliding his hand under her thick veil of hair, finding the right spot and pressing, hard. She was unconscious in a matter of seconds, and he pushed her down on her back in the water, holding her there.
She lay still beneath his hands, her hair fanning out around her, her face still and peaceful and eerily beautiful; he knew she couldn’t feel a thing.
But he couldn’t do it.
He hauled her out of the tub, a naked, dripping deadweight, and threw her over his shoulder. He didn’t know how much water she’d swallowed, only that it wasn’t enough to kill her. He tossed her on the bed, rifled through her drawers and grabbed whatever clothes seemed suitable. All black—she didn’t seem to own anything in color, including her underwear. He was about to dress her when he heard the noise outside. The Shirosama already knew he’d lost his quarry, and he’d sent new stooges after her.
Taka wrapped Summer’s unconscious body in the bedspread, tossing the dark clothes into the cocoon before he lifted her again. She was damn heavy; American women, no matter how thin, always seemed to weigh more than other women. Maybe they simply had bigger bones. Not that Summer Hawthorne was a delicate flower. He’d been working, but an important part of his job was observation, and Summer Hawthorne naked had a soft, curvy body, not his usual type of woman.
He shifted the weight, tossing her over his shoulder again, and a moment later he was gone into the night, as the white-robed brethren broke in the front door.
Summer was cold, wet, miserable and totally disoriented. She was immobilized, moving fast and she felt like she was choking, coughing up water. When she could finally catch her breath she tried to push the wet hair out of her face, only to find her arms trapped at her sides. She shook her head, realizing in sudden horror that she was back in that damn car with that damn man, hurtling through the night once more.
“What the hell …?” she said weakly, struggling. She was wrapped in her bedspread, her arms at her sides, the seat belt strapped around her, and the man driving didn’t even glance at her.
“You had some unwanted visitors. I figured you were better off with me than the holy brothers.”
She tried to speak, coughing instead, the spasms racking her body. “They must have tried to kill me,” she managed to choke out. “How did you know?”
“I was keeping an eye on things. I didn’t think they’d give up that easily.”
She was silent for a moment. “How many of them did you kill?”
He glanced over at her. “You think I’m a cold-blooded killer?”
“I have no idea who or what you are.”
“Takashi O’Brien. I work for the Japanese Department of Antiquities. We’ve been looking for the Hayashi Urn for a long, long time.”
She blinked. He didn’t exactly fit her idea of a Japanese bureaucrat, but then, nothing was fitting her preconceived notions today. “Why didn’t you just come to the Sansone and ask if we knew anything?”
“We had no interest in drawing the attention of the True Realization Fellowship. We needed to secure it before they could get their hands on it.”
“Why?” Her teeth were chattering. He reached over and switched on the heat, and she glanced at the dashboard clock. It was just after 1:00 a.m. It had been less than three hours since she’d left the museum. Three hours to change a lifetime.
“You can worry about that later. In the meantime we need to get you someplace safe and warm.”
“And dry,” she said. “And dressed,” she added in sudden horror. “I’m not wearing anything under this, am I?”
“Since you don’t make it a habit to bathe in your clothes, then yes, you’re naked. I grabbed some clothes for you when I got you out of there—they’re tucked somewhere between you and the bedspread.”
She wasn’t cold now, she was hot. For reasons she didn’t want to think about she tended to be extremely inhibited, more so since her mother had always made it a practice to prance her perfect body around the house in various stages of undress, particularly if there happened to be men around. And the thought of this exquisite, enigmatic man hauling her own wet, naked body around was enough to make Summer wish those monsters had ended up drowning her, after all.
Except then she would have been naked and floating in her tub. Please, God, if I’m going to die, could I at least do it with my clothes on? she begged. Particularly if the oddly named Takashi O’Brien was going to be there.
Though if he were around, chances were she wasn’t going to die. He’d saved her twice. Whether he admitted it or not, he was her guardian angel, and she was going to have to get over the fact that he’d seen her naked.
“Okay,” she said in a hollow voice. He was once more driving like a bat out of hell, and she had no choice but to hang on. “Where are we going?”
“My hotel.”
He was protecting her, she reminded herself, squashing down the needless additional panic. “And I’m supposed to walk in wearing only a bedspread?” she said.
“I told you, I brought some clothes. You can get dressed while I drive.”
She glanced behind her, but there was no back seat in this tiny sports car. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Take me outside the city and I’ll go change in the bushes.”
“I’ve already seen you, Summer,” he said in a bored voice. Unfortunately, that didn’t help.
“Then you know you’re not being deprived of anything spectacular. Find me a darkened street and some bushes and I’ll be fine.”
He glanced over at her, and for a moment she thought he was about to argue. She was going to forestall him when she started coughing again, finally leaning back against the leather seat, exhausted.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll find you some bushes.” She must have imagined the odd note of guilt in his soft, emotionless voice.
What did he have to feel guilty about? He’d saved her, again.
Hadn’t he?
4
His holiness, the Shirosama of the True Realization Fellowship, sat in meditation, considering his options. His practice was a far cry from the traditional forms. When he freed his mind the visions would come, the plans would form and true enlightenment would beckon like a bright white light.
He knew what he had to do to attain that permanent state, and the thousands of faithful were well trained, well organized to follow in his ways. He had the best scientists, the best doctors, the best soldiers, and the supplies were stockpiled, ready to be used. Awaiting his signal.
The blindness was increasing, a sure sign that all would soon be ready. His eyes were a milky brown—he still needed the contact lenses, but not for long. His colorless skin had needed no ritual treatment, and he hadn’t had to bleach his hair for months. It had stopped growing, and what remained was the pure white he’d managed to achieve. His transformation was almost complete.
It was really all very clear to him. A simple matter of various forces coming into play, and he had learned to be patient over the years.
He knew his destiny. Karma had brought him to this place and time. It was his task to reunite people with their lost souls, reintegrate them into a new life past pain, suffering and need. He would bring them all to that place of white-light purity, leading the way, a beacon of truth and retribution. The more they suffered in the task of being set free, the greater the reward, and flinching from what needed to be done was unacceptable.
Pain and death were merely transitory states, to be moved through with as little fuss as possible, and those who weren’t willing to embrace the change would be helped along by his army of followers. The gift he offered was of immeasurable value—the gift of a cleansed soul and a new life in a new world.
His needs were simple, and had been met by divine providence. He needed followers, true believers who never questioned. He needed the strong and the young, the old and the wise. He needed disciples of unflinching character who would do what he asked, and never consider it morally repugnant. There were times when delivering death was the greatest gift of all, helping someone past his or her current state of greed and passion, into the next life of pure thought.
The Shirosama had the disciples. He had the tools, the toxins and the gases that would render the subway systems and train stations in every part of this world into instruments of disease and death. This method had been tried before and failed, due to the weakness of the followers, the lack of vision.
Or perhaps it would simply be his time. The others had tried, for all the wrong reasons, the wrong faith.
The hour was almost right. The Lunar New Year was fast approaching, and he knew that time was finally right. Year after year had passed, but now things were finally falling into place as it was ordained. He had the followers, the weapons, the plan.
All he needed now was the Hayashi Urn, the ice blue ceramic bowl that had been in the care of his family for hundreds of years. The urn that had once held the bones and ashes of his ancestor.
The year 1663 had been a time of upheaval in Edo period Japan. Amid the warring clans, the daimyos and their armies of samurai, and the battling priests, there had been one man, one god. The original Shirosama; the White Lord—the half-blind albino child of the Hayashi clan, first considered a demon and later recognized as a seer and a savior. He’d foretold the disasters that had befallen the modern world, the terrifying eclipse of power and the new worship of greed and possessions. But he had been too powerful, his vision too pure, and in the end he’d committed ritual suicide by order of the shogun. His body had been burned, his bones and ashes placed in the ice blue urn and set in the remains of his temple up in the mountains, guarded by members of the Hayashi clan.
The steps were clear, laid out by the original Shiro-sama in the scrolls kept hidden by his family. The bones and ashes would be reunited with the urn at the place of his death, and his spirit would enter a new vessel. His descendant.
And that would signal the conflagration that would cleanse the world. Armageddon, where only the pure souls would survive.
There were too many stumbling blocks. For years the present Shirosama had no idea what that crazy old woman had done with the family treasure, and once he found out that an American had it, it was proving almost impossible to get his hands on it.
He could blame the disastrous war that had ravaged his country and his family. Only the oldest male member of the Hayashi family knew the location of the ancient temple, and he’d died without passing that knowledge on to anyone but his young daughter. In an effort to safeguard the treasure, the bones and ashes had been removed from the urn and hidden in the family home, and Hana Hayashi had been sent to the country of their enemies with the priceless urn and the location of the temple ruins.
He knew it was one last test to prove his worth, and he accepted it with humility. Once his followers were able to bring him the woman and the urn, there was still the problem of locating the ruins of the original shrine. At least he had the bones and ashes of his ancestor. For the last seven years he’d been mixing the ashes with his tea, to ensure his transformation, but the chunks of whitened bones were still complete, and when they were placed in the urn and set at the site of his ancestor’s sacrifice, all would become as it should be. Even the original Shiro-sama had been a test run. It was his destiny to finish what his ancestor had started.
He sat, and let his let his eyes roll upward in his head, ignoring the scrape of the contact lenses against them. Soon.
In the end, Takashi O’Brien had settled for a small park in a run-down neighborhood, pulling the car off to the side of the road. There were probably addicts roaming around, looking for a score, and maybe gangbangers, but they’d be much more interested in his very expensive car than a woman sneaking off into the bushes. If by any chance they found Summer more interesting he could take care of that as well.
Because, of course, he watched. She shuffled into the bushes, the bedspread clutched around her, and made him solemnly promise not to look. Was she really that naive? So far she’d taken him at face value, and he could back up the Ministry of Antiquities story quite easily. He was very good at convincing people who and what he was—he often went undercover as Hispanic, Italian, Russian, Native American and any Asian background. Being a mongrel, or ainoko, as his grandfather would have termed him, gave Taka advantages. He looked different, but he could shift those differences to mirror any number of ethnic groups.
He was going to need to make a decision, fast, before the Fellowship made its move. Once he finished this job he could get the hell out of here, back to the tattered shreds of the normal life his interfering family was assembling for him. The proper Japanese bride, the proper future.
People who worked for the Committee didn’t live a normal life, though he could hardly explain that to his disapproving grandfather. His mother’s uncle, his mentor, had some idea that Takashi O’Brien’s work entailed more than his involvement with the Yakuza, Japan’s organized crime family, but he wisely never asked. As long as Taka completed the occasional duties assigned to him, no one asked questions, not even his crazy cousin Reno. Particularly when his great-uncle was head of one of the largest Yakuza families in Tokyo, a fact that filled his industrialist grandfather with horror.
Not that it mattered. Takashi could never find favor in his grandfather’s eyes no matter what he did. His blood was tainted by his American father and the eventual suicide of his beautiful, self-absorbed mother, and Shintaro Oda would never look upon his only descendent with anything but contempt.
Summer Hawthorne was heading back toward the car, her long hair dripping wet on her shoulders. He didn’t want to think about why he didn’t finish the job he’d started. He had an instinctive revulsion for drowning, even if she’d been unconscious at the time, and it could have raised unpleasant attention. That was the second tenet of working for the Committee. Do what had to be done, without flinching, without moral qualms or second-guessing. And do it discreetly.
She was shivering when she climbed back into the car, the bedspread clutched in her hands. He should have told her to toss it, but that might have given her a clue that she wasn’t going to be returning to her little bungalow anytime soon. If at all.
“I don’t suppose you brought shoes,” she said, not looking at him as she began to braid her long wet hair.
“Behind the seat.”
She reached around for them, brushing against him in the cramped front seat of the car, and something odd shivered through him. A tiny bit of awareness, which was impossible. He liked statuesque American women with endless legs, he liked delicate Japanese women with tiny breasts, he liked athletic English women and inventive French women. He liked beauty, and the drowned rat sitting beside him, even when she was done up for a museum reception, was never going to be a classic beauty.
Besides, she was a job, and he was adept at compartmentalizing his life. He did what needed to be done, and some of the things he’d had to do would make her shrink in revulsion. And he would do those things again, without question. To her.
“What’s next?” He could hear the strain in her voice, and he wondered when she’d break. He’d been expecting noisy tears anytime now, but she’d remained strangely stoic.
“My hotel in Little Tokyo, where you can sleep and I can decide what to do next.”
“Little Tokyo? Isn’t that the first place the Shirosama would be looking for you?”
“They’re not looking for me. They don’t know I exist.”
“But you’ve rescued me twice …” Her voice trailed off, suddenly uneasy, and he realized he had to calm her fears.
“The two men in the limo died in the crash—they never saw me. And I got you out of your house without anyone noticing.” That was highly unlikely if they’d been the ones who’d tried to drown her, but he was counting on her being too worn-out to put things together. By the time she was more rested he’d come up with a plausible answer. In the meantime he needed to stash her someplace safe where he didn’t have to think about her, and the small bungalow he rented inside the grounds of the hotel was as good a place as any.
“Besides, Little Tokyo is much too obvious a place to hide someone with a connection to a Japanese cultural treasure. It’s the last place they’d think to look, and no one’s going to know you’re there.”
She said nothing, simply nodded and leaned back in the leather seat. He expected her passivity was only going to last so long. He’d better be ready to move when she started asking the unanswerable questions.
The Matsura Hotel was a Los Angeles landmark. The entry was through a security laden torii gate; the landscaping was minimalist and yet preserving of everyone’s privacy. He made his unwitting hostage duck down when he drove past the security cameras, but once he’d parked the car behind the bungalow, no one had any chance of seeing her. He ushered her into the two-room building, trying not to think about how he was going to get her out again.
She stood in the middle of the living room, and he could see the raw edges of shock begin to close in on her. He wasn’t in the mood for noisy tears or awkward questions, so he simply took her arm and led her into the bedroom, ignoring her panicked start when he touched her. “You need to sleep,” he said.
She looked at him, the wary expression in her eyes like that of a cornered fox. Pretty blue eyes, he thought absently. She was past words, but he knew what she was thinking.
“I’ll be in the living room. I can sleep on the couch, but I’ll wake up if I hear even the slightest noise. You’ll be safe.” For now.
She still didn’t move, and he took her shoulders and turned her toward the bed. He didn’t want to start undressing her—she’d probably jump to the wrong conclusion and that would only make things more difficult. He had no interest in her soft, curvy body or her lush, vulnerable mouth. He just needed her to go to sleep and let him think.
“Yes,” she said in a rusty voice, reaching for the hem of the black sweatshirt he’d grabbed for her. It was huge—he assumed it had probably belonged to a former boyfriend, even though their intel had only come up with one, years prior—and she started pulling it over her head. The T-shirt came with it, which was his signal to leave before she was standing there in her underwear, with that same dazed look on her face.
