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.
“Call me if you need anything,” he said, getting the hell out of the room and closing the door before she could respond.
He stretched out on the sofa, closing his eyes and wishing to Christ he could afford to have something to drink. It had been a rough twenty-four hours, but he couldn’t take even the slightest of chances, not when things were so fucked. When this was over he could down a whole bottle of single malt Scotch, his drug of choice. And he suspected that was exactly what he was going to want to do.
He was going to have to face Madame Lambert sooner or later. He’d been ignoring her messages on his übermobile phone, but he couldn’t put it off for much longer. She was going to want to know why Summer Hawthorne wasn’t dead yet, and she wasn’t likely to accept any excuses. Nothing ever touched Isobel Lambert, marred the perfection of her beautiful face or clear, emotionless eyes. She was the epitome of what they all strived for—ruthless practicality and no weakness. She would have put a samurai to shame.
Taka wasn’t sure if it was wisdom or weakness that had stopped him tonight. He could hear Summer coughing behind the door to the bedroom. She’d swallowed more water in the hot tub than he’d thought, but he couldn’t very well have taken the time to do mouth to mouth on her with the Shirosama’s goons closing in. In the ordinary world he’d have taken her to a hospital, rather than risk a lung infection of some sort. In this world it was the best-case scenario—if she got some virulent pneumonia from her near drowning it would no longer be his job to…finish her.
Things were stable for the moment. The true Hayashi Urn was currently out of reach, though he was going to have to find out where, and damn soon. He had no idea how good a copy the urn at the Sansone was. If the brethren decided to go for it, then all hell might break loose.
Taka groaned, shoving a hand through his hair. They were going to want to know in London why he hadn’t taken care of things, and he wasn’t sure what he could give them for an answer when he didn’t know himself. He closed his eyes, listening to the sounds around him, identifying and then dismissing each noise—the traffic beyond the thick vegetation that surrounded the hotel; the sound of her breathing behind the closed door, slow and steady as sh
e slept; the murmur of the wind; the steady beat of his own heart. He lay perfectly still, aware of absolutely everything. And then he let go, for a brief moment of respite.
Isobel Lambert stood in the window of her office, staring out into the breaking sunrise over London, a cigarette in one hand, a cell phone in the other. It was going to be another bleak, gray day, with a cold, biting rain that stung the skin and felt like ice. She hated January. But then, right now she hated everything.