by Cole Gibsen
He shrugged. “I don’t have a weapon.”
“You are a weapon,” I reminded him.
“Right.” He frowned and lifted his hands in the air like a witch about to conjure a spell. “Do I look just like a superhero?”
“Um … absolutely.” I grabbed his arm and together we followed Kim deeper into the foyer, where he stopped in front of a large wooden staircase. The house remained silent except for the ticking of a nearby grandfather clock.
“The bedrooms are upstairs,” Kim whispered.
“How do you know?”
The muscles in his jaw flexed. “Sumi,” he answered simply. He didn’t need to say more. Given the look of disgust on his face, I knew he was remembering the time he spent with her after she’d brainwashed him into being her boyfriend for several months. I’d never asked him about it—I hadn’t had the chance before he’d lost his memory. But now seeing him stand here clenching and unclenching his fist, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know. But I also knew Kim had a nasty habit of letting his guilt get the best of him.
I placed a hand on his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter,” I whispered in his ear. “She had control of your mind—you weren’t yourself.”
He closed his eyes for a moment and nodded. “There are things we should probably talk about—but now’s not really the time.” He reopened his eyes. “Let’s do what we came to do.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
Kim inhaled sharply and started up the stairs before stopping suddenly. “Since Q is resistant to Sumi’s power, I’m going to trust you two to search her room. It’s the first door on the right. Being here … my emotions are unbalanced.” He glanced at his sword and tightened his grip. “I don’t really trust myself right now. Can you handle that?”
Kim rarely lost his cool like this. It stunned the words right out of me. I could only nod.
“Good. I’ll check her parents’ room at the end of the hall on the left. If they’re sleeping and all looks okay, we’ll head back outside and resume our watch until morning.”
I nodded again. I sincerely hoped we wouldn’t find anything.
“Let’s go.” Kim climbed to the top of the stairs, his cautious steps barely registering on the antique wood. Q and I followed closely behind. I motioned for Q to step exactly where I did to avoid any squeaky or loose boards. When we reached the top, Kim turned left and disappeared into the shadows of
the darkened hall. I grabbed Q’s arm and pulled him to the right. I stopped when we reached the white, paint-chipped door. The cold tremors twisting through my body amplified, forcing me to clench my teeth to keep them from chattering.
“Remember my trick with the shadows?” I whispered.
His eyes never left the door. “Where you turn us invisible?”
“Better safe than sorry.” I sheathed my sword and held out my hand. Q clasped it firmly within his own.
“Let’s do this,” he said, licking his lips.
I lifted our entwined hands to the shadow cast by the door and watched as they disappeared. “Here we go.” I stepped against the door and pulled Q along with me until we’d vanished from sight. With my free hand, I slowly turned the doorknob and gently pushed the door open with my shoulder. My muscles twitched in anticipation. Whatever warning I was experiencing, I was about to find out what it was for.
I couldn’t see Q, but I could feel the heat from his palm against my own. Together, we moved quietly into Sumi’s room, where I hoped to find her sleeping soundly on her bed. But that wasn’t the case. In fact, given her still-made bed, it appeared she hadn’t been here all night. The buzzing sensation inside me remained.
“Huh.” I released Q’s hand, and he appeared beside me.
He lifted his hands in front of his face, examining both the fronts and backs. “I’ll never get used to that.”
Now that it was obvious there was no threat in Sumi’s room, my knotted muscles gradually unwound. “Where do you think she is?” I stepped out of the shadow, revealing myself next to her bed. I spun a small circle. For belonging to a seventeen-year-old girl, her room was unlike any teenager’s I’d ever been in. The blank walls held no pictures of friends or posters of bands. Ribbons and soccer trophies were absent from her shelves. The bookcases beside her bed contained only a few worn paperback novels, but nothing more that would let a visitor know a teenage girl lived here.
Her bed was made simply with a plain gray comforter. And stranger yet—especially for me—not a single stuffed animal sat against her pillow begging to be squished in a hug.
Q stepped beside me, repeatedly glancing at the door behind us. “This looks like the bedroom of a serial killer.”
He wasn’t far off.
I grabbed his arm, spun on my heels, and pulled him to the door. “C’mon.”
“Where are we going?”
“To see if Kim’s found anything. And then … ” I honestly didn’t know. If Sumi wasn’t here—that couldn’t be a good sign. What if she’d regained her memory and was out looking for a way to exact her revenge? Or worse, what if Whitley had changed his mind and decided to go after Sumi alone? He wouldn’t have any qualms about killing her. And since she was Kim’s inyodo, any attempt on her life put Kim in grave danger.
We emerged in the hallway in time to see Kim shut the door to Sumi’s parents’ room with a soft click. “Well?” he asked.
I gripped my arms, trying to suppress the tremors coursing through me. “Sumi’s gone.”
His hand fell from the doorknob. “Gone? Her parents are in their room sound asleep.”
The feeling of unease coiling around my chest suddenly squeezed so hard I staggered back.
“Rileigh?” Q reached for me.
I held up my hand to stop him. “I’m okay.” But I wasn’t so sure about Sumi’s parents. I looked at Kim. “They’re really sleeping?”
He frowned. “Well, they’re in bed. And they’re not moving.”
“Care if I check?”
Kim motioned me forward. I walked past him and pushed the door open. The pressure inside my chest intensified. I had an awful hunch, one I just had to follow. I fumbled my hand along the wall for the light switch and flicked it on.
“Are you crazy?” Q ran to my side. “You’re going to wake them up!”
I stared at the two bodies on the bed. “No.” My throat went dry as I took in the scene before me. Reflexively, my hand fell to the handle of the katana at my hip. “Look.”
Kim stepped inside the room. A low hiss escaped his mouth as he surveyed the bed before him. In the dark, it was easy to understand how he could have thought Sumi’s parents were asleep. They lay side-by-side underneath the covers, their heads nestled deep into their pillows. It was the stain of deep crimson pooling between their bodies that let me know they would never wake again.
Kim approached the bed and lifted the tattered edge of the blanket so he could examine their bodies. “Sumi. She stabbed them in their sleep.” He swiped his finger across the bloody sheet before letting it fall once again. He rubbed the blood with his thumb. “Cold,” he muttered. “But there’s not enough discoloration in the skin for it to have been more than a couple of hours.”
Now that I knew the danger, the uneasy waves rolling through my body subsided, replaced instead with a sense of dread. “So about the time you met me on the roof of my condo?”
He wiped his blood-smeared fingers with a corner of his T-shirt and nodded. “That’s a good assumption.”
“Son of hibachi,” I muttered. “She’s got a pretty good jump on us.”
“Yes.” Q stepped inside the room with us. “But at least one of our questions has been answered.”
Puzzled, I turned to face him. “And what question is that.”
“Her memory.” Q motioned to the dead couple on the bed. “I think it’s safe to assume Sumi the kunoichi is back an
d she has a plan.”
8
Dr. Wendell hung up his cell phone and sank onto the couch in my condo. The grim lines on his face grew deeper by the minute. Not that we looked any better. After Kim had updated Michelle, Braden, and Drew, no one had spoken more than a couple of words since leaving Sumi’s house. And now we sat limp, scattered around the living room like a bunch of deflated balloons.
Dr. Wendell pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay. I’ve called in a clean-up crew. They should arrive at Sumi’s house within the hour and erase any traces of you being there.”
“What about the bodies?” Michelle asked.
“I spoke to the Network about it, and we’ve decided to leave them for the police to find.”
“What?” Drew’s head snapped up. “Since when do we let outsiders become involved in Network affairs?”
“Usually we don’t,” Dr. Wendell agreed. “But this is a time-sensitive situation. We can assume Sumi has her memory and that makes her extremely dangerous. Especially since we have no idea where she’s hiding or what her next move will be. This is one of those rare times when a little media exposure might be a good thing.”
I had to admit having the public aware a psycho was on the loose might make finding her a little easier.
“When is the truck due to arrive?” Kim asked.
Dr. Wendell sighed and folded his hands on his lap. “It’s been dispatched from New York so we probably have at least”—he glanced at his watch—“another eight hours.”
“Great,” Drew muttered from where he sat on the floor. “You can kill a lot of people in eight hours.”
Michelle shivered, and Braden put an arm around her and squeezed her close. “How do you know she’s going to try to kill us, anyway? Maybe she’s going to lie low or—
better yet—leave town.”
“Doubtful.” Kim pushed off the wall and walked to the middle of the room. “If she wanted to lie low, she wouldn’t have killed her parents. Obviously she felt they were an obstacle in whatever plan she’s about to implement—a plan she knew there’d be no going back from.”
“He’s right.” I climbed to my feet and joined him. “This is the girl who vowed to kill Whitley in every reincarnated life because he killed Kim in the last one. She’s obsessed with revenge and even more obsessed with Kim. Her targets are either going to be Kim—in an attempt to alter his mind again; me—because she thinks I stole Kim from her; or Quentin—because he was able to defeat her in our last fight.”
Quentin’s jaw clenched but he said nothing.
“She’s had a head start,” I continued. “There’s a good chance she is already nearby.”
No one spoke for several minutes as tension settled across the room like a heavy wool blanket, hot and smothering.
Finally Michelle said, “We need a plan.”
“Right.” Dr. Wendell stood. “Like I said, the truck is going to be here in eight hours. We need to find Sumi by then—before she finds us. Our main objective will be to capture her and transport her back to New York. In the meantime—”
“We need more weapons,” Kim cut in.
Dr. Wendell tilted his head, considering. “It certainly couldn’t hurt.”
“And we need to stick together,” Kim continued.
Michelle bit her lip. “That’s going to be a problem for me. If I’m not home before my dad wakes up, I’m going to get grounded. He needs to think I’ve been asleep in my bed. I have to be there for breakfast. After that, I can meet up with you guys again.”
Kim frowned. “This is a dangerous time. No one should be alone.”
“She won’t be.” Braden slid an arm around Michelle’s shoulder and squeezed her against him. “I’ll go with her.”
“But won’t her dad kill you if he finds you?” I asked.
“Yes.” Braden nodded. “But he won’t find me. I have mad stealth skills.”
Michelle smiled and dropped her head against his shoulder.
“All right.” Kim nodded. “Braden will go with Michelle until she can meet us back here.” He looked at me. “I wonder if you should go too. Michelle’s dad wouldn’t have a problem with you there.”
“No way.” I shook my head. “If Sumi comes after me first, there’s no way I’m leading her to Michelle’s house. I’m not going to risk anyone’s safety on my account.”
“I think that’s wise,” Dr. Wendell agreed. “And with Debbie in a hotel, she’ll be safe should Sumi decide to attack here. I’m going to have to leave soon to meet up with your mom before she gets suspicious. But don’t worry, I’ll tell her I received a call from the hospital and have to leave. I should be gone no longer than twenty minutes.”
I forced myself to nod, even though it bothered me how easily Dr. Wendell lied to my mother. Every time I’d brought up his true feelings about Debbie, he’d managed to change the subject. Even now I couldn’t be sure if he really cared for her or only pretended to in order to keep tabs on me.
“All right.” Kim clapped his hands together. “I guess that means the rest of us should head to the dojo to collect weapons. If Sumi’s coming after me first, it’s possible she’s already there.”
Dr. Wendell frowned. “I don’t know, Kim. Yes, there’s a chance that Sumi could be there waiting for you, but there’s also a pretty good chance she could be coming here. We need to locate her as quickly as possible. I think the best way to do that is to make sure there are people here if she shows up.”
“He’s right,” I added before Kim could protest. “If she shows up at the condo and there’s no one here, that’s a wasted opportunity. We can’t afford that. Once she catches on that we’re trying to find her, she could run and we might lose our chance altogether.”
He scowled at me. “What are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting we split up—but we do it smart by partnering so no one is alone if we’re ambushed. I think you and Drew should run to the dojo for weapons, and Q and I will stay here and watch the condo.”
Kim scowled. “I don’t like it.”
“I know. But you have to admit that together, Quentin and I make a pretty good team.”
Q winked at me.
“It’s a good plan,” Dr. Wendell said.
Kim folded his arms across his chest. “Once upon a time, I thought of myself as the leader of this group. I guess I was only deluding myself. It’s pretty obvious who’s in charge.” He sighed and shook his head. “If we go with Rileigh’s plan, I’m adding a stipulation. This is the twenty-first century. There’s no reason we shouldn’t stay connected. Starting the moment everyone walks out this door, we are to text each other every fifteen minutes until the moment we meet back here. Failure to do so will imply you are under attack and the rest of us should come to your aid. Is this understood?”
Everyone murmured their agreement.
“Good. And one more thing.” Kim pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket and held it up. “If one of us does get attacked, we need to be able to locate each other quickly. I want everyone to turn on your phone’s GPS.”
Everyone pulled out their cell phones except for me—mine was in my bedroom—and turned on their GPS.
“Let’s move out,” Kim ordered.
Braden and Michelle were the first out the door, followed by Dr. Wendell, who promised to be back no later than a half hour.
Drew stood in the open doorway with his hand resting on the knob. “Ready, brother?”
Kim nodded. “Just a moment. I need something.”
Before I could ask him what he’d forgotten, he crossed the floor in several long strides. He slid a hand into my hair and tilted my head up to his. “Be safe,” he said, his words so soft they bordered on a prayer.
I placed my hand over his and leaned into his touch. Pain formed in the back of my throat, and I had trouble swallowing. Had it really only
been several hours since I’d sat on my rooftop longing to have Kim in my life once again? And now that he was, I was terrified I’d lose him all over again.
I turned my head and placed a kiss against his hand. “One of these days, Gimhae Kim, I won’t have to kiss you goodbye anymore.”
He tilted his head so his forehead rested against mine and all I could see were his eyes, dark pools I wanted to throw myself into and drown in. “I, too, look forward to that day. But just remember, there is nothing Sumi can do to break us apart.”
I knew he meant his words to be comforting, but I couldn’t help cringing the moment they left his mouth. If fate loved a challenge, there was nothing more enticing than breaking a promise made in love.
9
Japan, 1491
Chiyo sat huddled against the back of a tent within the bandits’ camp. She’d lost count of the hours she’d spent alone inside the dark tent. She didn’t dare try to escape. A man with a katana stood guard outside the door. Every so often he would stick his head through the flap and Chiyo would flinch. The man would laugh and disappear again, allowing her to breathe.
She wondered how long it would take Yoshido to receive news of her capture. Surely he’d come for her the moment he heard. He’d ride fast and hard through the night until he’d killed the entire camp. And then he’d carry her safely back to his village atop his horse.
Chiyo’s chest heaved, and she stifled her sobs against her shoulder. She’d be brave for him. Courage was expected of a samurai’s wife. And when he arrived, he would find her waiting
for him, fearless. And he’d be so impressed, he’d fall madly in love with her. And they’d be so happy, this entire nightmare would be forgotten.
Hot tears spilled over Chiyo’s cheeks as the gnawing ache inside her grew. It was a lovely thought—one she had to cling to in order to survive. Just a few more hours, she told herself. I must be strong a few hours more—until my samurai comes for me.
Voices approached from outside, and Chiyo jerked upright. She quickly wiped the tears from her cheek. She would be strong. For Yoshido.
