by Anne Stuart
But frankly, he’d rather not do that. For a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it would turn him on. And he wasn’t going near her, ever again. She was far too dangerous to his peace of mind.
His new white shirt was ruined, but he’d bought several, and he headed out into the living area, shirtless, ready to set things straight.
The room was deserted. Once more he’d underestimated her. She’d taken off, rather than spend another minute with him. And if he didn’t catch up with her, and fast, she might have no more minutes left in her life.
Holy motherfucker, what an idiot he’d been. You never went in with more firepower than you needed, and he could have scared her off without bringing out the big guns. But for the first time in his life he’d been frightened, of her, of what he was feeling for her, and he’d miscalculated.
He was shoving his feet into his cowboy boots, pulling on a clean shirt as he stumbled out the door of the hotel room. He was going to kill her when he found her.
The snow was falling more heavily when he left the hotel. He’d checked with the front desk—no one had seen the tall gaijin leave, and she tended to stand out in a crowd. If she’d gone outside, she’d be easy enough to find. He ran out onto the sidewalk, searching through the throngs of people getting out of work. No tall, blond gaijins anywhere, and he had no idea which way she could have headed. She had no money, no identification, not even a coat, and the silk clothes he’d bought her had been an impulse on his part, a stupid one. She’d be freezing.
He pulled out his cell and began texting—he was going to need help if he stood any chance of finding her, and Kyo was his first choice.
A meaty fist appeared in front of him, picking the cell phone out of his hand and dropping it on the sidewalk. Kobayashi, always light on his feet, loomed over him. “You need to come to the compound.”
He was faster than Kobayashi, and he didn’t see anyone else around who could stop him. “I don’t think so. I’m not walking into a trap.”
“Yes, you are, young master. You would never stand by and see someone you loved be tortured and killed.”
“My grandfather can withstand torture.”
“I’m talking about your gaijin. Hitomi-san has her and there’s nothing your grandfather can’t do about it. If I don’t bring you back with me, he’s going to start cutting pieces off.”
Odd, he could see his breath, but he wasn’t cold. He looked at Kobayashi, murder in his eyes. “You touch her…”
“No one will touch her, Hiromasa-san. Not if you come back. She has no value on her own; her only worth is to get you and Taka to come. If you don’t care enough, Hitomi-san will get rid of her.” He gave Reno a sorrowful look. “You should know I would never betray your grandfather. He has always known that something was going on, and he has had me go along with them. Your warning only gave him more proof. Your grandfather is smarter and stronger than five Hitomi-sans. You should know that.”
“Then why did you let them take her?”
Kobayashi shook his head. “She is of little worth to your grandfather and none to me. If I do not bring you back, they will kill her, and they will know I failed. They will no longer trust me. You need to come back with me, young master. Or Hitomi will win me and your grandfather will fall.”
There’d never been any real question. “What do they want with me?”
“Hitomi-san has said he will trade the girl’s life for yours. He thinks you are sentimental enough to make such a bargain. I told him he was wrong, but he took her anyway, and he’s awaiting word from me. If you refuse, he will kill the girl and then he will go for your grandfather, and I will not be there to stop him.” There were tears in Kobayashi’s eyes. “Please, Hiromasa-san. You’re the only one who has any chance of stopping him.”
Reno looked at him for a long, silent moment. And then he bowed. “Tell Hitomi-san I’m coming,” he said. “And if he even touches her little finger, I’ll rip his heart out.”
For a moment Kobayashi looked disapproving. “Your grandfather will never approve. Look at the shame and trouble your worthless mother brought to the family. If you choose to marry a gaijin like your father—”
“I’m not marrying anyone!” he protested, truly horrified.
Kobayashi did not look appeased. “Your grandfather will be very unhappy. His days are not long, and you are his favorite grandson.”
“I’m his only grandson,” Reno said. “And I’m not going to let anything happen to the old man. Or to Jilly Lovitz. Is that understood?”
Kobayashi bowed in agreement, lower than Reno would have expected. Maybe it was true that the old man would eventually die, but that wasn’t going to happen for many years, no matter how frail he’d suddenly become. He’d outlive Hitomi-san and his fellow traitors—hell, he’d outlive them all.
“Tell them I’m coming,” Reno said wearily.
“They already know, young master.” He jerked his head toward the black sedan waiting by the curb, one of many at the upscale hotel.
No time to get in touch with Kyo, no time for backup of any sort. If he was going to keep Jilly alive, he was going to have to walk into the lion’s den, just like that stupid story he’d learned in the Bible class he’d been forced to go to to learn some of his mother’s culture. A waste of time, even if there were occasionally good stories.
He nodded. “Let’s go, then.” He yanked his long red braid from underneath his jacket, letting it hang loose down his back, put his sunglasses back on his nose and composed his face into a faint sneer. And then he strolled toward the sedan at a leisurely pace. Ready to do battle.
Why didn’t she ever learn not to run away when things were difficult? Jilly thought. Not that there was anything else to do but think—she was tied up and dumped in some kind of a storeroom, filled with boxes and one narrow cot. Just to make sure she couldn’t investigate, they’d tied her to the cot, and while she could probably hop across the room, dragging the metal bed with her, it didn’t seem to be worth the effort.
How stupid could she have been? Almost three years ago she’d done the same damned thing in California. She’d run away from people sent to protect her, straight into the arms of a madman, and if it weren’t for Isobel Lambert and the Committee she would have been brainwashed or dead or both.
And now she’d done it again. No matter how hurt, how angry she was, she still should have stayed with Reno. He was the only one who had managed to keep her relatively safe, from everyone else, if not from him. She could have given him the cold, silent treatment. Reno was unbelievably tough, but even the strongest man eventually cracked under the silent treatment. Even her ruthless father quailed.
But no, she had to run out of the room, straight into the arms of what could only be Hitomi’s men. She was learning to tell yakuza from a distance—they wore garish suits and had carefully arranged hair, the polar opposite of Reno’s red-dyed mane and black leather. But there was no mistaking the coldness in their eyes, the way they carried themselves.
She hadn’t even gotten to the elevator. In fact, she couldn’t remember exactly what had happened. Someone had put a cloth over her face, and everything went dark. They must have used chloroform or something equally nasty, because the next thing she remembered she was alone in this cold, dark room, bound and gagged. Presumably back in the huge cement warehouse that provided the front for Ojiisan’s headquarters.
Were they going to kill her? If so, why were they waiting?
At least Reno would be relieved—she was no longer his problem. If she had any sense at all, she’d be much more upset about the fact that she’d been kidnapped and would most likely be killed. Not still obsessing over the night she spent with Reno in her bed.
Then again, she’d learned one thing in the past few days. Being a child brainiac with an astronomical IQ didn’t do a spit of good if she had absolutely no common sense. And where Reno was concerned, she was brain-dead.
Whoever had tied the ropes was far too good at it
—it probably came from practice. They weren’t tight enough to cut off the circulation, and she could move her muscles enough to keep from cramping up. But there was absolutely no way in hell she could even begin to untie them.
She looked at her bound wrists. Maybe she could try her teeth….
Unbidden came the memory of Reno suggesting she undo his fundoshi with her teeth. She dropped her head down on her knees with a groan. It was bad enough being kidnapped and, probably, eventually murdered. Did she have to be haunted by the biggest mistake in the history of the world?
Though, maybe it wasn’t that big a mistake. She’d never expected anything from him, and the fact that they’d had mind-shattering sex could be construed as a good thing. At least she wasn’t going to die a semivirgin, even if she’d been as bad at sex as he’d told her.
But if she’d been that bad, that uninspiring, then why had he come back to her, over and over again? Why hadn’t he walked away?
She lifted her head from her knees, leaning back against the wall with a groan. There was no way she was going to make sense of it, make peace with it. She wasn’t going to be seeing him again—that was at least one small blessing of being kidnapped by a Japanese gangster. She could live out whatever days or hours she had left knowing she’d never have to look at his far-too-pretty face.
The door to the storeroom opened, and one of the blank-faced men appeared. Except that he was young, probably younger than Reno. He had a nasty-looking knife in one hand, and she wondered if it was going to be over that quickly. Why had they even bothered bringing her here if they were going to kill her so quickly?
If they thought she was going to go down without a fight, they were wrong. She waited until he got close enough, and then she kicked out with her bound legs, trying to knock him off balance.
He scrambled to his feet and backhanded her across the face, hard, and she saw nothing but a red haze for a moment before she shook her head to clear it. He was already slicing through the ropes, not through her. Okay, she could put up with being slugged if it meant she got to live for a while longer. She wasn’t big on going gently into that dark night.
He hauled her to her feet, smart enough not to cut the ropes on her ankles while she could still kick him in the head. He only came up to her shoulder, and he had a sullen expression and a slick, black pompadour, but she didn’t make the mistake of underestimating him. He was the one who held the knife.
He leaned down and sliced through her ankle bonds, roughly, the blade nicking her skin as he jumped away, wisely not trusting her. She was considering making a run for it when he put the knife away, only to pull out a small, serviceable-looking gun instead. Maybe not; he was probably a decent shot and she didn’t want to die with a bullet in her back, running away.
Without a word he pushed her out into the barren hallway, gesturing for her to precede him. For a moment she didn’t move, wondering exactly what he’d do, but then she thought better of it. Her face still stung from his backhanded blow—yakuza-boy would not hesitate to hit her again to get her to do what he wanted. So she put her head down and began walking.
The hall was ill-lit and cold, and it looked like the corridor she and Reno had run down, stark and empty, the kind of corridor a trapped rat might race down. That eerie, trapped sense got worse as she turned the corner three times, at her captor’s prodding, and each corridor looked exactly the same.
“Dozo,” he said, stopping her in front of a door, and her stomach knotted. It looked like the room where she’d seen the murder. But all these rooms looked alike, except for Ojiisan’s throne room, and what were the chances of her being taken to the same room where she’d seen murder committed?
Very good, it turned out. She was pushed inside the large room, and the first thing she saw was the bloodstain on the floor, where she’d last seen a dead body.
There were half a dozen men in the room, talking in low voices, and they didn’t look up when she came in. Her surly guide closed the door behind them, and she stood still, wondering if she could make a break for it.
Unlikely. “You know, if you brought me here to kill me like you did the other man, then you might as well get to it,” she said in her most annoyed voice. “I’m really getting tired of all this drama.”
One man lifted his head to look at her, and she had no doubt at all that this was the notorious Hitomi-san. His eyes were flat and cold, and he emanated an ugly kind of power. “You are very brave for a gaijin,” he said in heavily accented English. “But we have no plans to kill you if Hiromasa-san does what he’s ordered to do.”
“Who?”
Hitomi’s lips curled in contempt. “I believe he calls himself Reno. If he agrees to come here and trade his presence for yours, then you can go back home and never have to think about this place again. And that is what I would advise. Tokyo is not a very healthy place for you.”
“I don’t think I’ll have the option. Reno isn’t going to put his life on the line for me.”
“He has been doing just that for the past four days. Why should that have changed?”
Well, because we slept together and he found me wanting? No, that was the last thing she was going to say. “You didn’t give him the choice of him or me before,” she said instead. “I don’t think he’s going to sacrifice himself for my sake.”
“Then you do not understand Japanese honor.”
“Do you?”
The silence in the room was absolute, and the man who’d brought her there, the one who’d hit her before, took a threatening step toward her.
Hitomi-san held up a hand to forestall him. A hand that was missing parts of several fingers, and he wore a gaudy diamond ring on one stump.
“For your sake, Miss Lovitz, I hope you are wrong. In the meantime you may sit over there and keep quiet. My men will never hurt you unless I give them the order, but it wouldn’t be wise to test me.”
Jilly had gone beyond fear, gone beyond hope, but she hadn’t gone beyond common sense, so she swallowed her instinctive retort and let yakuza-boy push her into a chair in the corner. “I don’t suppose the condemned woman could have a last meal?” she said.
Hitomi-san looked confused for a moment.
“I’m hungry,” she said. “Can I have some food before you kill me?”
Hitomi’s amusement wasn’t the most reassuring thing she’d ever seen, but he sent yakuza-boy off with orders that were too muffled for her to understand. He’d probably bring back tentacles.
She sat, absently rubbing her wrists where the rope had chafed her. Her cheek was throbbing—she’d probably have a bruise, assuming she lived long enough for one to form. Life had taken on an air of absurdity—and she fully intended to treat it as such. If she was going to die in a warehouse in Tokyo, then she was going to do it with style. Lianne would be proud of her.
The door opened again, and she looked up, hoping it was yakuza-boy with tentacle-free sashimi, but instead the giant bodyguard filled the entrance. He bowed, and Hitomi-san gestured him to enter.
And then Jilly saw what was hidden behind his massive bulk. Reno.
She didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just watched him as he strolled into the room as if he owned it, never glancing in her direction. There was a time when she thought that swagger was obnoxious. Right now it filled her with ridiculous hope. Maybe they weren’t doomed.
Hitomi-san gave a short, sketchy bow, and Reno returned it with a flare that somehow reminded her of the Three Musketeers. “I believe you have something of mine, Hitomi-san,” he said in Japanese.
“It was kind of you to join us, Hiromasa-san,” he replied. “Though I felt sure you would come.”
“Did you?”
“If not for the sake of the annoying gaijin, then for your esteemed grandfather.”
At that point Reno shot a cool, ironic glance in her direction. “She is a pain, is she not? But hardly worth the trouble it would cause if she were to disappear. And you are a very smart man, Hitomi-san. You would never need
lessly complicate matters over someone so trivial.”
Hitomi-san’s malicious smile didn’t help matters. “Aah, but Hiromasa-san, you know I’m a man who pays attention to even the smallest detail. It is the reason behind my success. There’s no way to trace her disappearance back to us. Enough people know that Russian mercenaries were in the country and she got in the way.”
“With your help.”
“Of course. Details, Hiromasa-san. Your grandfather is old, and his organization belongs to another age. You and I both know that. We can bring it into the future. As your grandfather’s natural heirs, both you and your cousin are welcome to join us, of course.”
“I don’t think so,” Reno said, his voice cool.
Hitomi’s faint smile wasn’t reassuring. “No, I didn’t think so, either. And as long as you’re around, there will still be a faction of the family who look to you for power. So I’m afraid you will need to be disposed of. You and your cousin and his wife.”
“And how do you intend to get to O’Brien-san? He was warned.”
“He was also told the sister of his wife has been killed. He won’t stay hidden for long with that kind of information.”
“Oh, shit,” Jilly said.
Reno didn’t turn to look at her. “You know she and her sister won’t be any threat to you.”
“Details, Hiromasa-san. If you had longer to live, you would learn to appreciate the necessity of paying attention to them. As it is, you’ll have to wait for your next lifetime.”
Jilly rose. “Look, haven’t we had enough of this evil-warlord shit? Why don’t you just—?” She’d forgotten that yakuza-boy was still behind her. Forgotten that he had a gun in hand. She felt the blow to the side of her head, and everything turned dark as she sank down onto the cold, hard floor. A roar of rage echoed around her as she lost consciousness.
15
“You’re an idiot.”
Not the best words to wake up to, particularly when she didn’t want to wake up. She felt fuzzy, disoriented, as if she’d been kicked by a horse, and she would really much rather keep her eyes closed and wait for the world to settle down.
