by Rhys Ford
The SUV rushed up behind me again, and that foreboding tickle ran along my belly. About three-quarters of a block away, another SUV the same indistinct color as the one trailing our asses pulled out of an alley and sat across the one-way road, its front end obstructing the side street I’d intended to take. I slowed down, and the vehicle behind us matched my speed, bringing us down to a safer crawl. Trent made eye contact with me as he answered the call. A heartbeat later, he rolled his eyes.
“I’ll tell him,” Trent said into the phone. “Can’t say he’ll stop.”
“What?” I had about a foot of wiggle room on the left side of the SUV in front of me, but from what I could tell, its engine was still on. I could slip in behind it, hoping the sedan would make it through, but a simple punch of the gas in reverse would plow the SUV into Trent’s door. “Hang up. We’ve got company. I’m going to go—”
“He says he’s your cousin and to pull over.” Trent hung up on the call, and I winced, knowing there’d be Hell to pay for that later. “Apparently he wants talk to you, so knowing what I know about your family, I’m fifty-fifty on gunning it and shooting our way out.”
“Which cousin? And how would he know where I was?” I eased off the gas as I unbuckled my seat belt. “Unsnap your gun and draw it. Keep it down to the side, but once I stop, get it out quickly and have it up. You’ve never met my family. It’s going to be a trap.”
“I’ve met you,” he replied softly, shifting in his seat, smoothly reaching to undo his belt. “You’re a trap.”
“Watch the front. Anything moves, I’m gunning it and going through.” I stopped the car but let it idle, its exhaust spitting out vapor when its engine heat hit the cold air. “Shit, it totally could be a trap. All of the danger, none of the calamari. Fuck.”
I smacked the steering wheel with my fist when the phone rang again, and this time I picked it up, my weapon drawn and my eyes on the SUV behind me. I didn’t know the number calling me, but that wasn’t a surprise. I’d never known how to get ahold of my grandfather or anyone else in the family. It was healthier that way… for them and me both.
Putting the call on speaker, I answered, “Yeah?”
“Rokugi.” I couldn’t recognize the voice, but that didn’t surprise me considering none of my relatives were on speaking terms with me. Male. Not surprising. The Takahashi seemed to breed boy children like fire gnats spawned swarms. “I need to speak with you.”
It was too volatile of a situation for most, if not all, Takahashi. Their two main choices were to engage positively or attack aggressively. The first would get them killed once Grandfather died, and the second would shorten their lifespan to the second after said Grandfather found out. As far as I knew, most chose the safer, less mundane route of ignoring me and hoping someone wiped me off the playing field before it became time to divide up the family’s assets.
“I don’t even know who you are.” One of the back doors of the SUV in front of us opened, and I tsked. “Come on. Do you think I’m going to get out of this car? In the middle of the street? Meet me someplace. Just us. Well, and my partner. You can bring someone if you want.”
“Is your partner the man who hung up on me?” If anything, his voice grew colder, his barely contained anger snapping across the line. “I would like to meet that man.”
“He’s my partner and I trust him, more than I trust any of the guys you’ve got covering you, so he’s off-limits.” I shot Trent a look, giving him as silent of a warning as I could, nodding at the gun he had in his hand. I wanted him to be ready, because from the strain in my alleged relative’s voice, I couldn’t be sure the man had all his wits about him. “Go after him and—”
“I don’t have time to talk about… we don’t have time to talk about this. I need five minutes of your time, Rokugi.” He ground his teeth loud enough for me to hear, and then he sighed. “Our grandmother—”
“Yes, I know.” A full cousin, then. Our grandmother. My grandfather had two wives, the first dying by her own hand in Japan, but she’d given him five sons. Yukiko presented him with three, my father being the eldest, but as far as I was concerned, that put him smack dab in the middle of the birth order and nearly dead last to inherit. My grandfather had other ideas, embedding me in his civil wars following my father’s abandonment. “Name a place, Takahashi. I’ll follow you there once I tell my Captain where I’m going.”
“No,” he bit back. “Stay parked where you are. We will come to you.”
With that, he hung up.
“Son of a bitch. We. Who the Hell is we?” I muttered, scrambling to recall anyone with the balls to call me. Names escaped me, and I cursed myself for not paying closer attention to the dossiers Vice sent over. A few possibilities floated to the top, but I’d never heard anyone speak, putting me at a disadvantage. “Now we’ve really got company. Someone’s coming out of that SUV.”
“So we’re just going to sit here and stick our heads into the bear trap?” Trent’s fingers ghosted over my thigh, leaving a frost-kiss pattern on my jeans. I shivered, recalling where those fingers had been last night. “Or are we going to go in guns blazing and apologize for the mess later?”
“I’d like the second, but truth be told, that’ll end all kinds of badly,” I confessed.
Someone was getting out of the SUV, a man large enough to catch the sun if he stretched his arms up. His long, coarse hair was pulled back from his tattooed face, a blue-black fierce display of Maori swirls and lineage. The SUV rose slightly when he stepped clear of it. Then he shook out a golf umbrella, an all-too-familiar mondokoro embroidered in gold on its black fabric. Holding the open umbrella aloft, the Maori blocked my view of who was getting out of the vehicle while his head turned back and forth, probably scanning the street for potential trouble.
Two figures got out, both slender, dark-haired, and dressed in expensive tailored suits. I didn’t know the younger man, but even with his face hidden by the umbrella’s deep, sweeping scallops, I instantly recognized the older one by the way he held himself. The Maori handed the umbrella off to the younger man, who held it low to shield the elder from the brisk, pounding downpour, and the men began to slowly walk toward us, their stern-faced security detail walking ahead of them, not showing a sign of discomfort about being out in the rain.
Sighing, I unfastened my seat belt. “Well, fuck me.”
“What?” Trent scowled while he dug out one of the extra clips I’d put in the console. “What’s going on?”
“The one in the blue might be my cousin.” I nodded toward the older man tucked under the umbrella’s curve. “But that one is my grandfather.”
THEY STOOD in the rain for a few minutes while the Maori walked around the unmarked. I had a brief flirtation with an urge to run him over when he crossed in front of the car, but that was shoved down by a quick rumbling cough from Trent. I apparently had to work on my poker face. But it seemed to be firmly in place when I rolled the window down to talk to my grandfather.
“Am I supposed to let you into the back seat now?” I asked. My definitely-cousin’s poker face was worse than mine, because I heard him gasp, and his head jerked back in shock. He looked nothing like me, probably because he was pure human and skinnier. Younger than I’d thought, not quite thirty, and from his expression, totally cowed by the old man. “Or did you think I was going to stand in the rain for this little chat?”
“Are the back doors open? It would be like you to have your cousin fight with the latch while you played with the lock,” Grandfather drawled. Then he got in and ordered me to drive to the tearoom.
We ended up having tea and dim sum in an ancient teahouse served by what was probably the restaurant’s original staff back in the day when it served as a front for an opium den. The interior was a jumble of large and small rooms, complicated by carts the servers used to bring food out. The tearoom’s dim sum was always fantastic, and the women working the floor were old enough to be the gate dragons’ mothers, so no one dared give them shi
t. If they didn’t know someone’s family, they knew someone who did, and word always got back to someone if anyone stepped out of line. In a way, it was a mini-sanctuary, but without Kingfisher’s firm stance against weapons and violence. Grandfather asked for a back room, and the cousin scanned it for listening devices before Grandfather went in to take a seat at the only table inside. There were four chairs and not a lot of space to move. It was a tight fit for Trent. His shoulders weren’t made for a Chinese teahouse’s back room, but he wedged himself in. I had only slightly better luck and took the chair opposite Trent, leaving the seat with its back facing the door for my stammering cousin.
Grandfather ordered in Mandarin, and the elderly tight-faced woman nodded, then disappeared, closing the door behind her.
“As nice as this is, I’ve got a job to do, Grandfather,” I reminded him. “I’m going to guess you’ve got something to tell me that’s going to make that job easier.”
“Patience,” he murmured, smoothing out a paper napkin he’d gotten from the pile left on the table. “Ten minutes, and then I will ask you a favor.”
“You’ve asked me for a lot of things over the years, Takahashi.” I eyed the cousin skeptically. “When have I ever done any of them?”
I saw no sign of distress or discomfort in the old man. Every hair was in place, shaved down to his jutting jaw, and he stroked at the thick gold ring on his ring finger, something he liked to do to make people nervous.
He’d tried giving me an identical one when I was younger. Or it could have been the same one. My mother tossed it back into his face, reminding the old man I would never be his as long as she drew breath.
Ironically, she was now gone, and there he sat, fiddling with a gold ring with the Takahashi crest carved in bas-relief on a jade cabochon on his finger—the finger where a wedding ring should have resided—but then, my grandfather was always more married to the family than to either of his wives. Cousin, on the other hand, was extremely agitated, judging by how he ran his free hand over his face, then through his hair.
“This one you will do because it involves Jie… and your grandmother.” His gaze flicked momentarily at the man sitting across from him. Then his hand dropped out of sight beneath the table. “I need you to rescue Yukiko from this madman. Anything you want—”
“You’ve already offered anything I’ve ever wanted before, and I turned you down.” I let the bilious harshness I felt stain my words. “That’s how my family ended up dead, remember?”
“I will pay for that… for what he did to you… for the rest of my life. This is different. This isn’t about me. This is about a woman who is caught up in a war she has no part of. Much like you, Yukiko is innocent, and she is now paying the price of loving me. For being my mistress… instead of my wife.”
“Mistress?” I almost stood up from the table, but a discreet knock on the door kept me in my seat. The old woman came in, dropped off a pot of tea, cups, and a mound of enormous char siu bao, then left. Leaning forward, I slapped at the cousin’s hand when he reached for the teapot. “What do you mean mistress? I thought Yukiko was your wife. My grandmother is—”
“I am confused, Grandfather.” The cousin cleared his throat, watching me warily. “Grandmother’s name is Kodama Akemi. Yukiko is our aunt… Grandmother’s adopted sister… she lives with Grandmother. In Hokkaido—”
“Sofu, no!” The scent of gun oil and cold-blooded resolve perfumed the air when my grandfather shifted in his seat. I lunged, grabbing my grandfather’s arm before he could fire the gun he’d drawn out of his jacket. Twisting the weapon from his hand, I hissed, “Do not kill him. Have you been lying to everyone in the family about who my grandmother is?”
“She is my wife and lives in Japan, away from this city and its complications.” Grandfather met my hard gaze with one of his own. “Akemi is a good wife. She knows what’s expected of her, and I married her because she is a strong partner and comes from a powerful family. Yukiko is…. My wife agreed to claim your father as her own, like she was taken in by the Kodama clan, and as far as the family is concerned Akemi is your grandmother. Your father is our only child.”
“So I’m the only one you weren’t lying to?” I handed the gun to Trent, the steam from the bao warming my skin when I passed my hand through it. He took it and began to remove the clip from its chamber as I sat back down. “Shit, you should have been worried about me shooting you.”
“I need no protection from my own grandson,” he sniffed imperiously. “Can you imagine the talk if I gave even a hint of distrust? You know better than that, Roku. I cannot risk that. Especially not… now. Not when I am being attacked and I can do nothing to save the woman I have in my heart.”
“I didn’t even think you had a heart, old man,” I retorted. My cousin was shaking in his seat, his trembling rocking the chair’s back. “Promise me you won’t kill him.”
There were consequences for discovering any of my grandfather’s weaknesses, and anyone who’d been in the room when he’d first gotten the news—however he’d gotten the news—was probably already fattening up the Bay’s bottom feeders, and I had little hope the men who’d dumped their bodies would live long enough to see another sunrise. My cousin’s life was forfeit the moment he’d crossed the threshold of the tearoom’s front door, a sacrifice my grandfather was willing to make but one I had no intention of him offering up.
“Promise me, Sofu.” I wasn’t going to plead for the man’s life, because my grandfather didn’t respect begging. “You took a life when I didn’t want you to. You owe me a life. You owe me his.”
“I spared you from killing Donnie,” he replied softly. “Because you would have killed him, and that would have destroyed you then.”
“Do not kill him. Make him a confidant. Hell, have him wash your feet every day if you have to, but do not kill him.” I was deadly serious, and Trent edged his chair back, anticipating something, but I couldn’t guess what.
“I will not kill him.” The look he gave the cousin was pitying, but I gave the guy credit. He wasn’t peeing in his pants. He met our grandfather’s eyes for a moment, then looked away. “You owe Rokugi for your life, Nobu. You chose to come in here when I advised you not to.”
“I thought you would need… I worried he would kill you, Sofu,” Nobu replied, ducking his head. “I know better now. I will work harder to earn your trust and faith.”
“Make something of yourself and do not let Roku’s generosity go to waste.” Grandfather motioned to the teapot. “Pour us tea.”
“Don’t know if I’m willing to drink it,” I said cautiously. “I’m not too sure about drinking or eating anything you give me. It’s kind of like being in the faerie kingdom. Suppose once I eat something, I can’t ever leave?”
“Then have your lover drink as well so you are not lonely,” my grandfather responded. “Pour, Nobu. My throat is dry.”
“How many people know your mistress is missing?” Trent asked a question I’d been dreading to utter. “Other than Nobu here?”
“No one other than who is in this room,” my grandfather responded. I wasn’t fooled by his gentle tones. He was sheathing his knives in a velvet calm meant to lull us into believing he meant no harm. “And anyone you’ve told.”
“How many before you came looking for me?” I prodded, leaving off mentioning I’d told Gaines what was going on. My godfather had nothing to worry about. Takahashi liked Gaines, believing him to be my mentor and the only positive male influence in my life, an unsurprising view considering my own father had been scarcer than an attack chicken’s teeth. “And before you ask, Jie doesn’t know who is with her. Unless Grandmother told her, she just thinks she’s a woman named Yukiko.”
“She called you? The Kingfisher’s girl called you?” Grandfather sucked in a breath, pinning me with a hard glare. “What did she say? Is Yuki… your grandmother… is she—?”
“I don’t know. Grandmother had a phone on her, one she hid or whoever took them just didn�
�t give a shit about.” I briefly filled in what Jie’d said and what I’d heard in the background. “We don’t have a lot of time. And I’m wasting what I have by talking to you.”
“I know where they are. The bastard who has them made sure I knew. I just don’t know why, but I will find out.” Grandfather clenched his fist around the fragile porcelain cup Nobu handed him, spilling a bit of tea over his fingers. “I need you to get her back. I need you to make sure she is safe. Once again, understand this. I will give you anything you need. Anything you want. But I need her to be safe.”
“If you know where they are, why can’t you go in and get them?” Trent prodded gently. “You’ve got better resources, better intelligence than the SFPD. In this case, anyway. Why are you asking Roku to do this?”
“Because the family does not know of my relationship with Yukiko. They cannot know. It is the agreement I made with Akemi. Yukiko is not her sister. They were… friends at one point. When I brokered the arrangement to marry Akemi, it was for the power she would bring to the Takahashi. Yukiko’s presence in my life would undermine Akemi’s position in Japan, weakening her power base.” He shrugged as if the tangled threads of wealth and manipulation were natural for a family to thrive on. “We cannot afford to lose any ground in Japan or here, but I refused to live without Yukiko. Now… my hands are tied, and I can’t risk going for her, not without tearing apart the foundation the family is built on.”
“Lies. That’s what this family is built on.” I sighed. I didn’t want my heart to ache for a woman whose life was a lie. My grandmother was a lie to everyone except me and the man she’d given a son to. A son his true wife claimed as her own, leaving Yukiko with nothing but a chance to be kidnapped and held as bait. Hating myself and knowing I had no choice, I asked, “So where is she?”
“What do you want in exchange? You’ve never met Yukiko. Never spoken to her. You have no connection to her, and the Jie girl—she is nothing to you now, where perhaps a few years ago, you would have gone to her without stopping to question why.” His hand trembled as he raised the cup to his lips. After taking a delicate sip, he rolled the tea in his mouth, then swallowed. Setting the cup down, Takahashi sighed, shrinking in on himself. I wasn’t taken in by the show of feebleness. He was a consummate con man, something I’d known before I could spell my own name. “What do you need in order to do this for me? I will give you everything.”
