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 she 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.
She hated the small, elegant office in Kensington that she’d coveted for so long. She hated the cigarette in her hand. She hated London, but most of all she hated the Committee and the choices she had to make.
For that matter, she hated Peter Madsen. Her second in command was home in bed with his wife. He had someone to turn to to help wash away the stench of death and merciless decisions. A wife who knew too damn much, but there was nothing to be done about that. If Isobel needed Madsen—and she did—then Genevieve Spenser came with the bargain. And if Peter had complete faith in her, then so did Isobel, because Peter had complete faith in very few things.
She turned and stubbed out her cigarette, then cracked the window to try to air out the office before Peter got there. She hated smoking, had tried to quit a hundred times, but days like yesterday would send her right back. It could be worse, she supposed. People she’d started out with had turned to drink or drugs, or the kind of soulless abuse of power that Harry Thomason had wielded. It was a good thing her soul ached. The feeling proved she was still human beneath the hard shell she’d perfected.
The bitter wind swirled through her office, and she shivered, but made no attempt to close the window. She was ice inside; the temperature made no difference.
They’d argued about the girl, she and Peter, but in the end they both knew there was no choice in the matter. The young woman in Los Angeles was a liability of catastrophic proportions, and when hard choices had to be made, Madame Lambert could make them. Summer Hawthorne had no idea why she was so dangerous, and she’d have no idea why she had to die. It wouldn’t have made a bit of difference if she did.
Hana Hayashi had left the urn with her, and the knowledge of where the ancient ruins were located. The Shirosama needed both of those things to make his ritual complete. A crackpot ritual that would signal the onslaught of Armageddon, or as close to it as one powerful maniac and a hundred thousand followers could enact.
And history had already proved that that could be pretty bad.
They could trust Takashi O’Brien to do what needed to be done. He was just as much of a realist as the rest of them—you couldn’t survive in the twilight world of the Committee without being able to see things clearly, unemotionally, and make the hard choices. Summer Hawthorne was just one more in a history of hard choices, one that Taka would make without blinking.
These things took their toll eventually. Peter could no longer work in the field, while some operatives got deliberately careless, stepping in the way of a bullet. Others perfected their image as a cool, soulless automaton. No one—not even Peter Madsen—knew what roiled inside Isobel herself.
She smoothed her pale blond hair back from her perfect face. No one had any idea of her real age—in their line of work they used the best plastic surgeons—and she knew the image she presented to the outside world. A well-preserved beauty, anywhere between thirty-five and sixty, with the best face money could buy. If anyone saw her naked, her body would prove the lie, but no one ever did.
Right now she felt as if she were ninety years old, and as ugly as the turmoil inside her. She couldn’t go on like this. These decisions were part of her daily life; she couldn’t let them destroy
