Anne Stuart - Ice Blue

Her curtains were pathetic, as well. The faux-Asian synthetic rice paper shades were practically useless. She’d left the lights on in her living room and kitchen when she’d disappeared into the bathroom, and she was soaking wet and naked when she reemerged and climbed into the wooden tub, closing her eyes in obvious bliss.

So he could safely assume that she hadn’t been lying—the Hayashi Urn was nowhere near her. He’d done a fairly thorough search the last time he’d been there, though far more discreetly than the Shirosama’s goons, and he doubted he’d have missed it, though at that point he hadn’t been specifically looking for it. He’d thought it was already at the museum.

He’d been looking for any kind of clue that would lead him to the shrine. If they found it before the Shirosama managed to discover it, the Committee could stop the cult leader’s plans cold. The Shirosama needed the sacred location for his crackpot rituals, and without it he and his followers would be too superstitious to move ahead with their plans. It was only a few days till the Lunar New Year, the date the Shirosama had decreed was the most auspicious for his mysterious ritual, and at least for this year his time was running out. If they could just stall long enough, keep Summer Hawthorne and the Hayashi Urn away from him for the next few days, they’d have an entire year to figure out how to stop him.

And then there would be no need to silence her before she spoke the truth she didn’t know she had.

The urn in the museum was an excellent forgery—Taka had enough of a gift at ceramics to recognize the hand of a master. It had been an error on his part not to recognize that the ice blue glaze had been a little too uniform, but then, he’d been concentrating on other things.

Too bad he couldn’t just let it go at this point. The Shirosama would steal the fake from the museum, never knowing the difference, but he still needed Summer Hawthorne. In truth, she might be the more valuable part of the equation, and Taka knew what his orders were. If necessary, he was to destroy a priceless piece of Japanese art, culture and history, and execute the woman who held the key to where it belonged. And he wasn’t supposed to think twice about it.

It was the “if necessary” part that was the problem. The Committee, and the ruthlessly practical Madame Lambert, trusted him to make that judgment call. But he wasn’t quite sure he could trust himself at this point.

Because he didn’t want to kill Summer Hawthorne.

If she was found floating in her hot tub, the Shirosama would know there was nothing he could do, and he’d be stopped cold.

It was simple. Practical. Necessary. Except that this scenario meant the Hayashi Urn would stay lost.

The bowl would stay in one piece, however. And sooner or later, maybe decades from now, maybe after they were all long dead, it would reappear. That knowledge should be enough to satisfy the committee.

Taka took less than thirty seconds to pick the locks. He moved through the house in complete silence—he could come up on her, push her under the water, and she’d never have a chance.

Drowning wasn’t a good choice. He wouldn’t be able to make it look like an accident, it took too damn long and she’d be frightened. He didn’t want to scare her if he could help it. He just wanted it over, if that’s what had to be.

She was sitting in the tub, her back to him, her long hair loose, dark with water. She was humming, some tuneless little song that was making this whole fucking thing even harder, but he couldn’t let himself hesitate. He moved so fast she didn’t have time to turn around, to know he was there, sliding his hand under her thick veil of hair, finding the right spot and pressing, hard. She was unconscious in a matter of seconds, and he pushed her down on her back in the water, holding her there.

She lay still beneath his hands, her hair fanning out around her, her face still and peaceful and eerily beautiful; he knew she couldn’t feel a thing.

But he couldn’t do it.

He hauled her out of the tub, a naked, dripping deadweight, and threw her over his shoulder. He didn’t know how much water she’d swallowed, only that it wasn’t enough to kill her. He tossed her on the bed, rifled through her drawers and grabbed whatever clothes seemed suitable. All black—she didn’t seem to own anything in color, including her underwear. He was about to dress her when he heard the noise outside. The Shirosama already knew he’d lost his quarry, and he’d sent new stooges after her.

Taka wrapped Summer’s unconscious body in the bedspread, tossing the dark clothes into the cocoon before he lifted her again. She was damn heavy; American women, no matter how thin, always seemed to weigh more than other women. Maybe they simply had bigger bones. Not that Summer Hawthorne was a delicate flower. He’d been working, but an important part of his job was observation, and Summer Hawthorne naked had a soft, curvy body, not his usual type of woman.

He shifted the weight, tossing her over his shoulder again, and a moment later he was gone into the night, as the white-robed brethren broke in the front door.

Summer was cold, wet, miserable and totally disoriented. She was immobilized, moving fast and she felt like she was choking, coughing up water. When she could finally catch her breath she tried to push the wet hair out of her face, only to find her arms trapped at her sides. She shook her head, realizing in sudden horror that she was back in that damn car with that damn man, hurtling through the night once more.

“What the hell …?” she said weakly, struggling. She was wrapped in her bedspread, her arms at her sides, the seat belt strapped around her, and the man driving didn’t even glance at her.

“You had some unwanted visitors. I figured you were better off with me than the holy brothers.”

She tried to speak, coughing instead, the spasms racking her body. “They must have tried to kill me,” she managed to choke out. “How did you know?”

“I was keeping an eye on things. I didn’t think they’d give up that easily.”

She was silent for a moment. “How many of them did you kill?”

He glanced over at her. “You think I’m a cold-blooded killer?”

“I have no idea who or what you are.”

“Takashi O’Brien. I work for the Japanese Department of Antiquities. We’ve been looking for the Hayashi Urn for a long, long time.”

She blinked. He didn’t exactly fit her idea of a Japanese bureaucrat, but then, nothing was fitting her preconceived notions today. “Why didn’t you just come to the Sansone and ask if we knew anything?”

“We had no interest in drawing the attention of the True Realization Fellowship. We needed to secure it before they could get their hands on it.”

“Why?” Her teeth were chattering. He reached over and switched on the heat, and she glanced at the dashboard clock. It was just after 1:00 a.m. It had been less than three hours since she’d left the museum. Three hours to change a lifetime.

“You can worry about that later. In the meantime we need to get you someplace safe and warm.”

“And dry,” she said. “And dressed,” she added in sudden horror. “I’m not wearing anything under this, am I?”

“Since you don’t make it a habit to bathe in your clothes, then yes, you’re naked. I grabbed some clothes for you when I got you out of there—they’re tucked somewhere between you and the bedspread.”

She wasn’t cold now, she was hot. For reasons she didn’t want to think about she tended to be extremely inhibited, more so since her mother had always made it a practice to prance her perfect body around the house in various stages of undress, particularly if there happened to be men around. And the thought of this exquisite, enigmatic man hauling her own wet, naked body around was enough to make Summer wish those monsters had ended up drowning her, after all.