Relief flooded her. “Yes, you do.”
“Stay put.” He released her, but the space was so small she was still crammed up against him. “I don’t know how long this will take me. Whatever you do, don’t move, don’t make a sound.”
She would have liked to protest. She would have liked to wrap her arms around him and haul him back. He was the only safety she knew, and he was abandoning her.
“Sure,” she said, her whisper the epitome of calm while her mind was screaming. “Take your time.”
She couldn’t see him in the darkness. But somehow she knew he smiled. Not the smirk that he usually offered, but a real smile. “I won’t abandon you, Ji-chan,” he said. And a moment later he was gone, the momentary sliver of light from the darkened corridor blinding her as he slipped out of the tiny closet.
Ji-chan? He called her Ji-chan? That was an affectionate term, and as far as she could tell he found her nothing more than terminally annoying. Why had he said that?
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nbsp; She was shaking, she realized belatedly. Her legs were trembling, her heart was racing, and she leaned against the door, pressing her forehead against the cool metal, forcing herself to take slow, deep breaths. He’d come back for her. Whether he wanted to or not. It had nothing to do with her, or any feelings he might have for her. He’d taken her on as his responsibility and he wouldn’t abandon her. But why in the world had he called her Ji-chan?
It was cold in the closet. It was midwinter, and she hadn’t bothered with a sweatshirt when she’d left her room. Clearly the Japanese were not strong proponents of central heating, at least not in their gangland warehouses. The ice was seeping into her bones, making it even harder for her to stay calm. If she wasn’t shaking apart from fear, she was trembling from the cold, and either way she was going to start knocking things over if she didn’t pull herself together. Serves me right for growing up in Southern California, she told herself. She’d never complain about the heat again.
She lost track of time. Maybe Reno had dumped her after all. Gangland-style killings couldn’t be that unusual—this was the yakuza, for God’s sake. She was hardly naive when it came to organized crime. After all, she’d watched The Sopranos. Maybe she’d overreacted.
But then, why had someone, presumably the mysterious Hitomi-san, chased her, shot at her? And why bother? She hadn’t seen the shooter—it wasn’t as if she could identify anyone.
There wasn’t enough room to sit—when she tried to push back from the door the wall was right behind her. Reno was just lucky the two of them had managed to squeeze in there when he’d yanked her into the tiny space. And it had only worked with her body absolutely plastered up against him, every inch of her pressed against his hard, hard body.
At least that thought was making her hot. All she had to do was keep remembering embarrassing moments and she’d keep from freezing to death. Fortunately or unfortunately she had a dozen of them, the worst being in the capsule with his cool, impersonal hands making her come her brains out.
No, maybe remembering wasn’t a good idea. Because not only was it making her skin warm, she was getting turned on, and that was one place she definitely didn’t want to go. Reno was out of her league, and it was a good thing. She had a hard-enough time dealing with the average American male. A wild card like Reno was more than she could handle.
Of course he’d take that moment to open the closet door, just as her face was flushed and her body tingling. Fortunately he was too intent on getting out of there to notice.
“Don’t say anything, don’t move unless I tell you to,” he said in a low voice. “If you do, you’ll get us both killed.”
She wasn’t about to come up with an argument. While the hallway was marginally lighter than the pitch-black closet, it was still almost impenetrable, and the only safety was the man in front of her, leading the way.
They passed one man on their trip through the maze of underground tunnels, and Reno moved so fast he was simply a blur in the darkness, and the man collapsed, unconscious, as Reno took her hand, pulling her deeper into the bowels of the building.
At first she didn’t realize when they emerged into the evening air—the cold that penetrated the old cement building was the same inside as out, and night had fallen. To her amazement they were outside the high walls of the cement-block compound that housed Ojiisan’s headquarters, on a dark and deserted side street. “Now’s the time to run, Jilly,” Reno said, and took off, dragging her along behind him.
It was a good thing she had long legs—if she’d been short, she never would have kept up with him, and chances were he’d either abandon her and drag her limp body in the dirt if she fell. She was in decent shape—she ran three times a week and didn’t smoke, but she wasn’t used to a flat-out sprint, and her chest was burning, her heart banging against her rib cage. Reno, goddamn him, seemed barely touched by the fast pace. He was probably running fast so she couldn’t argue with him.
It didn’t matter—there was no way she was going to fall behind or complain. If he could do it, then so could she. And the faster she ran, the more the scene retreated, the dead man, all the dead men that she’d seen in the past few days.
And then, just as suddenly, he stopped, catching her as she hurtled forward, pushing back against a building and holding her there while she struggled to catch her breath.
He wasn’t even winded. “We’ll get a taxi from here,” he said. “As soon as you stop sounding like an eighty-year-old man.”
“Go…to…hell,” she gasped, struggling for breath. They were on a side street, but the street-lights were on, and neon beckoned from around the corner. He just stood there, waiting while she brought her breathing under control. She shoved her sweat-damp hair away from her face with a shaking hand—at this rate she was going to get pneumonia and she didn’t care. She just wanted this all to end.
A moment later he took her hand, pulled her arm through his in a perfect parody of young lovers, and walked her into the neon, into the crowded streets of Tokyo.
It wasn’t until he’d gotten her ensconced in the backseat of a taxi that she noticed he’d covered his distinctive hair with a black kerchief emblazoned with kanji, and he’d tucked his bright red braid beneath the leather jacket. Except for his height, he could be any Tokyo hipster in shades, but there was no disguising Jilly. There weren’t that many almost six feet tall gaijin women around, and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it.
She waited until Reno gave instructions, so detailed she couldn’t follow, and then she spoke.
“What next?” Her voice was hoarse from running.
He didn’t bother to look at her—he was busy watching out the back, probably looking for signs of pursuit. “Train station,” he said. “We’re taking the train to Osaka and I’m putting you on a plane at Kansai Airport.” He glanced at her then, just briefly. “You’ll be safe enough.”
“Why don’t you just let me go on my own? You don’t need to take the train—we’re probably better off separated.”