Ice Storm (Ice 4)

“Your friends died that night. A few weeks later, when I was beginning to heal, Stephan brought me newspapers, with stories about General Matanga’s assassination and the five people found dead with him in the warehouse.”

“I was already blessed with experience and expertise.”

“But how did the men who tried to kill me end up dead in the warehouse? And how did you escape?”

“Trade secrets, princess.” He cut the wheel sharply as they skidded down a hill. “I figure I need every advantage I can get. You’re a formidable enemy.”

She didn’t feel formidable. She felt crushed, aching. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Dust-blown, shadowed, the elegant features that never showed emotion, contact lenses that muddied her blue eyes. How could he have known her?

That was a question she could, and should, ask. If she’d made a mistake, tipped him off somehow, she needed to be aware of it so it wouldn’t happen again. Assuming she came out of this mess alive. Death was waiting for her, sooner or later, and she accepted that with equanimity. But she wasn’t about to seek it out.

“How did you recognize me? And when?”

He didn’t even glance at her. Once more she was driving into the night beside this man, looking at his slender, elegant hands on the steering wheel. Bloodstained hands, figuratively if not literally.

“I don’t think you want the answer to that.”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t. When did you know it was me? Was it my voice?”

“Your voice is very different. Deeper, and you have a British accent that’s quite believable. Charming, as a matter of fact.”

She gritted her teeth. “How did you know me?”

He said nothing. She could see the shadowed form of something in the distance, and as they drew closer she recognized the outlines of a plane. Maybe they were going to get out of this mess, after all.

“When did you realize who I was?” she pressed.

He pulled to a stop abruptly, and she put out a hand to brace herself. Mahmoud made a piteous sound from the floor of the backseat, and then Killian cut the motor. “Let’s just say I’m very good at what I do. I’m not easily surprised.”

He climbed out of the Jeep, reached in back and tossed something at her—the dark blue burka that she thought had gone up in flames. “Better put it on. This is going to be tricky enough—we don’t need an anomaly like you getting people’s attention.” He picked up Mahmoud’s slight frame, tossing it over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She hadn’t moved, just sat there, holding the cloth. “Are you coming with us, or would you prefer to take your chances on the ground?”

Her small duffel was long gone, as well as anything he’d brought with him. She unfastened her seat belt and pulled the enveloping cloth over her head before climbing out. “I still have unfinished business,” she said.

And she left it up to him to decide whether she was talking about the current mission or killing him. When in fact, it was both.

Hiromasa Shinoda was covered with sweat, dressed only in a traditional fundoshi, the strip of cloth that had served Japanese men as underwear for millennia. His was made of bright red fabric covered with tiny little Hello Kitty icons in combat gear, something that would have given his old-fashioned grandfather a heart attack. But his grandfather wasn’t speaking to him. Reno was banished to this gray, gloomy place, and while there were as many women as he wanted, he was already getting tired of it all.

That son of a bitch Taka would approve, he thought, going through the prescribed moves.

Reno’s English was becoming impressive, honed by language CDs and the assiduous study of American gangster movies. He’d started watching old Yakuza and Samurai movies dubbed in English, just to amuse himself, but he was tired of being cooped up in the city, tired of not being able to drive, tired of inaction. He had Dragon Ash on the stereo, turned up loud to annoy the man downstairs, but so far Peter Madsen had failed to rise to the bait.

Reno spun around, his long hair whipping his body, his reflexes perfectly honed. He was a weapon, waiting, and all he could do was work out in the sparsely furnished living room of the old apartment.

Not that it had come sparsely furnished; he’d shoved the chairs and sofa into the back bedroom, leaving only the wide-screen TV and stereo equipment, the coffee table and a few mats to sit on. He’d left the bed that filled up the main bedroom—he’d gotten to like the luxury of sleeping on softness rather than a thin futon. But he’d stomach even that if he could get back to Tokyo.

Not in the foreseeable future, his family had told him. The police were going to take awhile to forget his last escapade, and his grandfather’s second-in-command had given him the choice of losing two fingers or getting out of the country.

Reno was very fond of his fingers. He could deliver—and subsequently receive—a great deal of pleasure via them, and he wasn’t about to give them up lightly. He probably wouldn’t have true Yakuza credibility until he lost at least part of one, but he didn’t particularly care. When it came right down to it he could scare the shit out of most people, anyway.

Not the man downstairs. Not his cousin Taka, with his American wife and her gorgeous baby sister with the beautiful mouth who…

Not his grandfather. Reno was banished from Tokyo until they said he could come home. In the meantime he was going to raise all the hell London could handle, and more.

He stopped, breathing deeply, pulled his long hair out of the high ponytail and then stripped off the fundoshi, heading for the shower. Yes, he was sick of English women. But he might find an American, someone tall, and he could close his eyes and listen to her voice and pretend….

His eyes flew open. He didn’t need to pretend anything. He needed to get laid, he needed to hit something, and he needed to get the hell out of London.

And he wondered how long this exile was going to last.