Someone pushed her down on the floor—she wasn’t sure who, and she lay facedown on the thick white carpeting, her arms over her head, trying to shut out the noise, the smell of death that filled the air with such a miasma of dark evil that she wanted to choke. She thought she was screaming, but noise thundered around her and she may have only whimpered.
The gunfire suddenly stopped, and all was eerily silent. Someone was on top of her, and when he released her, she didn’t move, didn’t want to see. From a distance she heard Reno’s voice, talking to his grandfather in frantic Japanese.
If she just stayed like this, she wouldn’t have to see, she told herself. The guns had stopped—no one was likely to shoot her at this point. If she didn’t move…
“Get up,” Taka said, and the sound of his voice was enough of a surprise that she lifted her head. “We need to get the hell out of here.”
The room looked like a scene out of Hamlet. Bodies were everywhere, staining the deep white carpet with dark pools of blood. She let Taka pull her to her feet, looking for Reno amid the carnage.
He was kneeling by his grandfather, who lay across the leather couch, held in loving arms by the loyal Kobayashi, who had tears streaming down his broad face. The old man’s suit was dark with blood, but there was a peaceful expression on his face, and Reno leaned forward to catch his soft words, nodding and answering just as quietly.
“We need to get out of here, Jilly,” Taka said, impatient. “The rest of Hitomi’s men are on their way—I blocked the elevator but it won’t take them that long to make it up the stairs.”
“But Reno…” she protested.
Reno must have heard her voice. He looked away from his grandfather, into her eyes, and it was the face of a stranger. A dealer of death.
“Take her,” he said.
Taka clamped his hand on her arm, but instead of dragging her away, he took her over to face the dying oyabun. He bowed low, and out of instinct Jilly did, too, her eyes filling with tears.
The old man smiled faintly, and he murmured something, but it was too soft for Jilly to hear or understand, and then Taka was pulling her away, and there were tears running down his face, her cool, emotionless brother-in-law.
And then she didn’t have time to think, or to cry, or even to breathe, as Taka dragged her through the back of the room, out into a darkened corridor.
She didn’t waste her time arguing. She could smell the chemical odor of gasoline and something else, and she knew, even without asking, what was going to happen. There was no pulling away from Taka’s iron grip, and when they reached the bottom of the endless flights of stairs and crashed out into the bright winter dawn light, she collapsed in the dirty, packed snow.
“Reno…?” She was gasping for breath. “You left him behind!”
“Summer would kill me if anything happened to you,” Taka said, not even winded. “And Reno can take care of himself. We’ve got to keep moving. The place is going to blow. Uncle had charges set all over the place.”
“Why?”
“So there’d be no chance Hitomi’s men would take over the family. Ojiisan’s men were honored to die with him.”
“Not Reno!” She scrambled to her feet, ready to race back to the building, but Taka caught her easily.
“Reno can take care of himself,” he said again. “In the meantime, you need to get the hell out of here. There are going to be a lot of questions, and I don’t want you around to answer them.”
“Please, Taka,” she begged as he dragged her away from the building. “Let’s just go back and make certain.”
“You’ll forget all this,” Taka said. “This was just a short nightmare
that’s no part of real life.” There was a small gray car outside on the street, and he pushed her into it. She had no idea whether he’d brought it or stolen it, spur-of-the-moment. All she could see was the compound, the smoke curling out of the upper-floor windows.
They were three blocks away when the explosion hit, so powerful that the car skidded beneath the shock. The streets were almost deserted—Taka didn’t slow down, and his face was grim.
“You can’t just drive away!” she cried.
“Yes, I can.” He didn’t even blink when the fire engines raced past them, heading for the warehouse. His face was set in stone, and if she couldn’t see the marks of tears on his face, she’d have thought he was without feeling.
“What if he dies?” she whispered.
“Reno has nine lives. At most he’s used up six of them.”
“And Ojiisan?”
“He’s gone,” Taka said, his voice flat and emotionless. “You were honored to have even been in his presence.”