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He rolled off her, landing on the floor silently, and her body was hot and aching. Then she heard the sound as well, someone moving through the overgrown shrubbery outside. Someone was coming, and whoever it was would be even more dangerous than Taka.
“Get down!” he said, yanking her off the bed and onto the floor, shielding her body with his as something came crashing through the multipaned window. She could smell smoke, acrid, burning, filling her lungs with fire. She heard him whisper in her ear, “Get out of here!” before he leaped up, away from her.
She tried to sit up, but she couldn’t stop coughing, and the smoke was too heavy to see more than a shadow play of violence. Taka moving among them, the battle a silent, deadly dance. She placed her hand on the bed, trying to pull herself to her feet, but her knees buckled beneath her and she went down again. With smoke billowing around her, she began to crawl slowly in the direction of the door.
There was a roaring in her ears, one she couldn’t identify, and then she felt hands grab her—rough hands. And though her eyes were streaming from the thick smoke, she looked up and recognized one of the brethren, even dressed in uncustomary black like some bizarre ninja. He was immensely strong, and hurting her, and there was nothing she could do but let him drag her, until suddenly his face went blank, wiped clean of any expression at all, and he released her, unmoving. He collapsed in front of her, and Taka kicked him out of the way, reaching for her.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry and howl and run, with death and fire all around her, but instead she simply let him take her hand, pull her from the smoke-filled room, out into the rainy night.
The car was parked where he’d left it, with two men lying in the dirt and mud beside it. They didn’t look as if they’d been touched, but they were clearly dead. Taka pointed the mobile phone at the car and the lights came on.
He kicked one man’s body out of the way and opened the passenger door, pushing her inside and closing it before he moved around to the driver’s side. Smoke was pouring out of her beloved cottage, but none of the intruders was following them. Taka started the car and began to pull away, and she felt the sickening thud as he drove over one of the bodies lying in the road. At the last minute he turned and pointed the cell phone at the house. A second later her cottage exploded in a ball of flames, the noise deafening. And they were speeding down the long, rutted driveway.
As they drove down the main road, they passed police and fire trucks, sirens blaring, lights flashing, paying no attention to the dark, anonymous sedan speeding in the opposite direction. At one point Summer turned back to look, and the flames were shooting high into the sky, taking her childhood with them.
“How many men did you kill today?” Her voice was a dull monotone.
“Three in the house. The two outside were killed by the security system on the car—it was set to electrocute anyone who touched it.”
“Isn’t that a little drastic for an antitheft device?”
He glanced at her, clearly surprised by her even tone of voice. He knew she was feeling nothing, absolutely nothing, a blessed numbness. One moment she was ready to climax from the simple rub of his clothed body against hers, and in the next there was fire and smoke and death…and numbness.
“Maybe,” he said, concentrating on the road.
“Did you get the urn and the other things, or were they lost when you blew up my house?”
“I have them.”
“That’s good,” she said. “I’d hate to go through all this for nothing. So why did you bother bringing me along? Why did you save me again? You could have just left me in the house and I would have been blown to hell along with the others. It would be a lot neater.”
He frowned. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
She began to laugh then. For some reason she couldn’t control it—the absurdity of his reply was so wonderful that she had no choice. She could laugh or she could cry, and she never cried.
“Stop it!” he said sharply.
She couldn’t. Didn’t he understand the cosmic absurdity of it? That no matter what she did, death followed her like a hungry vulture, and any respite was a lie, just a short delay on this inevitable journey of pain and darkness. Really, all you could do was laugh at such ridiculous—
The pain was blinding, stealing her breath, stopping her heart, shocking her into silence. He took his hand away, placing it back on the wheel, and she stared at him, knowing that all color had leached out of her face.
“That’s better,” he said evenly. “Things are bad enough—I don’t need you losing it, as well.”
It took her a moment to breathe, to speak. “‘Losing it’?” she echoed. “I’ve lost everything. My job, my car, my best friend, my legacy from Hana—even the house that I loved. And I’m probably going to lose my sister and my life. I think a little hysteria is in order.”
“I can hurt you a lot more than I just did,” he said. “I don’t want to, but I will. I need to concentrate, and I can’t have you flipping out on me.”
“I want you to either kill me or let me go. And don’t even try to convince me you weren’t planning on killing me. I can be blind and stupid for only so long.”
“No,” he said.
“No, what?” she snapped.
“No, I won’t try to convince you of that. Those were my orders. And no, I won’t let you go. Or kill you.” There was an odd, almost resigned tone in his voice. Strange, when he showed so little emotion.
She felt cold inside. “Then what are you going to do with me?”
“Damned if I know,” he said. And reached forward and turned on the radio, drowning out any more questions.
