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t is meant to be. But I think your Taka is going to be otherwise engaged, and unable to interfere with my well-structured plans.”
“And why do you think that?”
“Because he is here already. I can’t see him, but I can sense his presence. Surely you aren’t more blind than I am?”
She whipped her head around. She and the Shirosama were sitting in a clearing, surrounded by four small, newly constructed torii gates, a burning fire and banks of lights set up to illuminate the upcoming production. She’d been left alone with him, and if she’d had any sense she would have worked harder to get the paring knife out of her bra. They hadn’t found the weapon when they’d changed her clothing; she could still feel it digging into the side of her breast, and in front of a blind man she could have worked on loosening it, cutting her bonds, cutting his throat.
Now it was too late. Three men were approaching, two of them the Shirosama’s white-clad goons. And between them was Takashi O’Brien, carrying the Hayashi Urn in his hands.
25
“If you don’t want the real urn smashed into a thousand pieces you’ll tell your boys to take their hands off me.” His voice cool and calm, Taka seemed unmoved by the monks on either side of him. He didn’t even glance her way, which was a relief. Summer looked at him and didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
He’d been trying to kill her. She knew it—somehow she’d always known it—even as she’d kept pushing the thought out of her mind. He was like a poisonous snake, seducing her as he lured her toward death. She had no idea why Taka kept saving her, why he changed his mind. She wasn’t even sure it mattered. Those were the beautiful hands that had held her underwater till she began to drown. That had tightened around her throat. The same beautiful hands had touched her, loved her, shattered and redeemed her.
The Shirosama rose to his full height, coming up to Taka’s chest, and held out his arms. “Give me the urn,” he breathed.
Taka dropped it.
Brother Heinrich dived for the bowl, catching it just before it hit the frozen dirt, and the cult leader stepped back in distaste. “That is not the way to rescue your young woman, Brother Takashi,” he intoned, clearly disappointed.
“Don’t call me that.” Taka’s voice was low, deadly.
“Why not? You know as well as I do,” the Shirosama replied in that soft, singsong voice, “that you really want to be one of us. But you are afraid to listen to your heart, Brother Takashi. Listen to it now. Join us. It’s not too late. Don’t waste your time trying to stop me—I’m unstoppable.”
Summer couldn’t keep from watching Taka’s face, his treacherously beautiful visage. “I’ve brought you the urn,” he said. “Now give me the girl and we’ll get out of here.”
“Do not be foolish, child,” he said. “You know I was never going to let you take her. Surely you couldn’t have been that naive.”
There was no expression in Taka’s dark eyes as he stared down at the guru. “Anything is possible,” he said. “You might have become a man of your word.”
“My word is the sacred word of God,” he said.
“And God told you to kidnap a helpless American and murder thousands of people?”
“No one is being murdered. The world is being cleansed. Baptized, if you like. Only the most trusted will accompany me on my final journey.”
Taka’s eyes narrowed. “What final journey?”
“You don’t think I would ask such a sacrifice of my followers if I were not willing to make the same sacrifice, do you?”
“I think you’re a lying, devious psychopath who comes up with justifications for everything he does.”
“And I think it is time you joined your friend,” he replied. “The new moon is upon us, and everything is in place. Do you hear that?”
“The plane? I heard it. I’m assuming more of your goons have come to pick up your little packages of poison to deliver around the world.”
“My strongest followers are coming to bring freedom to all corners of the globe.”
“The earth is round, your holiness.”
“With no place to hide,” he murmured. “Tie him up, Brother Heinrich, and let him sit with the woman he tried to kill.”
He didn’t react. Taka’s very lack of guilt was even more telling than a protest. Brother Heinrich bound his arms and legs, roughly, and shoved him down on the ground, against Summer, so that she almost fell over. She scooted away from him quickly, refusing to look at him.
“You see?” the Shirosama murmured. “I told her you were the one who held her under the water, that you were planning to kill her. Even now, you probably believe your best course is to silence her. It doesn’t matter. Before long you will both be silenced, and perhaps you’ll both do better in the next life.”
Taka said nothing, pulling himself into a sitting position. “You brainwashed her so quickly? I would have thought she’d give you more trouble than that.”
