Travis Justice Read online

  Back at her hotel, she put the facts together coolly, logically, with no emotion, considering all her options.

  Hana knew why they’d hired this particular Japanese-American samurai expert. They were trying to prove provenance. Good luck with that, Hana thought grimly. The blade had been passed from generation to generation in the Nakatomi family for untold centuries, but only word of mouth proved it was a gift from Masamune to the samurai who supposedly saved the sword maker’s life back in the mists of early Japan. Even the Nakatomi family had no actual documentation.

  However, if final payment had been rendered to the historical expert, the sword was surely on its journey back to the military men who’d stolen it. The only question was: Where would they store it? Given her abortive break-in, if the Travises had figured out her target—and she did not underestimate their intelligence—they’d probably secret the sword in a vault somewhere.

  Wonderful. Hana had been trained in bypassing sophisticated surveillance systems, but she had no skill at safecracking. She knew someone who did, though . . . but she’d not spoken to him in months and their last parting had not been cordial. Hana had also seen a bill in the attorney’s files on the LLC that paid a private, secure transport agency to ferry the blade to California. It was logical they’d use the same service to bring it home. She’d snapped pics of the entire file in case she needed them for later perusal. She called them up on her phone now and stopped on the bill from the private security firm.

  She knew the address of the transport company. It was in a row of warehouses along Dessau Road, and while they probably had very secure cages, perhaps even safes, they had to be easier to circumvent than a bank vault. Now she only needed the date of arrival. Hana set down her cell phone and used the old-fashioned hotel landline to call another old acquaintance, one of Kai’s allies on the West Coast distribution line for his drug smuggling. If the Travises were seeking her, it would be easy for them to trace her cell phone, so she had to carefully think through every step.

  She made a mental note to buy a burner phone with cash later today. The hotel landline could also be traced, but Hana had paid cash for her lodging and not signed any registry. She was listening to the first ring on the other end when the noon news came on the television. She’d turned the volume down low, but when a brief image of a samurai katana flashed on the screen, she slammed down the phone and jacked up the volume.

  “Sources say a similar sword was used in what police are describing only as an execution-style killing of central Texas Ranger chief Sam Taylor and his wife. Evidence was recovered at the scene, and state and federal agencies are working the case. Meanwhile, security among DPS and Texas Ranger ranks has been tightened, though details are sparse at this point. In other news . . .”

  Hana turned the volume back down, fear congealing like slush in her veins. Dear God, had Kai done this? Did he really hate her that much, to do this to deliberately implicate her? Or was this related to his grand plan to take over the entire drug trade in central Texas?

  * * *

  Zach sat on his bed, still wearing his chaps and biker boots from his drive on the winding-hill country roads. It would probably be his last for some time. He’d taken it to clear his mind and be sure he was doing the right thing.

  He held the contract for the roughnecking job in his hands, turning it this way and that. Since high school, when the prom queen and most of her court had pursued him, he’d known that sure, his looks and intelligence were part of the reason for their attraction, but mostly they wanted his legendary name tacked onto theirs. And the growing family wealth didn’t hurt any, either. So he’d proved himself in the best and only way: by joining one of the most elite and toughest military training programs in the world. He could be George Washington reincarnated and his drill sergeant would still grind his face into the mud if he didn’t finish his reps on time.

  The stint on the rig would have given him the anonymity and freedom he craved to make his own mistakes. But he’d listened to the news reports about the slaying, and he didn’t need crime-scene photos to picture what the bodies looked like. Petrie dish or not, he had to officially apply for the new security position the DPS had created to protect its upper ranks. No matter how complex and sometimes adversarial his relationship with his father, he still loved him and would lose his own life before he’d let him be eviscerated like his former colleague and his wife.

  Methodically, Zach tore the contract into fourths and tossed it into the trash. Then he pulled out his cell phone to call his buddy. As he did so, he thought again in the back of his mind of the tall, slim Japanese girl who seemed to know just about every self-defense move he’d been taught. He couldn’t quite believe her capable of such a horrific crime, but evidence against her was piling up. He had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that he would, indeed, come across her again. . . .in the line of duty.

  * * *

  A few miles outside the Austin city limits, Hana pulled up before a strange structure, turning off her car but sitting there for a second to weigh her approach. After hearing the brief news report, she’d dialed her West Coast contact again. She’d coaxed and flattered him into agreeing to use his sources to hack into the secure transport-delivery database, so now she had an arrival date when the sword was due back at the warehouse. The man had warned her he’d tell Kai about her inquiry, but she didn’t care about that. Kai not only approved of her quest; he was blackmailing her to do whatever it took to get the sword, including risk her life.

  Still striving for that elusive calmness of mind that karate espoused, Hana appraised the pile of cantilevered shipping containers stacked on top of one another like giant Legos. Ernie Thibodeaux was one of the oddest men she’d ever met, but also one of the most talented. She saw that he’d added to his domain in the months since she’d been here. He was a closet architect, an art historian with a PhD, a gourmet chef, a martial-arts expert with a grandmaster red belt in judo and the corresponding black belt, highest-level tenth Dan, in Shotokan karate. He was also a wiz at playing the stock market, his current primary source of income. And he was a man who loved skirting rules, including the law, which he considered an imposition on the god-given liberties he’d enjoyed in the swamps of Louisiana, where boys were self-sufficient—or dead.

  When she’d been friends with him before her break with her mother, she’d often tried to find a blind-date candidate for him. She’d never come across anyone else with his diverse skill set, range of interests, and flexible morals. His on-again, off-again relationship with her mother had dissolved precisely because he skirted the law with impunity, but so far his check kiting and securities fraud hadn’t landed him in jail. However, the authorities didn’t know he was also an expert safecracker, a legacy of his days as a ragin’ Cajun with New Orleans mob ties.

  If she was right about his character, Hana suspected he’d kept up his skills with the increasingly sophisticated digital safes most secure institutions now used. At least, she hoped so.

  Banging the incongruous brass lion-head door knocker she knew he’d pilfered from a vacant, crumbling British estate in Northumberland, she admired yet again his unusual front door. It was massive, stainless steel, but it still pivoted easily and quietly on divots when opened. He’d designed and built it himself. But when he wanted his privacy, she knew the giant bars on the other side of the door would require an arc welder to penetrate.

  Looking up, she noted he’d also added to his elaborate security system. Tiny cameras blinked at her from all around the porch, and, she was sure, from the entire first floor of the complex structure. Ernie wasn’t paranoid; he just liked nice things. Very nice things. Thus, she knew he’d appreciate her quest for an item of immense value and beauty. It wasn’t really theft considering this most cherished of family heirlooms had been stolen from her grandfather when he was forced into a Japanese internment camp.

  She was about to wield the knocker again when the door opened. In his stockinged feet, wearing h
is usual ensemble of cargo shorts and hippie tie-dyed T-shirt with a gaudy Hawaiian surfing overshirt of eighties vintage, he was still somehow imposing. His pulled back long, dirty-blond hair showed some gray, but aside from that and a few more laugh lines in his chiseled, tanned skin, he looked exactly the same.

  “You look like hell,” he delivered with his usual bluntness. He swung the door wide. It pivoted in place, all thousand-plus pounds perfectly balanced. “Come in and I’ll fix you some peppermint tea.”

  Just like that, as if the last six months had never happened. He didn’t even ask the obvious question of why she’d come. In his kitchen, which took up most of one of the storage containers and looked exactly like a kitchen from Architectural Digest—complete with quartz counters, stainless-steel Thermador appliances, and decorative tile in the backsplash and underfoot—he immediately turned on the rear burner to heat the bright copper kettle. He kept up a conversational flow that seemed banal, about politics and weather and the latest celebrity scandal, but she knew he was really giving her time to collect herself. Of all his sterling qualities, his ability to read another person’s moods and motivations was most amazing, at least to her. She tended to react first and figure out later, whereas he could tailor his actions to the situation. He’d tried to teach her to read body language, not words, but she hadn’t been a good pupil except when it came to reading opponents in the ring.

  For the first time since she’d broken into the Travis estate, she began to relax. The old routine of sitting at his bar proved as comforting as the aroma of the tea he set before her. She sat on the plush, comfortable bar stool, swiveling from side to side as she had from about the age of ten, when he had become her black-belt karate coach. He made himself another cup and stood across from her, elbows on the quartz, chin in his hands, appraising her with pale gray eyes that missed nothing.

  After she’d taken a few sips, he said, “Okay, spit it out.”

  She carefully set her cup back in the saucer, getting directly to the point. “I need your help. I have to break into a local warehouse to retrieve a family heirloom and I suspect it will mean some safecracking.”

  His expression didn’t alter; in fact, she might have asked him to help her change a tire. “The Nakatomi blade.”

  She nodded, but no matter how she tried to contain herself, her eyes began to fill with tears as she added, “Jiji is dying. He’s only asked for one thing. To hold our family legacy once more . . .”

  “And then?”

  “He doesn’t want me to go to jail again, so he says I’m to give it back to the Travis family after he—after he . . .”

  “But you don’t want to give it back.”

  She took another deep sip, almost glad of her scalded tongue, for it made her croak a bit easier, “No, but I would have. Except for Kai.”

  She saw the tiny flare of alarm in his flickering eyes and flared nostrils, but he only looked down and picked up his cup to blow on his steaming tea. He was obviously waiting for more, letting her set the pace.

  “Kai knows I’m trying to retrieve the blade. And he wants to do a swap. The blade for . . .” Her voice broke and she couldn’t even get her son’s name out.

  This time, Ernie’s usual adept movements were so clumsy his cup went sideways in his saucer and tipped over. He caught it but not before some of the tea spilled. He grabbed up a towel and dried the splash, taking several deep breaths. When the counter was clean, he looked at her with those incandescent quicksilver eyes, his dislike crystal clear. “The unregenerate piece of pond scum.”

  Hana stared over his head at the sparkling stainless-steel vent hood, but she was seeing in her memories something far less attractive. After Kai took her son, she’d demanded to see Takeo and Kai had acceded, but only when she agreed to be hooded and transported by his own men.

  Her hood wasn’t removed until she was inside his impregnable compound, a warren of tunnels and caves attached to, she was pretty sure, some type of sprawling mansion over the Edwards Aquifer. The water table was porous with limestone and easy to excavate. The elaborate tunnel system El Chapo had used to escape his Mexican prison had been his model. Kai was nothing if not thorough; the authorities would never catch him. From birth, he’d been tutored in two of the most arcane but disciplined credos on earth: Japanese perfection by practice in everything, and Yakuza tactics.

  That night Kai had baited her, rejecting her pitiful offer of ten thousand dollars in ransom, all the money she had. He’d told her he knew she was after the Nakatomi katana to give to her grandfather before he died. He wanted it as soon as the old man passed. Just carrying the sword at his side would give him status among the three competing Asian gangs in central Texas. Even the Chinese with their roots in the Triad lusted for Masamune blades....

  With little choice, Hana had agreed to the devil’s bargain. Then he’d allowed his men to abuse her just short of rape. They were all products of the Yakuza, right down to their tattoos, but had also taken on the characteristics of the worst Latino gangs in their new American home.

  Only when she was able to swallow her rage and hatred and pretend submission, did he allow her to see her son for a brief moment. Long enough to hug him and dry his tears and promise she’d come back for him as soon as she could.

  Ernie hauled her back to the present. “Let it go. Quiet your mind. Hatred is not your friend.”

  Hana gulped down the last of her tea, savagely glad of her scalded lips and throat. The pain brought her back from her vision of using her family blade for its most exquisite purpose: to kill Nakatomi enemies. Kai prided himself falsely on his samurai heritage as a Japanese; she knew his lineage was full of fishermen, not samurai. Her own lineage could be traced to a major samurai clan all the way back to the 1200s. She’d often wondered if that was why he’d chosen her as his Pygmalion-like teen mistress so many years ago. How charming he’d been . . . at first.

  Thankfully, Ernie interrupted her painful memories.

  “You can’t give him the sword, Hana. No matter what. He’s already got an edge over the other gangs, if you’ll pardon the expression, and the symbolism of that blade will give him even more authority.”

  Hana nodded. “I’m aware of all that, but if it’s my only option to get Takeo back, I’ll take it. His compound is virtually impregnable. From what I saw of it, which wasn’t much.” She shook her head.

  “I know. I’ve been there.”

  “You have?” Hana was surprised, for Kai had only finished the compound in the last couple of years. “Hooded and escorted?”

  “Yeah. Kai contacted me, asking me to train his men in karate and swordsmanship. I declined. I have no illusions about who he really is and I was still livid with him for . . . leading you into a life of crime, then deserting you when you got caught. And he was such a promising student.... You didn’t let your talent spoil your character. He did.”

  Hana was touched. Few values got between Ernie and his bank account, but her heart leaped in her chest as she contemplated his news. “Do you think you can get into the estate to check on Takeo?”

  “Possibly. But getting him out would be very difficult. You know how many guards Kai keeps around.”

  Her tea finished, Hana propped her chin on her hands, glum again.

  Ernie didn’t mince words. “Hana, if you keep going after the sword and get caught.... Kai will have full control of Takeo then.”

  Hana sighed heavily. “I’ve already made plans to disappear as soon as I have my son.”

  “And you’ll raise an impressionable five-year-old alone, as a fugitive? No family, little money?”

  Hana slammed her hand down on the quartz counter, her palm tingling. “What the hell else can I do?”

  * * *

  Later that evening, in exactly the same manner, Zach slammed his hand down on the counter before his father in the family kitchen. “Dammit, I can’t perform my job if you don’t listen to me.”

  “You’re not official yet.” John Travis finished
making his huge sandwich, set it on a plate and cut it in half, offering a piece to his son. “And we have no idea yet if it’s a sole slaying or if there will be a pattern and a broader message.”

  “And you want to be the next message?”

  “I can’t hole up and still do my job. It’s a public position and I won’t set an example of fear. Surely you know me better than that.”

  Zach looked down at his sandwich. He usually loved his dad’s sandwich concoctions, but this time it was unappetizing. He shoved it away and propped his elbows on the counter, swiveling his bar stool back and forth because he couldn’t be still. “How much longer before they make a decision?”

  “I’m told another few days. A rush decision. There was some talk about nepotism and conflict of interest in having you guard me, but you’re clearly the most qualified candidate on paper and that should carry enough weight to get you hired. And since it’s a brand-new position contingent on budgeting, a direct appointment from the governor’s office rather than Ranger management, they’re being more lenient in their findings.” John took a huge bite of sandwich, chewing with a relish his son eyed sourly.

  “Dad, how can you eat at a time like this?”

  “Starving won’t give me any elucidation or insight into forensics.” John took another big bite.

  However, when his official encrypted cell phone rang, John gulped down his food and answered immediately. “Yes, do you have the results?” He listened, then tapped up a secure e-mail account on the iPad sitting next to him on the counter. “Thanks, I have it.” He used his forefinger to page through what appeared to Zach to be a criminal file.

  He was about to leave the kitchen when he glimpsed, upside down, a photo: a long fall of dark hair. He skirted the counter and looked down at the iPad. He saw an arrest record attached to a top sheet with a photo and the usual stats of height, weight, and gender. Hana Nakatomi was the name at the top. His father shoved the iPad in front of him, I told you so on his face, if not his lips.