The Last Assassin

Her mobile phone rang. She looked at it. No number appeared on the caller ID display.

She closed the book, severely irritated with herself at how much she was hoping, and opened the phone. 'Allo,' she said.

'Hey,' Rain said. 'It's me.'

She paused, her heart beating hard, and said, 'How did things go?'

'They got… complicated.'

'How do you mean?'

'I can't really talk about it.'

'Why? I'm listening.'

'I just can't right now.'

'Oh, really?' She could hear the icicles in her own voice.

'Come on, Delilah, don't be this way.'

'What way is that?'

Damn it, what was it about him that made her sulk and pout like a schoolgirl? She hated it.

There was a pause, then he said, 'I'm sorry, Delilah.'

Her heart beat harder. 'Sorry for what?'

There was another pause. He said, 'I have to go to Tokyo for a few days to straighten some things out. I'll be in touch after that, okay?'

She almost said, You mean like you were in touch after Barcelona?

She bit it off and said instead, 'What's in Tokyo?'

Another pause. He said, 'I'll call you soon. Bye.' And hung up.

She stared at her phone for a moment, and it took all her self-control not to hurl it across the room.

Goddamn him! Tokyo? What was that about, going to meet the family? What? And what was that good-bye? Was it, good-bye?

He had just let her go, hadn't he? They'd been getting closer and closer, she'd been opening up more and more, but as soon as he'd gotten a better offer, he was gone. What did he think, he could just have her for fun whenever it was convenient and then discard her at a whim?

And all this after the risks she'd taken to help him in Hong Kong, too, which was exactly what had caused her current troubles in the first place. Damn him. Goddamn him.

She knew she wasn't taking this well, but at the moment she didn't care. She wasn't going to just sit alone on the other side of the world while the men in her organization tried to figure out what to do with her at work and the man in her heart tried to figure out what to do with her in his life.

She thought again about what could have made Midori try to hide the baby from Rain, about what Rain could have done that would have precipitated that. Then she thought, The hell with it.

She went to her laptop and made a reservation on the next afternoon's Air France flight to New York. If he was going to fuck with her, he was going to see that she could fuck with him right back.

12

Dox and I met for dinner that evening at a Japanese restaurant called Omen on Thompson in SoHo. It was a good place, quiet and dark and private, and the food was first-rate. Over sushi and beer, I explained the situation in Japan, the risks and the possible benefits.

When I was done, he said, 'There's something I want to ask you about.'

'Okay,' I said, thinking there was something serious.

'Well, in all the excitement, you never did tell me how things went last night before everything went haywire.'

I realized I should have known better. 'It went okay,' I said.

'Okay? What is okay?'

'You know… okay.'

'I'm talking about your lady.'

'Yeah, it was good, I guess.'

'Goddamn, man, what do I have to do, the old Rayovac to the nutsack to get you to talk?'

'It was good. She didn't throw me out. She let me see… my son.'

My son. I wondered if the words would ever feel familiar. Just saying them made me feel slightly dizzy, good and anxious and confused all at the same time.

'Well, how was that?'