“Will?” he asked the stuffy darkness. But there wasn’t enough room for both Will and him in this crowded compartment. There wasn’t enough room for him on his own. Woozily, he began to feel around for something he could use as a weapon. But there was nothing. No tire iron, no jack, no handy crowbar or two-by-four.
The car banged down on another dip in the road, and this time the struggle to control his stomach failed. Sickness swept over him in a humiliating tide, wrenching his muscles. His head pounded more fiercely with each gasped retch.
* * * * *
“This is a goddamned, unbelievable screwup of near-mythic proportions,” Assistant Director Cooper snarled.
It was the most pleasant thing Cooper had said so far, and it indicated he was finally cooling down.
Will nodded curtly. That had been the extent of his participation for most of his meeting with Cooper.
“If MacAllister believed himself to be in some kind of danger —”
“He didn’t.”
At Cooper’s look of irritable inquiry, Will said, “He’d have told me, yes, but more to the point, Taylor wouldn’t ever believe there was a threat he couldn’t handle.”
Cooper snorted, but he couldn’t argue with that.
“Well, he obviously perceived there was some threat, because he sent off a sheet of Japanese writing and a cardboard box with wrapping paper to the FBI lab.”
Will swallowed and managed to say unemotionally, “Did they come up with anything?”
“It wasn’t a high-priority request at the time.” Cooper sighed. “We should know something soon.”
“Would it be possible for me to see MacAllister’s file as it relates to his posting in Japan?”
Cooper was scowling again. “Certainly not. Anyway, LAPD is taking point on this for now.”
“Until the G-men take it over?”
“Don’t remind me.” Cooper scrutinized Will. “You think this ties back to MacAllister’s first posting?”
“I think it’s possible. There’s certainly a Japanese theme to these threats.”
“That was, what? Ten years ago?”
“Eight, I think.” Will apologized silently to his missing partner. “He doesn’t talk about it, but I can’t think of any other connection. He likes Japanese food, but I doubt if that’s the key.”
“I can’t grant you access to your partner’s personnel file, Brandt.”
Will nodded.
“I’ll look at the file myself. If I find anything…” Cooper let it trail. “Meantime, I’m instructing you to give your full cooperation to LAPD. And I mean that, Brandt. Full cooperation.”
* * * * *
“Wake up.”
Bright pain beneath his ribs. His right side. He needed to be careful of his right side —
Taylor bit off a groan. A firework display seemed to be going on inside his head. His brain pounded sickeningly with each pulse of flashing bright light. He pried his eyes open. An indistinct figure stood over him. Was the light bad or was it his vision? Or both?
“Wake up.”
The voice was cold, level. It was followed by another spike of pain in his side as a foot landed solidly beneath the ribs. He bit off his cry and rolled away — tried to, anyway. There was a rope around his ankles and another around his wrists.
He was on the ground. No, a floor. A cement floor. An interior. It was chilly, and it smelled weird. Like fish. Like the ocean.
Taylor began to remember. He had been at Will’s. His car wouldn’t start. Then it came to him: Varga getting hit. Jesus. In the chest.
“Varga?” His voice sounded like gravel.
“She’s dead. Thanks to you.”
No. It wasn’t — that couldn’t… He shook his head. A very bad idea.
“Why the hell did you have to choose today to ride together?”
A woman’s voice from down a long, echoing tunnel. She seemed to expect an answer. Taylor mumbled, “Car wouldn’t start.”
“Of course your goddamned car wouldn’t start,” ranted the voice. “That was the point. If you’d just walked out the door at the time you always do, everything would have been fine. But you had to try and play tricks. And now another person has died because of you.”
He tried to place her. She seemed to know him, so he must know her, right? Nothing was familiar about her. The voice wasn’t familiar. He tried to peer up at her through his sticky eyelashes. Nothing. Nothing she said made any sense. She went rambling on about Varga and how he’d caused her death. He tried to assess the situation, but so far nothing was making sense.
Maybe his bewilderment was too obvious to miss. “You don’t know who I am, do you?” she asked finally.
He shook his head.
“I’m Alexandra Sugimori. The wife of the man you murdered.”
Chapter Ten
“Sugimori,” Taylor echoed.
“Are you going to pretend you don’t remember, you lying sack of shit?”
“I remember.”
“Yes,” she said with bitter satisfaction. “You could hardly forget.”
No, he could hardly forget. And now the pieces clicked into place like a Japanese puzzle box. Except it still didn’t make sense.
“You destroyed him. You destroyed our life.”
He shook his head, and she kicked him again. He began to worry about his right lung, the one that had been shot three months earlier. The doctors had warned him that it would always be vulnerable, especially to tearing loose from his rib cage again. He was pretty sure getting repeatedly kicked in the ribs would be discouraged.
“Murderer!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he protested. “I didn’t kill Inori. I wasn’t even in Japan when he —” Taylor stopped. Over the past few days the memories had returned, and though the pain had faded through the years, it still hurt. It always would.
“When he killed himself?” she asked.
Taylor nodded. He pulled surreptitiously at the rope binding his wrists. A lot of rope. Hopefully that meant they didn’t know what they were doing.
“The suicide that you drove him to.”
He tried to deny it, moving his head in negation — not easy lying on the floor.
“Liar.”
She kicked at him again, but this time he rolled to protect his lung and ribs. Her
