‘The time trials are tomorrow,’ Nat reminded her, stepping towards the door. ‘There isn’t time to find another car. And besides, we aren’t going there to win.’
She stared at him. ‘What the hell do you mean—?’
‘Your job is retrieval,’ said Nat. ‘You can’t do that and have the time to win the race. It’s one or the other, Dutch.’
Rage stiffened her muscles. ‘Do you know how hard it is for me to race in the Devil’s Run and try not to win?’
‘Hard or not,’ said Nat, ‘it’s either that or you go back to jail.’
And wouldn’t I love to know what it is you’re looking for on Teijouan, she thought, still fighting to suppress her anger. ‘Well, either way,’ she continued, pointing at the binder, ‘if we go driving around Teijouan in one of these things we’ve got that much less of a chance of making it back out alive, whatever reason we have for being there.’
‘I’ll wake you early so we can get to the racetrack in time,’ he told her, stepping over to the door. She could tell from the tone of his voice he wasn’t going to give way. ‘Get some rest.’
She slammed her fist against the nearest wall. ‘Fuck you. I should go out there and steal me something, and I’ll bet you whatever I find’s going to leave that heap of garbage in the dust!’
His expression hardened. ‘You’ll stay put. We’re still working on how to explain how you got here without having to answer some very difficult questions.’
She sank onto the edge of the bed. ‘What’s your deal, anyway? You’re not some chauffeur. I saw the three of you talking on that jet, and I could see that Wu paid a lot more attention to you than he ever did to that asshole Harry.’
‘I’ll be next door,’ he said, and departed, pulling the door shut.
‘You know it’s been years since I got behind the wheel of a car, right?’ she shouted through the door. ‘Maybe I can’t drive any more, did you think of that?’
No answer. Asshole.
Dutch sighed and ran her fingers across the bed sheets, then realised she hadn’t had a shower in a couple of days. She went to the bathroom, investigating the complicated faucets and smelling the soap. Once she got the temperature right, she stripped off and cleaned away the grime and sweat, then changed into fresh underwear and another, identical white T-shirt from the shopping bag; at least whoever had picked her clothes had done their research, since she never wore anything else if she had any choice in the matter. Then she went to stare out the window at a skyline she never thought she’d see again.
* * *
Something—some subliminal sense born of a billion years of tooth-and-claw evolution—brought Dutch awake in the pre-dawn hours, her heart pounding as if she’d awoken from a bad nightmare. The window stood open, letting in a breeze.
Dutch stared out the window at the neon lights of Roppongi across the river. It had been closed when she’d gone to sleep.
In that same moment, she became aware of a dark-clad figure standing motionless next to the window. Then it moved towards her with sudden swiftness, light reflecting from a long, tapering blade held out at an angle from its hip.
Dutch threw herself off the bed, landing in a tangle of sheets on the floor. The blade whispered past her neck, missing by millimetres. The assassin—for Dutch had little doubt that the intruder intended to kill her—leapt onto the bed, clad in black combats and T-shirt, eyes visible above a patterned bandana pulled up over his nose.
The blade flashed again, swinging down towards Dutch. She jerked back just in time, the blade again whispering past her neck. Without thinking, she grabbed hold of some of the sheets still on the bed and yanked them hard enough the assassin stumbled and fell backwards.
By the time the assassin had leapt back upright, Dutch had run into the bathroom. She had just got the door closed when the blade cut deep into the wood, its point emerging a few millimetres shy of her nose. She heard the assassin grunting from the other side as he tried—and failed—to tug the blade free.
Bad move, thought Dutch. She pulled the door open hard, yanking the sword-handle out of his grasp. His eyes met her for one brief instant before she slugged him hard on the nose, knocking him backwards with sufficient force that his feet became entangled in the sheets on the floor. He landed, arms flailing, on the bed.
Dutch held the door open with one foot, grasped the handle of the sword with both hands and managed to pull it free.
The assassin rolled off the bed and leapt back to his feet, a second, shorter blade grasped in one hand. But not quite fast enough: Dutch brought the longer sword around and rammed its point between his ribs.
He let out an agonised grunt, his eyes wide and full of horror as he staggered back and again fell sprawling onto the mattress, the katana protruding from his chest. His legs kicked and thrashed, and then he stopped moving, a dark stain spreading out across the mattress beneath him.
The door to Dutch’s room crashed open to reveal Nat in T-shirt and shorts, a pistol gripped in both hands and an underarm holster thrown over one shoulder. He stared at the sprawled body on the bed like he couldn’t quite make sense of what he was seeing.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he exclaimed, looking back up at her. ‘What the fuck is going on?’
‘He tried to kill me.’
He glanced at the blade still stuck in the assassin’s chest, then back at Dutch.
