Annja nearly laughed. If that was what he could do on short notice, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what he’d be capable of when given more time. Probably reroute the NSA’s supersecret satellites just to get his voice mail, she thought.
With the communications issues resolved, Henshaw saw Marco out the door. He was gone for a few minutes, and when he came back Annja was waiting for him with an annoyed look on her face.
“Let me guess. He’s an old friend who just happened to be hanging around down the street when you called. Out with it, Henshaw.”
He mumbled something about not knowing what she was talking about.
But after all that had happened, there was no way she was going to settle for a feeble excuse.
“I said, spill it!”
Henshaw hesitated for another moment or two, then sighed. “No sense in keeping things a secret now, is there?” he asked.
Annja chose to take that as a rhetorical question and simply waited for him to continue.
“We’ve had you under surveillance ever since the day you left the estate,” he said.
“Why?”
“Roux was worried. He knew about the Dragon—knew what he was capable of, how far he would go to get something he wanted. At the same time he’d heard rumors about an artifact the Dragon was supposed to possess.”
“You mean Muramasa’s sword?”
“Yes, right, the sword.” Henshaw tried but failed to hide his surprise that she knew about the weapon.
Of course she knew about the weapon. Did they think she was an idiot?
“And then what?” she prompted, feeling her anger rise. “Did he think he was going to just dangle me out there as bait? Wait and see what happened?”
Henshaw’s face went still. “I wasn’t privy to all his plans, Ms. Creed.”
So they were back to Ms. Creed now, were they? “I have half a mind to just leave him there, Henshaw. He was playing games with my life!”
Wisely her companion remained silent.
After several minutes, Annja said, “Okay, we both know that I can’t leave him in her hands any more than you can, no matter how angry I am. So let’s figure out the rest of this plan and call it a night.”
They talked for another hour, getting everything straight so that when the time came they both knew what they were supposed to be doing and when. It was a reasonable plan, straightforward, without too many things that could trip them up. Of course, she thought, there was always the unexpected, but that couldn’t be helped.
Afterward they made arrangements with the manager to have a cab waiting for them in the hotel’s underground garage so they could slip away from the hotel without being seen.
Assuming that Annja’s loft was being watched, they staged an argument just outside, with Annja yelling at Henshaw through the cab’s window, telling him she didn’t want anything to do with him and that she would handle things on her own, all in an attempt to convince the watchers they knew were out there that Annja was following the Dragon’s instructions to the letter.
Sleep was a long time in coming for Annja that night.
26
Several months earlier
Shizu eyed the lodge in front of her through the curtain of falling snow. Inside that building was the man she had come to kill. All she had to do in order to complete her contract was to enter the house, kill its occupant and get out again without being caught.
Not a problem, she thought with a grin.
She circled the property, noting the position of the security cameras and how often they moved in their preset arcs, and laughed silently. Whoever was in charge of security was an idiot; the cameras moved in defined, repeatable patterns. All she had to do was wait for the right moment.
When it came, she raced across the lawn directly toward the house in front of her. She was dressed in white, from her head to her feet, blending perfectly with the snow all around her. Even if someone had chosen that moment to look out through the windows, they wouldn’t have been able to pick out her form in the midst of the swirling snow.
She reached the side of the building without incident and flattened herself against it. The cameras only faced outward, so she was beyond their reach, but she wasn’t certain yet if there were armed guards wandering the property and she didn’t want to make herself a visible target.
There was a door several yards farther along. From the plans she had stolen from the contractor who’d built the place she knew that it led into a utility room.
It was as good a choice as any to provide her entrance.
She removed an electric lock pick from the pocket of her coat. It resembled a pistol but instead of a barrel it had a long thick tongue sticking out of the front end. She shoved the tongue into the lock and then pulled the trigger. There was a brief rattle as the pick vibrated inside the lock, causing the pins to fall into place, and then the door was opening before her. She shoved the pick back inside her jacket and stepped forward.
Slipping inside, she shut the door quietly behind her and listened, making certain that the rattle of the pick, quiet as it was, had not attracted undue attention.
She left her coat and shoes behind, not wanting the heavy fabric or wet soles to give her away. On stocking feet she moved deeper into the house.
The utility room door opened to a short corridor, which, in turn, led into the kitchen. That was where she found the first guard. He was standing at the island making a sandwich, a loaf of bread and a jar of mayonnaise open on the counter in front of him. He never heard her as she crept up behind him, covered his mouth with one hand and, with the other, drove a knife deep into his brain through the base of his skull.
She held him as he died and then lowered him quietly to the floor.
Wiping the blade of her knife on his shirt, she moved on.
The next guard was standing in a pool of light at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor, his arms crossed in front of him.
Her sword barely made a sound as she drew it from the scabbard she wore on her back.
Breathing deeply to fill her lungs with oxygen, the Dragon burst out of the hallway, a shadow moving through the dimly lit room. By the time the guard’s mind managed to receive the message from his eyes that he was under attack, it was too late. He died with his hands still reaching for the weapon on his hip, the Dragon’s sword thrust through his heart.
Pulling her sword free from his chest, she was already moving past the body and up the stairs as it crumpled to the carpet behind her with a thump.
She could see the floor plan in her mind, knew that the bedroom she wanted was the third door on the left, and she was already passing through it into the room itself when she heard the first shouts of alarm from downstairs.
Someone had found the body in the kitchen.
But that didn’t matter; she was where she needed to be. She could see the man’s sleeping form on the bed in front of her and she moved forward confidently.
One more thrust would be all it took.
Three steps from the bed the lights suddenly flared to life around her and Shizu found herself looking down the barrel of the pistol held in the hand of the man on the bed.