“Please.” She offered the weapon to Quinn, humbly bowing her head when he took it in both hands. “It is somewhat plain. Not as beautifully decorated as more modern wakizashi. I suppose my ancestors were austere men.”
Quinn grasped the handle and unsheathed the shining blade. Eighteen inches from tip to iron handguard, it sang in his hand as living steel should. There was something about a three-centuries-old weapon that pierced the soul as surely as it cut flesh and bone.
“I wish you to have it, Quinn-san,” Ayako said, her head still bowed.
“Oh, no.” Quinn slid it back in the sheath with a solid click. He pushed it toward her with both hands. “I couldn’t.”
“I have no husband,” Ayako said. “Who else would take it? The fool Watanabe?” She sniffed. A tear fell on her thigh and she brushed it away with the heel of her hand. “Please. I would like it to go to a good man.”
Her cell phone rang, playing a snippet of the pop song by her Korean heartthrob and rescuing Quinn for the moment.
Ayako listened intently, making “emm” and “ehh” noises every few seconds to let the person on the other end know she was still on the line. She’d regained her composure by the time she hung up.
“That was Watanabe,” she said. “You were right. Tanaka has agreed to meet us. He has a warehouse on the harbor, near the commercial docks. We are to meet him there in an hour.” Ayako brushed a lock of black hair out of her eyes that were still red from crying. “Something is not quite right. Watanabe sounded too happy. They must be planning something.”
“Of course they are,” Quinn said. “But so are we.”
He moved to return the sword, but she turned away.
“It is yours now.” She raised an open hand, showing her palm and refusing any further discussion. Moving to her duffel at the head of her futon, she peeled the pink T-shirt over her head and stepped out of her shorts as if Quinn wasn’t leaning against the wall ten feet away. He didn’t have time to look away before he caught the telltale shadow of a scar. White against the honey color of her skin, it ran diagonally across her belly, canted from the right of her navel to her panty line. Quinn had plenty of scars of his own and recognized this one as old and too jagged to have been made during a surgery. Turning, he couldn’t help wondering if the story behind that scar had something to do with her visceral reaction toward the mere mention of Oda’s name.
“I am dressed,” she said softly. He heard the sound of creaking wood as she sat back on the futon to put on her socks.
She looked fresh and beautiful in a pair of faded jeans and a loose, gray turtleneck sweater.
“Less… whore-like?” She shrugged.
“Stop that,” he chided.
“Do you know what a woman wants, Quinn-san?”
“I’m not the man to ask.” He wished Thibodaux was there. The big Cajun had barrels of philosophy about women.
“I think most men believe we want to be ravished — swept off our feet.” She sat on the end of the bed, one sock on, the other in her hand. “And perhaps some of us do when we are young. But what we really want is to feel safe. Every day I feel excitement, fear, sadness, anger, and sometimes, believe it or not, even desire… but safety is something I have not felt in a very long time — until now.”
Quinn did not know what to say, so he said nothing.
Tears ran down her cheeks. She sat on the futon and hugged her knees to her chest, giving a tiny nod toward Quinn’s hands. “Please, I beg you to accept the sword. Its value is far less than the gift you have given me.”
Quinn held it up in both hands, bowing at the waist, thanking her.
“In fact”—she leaned over to tug her other sock over a tiny foot—“bring it with us. Where we are going, the ferocious god of wind may be welcome assistance.”
CHAPTER 49
Quinn was surprised to see a metallic red Honda Blackbird parked on the gravel pad in front of the temple cottage beside Ayako’s yellow bike.
“We would never have been able to get away from Tanaka on my little bike.” She smiled. “And this is more suited to your riding style.”
Quinn stepped up to the motorcycle. It was enough to make him momentarily forget how bad he hurt. “Where did you get this so early in the morning?”
“I stopped to see a client before he left for work,” she said. “He has allowed us to borrow it for a while.”
“Now we’re talkin’,” Quinn said in English.
Ayako gave him a quizzical look.
“My brother had one of these when we were younger.” Quinn fell back into Japanese. “It brings back memories.”
“I thought you would approve,” Ayako said.
He ran a hand down the Honda’s aggressive fairing and across the smooth arc of the fuel tank. If his BMW GSA was the Hummer of motorcycles, the Honda Blackbird was the stealth fighter. He didn’t care for the two side luggage cases on this particular bike, thinking they detracted from the sinister look. But they served a purpose and made a good hiding spot for the two pink shopping bags he’d borrowed from Ayako’s kitchen cupboard when they’d cleared out after the altercation with Tanaka’s men.
Carrying the short sword in the soft-sided guitar case would keep them from getting stopped by any curious patrol officers. For a country steeped in a history of warfare and weaponry, Japanese police got twitchy if they thought someone was riding around with a sword slung over their back.
Once everything was stowed, Quinn swung a leg over the big bike and planted both feet to steady it. He wore the borrowed helmet and his leather jacket against the weather and any possible crash.
Ayako climbed on behind him and scrunched up closer than she probably had to. Her thighs ran tight alongside his, arms wrapped around him, body pressed flat to his back.
“All set?” he asked over his shoulder.
“All set.” She gave his belly a playful pat.
Quinn pushed the ignition button and brought the Blackbird’s 110 °CC engine to growling life. The throaty purr begged him to roll on the throttle.
“You know what I love about this bike?” he asked.
“I do not.” She shook her head, letting her helmet bump the back of his.
“It runs as good as it looks,” he said.
“The same could be said of you, Quinn-san.” Ayako gave him another squeeze.
Quinn groaned within himself. She might very well feel safe, but this girl was as dangerous as any yakuza gangster.
Tanaka’s dockside warehouse was a perfect location to be chopped into pieces and carried out to sea in a fishing vessel. To avoid a soupy end, Quinn made a short detour to a small Shinto shrine on a wooded hill a little over two miles away. He left one of the pink grocery bags there, tucked safely behind a flat granite monolith in a thick stand of bamboo.
The last thing he planned to do was meet Tanaka in his space, on his terms. Instead, he used a favorite technique he’d learned from an old salt when he’d first joined OSI and was assigned to the Crim unit — criminal investigations.
Thieves stuck with thieves, drug dealers hung with other drug dealers. Informants were, more often than not, steeped in the criminal culture. Good guys rarely had information on bad guys. That was the nature of the beast. Meetings with people on the other side of the law were ticklish at best and could turn deadly in the blink of an eye.
It was an inviolable rule that Quinn would pick the location of any meet with an informant. If a snitch called him for a meeting, Quinn would send him to a second location. Then, if things didn’t smell right on his arrival, Quinn might drive by and have the snitch follow him to a third — in a sort of rolling meet.