Miyagi found herself amazed at how much he’d aged. Still, there was a ferocity in his eyes that said he was not some old man to be trifled with. She took a half step back, fighting a rising panic.
He saw it and his face softened at once, drawing her in. A smile spread over rosy cheeks. She’d forgotten how handsome he could make himself.
“Oh, how I have missed you, Emi-chan,” he said. “I often wondered if you would ever return home.”
“Home…” Miyagi mused. “You were never that to me.”
Oda shook his head, chiding. “I gave you sanctuary,” he said. “And a beautiful daughter.”
“It would seem,” Miyagi said, swallowing the bile that rose in her throat, “that I gave the daughter to you.”
“As you say.” Oda shrugged. “But you were always my favorite. You know that, don’t you?”
Miyagi struggled to keep her face passive. “Takako-san was once your favorite,” she said. “I just came from her home, where I witnessed what you do to former favorites.”
“That was an unfortunate necessity,” he said. “But, she had become slow of wit — unlike you, it appears.”
“Is that so?” Miyagi said. She wanted to shoot him, but the gun felt like it weighed a thousand pounds in her hands. “It might interest you to know she left behind volumes of notebooks detailing her work for you over the past years — including information on your present relationship with a man named Ranjhani. Not so slow of wit, it seems.”
“Then I was right to kill her.” Oda sighed, but Miyagi caught the tiniest glint of worry in his eyes. “You are strong, Emi-chan, much stronger that she ever was.” He flicked his fingers. “Come, put down the gun and let us relive old times.”
“And what of Ayako?” Miyagi stared at him. “Was she your favorite as well?”
“No, no.” Oda waved away the thought, vain enough to believe Miyagi actually wanted to be his favorite. “Ayako-chan was only a vessel. You are certainly stronger than that foolish whore.”
Miyagi leveled the MP5, letting anger chase away her uneasiness. Oda was a monster, but he was merely a man, not a god to be feared.
Miyagi put two rounds in Oda’s belly, low so he would feel it. He stumbled backward, teetering at the edge of the roof. He reached out, hands flailing for support, seeking to control her even to the end.
“Emiko… help me. .”
Miyagi let the MP5 fall against her sling and drew her sword, extending it toward the falling man. Groping blindly, he grabbed the blade with both hands, leaving his fingers behind as he tumbled over the parapet.
“Ayako-chan survived when you cut her daughter from the womb,” Miyagi whispered, peering over the edge at Oda’s shattered body below. “She was the strongest woman I have ever known.”
Quinn feinted left, offering his injured side to draw the tattooed woman out.
Believing he was beaten, she struck again, slicing the sleeve of his Transit jacket. This time he was ready and took the cut on the crash armor, sliding by so he was inside her guard. Crashing in, he gave her a vicious head butt, shattering the bridge of her nose and sending her staggering backward.
Quinn kept coming, punching her over and over in the face with his left hand. She raised the sword to fend him off. It was a blind reaction but caused him to sidestep to keep from getting cut. Far from beaten, she held the sword with her left hand and brought her right around in a brutal punch to his kidney.
Fighting through the pain, Quinn pressed closer so he was chest to chest with the young woman, rendering her long sword useless.
“Get off me, you fool!” she spat. The odor of peppermint hit him full in the face.
A torrent of white-hot fury flowed through his body. He stepped to the side, stomping laterally at her knee, hearing the satisfying crunch as cartilage tore and the joint gave way. She screamed, twisting to the side to relieve the sudden pain. Quinn stepped behind her, grabbing the flap of sullen hair and jerking her head backward as he snaked his arm over the top of her throat, catching her head under his arm so her body was arched in front of him, her neck bent backward with nowhere to go. Hauling upward and back, he felt a dull snap.
The sword fell from her grasp, but he held her there a full minute longer, panting, squeezing, his entire body shaking from shock and relief. Finally satisfied that she was dead, Quinn let her body fall to the ground. He wasn’t far behind her, collapsing to his knees on the gravel.
Thibodaux and Garcia came up moments later. Ronnie fell beside him, supporting him with strong arms. Jacques let out a mournful sigh. “I wonder if we’re ever gonna run out of folks to kill…”
“Oda?” Quinn whispered.
“Miyagi took a gun to his knife fight,” Thibodaux said.
Still panting, Quinn found the strength to roll the dead woman over and raise her shirt so he could check her tattoo on her back. “Komainu,” he said under his breath.
“What?” Ronnie stayed locked in beside him.
“A foo dog,” Quinn said. “This may be difficult for Emiko to see—”
Miyagi’s voice came from behind him. “I am sorry to say it is not so difficult for me after all,” she said, standing over the body to peruse the tattoo. “This is not my daughter.”
“But the tattoo,” Quinn said, “it is just as you described.
“So it is,” Miyagi said. “But I was a fool not to remember that komainu come in pairs. One most always has his mouth open; on the other, the mouth is closed, as it is here.” She used the tip of her sword to point to the dead woman’s back. The ferocious temple dog did indeed stare at them over a closed mouth.
“Then who?” Quinn closed his eyes, knowing the answer before she told him.
“Her name is Hiromi. Ayako-chan had a difficult pregnancy,” Miyagi said. “She feared that she would lose the child and tried to sneak away, but Oda caught her. He cut out the baby with a dagger and left Ayako to die. Even Shimoyama, who had to that point looked down on the younger girls, took pity on the poor thing and helped her get medical attention. She saved Ayako’s life but gave up a little finger in return — and the trust of Oda.”
“Of course,” Quinn said, remembering the signs he should have seen — the visceral way Ayako had reacted when he mentioned Oda’s name, the way she’d gone pale when he told her he was looking for a girl with a komainu tattooed on her back. Though Hiromi would have no memory of her real mother, Ayako would have kept up with her. Hiromi was the reason she’d kept disrupting his aim during the chase through Yanagi Pharmaceutical. She was the reason Ayako had dropped the pistol during the motorcycle chase.
It was the first time she’d ever seen her daughter since the day Oda cut the child from her belly. No wonder Ayako wanted to protect her — but even the love for a daughter had limits. Something had snapped when she’d seen her damaged daughter cut down the innocent children. Even then, as she lay dying, she’d given Quinn the last clue in her warning.
“She is fierce,” Ayako had said. “Just like her mother.”
CHAPTER 72
Winfield Palmer answered on the fourth ring. His voice was hollow, preoccupied.
“Oda is dead,” Quinn said. He leaned against Ronnie, who sat with her back to a cedar tree supporting him while Thibodaux and Miyagi went to bring up the car.
“Good,” Palmer said. “That’s good.”
“He was up to something at Yanagi,” Quinn said. “I’d say everything they manufactured is highly suspect.”
“I agree,” Palmer said. His voice was a strained whisper, as if he didn’t want to wake someone beside him. “All that vaccine has been impounded. The pages from the notebook Miyagi texted me line out pretty well what happened. I’ve already got some of your OSI friends looking for the Kyrgyz barber at Bagram. There are others, as yet unidentified, that were spreading the infection by anything that would come in contact with the victim’s blood — infected razors, fingernail files, scissors — even dental floss. We’ve arrested a dental assistant in Cedar City and have leads on several others. Not much hope of finding them now, though.”