Fire and Ice - Anne Stuart [77]
But that would be letting him know she was still vulnerable. And she wasn’t. She was going to lie here and go to sleep and wait for her brother-in-law to rescue her.
He heard the noise before she did. She’d been drifting off into an uncomfortable sleep when Reno moved, immediately on full alert.
“What’s happening?” she said sleepily, as she heard the noise outside the door.
“I think they decided not to wait,” Reno said in a grim voice. He grabbed her hand and hauled her out of the bed, and she didn’t protest. “Stay behind me,” he said.
The door slammed open and four young yakuza pushed in the room, and Jilly had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. These were like yakuza-boy, not the exquisitely polite Hitomi-san. These were trouble.
It took her a minute to even begin to understand the conversation. It was in Japanese, and the intruders spoke with a strange accent, rolling their R’s, using phrases Jilly hadn’t learned in her intensive study. Reno was answering them the same way, even with the rolling of the R’s. And then the words began to make sense.
The leader, a slightly older gangster with a high shellacked pompadour and sour expression, was the spokesman. “We’re taking her,” he said. “Hitomi-san has decided she has no use. Your grandfather has barricaded himself in his rooms, and she will be of no help in getting to him. We have orders to kill her, show her body to the oyabun to prove we will stop at nothing, and then dispose of her body.”
“That would be a mistake,” Reno said, his voice calm and almost bored—as if he were discussing different ways to cook fish. “The Americans get very upset if their people meet with trouble in Japan, and this one is a young, pretty girl from a good family. Her face and name will be in newspapers all over the world, and the authorities will not let her disappearance go unnoticed. They will search until they find her.”
“We know how to dispose of a body, Shinodasan,” one of the younger men said with a sneer.
“They will look until they find her,” Reno said. “And if they don’t, they will keep looking. The police, who turn a blind eye to most things, will be on notice. You will make life much more complicated for Hitomi-san and the family.”
“Hitomi-san’s orders are clear. If your grandfather is presented with the dead body of the gaijin he will realize he is defeated.” Two of the men started approaching, and Reno grabbed Jilly’s arm and pulled her tight behind him.
“You can’t take her,” he said. “If you need a dead body you can take me instead.”
“We could do that,” the spokesman said, raising his gun.
“Matsumoto-san!” Hitomi’s voice was sharp as he appeared in the doorway. “What is taking you so long?”
“He’s being difficult, trying to save the life of the girl by offering his own.” The tone of his voice expressed his opinion of such idiotic behavior.
Hitomi looked at Reno, shaking his head. “You’ve spent too much time among gaijins, Hiromasa-san. You’re forgetting that for each one lost, there are a dozen to take their place.”
“If you want to kill her, you have to go through me first.”
“So romantic,” Hitomi said with a sigh. “It must be the tainted blood of your American mother. We can work out a compromise. Your grandfather has a small group guarding him, and we can’t break in. I’ve already lost seven men trying. I had planned to drop the body of the girl in front of the door with the assurance that you and his great-nephew would be the next, but I am flexible. You can take the girl and get him to open the door.”
“And then what?”
“And then we discuss the future with your esteemed grandfather. His ways are old-fashioned and impractical. It’s a new world, and he’s keeping his men from earning the kind of money they deserve. It’s time for him to step down and a new order to take his place.”
“And you will run that new order,” Reno said. “I don’t think my grandfather will agree.”
“I don’t think your grandfather