Ice Blue - Anne Stuart [57]
“Very funny. Are you telling me you’re not planning to kill me?”
His eyes slid away. “Not if I can help it. Not unless you’re really annoying.”
“Then if you’re not driving me out into the middle of nowhere to kill me, why are we here?”
“Use your eyes, Summer.”
She didn’t like him using her name, but replying “Dr. Hawthorne to you” would be like something out of a Marx Brothers movie. She looked around as he slowed down, and realized the vast, empty field was exactly that. An airfield, and there were several small planes sitting over by a ramshackle metal building.
“I’m not getting on a plane,” she said in a tight voice.
“Afraid of flying?”
She was, but that had nothing to do with it. “I’m not leaving my sister. I’m not going anywhere until I know she’s safe.”
“You’re going to do what I tell you to do.” He pulled up beside the metal shack and turned off the car.
“You’re going to have to kill me first.”
He sighed, and for half a second she was certain he was going to do exactly that. “Someone’s taking care of your sister,” he said finally.
“Who? The Shirosama? I don’t think so.”
“A colleague is getting her out. You don’t need to worry.”
“A colleague? A member of the Yakuza is going to waltz right in there and snatch her away?”
“You’re forgetting that the True Realization Fellowship started in Japan, and almost a third of its worldwide membership is Japanese. I don’t imagine a Yakuza would have any trouble fitting in.”
“Unless they saw his tattoos.”
“A good proportion of the brethren are criminals from one country or another. A Japanese criminal wouldn’t be surprising. Now stop arguing with me. You’re still alive, and so is your sister. She’ll be fine.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before? I would have been less trouble.”
“You and trouble are synonymous,” he said wearily, unfastening his seatbelt. “Get out of the car, and if you try to run I’ll shoot you.”
“You don’t carry a gun.”
“Yes,” he said, “I do. And I have no problem using it.”
And she didn’t doubt him for one minute.
Jilly Lovitz was proving to be a particularly difficult disciple. She refused to drink the sacred water they brought to her, she was somehow able to shut her mind to the True Word as it was piped into the barren little room she was kept in. He had some of the most brilliant young scientists working for him, following his path. Chemists, explosives experts, doctors, engineers, along with the disaffected youth who’d made their lives on the streets. He’d offered them all a path to salvation, and they’d taken it gladly. And yet Jilly Lovitz resisted.
It was hard to believe she’d come from Lianne Lovitz, who had barely a brain in her pretty blond head. She was much more like her older half sister, Summer. Too smart, too cynical, too distrusting. That latter was no doubt due to the mother—Lianne would make a saint doubtful. And there were few real saints in the True Realization Fellowship.
The girl wouldn’t eat, either. She’d laughed when they’d brought her chocolate, something he’d been told was her particular weakness. In fact, he’d known very few women anywhere who could resist the siren lure of chocolate, but sixteen-year-old Jilly Lovitz was confounding him on many levels.
In the end it didn’t matter. She was in one of the induction cells, with his devoted followers watching her every move, and while anything was possible, he doubted that a woman like Summer Hawthorne would have endangered her baby sister by sharing her secrets. No, the girl was only a bargaining chip. As soon as the woman realized her sister was in jeopardy she would show up with the urn and all her secrets. All he had to do was wait.
Except that the Yakuza was now involved, and he wasn’t sure whether to rejoice or lament. Takashi O’Brien was the great nephew of Hiro Matsumoto—his connections were impressive, and who else would have sent him? It didn’t matter the Yakuza had the same goals as he did—Japan as a world power once more. The world power, in the new order of things. But the Yakuza were more likely