Ice Blue - Anne Stuart [62]
She could do it for Jilly. She could do anything for Jilly. Including smashing the son of a bitch beside her unconscious while she ran.
He drove too fast, as always, but by now she was getting used to it. She had no intention of giving him directions to the well-hidden family house, but of course he didn’t need any. With calm resignation she watched him turn up their long, overgrown driveway.
No one had been in the house for months. Lianne had forgotten it existed, and Summer was the one who owned it, loved it, cared for it. Even if she hadn’t made it back since the fall.
It would serve Taka O’Brien right if someone had broken in and taken the urn and everything else of value. Serve him right if the Shirosama had somehow managed to find this place first.
Her father had died long ago, and even his meager family was gone. But Summer did have the house, even though it was in the name of the trust Summer’s grandmother had set up for her before he died. Summer never touched the money, any more than she accepted handouts from her stepfather. But she had taken the house.
Taka pulled the car in front of the old place, hidden by the tall grass and overhanging cedars, and she climbed out, not waiting for him this time. Rain was coming down more heavily now, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that she was coming home, despite the upheavals of the last God knew how many hours or days.
She trailed after him up the wide front porch. Leaves were scattered across it, along with some broken twigs, and the curtains were pulled tight. No one had been there looking for a lost Japanese artifact. No one had been there at all.
“Are you going to smash a window or break the lock?” she asked idly.
“I have a key.”
She didn’t bother asking how—he had an answer for everything. He unlocked the heavy front door and pushed it open, and she froze.
She didn’t want to go inside with him. She wasn’t afraid of him—she was past such idiocy. He’d already done his worst and she’d survived. But this place was her sanctuary, her haven, even if she got here far too infrequently. And if she went inside with Takashi O’Brien, her home would be permanently tainted.
“I’ll just wait here—”
He pushed her into the house, slamming the door behind them, plunging them into darkness. The place smelled like a closed-up house—mothballs and dampness. Someone came in once a month to air the place out, and must be due for a visit, because the air was thick and dusty.
And she was standing alone in the middle of the darkened hallway with the man who’d left her shattered and helpless. Wondering why the hell she wanted him to touch her again.
Jilly didn’t bother to look up when the woman walked into her cell. She had found her best defense was ignoring them—ignoring the droning voice that was coming through the speakers, ignoring the milky water they kept bringing her no matter how thirsty she was, ignoring everything. She’d been stuck here for at least a day, though there were no windows, nothing to tell her how many hours had passed. She had a small, windowless bathroom off the cell, with just a shower and a toilet, and for all she knew there was a video camera hidden behind the light, but she didn’t care. Growing up with Lianne strutting around partially clothed had given her a skewed sense of modesty, and if the Shirosama’s creepy goons wanted to watch her on the toilet then let them.
The door closed behind her new intruder, and Jilly turned her head. It was a woman this time, wearing white, of course, but a designer suit of some sort that even Lianne wouldn’t have sneered at. The stranger was flawlessly beautiful, with a perfect face, dark hair in a neat bun at the base of her neck, carrying a white leather case under one arm. Wearing gloves.
Jilly couldn’t help the sudden anxious jolt in her stomach, but she fought it. She wasn’t going to let these people terrorize her, not even the dragon lady who’d just walked in.
The woman’s smile was cool.