Ice Blue - Anne Stuart [66]
“So they put the bones in the urn and nothing happens,” she said, turning to look at Taka in the shadowy room. “And then everyone goes home disappointed and no harm done. Unless you actually believe in doomsday prophets?”
“The problem with doomsday prophets, particularly the ones we have nowadays, is they don’t believe in their destiny enough not to give it a little help. Reuniting the urn and the bones will signal a wave of mass destruction that will be very hard to stop. You know what religious fanatics are capable of—the whole world has been watching what’s going on in the Middle East, and trust me, the Japanese have always been more than ready to die in the service of their master.”
“So you smash the urn and everyone lives happily ever after. Problem solved.”
Easier said than done. Ostensibly, he could kill an innocent young woman if he had to, but he couldn’t bring himself to destroy such a singularly beautiful piece of Japanese history. It was a simple fact.
“Could you destroy it?” he countered.
Her eyes met his in the darkness, and then she turned away again, facing the window. “I don’t suppose I could. And you think I hold the key to where the ancient shrine is located? I’ve never been to Japan, even though I’ve wanted to go. It was something I was going to do with Hana, and when she died I just couldn’t face the idea of it. Maybe if we’d gone she would have told me, but as it was she never said a thing about her family history. She didn’t like to talk about it. The war was too painful.”
“Nevertheless, she left the knowledge with you. In the book, the kimono. Somewhere.”
Summer swiveled around on the bench, silhouetted against the open window and the moonlight. He couldn’t see her face, and he didn’t know whether that was good or bad. “And what did they tell you?”
“We’ll figure it out,” he replied enigmatically.
She turned away from him, and he fought back his sudden guilt. If she ran, if the Shirosama caught her, then the cult leader know that he wasn’t looking for just the urn and the girl. There were other pieces to the puzzle.
“And then what will you do?”
“Stop him before he can set off a wave of attacks that would make 9/11 look like a minor incident.”
“Why doesn’t someone just kill him, if he’s that dangerous?”
“The only thing worse than a cult leader demigod is a martyr. He has hundreds of thousands of followers around the world and the resources and equipment to create deadly havoc. His murder would signal the start of it all. The death toll might be lower—tens of thousands instead of hundreds of thousands—but it’s still unacceptable.”
She was silent for a long moment. “How high is the death toll now? There’s Micah and the followers you…killed. And then maybe there’s me and Jilly. How many will die before he’s stopped?”
“I don’t know,” Taka said simply, not denying it.
She turned back to the window. “Tell me when you’re ready to go,” she said, dismissing him.
Run, damn it! Get the hell away from me while you can. But she didn’t move, and he could see defeat in the line of her body, her narrow shoulders. Didn’t she realize she wasn’t going anywhere? He didn’t need her anymore. He had what he wanted. The safest, smartest thing to do would be to permanently silence her, and he was a safe, smart man.
He left her there, heading back into the bedroom to retrieve the antique kimono. He stripped a sheet off the bed to wrap it in, doing his best to clear his mind of anything but what he had to do. He could picture Summer in that huge old bed, sleeping, her hair loose around her. He still didn’t know what his damn problem was—him or her. She was nothing, nobody, merely a part of a difficult job, and yet she got under his skin. Maybe he could blame it on the time he’d spent recovering from his last botched assignment.
Or maybe it was simply that the thought of killing an innocent woman was repugnant. Killing young women wasn’t part of his normal duties. It was perfectly natural that he’d feel conflicted.
She was still sitting in the living room, staring out into the