Restless Soul - Alex Archer [91]
She drove the pommel against him again and again, recalling how he’d pummeled her with his fists minutes ago when she’d been tied in the chair. The air rushed from his lungs and he doubled forward, hands clawing at the air and then finding her shoulders. He suddenly gripped her throat in a choke hold and slammed the back of her head against the shelf behind her. Something toppled off and crashed on the floor.
“Bitch!” Kim cursed. “That was Ming! Look what you did!”
Annja jabbed him again with the pommel, this time under his arm, using all the strength she could summon. He gasped and relaxed his grip. She dropped beneath his arms, came up at him from the other side and kicked him in the groin.
“My fault? That’s two antiques you’ve claimed I broke. You’re a thief and a liar!” Annja struck him once more with the flat of the blade, crouching when he doubled over again and using him for cover against his nephew. “I’ve been trying not to break anything.”
When he cursed at her this time, it was in Vietnamese.
“And it’s not polite to talk in a language I can’t understand.” Feeling a little better, and her feet no longer tingling, Annja had gotten her moxie back.
She lured him toward the front of the shop, farther from the nephew with the gun. As much as Annja didn’t want to be shot, she worried that the young man, who had proven to have a lousy aim, might shoot his uncle. She needed Kim alive to answer her questions.
They continued to parry each other’s blows, but Annja was gaining on him and he was finally tiring. Sweat grew under his arms and appeared on his forehead, and his eyes narrowed with hate. That was good; hate made people careless. Kim knocked over only two more pieces before she had him at the front door. Red-faced, he sputtered at her in Vietnamese and looked like a pile-driving machine aiming his fists at her and striking the door instead.
He cracked it down the middle, like a karate practitioner splitting a block of wood, and set off an alarm. It was her turn to curse.
The police didn’t need to find her at this shop; she was supposed to be at their office answering questions. Now she’d have a lot more to answer…if they spotted her here. She wasn’t guilty of anything, but she’d knocked out an old man and entered a closed store. If nothing else, the police would detain her. Maybe they would even charge her with something.
A new sense of urgency took over, and she dismissed the sword, wanting both hands free. Kim’s eyes grew wide when he saw the blade disappear, then they closed in unconsciousness as she delivered an uppercut to his jaw, cracking it and sending him backward against an old piece of pottery that split in two.
“All right,” Annja pronounced. “That was my fault.” She glanced at the price tag and whistled. “But I’m not paying for what I broke.” She grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him down an aisle toward the back of the shop, stopping and peeking around the end to see the nephew still in the door frame, holding the gun with both hands now in an effort to steady himself.
“I’d drop the gun,” she called to him. “Unless you want to end up like your uncle Kim.”
He dropped the gun.
“And I’d back up a bit.” He complied.
Annja wanted to put some distance between him and the gun.
“Nang, right? I heard Kim call you Nang.”
He nodded.
“Be a good fellow, Nang, and put your hands behind your head.”
He got to his knees for good measure.
She tugged Kim behind the back counter and picked up the gun, emptying the bullets and tossing them in an urn that had been serving as someone’s spittoon. She’d intended to question Kim, but he was soundly out.
“Nang, I’ve got a few questions, and it would be in your best interest to answer them. You understand English fine, yes?”
Another nod.
Annja pointed at the chair she’d been tied to.
“Sit and make yourself uncomfortable.”
27
The phone on the desk was an old rotary model that was practically an antique. She used it to call the consulate, where she talked to Rose Walters. She told Annja that