Part 61 (1/2)
”Whatever.”
Wes let out a sigh of defeat, and decided to let her go. She turned away for exactly one instant before turning back.
”Wes, you need to get out of here. Now.”
”What're you talking about?”
”I don't have time to get into it, but some very bad people are here, and if they find you with me, things will end very badly.”
Wes let out a breath. That was how it always was, though. He nodded in spite of himself and motioned for her to follow. The stacks it was. Either they'd lose him down here, or he'd have his own s.p.a.ce to deal with them, but either way, it was the only option.
Twenty-Five.
Minami There was a certain swagger in Wesley's att.i.tude that Minami couldn't help but like, even entertaining, and now it was exactly that att.i.tude that was going to get him killed. She should have separated from him, but he always thought he could handle anything that was thrown his way, and this time he was wrong. Unlike the other times, Minami knew it this time, which made it that much worse.
She didn't know many people in the Higa family, or in the Inafune family, and she didn't know anyone who worked for that American she'd seen Wes and Higa with.
But she knew those three, by sight if not by name. Apparently her father had finally decided to get to the bottom of what was going on with her, and he wasn't going to like what he found out. Nor was Wesley, no matter how much he thought that he was G.o.d's gift to the world.
Minami followed him in spite of that, because whether she liked it or not she knew that if he asked her to, she'd follow him anywhere. He turned down a set of metal stairs, even his soft shoes clicking hard on the metal. Minami kicked her sandals off and carried them down. Her sandals would have made far, far too much noise. They'd have been caught in an instant.
There must have been thirty or forty rows of shelves, thick with the smell of dust. Minami took a breath and held it as best she could as he guided her back, finally pus.h.i.+ng her into a row.
”Stay down,” he whispered.
She realized, suddenly, that he'd completely misinterpreted who was in trouble here. She was fine, and more than that, she knew it. The one who had to worry was Wes, but then, crouching down low, he started heading back toward the entrance.
She waited a minute for him. It wouldn't take that long to get back to the stairs, but she didn't hear the same clanging steps of weight going back up. Another minute pa.s.sed them by, and still more silence. The curiosity of trying to figure out what was going on in the room was starting to burn inside her chest, but he'd told her to wait, and there had to be a reason for it even if she didn't understand what the reasons were, just yet.
Another minute. She crept to the edge of the row and peered out. Nothing. The place might have been empty, from what she could see. She slipped around into the next row. The dust and stale air was starting to go to her head. Minami forced herself to stay focused. She might not be in any danger, but if she could save Wes from what was about to come down on his head, then she had to do it-no matter what the risk was to her.
Besides that, the odds of there being any risk to her at all were between slim and none, and if they hurt even one hair on her head, it wouldn't be a long time before her father caught wind of it. The threat of that, by itself, would stop them in their tracks. The possibility that she wasn't lying would be too present, and that was a.s.suming that they didn't recognize her straight away.
They had certainly been sent there looking for her, looking to see what she was doing and who she was with. No doubt, Majima had driven them out, and sat right outside, prepared as ever to dig her out of any trouble she found herself in.
Well, she wasn't going to let other people dig her out of this. She moved across the aisle when she moved to the next aisle, to get a better view of the steps.
How long would they have to wait before they could be certain that her father's men had left? She already knew that answer, in spite of the feeling that she shouldn't have been so certain.
If the plan was to wait them out, then those men would wait until the place closed. Then they'd wait outside the exits, until her father called them and told them to stop. That was the way it was, with her father's men. Loyal to a fault, if anything. It was a comfort when there was danger around, but when she desperately wanted them gone- She moved up another row. If she got out of here, though, then Wes would be fine.
A j.a.panese man in a suit stepped into view at the top of the steps. Minami stood up and called out to him. ”You're looking for me, aren't you?”
The man responded in j.a.panese. That was how it always was with Yakuza-they wouldn't speak English between themselves, regardless of what country they'd all moved to. It didn't seem to matter all that much to them that they didn't fit in with the locals. Then again, they hadn't fit in with the locals in j.a.pan, either.
”Where is the man who was with you?”
”n.o.body was with me,” she answered, stepping back into view. ”I don't know what you're talking about.”
He started down the steps, the other one a step or two behind him. Minami stepped out further, hoping to meet him at the foot of the stairs, so wherever Wes had hidden himself, they wouldn't have a chance to look around.
”As you say, Young Mistress,” the Yakuza answered, clearly caught between his orders to look for someone and her instructions that there was n.o.body there to be found in either case. ”But I think we'd better look around anyways, for your father's peace of mind.”
”I called to be taken home, and I want to go home now.”
”Yes, young mistress.”
He stepped down another step, halfway down already. A hand shot out and grabbed the man's ankle, and pulled hard. The Yakuza's foot went out from under him and he fell hard, trying to land on his shoulder as much for safety as to turn and see his attacker.
Wes stepped out and took two long strides to tee off on the guy's head. It snapped back, throwing a spatter of blood onto the spines of the books that had been left down here.
He wasn't lucky enough to get the jump on the second guy, who took the stairs two at a time and hit Wes hard in the back with his shoulder, throwing them both off-balance.
The smaller Yakuza didn't bother trying to shake his partner awake. This was a fight, and if he was going to wake up then he would wake up on his own. He regained his balance before Wes and threw a punch into Wesley's kidneys that landed with a loud thump. Wes slumped down a little way, and in that half-second the bigger Yakuza pushed himself off the ground and turned his attention on Minami.
”We have to get the young mistress away,” he said softly. The big guy's arms wrapped around her body and started to pull her out of the bas.e.m.e.nt even as the other guy sent another hard punch into Wesley's ribs. He turned his back on Wes and followed behind, taking the steps quickly to try to catch his partner.
Minami could hear Wes shouting after them, but by the time she left the library, safe and sound and brought back in the arms of her father's men, she didn't see him come back out of that bas.e.m.e.nt.
Twenty-Six.
Wes Wes opened his eyes to the sun streaming down, right across his face. Someone else might have considered moving the bed, but there was more stubbornness in Wes than there was sense, and if the bed was there, then that was how it was going to be.
That was the same thing that had put him into this entire mess with Minami in the first place, and it was his fault that she'd been taken. He'd tried her phone a couple of times, in the days since, but she wasn't answering. Whoever had taken her, they clearly didn't want her talking with him, or seeing him, and that was almost understandable.
After all, if it was someone who wanted to hurt her, to use her to threaten her family, then they wouldn't want outside contact except the stuff under their control.
If it was the opposite, and the s.h.i.+mizu goons had been the one who did a number on him, then the answer was even more obvious. They were probably right to keep them apart, since there was no way that Wes was going to do any good for her. She should have recognized that the first couple of days together, but whether it was stubbornness of blindness she hadn't done anything about it, and Wes was too c.o.c.ky to leave something ell enough alone at first, and by the time he knew he'd made a mistake, he was too weak to tell himself not to go after her, in spite of the risk that her a.s.sociation with him put her at.
There was something unpleasantly self-flagellating about the whole situation, one that he didn't want to worry about, but couldn't stop.
He had to focus up. His body still ached from where they'd hit him. He'd been in worse sc.r.a.pes. Plenty of them, back in prison, were worse than that. But most of his sc.r.a.pes hadn't come only a couple of days before he fought one of Higa's goons in a big ol' dust-up match.
Well, another of Higa's goons. The first one, thankfully, had been a pushover. But then again, even if it were the same guy, could Wes take another pounding in the back so soon? If he'd been this busted up in the last fight, things would have turned out different, and there was no denying it, regardless of how much he wanted to.
Wes padded his way across the room to his fridge, ignoring the complaints of his muscles as he moved. No time to worry about hurting. No time to fight against it. He was doing what he had to do.