Travis Justice (3 page)

Then, after Hana got involved with Kai and even became an illegal drug courier, Hana's aggrieved mother took her scanty life-insurance proceeds with her back to Japan, leaving seventeen-year-old Hana with her grandfather. Hana had refused to admit—then at least—how much she missed her mother, even when she was relieved of her nagging about character and appearance. Jiji never nagged her; he only loved. And it was his sole, loving support that drew Hana back to the straight and narrow after she was arrested for intent to deliver illegal substances. The fact that she'd been pregnant at the time had no doubt contributed to the judge's decision to be lenient, especially since it was her first offense and she was barely seventeen. But he'd forced her into hours of community service and rehab even though she'd never used any of the drugs she carried, including marijuana. Not because she had any moral scruples—but because they affected her karate abilities . . . and because she knew the use would harm her unborn child.

Hana kept her condition secret as long as she could. She'd broken all ties with Kai while she sat in jail awaiting her hearing where he'd left her to rot instead of paying her bail.

The windowpane grew tangible again as a much wiser Hana now quashed the unhappy memories. They only made her feel lost and alone and hopeless, especially now that Jiji was dying. She washed her face at the sink, drying herself off thoroughly and methodically. Very well, then. If the sword was not where it was supposed to be, it was only logical to make a list of possibilities of where it could be. And in that case, it was best to start with where the Travis family acquired the weapon.

Hana opened her browser and went straight to Google, reminding herself of one of the most important guiding principles of Shotokan karate:
The art of mind is more important than the art of technique.

* * *

As he approached the bed-and-breakfast stuck into the hills outside Austin, Zach slowed down. From here, the quaint Victorian looked like a country-girl wallflower at a debutante ball, surrounded by sleek, modern mansions. Leave it to Ross and Emm to pick the nicest boutique hotel in town to stay in. Zach didn't much care for modern monstrosities like the JW Marriott, either. He parked his bike under a tree and kicked down the stand, leaving his helmet locked in a special tiedown attached to his tiny rear saddlebags.

As he approached the antique glass door up several flights of steps, Zach knew his father would not be happy with him if he knew whom he was visiting, but his father was never happy with him these days, full stop. Zach had three weeks before he was supposed to join his army buddy Jeff on the coast. He had the contract in a drawer in his room and while he hadn't signed it yet, he intended to.

But first he had a mission to accomplish, the first mission he'd felt obligated to complete since his last tour in Afghanistan. He couldn't explain it, but he'd felt in that slim, athletic girl a kindred spirit. He'd felt her ambivalence and desperation. As if her mission were onerous. As if she didn't want to invade their home, more as if she
had
to—which was why he'd advocated she not be pursued. Before he could work himself to exhaustion, he had to find her and ask her point-blank why she needed the sword. And if there was anything he could do short of giving it up—because it wasn't his to give—how could he help?

Zach told the desk clerk, a matronly woman with an apron and streak of flour on her cheek, that he was there to see the Sinclairs. She picked up a desk phone. The bed-and-breakfast was so tiny he could hear a phone ringing at the top of the stairs. The next thing he knew, Ross was halfway down the wide staircase. At the bottom, they shook hands. After the pleasantries, in which Ross explained Emm was too busy renovating the second historic building they owned in downtown Amarillo to tag along on his business trip, they got down to brass tacks, the way both liked it.

Wordlessly, Zach handed over a tiny Ziploc evidence bag. Inside was one long, black hair. Ross held it up to the light and set it on the small table between them with no comment other than a long, appraising look at the young man he'd known since his diaper days.

Zach hurried into speech. “Look, I know I'm putting you in a difficult position, but this is not official Texas Ranger business, Ross. This is me looking for a girl who's in trouble before she gets herself in even more trouble. Dad agreed not to pursue the case this morning as long as she doesn't try again. So he wasn't going to do anything with this sample, anyway.”

“Does he know you brought it to me?”

Zach shook his head.

Ross sighed heavily. “He's my boss, Zach. Why don't you give this to your dad instead of me? Then it's officially in the chain of evidence if it ever becomes pertinent.”

“You know what a huge backlog there is at the state labs. Even if we pursue the case, it will be low priority. Why add to the workload? Nothing stolen, no one hurt.”

Ross's mouth curled into a smile and Zach knew his dad must have spilled the beans about his towel incident, so he admitted, “Except maybe my pride. But this girl is in trouble, and I want to help her. It's that simple.”

“Doesn't sound simple to me. It sounds quite complicated. You've never been the kind of guy to tilt at windmills. If you were, you'd have joined the Rangers years ago.”

Zach ignored that remark and barreled on: “I put out some feelers, but I don't trust most of the private labs. And they don't have the latest databases to cross-reference, anyway. This needs a pro to handle it.” Zach took a deep breath. “I haven't told Mom and Dad yet, but I'm due on an oil rig off the Gulf in three weeks so I have limited time to get the results.”

Ross picked up the sample and held it to the light, eyeing the long black hair that even behind the thin plastic glowed with blue-black health in the sunshine coming through the casement windows. “If I do this, your father will not be happy with me.”

“I know. But strictly speaking, this is personal. Dad knows how persuasive I can be.”

Ross's lips quirked wider this time. “Yes, so Yancy is always telling me. She likes you. So does Emm, though your lukewarm reaction to her matchmaking has put her off a bit.”

“I like them too.”

To Zach's relief, Ross finally put the baggie inside his jacket pocket. “I'll talk to a consulting forensic scientist I know. She's the best. But she's not cheap.”

Zach pulled out his checkbook, but Ross waved him away.

“I don't know what she'll charge, but she'll bill you when she gives you the results. She's based in Austin, so that part is easy, anyway. Her name is Abigail Doyle.”

Zach whistled. “I've heard Dad speak of her, and how the conviction rates in district C skyrocketed after y'all engaged her services. Wasn't she involved in that business down in Mexico with you and Emm?”

“Yes. I trust her implicitly.” Ross glanced at his watch and stood. “I have to get ready for a dinner party tonight. I hate this political BS, but your dad wanted me here to talk to the legislature reps, so I came. We're asking for an increase in funding for the Ranger Reconnaissance Team. With these new Asian gangs muscling in on the drug trade all over central Texas, we need the additional funds. Most of our resources have been deployed near the border.”

Zach nodded. “Yeah, I heard that. Hope you get it.”

When they reached the lobby, Ross shook Zach's hand. “I only have one request—two, actually.”

“Name them.”

“Please tell your dad you asked me to do this. That I agreed only because the case is no longer official business. I don't need him any more pissed at me than he usually is over my ‘confounded propensity for not keeping him in the loop,' ” Ross quoted.

Zach grimaced but nodded.

“And secondly, give some serious second thoughts to whether to take the oil rig job or apply with the Rangers. You're perfect Ranger material, whether you realize it or not—”

Zach was shaking his head before Ross even finished. “I don't know why y'all keep saying that. I'm not going to be the butt of every daddy joke on the Internet, and I'm sick of having to toe the line on rules I didn't write. Plus I'm getting soft staying in Austin—”

“We have a new position opening up at the state level. It's security for state officials, including DPS execs and director-level Texas Rangers. Your special forces background makes you perfect for the job.”

Zach frowned. “Why didn't Dad tell me about it?”

“Because he wants you to make your own right choices.”

“Yeah, his.”

Ross sighed at the bitterness in Zach's tone. He'd opened his mouth to retort when his cell phone rang with an “Eyes of Texas” ring tone. “Sorry, official business.” He pulled two phones out of his pocket and put the iPhone back, holding the BlackBerry to his ear. He moved aside and Zach went over to a display rack of gaudy tourist brochures to give him privacy.

The call was short, but when Zach turned back toward Ross, he saw that Ross was pale beneath his tan, almost ashen. “What's wrong?”

Ross replied, “That was dispatch. The cocktail party is on hold but I'm called into a meeting at headquarters. Sam Taylor and his wife were found dead in their beds this morning by their maid. Not ten miles from here. They were . . . eviscerated. By the looks of the cuts, the examiner thinks it might have been done with a samurai sword.”

Z
ach was shocked. He'd been to that lovely home in Buckhorn Estates more than once and he liked Sam Taylor, who was a director-level Ranger, reporting to John Travis. “In his bed? How can that be? Theft?”

“It doesn't look like anything was taken. It looked like a hit. With extreme prejudice. We don't know many details yet, except they're pretty sure the weapon was a sword. A very sharp sword. It's almost like . . . the Taylors were—that is, the coroner thinks . . .” Ross took a deep breath and finished rapidly, “The coroner thinks the Taylors were used as target practice, but he's still verifying.”

Zach went totally still as Ross added grimly, “The stab marks showed a pattern in multiple strikes on both bodies of a long, thin blade with one sharp side—like a katana.”

“Oh my God . . .” Zach was so stunned his stomach roiled. He groped for a lobby chair to sit down.

Ross handed over the hair sample. “I can't help you with this now. You have to take it through official channels. How many experts with samurai swords can there be in Austin?”

Zach swallowed back his gall. Their eyes locked, but neither voiced the same conclusions they'd reluctantly drawn—was John Travis next? And was the mysterious female intruder involved?

* * *

Two days later, Hana hung up the phone, excited that she was, after many hours of digging, close to tracking down the blade. She knew the date when the katana had changed ownership at Christie's auction house because the announcement of the offering was still on the internet. The maid had also told her that the sword was in a joint-ownership interest, the paperwork for which she'd come across one time while dusting the study desk. That had led Hana to the Texas Secretary of State web site and a search for John Travis as a managing member of an LLC formed around the time of the auction. She hit on the tenth try.

The name they'd chosen for the LLC was hardly surprising or original: Masamune Limited Liability Company. The formation papers listed the attorney of record. Hana found his Austin office easy to break into, and there, neatly in the file, was a budget with a recent disbursement to a well-known samurai sword expert in California marked
final payment
.

Gloved the entire time, Hana put everything back as she found it, right down to arranging the paperweight in the exact spot, and ducked out the second-floor window she'd used to enter, closing it securely.

Back at her hotel, she put the facts together coolly, logically, with no emotion, considering all her options.

Hana knew why they'd hired this particular Japanese-American samurai expert. They were trying to prove provenance. Good luck with that, Hana thought grimly. The blade had been passed from generation to generation in the Nakatomi family for untold centuries, but only word of mouth proved it was a gift from Masamune to the samurai who supposedly saved the sword maker's life back in the mists of early Japan. Even the Nakatomi family had no actual documentation.

However, if final payment had been rendered to the historical expert, the sword was surely on its journey back to the military men who'd stolen it. The only question was: Where would they store it? Given her abortive break-in, if the Travises had figured out her target—and she did not underestimate their intelligence—they'd probably secret the sword in a vault somewhere.

Wonderful. Hana had been trained in bypassing sophisticated surveillance systems, but she had no skill at safecracking. She knew someone who did, though . . . but she'd not spoken to him in months and their last parting had not been cordial. Hana had also seen a bill in the attorney's files on the LLC that paid a private, secure transport agency to ferry the blade to California. It was logical they'd use the same service to bring it home. She'd snapped pics of the entire file in case she needed them for later perusal. She called them up on her phone now and stopped on the bill from the private security firm.

She knew the address of the transport company. It was in a row of warehouses along Dessau Road, and while they probably had very secure cages, perhaps even safes, they had to be easier to circumvent than a bank vault. Now she only needed the date of arrival. Hana set down her cell phone and used the old-fashioned hotel landline to call another old acquaintance, one of Kai's allies on the West Coast distribution line for his drug smuggling. If the Travises were seeking her, it would be easy for them to trace her cell phone, so she had to carefully think through every step.

She made a mental note to buy a burner phone with cash later today. The hotel landline could also be traced, but Hana had paid cash for her lodging and not signed any registry. She was listening to the first ring on the other end when the noon news came on the television. She'd turned the volume down low, but when a brief image of a samurai katana flashed on the screen, she slammed down the phone and jacked up the volume.

Hana turned the volume back down, fear congealing like slush in her veins. Dear God, had Kai done this? Did he really hate her that much, to do this to deliberately implicate her? Or was this related to his grand plan to take over the entire drug trade in central Texas?

* * *

Zach sat on his bed, still wearing his chaps and biker boots from his drive on the winding-hill country roads. It would probably be his last for some time. He'd taken it to clear his mind and be sure he was doing the right thing.

He held the contract for the roughnecking job in his hands, turning it this way and that. Since high school, when the prom queen and most of her court had pursued him, he'd known that sure, his looks and intelligence were part of the reason for their attraction, but mostly they wanted his legendary name tacked onto theirs. And the growing family wealth didn't hurt any, either. So he'd proved himself in the best and only way: by joining one of the most elite and toughest military training programs in the world. He could be George Washington reincarnated and his drill sergeant would still grind his face into the mud if he didn't finish his reps on time.

The stint on the rig would have given him the anonymity and freedom he craved to make his own mistakes. But he'd listened to the news reports about the slaying, and he didn't need crime-scene photos to picture what the bodies looked like. Petrie dish or not, he had to officially apply for the new security position the DPS had created to protect its upper ranks. No matter how complex and sometimes adversarial his relationship with his father, he still loved him and would lose his own life before he'd let him be eviscerated like his former colleague and his wife.

Methodically, Zach tore the contract into fourths and tossed it into the trash. Then he pulled out his cell phone to call his buddy. As he did so, he thought again in the back of his mind of the tall, slim Japanese girl who seemed to know just about every self-defense move he'd been taught. He couldn't quite believe her capable of such a horrific crime, but evidence against her was piling up. He had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that he would, indeed, come across her again. . . .in the line of duty.

* * *

A few miles outside the Austin city limits, Hana pulled up before a strange structure, turning off her car but sitting there for a second to weigh her approach. After hearing the brief news report, she'd dialed her West Coast contact again. She'd coaxed and flattered him into agreeing to use his sources to hack into the secure transport-delivery database, so now she had an arrival date when the sword was due back at the warehouse. The man had warned her he'd tell Kai about her inquiry, but she didn't care about that. Kai not only approved of her quest; he was blackmailing her to do whatever it took to get the sword, including risk her life.

Still striving for that elusive calmness of mind that karate espoused, Hana appraised the pile of cantilevered shipping containers stacked on top of one another like giant Legos. Ernie Thibodeaux was one of the oddest men she'd ever met, but also one of the most talented. She saw that he'd added to his domain in the months since she'd been here. He was a closet architect, an art historian with a PhD, a gourmet chef, a martial-arts expert with a grandmaster red belt in judo and the corresponding black belt, highest-level tenth Dan, in Shotokan karate. He was also a wiz at playing the stock market, his current primary source of income. And he was a man who loved skirting rules, including the law, which he considered an imposition on the god-given liberties he'd enjoyed in the swamps of Louisiana, where boys were self-sufficient—or dead.

When she'd been friends with him before her break with her mother, she'd often tried to find a blind-date candidate for him. She'd never come across anyone else with his diverse skill set, range of interests, and flexible morals. His on-again, off-again relationship with her mother had dissolved precisely because he skirted the law with impunity, but so far his check kiting and securities fraud hadn't landed him in jail. However, the authorities didn't know he was also an expert safecracker, a legacy of his days as a ragin' Cajun with New Orleans mob ties.

If she was right about his character, Hana suspected he'd kept up his skills with the increasingly sophisticated digital safes most secure institutions now used. At least, she hoped so.

Banging the incongruous brass lion-head door knocker she knew he'd pilfered from a vacant, crumbling British estate in Northumberland, she admired yet again his unusual front door. It was massive, stainless steel, but it still pivoted easily and quietly on divots when opened. He'd designed and built it himself. But when he wanted his privacy, she knew the giant bars on the other side of the door would require an arc welder to penetrate.

Looking up, she noted he'd also added to his elaborate security system. Tiny cameras blinked at her from all around the porch, and, she was sure, from the entire first floor of the complex structure. Ernie wasn't paranoid; he just liked nice things. Very nice things. Thus, she knew he'd appreciate her quest for an item of immense value and beauty. It wasn't really theft considering this most cherished of family heirlooms had been stolen from her grandfather when he was forced into a Japanese internment camp.

She was about to wield the knocker again when the door opened. In his stockinged feet, wearing his usual ensemble of cargo shorts and hippie tie-dyed T-shirt with a gaudy Hawaiian surfing overshirt of eighties vintage, he was still somehow imposing. His pulled back long, dirty-blond hair showed some gray, but aside from that and a few more laugh lines in his chiseled, tanned skin, he looked exactly the same.

“You look like hell,” he delivered with his usual bluntness. He swung the door wide. It pivoted in place, all thousand-plus pounds perfectly balanced. “Come in and I'll fix you some peppermint tea.”

Just like that, as if the last six months had never happened. He didn't even ask the obvious question of why she'd come. In his kitchen, which took up most of one of the storage containers and looked exactly like a kitchen from
Architectural Digest
—complete with quartz counters, stainless-steel Thermador appliances, and decorative tile in the backsplash and underfoot—he immediately turned on the rear burner to heat the bright copper kettle. He kept up a conversational flow that seemed banal, about politics and weather and the latest celebrity scandal, but she knew he was really giving her time to collect herself. Of all his sterling qualities, his ability to read another person's moods and motivations was most amazing, at least to her. She tended to react first and figure out later, whereas he could tailor his actions to the situation. He'd tried to teach her to read body language, not words, but she hadn't been a good pupil except when it came to reading opponents in the ring.

For the first time since she'd broken into the Travis estate, she began to relax. The old routine of sitting at his bar proved as comforting as the aroma of the tea he set before her. She sat on the plush, comfortable bar stool, swiveling from side to side as she had from about the age of ten, when he had become her black-belt karate coach. He made himself another cup and stood across from her, elbows on the quartz, chin in his hands, appraising her with pale gray eyes that missed nothing.

After she'd taken a few sips, he said, “Okay, spit it out.”

She carefully set her cup back in the saucer, getting directly to the point. “I need your help. I have to break into a local warehouse to retrieve a family heirloom and I suspect it will mean some safecracking.”

His expression didn't alter; in fact, she might have asked him to help her change a tire. “The Nakatomi blade.”

She nodded, but no matter how she tried to contain herself, her eyes began to fill with tears as she added, “Jiji is dying. He's only asked for one thing. To hold our family legacy once more . . .”

“And then?”

“He doesn't want me to go to jail again, so he says I'm to give it back to the Travis family after he—after he . . .”

“But you don't want to give it back.”

She took another deep sip, almost glad of her scalded tongue, for it made her croak a bit easier, “No, but I would have. Except for Kai.”

She saw the tiny flare of alarm in his flickering eyes and flared nostrils, but he only looked down and picked up his cup to blow on his steaming tea. He was obviously waiting for more, letting her set the pace.