Dangerous Ground 2: Old Poison (13 page)

86

Josh Lanyon

If Cooper had bothered rounding up a last-known address, his mind was working the same way as Will's. Not that it was any great leap to want to speak to the surviving spouse or lover.

Spouses and lovers always ranked high both for doing in loved ones and avenging them. Feeling the way he did about Taylor, Will understood why—on both counts.

Cooper said, “She wasn't in Japan when Sugimori died. In fact, she wasn't in Japan for the two years MacAllister worked at the Tokyo embassy. Some problem with her visa. At least that's how it looks on paper.”

“You think they might have been estranged?”

“Hard to say. It's difficult to get a handle on Sugimori. Professionally he was well regarded, highly respected. His private life—well, that's harder to read. He was the product of a mixed marriage. His mother was an American. She worked as an interpreter for the UN, which is where she met Sugimori's father. He was a wealthy Japanese businessman, and she was his second wife. She died giving birth to Sugimori, and he married his third wife, a Japanese national, shortly after. So what you've got there is this half-American kid born into a very traditional, conservative Japanese family. There's an older son and daughter by the first wife, then Sugimori, then a younger son eventually born to the third wife.”

Taylor's lover. Okay. So why hadn't Taylor told him about Sugimori when Will asked about Japan? That was the part Will was having trouble wrapping his mind around. Not like they didn't know they'd each had other lovers, Taylor in particular. In fact, that was one of the reasons Will had been hesitant to ever start with Taylor.

Oh.

Maybe he'd just answered his own question. Maybe Taylor was guilty about this relationship? Thought Will would disapprove? He was funny that way. Took Will's occasional criticisms to heart in a way that Will never intended—nor reciprocated.

“Sugimori was educated in Japan but went to university in the States, which is where he met the wife, Alexandra Burton. They married right after college, and Sugimori worked for the State Department. Eventually he applied for the posting to Japan, got it, and moved back to Tokyo.”

“And Alexandra didn't follow?”

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“Apparently not. Now it might have been bureaucratic red tape, or it might have been something else. If MacAllister and Sugimori were having a sexual relationship, it was probably something else.”

“Why don't I go find out?” Will suggested.

“Why don't you? But bring LAPD along. We don't want any accusations of coercion or improper use of force.”

Will raised his brows. “Me?”

* * * *

Taylor opened his mouth to let loose a string of invective, but they were back, and the look on Alexandra's face shut him up. Not that he had ever imagined he was going to make her understand, see things from his point of view, but he thought she would string it out, want to keep talking to him, make him listen.

Give Will a chance to find him.

Maybe she would have, but there was Yuki to consider. Whatever Yuki's role in all this—

besides discoverer of his older brother's box of secrets and bearer of bad news—was hard to say.

Clearly he was the more practical of the two. He was observing Taylor with those cold, unwavering eyes, already thinking about how to dispose of the body.

“Here's what we're going to do,” Alexandra announced. She sounded relatively cheerful, so she was getting her way about whatever this was. She carefully set down a white sake bottle a few feet from Taylor and straightened up.

The bottle reminded him how thirsty he was. That he hadn't eaten since lunchtime the day before. The bottle scared him.

“This is laced with rat poison. When you become desperate, you can drink it.”

“Gee, thanks.” Taylor looked past her to Yuki, who stood in the doorway, arms folded and impassive. “You think of everything.”

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Josh Lanyon

“Oh, you
will
drink it,” Alexandra informed him. “Even though you'll have to struggle to get to it. You see, we're going to leave you here to die. To die of thirst and hunger. Like you, this house is condemned. Abandoned. No one ever comes here. It's private property in the middle of nowhere, so you can scream and yell all you like. No one will ever hear you. No one will ever find you.”

Taylor said nothing. What on earth could he say? It was all he could do to hide his relief.

He'd been thinking the jar was to keep his private parts in after she surgically removed them. Or that maybe it contained a baby cobra or scorpions or black widows. Or that it contained battery acid. Rat poison was pretty mild unless they were going to force it down his throat themselves, and apparently that was not the plan.

Alexandra smiled. “You don't believe me. You think someone will find you, but there's nothing to connect us to this house, so even if the police do figure out I'm involved, they'll never find this place. I'll never tell them. It doesn't matter what they do to me.”

That much he believed. She was as committed as any martyr lashed to the burning stake.

Even Will would have trouble getting this chick to talk, and Will was very good at getting people to talk.

“I'm glad you don't believe me,” she added. “I'm glad you're hopeful, because I want you to take a long time to die. I want you to suffer as much as I did. As much as Nori did. I want you to stay hopeful, to keep believing someone will find you, until you can't stand the thirst and hunger and loneliness anymore and you drink the poison.”

He knew he should try to talk to her, try to appeal to her, try to make her empathize with him, but somehow he couldn't seem to find the energy. He knew it was useless, could read it in her cold, crazy eyes. There was no going back for her. She had killed Varga, and even if she was unbalanced enough to forget that, Yuki wasn't.

Taylor glanced at Yuki again, and a chill ran down his spine. No, Yuki wasn't crazy or stupid, and regardless of what Alexandra thought, Yuki was not going to leave Taylor here and trust that he'd get despondent enough to drink rat poison. Yuki wasn't going to leave him alive one minute longer than he had to.

As though he read Taylor's thoughts, Yuki offered the first glimmer of emotion he'd yet revealed. He smiled.

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Chapter Eleven

The house felt weirdly empty after Alexandra and Yuki left. It felt as though Taylor were already dead. As though it were already far too late for him.

He had to hurry. He knew that. Yuki was going to come back just as soon as he unloaded Alexandra, and he was going to kill Taylor. No doubt about that; Taylor had seen it in the other man's eyes.

He had no idea of how much time he had; he had to act based on the assumption that it was very little. He inched and scooted around, crawling toward the sake bottle. When he was within range, he drew his legs up and gave it good hard kick. The bottle went flying, hit the wall, and shattered into pieces, poisoned sake splashing against the wall and dripping down to the cement floor.

Taylor rolled over to the broken pieces and tried to kick a couple of the larger ones out of the pool of poisoned wine and line them up so that he could lean against the wall and saw the ropes without having to lie on the thick glass.

His bladder now felt in danger of bursting, and he knew he was going to have to give in to the indignity of peeing his pants. It added to his general fury—and discomfort—but once that was out of the way he was better able to concentrate on the task at hand.

Literally, at hand.

And now was the time to be grateful for his martial arts training. All that stretching and bending and limbering made it possible for him to move his arms out far enough from his back in order to saw awkwardly, frantically, against the dull chunk of broken earthenware.

Even so, that position quickly grew tiring and then painful and then agonizing. His shoulders and back ached with the strain, his muscles burned. Unable to see behind himself, he was unsure he was making progress.

90

Josh Lanyon

Every minute or so he had to stop to rest his shaking arms. He used that time trying to free his legs, wiggling his ankles to loosen the ropes binding his lower limbs together. Alexandra and Yuki had not been taking any chances. The rope was looped around his ankles four times, but the excess of rope length actually meant there was play in the line, if he could just…

After a time he had to stop and rest. Had to. Getting slammed across the head, kicked in the ribs a few times, took it out of a guy. He rested, gulping, on the cool cement, willing the world to stop spinning, his guts to stop churning. Looking up at the faraway ceiling, he tried to calculate the time. He could tell by the reflected shadows that the sun was moving across the sky.

How the hell long had it been now?

It felt like hours, but that was probably wrong.

Even so, Yuki might be on his way back to the house.

He wondered what Will was doing, tried to guess what steps Will would be taking to find him. He had no doubt that Will was hunting for him. No doubt that Will would find him—Taylor just wanted to make sure Will found him in time.

He heaved himself up and started sawing at the ropes around his wrists again.

* * * *

She raised her milky blue gaze to Will's. “Bureau of Diplomatic Security? It's a long time since I've heard from the State Department.”

Mrs. Sugimori was a tall, slender woman in an elegant navy silk housecoat. Her dark hair was pulled back in a sleek chignon. She could not have looked more different from the description of the woman who had shot Denise Varga and helped to abduct Taylor, but as Will gazed into her pale gaze, he got that telltale prickle at the back of his scalp.

“Your name came up in connection with a case we're investigating.”

“Oh yes?”

She sounded uninterested. Too uninterested. She smiled a chilly smile at Lt. Wray, who was—after some debate—letting Will take point on this, and said, “Well, we may as well be comfortable.”

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She led them into a beautiful living room furnished with expensive Asian objets d'art. “Can I offer you something in the way of refreshment?”

“No, thank you,” Lt. Wray said. She looked around with the innocent interest of a tourist in a museum. She nodded to the credenza, where a silver-framed picture of a young Japanese man and a boy sat. “Is that your husband?”

“That's Nori, yes. He died seven years ago. Seven years ago exactly, as of tomorrow.” She added into the awkward silence, “The boy is Yukishige, his younger brother.”

Will asked, “You've stayed in touch with your husband's family?”

“I've stayed in touch with Yuki. He chose to attend school in the States.”

“Where does he go?” Wray asked.

The pale gaze rested on her. “Stanford University. The same as my husband.”

“When was the last time you saw your brother-in-law?” Wray asked at the exact moment Will opened his mouth.

He contained his impatience. He and Taylor had this kind of thing down to a science.

There was no talking over each other, no waste of time or energy. Still, Wray was a smart cop, and he thought she was right there on the same wavelength.

Mrs. Sugimori didn't hesitate. Her eyes slanted right as she said thoughtfully, “We met for dinner two weeks ago.”

The right-eye movement was a cue that she was visually remembering an actual event.

Taylor put a lot of stock in these visual access cues; he was very good at reading them. Will was less sold on body language and eye movement, but he observed that their suspect was holding herself stiffly as she tucked a nonexistent strand of hair behind her ear. All supposedly indicators for lying.

Lying by omission?

He deduced that Mrs. Sugimori had had dinner with her brother-in-law two weeks ago but had seen him more recently. “Where could we get in touch with Yukishige?”

Her eyes slanted left as she said, “Through the university, I suppose. I would call his dorm.

Forgive me for asking, but why would you need to speak to him?”

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Josh Lanyon

Instead of answering, Will said, “We apologize for having to bring up what are undoubtedly painful memories, but we wanted to ask you one or two questions about your husband's death.”

“
Why
?”

Seven years later it was clearly as raw as if it had just happened.

Wray said, “A federal agent has been killed and another abducted. We believe these crimes may be somehow connected to your husband's death.”

“That's ridiculous!” Sugimori was on her feet and walking agitatedly around the room, keeping tables and sofas in between herself and them, Will noted. That could be an indication that she was lying—or that she was going to try and pull a weapon out of that big flower arrangement. “That's insane. And you think Yuki is part of this?”

Wray asked, “Was he very close to his brother?”

“Yes. They were close. But what you're suggesting is ridiculous.” She stood still. “Why would Yuki wait seven years to avenge his brother?”

Avenge.

Will said, “Your father-in-law recently passed away, I believe. We thought that perhaps some new information might have come to light at that time. Families often have secrets.”