He put his hand over the receiver and looked at Brandy. “Odd,” he whispered. “They’ve transferred me to the CDC.” He turned back to his conversation. “Yes, this is Todd Elton in Kanab, Utah . . . No, K . . . A . . . N . . . Yes, Kanab. Anyway, I’m a family practice physician and . . .” He took a deep breath. “We have a bit of a situation I’d like to run by you—” He nodded, though talking on the phone and the woman on the other end had no idea he was nodding. She asked a series of questions, callback numbers, physical address, number of people involved, all likely off a predetermined checklist kept beside the hotline telephone.

  “Yes,” Elton answered at length. “Well, it’s an acute outbreak of feverish boils around the groin, armpit, and neck. There’s been one male patient but it generally appears to be affecting women . . . Yes, fourteen total so far . . . Yes, I’m running cultures—”

  He sat silently for a moment, listening, perfectly still but for his eyes that kept darting between Brandy and his desk.

  Elton shook his head, grimacing at Brandy as if he’d just heard something odd. “Yes,” he said. “As a matter of fact one of the patients is a soldier. All right, I understand.”

  He hung up. “Get this,” he said, taking a deep breath, “they were already working on it.”

  “How’d they know about us?” Brandy crinkled her forehead.

  “Not us,” Elton said. “I guess there are cases popping up in other places.”

  Brandy caught her breath. “What other places?”

  “I was talking to a government agency.” Elton chuckled, trying to relieve the tension he felt in his gut. “She was not extremely forthcoming with that information.”

  “What are we supposed to do?”

  Elton toyed with the notepad where he’d written the number for CDC. “The lady said she’d call right back. But I get the feeling they are sending someone to take over.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Virginia

  The tiny edge of the hidden tattoo that had plagued Quinn and Thibodaux for the last year and a half was actually the beginning of a design that covered virtually every inch of Miyagi’s torso.

  Brilliant splashes of black, orange, pink, and green started at her shoulders like cap sleeves and worked their way down. An orange carp, or koi, covered much of her back, swimming beneath fallen pink cherry blossoms. The image of a gaudily made-up courtesan adorned the ribs and hip of her left side, completely covering her buttock and thigh. The opposite side of her body was graced by the goddess Kwannon, who faced inward, as if staring into her soul.

  Her upper chest around her collarbone and a four-inch line of flesh running down the center of her body remained un-inked, making it possible for her to wear shirts open at the neck and even her workout leotards without revealing the presence of a tattoo. Only the tiniest black outline of a cherry blossom sometimes peeked out on the swell of her breast.

  Her head bowed demurely, chin pressed against her chest, Emiko brought her leg over the side of the tub in a movement that reminded Quinn of ballet. The steam parted as her foot pierced the surface. Water shimmered like quicksilver, lapping at the taut muscles of her belly, just below her navel.

  She stood perfectly still.

  The musky scent of her body drifting over the superheated water made Quinn feel as though he’d been drugged. He found it impossible to tear his eyes away. Apparently wanting him to look, she kept her hands at her waist, turning in a slow revolution before she settled into the bath. Only her head and shoulders were left exposed.

  Her body was the canvas for an incredibly intricate work of art. The fact that Quinn had known her for so long without any idea such a thing was there only added to the mystery.

  Miyagi kept her face down, toward the water. Her wet hair hung in a sort of protective curtain, concealing her eyes but not her emotions.

  “Many servicemen get tattoos,” she said, finally breaking the silence. “I have often wondered at the fact that you do not have any.”

  “I’ve thought about it,” Quinn said, surprised at how dry his mouth was. “But I started working outside the wire, posing as an Arab, early in my career, so it seemed advisable to keep my skin unidentifiable.”

  “That is a good choice,” she said. “One that will hopefully keep your skin intact as well.” Her chest shook with a nervous chuckle. “I think Americans would consider my tattoo hideous, no?”

  “It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks,” Quinn said. His voice was throaty and hoarse. He opened his mouth, but could not think of another worthwhile word to say.

  Miyagi looked up, her eyes probing to know what he thought of her. “Do you know how we begin a tale of long ago in Japan?”

  Quinn gave a quiet nod. “Of course. Mukashi, mukashi—once upon a time . . .”

  The tiniest of smiles parted Miyagi’s lips. She was close enough that Quinn could almost feel her breath across the water. She trembled slightly as she spoke. Her shoulders, which had always been so powerful during their lessons, softened and seemed to melt into the water. She tilted her head, ebony hair trailing the surface of the bath.

  “Well then,” she whispered. Steam swirled around her face. “Mukashi, mukashi, when I was a little girl, my father was a yakuza underboss, second only to the oyabun. My father was a powerful man, respected by his peers and the many men who worked for him. His name was Yamada Senzo and he was an expert at kendo and tameshigiri.” She looked at Quinn to see if he understood. “Do you know tameshigiri?”

  Quinn nodded. He’d practiced the art of cutting with a functional Japanese sword—some of his targets considerably more realistic than others.

  Miyagi continued her story. “You may know that the yakuza were originally gamblers. Even the name ya-ku-za comes from the term for eight-nine-three, a losing hand in a Japanese card game. Some call them rogues and thieves, but to my father’s mind, the yakuza had an ancient samurai ethic. He trained me in all things according to the martial way from the time I was old enough to walk. We were very close, he and I.

  “Unfortunately, when I was thirteen years of age, he became very ill. Wicked men, men who had sworn oaths to support him, schemed instead behind his back and took everything he had. In his weakness, he could not fight them. He died a broken man, leaving my mother overwhelmed with crushing debt. There was nothing she could do but take up house with another yakuza lieutenant.”

  Miyagi looked up suddenly, pained eyes locked on Quinn. Tendons knotted along her delicate neck. The tip of her tongue quivered against her lips. “It is here, when I began life on the street, that my story, the story that is relevant to you, begins . . .”

  CHAPTER 19

  April 2, 1983

  Saturday, 2:00 AM

  Fukuoka, Japan

  Yamada Emiko had the stomped look of a girl with a broken heart—but she knew how to fight.

  “Choke! Choke! Choke!” The chant rose from the darkness in the deserted train tracks behind the vacant box factory. The empty shell of broken windows was a precursor of the economic slump that would soon strike Japan’s industry and powerful markets, but the fighting youth knew nothing of that. To them, the vacant building offered a place to hide from the crushing conformity society tried to push on them.

  Locked on the gravel in a deadly embrace with her opponent, Emiko puffed her hollow cheeks and reared back, catching the other girl’s throat in the V of her bent arm. Chiyo was new to the group. Still well fed from her parent’s table, she had Emiko by thirty pounds—but that didn’t matter.

  Emiko grasped her own forearm with the opposite hand, pulling tighter, her body settling in next to her opponent. Each time Chiyo moved, Emiko adjusted her grip, squeezing the life out of her like a constricting snake. One leg entwined the other girl’s ankles, keeping her from kicking free or turning around.

  Chiyo gurgled, struggling to draw a breath. Her hands clawed at the arm that wrapped around her neck, trying in vain to pry it away. Emiko let her wrist nestle in next to the hollow of the other girl’s neck, as her father had taught her. She bent it just enough to drive the base of her thumb against her opponent’s carotid artery, stopping the flow of blood to her brain and putting her to sleep almost instantly.

  Emiko dropped the unconscious Chiyo like a piece of garbage, then raised her hands above her head and gave a bloodcurdling scream. Victory meant money, which meant food—and maybe even a little sake.

  Her peroxide-red hair was chopped as if with a pair of garden shears and stood out at different lengths in all directions. In a country that valued conformity, such a haircut on a young woman was the equivalent of spitting in the face of her elders. It did not matter to her. Emiko had no elders to spit on.

  She’d cut away the neckline of her pink Hello Kitty sweatshirt in order to expose a budding cleavage. Kenichi hated for other boys to look at her that way but didn’t mind taking a peek himself. Besides, it gave him a reason to be jealous. Emiko enjoyed the feeling of being fought over, especially if muscular Kenichi with his James Dean pompadour, tight white T-shirt, and black leather jacket was the one doing the fighting.

  Life had been hard enough after her father died in debt, but then her mother had taken up house with the filthy yakuza underboss, Sato, who seemed to be a lot more interested in Emiko than he was her mother.

  Looking back, Emiko should have killed him, but she knew little of such things at the time.

  At first she’d stayed with girlfriends from school, but when their parents discovered that she was the daughter of a dead yakuza lieutenant, they politely but firmly told her it would be best if she found somewhere else to lay her head. She’d slept in a park the first night—almost five months before—next to a crazy homeless woman who thought Emiko was a pet goat. The fact that she’d abandoned life, coupled with her ability to fight, made the bosozoku street tribes a natural place for the young girl to eventually land.

  Now gaunt from malnutrition, too little sleep, and too much alcohol, her collarbones stretched against pale skin as if they wanted to escape. Her fingernails were dirty and broken. Grime ringed the cuffs of her pink sweatshirt.

  Kenichi urged her to eat more, begged her to quit fighting, even promising to clean up his act and get a job as a mechanic so they could get married.

  Marriage. Emiko scoffed, looking at the muscular boy across the unconscious body of her latest opponent. Marriage was too big a word to comprehend for a girl who didn’t expect to live to see her fourteenth birthday. Apart from her feelings for Kenichi, she didn’t even care.

  The greasy bookie who’d set up the fight with the new girl handed Emiko her money, a measly five thousand yen—roughly twenty-five American dollars—to risk a broken neck.

  “Sagara wants to see you,” the bookie grunted. He stuffed a wad of bills into the pocket of his canvas trousers that looked to have been doused in motor oil.

  Kenichi’s strong arm snaked around Emiko’s shoulders, drawing her close. “Tell him she is busy tonight,” he said. “Come on, Emi-chan. I got the motorcycle fixed. Let’s go for a ride across the riv—”

  The bookie gave Kenichi a hard cuff to the ear. “Idiot!” he spat. “No one tells Sagara they are busy. He will tell you if you are busy or not.”

  Kenichi shucked off his leather jacket, always spoiling for a fight. Emiko had been his girlfriend long enough to know that no one could hit him in the head and get away without a beating, least of all a greasy old man.

  Sagara’s acid voice barked from across the tracks, stopping the boy in midswing. He was a thick man, nearly as wide as he was tall, with a big belly and fat cheeks that pushed his eyes closed from the bottom when he smiled, which was usually at the expense of someone else’s misfortune.

  “Oi!” He grunted, nodding to the slouching man at his left who held a black pistol, half hidden in the darkness. “Can I buy you two a hot meal or should I have Tomiyuki-kun put a bullet in your worthless brains?”

  Kenichi spun at the new threat. Fists doubled, he stood on the balls of his feet. Emiko’s father had taught her about men like Sagara. She knew it would be bad strategy to fight such a person in face-to-face combat. He was yakuza, like her father had been—too powerful, too connected for mere teenagers to beat in an open fight.

  She patted Kenichi’s arm to calm him and then put on her helpless-child voice. It was another strategy taught to her by her late father.

  “Why would a powerful man such as Sagara-sama want to feed two worthless brains like ours?” She bowed low.

  “Because I do not want you for your brains,” Sagara growled. “Come. I have curry rice. You can eat in the car on the way.”

  It was generally easy to bribe a starving soul with meat, but Emiko stood her ground. Sagara reeked of evil. She could smell it even from across the tracks.

  “If not for our brains, what then?” Emiko said. “I am no prostitute.”

  Sagara roared with laughter, elbowing his man, Tomiyuki. “As if anyone would want to take your scrawny body.” He rubbed his eyes. “There are those in my organization who have noticed you when you fight. We believe it may be time to see if you are ready to move up to bigger things.”

  Emiko had heard of such yakuza-sponsored events. They were still underground, but the money was said to be better—and sometimes they even arranged an apartment for their fighters to live in—so long as they kept winning.

  She shot a wary glance at Kenichi, who shrugged. Curry rice was his favorite. He pitched the keys for his customized Honda to a boy named Tsuchiya, asking him to watch the bike while they were gone, then turned back to Emiko.

  “What can it hurt to talk to them?” Kenichi said.

  Two minutes later, Emiko was crammed in the back of the dark sedan, squeezed in between Kenichi and the leering Sagara. Streetlights flashed red and amber as they thumped along the main road going south, out of town. The lights grew more infrequent as they left the city, throwing the interior of the car into near darkness, illuminated only by the green glow of the dashboard and the red ember at the end of Sagara’s stinking cigar.

  The inside of the Toyota Crown smelled like cheap aftershave and tobacco smoke. Kenichi, always looking for sources of protein so he could grow muscles like his hero Arnold Schwarzenegger, wolfed down all his curry and much of Emiko’s when she said she was finished. A familiar gnawing at her stomach pushed away hunger. Her father had called the feeling haragei, the art of the belly, and told her she should pay attention to it. These feelings would, he said, warn her of danger.

  As they sped up on a long section of highway out of the city, the gnawing in her stomach grew so strong she almost cried out. In the front seat, Tomiyuki smoked one cigarette after the other while he drove. Even in the darkness of the sedan, Emiko could see the young lieutenant was missing the last joints on the pinky and ring fingers of his left hand—evidence of two fairly significant misdeeds he’d had to atone for. Sagara folded his stubby arms across a great belly and looked down at her with a squinty, condescending grin.

  Emiko closed her eyes to escape the man and tried to go to sleep. She should never have gotten in that car.

  She woke up sometime later to a slowing motion of the car. Her head was resting on Sagara’s shoulder. It took a moment for her to realize where she was, but as the smells and sounds came back to her, she gave a startled shudder and sat straight up. Sagara smiled down at her as if he’d never moved his squinting eyes. Kenichi was still asleep, a line of drool running from his mouth to his T-shirt. She nudged him with her foot. He woke up blinking wildly, just as startled as she had been at finding himself in an unfamiliar place.

  The low rays of a morning sun crawled across the pavement in front of them, chasing a thick blanket of mist back into the tall pines that lined the road.

  A stone wall, like the ones Emiko had seen around feudal castles, stood on either side of the road ahead of them. Tomiyuki slowed the Toyota as two massive wooden gates yawned open. The gates shut behind them as soon as they drove through, and Emiko found herself surrounded by manicured gardens, koi ponds, and squat stone lanterns. Arched Shinto torii gates straddled well-groomed gravel paths. Huge stone monoliths rose here and there at least fifteen feet into the air. She could see several buildings tucked back in the trees, but their dark wooden architecture made them blend in to become part of their natural surroundings.

  Tomiyuki stopped the sedan and turned to his boss with a subservient nod.

  Outside, a smiling man wearing a white judo gi under dark blue hakama—a type of loose, flowing pant worn by ancient samurai—waited on the newly mown grass with folded arms. A rich head of dark hair was conservatively short, like that of a Japanese businessman. Though he smiled at the new arrivals, the man’s dark eyes held the flint-hard air of one accustomed to being in complete control of his surroundings.

  The man bowed deeply when Sagara approached, both hands flat against the sides of his hakama.

  The yakuza boss returned the bow, rising quickly to motion Emiko forward with a flick of his thick wrist.

  “Come, come,” he grunted, commanding her in low tones, as if she were a dog.

  Tomiyuki gave her a rough shove from behind to hurry her up. She turned to glare at him and saw that he carried a wooden case like the one her father had used to transport his cutting swords. She shot a worried glance at Kenichi, who stretched his muscular arms skyward and yawned, still not comprehending exactly where he was.

  Sagara gestured toward the man in the hakama with an open hand. “Like I told you,” he said, “you have been noticed as a possible fighter. Oda sensei is going to see what you are made of.”

  Emiko found herself bowing before she realized what she was doing, transfixed by the man’s dark eyes. The other bosozoku would have laughed her out of the gang.

  The man called Oda looked at her, seeming to gaze past her eyes to study the back of her skull. She squirmed awkwardly at the intrusion, feeling as if she was being physically touched.

 

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