CHAPTER 45

涙 Namida

Tears

J-Bird drove Hiro, Soji, and Jet along the highway. Soon after they’d crossed the Colorado border into New Mexico, snow began to fall.

“Yuki! Snow!” Hiro leaned against the window. Though he hid them well, Jet could feel Hiro’s emotions. He’s still just a kid, she remembered. Not even a teenager yet.

Before long, the hills along the freeway were draped in soft white. Looking at the tableau, Jet felt its cool sparseness. This feeling of emptiness was a relief.

“What happened to the man with the light brown eyes?” Soji asked.

“I left him for dead,” Jet said, staring at the snow.

“I see.” Soji’s jaw tightened. “What a waste.” He, too, kept his eyes on the road in front of them, and the white mountains glittered in the cold silence.

“Completely,” Jet said, stifling her own emotions. Unconsciously, though, she rubbed her hands as if the smell of blood remained there. Takumi had still been breathing when she’d left him. After incapacitating the guards who hadn’t fled, she’d called an ambulance and bound his wound. Then she’d interrogated several of the injured men, finding out where Harter would have gone.

Had Takumi sacrificed himself so she could live? And yet she knew that if she’d killed him then, she would have died at Harter’s hand. What another might have called weakness had been her strength. It had allowed her to survive.

Turmoil would always exist beneath the surface, but what lay hidden in the depths of the ocean, the crevices of a cave, the folds of the wind, the chambers of the heart? A longing for tranquility filled her. Yes, she could locate the point on the forehead where a flattened palm would knock a man unconscious, or knee someone hard and swift enough to make someone crumble, or twist herself deep into a man’s unconscious mind, sticking there like a fly in a spiderweb to confuse and disorient. But none of that had helped her when Takumi lay wounded.

It was just as Ojiisan said: one could survive only at the expense of others.

She grit her teeth. The fight was still not over.

“Take me to the airport,” she said, her voice thick with resolve.

“What?” J-Bird asked, stunned. “Why?”

“It’s not over yet, J-Bird. You know that. We need to finish this.” He looked over at her, his eyes glinting.

“I know I need to let you go,” he said. “But I want to go with you.”

“I know. Trust me. I’ll be back,” she promised.

He reached out and gripped her hand.

“You will,” he said, knowing that only she could finish what her mother had started.

“I’m sure of it. Satoko knew you could do this, too.”

“Thank you for everything, J-Bird,” Jet said, her mind made up.

As he gazed at her attentively, he hoped in his heart of hearts that she would. He’d lost one Kuroi woman. He couldn’t bear to lose another.