In the Still of the Night:Sexy Romantic Suspense (Book 2 The Blonde Barracuda's Sizzling Suspense Series) (2 page)

As darkness closed over her, Sun-ja thought perhaps she finally had.

Chapter 1

G
irlish shrieks followed by a chorus of laughter filled the air. Lexie shook her head in mock dismay and shared a wink with Master Wan. Even though Lexie did her best to enforce decorum in the dojo, nine little girls between the ages of six and eight were as hard to corral as a herd of frisky ponies. Worse, she thought with a grin. Because it wasn’t often that girls were encouraged to punch and kick and in general act like hoodlums instead of quiet, well-behaved girls. It was clear that given full rein, these girls could be as fierce as any boys who dared to take them on. And that was precisely the point Lexie wanted to make.

While she trained boys—particularly highly talented fighters whose parents often drove three hours each direction for their son to have an hour of Lexie’s time—her focus was women. The sign over the front of the dojo declared her life’s mission. “Strong Women Survive.” She smiled at Jake’s scrawled addition: “And Thrive.” He’d added those two words, back when Lexie wasn’t sure what it meant to “thrive.” Surviving had been challenging enough. Without Master Wan, it was unlikely either she or her brother Anthony would have survived.

Anthony was fifteen years old when he met Master Wan, and was facing high security confinement, following his fifth arrest for violent behavior. The schools and social service agencies had given up on him and the correctional system was about to do the same. As a last resort, and needing a place to park the angry young boy until he was old enough to go to prison, they sent Anthony to Master Wan’s dojo to learn “discipline.” Each year, Master Wan took in two or three incorrigible young people whom the courts had labeled potentially salvageable. Anthony was one of the lucky ones. Watching the young man fight, Master Wan saw beneath the veneer of rage, and began to teach the violent boy how to profitably harness his fury. Three years later, Anthony left the dojo to join the U.S. Army, a trained mixed martial artist the likes of which the U.S. Army rarely saw.

After a six-year search, Anthony finally found the little sister who he’d last seen when she was ten years old. Separated by the social service system, it was unlikely the two orphaned children would have found each other without Anthony’s determination and Master Wan’s support. While Anthony’s teenage years were marked by violence he initiated, Lexie’s young life was one of violence perpetrated upon her. Eight foster homes and countless abusive situations later, she ran away for the last time. Following a tip from a social worker who remembered the striking young girl, Anthony found Lexie in a strip joint on the outskirts of San Francisco, a mere twenty miles from Master Wan’s dojo. Now a Green Beret on leave from Afghanistan, Anthony turned the drugged out, deeply cynical sixteen-year-old over to the man who had saved his life. He had one request of his mentor. “Teach her to protect herself.”

Master Wan did that and more. He saw Lexie’s potential and built on it. Harnessing the indomitable spirit that had allowed Lexie to survive, Master Wan initiated a rigorous training regimen. Three years after Anthony found her, Lexie was an acknowledged master in five different martial arts disciplines. Master Wan always said, the only fighter he’d trained in thirty years more talented than Anthony was his sister.

When she graduated from college, and Master Wan asked her what she wanted to do next, she’d said with a smile, “To become your partner of course.” And she had. At Master Wan’s insistence they named their center Jai Li’s, Lexie’s Chinese name which meant “strong leader.” While Lexie never forgot her past, she buried her personal pain in a deep dark hole, only rarely letting it raise its ugly head. Instead she took those hard lessons and used them to create her women’s self-defense program, “Strong Women Survive.” It was so effective that at the young age of twenty-six, Lexie was becoming an acknowledged expert sought after by law enforcement agencies and women’s groups across the state of California.

And then, tragedy struck. The unimaginable happened. Anthony, her hero, her beloved brother, and the closest person in the world to her, was brutally murdered. Tired of being overseas for long stretches of time and wanting to be closer to Lexie, Anthony left the Army and joined the Yuma Police Department. He was about to expose the mastermind behind an international drug cartel when he was murdered. Lexie had always considered herself a survivor, but after Anthony’s murder, she wasn’t so sure. That she did survive, and was even toying with the notion of thriving, could be summed up in one word. Jake.

Lexie broke out of her reverie when she saw Master Wan in the doorway. He spoke softly. “Jai Li, you have visitors. They are waiting for you in your office.”

Seeing Master’s Wan’s serious expression, Lexie turned to her assistant. Ming Tong, a young Korean woman, was one of Lexie’s star pupils. Like many of Lexie’s followers, Ming came from a hideous family situation and shared Lexie’s passion for the Strong Women Survive program. Lately, Ming had been helping Lexie with some of the classes, particularly for the youngest pupils.

“Ming, will you please finish the class? Remember girls, before you get to go to the punching bags you need to do at least ten minutes of stretching.”

Lexie laughed at the outcry from the little girls. She agreed. There was nothing quite like driving your fists and feet into a hard bag to relieve stress and take out your frustrations. The first time Master Wan had her spend ten minutes pounding the bag she was hooked. Even today, she sometimes spent as much as an hour tormenting the leather-wrapped opponent with her fierce fists, elbows and feet. The only thing that compared was breaking a hundred blocks in a steady barrage of shrieking punches and kicks. She had instilled her love of this challenging outlet in all of her students, to the point that even the six-year-olds complained when they had to stretch rather than punch and kick.

After Anthony was killed, and her fierce bouts with the bag consumed her to the point of exhaustion, Jake and Master Wan cautioned her. Admonishing her, the way she did her students. Master Wan’s patient wisdom rang in her ears. “Moderation, Jai Li. The warrior’s strength comes from peace, as much as battle. True strength is peaceful.” While Lexie would like to agree, the anger that ran deep in her soul that had been reignited by Anthony’s death made a peaceful practice unlikely. Moderation was hard enough.

Entering her office, she was surprised to see Captain Rourke and Lt. Peterson, two police officers who headed up the vice unit for the SFPD. She’d been on several panels with Daniel Rourke and he’d become a friend.

“Dan, I would say this is a pleasant surprise, but given that you are unlikely to drop in for a visit, I can only assume you are here on police business. Unless perhaps you knew that Madam Juen makes her lotus pastries every Monday and you couldn’t resist. If that’s the case, trust me, you aren’t the only visitors who suddenly find they have urgent business with me every Monday at approximately 11 a.m.”

Cap. Rourke’s ruddy face cracked in the semblance of a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“I wish that were the case, Lexie. Unfortunately the nature of my job doesn’t make me the most welcome visitor under the best of circumstances. And today is no exception.”

Motioning the two large men toward the armchairs in her small sitting area, Lexie looked up to see Madam Juen’s kitchen assistant, Jung Kee, in the doorway.

“Excuse me, Jai Li. Madam Juen asked if you and the big officers would like some tea and pastries.”

Lexie smiled at the young woman.

“I think you read our minds, Jung Kee. And yes, please, bring the ‘big officers’ both tea and pastries. And Jung Kee, please ask Master Wan to join us.”

Seeing that being referred to as the “big officers” by the diminutive young woman brought barely a smile to the faces of her guests, Lexie knew that the news was serious. She had reason to be concerned when the police came to their dojo. Too often it meant that one of their students had been hurt by an angry husband—or worse, by a sadistic pimp. But since that day when she’d received the news of Anthony’s death, even a year later, police officers bringing her news spiked a sense of dread. Fighting the tension rising inexorably in her stomach, she was relieved to see Master Wan enter. Just his presence gave her courage. The Master nodded to the officers and gave Lexie a questioning glance, then joined her on the sofa.

Lexie answered his unspoken question.

“No, Master Wan, Captain Rourke and Officer Peterson haven’t yet told me the reason that they are here. But as we have learned in the past, as much as we may like and respect them, their visits are not something we look forward to.”

Dan Rourke grimaced. His bushy grey-flecked eyebrows met in the deep crease between them.

“Yes Lexie, Master Wan. Someday I’m going to come and invite you both to my house for dinner and the best Irish stew you’re likely to eat, and we can all get drunk together. But today isn’t one of those days.”

He nodded to Mark Peterson, who opened the folder he’d been carrying and spread three glossy photographs across the coffee table.

Lexie squeezed her eyes shut to block an all-too-familiar sight. Grateful for Master Wan’s comforting hand over hers, she took a deep breath and asked the obvious.

“Who… who is she, Dan? And what happened?”

“We’re not sure, Lexie. We don’t have a positive ID yet. As for what happened, she was stabbed to death, found by some junkies in an alley in the District. From her clothing, scars and internal injuries she’s one of the street workers, likely in the massage parlors in that area. She… she had a hard life.”

The gruff officer stopped abruptly, shaking his head. After a long pause, he added, “Damn, this girl can’t be more than twenty… and, hell, if she weighs eighty pounds I’d be surprised.”

Lexie swallowed around the hard lump in her throat. Like Officer Rourke, no matter how many times she saw the bruises, the cuts, the broken bones—or as with this young girl, the dead bodies—the sight shattered her. Her first reaction was shock, disbelief. Who could do this to another human being? Especially one so vulnerable? Her shock morphed into grief and soon became anger. It was the anger that galvanized her. It was why she’d started her center, why she met each new challenge fiercely determined to right the wrong. But it never got easier. Oh, she’d heard that, over time, police officers and other people like her got inured to the pain and the suffering they saw. But she hadn’t. From the shadowed expression on Dan Rourke’s stern face, he hadn’t either.

Master Wan broke the silence.

“She is Korean? Although, it appears she has had facial surgery.”

Lexie grimaced. She was as offended as Master Wan was, at the attempts by the pimps and sex trade bosses to make their Asian girls look more American, more Caucasian. Supposedly, that made them more attractive to their white “johns.” In addition to the racial insult, the cost of the surgery was always added to the debt the girl owed, further indenturing her. In the worst cases, the surgery failed or was sloppy, and the disfigured young women were tossed on the scrap heap of the industry. Like casual experiments gone awry.

At the grim nods from the two police officers, confirming they agreed with Master Wan’s conclusion, Lexie asked, “Why are you here, Dan? If you’re asking me if I know this young woman, I do not. But, I have a number of Korean women in my “Strong Women” program who have lived the life that this poor girl did. While I don’t relish showing these awful photographs to them, I will if it’ll help you track down the animals that exploited her… and killed her.”

“I appreciate that, Lexie. Anything you can do to help us figure out who she is, gives us a fighting chance to find the bastards who did this. But, we’re here for another reason.”

Lexie took a sharp breath and frowned at the troubled man. He answered her questioning gaze by taking out of Officer Peterson’s file a tattered piece of note paper.

“As you can see, Lexie, while you don’t seem to know her, she apparently knew you.”

Lexie opened the note with a surprised gasp, and then handed it to Master Wan. A rare frown crossed his usually smooth countenance. The note said: Come to 2607 Larkspur Lane, Jai Li will help you. She will protect you.

The note was signed Ming Tong.

Chapter 2

Ming sat between Master Wan and Lexie, sobbing bitterly. She looked up at Lexie imploringly.

“I’m so sorry. Oh God, I am sorry. I just wanted to get her out of there. She looked so young. So scared.”

Lexie knew about “Ming’s missions,” as she called them. While Lexie wasn’t sure how much good they did, she applauded the young woman’s passion and determination to give hope to the hundreds of girls caught in the hideous trap of the sex trade. As with her own program, Lexie knew how little they could do to undercut a multi-billion dollar industry—but every woman who joined the Strong Woman program was one less victim. Or so she hoped. Seeing the frown on Officer Rourke’s face, she interrupted what she was sure would be a criticism of Ming’s tactics. Unfortunately, Lexie knew Master Wan had been concerned for some time about the initiative and had cautioned Lexie. She agreed with his concerns but disagreed with his prescription—which was to have one of the more accomplished male students accompany the girls.

“Dan, I’m aware of the fact that Ming and some of the other students have been distributing these notes to women who look as though they’re being exploited. I hope you understand that Ming and I both are devastated that this young girl was killed. But the fact that she had this note on her person, does not mean that the note caused her death.”

Officer Rourke’s ruddy face flushed dangerously. He made an obvious effort to contain his response but his Irish temper squeaked through.

“Damn, Lexie. Do you mean to tell me that you sanction—what did you call them, ‘Ming’s missions?’ Do you have any idea how dangerous it is? Not only for girls like this,” he said, pointing to the photographs of the dead girl, “if they are caught accepting Ming’s overture. But also for Ming. I hope to hell you have some big burly guys accompany them.”