Sake Bomb (41 page)

A soft whoosh of liquid and the sound of
dissolving pellets. Xander shook a small white bag, dropped it on
the table, repeated the process with another. “Kiz—”

“We’re not doing this.” Her voice stayed low
because she hadn’t found it in the half hour they’d been airborne.
“Drop it.” ‘Or die’ hung on the tail end of that.

A low cough cleared Xander’s throat. “I was
actually going to fill you in on what Sumi told me. There’s a bomb
to find, if you recall.” He extended his arm on the table, palm up,
waiting for her hand. A small smile curved his mouth; a slight flex
of his fingers, motioning for her compliance. “Hard or easy,
Princess.”

“Sure
you
don’t need ‘em?” Kizzie
asked, jutting her chin toward the ice packs. “You’re the one who
got his chest caved in.” Xander grunted a laugh and she reluctantly
slid her aching hand across the table. The jolt to her system she
attributed to lingering adrenaline. Nothing more.

Palms connected, he traced over the swell on
her center knuckles with the fingers of his other hand, the motion
so light Kizzie almost didn’t feel it. Head bent in deep focus, he
continued the unsettling movements far longer than a cursory
examination required.

“Forgive me.” She tried to pull her hand
away, but he held her firm, head shaking slightly. “That…shouldn’t
have happened like that. I don’t have the right—”

“Damn straight, you don’t.” Anger
disappeared when he lifted his head, genuine remorse clouding his
brown eyes. She tugged again to no avail; swallowed hard,
uncomfortable with that look.

A folded paper towel over her knuckles to
protect her skin, Xander carefully placed an ice pack on her hand,
the cold sting soothing instantly. Then he sandwiched it all with
his other palm, holding it in place and letting the cool rush
through. By his expression there was something he wanted to say,
but he seemed to think better of it.

“Sumi said the target is DC. You come to the
same conclusion?”

Business. She could handle that.

They exchanged the bits of information
they’d gathered, Kizzie quickly relaying her findings from Fay’s
phone, the oleander tattoo instead of the In-Yo on her back. The
bastardized five elements theory. Xander gave her motive. Neither
had a name, or a specific location in DC. They spent some time
trying to connect dots, but came up short.

The last of the info transferred, Xander
looked at her torn knuckles. “I know I’ve got pecs of steel, but I
didn’t do all this damage.”

“Might have had a reflex with Koji and his
friend.”

He shook his head. “Whenever I’m not
watching you, you get banged up. That settles it. I can never let
you out of my sight again.” He winked. “So, ready to eat this
elephant?”

Kizzie cracked the barest hint of a smile.
“As an agent for the CIA I can neither confirm nor deny the
existence of an elephant. Now, if you’ll just stare at this handy
mind-eraser pen…” He didn’t laugh.

“Is that what I stirred up in Helsinki?” She
frowned and Xander continued. “You zoned on me while I was whipping
you. Thought you’d reached subspace, but afterward you had
this…haunted look in your eyes. I remember thinking I’d broken a
dam you’d worked hard to build. I never imagined…”

“Part of it.” Kizzie inhaled a breath. She
didn’t want to do this, relive it, but it was out in the open now.
“What else did your contact tell you?”

He frowned. “Not a contact. You. What you
were saying, what you weren’t. But judging by the question and the
relief on your face, there’s more to the story.”

More? Xander didn’t know the half of it.

The rape shook her, changed her, opened her
eyes. It fought to consume her; Kizzie fought harder. Channeled her
anger into her schoolwork, used the shame to be outstanding in the
truest sense of the word. Covered feelings of vulnerability with a
blanket of “don’t fuck with me” as she focused single-mindedly on
becoming the best second lieutenant The Point had ever seen.

Sophomore year, the year it happened, she
increased her workload, took adjunct courses online, studied
multiple languages. She would have graduated top of her class,
earned something no one could ever
take
from her.

But then, Junior year.

As horrible as the rape was, the events that
followed were what weighed on her. That “little kerfuffle.”

The pack pressed harder an infinitesimal
amount. The muscles in Xander’s jaw bunched and flexed, and
emotions she couldn’t read shifted over his face. His brown eyes
bored through her, searching, and if he asked she’d break down and
tell him the truth.

Kizzie the fraud. The coward.

The murderer.

But Xander wouldn’t push, not now. So it’d
be up to her to stop running, to submit to
this
kind of
pain.

Deal with the fallout of things she couldn’t
plan for. Communicate when she didn’t want to. Trust when she
didn’t want to…

“I owe you an apology. Several, actually.
Uh…” The familiar fight against being vulnerable reared its head,
but Kizzie forced it down. “Like I said, I don’t do close to me,
for a couple of reasons… But you got close, and I’m such a coward
it was easier to think you were playing me than to believe you
really care about me. So I latched on to the first thing I could to
push you away, jumped to the lame-ass assumption you were trading
your help for a quick screw, ‘cause I was scared shitless you’d
find out there’s nothing in me to get close to. Still am…”

God, she felt naked. She wanted her hands
back so she could huddle in her jacket. Xander’s gaze was on her.
No judgment, no pity, no sadness. Just enough calm for the both of
them. She cleared her throat and pressed on.

“I’m more than sorry. That was a horrible
thing to even hint at, and if I know nothing else about you, I know
you’re not that guy.

A gentle squeeze to her hand. “And I know
what it took for you to open up, which makes you incredibly brave,
Princess, not a coward.”

A flash of green ribbon…a sea of red. She
swallowed hard. “You don’t know me, Xander.”

“Well,” he glanced at his empty wrist,
“world’s slated to end in ten hours. Got someplace to be before
then?” She grinned and he said, “Baby steps.”

Kizzie turned her gaze out the window, ready
to take a leap. “And Jo…wasn’t cheating on me. Jo’s a woman.”

She wanted to say more. To admit she was the
reason her best friend was dead.

But the guilt clogged her throat. She blew
out a breath. “Whew, this elephant is kinda tough…little salty
too.”

Xander chuckled, dropped a kiss to her cold
knuckles. “Thank you for trusting me with that.” Her hand still in
his, he stood and rounded the table, tugged her up with him. “Come
on. Come lay with me.”

He guided her past another set of captain’s
chairs where Sumi lay unmoving, cocooned in the hotel’s blanket.
Kizzie had been in such a haze she’d missed the body
altogether.

Xander toed off his shoes and sat on the
couch. Hunched over, he unlaced her sneakers so she could step out
of them. Then he stretched out on his side. Kizzie stretched out,
too, her back snuggled against his chest. His palm splayed over her
belly, her palm slid down the back of his and their fingers locked
together.

Warm, safe, protected.

If only for a little while.

“I owe you three questions,” Xander
whispered, just as Kizzie started dozing. “Absolutely honest. Any
three you want, no restrictions.”

Her brow lifted but her eyes stayed closed.
She’d forgotten all about that. And what she should ask—What’s your
problem with Connolly?; Who’s your buyer for Harvey?; Anything else
on 3-19?—didn’t align with what she wanted to know.

“Do… Do you really play the spoons?”

Xander laughed, low and gravelly in her ear.
“Going for the jugular, huh? Thought you’d ease me into this, start
with something a little less personal…. Quit stalling,
beautiful.”

She frowned, mulling it over in her head.
“Honestly, I don’t have any.”

“Not one? Why’s that?”

Kizzie let out a deep sigh, snuggled against
him a bit further. “‘Cause where you met, why you got married, and
if you love her…hearing the answers’ll only make it hurt more.”

“Hm.” Xander hummed, pressed a kissed to her
hair. “Long flight. Get some rest.”

August 5
^th

Washington, DC

S
erial number:
B-29-45-MO44-86292. Victor 12, or 82, depending on which side of
August 5th you were on. But not just 1 of 15.
The
one.

The Mother.

With a 141-foot wingspan it resembled just
that, a mama bird with her arms spread wide in proud adulation of
her Little Boy’s accomplishment.

Practically alone in this section of the
museum, Julie stared out at her distorted reflection in the shiny
aluminum fuselage, a mix of pain and anticipation curling in her
blood.

The soft squeak of shoes on concrete drew
her attention to the left where the Enola Gay’s placard resided. A
small, hunched Japanese man clutched the hand of a child of maybe
six or seven years old. He unfolded enough to look out at the
plane, through the glass nose and into the cockpit. Julie watched
him curiously, wondering what he thought and felt. What memories
did seeing this ghost stir in him? The girl beside him fidgeted,
twirled around oblivious to the meaning of the words her elder
mumbled from the placard.

Julie had read the short inscription on the
plaque just minutes before, and it took all her control not to show
her rage at it’s inadequacy. It described the B-29 as a
“sophisticated propeller-driven bomber.” A handful of insipid specs
were listed—length, width, combat radius, max speed—but not the
number. Not one single line devoted to the many counts of horror
this vehicle of death had delivered.

But Julie knew. Just as she knew the number
of lives lost in the internment camps. Just as she knew the number
of names in the register that filled the stone chest sheltered by
the cenotaph in the inappropriately named Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Park. Peace? Peace was about balance, about all things being in
equilibrium, in a contented state of rest.

70,000 deaths on impact was not peace.

A little girl, standing across from the
ghostly ruins of the A-Bomb Dome was not peace.

And that same little girl haunted by the
phantoms of her mother’s raw pain was not…

She pulled back and stared into her
matushka’s
face, past the ruined, wet skin and into resilient
black eyes that looked so much like her own. A hand on each of
Hiro’s cheeks—one terribly scarred, one less so—she asked, “Why are
you sad?”

“
You were very good for mommy.” Hiro
smiled, creasing her waxy skin. She turned her head and kissed her
daughter’s palm. “Would you like to have tea and sweets
now?”

Her brow knit. Hiro kept ignoring her
questions and she didn’t like it. “No,
Matushka,
” she said
defiantly.

Hiro tilted her head and raised her brow.
Then she touched a finger to her daughter’s nose. “I promise you’ll
love them.”

She pointed to the building without turning
her gaze. “Why’d that place make you cry?”

“
Just a…a phantom that scared mommy.
That’s all, baby.”

She didn’t like phantoms, especially not
ones that scared her mother. Nothing scared her mother. She studied
the carcass again and something she’d never felt before gripped her
young heart. Her eyes narrowed. “I hate it.”

“
No!” Hiro clasped her small shoulders.
“You will not hate.
Ever
. Am I clear? Not even a
little.”

“
But it hurts you! It makes you cry!” She
stubbed the toe of her shiny shoe into the concrete. Water pressed
behind her eyes and then spilled down her cheeks. All the strength
in her body wasn’t enough to help the woman who kissed her
boo-boos, and she let out a low sob.

“
Shh, shh.” Her own nose and chin
trembling, Hiro brushed her daughter’s tears away. “How many
elements are there, baby?”

“
One—” she hiccupped wetly, “one hun’red
fifteen.” Pride filled her voice, happy for the chance to impress
her mother and stop the sadness. “There’s hydrogems and he-weums
and little-umms and the berries and—”

Hiro chuckled and tapped her fingers over
her daughter’s heart. “I mean here. The most important ones. How
many are those?”

“
Oh, five,
Matushka
! Five el’mets
of peace.”

“
And is hate one of them?”

She went through the list and shook her
head. “No. But I don’t want that place to make you sad or hurt you.
I want to help.”

Hiro dabbed at a fresh stream of tears,
passed her hand over her daughter’s silky black hair. “But you
have, baby, you have. I hated for a long time. Too long.”

“
You did?”

Hiro nodded. “And it stole the peace from
my heart. Then you came along and gave it back; filled it up and
made me whole again. My miracle. My little peace warrior. My strong
flower.” She touched the golden locket at her daughter’s neck, the
heart too big for a her body. But that was the point of it. For her
daughter to remember the bigger the heart, the more love to share
with the world. She cleared her throat. “Hate is a most powerful
enemy. It is resourceful, it is cunning. It will try to break you,
baby. Try so very, very hard. But you must be…
shinari
. Say
it.”

“Shi-nah-ree,
” she said, sounding it
out.

“
Good. It means you must not bend to it,
not even a little. Promise me...”

And in that moment, with memories so sharp
and vivid they could have been her own playing on an endless loop
in her head, all reservations Julie might have had about what she
would soon do faded away. She clutched the locket, eyes closing
against tears for the mother and daughter tucked away inside.