Senshi (A Katana Novel) (7 page)

Of course. I rolled onto my back with a groan. It was always an emergency with Sumi. I wondered what it would be this time. Were they out of stamps? Maybe there was a spider on the ceiling? Perhaps the faucet was leaking? She would use any excuse to get Kim back to the dojo and away from me.

Kim nodded to a question I couldn’t hear and sighed.
“Alright. Try to stay calm. I’ll be there in a minute.” He hung up and flashed me an apologetic look. Before he opened his mouth, I held my hand up to stop him.

“Save it. It’s not your fault. Just go and make sure everything is okay.”

“Thank you.” He kissed my cheek. “I’ll drop you off at Sonic so you can get a ride home.” He stood and, after brushing the grass from his pants, offered me a hand up. “I was wondering … can I swing by your place later? I know you have school tomorrow and I won’t keep you up late. But between Network missions, training, and now the ninja hunt, we haven’t spent much time alone and … I hate being apart from you.”

A hundred dragonflies somersaulted inside of me. I smiled. “Sure. Just don’t make me wait too long.”

He shook his head and tilted my chin up for another kiss. “I waited a lifetime to be with you. I don’t plan to waste a second.”

12

Q
uentin, Michelle, Braden, and Drew sat around a picnic table outside the restaurant. Kim didn’t bother parking, only waved to the others as I climbed out of his car and drove off seconds after I’d shut the door.

“Where’s he going?” Quentin asked, handing me a half-melted Hey Batter Batter Blast.

“Sumi called.” I shoveled a spoonful of ice cream into my mouth and chewed angrily. “Another
dojo emergency
.”

Michelle rolled her eyes. “That girl doesn’t give up, does she?”

“Nope.” No longer hungry, I stirred my shake into a soupy mess.

“Relax, Rileigh.” Braden dug his fingers into my neck in what I guessed was supposed to be a massage but felt more like pressure-point combat. “Nothing will ever break you and Kim up. You guys are soul mates.”

“I know.” My eyelids fluttered as I fought the urge to wince as his fingers continued to pinch the tendons along my neck. “I just wish that Kim and I could have a normal relationship—without all these obstacles in the way.”

“It’ll be fine,” Michelle said. “You’ll see.”

But it wouldn’t be fine. Nothing would ever be fine again until Braden let go of my shoulders. Mercifully, his talonlike fingers released me before he separated my head from my neck. “Wow. You were tense. But you should be good now. I give the best massages. Michelle doesn’t need her neck worked on for a month after I give her one.”

“Is that so?” I rubbed my screaming muscles and eyed Michelle. She refused to meet my gaze and, instead, studied a black patch of flattened gum on the concrete. I stood and threw my cup away. “Well, you better keep those magic fingers warmed up, Braden. Michelle told me earlier that her neck was bothering her.”

Braden cracked in his knuckles. “Will do.”

Michelle shot me a fiery look and mouthed the words,
Why do you hate me?

I stifled a laugh and turned to face Quentin. “Q, it looks like I’m going to need a ride home after all.”

“Oh.” His eyes widened and darted to Drew and back to me. “Um, I already told Drew I’d give him a ride home because I thought you’d be with Kim. I’d take you but the backseat of my car is loaded with crap and—”

Braden spoke up. “We’ll give you a ride.”

“Sure,” Michelle said. “Downtown isn’t that far from South County.”

Quentin looked relieved. “Problem solved.” He slung an arm around my neck and squeezed me against him. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

Since when was I a problem?
“Yeah, okay … ”

He started to walk away.

But it wasn’t okay. The growing number of knots in my stomach pulled tighter with each step he took toward his car. “Wait! Q!”

He stopped and looked at me.

I couldn’t just sit by and let our friendship disintegrate. If I had to apologize to him every minute of every day to make things right between us, then that was exactly what I was going to do. “I know I’ve already told you, like, a hundred times, but I’m so,
so
sorry about what happened today.” I pointed to my eyebrows. “I’m working on it. I swear I’ll get it under control.”

“I know.” He opened his mouth to say more but winced and pinched the bridge of his nose. “God, this headache is something.” He offered a weak smile. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

I nodded and watched him go with one less knot in my stomach. His headache—of course! That’s what the weird look and attitude was all about. It made perfect sense. But still, I couldn’t ignore the feeling that there was something else going on, festering unseen, like a botfly burrowed into flesh.

Michelle tugged on my elbow. “You okay?”

I turned around and saw Braden already sitting in her car. “Oh, sorry. It’s just been a stressful day, you know?”

Michelle gave me a sympathetic smile. “I know I’m not as close to you as Quentin and Kim, but I just wanted you to know that I’m your friend, too, Rileigh. So if you need anything … ” She shrugged and stared at her feet. “I just want you to know I’m here for you.”

That was unexpected. For a moment all I could do was blink at her. It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d been trying so hard to be my friend. The shame of not noticing washed over me in a hot wave. “Cut it out, Michelle.” I gave her a playful bump with my hip. “If you make me cry they’ll revoke my samurai club membership.”

She grinned and bumped me back. “If they do, we’ll kick their ass.”

“Or worse—have Braden give them a neck massage.”

Laughing, we climbed into her car and, for the first time in months, I actually felt like a normal teenager. We sang along with Michelle’s iPod, took pictures of each other with our phones, and laughed until we approached my building.

Then the laughter died on my tongue.

He was standing across the street, half-bathed in the shadows cast by the streetlights. Waiting.

“Stop!” I screamed.

Michelle slammed on the brakes as I fumbled with my seatbelt. She called out to me as I pushed out the door but I ignored her. I had to get to him. Had to prove that he wasn’t a figment of my imagination.

But no sooner had I stepped out onto the street than a horn blared, freezing me in place. I had only an instant to come to my senses and throw myself back on the sidewalk before a Metrobus would have mowed me down. I turned my head away from the bus and braced against the backdraft that whipped my hair into my face. When it passed, I scrambled to my feet and readied myself to weave across the busy intersection. But as I looked for a gap in the coming traffic, my eyes went back to the place where the guy had stood doing who-knows-what. Watching? Waiting? I guessed it didn’t matter.

Because he was no longer there.

I leaned against a street sign for support and a chance to steady my breathing.

Whitley was gone—if he’d even been there at all.

13

T
he doorman, a kindly looking man with fluffy white hair, pushed open the heavy glass door and ushered me inside with a smile. He said something. I watched his lips move, but I couldn’t hear the words over the pounding of my heart.

I smiled and nodded, hoping that was an appropriate response, and kept walking. What was wrong with me? Was I going crazy? It was the second time I’d seen Whitley
—or a guy that looked a lot like him—within a month. I didn’t know what to make of that. I didn’t believe in coincidences, but I didn’t believe in ghosts, either.

The frigid temperature in the lobby—or the mausoleum, as I liked to call it—was cold enough to sting. I hugged my arms across my body to ward off chills as I raced across the polished granite floor to the elevators. My temples throbbed as a stress headache built behind my eyes.
Awesome.
The perfect ending for the day from hell.

One of the elevators opened with a ding and I darted inside. After the doors closed, I pushed the twelfth-floor button and waited. As the elevator ascended, I stared at the reflection of myself distorted by the steel doors. The girl that stared back was thinner than me, pale, with black eyes and bones that twisted in inhuman waves. As I studied the ghostly version of myself, I couldn’t help but think about how close I’d come to actual death. It had only been four months since Whitley—the reincarnated version of my samurai nemesis Zeami—had nearly succeeded in killing me. In turn, I’d left him pinned to my wall with his own shuriken as the house burned down around him. If he wasn’t dead—and that was a long shot—I could only imagine how pissed off he would be.

This time my shivers were not from the cold.

I folded my arms across my chest and watched the floor numbers change on the digital screen. As soon as an eleven appeared on the digital screen above the buttons, the elevator shuddered and I reached out to grasp the handrail to keep from falling to the floor.

“Of course,” I muttered. The stupid elevators were always breaking down. And today I was lucky enough to be inside of one when it happened. At least I was only a floor away from home.

The elevator continued to rise, jerking its way up at half its normal speed. When the digital twelve flashed on the screen, I thought my trip was over. The door chime dinged my arrival, but, after waiting several moments, I realized the door wasn’t opening.

“Seriously?” I hit the door with my hand and immediately regretted the action when something squealed overhead. I crouched down just as the lights flickered once and then left me alone in the dark.

“What the—?” But I didn’t have time to finish. The elevator shrieked—a horrible sound that pierced my eardrums like a knife. It dropped a foot before jerking to a stop. My hands fumbled in the dark until they found the metal handrail. Something above me—either the cable or the brakes—groaned and I tightened my grip on the rail right before the elevator shuddered and fell several feet.

“Son of hibachi!” Alone in the dark, I could almost hear the rush of blood pounding beneath my temples. What the hell was going on?

As if reading my mind, the digital twelve disappeared from the screen, followed by the scrolling words,
Hello Rileigh. How does it feel to know you’re about to die?

I sucked in a breath as a chill descended my spine on spindly insect legs. No matter how hard I tried or how many times I blinked, my brain refused to decipher the words on the screen. It was too crazy to make sense. Obviously elevators didn’t try to kill people all on their own. Someone had to be controlling it, someone who wanted me dead.

The answer slammed into me with enough force to sway my body. Whitley! He had to be the one behind this. Somehow he had escaped the fire and now he was back for revenge. It made sense. Why else did the ninja only attack me? He had a score to settle. I whirled around in the dark, as if he might appear next to me. But of course he didn’t. Which—
duh, Rileigh—
made sense because I was about to plummet to my death.

The floor lurched under my feet and the elevator began to ascend much faster than normal. I struggled to swallow past the lump wedged inside my throat. I
so
did not have a good feeling about this.

The screen flashed as more words scrolled across.
They don’t make elevators like they used to,
the scrolled words told me.
You can’t just cut a few cables and expect them to fall to the ground. They have built-in brakes that prevent that from happening. But many modern elevators have computers. Like this one. And computers can be hacked.

Fan-freaking-tastic. The cables whirled as the elevator rose faster than should have been possible. I couldn’t even be sure what floors I’d passed, only that I’d heard more than a dozen dings. I had to do something quick—but what? I could barely operate the cable remote let alone figure out how to deprogram a hacked elevator.

My heart thrummed inside my head, the sound spilling out of my ears and echoing off the walls. My eyes gradually adjusted to the red glow projected from the digital numbers. But it wasn’t an improvement. All it did was make me aware of how tight a space I was trapped in, and the last thing I wanted was to die inside this metal coffin.

The elevator squealed and began to slow. I had a feeling I was nearing the twenty-fifth floor and after that—well, I didn’t know but it couldn’t be good.

I felt my way to the corner of the elevator and used the two walls as leverage to get a leg up on the handrail. Carefully, I stood on the rail, one foot balanced against either corner and felt my way along the ceiling like I’d seen done in so many movies. There had to be a trap door of some sort.

Fingering the smooth metal ceiling, my fingers grazed the lip of a door. Success! I pushed against the trap door. It didn’t budge. “Perfect,” I muttered.

The elevator dinged and came to a halt. I pounded against the door. That’s when the edge of my palm came in contact with something sharp.

Hissing in pain, I jerked my hand back for just a second before reaching out and brushing the edge of the door with my fingertips. What I found was a jagged piece of metal at the corner of the door. Balancing on my toes, I stretched my arm farther and discovered a similar piece of metal in the other corner. My stomach fell into my knees. Bolts. The door was bolted shut.

The digital screen flashed with new words.
Going down?

Oh. Crap.

I froze, still balanced on my toes with my fingers on the ceiling. There was no way out. A wave of nausea rolled over me. Now what?

The elevator screeched as its brakes released their hold on the cable. The sudden descent sent me crashing to the floor. A shock of pain bolted up my leg from where I’d landed on my knee. But that didn’t matter. Nothing did except for the fact that I was free-falling to the ground and, judging from my speed, nothing would be left of me when I crashed to the bottom.

My heart leapt inside my throat, threatening to choke me with each pulsing beat. But breathing was the last of my worries. I needed to focus. I tried to stand but found I couldn’t balance at the breakneck speed I was traveling. Instead, I crawled my way along the floor.

Finally, I reached the handrail.

Ding after ding sounded as I dropped down the shaft. Only seconds remained before I reached the bottom.

The weight of gravity pulled at me like invisible chains as I hoisted myself to my feet. More dinging. More floors. Time was running out.

“Son of hibachi!” I spit the words from my mouth. What do I do? What
could
I do? The trap door was bolted shut and I had no idea how to rewire an elevator. Hell, I barely knew how to reboot my laptop after it froze. I chewed on my lip as I stared at the elevator buttons. And that’s when the first whisper of an idea drifted into my mind. There was
one
thing I knew how to do.

The elevator picked up more speed, whining and shaking so much that I wondered if it might fall apart before we even hit the bottom. I gripped the handrail so hard that the metal edge bit into my palm. I didn’t care. I had one shot at this and I couldn’t screw it up.

A scream that had been building in the back of my throat spilled from my lips. I lifted one leg in the air and brought my foot down as hard as I could into the control panel.

The plastic buttons cracked under my heel, spilling their multi-colored wired guts. I reared back and struck again, this time ripping into the wires as I brought my heel back down.

The elevator shuddered, the lights flickering on once before going back out.

My plan had failed. I was going to die.

And so I closed my eyes and waited for the crash that would be the end of me.

Seconds passed.

But the crash never came.

Instead, the floor jerked, bringing me to my knees. The shriek of the brakes grinding against the cables squealed so loudly I wondered if the sound might pierce right through my skull. But it wasn’t until the elevator came to a grinding halt and the scream continued on that I realized it was coming from me.

My knees lost their ability to support my weight and I slid to the floor, panting. The digital screen above the buttons flashed a red
ERROR.

“I’m not dead,” I whispered to myself. My voice trembled but I didn’t care. I just needed to hear the words out loud, to confirm I was still alive.

I heard a commotion outside the doors and jumped to my feet, bringing my shaking fists in front of me. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t over yet.

A sliver of light appeared before me in the dark, widening with a groan. I was forced to squint until my blurred vision regained focus.

“Young lady? Are you okay?”

I blinked several times to make sense of what I saw. The white-haired doorman stood wide-eyed in front of me. He offered me a hand but kept his feet planted in the hall. “I could hear the screaming clear outside.”

I wasn’t sure if he was talking about me or the cables. With shaky steps, I moved forward and took his offered hand. He pulled me from the elevator. Once I set foot on solid ground, my knees wobbled so violently that I collapsed against his chest. His cologne was spicy and warm, something only a grandpa would wear.

He patted my back awkwardly. “Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

“No. I’m okay.” I pushed off of him to see if I could support my weight. I teetered to the side before righting myself. “Just … maybe call someone about that elevator? It’s a deathtrap waiting to happen.”

He nodded and let his hand slide from my shoulder. “I’ll call right now.” He hesitated. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Before I could answer, the shrieking cry of metal against metal pierced my ears. We both turned back to the elevator in time to see it drop from view, leaving only a dark empty shaft. The crash that followed shook the ground beneath our feet.

“Sweet Jesus!” the doorman yelled. He grabbed my arm and scrambled backward, dragging me with him. “I don’t understand. How—”

“Bad cables?” I offered, even though I knew it was anything but.

He shook his head. “That’s impossible. The elevators were just inspected today. They all passed.”

I jerked my head away from the empty shaft. “Today?” I thought about the Whitley look-alike I’d seen only ten minutes ago. “Was the inspector young? Did he have long blond hair?”

The doorman scratched his chin. “No. There were three of them. Here before lunchtime. Two guys and a gal—all of them with dark hair. They were fairly young. But thorough—spent a lot of time poking around.”

“Uh-huh.” So, not Whitley. But they possibly fit the description of the ninja from the alley attack. Which got me thinking, if the ninja kept popping up every time I had a Whitley sighting, that couldn’t be a coincidence, right? But was I ready to believe that Whitley was alive and working with the ninja? I just wasn’t convinced … I’d left Whitley pinned and burning. How could he have gotten away? “Just to play it safe, I think you should call the inspectors back.
Different
inspectors. And it’s probably best to keep everyone off the elevators until they get the all clear.”

“Yes. That’s probably for the best.” He paused, his brow wrinkled into lines of confusion. “Do you think the inspectors had something to do with this?”

I answered him as truthfully as I could. “I’m sure they were just doing their job.”