cheek.
This guy weighs more than he looks, she thought as she dragged his unconscious body behind a mess of old tarps. She checked the weapon. A semiautomatic of undetermined make, though she suspected it might be a bootleg QSZ-92 liberated from the People’s Liberation Army. Eleven rounds out of fifteen.
The room was a storeroom from the looks of the gear thrown every which way. A single door led deeper into the bridge. She listened hard, but when she heard nothing on the other side, she opened it.
The scent hit her hard, the wet-penny smell of anger, the burnt coffee of terror. Concentrated, it nearly exploded in her nostrils, cloying and acidic.
What had happened here?
Nikki suppressed a cough and breathed through her mouth. The scent was concentrated from the small, dimly lit space, but several days old. Had it been fresh it would have put her on her ass for sure.
She’d ponder this one later, when she had time. Heart pounding from adrenaline rush, she slammed the door shut.
Outside, a man’s panicked cry was cut short.
Nikki thumbed the safety off the 9 mm and slipped back outside. It was a regular pattern: men would yell, go quiet, then guns armed with silencers would spit. Almost like they were hunting someone.
Or someone was hunting them.
The coffee smell was starting to be so strong, she thought a pot was brewing under her nose. No time to be scared, she reminded herself.
Nikki ran back to the stern and nearly tripped over a wounded crewman lying half-in, half-out of a pool of deck light. He screamed, shielding his head with his hands. Nikki quickly frisked him but found no weapon. Only a flesh wound in his thigh.
She tucked the semiautomatic in her waistband and tore a strip off the man’s untucked shirt.
He lowered his arms. “You American!”
“Do you speak English?”
The man nodded warily. “You’ve come to rob us.”
“Not exactly.” She ran the strip underneath his injured leg and cinched it tight above the wound. “What’s going on?”
“We are doing our job.”
“What job?”
“Guarding the ship.”
She knotted the strip and sat back on her heels. “Who’s shooting at you?”
“Triads.”
Nikki bit her lip. “These triad guys. Can they be identified by what they wear?”
He shook his head.
“Great. I bet there’s no secret handshake at the clubhouse, either.” At his puzzled frown, she said, “Forget it. Listen, where’s your passenger?”
The guard looked confused again. “I don’t know. We guard the ship from robbers. We’re not crew. That’s all.”
Well, hell. So much for getting information the easy way. “Stay put and don’t move.” She started to leave, but thought better of it. Instead, she leaned toward him and said softly, “I wasn’t here.”
And suddenly, lemons.
Nikki sprang back and to the side. A knife whisked out of the darkness, caught the injured guard in the throat. She pounced. She grabbed the assailant’s wrist, still outstretched from his throw, and twisted down toward his body. He bent forward, his elbow locked up. She saw him winding up for a sweep-kick. As it approached, she palm-heeled his vulnerable elbow. The snap was followed by a grunt of pain, and the kick lost its momentum. She applied more pressure to his wrist, driving him face-first to the deck.
After that, it was dealer’s choice.
She chose the choke hold. In moments he’d passed out. She liberated another sidearm and a throwing knife. This guy she left in the open. His lemony triumph, always a sign of arrogance, had given him away before she saw him.
Nikki drifted into the shadows on the starboard side again, following the sound of the screams. They grew less loud, less frequent, as she threaded between containers. By the time she reached the bow, silence.
Somebody had made mincemeat out of the triads. Or the guards. Or both.
Nikki settled into a ball on the deck, making herself small and unhumanlike in shape to the careless glance. She eased the gun from her waistband. Then she took a long and careful sniff.
Nothing.
No coppery anger or coffeeish terror. No citrus triumph. Just sea air and diesel fumes wafting over the water.
It felt really, really wrong.
She adjusted her grip on the gun, consciously relaxed each major muscle. Loose, she thought. Stay loose.
In the silence, she finally heard the distinctive scrape of metal on metal, something unscrewing.
A silencer being removed. Or attached.
It was now or never, while he was distracted.
She leaped from between the containers as he spun to face her, her arm outstretched, pistol up and pointed into the man’s impassive face. Gotcha!
Only she was looking down the barrel of his gun.
Chapter 4
They eyed each other warily. Arms straight and stiff, guns unwavering, muzzles nearly pressed to cheeks.
Nikki forced herself to look past the gleaming barrel and into the eyes of the man who held her life in his trigger finger. In the shadows and half-light, wrapped in some sort of black fighting garb, he was every inch the dark warrior. He looked exactly like the kind of man who could take out well-armed guards, instill terror in grown men and kill without mercy.
His eyes, the only part of his face not concealed by his disguise, were black, calm.
No wonder I couldn’t smell him, she thought. He’s at peace.
Of course he’s at peace, another part of her retorted. He’s got two guns.
One aimed at her face, the other at her heart.
Nikki counted breaths. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three. Lungs full, her life about to end, she remembered sunlight slanting down onto Athena Academy’s grassy courtyard and the neighing of the smelly horses she hated to ride. She thought of the dry dirt and mesquite surrounding the silver mine where she first truly understood what her gift could mean, when she’d smelled burnt coffee and then heard a scared girl’s voice echoing up through the earth.
She’d come all this way just to die.
A tendril escaped from her messy ponytail and arced down onto her forehead. The heady scent of fish wafted over the ship’s bow. If she listened carefully, she could hear the distant traffic—small cars and buses darting through heavy weekend traffic. With one long, slow sniff, she knew the vehicles’ diesel and gas fumes and the rotten eggs of a spent catalytic converter.
But from her killer, nothing but a hint of ginger and something akin to warm chalk.
“Can we talk about this?” she found herself saying.
His eyes remained unchanged and he didn’t speak.
She slowly stepped to her right, out of the horse stance that was starting to burn her thighs. He pivoted with her. Their guns remained aimed, deadly. She needed to get close enough to a railing to jump. Maybe in the dark he wouldn’t be able to hit her. With either gun. Right.
She backed up a step. He followed.
He stood now in a patch of dim light slanting down from the ship’s bridge. He seemed fuzzy, in-substantial. Almost like a ghost.
Her ghost?
“Johnny?” she chanced.
“You