Reckoning - Chapter 2

The elevator dinged open on the sixteenth floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department headquarters in Kasumigaseki, followed by a militant click-clack of high heels.

Some of the occupants of the cubicles and offices in the MPD Organized Crime Control Division, those who had been in the department long enough to know and remember the woman marching through the floor, froze, gulped, and kept their heads down.

Those new to the division glanced over their cubicle partitions or through their offices’ floor-to-ceiling glass walls. The bravest and boldest among the newer recruits dared more than a quick glance. There was plenty to see as the tall, slender, yet nicely curved woman strode purposefully toward the office that’s remained closed and unoccupied for the better part of the past four years.

Her face set in a detached mask, her gaze carefully blank, she acknowledged the few hushed greetings with an almost imperceptible nod of her head. She was dressed from head to toe in black, from the turtleneck and skinny jeans showcasing her long legs to the ankle-high heeled boots.

The only colors on her were her pale complexion, hazel eyes, the deep auburn of her short pixie, and the golden shield at her waist.

Unlike other police badges, hers was styled as the Asahikage, the National Police Agency emblem, the special badge for the top brass of the Drug and Firearms Countermeasures Division and the select best agents in the division. The elite.

Those who had actually worked with her and those who had only heard of her knew it didn’t get more elite than this woman. If anyone had earned the honor of wearing the special badge, it was her.

She was from a career police family, but she had worked hard to get to where she was. She’d graduated with honors in psychology at the University of Tokyo, aced the National Police Academy training, and, unlike her father and uncle before her, joined the Special Assault Team and then completed the FBI National Academy program in Quantico before returning to Japan to join her cousin at the Drug and Firearms Countermeasures Division.

Both cousins disappeared two years later. The official brass explanation was that they were assigned to a joint international unit focusing on the drug production and trade in Central America, but most believed the unofficial speculation that they were on an undercover assignment.

Which was illegal.

But the elite could afford stepping outside the law and remain unpunished. Especially if it was sanctioned by the Division Chief, NPA Senior Commissioners, MPD Superintendent-General, the Commissioner General of the NPA, and, so the rumors went, the Prime Minister himself.

The fact remained: no one outside the close circle at the top of the law-enforcement food chain knew.

But now, four years later, she was back in the office, as aloof and detached as ever.

As everybody looked, she knocked on the Division Chief’s office and entered without waiting for an invitation.

Untouchable. The elite.

 

Division Chief Ito Seiji leaned back in his chair. “Welcome back. I trust everything went well.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you find the apartment to your liking? We didn’t have much time.”

The spacious penthouse in the Hiroo area of Shibuya was the only furnished apartment they could procure on such short notice.

“It’ll do, thank you.” It had a kitchen, bathroom, and bed and was relatively close to work. She’d probably not use it for long, anyway.

Ito’s brows drew together as his eyes clouded with sadness. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She merely nodded. It was his as well. It was him that had sent her cousin on the obviously suicide mission four years ago.

“Do you have the file?”

He suppressed a sigh. He’d known she wouldn’t want to talk about her cousin, but he had still hoped. It wasn’t good to keep it all bottled in. And as a psychology graduate, she should know that. Instead of pressing the matter, she’d just clam up more, he nodded.

“It’s already in your inbox. Encrypted. The access code is the same.”

Only she, her cousin, and he knew the code to access both the classified and encrypted information as well as their hub on the Dark Web, where they exchanged sensitive information.

The last to access it a week ago had been her cousin; his message was short and to the point. His cover was blown, and his life was in danger.

Ito had immediately called his contacts, arranging an extraction, but when they reached the man he considered like his son, thanks to his close connection to his father and uncle, they could barely scrape together enough to fit into a small evidence bag.

So Ito had had to inform the man’s cousin and only remaining relative of his death. And pull the plug on the other end of their joint mission.

Six years ago, when he had had to convey similar news, her reaction had been the same.

She hadn’t broken down at the news that her little cousin, ten years her junior, the little girl she’d come to love as a baby sister the moment she’d joined their family, had died of a drug overdose. She stood in front of him, silent and stoic. She hadn’t cried, she hadn’t raged, only quietly told him whoever killed her little cousin would pay.

So, two years later, the cousins switched places. She had taken her cousin’s place undercover, while the man had gone directly to the source, embedding himself in the very criminal organization that had provided the drugs to so many, killed so many, including his baby sister.

Ito observed her now. Still stoic, impassive, detached. For someone who didn’t know her, she’d appear like she didn’t care. But deep in her eyes, hiding behind the aloof facade, was deep sorrow. For the loss of her last blood kin, but, he suspected, for something more as well.

“You can take a few days off, if you need to,” he told her gently.

She shook her head. “Can’t. Apparently he’s on his way to Japan. He sent an advance party to clear the table, I’m waiting for the ETA.”

He frowned. The drug cartel boss sent an assassin to Japan. They both knew who the target was. And that explained the detachment and stoicism. It was to mask the urgency and fear. The stakes were higher than even he’d imagined. Because something inside her had changed in these past four years. Something tangible, something she couldn’t fully hide. Not anymore.

“Keep me informed.”

“Will do, sir.” And she was gone.

Ito swiveled on his chair to look out through his large window over the Kokyo Gaien National Garden and Imperial Palace grounds. His fear of his best asset turning into a Death Seeker was unwarranted. She had something—someone to live for after all.

 

She sat at her desk, reading the report for the second time, when there was a perfunctory knock on her door, and Agent Kobayashi Noriaki of the International Investigative Operations Division poked his head inside her office.

“I heard you were back.” He walked in, closed the door behind him, and leaned his back against it. “Couldn’t believe it, but here you are.”

With a quick tap on the keyboard, she closed the file and clasped her hands together on the desk as she looked at him.

He hasn’t changed in the past four years. He was still wiry but dressed to accentuate his above-average height and lean waist, with slight padding in the shoulders to give himself a little more breadth. Today he wore a dark gray pinstripe suit, a pale gray silk shirt, and a navy blue tie to match his eyes. He was wearing contacts, of course. His real eye color was muddy brown, like his short hair, slicked back with his trademark waxy pomade.

He smiled and walked toward her desk, a cloud of heavy cologne preceding him.

She internally rolled her eyes. What was wrong with a natural male scent? Sun-kissed skin with just the right touch of musky sweat and a hint of soap?

Come to think of it, what was wrong with a man’s natural eye color? Or naturally wavy messy hair barely tamed by finger-combing it, just a tad too long for it to curl over the collar, with an unruly lock constantly sliding down the forehead?

And why always dress like a model straight from the runway? What happened to well-worn jeans hugging a toned butt, lean hips, muscled thighs, and long legs? Or a tight T-shirt clinging to and accentuating every toned, ripped, hard muscle and broad shoulders?

Noriaki leaned a bony hip on her desk and sighed. “I missed you, Cookie.”

The nickname was a shortened version of Tough Cookie, and he thought himself very clever for coining it.

She hated it.

He leaned down, intent clear in his eyes, but she, fighting a shudder of revulsion at the sight of foundation and eyeliner on his face, pushed away from the desk, rolling her chair backwards, and stood. If he thought to rekindle their sporadic friends-with-benefits arrangement, he had another think coming. Even before she’d gone undercover, he’d been just an itch-scratcher, and their arrangement had grown stale fast.

She hadn’t thought of him once in the past four years.

With a moue of disappointment, he straightened as well, only to frown at having to look up to meet her eyes. He tsked and glowered down at her feet.

“You know I don’t like you in heels, Cookie. It makes it so difficult to kiss you.”

No, it was because she was taller than him. In flats, the difference was less than an inch and not easily spotted. In heels she towered over him, and he hated it.

“That’s good then, since I don’t want you kissing me,” she said flatly.

He crossed his arms over his thin chest. “You don’t mean that, Cookie. After all, it’s been four years. Four long, dry years keeping all that fire and passion inside you banked.”

She stared at him. Either he was fishing, or he knew. She needed to talk to Ito and find out what they knew over there in IIOD.

He took her hand and caressed her knuckles with his thumb. “Let me help you.”

She tugged her hand free. “I don’t need help, Noriaki. Especially not yours.”

A corner of his mouth curled upward, but his eyes were hard. “Don’t be like that, Cookie. Remember how it was between us. Think of how it could be again.”

She sighed. “It had been perfectly adequate, but that’s pretty much it.” It wasn’t like they had been in a relationship or made any promises to each other.

He straightened and puffed his chest, shoulders back. If he only knew it made him look even scrawnier. “Adequate?!” he snapped, affronted. “What do you mean, adequate?”

“As in satisfactory or acceptable in quality or quantity,” she explained. “Nothing out of the ordinary and not something I’m willing to repeat any time soon.”

She had her hands and imagination if she felt so inclined.

“Are you rejecting me?”

She rolled her eyes. This wasn’t Pride and Prejudice, and he wasn’t Mr. Darcy. Far from it.

“Noriaki,” she said calmly, “I don’t know what you expected, but it’s not going to happen. I know you haven’t been pining after me all these years, and I sure as hell haven’t been pining after you. Let’s just say it’s been nice while it lasted and move on.”

His eyes turned glacial. “I see. You have higher standards now, huh? Pity, he’s busy screwing everybody else but you. He doesn’t even know you exist,” he spat.

She went cold inside. No need to consult with Ito. The son of a bitch knew. The only question was how much.

Noriaki turned and stalked to her office door, turned, hand on the doorknob. “Enjoy your empty and cold bed. It will remain like that.” And he stormed out, banging the door shut behind him.

She cursed. Even if he didn’t know everything, which she doubted, he knew too much. She immediately crossed the hallway to Ito’s office. They had a leak, and it needed to be plugged.