Western Romance Collection: Rugged Cowboys Part 61

"Whatever."

Wes let out a sigh of defeat, and decided to let her go. She turned away for exactly one instant before turning back.

"Wes, you need to get out of here. Now."

"What're you talking about?"

"I don't have time to get into it, but some very bad people are here, and if they find you with me, things will end very badly."

Wes let out a breath. That was how it always was, though. He nodded in spite of himself and motioned for her to follow. The stacks it was. Either they'd lose him down here, or he'd have his own s.p.a.ce to deal with them, but either way, it was the only option.

Twenty-Five.

Minami There was a certain swagger in Wesley's att.i.tude that Minami couldn't help but like, even entertaining, and now it was exactly that att.i.tude that was going to get him killed. She should have separated from him, but he always thought he could handle anything that was thrown his way, and this time he was wrong. Unlike the other times, Minami knew it this time, which made it that much worse.

She didn't know many people in the Higa family, or in the Inafune family, and she didn't know anyone who worked for that American she'd seen Wes and Higa with.

But she knew those three, by sight if not by name. Apparently her father had finally decided to get to the bottom of what was going on with her, and he wasn't going to like what he found out. Nor was Wesley, no matter how much he thought that he was G.o.d's gift to the world.

Minami followed him in spite of that, because whether she liked it or not she knew that if he asked her to, she'd follow him anywhere. He turned down a set of metal stairs, even his soft shoes clicking hard on the metal. Minami kicked her sandals off and carried them down. Her sandals would have made far, far too much noise. They'd have been caught in an instant.

There must have been thirty or forty rows of shelves, thick with the smell of dust. Minami took a breath and held it as best she could as he guided her back, finally pus.h.i.+ng her into a row.

"Stay down," he whispered.

She realized, suddenly, that he'd completely misinterpreted who was in trouble here. She was fine, and more than that, she knew it. The one who had to worry was Wes, but then, crouching down low, he started heading back toward the entrance.

She waited a minute for him. It wouldn't take that long to get back to the stairs, but she didn't hear the same clanging steps of weight going back up. Another minute pa.s.sed them by, and still more silence. The curiosity of trying to figure out what was going on in the room was starting to burn inside her chest, but he'd told her to wait, and there had to be a reason for it even if she didn't understand what the reasons were, just yet.

Another minute. She crept to the edge of the row and peered out. Nothing. The place might have been empty, from what she could see. She slipped around into the next row. The dust and stale air was starting to go to her head. Minami forced herself to stay focused. She might not be in any danger, but if she could save Wes from what was about to come down on his head, then she had to do it-no matter what the risk was to her.

Besides that, the odds of there being any risk to her at all were between slim and none, and if they hurt even one hair on her head, it wouldn't be a long time before her father caught wind of it. The threat of that, by itself, would stop them in their tracks. The possibility that she wasn't lying would be too present, and that was a.s.suming that they didn't recognize her straight away.

They had certainly been sent there looking for her, looking to see what she was doing and who she was with. No doubt, Majima had driven them out, and sat right outside, prepared as ever to dig her out of any trouble she found herself in.

Well, she wasn't going to let other people dig her out of this. She moved across the aisle when she moved to the next aisle, to get a better view of the steps.

How long would they have to wait before they could be certain that her father's men had left? She already knew that answer, in spite of the feeling that she shouldn't have been so certain.

If the plan was to wait them out, then those men would wait until the place closed. Then they'd wait outside the exits, until her father called them and told them to stop. That was the way it was, with her father's men. Loyal to a fault, if anything. It was a comfort when there was danger around, but when she desperately wanted them gone- She moved up another row. If she got out of here, though, then Wes would be fine.

A j.a.panese man in a suit stepped into view at the top of the steps. Minami stood up and called out to him. "You're looking for me, aren't you?"

The man responded in j.a.panese. That was how it always was with Yakuza-they wouldn't speak English between themselves, regardless of what country they'd all moved to. It didn't seem to matter all that much to them that they didn't fit in with the locals. Then again, they hadn't fit in with the locals in j.a.pan, either.

"Where is the man who was with you?"

"n.o.body was with me," she answered, stepping back into view. "I don't know what you're talking about."

He started down the steps, the other one a step or two behind him. Minami stepped out further, hoping to meet him at the foot of the stairs, so wherever Wes had hidden himself, they wouldn't have a chance to look around.

"As you say, Young Mistress," the Yakuza answered, clearly caught between his orders to look for someone and her instructions that there was n.o.body there to be found in either case. "But I think we'd better look around anyways, for your father's peace of mind."

"I called to be taken home, and I want to go home now."

"Yes, young mistress."

He stepped down another step, halfway down already. A hand shot out and grabbed the man's ankle, and pulled hard. The Yakuza's foot went out from under him and he fell hard, trying to land on his shoulder as much for safety as to turn and see his attacker.

Wes stepped out and took two long strides to tee off on the guy's head. It snapped back, throwing a spatter of blood onto the spines of the books that had been left down here.

He wasn't lucky enough to get the jump on the second guy, who took the stairs two at a time and hit Wes hard in the back with his shoulder, throwing them both off-balance.

The smaller Yakuza didn't bother trying to shake his partner awake. This was a fight, and if he was going to wake up then he would wake up on his own. He regained his balance before Wes and threw a punch into Wesley's kidneys that landed with a loud thump. Wes slumped down a little way, and in that half-second the bigger Yakuza pushed himself off the ground and turned his attention on Minami.

"We have to get the young mistress away," he said softly. The big guy's arms wrapped around her body and started to pull her out of the bas.e.m.e.nt even as the other guy sent another hard punch into Wesley's ribs. He turned his back on Wes and followed behind, taking the steps quickly to try to catch his partner.

Minami could hear Wes shouting after them, but by the time she left the library, safe and sound and brought back in the arms of her father's men, she didn't see him come back out of that bas.e.m.e.nt.

Twenty-Six.

Wes Wes opened his eyes to the sun streaming down, right across his face. Someone else might have considered moving the bed, but there was more stubbornness in Wes than there was sense, and if the bed was there, then that was how it was going to be.

That was the same thing that had put him into this entire mess with Minami in the first place, and it was his fault that she'd been taken. He'd tried her phone a couple of times, in the days since, but she wasn't answering. Whoever had taken her, they clearly didn't want her talking with him, or seeing him, and that was almost understandable.

After all, if it was someone who wanted to hurt her, to use her to threaten her family, then they wouldn't want outside contact except the stuff under their control.

If it was the opposite, and the s.h.i.+mizu goons had been the one who did a number on him, then the answer was even more obvious. They were probably right to keep them apart, since there was no way that Wes was going to do any good for her. She should have recognized that the first couple of days together, but whether it was stubbornness of blindness she hadn't done anything about it, and Wes was too c.o.c.ky to leave something ell enough alone at first, and by the time he knew he'd made a mistake, he was too weak to tell himself not to go after her, in spite of the risk that her a.s.sociation with him put her at.

There was something unpleasantly self-flagellating about the whole situation, one that he didn't want to worry about, but couldn't stop.

He had to focus up. His body still ached from where they'd hit him. He'd been in worse sc.r.a.pes. Plenty of them, back in prison, were worse than that. But most of his sc.r.a.pes hadn't come only a couple of days before he fought one of Higa's goons in a big ol' dust-up match.

Well, another of Higa's goons. The first one, thankfully, had been a pushover. But then again, even if it were the same guy, could Wes take another pounding in the back so soon? If he'd been this busted up in the last fight, things would have turned out different, and there was no denying it, regardless of how much he wanted to.

Wes padded his way across the room to his fridge, ignoring the complaints of his muscles as he moved. No time to worry about hurting. No time to fight against it. He was doing what he had to do.

He didn't have time to worry about Minami, either. Not really. He should have been training, or at least he should've been trying to get was much rest as he possibly could, to manage somehow to counter the consecutive beatings he'd taken in the past week. If he let Bradley know about one of them, even G.o.dd.a.m.n one, he'd be out of the fight, no question.

Which begged the question: what, if anything, did Higa know? He'd been out with Minami, and he was a guy with connections. That must have been a real embarra.s.sment, getting his girl taken. The two separate times that guys had come by the apartment in the days following told Wes about all he needed to know about it.

The odds that he wouldn't hear about Wesley's beatings was slim. So was he planning on not mentioning it to Bradley?

No, obviously he wasn't planning on mentioning it, Wes reasoned. If he was, then the fight wouldn't have gone ahead, because they'd left Wes in a b.l.o.o.d.y mess on the floor, and the guys would have gone back and told their boss all about it.

Maybe there had been some doubt that they told the whole truth, but when Wes showed up a couple days later. looking fine as frogs' hair... well, n.o.body would mistake 'completely unhurt' for 'in a b.l.o.o.d.y mess.' He might decide the guys had lied, but he wouldn't decide that they'd misunderstood. n.o.body in their right mind would think it.

Wes slumped back into the couch and took a deep drink of water. He reached for the phone on the table and pressed the b.u.t.ton to call Minami. It rang once, and then cut to a machine voice telling him that the call couldn't be completed. Well, that made plenty of sense.

She said she'd call him, but a week was plenty of time to get back in touch with him. He couldn't deny worrying about it, but he couldn't afford the effort to look into it further. Two beatings, less than two weeks out of a fight...

Well, he wasn't exactly looking forward to a third, to put it simply. He was good, but eventually his body wouldn't be able to keep putting out anything like his best effort. No good eyes could overcome a failing body, as many older fighters quickly learned. Instincts and experience could only take you so far, and if Wes still had it in him to win a fight against a guy who knew his face was still like play-doh, then he wouldn't have it after another bad run-in with those guys.

Especially if he ran into them on their home turf. Walking around with weapons brandished in public was a tricky thing. n.o.body wanted to do it, and no doubt the Yakuza wanted it least of all, since this was the furthest thing from a country where they had widespread police connections.

If he ran into them in a place where they had time to prepare, though, then there wouldn't be much he could do. They'd be liable to kill him, if they could hide the body or give testimony that he was an intruder. He couldn't put himself in a position to make things any easier for them.

So he'd wait here, in spite of his worries, and he'd wait for Sunday night. Then he'd go, he'd meet Bradley and Higa, they'd have their big fight, and he'd come out on top if he could.

His body sent another random, surprise-inspection shock through his muscles, and for the first time in his life it occurred to Wes that he might not be able to win this one. If he was lucky, maybe he'd win a fair fight.

But it wasn't a fair fight, not really. The other guy knew all about Wes being in bad condition. He'd probably have a few ideas where Wes was hurting, and unless he wanted to apply that makeup again, it wouldn't take him long to figure it out if he didn't.

The other guy, though, would probably be fresh. If Wes was lucky, maybe he'd be able to finish it quickly. He still had that heavy hook, one that had dropped more than its share of perfectly good fighters.

He took another drink of water. If he was lucky, that is. If Wes had learned one thing in the years since he joined up with the family back in New York, it was that luck was fickle. In fact, no-luck was a downright b.i.t.c.h. You get it when you don't need it, but when you need a sure thing, you don't count on luck.

When you need a sure thing, you cheat. Wes had no compunctions against cheating. What he had that stopped him planning right then and there what he was going to do was the trouble of figuring out how to do it without getting caught. If there was one thing that he had learned, it was that he should cheat to win.

If there were two, it was that getting caught cheating was far, far worse than taking a beating.

Twenty-Seven.

Minami Minami took off her coat. It was too warm for such heavy clothing, but it didn't change that she needed it. It was the only thing that she owned with big enough pockets that n.o.body would notice her on the way home, and after Father had taken her from the library, she was under constant watch.

She could usually get them to leave her alone a little bit at convenience stores, but only so far as waiting outside, and even still they painted an obvious target on the place. n.o.body was going to walk by thinking 'those guys look like they belong.'

Usually that ended up meaning that she could at least get a few minutes of real privacy, where n.o.body came into the store for five or ten minutes. But this time, the only thing she worried about was her father's men coming in to check on her.

She closed the bedroom door, breathing a sigh of relief that they hadn't. She threw the boxes on her bed. Three of them, each with the words 'Early Pregnancy Test' in big letters across them. No way she was going to be able to pretend they were something else. Her father's bodyguards spoke bad enough English, but even they knew 'pregnancy.'

The Yakuza's daughter didn't want to take the tests. Maybe that was how it always was, she didn't know. Taking the tests made it feel real. If she just ignored it, maybe her period was just a few days late. Okay, more like a week late. But eventually, she knew, she had to make sure that her fears were unfounded.

After all, she wasn't totally confident in her menstrual cycle anyways. She had a general feeling, usually, and that feeling was pretty accurate, but it wasn't like she was taking any notes, or keeping a calendar. So maybe her feelings were wrong this time?

Either way, taking the test would make sure that she didn't a.s.sume wrong one way, or the other. She pulled the boxes open and palmed the little plastic strips. The instructions on the boxes had all been the same.

Urinate into a cup, dip the strip. Wait a few seconds, check for two pink lines. Any color change at all on the 'test' portion, and you had better start figuring what you're going to do about this kid.

Palming them came easy. She spent most of her life surrounded by pickpockets and petty thieves, after all. It wasn't as if she wasn't going to pick up a few things. She knew she was being too stiff as she moved for the bathroom, but she had to hope that n.o.body was watching. She slipped inside, closed the door behind her, and let out a breath. Everything was fine. She wasn't caught, which meant she didn't need to explain why she had them.

Peeing into the cup wasn't any trouble. She'd done it before, after all. Yet, this time it felt different, maybe because of what she was going to use it for, or maybe because she was afraid of what was going to come next. There was nothing hard about the test except for the three minutes of uncertainty.

She took the cup, grabbed the first test, and dipped it in, counting down. Five... four... three... two... one... and then she set it aside and started again with the next one. Five... four... three... two... one. Set it aside and pick up the third.

She wasn't going to accept the possibility of a false negative, or worse, a false positive. Three of them would give her the right answer, no matter what. They were 90-percent effective, according to the box, so three of them would be 99.9% accurate, right?

The waiting was the hardest part. She wanted to check them after thirty seconds. The minute hadn't even changed over on the digital clock they kept in the bathroom. She took a deep breath and sat back on the seat of the toilet, forcing herself to wait. Forcing herself not to think about what it would mean if she was.

If she was, then that was fine. If she wasn't, then that was fine. Whatever happened, she'd be able to deal with it. She repeated that to herself a few times. She'd be fine. She could deal with whatever happened, no matter what the results were. She wasn't even hoping for a baby, but imagining herself getting three negatives brought with it a slurry of strange emotions.

Finding out she was, that would be even worse, because as far as she could tell, getting in touch with Wes would be the hardest thing of all. She didn't even know how she could, not with the guards on her twenty-four hours a day, and her driving privileges revoked.

Still, if she was, then she owed him that information somehow. Whatever it took to let him know he was going to be a father.

She looked at the clock. Four minutes. That was more than enough time. She reached for the first strip, but the second she put her hands on it, she froze. Didn't want to find out, either way. This was the last time she could back out. After this, she knew where she stood and she couldn't keep playing the guessing game.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed it off the counter and looked. Two pink stripes. That could be wrong, though, she reminded herself. The second was easier than the first. She'd already gone past the point of no return. Now she had to know what the real truth was.

Two stripes. The third one was the same. Two stripes.

Minami could feel a sob tearing from her throat. What was she supposed to do now? She wasn't-she couldn't go to her father, he still thought she was his perfect princess. She couldn't tell anyone else at her house, either. Mother might understand, but then she'd tell Father, and that was the end of that.

She couldn't tell Wes, either, because there was just no way to reach him. If she tried to run away, he'd just get hurt again. Maybe killed this time, if Father took the news particularly badly. Could she live with herself if she was responsible for that?

She already knew the answer to that question. Which just raised another one.

If she couldn't tell get away, how was she going to tell Wes about his child?

Twenty-Eight.