Ice Blue Read Online Free PDF

moments of peace she could just be.
    And try to rid herself of the irrational feeling that somewhere out there he was still watching her.
     
    For a smart woman, Summer Hawthorne was annoyingly brainless, Taka thought as he skirted the back of her bungalow. He'd already checked it out several days ago and knew just how pathetic her security was. Her house had been broken into recently, and yet she'd taken no measures to fortify the place. All three locks on the back door were easy to pick, the chain would break with one good shove and she had no outdoor security, no sensors or alarms. He could slip behind the house, disappear into the overgrown shrubbery and no one would even notice.
    Her curtains were pathetic, as well. The faux-Asian synthetic rice paper shades were practically useless. She'd left the lights on in her living room and kitchen when she'd disappeared into the bathroom, and she was soaking wet and naked when she reemerged and climbed into the wooden tub, closing her eyes in obvious bliss.
    So he could safely assume that she hadn't been lying—the Hayashi Urn was nowhere near her. He'd done a fairly thorough search the last time he'd been there, though far more discreetly than the Shirosama's goons, and he doubted he'd have missed it, though at that point he hadn't been specifically looking for it. He'd thought it was already at the museum.
    He'd been looking for any kind of clue that would lead him to the shrine. If they found it before the Shirosama managed to discover it, the Committee could stop the cult leader's plans cold. The Shirosama needed the sacred location for his crackpot rituals, and without it he and his followers would be too superstitious to move ahead with their plans. It was only a few days till the Lunar New Year, the date the Shirosama had decreed was the most auspicious for his mysterious ritual, and at least for this year his time was running out. If they could just stall long enough, keep Summer Hawthorne and the Hayashi Urn away from him for the next few days, they'd have an entire year to figure out how to stop him.
    And then there would be no need to silence her before she spoke the truth she didn't know she had.
    The urn in the museum was an excellent forgery—Taka had enough of a gift at ceramics to recognize the hand of a master. It had been an error on his part not to recognize that the ice blue glaze had been a little too uniform, but then, he'd been concentrating on other things.
    Too bad he couldn't just let it go at this point. The Shirosama would steal the fake from the museum, never knowing the difference, but he still needed Summer Hawthorne. In truth, she might be the more valuable part of the equation, and Taka knew what his orders were. If necessary, he was to destroy a priceless piece of Japanese art, culture and history, and execute the woman who held the key to where it belonged. And he wasn't supposed to think twice about it.
    It was the "if necessary" part that was the problem. The Committee, and the ruthlessly practical Madame Lambert, trusted him to make that judgment call. But he wasn't quite sure he could trust himself at this point.
    Because he didn't want to kill Summer Hawthorne.
    If she was found floating in her hot tub, the Shirosama would know there was nothing he could do, and he'd be stopped cold.
    It was simple. Practical. Necessary. Except that this scenario meant the Hayashi Urn would stay lost.
    The bowl would stay in one piece, however. And sooner or later, maybe decades from now, maybe after they were all long dead, it would reappear. That knowledge should be enough to satisfy the committee.
    Taka took less than thirty seconds to pick the locks. He moved through the house in complete silence—he could come up on her, push her under the water, and she'd never have a chance.
    Drowning wasn't a good choice. He wouldn't be able to make it look like an accident, it took too damn long and she'd be frightened. He didn't want to scare her if he could