The Mask: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

wireless connections, there was no pathway for hackers to break in and steal.
    If the security protocols worked as the company had designed them to work, the other players, with all of their intelligence, gadgets, and technology, were locked out of the game, but none of the precautions were designed with a woman like her in mind. As long as she worked here, nothing they did could stop her from taking what she wanted.
    Sato returned to the elevator, where the line was now backed up with two people waiting for the body scan. At the building’s front entrance, the cowboy walked in.
    Sato kept her face toward the floor and observed him to the degree that she wasn’t obvious. He stopped at the front desk and chatted with the guards for a minute, letting them practice their English on him and buying goodwill for cheap. He stayed in the open area longer than any other employee would dare, smiling and nodding like a simpleton while his eyes tracked over each person, taking in more than he let on.
    That was easy when most everyone wrote off his behavior as just more of the
gaijin
being a
gaijin,
even those who believed the rumors and gossip.
    Sato moved forward one space in line.
    The cowboy intrigued her. He was a hunter, keen enough to sniff out a trail. He’d proven that already, though he likely didn’t know it yet.
    As if he’d read her thoughts, the cowboy’s head ticked up and he walked toward the elevator bank. Sato shifted her back to him slowly, a natural movement that wouldn’t flash evasiveness and challenge the pack leader to chase.
    The line moved forward. She stepped between the screening walls beside the elevator so some pervert in the security department could get a good snapshot of her body, and when she stepped out, she glanced up to find the cowboy watching her.
    Sato blushed when she made eye contact and covered her mouth when she smiled so slightly, because the culture demanded this, too. She turned to the elevator and pressed her thumb to the biometric reader while the cowboy’s eyes bored into her back. By the time she’d stepped inside and pressed her thumb to the interior reader, he was gone.
    The doors closed and her hands and feet tingled.
    For three years she’d toyed with her competition and teased the men in the security departments, but they were all like babies, easily taken and confounded by games of
inai inai ba
. But the cowboy, he was a man and a warrior, and the idea of facing off against a worthy combatant made her toes curl.

The Kawasaki dealership, part showroom, part garage, was in a corrugated building off the inner loop, a wide thoroughfare just north and across the river from Osaka proper. Bradford pulled the Mira into the small frontage parking area next to a flat-nosed delivery truck and shut off the ignition.
    Munroe squeezed his hand.
    Lining the building’s front window was an array of motorcycles, their aerodynamic curves and bright vivid colors a mocking laugh at the bleached concrete, harsh angles, discount stores, and factories that made up the area.
    It had taken a while to find the place. That was a problem in a country whose address system only made sense to city planners and GPS: sets of numbers pinpointing block and building not geographically, but according to when each structure was built. There was irony in having left Africa for one of the world’s most developed countries only to discover that directions by way of signage, restaurants, and landmarks were still a part of life.
    Fingers interlaced, they walked toward the tight row of bikes in the way of treasure hunters who’d finally struck gold after so much searching.
    Beyond the window other models filled the floor space, scooters and off-road bikes squished together and adorned with handwritten sale signs in reds and yellows like washing machines in a discount warehouse that just had to go, but these outside were the supersports, the big-girl machines; these were the
murdercycles
.
    Munroe brushed her