Travis Justice Read Online Free PDF Page A

forensic scientist would appraise his subject at an autopsy, one dissected organ at a time.
    The maid backed a step. “I’m s—sorry, madre de Dios , I’ll pay you back, I promise, I needed the money for my niños —”
    â€œGet out,” Hana said flatly.
    The maid got.
    After the maid left her day hotel, Hana paced the small open space, up and down, until she could see her own tracks in the thin carpet. No matter if she paced a million miles, she’d end at the same destination: She was at a dead end in seeking the sword without more inside information. She stopped at the window overlooking a dumpster and an uneven parking lot badly in need of new asphalt. But she didn’t see the ugly scene. Her visions were far more horrific. How long had it been now? Hana put her hands flat against the grungy glass. It became literally a dirty window into her past as the memories she seldom allowed subsumed her.
    For a weak instant, the strength of her mind was helpless against a rush of emotions. She pretended she could feel those warm little hands pressing back in the patty-cake she’d taught him. She didn’t need to look at her watch or her phone to know the date. He’d been missing for exactly three months and five hours because it was ten a.m. on a Saturday three months ago. Kai had snatched him from day care while she worked an extra shift as a waitress at a popular breakfast spot in south Austin because she needed the money to help save her grandfather’s house from foreclosure.
    Another useless exercise.... Resting her head against the grimy windowpane, Hana asked herself yet again how she had ever been stupid enough, even at a rebellious, impressionable seventeen, to get involved with Kai?
    Her practical, stable father had just died in a car wreck, and her Japanese mother, a high-strung traditionalist, was trying to groom her only child for marriage into the small Japanese community then in Austin. Hana’s dream of winning the world women’s karate championships was just that, a foolish dream. Years later, she could recite her mother’s nostrums now almost verbatim: How could such a strange ambition for a respectable female prepare her for a prosperous future? Even karate masters who opened their own dojos usually went broke in a few years. Since she had no interest in business or engineering or medicine, what else was she to do but marry well?
    Then, after Hana got involved with Kai and even became an illegal drug courier, Hana’s aggrieved mother took her scanty life-insurance proceeds with her back to Japan, leaving seventeen-year-old Hana with her grandfather. Hana had refused to admit—then at least—how much she missed her mother, even when she was relieved of her nagging about character and appearance. Jiji never nagged her; he only loved. And it was his sole, loving support that drew Hana back to the straight and narrow after she was arrested for intent to deliver illegal substances. The fact that she’d been pregnant at the time had no doubt contributed to the judge’s decision to be lenient, especially since it was her first offense and she was barely seventeen. But he’d forced her into hours of community service and rehab even though she’d never used any of the drugs she carried, including marijuana. Not because she had any moral scruples—but because they affected her karate abilities . . . and because she knew the use would harm her unborn child.
    Hana kept her condition secret as long as she could. She’d broken all ties with Kai while she sat in jail awaiting her hearing where he’d left her to rot instead of paying her bail.
    The windowpane grew tangible again as a much wiser Hana now quashed the unhappy memories. They only made her feel lost and alone and hopeless, especially now that Jiji was dying. She washed her face at the sink, drying herself off thoroughly and methodically. Very well, then. If the sword