Project Maigo(30)

I hit the screen door at a run, smashing the handle down as I barrel outside onto the driveway and a scene of destruction.

The first thing I see is a body laid out on the pavement, by the husk of what used to be Cooper’s car, ironically, a coupe. Even the clothing I can see—black pants and slick black shoes—is all wrong. My first thought was that this was Collins. But then she stands up on the other side of the wall that is Watson and looks my way.

My relief is short-lived. Collins is alive, but her eyes look a little hazy and her blouse is stained with blood. As is her hair. I rush toward her, lowering my weapon. Then I see the body’s face. Endo.

Something about Endo being unconscious doesn’t make sense. Collins couldn’t take him by herself, and I don’t think Watson or Cooper would be much help in a fight. But I really don’t give a shit. It’s clear that he attacked the Crow’s Nest, but they somehow got the upper hand.

Despite my growing anger, I pause beside Collins. “You okay?”

“Probably a concussion,” she says, sounding more lucid than she looks.

Endo groans.

Without a thought, I reach down, grab his shirt and pull him up roughly. “You don’t get to wake up yet!” I move to knock him out again, breaking all sorts of rules, but no one’s going to care if he assaulted a government facility.

My arm is caught mid-swing. I turn to question Collins and find the face of the Asian woman from the port of Hong Kong glaring at me. “Let. Him. Go.”

“Go. Fuck. Yourself.” I say. Collins is going to pop her any second now, and then we’ll have both of them in custody.

But my partner doesn’t move. Instead, she sits down on the pavement, looking tired.

I look from Collins to the stranger and then to Watson and Cooper. “Could someone please explain why you haven’t pig-piled Lucy Liu over here?”

“That’s racist,” the woman says.

For some reason, this totally flabbergasts me. Not only is she kind of right, but I’m really not in the mood to have a conversation with an associate of Katsu Endo, who freaking paralyzed me the last time I saw him.

“Look, if it makes you feel better, Lucy Liu is a hottie.”

“It does,” the woman says, “but she’s also Chinese. I’m Japanese.”

“Actually,” Watson says, raising a finger. “She’s American. Born in—”

“You know what I meant—”

“I can see you’re going to fit right in.” All eyes turn down to Endo. He’s awake and looking at his partner, who is still holding my hand back.

Fit in?

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t club you,” I say.

“She could kick your ass,” he says, smiling, motioning to the woman.

“Two good reasons.”

“I saved them.”

“Saved who?”

“Us,” Collins says. “If it makes you feel better, I already knocked him out once.”

The tension goes out of my clubbing arm, and the woman’s grip relaxes. Saved them? From who?

The hole in the wall.

The destroyed car.

The brown blood.

“Gordon was here,” I conclude, yanking my hand away. If what I’m being told is true, I won’t knock Endo senseless, but I will arrest him. Standing clear of the woman’s reach, I aim my weapon at Endo. “Why didn’t you let us know?”

Endo sits up, feeling the goose egg on his forehead where Collins must have clocked him.

“About what?”

“Gordon.”

“I didn’t know he was here.”

I turn to my team. “Did he try to put something on Gordon’s head?”

Collins’s shifting expression answers the question. “He had a drill. He was...” She was with me in Hong Kong. She saw what happened to me. Even knocked silly, the pieces aren’t hard to put together. She turns to Endo. “You were trying to control him.”

“Empty your pockets,” I say, shaking my handgun at him.

He complies. There’s a folding knife, a pack of Juicy Fruit, a wallet and the same device he slapped on the side of my head. He must have been trying to drill through Gordon’s thick flesh so the device could work.

“I was following orders,” he says.

“Zoomb is not the United States government,” I reply. “You don’t have to do what they say, and their orders do not put you beyond the reach of the law, no matter how much money they have.”

Endo stretches, working out the kinks. “My employer didn’t send me here. I was requested.”

I make a show of aiming my gun more carefully, leveling the sights at his wang. I nearly say so, but I quickly realize Lucy Liu will just accuse me of being racist again. “By who?”