CHAPTER FIVE

Kira’s scream reverberated loudly in her ears as the sound of her own terror echoed off the walls of Yi’s office. Her initial instinct was to run to Yi’s side and render aide but it was obvious that there was no aide to be rendered.

Yi was dead.

And whoever made him that way could still be lurking in the shadowy darkness of his office. With her survival instincts kicking in at full blast, Kira backed out of Yi’s office and raced down the hallway towards the elevator as fast as her high heeled feet would carry her, the sound of her own footsteps echoing loudly behind her, chasing her away from Yi’s office at full speed. Stealing a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure that she wasn’t actually being chased by someone, another terrified scream exploded from Kira’s throat as her mad dash to the elevator was abruptly halted by the force of her body slamming into someone else’s. The body that stopped her forward progress was firmly muscular and completely unmovable, causing Kira to bounce off of it in the darkness. As she tumbled backwards, she felt a pair of hands lock onto her arms, keeping her from crashing onto the floor. Blinded by fear, Kira began struggling with all her might against the strong, masculine hands that held her tightly in their grip. It was only when she caught a whiff of the familiar, spicy scent of the man's aftershave that she ended her struggle.

A sudden rush of relief propelled Kira into Ethan’s arms.

“What’s wrong?” Ethan’s voice was low and thick with concern.

“Yi’s dead.” Fear and the exertion of her sprint down the hallway caused her words to tumble out of her mouth in a breathless rush. “Somebody killed him.”

Ethan peered over Kira’s shoulder, his eyes locking on Yi’s opened office door at the end of the hallway. Through the lightning-lit darkness, she saw his emerald eyes harden as he reached into his suit jacket and pulled out the semi-automatic handgun that she knew he kept strapped to his side at all times. He glanced at the open doors of the elevator and briefly considered putting Kira inside it before thinking better of that idea. If there was a killer on the loose in the building, he wanted Kira where he could keep an eye on her.

Clutching his Glock tightly in one hand, he took Kira’s hand into his other one and led her down the hallway, ignoring the slight pain caused by her involuntarily digging her nails into the back of his hand. But despite her still palpable fear, she followed him to Yi’s office willingly, feeling safer just knowing that he was at her side. When they'd entered the office, she dropped her head, deliberately diverting her eyes from the sight of Yi’s body. The smell of sudden, violent death hung in the air as Ethan’s eyes swept the room like the laser green beam of a radar scope.

“Don’t touch anything,” he cautioned Kira before searching the entire suite. Once he was certain that no one was hiding anywhere in the office or in the large adjoining bathroom did he exchange the gun in his hand for the cell phone in his pocket in order to summon the police.

***

A long, shuddering tremble rippled through Kira’s body, frustrating her attempts to insert her house key into the lock of her apartment door. Ethan placed his hands on both of her shoulders in a comforting caress, the gentleness of which came precariously close to unleashing the flood of tears that she had been holding back for hours.

“Let me do that,” Ethan whispered in her ear as he slid a hand down her right arm and plucked her keys from her fingers.

Numbly, Kira stepped aside, quietly allowing him to take over the task of opening her door the same way she had quietly acquiesced to his demand that she let him drive her home from the police station after three hours of questioning. When he unlocked the door and held it open for her, she didn’t utter one word of protest as he followed her inside uninvited and locked the door behind them. She was vaguely aware of the fact that she should ask him to leave but she just didn’t have the energy or desire to push him away as she wandered through her apartment with the listlessness of a person in a state of shock.

Ethan watched her carefully, his dark eyebrows burrowing with concern. Hours after finding Yi’s body, her face was still the same unnatural shade of pale white that it had been when she had flung herself into his arms in abject terror. Reflexively, he reached out and stroked her cheek as if trying to transfer his own warmth and color to her through his fingertips. Kira barely seemed to register the contact as her eyes looked passed him to the stack of papers she had been reading through when she had received the phone call from Yi.

“Yi’s dead.” Kira uttered the first words to come out of her mouth since departing the police station in a detached manner, as if testing out the sound of them rather than registering them. But as the words hung heavy in the air, undisturbed by any movement or sound inside the apartment, they slowly began to sink in with the same ruthlessness with which someone had plunged The Dragon’s Breath into Yi’s back. Tears spilled from her widened amber eyes as they finally shifted their focus to Ethan. “Yi’s dead.”

This time her words came out in an anguished cry as Ethan quickly took her into his arms. Cupping the back of her head with one hand, he absorbed the stream of sobs that spilled from her mouth as he rubbed her back with his other hand in long, soothing strokes. After a few moments, Kira’s trembling body stilled within his arms, drawing strength from the firmness of his touch.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled as she pulled away from his embrace, forcefully wiping tears from her cheek.

Ethan brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “You don’t have to apologize. A man you cared about was murdered tonight. You’re allowed to fall apart.”

“I don’t have time to fall apart,” she replied curtly as she made her way over to the files laying on her cocktail table and picked them up determinedly. “As Gau Lung’s troubleshooter, I’ve got a lot to do. Yi’s death is going to throw the company into chaos and it’s my job to minimize any and all negative fall out. It’s what Yi would have wanted.”

“From what I observed, Yi cared a great deal about you. He would have wanted you to take care of yourself first.”

“I’m fine,” Kira said with a wave of her hand.

“You just found the murdered body of your friend and employer. There’s no way you could possibly be fine.”

Kira shivered at the memory of finding Yi's body. “Thank God you were there,” she said. “What were you doing at Gau Lung that time of night anyway?”

“Yi phoned and said that he wanted to meet me there. He had some questions about the theft of The Dragon's Breath that he thought that I could answer.”

Once again, the image of Yi's pale, lifeless body slumped over his desk with The Dragon’s Breath protruding from his back flashed through Kira’s mind, causing her knees to buckle beneath her, forcing her to abruptly collapse onto the sofa like a folding chair.

“Who would do that to him?” Kira asked as she glanced down at the list of names of those with Level Five security clearances at Gau Lung, wondering if the security breach from the day before could be connected to Yi’s murder. Wondering if the name of Yi’s killer was on the list. A shudder ricocheted through her body at the possibility.

“Yi Wong was a powerful man,” Ethan said as he joined her on the couch. “Powerful men tend to make dangerous enemies.”

Ethan had his own theory about Yi’s murder. A theory that began and ended with Jared Halifax’s desire to get his hands on the Wong sub-concession.

“You think his murder had something to do with his plans to hand over control of Gau Lung, and therefore control of the sub-concession, to one of his sons, don’t you?” Kira replied as if reading his mind.

“That sub-concession is worth a fortune. A large one at that. Some people would do anything to get their hands on it.

“Are you one of those people?” Kira asked as she gazed up at him through thick lashes still glistening with tears from her earlier crying jag.

Ethan returned her gaze unwaveringly. “I didn’t kill Yi.”

“I know you didn’t,” Kira admitted. “You may be a lot of things, many of them unsavory, but you are not a murderer.”

“I’m glad you know that,” Ethan said softly.

“What about Jared Halifax? Is he capable of murder?”

Ethan’s body tensed at the mention of Jared’s name. “He’s more than capable of it.”

Kira chewed anxiously at her bottom lip before asking the question that had been nagging at her since the night of the exhibition. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that he was your father?”

“It’s not exactly something to brag about.”

“Maybe not but I had a right to know,” Kira’s voice took on a bitter edge.

Ethan contemplated her statement. “You’re right. You did have a right to know the whole story. You still do. That is if you’re still interested in hearing it after everything that’s happened.”

Kira crossed her arms over her chest as she leaned against the back of the sofa, silently debating if she even wanted to delve into the subject of her past with Ethan. “I’m listening,” she finally said.

Ethan drew in a deep breath as he rose to his feet, the prospect of talking about his father causing his nerve endings to jangle with long simmering hatred. “The long and short of it is that Jared Hallifax, born Jacob Chance, is a child abuser and a wife beater who murdered my mother and skated away from it scott-free.”

“I’m sorry,” Kira replied softly, the pain in Ethan's voice echoing in her heart. She had never seen Ethan look so vulnerable as he did in that moment. She had never even thought him capable of it. Instinctively, she wanted to reach out to him, to physically comfort him in some small way but her own pain kept her hands tightly folded in her lap.

“It’s not your fault,” Ethan replied flatly. “It’s Jared’s fault and that’s why my brothers and I are going to make him pay.”

Kira shivered a the dangerous edge that crept into Ethan’s voice when he spoke of making Jared pay. “So stealing Enclave out from under his nose was part of making Jared pay and I was a convenient means to that end.”

“There was never anything convenient about you. Especially not my feelings for you,” Ethan sighed as he rejoined Kira on the couch. “But I will admit that in the beginning you were a means to an end.”

“Just in the beginning? Because it seems to me that’s all I was in the end as well.”

“That’s not true,” Ethan said firmly, seizing the opportunity to say all the things he should have said to her two years ago. “By the time it was all over, I was in love with you.”

The soft, steady patter of rainfall against the windows was all that filled the ensuing silence caused by Ethan’s admission as Kira took in the significance of his words. Once again she felt tears threatening to spill from her eyes. “It would have been nice to have known that at the time.”

“Would it have made any difference?”

“I don’t know,” Kira admitted with a weary shrug. “But at least I wouldn’t have spent the past two years thinking that everything between us was just one big game designed to amuse yourself like your sideline in stealing artwork.”

“Now that you know that it wasn’t a game, does it make a difference?” Ethan asked, hopeful despite himself.

Kira’s lips tightened as she shook her head firmly. “Knowing all of this doesn’t undo the damage. While I can understand your desire for revenge, it doesn’t make what you did okay. Even though our relationship started out as a game of one -upmanship, what we had became real to me.”

“It was real to me too.”

“That just makes what you did all the more painful,” Kira explained plaintively. “You threw away what we could have had together in the name of revenge and I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for that.”

“I understand,” Ethan finally replied after a long silence, his disappointment registering in the sudden huskiness of his voice. “And I respect your feelings. I just ask for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Just let me take care of you tonight.”

Kira glanced over Ethan’s shoulder at the cold, wet darkness outside. It would be a couple of hours before the sun rose again and she suddenly realized that she couldn’t face those hours alone. Not tonight.

Without saying another word she curled up into the curve of Ethan’s arm and rested her head on his shoulder. Ethan suppressed a sigh as he gathered her closer to him, grateful for the opportunity to have her back in his arms, no matter how briefly. Kira snuggled even closer, allowing herself to relish in the gentle comfort of Ethan’s hand stroking her hair as they sat entwined, silently watching the night slowly being engulfed by the dawning of a new day.