Day Of Atonement

The road ahead was straight as far as the eye could see, the pavement shimmering with frost haze where the sun reflected off the surface.

Her hands felt slick on the wheel. Her heart beating just that little bit faster, the thrill of the extra adrenaline pumping through her veins.

She pulled over to the side of the road, put the car into Neutral and released her seat belt. She didn’t kill the engine, letting it idle.

She wasn’t going anywhere until she knew what was going on.

If the Mercedes raced by, she’d just follow it. Simple as that.

The other car reduced its speed, no more than ten miles an hour, as it drove by. The passenger, the giant brute of a man, held her gaze without blinking as the driver pulled up in front of her car.

The passenger door opened and the big man climbed out.

Police? It was possible, but it was a nice car for an unmarked gendarmerie vehicle, which made it unlikely it was local law enforcement. She had come across enough of them all over the world to know when it was the law keeping an eye on her. It was a sixth sense now.

The man reached down for her door handle before she thought to lock it from inside. She reached for the button just as he tugged hard at the handle, as though brute force would be enough to beat her and the lock. When the door didn’t open, he banged against the window with the side of his fist.

Annja took a breath. It was that moment, the single point between fight and flight. She inched the window down a crack.

“What do you want?”

“Miss Creed,” the man said in a gruff voice, taking a step away from the car.

“Yes,” she said.

“Get out of the car.”

“No,” she said, not making an argument of it, but simply stating that there was a line she wasn’t stupid enough to cross just because he said so. “Not until you say please.” She used humor to show she wasn’t frightened, no matter how physically intimidating the giant was. And towering over the roof of the car, he was like a mountain more than a mere mortal.

“Please,” he said, laboring over the word, like it was something unfamiliar to his lips. Annja saw by the way he clenched and unclenched his fists that he was pumping himself up for an explosive confrontation. She almost felt sorry for him. It wasn’t as though he could know what he was letting himself in for. She was ready.

He used one ham hock of a hand to pull back the edge of his leather jacket to reveal the butt of a pistol tucked into the waistband of his jeans, removing all doubt as to his motivation. So much for the hope he was an overzealous autograph hunter. The odds of a peaceful outcome whittled down to zero as the driver opened his door, emerging from the Mercedes to join his hulking companion.

She needed to act quickly.

Dealing with them one at a time was preferable to taking them on together. It was simple mathematics. She had seconds to make the parity count. Annja moved fast, unlocking her door and slamming it open, far harder than she needed to, forcing the mountain to stumble back a couple of paces. He actually moved pretty well for such a big man, which was disappointing. She slid out from behind the wheel, climbing out of the car just as he reached for his gun. In a fair fight he would have drawn down on Annja before she was halfway out of the car, but this wasn’t a fair fight. Annja was fast. Even if he knew who she was, he had no idea just how fast she was.

Before he could raise the muzzle in her direction, she had reached into the otherwhere, her fingers curling around the familiar grip of her sword. Her entire body thrilled to the touch of the ancient blade, her blood resonating with the weapon on some primal level as she pulled it free of its resting place. Sunlight glinted from the keen steel edge that never dulled. She brought it down hard, slashing through the air in a savage arc that drove the mountain back two more steps, stunned by the impossibility of what had just happened.

It didn’t matter how big he was, or how many bullets he had in his magazine, he was afraid. She had seen that look often enough in the past. The sword had a way of making big men shrink down to size.

She moved the blade through a kata, whipping her wrist about to control the vicious dance of steel.

The man released the first shot.

Annja was barely three steps away from him, but it was all the room she needed to bring the ancient sword to bear, deflecting the bullet off the flat blade and sending it whistling away harmlessly in a shower of sparks. The sound of the ricochet rang through the air, echoing over the fields on either side of them.

The second shot nicked the blade, lodging itself in the body of the rental car behind her. He didn’t have time for a third. Annja slashed the tip of the sword close to the mountain’s great barrel of a chest, slicing through the leather jacket and parting the cotton T-shirt beneath without breaking his skin.

“See how easy it would be for me to gut you?” Annja said, completely matter-of-factly, her breathing deep, calm, controlled.

He stumbled back, stubbornly trying to fire again.

Annja shook her head. The blade, moving faster than the eye could possibly follow as more than a silver shimmer in the air, slapped against his gun hand, springing his fingers apart in a cry of pain.

The gun went flying, another shot drilling harmlessly into the ground.

She looked down at it, then up at the mountain, knowing he was nursing a couple of broken fingers. He wouldn’t be firing a gun again in a hurry. At least, not with his right hand. He followed the direction of her gaze, looking down between his legs in time to see Annja’s foot come up. He buckled as she made contact, doubling him up. It didn’t matter how big a man was, how many steroids he pumped into his veins or how many reps he did in the gym. He couldn’t strengthen that one very frail human weakness no matter how hard he tried. Her adversary fell to his knees howling with pain. Annja launched herself into a vicious roundhouse that connected with the side of his head and stepped back to watch as the mountain’s face plowed into the dirt at her feet.

He was out cold.

“Stay right there,” the driver said. He looked ruefully at his unconscious comrade, obviously glad he wasn’t in his shoes. He had his own gun aimed squarely at the center of Annja’s mass, but wasn’t in a hurry to fire. He’d just seen what she was capable of. Why would he think his bullets had a better chance of finding their mark than the mountain’s?

Annja held her sword in front of her, balanced lightly in her grasp, moving forward onto her toes. He was close enough she could hurl the blade at him, cleaving his head from his shoulders before he could get down behind the safety of the car. But killing him wouldn’t give her any answers. And it wasn’t her style.

“There was no need for that,” he said, doing his best to sound reasonable. “We just want to talk to you.”

“Of course you do,” she said. “People always come up to me wanting to have a nice little chat with a gun in their hands.”

“Look, I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant to go down like this. If you’d just come with us, we could have done everything nice and calmly.”

“And why on earth would I want to go with you? I think you better start talking fast.”

“Why? Because we were asking nicely.”

She shook her head. “You didn’t ask at all. Your brute tried to strong-arm me. I’d hate to see what you call nasty. So, what do you want to talk to me about? I’m sure you’ve noticed that you have my undivided attention right now.”

“Not me. I was only asked to pick you up.”

“I’m already fed up with the way you answer questions. Who asked you to pick me up?”

“It doesn’t matter who.” He shrugged. “Not to me. I’m just doing my job.”

“Ah, the good old staple. ‘I’m just following orders,’ is that it? I think I’ve heard that before somewhere.”

“Look, there’s no need to get hostile about this. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt, especially me, okay? So why don’t you just drop that thing and get into the car. We can just do what we’ve got to do and everyone can be happy.”

“Happy? You seriously think I’m about to get into a car with you? What kind of happy pills have you been popping? Give me some answers and I’ll consider following you in my car,” she said, with no intention of following him. But if he believed her, maybe she’d get a few details.