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Ken braced his hands on the steering wheel and stretched his back, relieving some of the tension he felt creeping into his muscles. “It’s a force of habit. I’ve been dealing with people throughout my entire life who were often not operating in my best interests. Ulterior motives are a nasty business.”
“Agreed,” Annja said. She seemed to relax slightly.
Ken tilted his head. “But you are without guile. I can talk to you about the nature of my family’s troubles. I can ask for your help and guidance and I feel quite comfortable doing so.”
Annja waggled her eyebrows. “You never know, Ken. I might just be a plant.”
Ken shook his head. “And there you have the reason I know where you are staying.”
Annja sniffed. “You’ve had me staked out since I landed?”
Ken took a breath. “If we’re being honest about things…it has actually been a bit longer than that.”
Annja frowned again. “Just how long have you been around?”
“Would you believe three months?” Ken hoped his smile was disarming enough to distract her from the length of time.
Annja’s eyes went wide. “Three months? You’ve been following me all over the world for the past twelve weeks?”
Ken smirked. “And you thought you were exhausted. I could do with a healthy spell of sleep myself.”
Annja crossed her arms. “I can’t believe it.”
“I know what you’re thinking. How could this Japanese dude actually follow me around the world without me noticing him? After all, I’m pretty aware. I can sense things to some extent.”
Annja whipped her head around. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Had he just touched a nerve? Ken filed it away for the moment. “Only that you are, for the most part, an extremely aware woman. But even those who think they are aware usually have gaps in their defenses. Those gaps can be exploited. In this case, it enabled me to remain invisible despite your attentiveness.”
“How?”
Ken shrugged. “Let’s take your recent trip to Marrakech.”
“You were there, too?” Annja shook her head. “I don’t believe this.”
“You stopped at a stall in the market to buy a mango. Do you remember?”
He watched her eyes track to the lower left. He could see her recalling the moment in her head. Vaguely, she nodded.
“It was pretty hot that day. The sun blazed overhead like a blast furnace. I thought I might melt under my robes. But luckily, you didn’t stay that long and I was able to shed my garb and move inside to cooler environs.”
“But where were you?”
“Across the way. You bought the mango and some dates, if I recall. I was at the stall with the cheap necklaces.”
He saw recognition flash across her face. “That was you?”
“With makeup, but yes.”
“Those necklaces were awful knockoffs.”
“That was deliberate. I knew you would never waste any time looking at them. You’d be able to pick them out as bad forgeries from a mile away and therefore not waste any time on my stall. I could easily watch you without fear of you becoming suspicious about me. To you, I was simply another would-be con man trying to hawk some ridiculous goods to the naive.”
“And that, I suppose, was the gap in my defenses?” He saw her smile in spite of herself.
Ken nodded. “You see? I was in plain sight, but so apparently not a threat or of interest to you that you simply didn’t even catalog me except way, way back in the furthest reaches of your consciousness. True invisibility exists, but not the way that most people believe it would. By being obviously ridiculous without making a spectacle of myself, I faded from your mind.”
Annja nodded and Ken felt that she just might have some appreciation for the techniques he’d learned so many years ago.
“It’s actually pretty impressive,” she said.
Ken smiled. “If I had meant you any harm, Annja, please believe me when I tell you I could have easily done something to you much earlier than this. There’s absolutely no reason for me to make myself an obvious threat to you now. I’d be almost leveling the playing field by doing so.”
Annja’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Almost leveling?”
Ken smiled again. “You’re good. Don’t get me wrong.”
“But you’re better. Is that it?”
Ken held up his hands. “I will plead the fifth, as you Americans say.”
Annja smiled. “Yeah. Well, we’ll see. Why don’t you take me back to my hotel? I could use a good sleep.”
Ken pulled the car away from the curb, relieved to have seemingly defused any suspicion that Annja might feel toward him. In her place, Ken would have felt exactly the same way. He might have even reacted more aggressively, taking out the potential threat rather than allowing it to continue to exist even for another few hours.
But Annja Creed was not like him. And that was why Ken felt sure she would make the perfect aide in his quest to find the sacred Yumegakure-ryu vajra . Her knowledge and ability would keep them in good stead.
And Ken also appreciated how utterly beautiful she was. What he liked the most was how unaffected she was by her natural beauty. Briefly, he wondered if she might think him handsome. Just as quickly, he pushed the thought out of his mind. He needed to stay focused if he had any hope of recovering the artifact before the others did.
“Are you going to tell me why the Yakuza is so interested in you?” Annja said.
The question jolted him. Ken struggled to come up with a response and instead chuckled. “So much for a segue.”
Annja stared at him. Something had changed. Ken could see it in her eyes. There was a hard edge there, way back, but present nonetheless. “What happened at the restaurant, it was more than a chance encounter. Those thugs were waiting for you,” she said.
“Are you asking or saying?”
“I’m saying. It’s a fact,” Annja said.
“Maybe.”
“Were they waiting for me, too?”
“No.” Ken shook his head. “Absolutely not.”
They pulled up to the hotel and Ken put the car into Park. Annja sat facing him.
“Ken, you seem like a nice enough guy. But I need to know what I’m getting mixed up in here. I don’t like the thought of tangling with the Yakuza or even wanna-be Yakuza. If they’re interested in you and I’m around, that will make me a target of opportunity, as well.”
“You don’t strike me as being averse to danger. Some of your past adventures certainly contained far more danger than what I propose we undertake.”
She shrugged. “I’m not necessarily averse to much. But I’d be a fool if I took all of this at face value.” She placed one hand on the door handle. “You may not want to talk about it right now. That’s fine. It’s late and we’re both tired.”
“Thanks—”
She looked at him. “But we will talk about this. If you want my help finding this vajra , then you’re going to tell me exactly what the hell is going on here. Otherwise, I will vanish and not even you will be able to find me again.”
She