Chapter 8 - THE TRAP SPRUNG
Tanaka pulled a red encrypted mobile phone from his kimono sleeve. His fingers moved frantically as he dialed a private number.
Claire watched him closely, her keen ears picking up the faint, panicked Japanese voice responding through the phone speaker.
“Tanaka-san! It’s true! The Canadian authorities served an emergency injunction on our Vancouver holdings an hour ago! They knew the exact shell company names!”
Tanaka’s face turned gray. He slowly lowered the phone, his breathing shallow.
“How did you find the shell company names?” Tanaka asked, his eyes locked on Claire with a terrifying mix of hatred and awe. “Those names were stored on an offline server in Osaka!”
“Your lieutenant, Warren Pike, kept paper receipts of his wire transfers in his private safe at the Monarch Room,” Claire explained calmly. “I translated his personal notes while Mr. Mercer’s team cleared the manager’s office. You used old Edo-period merchant ciphers to hide the accounts. My father published a paper on those ciphers in 2012.”
Tanaka stared at her for a long, agonizing minute. The fog outside seemed to press against the paper screen walls of the teahouse, trapping them in a breathless silence.
Suddenly, Tanaka let out a low, bitter laugh.
“Sato-sama was right about one thing,” Tanaka said, reaching slowly into his kimono breast. “You are far too dangerous to be left alive.”
Before Gabriel or Elias could move, Tanaka pulled a small, silver-plated derringer pistol from his robes and aimed it directly at Claire’s chest.
“Claire! Down!” Gabriel roared, hurling his entire body across the space between them.
A sharp crack shattered the night.
Gabriel slammed into Claire, knocking her backward onto the tatami mat as his body absorbed the impact.
Simultaneously, the paper screens of the teahouse exploded inward as Elias and three of Gabriel’s tactical security officers breached the room. Two deafening gunshots echoed through the pavilion. Tanaka collapsed backward onto the floor, his weapon skittering uselessly across the wood.
“Gabriel!” Claire screamed, her hands frantically reaching around Gabriel’s back as he lay heavy against her chest. “Gabriel! Are you hit?!”
Gabriel let out a ragged groan, pushing himself up slowly. He looked down at his chest. The bullet had caught him in the left shoulder, blood soaking rapidly into the fabric of his dark charcoal suit coat.
“I’m... I’m fine,” Gabriel gasped, forcing a reassuring smile despite the pain twisting his face. “It takes more than a cowardly old man to take me down.”
Claire’s eyes filled with tears as she tore off a strip of her silk dress hem, pressing it tightly against his shoulder wound to stop the bleeding. “You idiot! Why did you jump in front of me?!”
Gabriel looked down at her, his pale face illuminated by the soft lantern light, his eyes burning with absolute devotion.
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“Because my life means nothing without you in it, Claire,” he whispered, his clean hand reaching up to brush a tear from her cheek. “I spent seven years surrounded by noise and lies. You are the only real thing I’ve found in thirty-eight years.”
Claire sobbed softly, pressing her forehead against his chest as Elias rushed over to provide medical support.
