Broken Storm Part One (5 page)

Nothing.

It was a fact only a few people knew throughout the
world, an elite few, the kind that John associated with. It was a fact worth a
potential fortune, and steeped in far more danger than a single man could
handle.

A mystery. An incredible mystery that no one had
been able to answer.

Some might have thought Chase was crazy, but he
wasn't. This was real. He may have spent several years trying to hide from that
fact, but after John's death, Chase couldn't do it anymore.

He couldn't deny what had happened to him 15 years
ago, and as he slowly stared up at Keiko, he realized the woman before him was in
exactly the same position.

Though she, of course, was innocent to the true
mystery that surrounded this.

'Are those documents useful at all? I haven't
wasted your time, have I?' She brought a hand up to rub her scar.

'You haven't wasted my time; these documents are
incredible, thank you very much for bringing them in. I'll have my secretary
write you a check,' he mumbled as he looked back down at them.

She made a strange, strangled, gulping sound. ‘Check?
You don't have to pay me. You're just looking at some documents.’

He flicked his gaze up, and he tried very hard not
to concentrate on the holes in her cardigan. 'These have been very useful, I
just want to compensate you for your time,' he brought his hands down, locked
them together, and rested them on his table.

It felt a little like he was trying to close a
deal. Except a deal where he was attempting to give someone money who didn't
want it.

She put both her hands up. 'You honestly don't have
to pay me. Like I said, I'm sure my grandmother would just be thrilled to know
that there is somebody else out there in the entire world who even knows about
Aiko, let alone who wants to learn more about her.'

‘Your grandmother,' he suddenly latched onto that
fact, his breath shortening as he did, 'you said she is in a nursing home? Is
she close by?’

‘Yeah, it's about an hour away,' she looked
confused for a moment. 'You don't want to meet her, do you?’

'Absolutely,' he could hardly hide his enthusiasm.

While the documents were completely fascinating,
John got the distinct feeling that he would get so much more by talking to the
woman who had collected them in the first place.

Aiko did not look comfortable, and it was not just
the general embarrassment and awkwardness she had displayed since sitting down
in his office. She brought her hands down and began to rub her thumbs quickly.
'I,’ she trailed off.

'Is your grandmother fit for visitors? She doesn't
have dementia, does she?' Chase asked again, faintly aware of the fact his
questions were hasty and less-than-polite. He just couldn't help himself. The
potential reward here was far more valuable than social niceties.

Still looking uncomfortable, she shook her head.
'She is fine. Just frail.'

‘Could you arrange for me to meet her?' he jumped
in, hardly waiting for her to finish.

She pursed her lips for a moment, bring her hand up
and patting at her head. 'I,' she trailed off again.

She was clearly uncomfortable, and Chase understood
why. From her perspective, this entire ordeal would be confusing as hell. She
meets a strange man at a party, he tracks her down in the rain, demands she bring
him any information she can on her family's shrine, then up and asks if he can
meet her grandmother. Chase was moving very fast, but he didn't care.

He cleared his throat.

He was used to making difficult deals. 'I would be
happy to compensate you,’ he tried again.

Once again she put her hands up, her fingers
crooked and stiff. ‘You don't have to pay me, Mister Harlow,' she swallowed her
words.

‘Just call me Chase,' he finally closed the file
before him, fixing all of his attention on her.

She was small, thin, and had a neat, shiny black
bob.

She wasn't wearing any makeup, not that he could
tell, and from the look of her clothes, it appeared she didn't give a hoot
about what she looked like. In other words, she was the kind of girl that Chase
Harlow hardly ever came across.

And yet as he stared at her in that moment, maybe
he took the time to actually process what he was seeing.

Though she looked awkward, and completely out of
her depth, she didn't jump to her feet and run for the door. She just sat there
resolutely, still clutching at her hands and somehow finding the courage to
look at him.

'Look, I'll ask her, but,’ she started.

‘It's up to her, I understand that,’ Chase lied.
Because he didn't understand that. He needed to speak to this woman. He needed
to track down every single clue he could find about Aiko.

‘Look, okay, I’ll try to contact her,' Keiko said
as she stood up quickly. She looked down at the file just as he did.

Her embarrassment had changed. Now there was an
edge to it. A suspicious edge.

Maybe he really had moved too fast and had been too
pushy, because right now she was looking at him exactly the way she had when
she had told him plainly that she wasn't going to get in his car.

He rushed to his own feet. 'This is really
important,' he tried.

She nodded, taking a step back. 'Can I have those
files back?’

Chase’s jaw stiffened as he looked down at the
documents. He could spend the next several weeks painstakingly going over each and
every one of them. There was only one problem though: they didn't belong to
him.

He would have been happy to give her his sports
car, or buy her a new bloody house if only she'd give them to him, but he got
the impression that was not going to work.

Her eyes narrowed further. 'I guess you can copy
them and have them sent to me,' she said as she backed off slightly, her arms
pulling up and locking around her middle in a classic move of defensiveness.

'I'll have my secretary give you my direct number. As
soon as you talk to your grandmother,' he tried.

She nodded sharply. ‘Yeah, of course, I will call
you.' With that she turned around and headed for the door.

Chase wanted to rush over, get there first, and
lock his hand over the handle, forcing it closed. But that really would creep
her out. And he didn't need to be a businessman to see that he had just lost
this deal.

Keiko had gone from being cute, if fantastically
embarrassed, to being outright wary of him.

'This is very important,' he mumbled again.

She nodded sharply, grabbed the handle, and yanked
the door open.

That she half jogged out.

God damn, that had gone badly.

He tried to catch up to her again, but she just
mumbled her goodbyes, said she would call her grandmother, and practically ran
for the lift.

And that left Chase Harlow standing there in the
atrium before his office, watching one of the precious few opportunities he had
ever gotten to track down Aiko run away from him.

'What on earth was that about?' His receptionist
came up, her appointment book in hand. ‘Who was that woman?'

Chase didn't answer. He did let out a hearty, frustrated
sigh though.

But he didn't give up.

He might have stuffed that meeting up, but this was
worth far more to Chase than most people could appreciate.

John had always taught him one thing.

Never give up. Not when something matters to you.
If you know you want something, you chase it down, you lose what you have too,
whether it be money or dignity, but you get your hands around your desire.

You win.

It was a lesson Chase would never forget, and one
he was going to employ now.

K
eiko was sitting on the couch, pushing a cushion
into her chest, huddling into it.

That had been one of the weirdest experiences of
her life.

'What the hell does that guy want?' she mumbled to
herself out loud.

There was no risk that anyone would overhear her;
Jenny was in the shower, and probably wouldn't be out for the next half an
hour.

Plus, Keiko needed something to chase away the
silence. It felt like it was eating at her.

She didn't know whether she should be embarrassed
or angered.

Had she been the idiot here, or had Chase been the
one to make an ass out of himself?

At that moment she couldn't help but remember an
important, if curt lesson her grandmother had once told her.

Keiko had a tendency to think everything that went
wrong in a social situation was her fault.

If someone said something awkward, Keiko would feel
embarrassed, if someone did something strange, Keiko would think she’d made it
happen.

But Keiko was not in control of the behavior of
others, and right now she remembered that fact.

Despite how mousey she may have been in that
office, she had not made Chase say any of those things.

'He's just creepy,' she finally concluded.

And handsome too, her brain automatically answered,
though she tried to stifle that conclusion.

Because who cared if the guy was handsome? Why had
he looked so
interested
when he'd asked questions about when Keiko had
died? Why had he been so determined and belligerent in trying to get a meeting
with her grandmother?

None of it made any sense, and Keiko knew that
sitting here on the couch and hugging a cushion was not going to suddenly make her
understand what was going on. So sighing, throwing the cushion to the side, she
padded her way into the kitchen to make yourself a cup of tea instead.

She tried to put it out of her mind.

Because hopefully she would never see Chase Harlow
again. She certainly was not going to make a meeting between him and her
grandmother, and she was never going to call the number on the back of the card
that was still stuffed in her purse.

She was going to forget about him.

It was the sensible thing to do. And while Keiko
was a lot of things, at least under all her social awkwardness, she was
sensible.

Chase Harlow

She wasn't going to call, was she? He really had
stuffed that one up. But that did not mean Chase was about to give up. He’d
copied the documents she’d left him, then he'd made his secretary track down
her address and send them back to her with the most expensive flowers the
florist down the road could provide.

Then Chase Harlow had stopped being decent.

He’d found out the name of Keiko's grandmother, the
nursing home she was in, and he’d called up to find out visiting hours.

Then he’d piled into his car, cancelled all his
appointments, and driven out there.

No doubt if Keiko knew what he was doing, she would
conclude that he really was a total creep. Chase didn't care.

He had his eyes on the prize, and he was not going
to get distracted.

When he arrived at the nursing home, the day had
turned bleak, clouds tracking in across the horizon.

He pulled his car up in the parking lot, right next
to a beaten up Corolla.

In fact, glancing around, he noted that every car
around him looked as if it was more than 10 years old.

His Ferrari stuck out like a sore thumb.

Shrugging into his jacket, curling the collar up
until it sat neat against his neck and blocked out the chill, he walked across
the parking lot, hands in his pockets.

His heart was beating faster than usual, his mouth
dry no matter how hard often he tried to swallow.

This was the first lead like this he'd ever
received. John was used to dealing with shady black-market contacts, or the far
more dangerous groups that were after the same secret he was.

Visiting old ladies in nursing homes was not
usually on his itinerary.

He hadn’t said a word of this to Victor or Julius. He
wasn't sure if it was worthwhile yet.

Though the documents sitting on his desk were
incredible, unless they led to a picture of Aiko, what was the point?

First he would have to find out what this woman had
to say, then Chase would figure out what to do from there.

Walking in through the doors, pushing his hand into
the glass as the mechanism creaked, crying out for some maintenance and oil, he
cleared his throat and walked up to the receptionist.

When he announced who he was after, the
receptionist looked confused and mumbled that Ami hardly ever got visitors.

But eventually she led him down the clean corridors
that smelt faintly of detergent and to a plain door that read the number 22.

His heart felt like it had popped out from his
chest and pulled all the way up into his throat, the beat of it reverberating
through his clenched jaw.

His hands were now firmly tucked into his pockets,
the fingers having curled into fists long ago.

The receptionist knocked on the door, walked in
when somebody answered, and asked the woman inside, Ami, if she didn't mind
having a visitor.

At that moment Chase could have almost gone mad.

The prospect that he could be turned away, suddenly
dawned on him. Because he really doubted the receptionist was going to let him
in if Ami put her foot down.

And Chase wouldn't like it to go to the papers if he
pushed his way in anyway and proceeded to berate the old grandmother with his
questions.

But then the receptionist popped her head out of the
door, nodded at him, and opened it wide. 'If you need anything, I'll be at the
desk,’ she said as she glanced down at his jacket, possibly noting his suit and
the heavy, gold Rolex on his wrist.

'Thank you,’ he said with a clear nod.

She smiled.

He walked in the open door.

Ami was sitting in a chair by her bed, her
expression unreadable.

Small, diminutive, and dressed in a simple purple
top and loose pants, her eyes crinkled until they were half-closed. ‘Do I know
you?' she asked in an accent-rich tone.

He shook his head, pulling his hands from his
pockets and offering her one.

She didn't lean out to shake it; she kept her own
hands rested on her lap, and she stared at him. 'Who are you?'

'My name is Chase Harlow,' he cleared his throat.

'Why have you come here?' she asked bluntly.

Her tone and demeanor were a mile away from her
granddaughter’s. While Keiko looked timid and overcome by most situations, this
woman looked like she could take anything in her stride, and right now she was
looking up at Chase with calm suspicion. ‘I don't know you,’ she repeated
again.

He muddled through an awkward laugh. 'I know your
daughter,' he said. It was a lie, technically. Chase had met Keiko twice; he
certainly didn't know her. And he was sure that if she had her way, she would
never see him again.

But eyes on the prize, there was too much to risk,
too much to gain, too much to lose.

'Let me cut straight to the chase,' his voice
deepened, and he took on a bit of the attitude he did when he was about to
close an uncomfortable merger. 'I'm a collector. I'm particularly interested in
Japanese culture and history. Your granddaughter mentioned to me that you still
own a shrine dedicated to the wind goddess Aiko.'

A funny thing happened when Chase said that word.
The windows didn't suddenly shudder from an almighty gale, but the woman, who
looked painfully frail, suddenly stood up.

It was a powerful move, and despite the fact she
barely came up to Chase’s shoulders, he almost wanted to step back.

'What?' she said simply.

He shifted back, his jaw tensing as his teeth
ground together. 'Keiko leant me some of your notes, they were incredible,' his
voice wavered as he was unable to dampen down his natural enthusiasm at that
moment.

The old woman's eyes narrowed further. 'Why did she
do that?'

Every word she said was snapped and suspicious, and
just as with Keiko, the more time Ami spent with Chase, the more wary she became
of him.

He was stuffing things up again.

He let out what he hoped was a low and reassuring
chuckle. 'Your granddaughter is a good person,’ he tried.

‘You don't know her. She has never spoken of you.
How do you know this?'

Chase let out another laugh, but it was very
uncomfortable. He felt forced to put his hands up.

‘Why are you really here? What do you want to
know?'

'If you have a picture.' There we go. He’d just
said it. The woman's natural suspicion and forthright attitude had beaten it
out of him.

‘Get out,’ she said in a snap. ‘I'm not going to
give you a picture of my granddaughter.'

‘No, no, that's not what I meant,' he said quickly,
swallowing his words, 'I meant Aiko, the wind goddess, I want a picture of
her.'

‘Get out, I told you, I'm not going to give you a
picture of my granddaughter,' the woman said, her voice getting louder by the
second.

Chase had to do something before she created an
incident, so he took several steps towards the open door. 'I want a picture of
Aiko
,'
he stumbled over his words again.

'Leave my granddaughter alone,' the woman snapped,
then she practically pushed him out of the door, closed it, and locked it from
the inside.

Which left Chase standing there, staring at the
number 22, his mouth parted open in shock.

That had not gone well. That had gone unbelievably
badly.

Obviously the old woman was either too confused or
her English wasn't quite up to the task.

He felt like raising his voice and saying one last
time that he wasn't after a picture of Keiko, he wanted one of Aiko, but he
wasn't dumb enough to try it.

Instead Chase Harlow gave up.

He walked away, swallowing hard as he did. He
nodded at the receptionist, then got back in his car and drove all the way back
to his building. His thoughts raged in his mind, his confusion over what had
just happened only serving to peek his interest.

Regardless of whether his interest was piqued or
not, where was he going to go from here? He doubted Ami Teshi was ever going to
talk to him again, and he was fairly sure that Keiko was done with him too.

But Chase Harlow was not going to give up.

His father had taught him that lesson.

If he had been smart, however, Chase would have
looked in his rear vision mirror once or twice on the way home. And he would
have realized someone had followed him.