GhostWalkers 10 - Samurai Game

her weapons would only force her to answer more questions about herself.
    He shook his head, tossed the medical report back in front of Gator, and looked around the room. “It’s possible that someone, using a blowgun, shot a tiny dart into the major’s mouth, poisoning him. The delivery system, no more than peanut-size, could have dissolved. If he wasn’t looking for it, the ME may have missed a very fine needle mark.” He drummed on the table with restless fingers. “If I were an assassin, I would have learned everything about my targets and I would have found out Patterson had a severe allergy to peanuts. If I could deliver the toxin to him, no one would ever know it was anything but an accident, just like the other two.”
    There. It was done. He looked around for a glass of water. Tucker had a water bottle unopened in front of him. He snagged it and chugged nearly half of it.
    “A delivery system that dissolves?” Ryland echoed. “It’s possible.”
    Kadan and Nico exchanged a long look. Finally Kadan shook his head. “Do you have any idea how accurate one would have to be to use a blowgun in full view of the public and hit someone in the mouth when they were talking? The chances of anyone having that kind of skill are nearly impossible.”
    He’d given her up. He damn well wasn’t going any further until he had a chance to talk to her. Sam remained silent. He felt like hell, both mentally and physically. He was beginning to sweat again. He tried not to move, the pain from hiswound just waiting for the smallest shift of his body to assert itself.
    “You make impossible shots in high winds,” Gator pointed out. “It’s not like it couldn’t be done.”
    Nico shook his head. “It’s not the same thing. You’re talking about hitting
inside
the mouth. I could put a bullet in the mouth, but it wouldn’t matter if it was opened or closed. You’d have to time it perfectly. And this was done in a crowded restaurant.”
    “Impossible,” Kyle “Ratchet” Forbes agreed. Slightly under six feet, with blue eyes and a medium build, his looks were deceptive. He was abnormally strong and a genius with explosives as well as being a doctor. “No one would try it in a crowded room in a public situation. If they missed . . .”
    “But maybe they don’ miss,” Gator said, reluctant to give up on the mystery theory. He looked toward Sam for confirmation.
    Sam couldn’t say another word. The room shifted a little, the floor rolling. He was grateful for the chair he was sitting in.
    “If you’re assassinating someone, you don’t want a maybe,” Kadan pointed out.
    Kyle grinned and gave a little shrug. “There’s that, of course. You’d have to be absolutely confident in yourself to try something like that.”
    “Maybe a tribesmen from the lost tribes in the Amazon came a-visitin’,” Gator said with a small laugh.
    “I could do it with a knife,” Jonas “Smoke” Harper said into the silence. Lithe, medium height with blond hair and Florentine gold eyes, he was a quiet, highly intelligent man who could have been a master thief. He was an undisputed master with knives. “It would be difficult, but with enough practice, and studying my mark, I’d be able to know his mannerism’s, the way he moves, the little things that give people away when they’re talking.”
    “You could hit a man from across the room
inside
hismouth with a knife?” Kyle asked, half skeptic, half awed believer.
    Jonas nodded. “I know I could.” Jonas had grown up throwing knives with a circus family, he’d practically been born with a knife in his hand.
    “Really?” Kyle’s eyebrow went up. He leapt up and raced out of the room.
    “He’s up to somethin’, Smoke, you’d better watch out,” Gator advised Jonas in his slow Cajun drawl.
    The men erupted into laughter. Jonas shrugged and took out one of the many knives he carried most of the time. Around the room on various walls hung well-used targets, testimony to the fact that when idle, Jonas threw knives and was
very
accurate.
    Nico held up his hand. “Let’s think about this. If we’re really going with the assassination theory, the bathroom and the car accidents are very doable. Any assassin worth his salt could rig a car, or make the hit in a secluded bathroom. It’s just the major’s death that’s harder to figure out, right?”
    Kadan nodded. “And yet, of all three, his death seems the least likely to be an accident.”
    Kyle slipped back