The Last Assassin

the interface to English,' she said. 'It's fine.'
    I nodded. 'Are you armed?'
    She smiled. 'What do you think?'
    I looked her over. She wasn't wearing much, but if she was carrying, I couldn't see it.
    'Not that I can tell,' I said.
    Her smile widened. She dropped her right hand, hooked her thumb under the edge of the dress, and reached up along her inner thigh. An instant later her hand reappeared, her fingers curled into a fist. A wicked-looking two-inch blade protruded like a talon from between her first and second knuckles.
    'Goddamn,' Dox said. 'What is that pretty little thing?'
    'FS Hideaway,' Delilah said. She opened her hand, slid the knife from around her first two fingers, and handed it hilt first to Dox.
    'Yeah, I've been reading about these, but haven't gotten my own yet,' he said. He tried to slip it on, but the grip was too small to fit over his fingers. 'You like it?'
    'I love it,' she said. 'This one's actually a knockoff that our tech people make. It's composite, not steel. Not as tough as you'd like, but it's razor sharp and, best of all, doesn't set off metal detectors. I carried it from Paris on the plane.'
    I saw that, instead of a handle, the knife was gripped through a capsule shaped hole. The whole thing was tiny, but when she had it deployed, she looked like a damned velociraptor.
    'What have you got down there?' Dox said, looking at her thigh.
    She raised an eyebrow.
    He blushed. 'I mean…' he started to say.
    She smiled. 'Kydex sheath.'
    'Well, now I know what to ask for for Christmas,' Dox said, handing the knife back to her. She reached under her dress and returned it to its hiding place.
    I pulled the commo gear out of a bag and handed her a transmitter and an earpiece. 'This is the same kind of equipment we used in Hong Kong,' I said. 'We ought to do a dry run tonight. But with your hair up…'
    'I'll hold the earpiece,' she said, fixing the transmitter just below the neckline of the dress. 'When I get alone for a minute, I'll put it in place. We'll make sure it all works.'
    I nodded. 'We could wire you up so Dox and I can hear what's going on around you, not just you talking into your dress.'
    She shook her head. 'Not in this outfit. I wouldn't be able to hide the battery bulge. And I don't know what this club is like. People might be free with their hands.'
    I nodded again. 'Yeah, you're right. Well, as long as we can hear you, we should be okay.'
    She looked at her watch, then at Dox and me. She smiled, and I realized that some part of her enjoyed the rush of an op.
    'Okay, boys,' she said. 'Time for me to get into character.'

32

    D elilah did a surveillance detection route on foot to ensure she was alone, then caught a taxi to Minami Aoyama. She doubted the driver would ever have heard of Whispers, but he understood the words Aoyama-dori and Kotto-dori well enough, and from that main intersection she could walk. She was glad she'd taken the time to reconnoiter earlier that day. It would be good to have a few things that felt familiar. Certainly everything else about this city and these circumstances was disorienting.
    She didn't want things to be so tense with Rain, but damn it, she was just so frustrated with him. None of this needed to be happening. He had rushed off to see his child, and then he'd screwed up, just as she had feared in Barcelona. And now she was getting sucked into the aftermath.
    Ordinarily, she felt she had a lot of clarity in her life, especially given the shifting, ambiguous world she lived in, but this time her feelings were a mess. She was pissed at Rain for creating the situation that had caused her to do such an ugly thing as visit Midori in New York. And she was simultaneously appalled at what she had done, remorseful for it, and afraid that Rain was going to find out. She wanted to do something to make amends, and was furious with herself for putting herself in a position where she felt
she
needed to make things up with
him.
And underlying all of it was the fact that she still wanted him, and she was angry at him for that, too.
    She closed her eyes, exhaled deeply, and told herself to let it go. She could figure it all out later. Right now, she was on her way to a job interview. She reviewed all the particulars of the role she was playing, why she was here, the job she wanted, her hopes and fears. By the time the cab let her off at the corner of Aoyama-dori and Kotto-dori, she had submerged herself and was fully in character.
    She walked south down