The Last Assassin

gratefully. But not now. Not while there was still a chance of a better way.
    I’d talk to Dox, though, make sure he knew how to get my share of what we’d taken at Wajima to Midori and Koichiro. Just in case.
    I realized I might have been rationalizing. I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to offer Yamaoto my life until I’d taken my best shot at ending his.
    I felt something closing into place in my mind, the old emotional bulkheads, sealing up everything behind them, enabling me to do what I needed to. A part of me was appalled that I retained the ability even under the current circumstances. But I also knew from long experience that it was the only way to get the job done.
    I looked down and saw I hadn’t touched my coffee or sandwich. Enough. I fueled up and started thinking about the tools we would need for tomorrow night.

31
    T HAT EVENING , I went to see Dox at the Prince in Shinagawa. I stopped at the incongruous Dean & DeLuca on the way and picked up sandwiches and side dishes for three.
    He opened the door when I knocked and looked behind me. “Where’s your lady?”
    “Coming soon, as far as I know. Don’t call her that.”
    I walked in and he closed the door behind me. “You have a fight?” he asked.
    “I don’t know what’s going on.”
    “You must be making her sullen again.”
    “I guess so.”
    “You keep this up, she’s going to defect to me. And you won’t be able to blame me when it happens.”
    I rubbed my sore thigh. “You can have her.”
    “Sorry, man, that must have been a bad fight you had.”
    I started taking the food from the bags and putting it on the desk.
    “Mmm, that smells tasty,” Dox said. “But I guess we ought to wait for your lady.”
    I glared at him, only to meet the irrepressible grin.
    While we waited for Delilah, I took out the plans and drew a grid over them. Top to bottom, I lettered A through K. Left to right, I numbered one through twenty-four. When I was done, we had a convenient and reliable way of discussing every position in the club.
    A few minutes later, there was a knock. Dox looked through the peephole, then opened the door. It was Delilah.
    “Well, hello there,” he said. “Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
    She was, too. She was wearing a black cocktail dress made of some kind of embroidered lace, with a satin capelet thrown over her shoulders. She had on high-heeled shoes, but not stilettos, which would have been too much, and was carrying a black silk, beaded evening bag. Her hair was pulled back, and she had employed just a little smoky gray eye shadow and a hint of gloss on her lips.
    “Dox,” she said, smiling. She came in and he closed the door behind her. Then she turned and kissed him on both cheeks, European style. I saw the dress had an exceptionally low-cut, open back. The revealed skin and musculature of her back was gasp-inducingly erotic, and the material below hugged her ass exactly right—as though her body, not the dress, was responsible for the arresting effect. The overall impression was sophisticated, confident, and sexy as hell.
    I saw Dox blushing from the kiss and could have laughed. She’d had that effect on him the first time he saw her in Phuket, and it had never gone away.
    “Honey,” he said, “if they don’t offer you a job on the spot tonight, they are either crazy or blind or both.”
    Her smiled widened. She looked him over and said, “You kept the beard off. You look great.”
    “Well, someone once told me I have good bones, and that was the end of that.”
    She laughed, then turned to me and nodded. I nodded back.
    The room was noticeably quiet for a moment. Dox looked at Delilah, then at me. “I don’t mean to pry,” he said, “but I’m detecting some animosity in the air. Is this little tiff the two of you seem to be having going to make it hard for us to work together?”
    Delilah and I looked at each other and said in stereo, “No.”
    Dox nodded. “Good, I feel reassured already.”
    The room was quiet for another moment. To fill the silence, I said to Delilah, “You look good. You bring that outfit with you?”
    She shook her head. “There are so many French designers in Tokyo, I might as well have been shopping in Paris.”
    I passed out sandwiches and we ate sitting on the double beds. Dox did a nice job of keeping the conversation going, asking Delilah what she thought of Tokyo, things like that.
    “I like it,” she said. “I slept for a few hours, then spent the