Swordsman's Legacy

“I think the seat is adjustable, if you’re not comfortable?” she said.

“Ah, no worries.” He smoothed a palm along his left side. “An injury that is yet stiff, you see.”

“How’d it happen? Base jumping? Extreme running—what did you call it?”

“ Parkour. Running all over building tops and jumping at high speeds. You use the architectural landscape as your obstacle course. Very exciting. Good for the quads, glutes and delts. You should give it a try.”

“I just may.”

He tossed her an approving nod.

“But that was not how I came to this injury. It is of no importance. Up there, just around the corner, we’ll find the dig site. Why are you stopping, Annja?”

In the rearview mirror, the sight of the big black SUV that had barreled up on them put Annja to caution. The pistol jutting out the passenger’s side could not be ignored.

She couldn’t outrun the monster truck in her little beater. While her gut prayed it was merely mistaken identity, her intuition screamed that this vacation had suddenly taken a new yet familiar twist.

3

Annja stopped the car on the country road. The sun had set, but the sky still glowed yellow. The SUV’s headlights dimmed in the rearview mirror.

“For reasons that elude me, we’ve been followed,” Annja said.

Tilting a glance across to her passenger, she was taken aback to spy him nervously swipe a palm down his face.

What had she stepped into?

Certainly she had jumped into the adventure with little more than anticipation for a fun excursion. No parachute, that was for sure—parachutes were for wimps. Yet now that she had jumped, it had become apparent she should employ caution at all turns.

“Ascher, do you know the hulking, black-suited men who are currently getting out of an imposing SUV, tucking pistols into their inner pockets and marching toward us?”

The man’s sudden lack of conversation struck her to the core. Annja sucked in a heavy breath.

“Ascher, my background check on you didn’t turn up any jail time or criminal leanings.”

“You checked me out?” he asked, sounding offended.

“Obviously not well enough. What have you involved me in? Have you enemies who feel the need to keep tabs on your every move?”

“Every man gains an enemy or two in his lifetime, no?”

“No—”

A thud against the window alerted them both. Annja twisted in the driver’s seat to spy two palms pressed flat to her window. Ten fingers disappeared, and were replaced with the barrel of what looked like one of her favorite pistols, a 9 mm Glock. It wasn’t her favorite at the moment.

From outside the car, a staunch French voice commanded they exit with their hands up.

“Be cool,” Annja said. “And get out slowly.”

“I am cool. You be cool, Annja.”

“I’m cooler than—oh, for cripes sakes, what are we doing? Now is no time to act irrationally. Let’s do this slowly and carefully and together.”

“Exactly. We cannot allow them to divide and conquer us.”

Holding back the retort, “Whatever you say, Napoleon” seemed wise.

Each slowly opened a car door, and before Annja could get her hands up, the gun barrel pressed into her rib cage. She wore a white, sleeveless T-shirt and khaki hiking shorts, and she was sweating.

A tall, brutish man dressed in nondescript dark pants and a short gray coat wielded the gun. A thick gold chain snaked about his tree-trunk neck. High-top sneakers rounded off the attire that was strange for only a drive in the countryside. He looked ready for a hike through an urban nightclub.

Pressing the backs of her thighs to the car door, Annja surreptitiously glanced over the roof of the rental. Ascher stood with hands raised, and a gun about a foot from his nose.

“You had no intention to invite us to the dig?” the gunman beside Ascher asked in French.

She heard Ascher fumble for a reply. “And have you get your hands dirty? Of course not.”

“Who is she?”

The gunman eyeing Annja lifted a blocky chin and eyed her down his nose. One crushing palm to the tip of that nose and he’d be snorting blood. But though she knew Ascher was athletic, she couldn’t be sure he’d know to react defensively when she did. Just because he was an enthusiast for sports didn’t make him a self-defense expert.

“A girlfriend,” Ascher volunteered. “No one you know, or need to know. She can stay in the car while we go on to the dig.”

She felt to her bones that Ascher knew these men, or at least wasn’t as surprised to see them as she was. And while his efforts to protect her fell flat in the chivalry department, she wasn’t about to stay behind when the situation could turn dangerous.

And did you just hear your own thoughts, Annja? You know it’s going to be dangerous, so you intend to march right into the fray. You really buy into all this protect-the-innocent stuff the sword has brought into your life.

If she couldn’t avoid danger, she figured might as well join it. That would grant her more control than if she simply surrendered. Besides, she was armed, but the sword wasn’t exactly a weapon to win against bullets.

“She comes along.” The gunman gripped her upper arm, hard, and poked the Glock into Annja’s back. She hated unnecessary aggression focused through the barrel of a gun. “Vallois, you will take us to the sword,” he ordered.

They knew about the sword? And they knew Ascher’s name.

Good job on checking the online contact’s history, Annja, she chided herself.

Once around the hood of the car and shoved to Ascher’s side, Annja saw he had a pistol barrel stuck against his temple.

“Does she know where the sword is?” the thug with the gun stuck into her side asked.

“I—I’m not—” the safety on the pistol aimed at Ascher’s skull clicked off, which made the truth flow easily from him. “No, but I have told her about it. The dig site is through the forest.”

“Then lead us.” Both of them were given a shove.

Annja stumbled in the growing darkness as they descended into the shallow roadside ditch, but kept her balance. Her hiking boots squished over soggy grass, but didn’t sink in far. An owl questioned them from somewhere in the distant forest. A cloud of gnats pinged against her shoulders and neck. She didn’t shoo them away. Any sudden moves could result in a bullet wound, which was less desirable than a few insect bites.

As she trudged up the incline and through the long grass, she felt fingers touch her hand. Ascher tugged her up the opposite side of the ditch and they continued onward, close, hands clasped.

“Trust me,” he whispered.