Bitter Spirits
Page 33

Winter held up his hands in surrender and sat. Doctor Yip stumbled past her with his hands up, as well.
She struggled to get away, clawing at the arm around her shoulders. His grip tightened painfully. She gasped for air and dug her nails into her assailant’s arm. He shoved her head to the side. Low Cantonese grated against her ear. His arm was beefy. Not as tall as Winter, judging from the way he felt against her, but solid enough. Her initial shock and confusion trickled into a deeper panic.
Winter addressed the man standing next to her in a barely restrained rumble. “You just made the biggest mistake of your life.”
“No, you did, Magnusson. This is Ju’s territory.”
“Did Ju send you here?”
“Ju hears Bo Yeung poking around, asking questions. Now you show up? He won’t be happy to hear we found you here. Not at all. Maybe you think now that your daddy is gone, you’ll get your hands on tong business.” The man took a step toward Winter. His black suit was creased. A bowler was perched crookedly atop his head. His ear was cauliflowered—bulbous and protruding around the upper shell. An old injury. “Why are you in Ju’s territory?”
“None of your goddamn business.”
“Why is Bo sniffing around?”
“Call off your dog and let her go. Then we can talk.”
The man said something in Cantonese that made her captor laugh. Fat fingers clamped over a breast and squeezed. Aida struggled to pull away. “Get your hands off of me.”
Winter lurched to his feet. “You dirty fucking pig—”
The cauliflower-eared man shoved the muzzle of the gun against Winter’s forehead as he grabbed one of his acupuncture needles and jammed it farther into Winter’s shoulder. He shouted incoherent blasphemies as his eyes watered.
“Do not spill blood!” Doctor Yip cried out. “This is a holy place.”
The man ignored the doctor. “Sit down,” he repeated to Winter.
Winter complied.
Aida’s panic shifted into anger. She could continue to stand by and do nothing while Winter got hurt—or killed! Or she could do something and help him.
Her mind raced. Her lower arms were free. The man holding her was becoming lazy as he watched his friend torment Winter. Doctor Yip was huddled against the far wall, talking silently to himself. Praying to his spirits, maybe. She hoped like hell they were listening.
The overpowering scent of sandalwood was making her ill. She glanced down at it in irritation. The brass incense bowl was within her reach, the tips of the sticks glowing orange.
Ah . . .
Fast as she could, she whipped her arm out and grabbed several sticks in one swoop. She felt the gripping arm tighten around her shoulders, but he wasn’t fast enough. She stabbed backward over her shoulder using all her strength, aiming the joss sticks for what she hoped was his face.
ELEVEN
THE STICKS JAMMED INTO FLESH. HER CAPTOR’S SCREAM PIERCED her ear.
She fell forward, stumbling away from him.
Distracted by his friend’s screaming, the cauliflower-eared man let his guard down for one heartbeat too long. Winter flew off the bench. In two beautiful movements, he snatched the gun from the man’s hand as he jabbed an angry fist square in the middle of his face. It was brute strength, skillfully wielded—she’d never seen such a violent motion delivered so precisely. The punch made a sickening crack! like a bat hitting a ball. The man’s body flew backward and collapsed on the floor.
His muffled cries were pained and feral as the copper-bright scent of blood wafted in the air. He was not going to get up again. Aida’s attention flew to her captor. Both hands covered his cheek. She’d missed his eye by centimeters. A shame.
“Get down!” Winter bellowed at the man, loud enough to rattle Aida’s nerves. He was savage—the devil himself. And Aida was, all at once, frightened and strangely thrilled.
Winter stepped between her and her captor and motioned with the gun. The man dropped to his knees.
Lying on his side, the cauliflower-eared man loosely held his hands over his nose and took desperate gasps of air through his open mouth. Blood seeped between his fingers.
“No shame in crying.” Winter told him in a calmer voice. “That nose is broken and probably hurts like hell. You might want to have someone set it, or it’s going to look ugly when it heals.”
The man twisted in place to shoot Winter a hateful look.
Winter clucked his tongue. “You’ve got nerve, coming in here today to question me without Ju’s permission. I can only imagine what you were thinking. But let’s get some things straight. I’m not interested in Ju’s territory, or any of the other tongs’. We do not have overlapping interests. Never will. Secondly, this cul-de-sac is not technically Ju’s. It’s free territory.”
The man shuddered, rolled onto his shoulder, and spat blood out of his mouth.
“And if Ju has a problem with Bo ‘sniffing around,’ as you put it, then he will come talk to me directly. I don’t do business with peons.”
Her captor was saying something in Cantonese. His partner didn’t answer.
“But let me make one thing clear. If either of you lay a finger on Bo, I will hunt you down and break every bone in your body. And if you or any other man so much as even stands too close to her ever again, I will blame you personally”—he tapped the man’s elbow with his shoe—“and I will put a bullet in both your brains. Do you understand?”