7

The fourth man swung his katana.Its blade hissed, struck Kamichi's waist, kept speeding as if through air, and sliced him in half. Kamichi's upper and lower torso fell in opposite directions.

Blood gushed. Severed organs spilled over the floor.

Akira wailed in outrage, rushing to chop the man's windpipe before the assassin could swing again.

Too late. The assassin reversed his aim, both hands gripping the katana.

From Savage's agonized perspective on the floor, it seemed that Akira jumped backward in time to avoid the blade. But the swordsman didn't swing a third time. Instead he watched indifferently as Akira's head fell off his shoulders.

As blood spewed from Akira's severed neck.

As Akira's torso remained standing for three grotesque seconds before it toppled.

Akira's head hit the floor with the thunk of a pumpkin, rolled, and stopped in front of Savage. The head rested on its stump, its eyes on a level with Savage's.

The eyes were open.

They blinked.

Savage screamed.

Frantic, he struggled to overcome the pain of his broken arms and legs, to force them to move, to raise himself from the floor. He'd failed to protect Kamichi and assist Akira. But he still had an obligation to avenge their deaths before the assassins killed him.

He compelled his anguished limbs to respond, lurched upward, felt hands press against him, and fought. The hands became arms encircling him. They pinned his own arms, squeezing against his back, thrusting air from his lungs.

“No,” Akira said.

Savage thrashed.

“No,” Akira repeated.

Abruptly Savage stopped. He blinked. In contrast with the sweat trickling off his brow, his skin felt terribly cold. He shivered.

Akira-

Impossible!

– hugged him fiercely.

No! You're dead!

Akira's face loomed inches away, his sad eyes narrowed with alarm, eyes that Savage had just seen blink from a severed head resting upright on the floor.

Akira again repeated, this time whispering, “No.” Savage slowly peered around. The image of the blood-spattered hallway in the Medford Gap Mountain Retreat blurred and dissolved, replaced by the tasteful furnishings in a room, in a suite, in a hotel off Fifth Avenue.

The room was mostly dark, except for a dim light next to a chair in a comer to the left of the door to the hallway. Akira, having slept while Savage kept watch, had taken his turn on guard.

Savage breathed. “Okay.” He relaxed.

“You're sure?” Akira kept holding him.

“A nightmare.”

“No doubt the same as mine. Brace your legs.”

Savage nodded.

Akira released his grip.

Savage sank onto the sofa.

The bedroom door jerked open. Rachel appeared, focused on Savage and Akira, inhaled, and quickly approached. She wore a thigh-length blue nightshirt. Her breasts swelled the cotton garment. Her urgent strides raised its hem.

She showed no embarrassment. Savage and Akira paid no attention. She was part of the team.

“You screamed,” Rachel said. “What happened?”

“A nightmare,” Savage said.

“The nightmare?”

Savage nodded, then turned and peered up at Akira.

“I have it, too,” Akira said. “Every night.”

Savage studied Akira in pained confusion. “I thought, once we'd met for a second time, it would finally go away.”

“I thought mine would, too. But it hasn't.”

“I've been trying not to talk about it.” Savage gestured in frustration. “I still can't get over the certainty that I saw you killed. I see you before me! I hear your voice! I can touch you! But it makes no difference. We've been together for several days. Yet I'm still sure I saw you die.”

“As I saw you die,” Akira said. “Every time I doubt myself, I think of my six months of agony while I convalesced. I've got the scars on my arms and legs to remind me.”

Savage unbuttoned his shirt and revealed two surgical scars, one below his left rib cage, the other near his right pelvic bone. “Where my spleen and appendix had to be removed because they'd been ruptured by the beating I received.”

“Mine were removed as well.” Akira exposed his muscular chest and abdomen, showing two scars identical to Savage's.

“So we know… we can prove… that you both were beaten,” Rachel said. “But obviously your ‘deaths’-that part of your nightmare-are exactly that: a nightmare.”

“Don't you understand it doesn't matter?” Savage said. “The fact that Akira's alive doesn't change what I know I saw. This is worse than déjà vu, worse than the eerie feeling that I've lived through this before. It's more like the opposite. I don't know what to call it. Jamais vu, the sense that what I saw never happened. And yet it did, and what I'm seeing now isn't possible. I've got to find out why I'm facing a ghost.”

“We both do,” Akira said.

“But Graham's dead. Who else could explain what happened? How do we find the answer? Where do we start?”

“Why don't you…?” Rachel's voice dropped.

“Yes? Go on,” Savage said.

“This is just a suggestion.”

“Your suggestions have been good so far,” Akira said.

“It's probably obvious.” Rachel shrugged. “For all I know, the two of you have already thought of it and dismissed it.”

“What?” Akira asked.

“You start where your problem started. Six months ago. At this place you keep talking about.”

“The Medford Gap Mountain Retreat.”

8

They ate a room-service breakfast and checked out shortly after seven. Using evasion procedures, they reached a car rental agency when it opened an hour later. Savage had considered asking one of his contacts to supply a car, but he felt nervously convinced that the fewer people who knew he was in town, the better. Especially now that Graham was dead.

Rachel confessed that she'd had a nightmare of her own, seeing Graham propped behind the steering wheel of his Cadillac, enveloped by exhaust fumes, driving into eternity. But the Cadillac would eventually use up its fuel, she explained. If a neighbor didn't hear the engine's faint rumble before then, it was possible that Graham would sit in the car for several days, bloating, decomposing, riddled with maggots, until the stench from his garage finally made someone call the police. Graham's nostrils, filled with maggots, had climaxed her nightmare, startling her awake.

“Why couldn't we have phoned the police and pretended to be a neighbor concerned about the sound in Graham's garage?” she asked.

“Because the police have an automatic computerized trace on incoming calls. In case someone reports an emergency and hangs up without giving a number. If we phoned from Graham's house or a pay phone, it would have told the police a neighbor wasn't calling. Since we don't know what Graham's killers are up to, it's better to let the scenario play out the way they intended.”

As Savage drove the rented Taurus from the city, Rachel lapsed into brooding silence. Akira slept in the back.

Attempting to recreate his previous journey, Savage left Manhattan via the George Washington Bridge and entered New Jersey, heading along Interstate 80. Twenty minutes later, he started scanning the motels near the exit ramps.

Holiday Inn. Best Western.

“There,” Savage said. “Howard Johnson's. That's where Kamichi changed briefcases. It puzzled me.”

The October day was splendidly clear, the sun dispersing the chill of the night before. As they left New Jersey and progressed into Pennsylvania, cliffs rimmed Interstate 80. After half an hour, the cliffs were mountains.

Rachel began to relax. “I've always loved autumn. The leaves turning colors.”

“The last time I drove here, the trees hadn't budded yet. There were patches of snow. Dirt-covered snow. It was dusk.