There were murmurs of assent from the group that was gathering around her. Looking into his eyes, she could see he was being honest. He had no idea what she was talking about.

She released him and turned away, her thoughts racing. If the waiter hadn’t done it himself, nor allowed it to happen in the back before it reached her table, then it had to be someone else on the staff.

But who?

She replayed the final minutes of the meal in her mind: she was sitting talking to Shizu, the waiter had come by and placed the check on the tabletop, she’d gotten up to use the restroom. When she had returned, Shizu had thanked her and raced off to meet her boyfriend.

Annja stopped the mental replay and backed it up again, watched as the waiter placed the check folder on the edge of the table between Shizu and her, watched as she excused herself to go to the restroom.

Thinking it through, an uncomfortable suspicion was starting to form in her mind. The only time the bill folder had been within anyone else’s sight was during those few moments that it had rested on the tabletop. And the only person within reach of it at the time, aside from herself, was…

Shizu.

Annja was already in motion by the time her conscious mind caught up with her intuition. She threw some cash at the waiter, ran out of the café, vaulted the small iron fence that surrounded the outdoor terrace and rushed into the nearby intersection, her eyes already scanning the crowd for any sign of the girl who had shared a drink with her over lunch.

The girl worked for the Dragon.

Annja hunted up and down those streets for more than an hour, hoping she might show herself, might give Annja the chance she needed to grab her and ask a few, all-important questions, but it was no use.

The young woman, whoever she had really been, was gone.

17

As Annja was confronting the waitstaff at the café and trying to determine just who had left the folded paper dragon in her bill folio, the Dragon was headed for the offices of Dr. Julie Laurent, hypnotherapist.

Something had happened to Annja there. Her agitated state had been proof of that and the Dragon wanted to find out what had riled her so badly.

Finding the office was easy. The Dragon climbed the steps and knocked on the doctor’s front door.

“Coming!” said a faint voice from behind the door.

The Dragon put a finger over the peephole, preventing the doctor from looking out and seeing anything.

A moment passed. The Dragon heard the locks being turned on the other side, and then the door was opened to the extent the security chain allowed it. The Dragon reared back and slammed a foot into the door right next to the handle.

The door flew open, knocking the older woman behind it backward into the office and down onto the floor. The Dragon followed swiftly. A knife was put to the doctor’s throat.

“Scream and not only will I kill you, but I’ll carve you up before I do,” the Dragon said.

Wisely, the doctor clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out.

The Dragon kicked the door shut, relocked it and turned back to face the woman still cowering silently on the floor.

“You and I are going to have a little chat, all right?”

Dr. Laurent nodded.

“If you answer my questions, you’ll be fine. If you do not answer them, I’m going to have to hurt you. Do you understand?”

With tears streaming down her face, the doctor nodded.

“Good.”

The Dragon instructed her to get up off the floor and to take a seat in one of the nearby chairs. Dr. Laurent immediately did so. That was a good sign; a submissive attitude was much better than the defiance that had been expected.

Taking out a photograph of Annja, the Dragon handed it to Dr. Laurent.

“The woman in the photo was in here earlier this morning. What did you talk about?”

A little bit of the doctor’s uncertainty came back at the idea of breaching her client’s privacy. “I can’t possibly give you that information. It is covered by doctor-client confidentiality and—”

Still smiling, the Dragon reached out, grabbed the doctor’s left pinkie and brutally snapped it.

Dr. Laurent let out a short, sharp yelp of pain that was quickly cut off as the Dragon slapped a hand over her mouth.

Leaning close to her ear, the Dragon said, “Next time I’ll break all of the fingers on that hand. And then I’ll go to work with my knife. Now answer the question!”

The doctor’s bluster seemed to have fled in the wake of the violence and she answered the best she could around her sobs of pain.

“Ms. Creed came in for a consultation. She’s been having the same dream for several nights and she…she wanted to understand just what it was trying to tell her.”

“See? That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?” the Dragon asked. “What kind of dream?”

“A man…attacking her with a sword.”

“Did she describe this person?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

“Because all she could see was the swordsman’s eyes. The rest was covered up with some kind of mask.” Dr. Laurent cradled her injured hand in her other one and glared at the Dragon.

In response, the Dragon smiled and then nearly laughed aloud as Dr. Laurent recoiled in fear, pulling her hands against her body as if that would protect them from harm.

Little good that will do when the time comes, the Dragon thought.

“What else can you tell me?”

Dr. Laurent explained how her patient had been focused on identifying the swordsman and had even drawn images of the sword that he carried in the dream. When asked if she had these drawings in her possession, the doctor admitted that she did; there were copies in the file with her written notes.

“And the file is here, in the office?” the Dragon asked.

Dr. Laurent sighed at this further violation of a client’s privacy but had learned her lesson the first time and didn’t object. Instead, she showed the Dragon where she kept the file.

The images were well done, surprisingly so since they had been created while the artist was in the midst of a hypnotic trance. The Dragon stared at the face in the picture; it was an excellent likeness.

The image of the sword, however, was more disturbing.

There wasn’t enough detail in the portrait for the Dragon to be worried about being identified through it. But the image of the sword was another story. It was close enough to the real etching and signature that Annja Creed might be able to trace it back to the Dragon’s master and that would never do.

“Is this the only copy of the drawing?” the Dragon asked.

Dr. Laurent nodded.

Something passed between them, a feeling, a premonition, maybe. Whatever it was, the doctor suddenly realized the purpose of the question, her eyes going wide with the recognition of what was to come. She gave a frightened little squeal and tried to run, bolting from her chair and heading for the door.

The Dragon let her get close to the door, let her hope rise as she realized freedom was only a few steps away, and then bounded across the room, seizing the doctor by her hair and spinning her around to face the interior of the room. With a flick of the wrist a blade appeared in the Dragon’s hand, a blade that was used seconds later to slash the doctor’s throat.

It happened so fast that the doctor never had time to scream.

Blood fountained up from the wound and the Dragon shoved the body away to avoid being splashed.

Dr. Laurent tumbled forward, collapsing across the sofa, her hands going to her throat as she tried to staunch the flow of blood.