“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said through gritted teeth, angry at having been bested so handily. With her sword in hand she ran for the window herself, trusting Garin to stop firing when he saw her move.

Garin shouted something at her, but Annja didn’t hear. She was almost to the window itself when a hand appeared from outside and tossed something dark into the room in front of her.

It hit the floor and rolled toward her.

She had a split second to think, Grenade!and throw herself to the side before the explosive device went off.

4

It felt as if a giant hand picked her up and threw her against the floor, the concussion hammering her senses until her head reeled. She bounded off the marble floor and slid into the wall with enough force to nearly knock her senseless.

Only the fact that it had been a concussion grenade, rather than an explosive one, saved her life. She was still trying to figure out which way was up when Garin rushed to her side.

“Annja! Are you all right?” he asked, his voice seeming to come from miles away as the roaring in her ears continued.

She nodded, still too caught up in the emotion of the moment to speak. Her heart was beating like crazy and she fought to get her breathing under control as Garin helped her into a sitting position.

At last she found her voice.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m all right.”

Using his arm for support she pulled herself all the way to her feet and then stood on still-wobbling legs. Her gaze landed on the lock of hair that the intruder’s sword had cut from her head.

Too close.

She glanced over at the intruders. Or rather, what was left of them. Garin hadn’t spared any ammunition it seemed; every body was riddled with bullet holes and blood leaked across the marble floor beneath them.

“Did you have to kill them all?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Now why didn’t that surprise her? “But if you had managed to only wound one or two, we might have been able to question them. Learn who they were and why they were here.”

Garin grunted. “Or they might have managed to kill us both. Thank you, but I’ll take the safer way out every time, particularly where mylife is concerned.”

Annja did not doubt that in the slightest. When it came to protecting his long life, Garin was exceedingly ruthless.

At any rate, it was too late now to argue about it.

Garin stepped over to the window and cautiously looked out, but the intruder must have been long gone for he turned away, shaking his head. He was on his way back to Annja’s side when Roux and Henshaw arrived.

“Is everyone all right?” Roux asked as he stepped into the room, surveying the death and destruction before him.

“We’re fine,” Annja replied as Garin nodded in assent.

“What happened up here?” Roux asked.

Annja explained how she’d arrived to find the intruders already in the room and what had happened after that. She didn’t mention her near defeat at the hands of the final swordsman; that was for her and her alone. No one was too surprised at the realization that Annja had held off six attackers on her own; they had all seen her wield Joan’s sword at one time or another in the past and they knew just how deadly she could be with the weapon in hand.

“Did they say anything? Do anything that gave you some idea what they might have been after?”

Annja shook her head.

“I don’t get it,” Roux said. He glanced around the room, a puzzled expression on his face. “The assault force at the front of the house seems to have been a diversion. They made no attempt to take the manor itself and only put up just enough of a fight to keep the security force occupied.”

“Given what we know at this point, I’d say the whole thing was a diversion to allow this group to enter the house from the back,” Henshaw suggested.

“A logical assumption, I agree, but why? What was it they were after?” Roux glanced at the weapons decorating the walls and Annja could see him silently cataloging each one, gauging whether there was something valuable enough among them to warrant such an attempt. By the confused look on his face she could guess that the answer to that question was a solid no.

As the others looked on, Garin squatted next to one of the bodies. Reaching out, he pulled off the dead man’s ninja mask and hood, revealing his face.

The man was Asian. Somewhere in his thirties or so, was Annja’s guess. He was dressed in a dark blue coverall, similar to those worn by special forces units all around the world, with dark combat boots on his feet. A quick check showed that any identifying tags or markings had been stripped from the uniform.

“Recognize him?” Annja asked, only half-jokingly.

Garin scowled at her, annoyed by the comment apparently. “No, I don’t recognize him,” he replied. “Do you?”

Annja snorted. She wasn’t the one who dealt in the shadow world of dirty tricks and ruthless competition.

Neither Roux nor Henshaw had ever seen the man. With Henshaw’s help, Garin lined the bodies up next to one another and then he began to methodically search them for information while the other three looked on. He stripped them of their masks and pulled back their hoods, gazing at each face as if it might be able to tell him something. He went through their pockets, checked the labels on their clothing and even looked inside the boots they all wore.

Finally he stood, a disgusted look on his face.

“Nothing,” he said. “They’re as clean as a whistle.”

“Professionals, eh?” Henshaw asked, and the expression on his face told Annja how he felt about that revelation. A random break-in was one thing, but the knowledge that this had been planned and executed to within a fair chance of success was something else entirely.

Garin nodded. “Seems to be,” he replied. “Though that doesn’t tell us what they were after.”

“Or whom,” Roux added.

Annja had been content to listen in on the exchange but broke in at this point. “What do you mean ‘whom’?”

“Seems rather obvious, doesn’t it?” Garin answered for him. “They slip a group in the back door while the security team is otherwise occupied dealing with the assault out in front. With all of our attention in that direction, the second group would have had the opportunity to move through the house at will. Probably could have ambushed any one of us before we even knew they were there.”

Henshaw glanced over at Annja. “Seems you saved the day, Ms. Creed.”

“But that still doesn’t tell us what they were after.” Roux scowled down at the bodies in front of him. From his expression Annja knew he would have killed them himself had they lived through the assault.

She caught Garin staring at their host and recognized that mischievous expression in his eye.

Uh-oh.

“Pissed anyone off lately, Roux?” he asked, perhaps with a bit more force than he’d intended.

The damage was done, however. Roux noticeably stiffened, then shot back with, “No more than usual. Perhaps they were after someone with a bit less scrupulous business dealings.”

Now it was Garin’s turn to bristle. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what I said. You have a far greater capacity for annoying others than I do! Maybe they were here to settle a debt with you.”

The younger man threw up his hands in annoyance and took a step toward his former companion. “Oh, I get it. It is yourhome that is attacked, yoursecurity that is penetrated, but suddenly I’mthe one to blame.”