That there were places in the middle of that building I'd never seen I was sure. That there were places in the main house I'd never come close to seeing either was also logical. And given where the windows were and the fact that I knew the place to be more huge than what I'd seen, the weirdly segmented shape of it I'd seen from the air made sense. There were chunks of building juxtaposed to allow individual rooms to have light. I thought there were probably parts of the maze-like compound underground, too.
When Cole saw what was coming, he indicated a place. Resigned. Against it. But still he told the guards to untie him and he'd take them there and when the men with guns told Kie to simply beat the information out of him since some of the passages were padlocked, she snapped at them to untie him and follow.
That made a procession through the house, down hallways I'd seen and into those I hadn't. Cole and I at the head of the parade, not touching, not doing anything to show we were together or might mean anything to each other. Giving nothing more away that Kie could use against us.
In truth, I didn't know what we meant to each other. But if nothing else, we were united against Kie, and that she'd already know.
The room Cole took us to was a workout room, probably for yoga as well as martial arts. It was an interior room, but light and sunny with a sun roof of the kind that indoor pools have in swanky hotels in Nevada. There were pads stacked up against the wall, a couple of inches thick and covered with fake leather, used for gymnastics training and the kind of martial arts where people throw and other people do the falling. There were some chairs along the edges.
Otherwise, it was empty.
I nodded, half to myself. The whole setup had a very two enter, one leaves feeling to it, which I was pretty sure was a paraphrased motto from a Chuck Norris movie. Fitting.
Turning back to Kie, I said, "Stakes? Rules?"
She laughed. "Rules: Fight till one of us is dead. Stakes: The lives of everybody else."
If I weren't imagining things, two of her four guards looked at each other. Made sense. Kie had been considered dead in Paris. Vincent really was. So maybe whatever guards these were, they'd been hired since she surfaced again in the States.
I hoped so. Because fresh hires wouldn't feel any kind of loyalty to more than a paycheck. If she started acting like their stake in it was to die for their mistress, maybe they'd turn. If we were all locked in here together, maybe they'd change in our favor.
And whatever else happened, as long as Cole's men weren't dead, they'd be recovering and finding a way to get to us. Not that I thought all the shooting between the two groups of guards would be beneficial to anybody's health.
But it would be nice to have our guards in charge again.
Our! … Cole's.
"Not good enough." From peripheral vision I could see Cole watching me, shaking his head. Did he want me to fight to the death?
Sounding bored, Kie asked what my terms were.
"That no one here is killed. Not Cole, not his guards, not me."
Her lip rose as if she were snarling. "You want me to believe you won't try to kill me?"
"I didn't before."
"You thought I was dead before."
It would have been simpler if she didn't know that.
I just repeated, "No one here gets killed. Not Cole, not his guards, not me. If you win. If I win, I'm not killing anybody who doesn't do something that warrants killing. For my safety and the safety of the people who belong here."
She nodded. "If I win, you come with me."
"I thought the whole point was that you won."
"And you upped the stakes. In or out?"
"You'd leave everyone who belongs here, Cole and his men, untouched, unharmed, still alive?"
"Yes."
"And I go with you where?"
"I refuse to tell you that. Please remember we have all the guns. I don't have to meet any rules. I don't have to have a contest. I don't have to leave anybody alive. But I won't kill you here."
Didn't mean she wouldn't kill me somewhere else. But I was running out of time and options.
We were agreed.
We stood in the center of the room, flanked by her guards standing watch from the walls, backs to plaster, holding up their guns at some kind of military parade rest. There were no referees and no judges. Only the two of us, facing off.
It was Cole who called out the commands. Facing each other, we both bowed deeply, eyes to the floor, showing the respect that said the other person wouldn't start fighting ahead of time, wouldn't take the moment of diverted vision to strike first.
I was surprised when Kie didn't take that chance. I hadn't thought she possessed honor.
Neither Cole nor I knew what style of martial art Kie had studied. TaeKwon-Do is Korean, so the commands Cole would ordinarily give would be in that idiom. Likewise, I had no idea what nationality Kie was or if she'd been born in the States. Maybe she spoke an Asian language. Maybe like me, she only spoke English. If her martial art wasn't Korean, the Korean commands would make no sense. Cole chose to give directions in English.
Attention.
Ready stance.
Begin.
We were both instantly in motion, circling each other, looking for an opening. I hadn't been to class in a while but everything came back at once as if I'd never left. I remembered how to split and widen my vision so I could take in the room around me, scanning for potential hazards, things that could trip me up or block my path, people who might get in the way or actively interfere.
At the same time, the majority of my attention was on her, watching as we began circling each other like alley cats about to break into a full-on cat fight. My feet were still bare, which was natural for TKD. The floor under them was sun warmed.
Fighting was natural too. Sparring. Even with someone I didn't like.
There was nothing natural about what was going on here today, though.
I threw a punch, a feint, testing her reaction time and her response. She moved away from it like she was Gumby, her limbs made of something insubstantial that didn't need to take up space in the real world.
I frowned, tried a kick. She just wasn't there again.
Shit. She flowed out of nowhere and made first contact, tagging me with the back of her hand, a little slap to the temple, just her fingers like a mother might tag a child who wasn't listening.
It was a brag. She touched me first.
It was also a bad thing. I watched as she moved. Best guess, she was trained in one of the "soft" Chinese styles, Kung Fu or the like. I'd fought a visiting student at my school several years ago in Seattle. He'd been a guest, come to class for the hell of it, and I thought he’d studied a Shaolin style of Kung Fu. Whatever it was, he actually said the point of some moves was to "flow like seaweed." Which sounded absurd and like a quote from a badly dubbed Bruce Lee movie.
But it was nearly impossible to make contact with seaweed as ii flowed. He’d definitely won our sparring match. His name was Dan and he didn't appear to be unbeatable at the outset. He had curly brown hair and a slim, unimpressive body.
He won a lot.
Dan hadn't been trying to kill me.
I let Kie come close to me. Watching how she moved, I looked for tells. She didn't have many of them, but she did look where she wanted to hit before she did so. That would help. For now all I wanted to do was dance and watch her.