Chapter 2

Mikan Sakura jammed a strawberry stick among the ice cubes and the slice of orange in her tall glass of sweet tea punch and sat back in the old wicker rocker on the front porch of her family's 1918 log house. The air was warm, not to hint yet of the heat and humidity that would come with the middle Kyoto summer, and the sky was washed from yesterday's rain. A gentle breeze floated up from the river and brought with it the faint scent of roses.

Somewhere nearby, a mockingbird sang.

Mikan had warned herself to be prepared for the worst when she came home. Leaks in the roof, un-mowed grass, bats, mice, and food rotting in the refrigerator – her parents had last been in Northern Woods in early April, though they wouldn't necessarily notice such things or have them tended to. But they'd hired a new "gardener" as her mother called the property manager, and he seemed to be working out. He hadn't disappeared yet, as so many of his predecessors had, and he was at his good job. The lawn was manicured; the flower and vegetable gardens were in top shape, and the house was in good repair on what a perfect early May afternoon.

The Sakura's had arrived on the Northern Woods in the late eighteen century and had been there since , sometimes eking out a living, sometimes managing quite nicely – always having adventures and too often dying young.

After just one sip of her tea punch, Mikan resolved not to drink the entire pitcher by herself. It was even sweeter than she remembered. She'd come home last at Christmas, but the tea punch was a summer treat. She'd only made it to Northern Woods once the previous summer, whirlwind visit that did not involve a leisurely afternoon on the porch.

The porch was shaded by a massive oak that she and her brother, Ruka, used to climb as children, but even the lower branch is was too high now. They'd sneak up there and spy on Oba-san Sakura and their father, arguing politics on the porch, or their mother as she snapped beans and hummed to herself, thinking she was alone.

Mikan had made the tea punch herself, dunking tea bags into Oba-san's old sun-tea bottle and setting it out on the Porch for an hour, then adding the litany of ingredients – frozen tangerine juice and lemon juice, mint extract, spices, sugar. She knew not to ponder too much or she'd never drink the stuff. She never had an urge for sweet tea punch except when she was home in Kyoto.

Her friends in Scotland had made faces when she'd describe Oba-san's recipe. Do you waste proper tea on it?" Well no. She didn't. She used the cheapest tea bags she could find.

She took her friends' chiding in stride. It wasn't as if they didn't have oddities in their comfort cuisine.

She'd spent two weeks in Scotland in the fall and the past three months straight, working nonstop, completing – yes that was the word, she told her self – the final project series of the projects under on huge heading: The Anju's House. How dry and Ordinary it sounded. Yes it had consumed her since high school, before she even knew what historical archeology was.

The Anjus had arrived on the Northern Wood not that long after the Sakura's . Mikan knew their family history, the history of their post – civil war house downriver, of the land it was built on, better than she did her own. She'd written articles and papers, she'd done interviews and research; she'd organized archeological digs on the site; she'd preserved documents and artifacts: she'd scrambled for grants; she'd helped create a private trust worked with the state and federal government to preserve Anju house as an historical site: and now produced a documentary that took the family back to its roots in Japan.

It was time to move on. Find something else to do.

She had no idea what but pushed back any thought of possibilities before it could explode into a full-blown obsession, as it had on the long trip home from Scotland. What would she do now? Teach full-time? Work for a foundation? A museum? Find a new project?

Have a life?

Mikan yanked her strawberry stick out of her glass and licked the end of it, watching dappled shade on the rich, green lawn. She wondered if her grandfather, who'd built the log house in order to attract a bride, had ever imagined that dams would raise the river and bring it closer to the front porch, if he'd ever pictured how beautiful the landscape would be almost a hundred years later – if he'd ever guessed that his family would become so attached to it. Mikan had never known him. He'd died an early tragic death like so many Sakuras before him.

When she was a little girl, she'd believe stories that the logs for the house had come from trees cut down, blown down or otherwise destroyed when the Japanese Army Corps of engineers dammed up the Northern Woods for flood control and hydroelectric power, until she realize that the dams had been built decades after the house.

More than most in the middle of Kyoto, her family had a flare storytelling and would go to great lengths, including embellishment, to make an already good story better.

She was convinced it was one of the reason her father was such a natural diplomat. He didn't necessarily believe anything anyone told him, but at the same time, he didn't condemn them for stretching the truth, exaggerating, tweaking and otherwise making what they had to say suits their ends. To Izumi Sakura, that was all perfectly normal.

Mikan had no intention of making researching her own family her next career. It was enough to have researched her Northern Woods neighbors – especially when the last of the Anjus had been elected to the Imperial Palace. She'd promised Narumi Anju – Prime Minister Anju – that he could be the first to view her documentary, which was finished, edited, done. But he couldn't ask her to change anything.

That was the deal.

A mockingbird was singing somewhere nearby. Mikan smiled, watching a boat make its way to its way upriver along the steep bluffs on the opposite bank, and drank more of her tea. Maybe it wasn't too sweet, after all.

Maybe, despite having nothing particular to do, this time she wouldn't get herself into trouble. She'd never done well with time on her hands. She hated being bored. She like in dependence her work afforded her, being her own boss, making her natural impulsiveness a virtue rather than a liability. Some of her best work had started out as wild-goose chases. But when she had no focus, nothing to anchor her, her impulsiveness hadn't always served her well. Once, she tried building her own boat and nearly drowned. Another time she'd tried her hand at frog-gigging and came up with a leg full of leeches. Then there was the time she'd ended up, on a whim, in Peru with nowhere near enough money to get by.

No affairs, anyway. She'd learn not to be impulsive with men.

The telephone rang, interrupting her mind wandering. She set her glass on a rickety old table and reached for the ancient, heavy dial phone that had been wired up for the porch for as long as she could remember. It would never die. The phone company would have to come for it and tell them they couldn't use it anymore.

It was probably a solicitor. Not many people knew she was home. Her parents, but they were in America. Ruka, but he was on duty in Tokyo he'd promised to get up there soon to see him. Her Scottish friends.

The Prime minister, except Narumi Anju didn't call that often.

Virtually none of her Kyoto friends and relatives knew she was back in the Northern Woods. It had been a week – she had only just recovered from jet lag.

She lifted the receiver, but didn't get a chance to say hello. "Mikan." She barely recognized her brother. "God…" His voice was weak, breathless.

Mikan gripped the phone hard. "Ruka? What's wrong? What-"

"I made Natsume call you. I… damn."

"Are you in Tokyo?" She could hear sirens in the background, people shouting, and felt panic rising in her throat. "Ruka, talk to me! What's going on? Who's Natsume?"

A fat bumble bee landed on the rim of her tea glass. She couldn't breathe, couldn't think as she waited for her brother to answer.

"I've been shot. I'll be okay"

"Ruka!" She jumped to her feet. "Ruka, where are you? What can I do?"

Another voice came into the line. "Miss Sakura? Natsume Hyuuga. I work with your brother. Is someone there with you?"

"No. No, I'm here alone. Ruka-"

"He wanted you to hear the news from him. A paramedic's with him now. We've got to go. I'll call you as soon as I can with more information."

"Wait – don't hang up! Where was he shot? How bad is it?"

"He took a bullet to the left upper abdomen." Natsume Hyuuga's voice was professional, unemotional, but Mikan thought she heard ripple of something else. Pain, dread. "Paramedics are coming for me. Sorry, I've got to go. We'll get you more information. I promise."

His words sank in. "Have you been shot, too? My God-"

The line went dead.

Mikan's hand shook so badly she had trouble cradling the receiver. Was Natsume Hyuuga another Agent? She knew very little about her brother's work. He knew even less about hers. Historical archeology – he'd say he didn't know what it was. Traditional archeology studies prehistoric people and cultures. Historical archeology is a sub-discipline of archeology that studies people and culture that existed during recorded history.

She'd given Ruka that explanation dozens of times.

He chased fugitives. Armed and Dangerous fugitives. She knew that much.

Her teeth were chattering, and she was pacing.

Gulping for air.

"Mikan-chan?"

Tsubasa Ando, her parents' new property manager, walked slowly up the porch steps, his concern evident. He had on his habitual overalls and Kyoto Titans shirt, his dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. He was fair and lean and had a black star tattoo on his upper left cheek below the eye.

"Mikan-chan, you don't look so good." He spoke. "Is there anything I can for you?"

"I need - " she took in another breath, but couldn't seem to get any air. It was as if her entire body was trying to absorb the shock of Ruka's call. "I need to wait for a phone call. My brother…" She couldn't finish, just kept trying to get air into her lungs.

The old porch floor, painted a dark evergreen, creak under Tsubasa's weight. He was a year or two than she was twenty-four and smaller. Her parents had found him down the dock fishing when they were for a few days. Trespassing, really, but he'd explained that he'd just move to Kyoto and was looking for work. Since they'd come home to a leaky ceiling in the living room and an overgrown yard, they offered him a job. He'd worked hard every day since Mikan arrived in the Northern Woods a week ago. He lived in the Oba-chan Sakura's old cottage down by the river, close to the woods between the Sakuras and the Anju.

Oba –chan had lost a husband in a logging accident, a son in the World War II. Her surviving son's first wife had died after a struggle with multiple sclerosis. Oba-chan built the cottage for herself.

Mikan knew the story of how her father had almost withered away here in Northern Woods after his wife's/her mother's death, until he meet Ruka's mother, twelve years his junior, the young and vibrant Yuka Azumi a women even Oba-chan had come to believe had change the Sakura luck.

Mikan could feel her heart thumping in her chest.

Not another Sakura tragedy…not Ruka…

What about your brother, Mikan-chan?"

Tsubasa was invariably polite and deferential. She suspected he was a country musician looking for a big break in Kyoto. She'd heard him play acoustic guitar on the cottage porch early in the morning and late in the evening.

"Mikan-chan?"

"Ruka – he's been shot."

The words felt no less surreal now that she'd said them herself.

Biting back tears, trying to breathe normally, she told Tsubasa about her brother's call from Tokyo, Natsume Hyuuga, and his promise to call her as soon as possible.

"What a shame Mikan. What a crying shame." He shook his head and exhaled forcefully, as if it would ease his own tension. "Who'd want to shoot two people like that?"

"Ruka's an Alice Agent. They're called agents. I didn't know that when first started. An Agent spies up each district – they're not deputies. They're appointed by the president. I -" She didn't know what Ruka was doing."

"The agency must have an office in Kyoto. They'll send someone out here. You just sit tight" Tsubasa spoke with confidence as he withdrew a faded blue bandana from his back pocket and wiped away the dirt and grease in his fingers. "You're your brother's closest kin in the company aren't you? The agency will take good care of you."

Mikan's stomach twisted. "My parents. They're in Paris. Oh, God. Who's going to tell them?" "Let the agency do it. You don't have enough information yet. If you try calling now, you'll just scare them, maybe unnecessarily."

Tsubasa's steady manner helped her regain her composure. She felt someone is standing on her chest – she couldn't get air – and made herself breathe from the diaphragm, counting to four as she in haled through her nose, then to eight as she exhaled trough her mouth.

"Ruka was able to talk," she said. "That's a good sign, don't you think?"

"Don't get ahead of yourself. Why don't you go inside and throw some cold water on your face? That always helps me when I've had the rug pulled out from under me."

Cold water. She wondered if she looked as if she was going to pass out.

"Go on," Tsubasa said calmly. "I'll go down to the cottage and get cleaned up, then come back here and stay with you until the agency get here of this agent with you talked to calls back."

"You don't think he will, do you?"

"Not of he was shot, too, Mikan-chan. Doctors and FBI will have him sewn up. Now, go on. One step at a time, okay"

Mikan nodded. "Thank you. Ruka is my stepbrother. Did you know that?"

"I think your mother told me that."

Supposedly. It could have been another in a long string of Sakura enhancements. Although not a blood of Sakura, Yuka Azumi had fallen right in line with that particular Sakura tradition. Even letters and diaries from the nineteenth century that Mikan had uncovered in her Poe research had mentioned the Sakuras and their zest for drama and adventure. They'd made so many bad, romantic, impractical decisions that had led to disaster – which was exactly how their father had viewed Ruka's decision to become an agent. A bad decision that would lead to disaster..

But Mikan didn't know why she'd mentioned that their mothers are different – why she'd even thought of it.

Tsubasa didn't comment and walked back down on the porch steps with the same deliberateness as he'd mounted them. He paused, glancing up at Mikan as if to make sure she hadn't fallen apart in the few seconds he'd had his back turned. She couldn't smile. She couldn't do anything to reassure him.

"A splash of water of cold water, Mikan-chan," he repeated. "It'll help. I'll be back in a few minutes."

She managed to pull open the screen door and step into the front room with its walls of squared logs and thick, white caulking, with its old furnishings and frayed knitted afghans, its threadbare rugs, its wall of framed photographs. Her gaze land on an oval portrait of Granny Sakura at eighty, in her pink sweater and cameo pin, a woman who'd endured so much sorrow and tragedy, who'd nonetheless stayed strong and kept her spirit, her faith.

Mikan ran back to the kitchen and turned on the faucet in the old sink.

"I've been shot. I'll be okay."

Crying, she splashed her face with cold water and prayed those wouldn't be her brother's last words to her.

An hour after Mikan's brother took a bullet in the Central Town Park; two agents arrived at the arrived at the Sakura house in a black government car. They came all the way around to the front porch, which afforded her to give her brother his best and slip out the back door.

He didn't need to be introducing himself to a couple of agents.

As pretty as she was, Mikan looked like hell. Pale, frightened, splotchy-faced from the shock and tears. The other fed shot with her brother – Natsume Hyuuga – hadn't called her back. Understandable . The cable news channels reported that both he and Ruka Nogi were in surgery. Hyuuga was stable. Ruka Nogi was critical and unstable.

If the reporters got it right. There was a lot of confusion and the agents weren't releasing much information.

Tsubasa had talked Mikan into shutting off the television. CNN, MSNBC and FOX were all carrying the story live, with helicopter shots of Central Town Park and manhunt for the sniper. They'd brought in experts to talk about what kind of person would do such a thing and explain what the Alice Agent was.

The repeated footage from the news conference that had preceded shooting and showed Natsume Hyuuga and Ruka Nogi standing behind the mayor, the Agents from their district, the chief alice agent , the assistant director in charge of the FBI, and the Tokyo police commissioner – an impressive gathering of state , federal and local law enforcement types.

Hyuuga was tall, rangy and all business.

Nogi looked like a frat boy.

Every time she saw the footage of her brother, Mikan went a little paler.

A joint FBI, Tokyo Police and Alice Agency news conference was scheduled for the later that night and would, Tsubasa suspected, tell people nothing. The agents would be playing it close to the vest when two of their own had just been picked off in the central town park in the broad daylight.

The all-news networks promised to carry, live, any briefing from the hospital where the two agents were being treated.

As he made his way down his cottage, Tsubasa stayed out of sight of the porch and any windows that could offer the agents a view of him. The breeze had strengthened into a stiff wind, damp and earthy smelling.

He entered through the back door, not making a sound. The cottage was made of the same rough logs as the main house and had an old-lady feel to it. Hand-crocheted afghans in bright, wear-ever yarns, doilies on the on the end tables, pink tile in the bathroom. When she'd shown him the place, Yuka had explained that her mother-in-law had built the cottage for herself after insisting her son live in the main house when returned to Northern Woods with his dying first wife. Even after her daughter-in-law died, Granny Sakura, as she was known by everyone, had stayed on in the cottage until her own death fifteen years ago.

The place has small kitchen, two tiny bedrooms and a front room and small porch that looked out at the river.

It could have been a tent for all Tsubasa cared.

A fishing boat with two old men talking loudly at each other puttered upstream, and Tsubasa had to fight an urge to find a boat and get the hell away from Northern Woods.

Misaki would want him to. Get on with your life. You can't change what happened.

She wouldn't be fooled into believing it was justice he was after.

It was revenge . Absolution for his own guilt.

He pulled himself away from the front window.

Misaki would have loved it here. She'd never been a grasper – she'd talk about quitting the military and getting a little place in the country, having couple of kids. He was the one who wasn't ready to stand down. A couple more years, Misaki. A couple more.

She hadn't had years the last time she'd brought up the subject.

She hadn't had months.

Only days.

And he wasn't with her when she died.

When she was murdered.

Tsubasa grabbed the pair of clippers he'd tossed onto. The kitchen counter earlier and headed back outside. He didn't know as much about gardening as he'd claimed to Izumi and Yuka Sakura, but they'd never bothered to test his knowledge of flowers, trees and shrubs or even check his phony references. He'd made sure he so looked the part of disarming, hard-working good ol' boy that they'd let it go.

He was from Tokyo, but the rest was pure fiction.

Concealed behind a cedar tree, he watched the two agents leave via back door, one of them carrying small suitcase, presumably Mikan's. But instead of following them, she came out onto the porch and trotted down the steps and across the yard to the cottage. "Tsubasa-sempai?" her voice sounded tight but more composed. "Tsubasa-sempai, I'm going to Tokyo to see Ruka. Where – "

He ducked out from his hiding place. "That's good, Mikan-chan."

She almost smiled. "You were right about the agents looking after me. I don't know how long I'll be gone. A few days, at least, I would think."

"You just go on and don't worry about anything here."

She seemed relieved, as if she'd expected him to evaporate on her. "I left my cell phone number on the refrigerator in case you need to reach me. You were right about the agents getting in touch with my parents, too. They just called. They're waiting to get more information after Ruka gets out of the surgery before they decide what to do."

How much information did they need? Their son had been shot. He was in surgery. As far as Tsubasa was concerned, they should get their butts on the plane.

But Izumi Sakura did important works. He was in Paris negotiating world peace or some damn thing. And he was old. A lot older than his wife forty or close to it. It couldn't be easy at that age to drop everything and fly across the Atlantic, even in an emergency.

Tsubasa put aside his disapproval; He didn't know what, if any role the Sakuras had played in his wife's death, only that Misaki had met them in Paris two days before she was killed. He wasn't even sure if the France authorities knew. Or if it mattered. The Sakuras had returned to the country the day after they met with Misaki, the day before she was killed. That was eight months ago. Tsubasa had arrived in Northern Woods in early April to check them out. They'd ended up hiring him/

He hadn't bothered using an alias. The Sakuras showed no sign that Ando was named they ought to know. Maybe Misaki had used alias with them? Maybe they didn't remember her name? They returned to Paris in February and rented an apartment on a canal. Hiring Tsubasa on a quick trip home in April was supposed to give them peace of mind while they were away – it wasn't easy for them to get back to Northern Woods to check on their place. Maybe they didn't know about Misaki's death.

Since coming to Kyoto, Tsubasa learned that the minister of Japan was a family friend who'd grown up next door. He had no idea if that had anything to do with Misaki's death or what he'd do if the secret service decided to check out the Sakura's new gardener.

He'd also searched every inch of the Sakura house.

He gave Mikan a reassuring smile. "I'll take care of the place while you're gone. You just take care of yourself and your brother."

"Thanks sempai. No wonder my parents were thrilled when you agreed to work here. Thanks for everything."

He didn't feel even a twinge of guilt. All Tsubasa needed to do if he felt guilty about duping the Sakura was picture his wife lying in a pool of her own blood. There'd be no civilian life for them. No quiet place in the country. No babies. The investigation into her murder kept hitting brick wall after brick wall. Tsubasa hadn't had an update in weeks. In the meantime, he had his own sources, his own methods. So far, they'd brought him to Northern Woods and the Sakuras.

He hadn't anticipated Ruka Nogi getting shot in Tokyo.

Who? Who was responsible? Did the shooting have anything to do with Misaki's murder?

He could hear her voice. You're grasping at the straws, Tsubasa. Let the authorities do their job.

There wasn't necessarily a connection between what happened to Misaki Ando in Paris eight months ago and what had happened to Ruka Nogi and Natsume Hyuuga in Tokyo that afternoon.

Tsubasa watched the agents' sedan pull out of the long, curving driveway.

Yeah right. He didn't believe in coincidence.

There had to be a connection.

He snipped a dead branch off some kind of white flowering bush. An azalea, probably. He wasn't sure. Some gardener.

He wasn't an investigator by nature or training. He was a search-and-destroy specialist. His wife was the plotter, the thinker, the analyst.

She'd want him to call the police when he found her killer.

But he had a feeling he wouldn't do that.

-End Of Chapter-

Please R&R..