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  Chapter Nine

  Katsuya and his limo driver head toward Katsuya’s private limousine. Glass and other debris from the explosion cover the top of the car.

  “Quick, driver! We need to get to the estate ASAP!”

  The driver opens the door for Katsuya and he gets in. The driver shuts the door behind him. Katsuya hears a too familiar thud. Seconds later, the glass separating the front and back of the limo rolls down. Century is behind the wheel, “How ya doing Kats? Going somewhere are we? I got the perfect place. How about the bottom of South Schaub Ocean?” All the doors lock and Century slams on the gas.

  Katsuya is scared, “Why are you doing this? What have I done?”

  “You’re behind all this.”

  With a look of total disbelief Katsuya asks, “What? What in the world are you talking about?”

  “How else did she know the exact location of each board member, deactivate alarms that she’s never seen before, manage to park a motorcycle in the bushes not even two hundred feet from the building and make it either on top or inside each building undetected.”

  “I told you before. She was built to be the best.”

  “And I might have believed that until the last one. You said that missions and other information was as easy as click and pull right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So in the simplest terms, she was programmed?”

  “Yes, I guess so.”

  Century whips the car around a curve going fifty plus. “So then explain how she planned this last one. She knew that the gas would affect everyone but me. Knowing that Baino would be unable to move himself and that I would have to carry him out, most likely on my shoulder with his face back. Also that once in the hallway I would choose the shortest and safest route to remove him before he suffered severe neurological damage, which is where she waited patiently for me to pass. Sounds like one hell of a program, huh?”

  Katsuya sounds impress, “Ingenious. She was programmed to improvise, but I’m impressed.”

  Century rolls down the window and taunts, “Oh that salt-water smell. Intoxicating isn’t it?”

  Panic returns back to Jin Jun’s voice, “I assur.... I mean I’m telling you the truth that I had no part of any plans to kill Baino or any of our board members.”

  “And also it seems that every time that we met, Shadow had some neat cool device that you failed to mention.”

  “I told you I had nothing to do with that. I believe that someone in our corporation is a mole.”

  “How convenient, Kats. Well I hope you can hold your breath pretty long, as in years.”

  The limo smashes through a barrier and onto a long dock.

  “You’re insane! I’m telling you the truth!” Katsuya’s eyes get bigger as he sees the ocean growing bigger. Shouting out in desperate plea, “Why would I have anything to do with my own father’s death?”

  “What are you gabbing about?”

  In a solemn tone, Katsuya answers, “My father...my father is the fifth member.”

  Century slams on the brakes, “What? I thought your father was dead? It was all over the news and you said so yourself.”

  “My father is alive.”

  “But how? Explain or swim!”

  “For one reason or another our particular family has never gotten along with the other families. We tolerated them and they tolerated us. A rumor got around that father was turning state’s evidence against several of the other families but he wasn’t. The Kairasha family sent an assassin to set a car bomb to kill my father before he was rumored to testify. Luckily for us the assassin that they sent was a friend from my childhood and he owned my family and me her life for helping her mother one time. She couldn’t set the bomb. We staged my father’s death so that he could run the company from secrecy. My father was so outraged that another family tried to kill him, that we started the Shadow project and used the turmoil followed by a boss’s death to explain the monetary loss. Shadow was created with the sole purpose of eliminating the other family heads without being traced back to us. An assassin with no family ties, no emotions and no loyalties to anyone except us.”

  “Keep going.”

  “If it was ever found out that my father’s death was a hoax, the whole Shadow project could have blown up in our faces. So when she disappeared, we had to double our efforts to keep my father a secret.”

  “Do you think that another family kidnapped her and reprogrammed her?”

  “Yes. I believe it is the Kairasha family.”

  Century thinks to himself, “That would explain her disappointment with Baino’s head. She was looking for Kats Sr.”

  Katsuya continues, “I have several employees that I have had suspicions about, but they are not my concern at the moment. My concern is my father who I believed Shadow is after as we speak. I was headed to my estate where my father is at before you abducted me.”

  “How does she know he’s alive and where he‘s at?”

  “Like I stated earlier. I believe there is a mole.”

  Century backs the limo off the dock and they head to the Katsuya Estate.