Tempted by Fate Read Free Page A

would only speak with her face-to-face.
    A trap set by the Bad Man? Likely. But what else could she do? She had to check it out. So she’d taken the first flight out to the West Coast.
    And now here she was, hiking up a pitch-black hill at two in the morning.
    “At least it’s not the Golden Gate Bridge,” she whispered to herself. That was where her informant had wanted to meet. She shuddered. Crossing all that steel would have been a bitch. Anytime she was around too much metal, it became difficult to perform. Metal chops wood, just like a child’s Rochambeau.
    Willow crested the hill. Ahead of her, two figures sat on a bench.
    Her broadsword-shaped birthmark, the mark of a Guardian, stung. An internal warning system. One that had been clanging in alarm ever since she stepped foot in the city.
    “At least here there are plenty of weapons.” She touched the low branch of a tree and headed to the two shadows. They didn’t move or acknowledge her presence.
    She stopped. “Something is so wrong,” she muttered. She let
mù ch’i
branch out to the two figures. The scroll’s energy coursed through her, jagged and uneven.
    Her mother had taught her that everything had energy—even plastic and other man-made materials had energy to some degree. Drawing on the energy of trees came naturally to the Guardian of the Book of Wood, but it took skill to read and manipulate energy from other sources. Skill she didn’t have, because her mother hadn’t been around to help her perfect her technique. Hence, the occasional fitful starts when she used
mù ch’i
.
    She was better, though. But she wasn’t delusional enough to think she could ever be as good as her mom.
    Through the force of her will,
mù ch’i
mellowed into a smooth flow, extending to the figures on the bench.
    But she felt nothing, which meant the two bodies ahead were dead. “Damn it.”
    The faint wail of sirens overrode the soft whisper of the wind in the trees. She paused, listening.
    They were headed toward the park.
    “Damn it.” She hurried to the bodies, yanking her leather gloves on. The one on the right was the man she’d hired. Half his head was bashed in, but there was enough of him intact for her to ID him from the pictures she’d seen.
    Always make sure you know who’s working for you. She’d found that out the hard way.
    She patted him down, while taking in the scene carefully. Staged. Because someone wanted to set her up? If the approaching sirens were any indication, the answer would be yes.
    She took his wallet and slipped it into her pocket before turning her attention to the other guy. Presumably, the informant. He was less messy, with a thin line of blood trickling from a small hole in his head. Bullet, 9mm. Professional.
    The sirens stopped abruptly.
    They were here.
    Through the trees, she caught flashes of red and blue lights. They’d probably parked at the top of the hill, at the park’s east entrance.
    “Which means they’ll be on my ass in minutes,” she said, transferring everything from the informant’s pockets to hers.
    A card fluttered to the ground. The wind grabbed hold, but just before it got lost in the night, Willow caught it and stuck it in her already stuffed pockets. Taking in the scene one more time, she turned and strode toward the copse of trees and bushes just beyond the scene. She stepped behind a five-foot-tall bush. Not tall enough to hide her five-ten frame, she let
mù ch’i
reach inside the plant and urge it higher until its branches provided enough coverage without obscuring her view.
    She tugged off her gloves and touched her long hair. The white-blond was like a beacon in the night, but she never covered it. It’d become something of a calling card. Plus, it tied her to her mother in one more way. Just to be safe, she encouraged extra foliage to sprout in front of her.
    Two cops huffed up the hill a moment later. It seemed they knew exactly where to find the bodies.
    “Of course they did,” she