At this place in time, neither of them were foreign to each other. They were just two humans alone in the middle of the sky. The differences between them now were immaterial, like the faint whisper of traffic far below.

He was a scoundrel and a saint and a survivor. A tangled Celtic knot of thorns and roses. Ragged and sincere. It moved her deeply. Like a forgotten melody that suddenly struck a vibrant chord inside her heart. He was almost irresistible.

A lone Japanese man stood on the sidewalk a short distance away. Sleek, self-possessed, dressed in gray. Emma’s lover. Moon’s prime suspect. The man who had once been Dr. Toshi Okada—maimed, supposedly dead, come back alive for revenge.

He attained the highest mastery of Korean martial arts—he could hurl himself through the air and crack cement blocks with his bare hands. In knife-fighting drills, he developed a thousand different reflexes to disarm and stab people. He learned to shoot all manner of firearms…Justin Moon had become the ideal South Korean soldier—with stony strength, quickness, and above all, endurance.

No more lip from you. Otherwise there might be a misunderstanding.” Kika eyed the door. She considered making an escape. “Oh…I forgot to mention something. It’s terribly stormy outside tonight,” said Mitch, with an ominously sweet smile. “It’s raining bullets.