by Kailin Gow
“I’ve been waiting for this chance since first learning about this crime ring. I’m not about to let this chance pass me by.”
“Okay. I’m on board, but reluctantly so. It’s too dangerous, Zara.”
“It’s the break I’ve been waiting for to infiltrate, Leo. It’ll be worth it if I can crack this crime ring and get to the bottom of it all…”
Leo sighed. “What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing. Just hang back.”
He seemed uncertain.
“And don’t worry about being protected. Peter’s great at what he does and he’ll look out for you while I’m in with these guys. Just relax and trust him.”
Leo grimaced. “I’d much rather have you looking out for me.”
“No,” she corrected. “You’d rather have me at your beck and call. You’d rather have me following you around, dressing up the way you want and being the pretty little thing on your arm.”
“Seriously, Zara.”
“Seriously, Leo. I have to do this. Go back to your office, talk to Peter and tell him where I am. Everything will be fine.” She turned away.
“Zara,” Leo called.
She turned back to him. “What?”
“They saw you running away with me. Won’t that make them suspicious?”
Taking in his words, she stopped a moment.
“I know you really want to bust this ring, but it all seems so risky and dangerous.” He walked right up to her and slipped his hands around her waist pulling her closer.
She instantly remembered the hot and steamy kiss they’d shared and longed to share another. Her heart beat with tons of adrenaline and the thrill of the hunt as she considered infiltrating the crime ring, but it also beat for him; this man who was at once strong and sexy, yet so sensitive and caring.
“I know what I’m doing, Leo. I promise. Everything will run smoothly. That’s my grandmother in that operating room. It’s only natural that I come back to check up on her. They won’t suspect a thing because I won’t do anything to compromise my chance of becoming one of them.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” he said as he pulled her closer.
“I don’t want anything to happen to me, either.” Though she tried to laugh off his concern, her heart was thrilled by it. She shivered beneath his intense touch and knew it would be so easy to succumb to him.
“I couldn’t live with myself if you got hurt because of me,” he whispered.
“This is my job, Leo. Whether it’s to save you, or any other citizen, this is what I have to do.” Though she tried to sound flippant, she was struck by the emotions in his eyes.
He pulled in closer, his lips just inches from hers. She could smell him, the sweet scent of his expensive cologne over the strong masculine scent of the man he was.
“Leo,” she said in a husky voice that didn’t belong to her. Breathing became difficult, talking was impossible and thinking clearly was out of the question. All that mattered in that moment were his lips so close to hers. All the mattered were his hands over her body, and her hands that longed to return the favor. All that mattered was him, right there, so close to her. “I’m trying to do my job as best as…”
He cupped her face and gently brought his lips over hers.
Her body’s response was electric and she let out an enraptured sigh as the small, gentle kiss became a passionate and all-consuming embrace. His soft lips coddled hers while his tongue explored her mouth, drawing gasp after gasp of pleasure and desire.
All the tension of the past day and night melted away as she pressed into him, reveling in his strength and eager to discover more. She let go of her concern for her ailing grandmother, set aside her confused feelings for Peter and simply concentrated on Leo and his mouth, and his tongue, and his lips.
“Oh, Leo,” she moaned as she tried to regain some sort of composure. “I have to… This isn’t the time for… Oh, I just can’t. Not now. Not here.”
“And yet I want to do so much more than just kiss you. I want to devour you, to taste every inch of you. I want to run my tongue up your thigh and really make you groan with pleasure.”
Shocked, she looked up at him. “Leo!”
“Don’t play innocent. Your kiss was the fiery and passionate kiss of a woman in need, not the shy embrace of a young girl who can’t.”
“Still…”
“All I want to do is take you away from this stinky hospital and carry you into a luxurious hotel room. I want to lay with you, sleep with you, hold you in my arms until the sun comes up.” A devilish grin curved his lips. “I want to feel your body pressed up against mine…naked and glowing with after-sex sweat.”
“Leo.” She took a step back, horrified not so much by his words, but by her body’s reaction to them. Her thighs clenched and she felt a definite patch of moisture in her panties. “I can’t be thinking of all this right now.”
“Then just tell me you want me.”
“What?”
“Just tell me you want me, Zara.”
“Leo. I don’t have time to play games.”
“Say it.”
Licking her lips, she tried to muster up the nerve to lie to him, but she knew her body had already betrayed her. “Yes, but not like this. My grandmother is probably out of surgery by now and she’ll be waking up soon. I want to be there when she wakes up.”
“You won’t be able to if those goons snatch you up.”
“I’ll just have to hope they’ll be reasonable and let me see her before they cart me away.”
“All right, but I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Leo, this is serious police business, not some action movie set. You said so yourself; things don’t always go as planned. The bullets that come out of their guns are real. The blood that spills at the hands of these men is real. And when someone falls to the ground dead, they don’t get back up when the director yells ‘cut’. So please, stay out of it and let me do my job.”
For a moment he looked hurt, then angry, then offended. Zara wanted to laugh by the array of emotions her comment garnered. “No offense,” she said.
“I’m not just a lowly actor who pretends to know a few karate moves. I can defend myself and I can protect you, as a man who cares for a woman should.”
Zara didn’t know what to say. Flattered by his words, she knew she still had to look at the situation with a professional eye.
“I know you're tough, Zara, and you're well trained, but I saw you when those men dragged you to the elevator. I also felt the fear. The fear of what could happen to you if they walked out of here with you.” He brushed the back of his fingers along her cheek. “Don’t you see? I’ve finally found a woman I care about, and you're asking me to let her walk into danger… and for what? So she can protect me? No, I’m the one who should be protecting you.”
He pulled her in for a long, hard kiss filled with love and tenderness. “I want to protect you. I want to keep you safe.” He looked intently into her eyes. “Don’t you get it? I want you, Zara.”
“That doesn’t make sense. We just met a few...”
“I’ve spent more time with you these past weeks than with anyone else… ever. But it’s not the amount of time we’ve spent together that really matters, it’s how I’ve felt every single time. You make me forget that I’m an action movie star. With you I’m not the heir to Lee Holdings. I’m just a man, relaxed, and happy, and normal. I’m myself, the good and not so good real self. You’ve been around me when I’m angry, and impatient…” He smiled remembering the first time she walked into his office. “And even hung over.”
And almost completely naked, Zara wanted to add.
“I’m flattered you feel so comfortable around me, but that still doesn’t…”
She heard the familiar ring tone of her phone and cast a curious glance at Leo’s breast pocket, the source of the sound.
Rather sheepishly, he pulled it out an
d handed it to her. “I found it in the cafeteria when I was looking for you. You must’ve been really concerned about your grandmother to leave it behind like that.”
She nodded and took the phone. “It’s the hospital,” she said as she looked at the screen. “Hello, yes. Yes, I’m at the hospital at this very moment. I’ll be right there.” Looking up at Leo, she slipped the phone into her pocket. “She’s out of surgery, and should be waking up any minute now, but the doctor wants to talk to me.”
“Perfect. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Okay.” She no longer had time to argue the point. “But keep a reasonable distance.”
“As far away as I can while still keeping an eye on you.”
“If it makes you feel better, but just so you know, I won the Iron Fist Martial Arts Championship two years in a row a few years back. I may be petite, but I can pack a punch. Believe it or not, I can throw down a man three times my size. I’ve learned to take pretty good care of myself, Mr. Action Movie Star.”
“I don’t doubt that you’re a dynamo, but I’ll still be close by.” Leo kissed her forehead then urged her forward.
Eager to learn about her grandmother’s status, she headed to the room the doctor had asked her to meet him in; down the hall, first door around the corner.
After knocking lightly, she opened the door expecting to see her grandmother lying in bed with the doctor at her side, but the sole bed in the darkened room was empty and there was no one in the room. “Grandma?” she called. Seeing a narrow door by the far wall, she walked to it and opened it, expecting to see a small bathroom, but it was a dark linen closet filled with stacks of rolled up sheets.
Confused, she took a step back, but before she could turn around a black hood fell over her head, instantly blinding her. She tried to scream, but a thick hand pressed over her mouth as another hand pushed her head up against the wall.
Her hands were roughly yanked behind her back and handcuffs were squeezed tight over each wrist. Fighting to free herself, Zara kicked as best she could, but with every jagged breath she inhaled of the strange herbal scent that filled the cloth hood, she felt sleepier and sleepier.
Chapter 9
Leo
Leo watched Zara round the corner then hurried to take a peek into the corridor she’d taken. In the distance, he saw her stop before a door, tap gently on it and entered.
He waited a moment or two before taking to the corridor, whistling a light tune as he nonchalantly made his way to the door. Putting on the charm, he smiled at a passing nurse, and nodded politely at an old man who seemed in a rush to find a bathroom, something for which the hospital seemed to be sorely lacking.
Still whistling, he arrived at the door Zara had disappeared behind. For a quiet moment he listened at the door, expecting to hear the doctor give Zara an update on her grandmother’s status, but there was only silence, hard, cold silence.
A chill ran up the back of his neck and he knew something was wrong. Not bothering to knock, he opened the door to find it completely empty save for a small, vacant bed.
“Zara,” he called out though he didn’t truly expect a response. He opened the door to a closet filled with bed linens, then opened the door beside it. It opened onto an adjacent room, something akin to an office, with filing cabinets and a few small tables, but no desk. “Zara.”
It couldn’t be. She couldn’t have disappeared so fast. He was right there. If anyone had emerged into the corridor, from any room, he would have seen them. He returned to the hall and investigated a few more rooms, but only found bedridden patients.
Maybe he’d been mistaken from the start. The corridor was long… maybe she’d taken another door, maybe…
He approached the nurse’s station.
“Please, I’m looking for Zara Zee. Her grandmother just came out of surgery.”
The nurse smiled, more star struck than helpful. “Zara who?”
“Zara Zee.”
The nurse looked down at her list of patients. “The only patient to recently come out of surgery is in room eleven.” She pointed down the hall. “It’s right down there.”
“Thank you.” He rushed off, counting down the rooms as he went. Twenty-one, nineteen, fourteen. Eleven. He stopped and took a deep breath. She’d better be in there.
He quietly opened the door. A small old woman slept soundly in the middle of the bed, but no Zara. Taking a step closer to the woman, he wondered if it was really Zara’s grandmother. Perhaps the nurse was mistaken, but no. There was no mistake. The woman was old, but her skin was tight along her cheekbones, cheekbones as high and aristocratic as Zara’s, and her lips still retained their youthful pucker, so similar to the lips he’d just kissed.
It was as if he were looking into Zara’s future. “Not bad,” he said as he had an instant glimpse of his life with Zara, growing old with her. “But where the hell are you?”
Lost and confused, he returned to the first room and examined it more closely. Then he saw it; a window by the far corner. It opened onto the vacant lot beside the hospital. It was wide open and just outside, below the window sill, were two sets of extra large footsteps clearly stamped into the damp mud.
Taking a step back, he slipped on something and almost fell back. On the floor at his feet was a small chocolate pearl, just like the ones that had dangled from the earrings he’d bought her on their shopping spree. His heart pounded at the thought of the struggle that had ripped the precious pearl from her ear. But then he noticed where the struggle had ceased.
A flurry of short scuff marks marred the floor around the pearl, but two long black streaks led from the fallen pearl to the open window. “What’d they do to you, baby?”
Feeling panicked and guilty, he pulled out his phone and called his office.
“Lee Holdings. How may I…”
“It’s Lee,” Leo cut in. “Is Peter Brock around?”
“He’s standing right in front of me.”
“Put him on.”
“Hello,” the British voice said.
“Peter, it’s Lee.”
“Well, well, well. Mr. Lee. You're a clever gent, aren’t you?”
“No time for games, Brock. Zara just went missing.”
“She what?”
“I was right behind her as she went in to see her grandmother, but when I walked into the room not long after, she was gone. Nothing in the room. Nobody.”
“You're at the hospital?”
“Yes,” he said with irritation.
“You escaped my watchful eye so you could go out looking for Zara? I should’ve known. I thought I’d noticed something odd in your eyes when I mentioned her name.”
“Did you hear me? She’s gone.”
“Maybe she just gave you the slip. Zara can be very hard headed when she chooses to be.”
“Listen closely. I found her sleeping in the waiting room. I stepped out for a minute and when I returned two burly men were carting her off. I managed to snatch her back, but we overheard them talking. They had a plan to get her, to get her to work for them. She knowingly walked into their trap thinking she could outsmart them, but it looks like they're having the last laugh.”
“Zara’s highly trained. No one could simply…”
“But they did. Are you going to just stay there and argue the point or are you going to do something about it?”
“Don’t move. I’ll be right there. Stay put.”
Leo hung up, but staying put was out of the question. He had to do something. He jumped out the window and tried to track the footsteps as long as he could, but the moment they hit the pavement, there was nothing else to follow. Slowly filling with desperation, he returned to the open window and crawled back in. “What happened in here?” He looked around the barren room, taking a close look at everything. There had to be something he hadn’t noticed before.
Then his eye finally caught on a flash of white under the bed. He bent down to pick up a small slip of paper, hoping it held relevant inf
ormation.
Da Hwa Factory.
Leo stared at the letterhead and frowned. The name was familiar, too familiar. He knew he’d heard it before, but couldn’t remember where or in what context. Closing his eyes, he replayed news reports from television and articles he’d read in the paper, all while knowing the name should mean so much more than that.
Lee Holdings. Da Hwa had something to do with Lee Holdings. He quickly ran through some of the more recent meetings he’d attended and finally remembered when he’d heard the name. Da Hwa had been the main topic of one of those meetings, but why?
It suddenly came to him and he opened his eyes to stare at the letterhead. He owned Da Hwa Factory, but that didn’t explain how the company’s letterhead ended up in the very spot where Zara had disappeared?
Once again, he pulled out his phone. “Liu. Take out everything you have on Da Hwa Factory and put it on my desk.”
“Sir? Everything?”
“Everything.” He hung up and turned around to see Peter walking in.
Chapter 10
Leo
“You shouldn’t have given me the slip like that,” Peter said with a frown. He stood at the door with his feet firmly planted on the old linoleum floor.
“Sometimes a man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do.”
“No. Sometimes billionaire playboys think they can do whatever the hell they choose to do. Just because you're the heir to Lee Holdings doesn’t give you the right to play with Hong Kong’s police department any way you please. This isn’t all fun and games, you know. This isn’t a movie set.”
“I know.”
“Then act like it. Zara and I are risking our lives to protect you. The least you can do is keep the risks at a minimum. Running off like you did puts us all in danger.” Peter walked around and looked closely at the room before bending down to examine the scuff marks on the floor. “This is where they got her, isn’t it?”
Leo nodded.
“Looks like she managed to put up some kind of fight.”
“She didn’t make it easy for them.”
Peter reached for the wastebasket in the corner and inspected the contents. Seeing something interesting, he pulled a pair of disposable chopsticks from his breast pocket.
