by Amelia Autin
“Do you?”
“Yes, but only because I’ve lived other places. I don’t own a car. So it doesn’t surprise me they took a cab. And, besides, a loitering getaway car would attract more attention, something I’m sure they wanted to avoid.”
Her smile faded, and her dark brown eyes turned deadly serious. “But there’s something else we have to discuss before we go any further. You have some choices to make. And you need to make them now, before we talk with the cabdriver.”
“What choices?”
“Let me call my friend first, get him over here as soon as he’s done with Vanessa and Chet. And you need to talk to the hotel, clear it for Mr. Lin to be free as soon as possible.” She frowned. “It won’t be easy, not without telling them why time is so critical it can’t wait for Mr. Lin to get off work.”
“Leave it to me.” Dirk hadn’t been an international film star this long without at least knowing how to get what he wanted, when he wanted it. He rarely exercised the power that went with his exalted status, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t...or wouldn’t.
* * *
Five minutes later Dirk hung up the phone, having wrung acquiescence from the hotel’s manager for anything he wanted, including Mr. Lin’s time for as long as necessary. And he hadn’t had to go into detail, hadn’t had to explain other than to say it was crucial.
Mei-li had already finished her call, and she told Dirk, “Vanessa and Chet are still there. But as soon as he’s done with them my friend will head over here.”
“Good. Mr. Lin’s time is mine for as long as I need him.” Then he returned to their earlier discussion. “What choices?”
She didn’t miss a beat. “You already told me the only thing you care about at this point is your daughters. I think you really mean it.”
“I do.”
“But we both know, even if you pay the ransom there’s no guarantee they won’t kill your little girls.” Dirk flinched at the direct way she stated this, but knew he had to face the possibility. “Because money isn’t the only motive here. Revenge plays a big part.”
His throat closed, and he could only squeeze out one word. “Yeah.”
“That means you can’t just sit back, pay the ransom, and pray for the best. It means following the kidnappers’ trail. Wherever it takes us.”
Dirk breathed sharply. “Why do I have the feeling I’m not going to like the rest of what you have to say?”
Her smile held a tinge of sadness. “Because you’re too smart to lie to yourself. And you know if we go after the kidnappers to rescue your daughters, there’s a chance—I can’t give you odds on something like this, but a chance—that the kidnappers will panic if they think we’re getting too close.” She didn’t say it again, but he heard it anyway. And they’ll kill your little girls.
“That’s one of the choices you have to make,” she continued. “I can’t make that choice for you.”
Dirk didn’t even have to think about it. “If I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t, I’d rather do everything I can. Then if...” He couldn’t say the words, and settled for, “If the worst happens, at least I tried.”
She nodded. “I thought you’d say that.”
“What other choices do I have to make?”
“Do you bring in the Hong Kong police now, or not?”
He shook his head. “Not,” he said firmly. “When the kidnapper called me this morning he knew I hadn’t called the police so far. I’m not risking that he knew because he has a source inside the police.”
“What about the US consulate? Are you going to contact them? I’m not sure exactly what they can do, but calling in your country’s FBI seems probable. Is that something you want to do?”
This time he hesitated. Call on his government to help him? He had great faith in the FBI. They had a kick-ass reputation, especially where kidnapping was concerned, and his first instinct when he’d learned his daughters had been snatched yesterday was to contact the US consulate. He wasn’t sure why he was hesitating. “Maybe I should,” he said, more to himself than to Mei-li. “Maybe I should at least notify the consulate.”
“Your call.” She closed her lips tightly as if she wanted to say something more, but wouldn’t.
“You don’t think I should,” he said shrewdly.
“Your call.” The decisive way she said it told him she meant it—even if she had an opinion.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t.”
“Your. Call.” Each word a separate sentence, emphasizing she wasn’t going to try to influence him in any way.
That decided him. “Then, no. At least...not today.”
She didn’t respond one way or the other, but her eyes—either he was beginning to be able to read her, or she was letting him see what she was thinking—her eyes told him she approved of his decision. “Now tell me why,” he insisted.
She sighed. “Because in my experience a policeman—any policeman—can’t help being that first. Which means no matter what they say, no matter how hard they try to see things from your perspective, in the back of their minds is the desire to apprehend the perpetrators. A need to bring the criminals to justice, to protect society, so it doesn’t happen again. That’s their raison d’être—their reason for being policemen. Yes, the safety of the victims is also important, and they try very hard to make it paramount, but...”
“I see,” he said slowly.
“Which is why families in Hong Kong tend to pay the ransom first, recover their loved ones first, then contact the police...after the fact.”
It made a hell of a lot of sense. “I understand,” he told her. “What else?” Her brows puckered in a question, and he elaborated. “Are there any other choices I have to make right now?”
She nodded. “You have to decide how far you trust Rafe and Mike.”
That took him aback. “You said you don’t trust them.”
“That’s me. I don’t trust many people—my parents, my cousin Patrick. My brother...when he’s around.”
Dirk was distracted for a moment. “You have a brother?”
“Yes. But we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you. Your life. Your children. We can do this on our own, but it would be easier if there were more people we could trust.”
He thought about it. Carefully. “I used to trust all the people who worked for me. My housekeeper, Hannah. Vanessa. The twins’ bodyguards—all three of them. But now...”
“But now...?” she prompted when he didn’t continue.
“Hannah,” he said unequivocally. “She would walk through fire for Linden and Laurel—she’d be here now if she hadn’t broken her leg right before we were supposed to leave.” There was barely a pause before he added, “Vanessa, no. Chet, no. Mike?” He grimaced. “Not sure. But Rafe?” He considered what Rafe had said and done this morning. It just didn’t make sense for him to have brought the doorman to them if he was involved. “Yeah, I think I do.”
“Then anything you confide in Rafe will have to be in private. And you’ll have to make sure he doesn’t share anything he knows with Mike. I didn’t get the impression they were friends outside of work—”
“They’re not.”
“That’s good, because it would be very difficult for Rafe to dissemble if they were friends.” She hesitated for a moment, then said, “There’s one more choice you have to make, Dirk, and it’s best to have it out in the open.”
“Which is?”
“How far will you go to rescue your daughters?” She held up a hand to prevent him from answering too quickly. “What I’m asking is, are you willing to break the law? Are you willing to go to jail?” She let that sink in before adding, “Are you willing to admit that sometimes it’s not a matter of right and wrong, but rather choosing the lesser of two evils? How far are you willing to go?�
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Dirk’s smartphone rang before he could answer, and though his heart skipped a beat, thinking it was the kidnapper calling again, he quickly realized from the ringtone that it wasn’t. He swiped a finger over the keypad and recognized the caller. “Yes, Rafe? What is it?”
“I’m down here with the cabdriver,” Rafe said urgently. “I gave him a Hong Kong fifty not to take another fare, but if you want to talk with him you’d better get down here pronto.”
“We’re on our way,” Dirk replied, heading for the door before he even disconnected. “Rafe’s got the cabdriver,” he told Mei-li, holding the door for her.
* * *
Mei-li hadn’t been outside yet, and when she and Dirk exited the hotel, the bright sunshine and cotton ball–dotted blue skies were a welcome change after the ominous, low-hanging clouds that had preceded the typhoon the day before. Dirk immediately slipped on a pair of BluBlockers, and for a moment Mei-li was puzzled—the sun wasn’t so bright they were a necessity. Then she realized it was probably habit on his part—his face was instantly recognizable, and he would often need to mask his identity. It was a little thing, but telling. Not something she would feel comfortable having to do, and a tiny pang of sympathy went through her. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what his life must be like with so little privacy. Not just in something like this—being recognized on the street—but in every aspect of his life.
What would it be like to have every bad thing that happened to you play out on a stage for the world to gawk at? There had been a media frenzy immediately following Sean’s murder by his kidnappers, but it had blown over relatively quickly. That had allowed her to work her way through the five stages of grief in private: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. Dirk didn’t even have that. He’d lost his beloved wife, but he’d had no respite from the paparazzi, no chance to mourn her without the world intruding.
She shook her head, pushing those thoughts to the back of her mind to consider another time, because she couldn’t let herself lose focus. Dirk’s private pain was something she couldn’t afford to think about...not now. Not unless she wanted to risk his daughters’ kidnapping turning into another monumental catastrophe for him. If anything happens to his daughters, she thought, he might survive, but he’d never recover.
She glanced from left to right, then spotted Rafe standing next to a red cab on the far right of the hotel’s spacious forecourt, waving to catch their attention. Dirk had already seen him and was moving in that direction. His legs were a lot longer than hers, and they quickly ate up the distance. She scurried to catch up.
Rafe met Dirk halfway, and she arrived just as he told Dirk in an undertone, “I didn’t tell him anything. Just that you wanted to talk with him and would pay him for his time.”
“Thanks,” Dirk said, slipping his glasses momentarily to the top of his head. “But I’m going to want more than that.”
“You want him to take you to the airport,” Mei-li said. It wasn’t a question. “You want him to show you exactly where he dropped those two men off yesterday.”
“Yeah.” Dirk reached into his pocket, pulled out the key card to his suite and handed it to Rafe. “Find Mike, will you? The two of you can wait for us in the suite.” He glanced at Mei-li, as if he were remembering her warning, then his gaze returned to Rafe’s face. “Don’t tell Mike what we’ve learned so far. Just tell him we’re following a lead, but not what that lead is.”
Rafe nodded slowly. “Got it. You don’t trust Mike.”
“It’s not that.”
“Yeah, it is. That’s exactly what it means. But I understand. If they were my little girls—hell, they are like my little girls—I wouldn’t take any chances with their safety, either.”
“I trust you.” Quiet sincerity was apparent in Dirk’s voice.
Rafe’s lips twitched as if he were going to smile, but he didn’t. “I trust me, too, but I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.” His eyes hardened. “What are you going to do if you find the kidnappers? You think you can handle two men on your own? And keep your daughters out of harm’s way?” His eyes cut to Mei-li’s face. “Sorry, ma’am. I’m not dissing you, but I don’t think you’re a match for a man like...” His hand motion indicated Dirk and himself. “Especially since we already know he has a gun. For all we know, they both do. And they’ll be desperate. Desperate men do desperate things.”
“No offense taken.” She touched Dirk’s arm. “He might be right,” she said softly.
Rafe sat in front with the driver, while Dirk and Mei-li sat in the back. The cabdriver hadn’t been able to add anything to the description of the two men he’d driven to the airport, but he had assured Dirk he could take them to the same place. His English wasn’t as good as the doorman’s, but it was good enough.
“Chek Lap Kok,” he said, referring to the reclaimed island just north of Lantau Island, where Hong Kong International Airport was located. “Half hour. Hour. Not sure. Traffic?” He shrugged. “Hour, maybe.” He depressed the meter’s flag. “Tolls there and back. You pay.”
Mei-li responded in Cantonese, assuring the driver they understood it wouldn’t be cheap. They were more concerned with speed than cost...and his tip would reflect it.
They’d barely pulled away from the curb when Rafe called Mike, but his conversation was brief, just long enough to let the other man know they were following a slim lead and would be back before dark. “No,” he told Mike, “go ahead and have lunch. We’ll grab something to eat while we’re out. And if you’ve finished your interrogations, might not be a bad idea to head back to our hotel and catch a quick nap. Who knows what we might have to do tonight.”
Mei-li’s cell phone rang almost as soon as Rafe hung up, and she dug her phone out of her purse. “Wei?” She listened to her cousin on the other end speaking in Cantonese, then quickly relayed the information that they were no longer where he’d left them...in English. She would have said more, but she was conscious the cabdriver was listening, so she spoke in English, which the driver wouldn’t understand nearly as well as Cantonese, and kept her answers to a minimum. She ended the call and turned back to Dirk, saying, “That was Patrick.”
Dirk had donned his sunglasses when he’d first spoken with the cabdriver, but had removed them again once he was inside the cab. He held them in his hand, ready to put them back on at a moment’s notice. Now he cocked one eyebrow, as if asking for more details. Mei-li leaned toward him in intimate fashion, so the cabdriver couldn’t hear, and spoke sotto voce. “The sketch artist wasn’t a complete washout. He’ll scan and email copies of the sketches to me, but they’re pretty much meaningless at this point. It’s not that Vanessa’s descriptions were so vague, but all she really saw were their eyes. Masked like that, they could be anyone.”
“Which doesn’t help us at all.” Dirk’s answer was just as intimately given, with his lips almost pressed to her ear.
“Oh, but it does,” she reassured him softly. “If nothing else, it got Vanessa and Chet out of the way this morning. Patrick said they’re eating lunch now, then they’ll head to the hypnotist. He also said Vanessa is getting increasingly worried about the hypnotist. Chet is doing his best to calm her down, but—”
“It sounds more and more like she’s involved in the kidnapping,” Dirk said before Mei-li could. “And Chet, too.”
“Yes.” She watched a tangle of emotions play across Dirk’s face—anger, frustration, remorse. Anger that someone he trusted to keep his daughters safe would endanger them. Frustration that he couldn’t choke the truth out of them—assuming they really were involved—couldn’t force them to tell him what they knew, force them to tell him where his daughters were. Remorse? Mei-li wasn’t sure why Dirk felt remorseful, but she understood the anger and frustration. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
They were on Route 8 now,
the major artery that went up the western tip of Tsim Sha Tsui, then hopscotched across smaller islands until it reached Lantau Island, the largest of the two hundred sixty-three islands in the Hong Kong SAR—larger even than Hong Kong Island itself.
Mei-li turned back to Dirk. “No,” she said softly, “I know it’s not my fault, but I...I empathize. When Sean was kidnapped...” She let her voice trail off.
Dirk’s hand squeezed hers, silently encouraging her to continue. She leaned closer, her voice barely above a whisper. “Sean’s family was appalled to learn his kidnapping was an inside job. A longtime family attorney—a man they’d trusted for years—had planned the whole thing. He’d been dipping into Sean’s trust fund to support his drug habit and saw this as the way to put the money back without anyone being the wiser. He never intended for Sean to die—that was the last thing he wanted. Not only because he knew Sean personally, and liked him, but because Sean’s death triggered an audit of his estate and the attorney’s malfeasance was uncovered. But when the payoff was botched, the two kidnappers he’d hired panicked. They killed Sean without consulting with the attorney and fled to Macau.”
She glanced away, staring out the window, biting her lip to get her emotions under control. Dirk still held her hand, though, and somehow this time comfort flowed from him to her...instead of the other way around.
* * *
Dirk saw the parallel Mei-li had been trying to draw, and when her gaze finally returned to his, he said in an undertone, “So you think that’s the situation with Vanessa...and Chet?”
“It’s possible. If someone approached them, dangled money in front of them as an incentive but assured them money was the only motive and nothing bad would happen to the girls—it’s possible. I don’t think either of them wants your daughters dead.” She smiled slightly. “Or maybe I just don’t want to think it.”
“I don’t want to think it, either.” But he could see it was possible. And now that he thought of it, he remembered Vanessa’s odd reaction the day before. When he’d heard Terrell Blackwood sends his regards, his first stunned thought had been that Linden and Laurel were dead, and he’d said something to that effect out loud. What had Vanessa replied? He culled his memory, and he suddenly heard Vanessa’s choked voice in his mind, saying, What do you mean...they’re dead? They can’t be dead... As if it wasn’t possible...something she would only know if she’d been involved in the planning stages of the kidnapping.
