“I’m stuck,” she said.
Again, the doorknob rattled, louder this time.
Lee grabbed her shoe and angled it downward, then forced it through the window.
Something banged against the front door, shaking it in its frame.
Xiaolian began pulling her other leg through the window as she straddled the bottom of the sill, her torso completely outside.
The banging against the door continued. Each hit louder and much more forceful. Any second, it would crash open. Lee held on to both of Xiaolian’s hands as she began lowering herself. One by one she transferred her grip from his hands to the windowsill. No sooner had she done this, the banging stopped.
Lee grabbed the gun and exited the bathroom, closing the door behind him just as a kick sent the door to the room flying open.
Standing in the doorway was a man. The setting sun behind him cast his image as a shadow, but Lee didn’t need a spotlight on the person’s face to know that Walter Chan had found them.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
That Saturday afternoon we had commenced with the BBQ in my backyard to celebrate Kang’s one-year anniversary with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Everyone showed up: Reilly, House, Sokolov, Bennie, and Dr. Green.
Yes, Green. I had inadvertently mentioned it to him while at his office, and he’d quickly expressed his desire to come, which I found surprising since he and Kang didn’t really have the friendliest of relations. That fact didn’t seem to bother Green, so I relented and told him he was more than welcome to come over. “I’ll bring my famous baked beans,” he’d said happily. “Everyone will love it.”
And we did. Those beans were damn good.
On the grill, we had ribs, chicken, and sausages. Kang commandeered the grill from the moment he arrived. “Abby, I love grilling. This is not a bother, so leave me be.”
Po Po made Kang’s favorite dish: Peking noodles. She fixed him a plate while he grilled, as he just couldn’t wait. Reilly brought fresh oysters from Tomales Bay, and we shucked and shucked and shucked. Sokolov indulged us with Russian salad and cheese, and his homemade pickled vegetables. Bennie brought tamales he’d made using his mother’s recipe. House supplied the desert—an apple, a blueberry, and a peach pie. No one there would say they left hungry.
By the time the sun had begun to set, most everyone had a stuffed belly. Kang and I were sitting on lounge chairs around a custom fire pit I’d had installed a few months ago. It was the perfect day with loads of laughter and hearty conversation, and with the best company I could ask for.
Kang sipped his beer. “I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting Green to turn up, but all in all, I’m having a great time.”
“You see? You two can get past your jealousies over me.”
“Are we bringing this up again? I tell you…”
“Hold that thought. I’ll be right back.”
The cooler was low on ice, and I had another bag sitting in the freezer in the kitchen. Lucy noticed me heading inside and quickly followed.
“Where are you going, Mommy? Is the party over?”
“No, it’s not. I’m just getting more ice.”
“Oh good, because I’m having a lot of fun.”
Ryan ran right by us.
“Hey, where’s the fire?” I shouted.
He stopped at the foot of the steps. “I’m getting my nunchucks. I want to show Uncle Kyle how much I’ve improved.
“He’s not going anywhere anytime soon, so slow down, all right?”
“Okay, okay.” He turned and raced up the stairs.
Just as I pulled a bag of ice out of the freezer, the doorbell rang. Lucy, as usual, bolted toward the front door. I was still on edge with the recent killings and called out to her not to open the door, but by the time I had reached the living room, she had already pulled it wide open.
In an instant I froze in step as I recognized the man standing in the doorway. Lucy was wrong when she’d called out that we had another guest. I knew this man, but he was definitely not invited to the BBQ. I simply couldn’t believe he was standing there. Impossible. And I knew this to be factual because I remember staring into his empty eyes after I’d shot him dead.
But there he was, on my front porch. Alive.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
“Lucy!”
No matter how much I forced my legs to move faster, no matter how hard I pumped my arms, it seemed as if I could not reach her. Why was it taking so long? Why was she not heeding my calls to move away from the door? Why did she continue to stand there? There were no logical answers to the series of whys filling my head.
None of this made any sense. How could the killer I’d shot dead be standing on my front porch? And yet there he was.
“Lucy, get away from him!”
She looked back at me, a smile on her face. Didn’t she know? Didn’t she recognize the man standing before her? Hadn’t she seen his picture on the news?
At that moment I realized I was responsible. I had done my best to shield her from the killings, and those efforts were quickly turning into the very thing that endangered her. Had she watched the news, had she seen his picture, had she been aware of the dangers that plagued our city, she would have never have opened the door to a stranger.
Instinctively my hand shot to my hip where I always wore my holster. But I knew before my hand reached down that my gun wasn’t on me. I never carried it at home. I always kept my weapon in my bedroom upstairs on the second floor.
The thought to turn and run upstairs to retrieve it crossed my mind briefly, but I knew that wouldn’t do me any good. His right hand was already sliding up his torso and into the open sport jacket he wore.
No! This can’t be happening.
A smirk appeared on his face. He knew I was unarmed. He held the power to decide the events that unfolded in the next few seconds.
As I struggled to close the gap between us, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of his hand. I watched it disappear inside his coat briefly before returning to view.
Firmly in his grip I saw the black metal of the handgun’s barrel. His hand moved in an arc as he trained his weapon on his target.
It wasn’t me.
The barrel of the gun swung around and stopped just above where Lucy stood. His gaze never once left mine as he lowered the gun. I watched him point the weapon straight at her forehead. She was no longer looking at me but at the man in front of her.
What was she thinking? Had her smile disappeared at that point? Did she know of the danger she was in? Was she capable of realizing she had to run?
She’s not moving.
She’s not screaming.
The worst possible outcome had come to fruition.
She froze.
Kang had shot off his chair the instant he heard Kane scream. He knew her well enough to know that her shouting Lucy’s name had nothing to do with disciplining her. There was fear woven throughout it. Something terrible had happened.
“Kyle?” House called out. She had been talking to Reilly.
Kang didn’t answer but zeroed in on the door leading into the screened-in porch—a path to the inside of the house. At that moment, he knew deep down inside that every second counted. He couldn’t waste a moment explaining. He pulled open the screen door and slipped between a small table and a rattan loveseat, his right hand stretched outward for the door leading into the house.
Unlike Kane, Kang was carrying his weapon on his body, though he hadn’t yet thought there was a need to draw it. He reached for the doorknob and twisted as he moved forward, but instead of running through an open door, he crashed directly into it. He had mistimed the opening. Unnecessary time wasted.
He twisted the doorknob once more and pushed forward. The door flew open, revealing the narrow hallway leading to the front of the house. The light from the kitchen spilled into the dark hallway, revealing the doorway opposite the kitchen—the guestroom where Xiaolian had stayed.
Kang charged past Po Po’s room, still
unaware why Abby had screamed, but he knew he had to keep moving. Straight ahead he had a limited view of the living room. The front door was off to the right side, just out of his view. He could tell it was open, as the sun hadn’t completely set and the natural light spilled onto the wooden floors.
“No! Don’t do it.” I pleaded as I moved in closer.
He showed no sign of comprehending what I was saying, but I knew he understood me. He still had that wry grin on his face. He was enjoying every second.
I was feet away and closing in. Thoughts of what my next move would be filled my head.
Go for the gun?
Tackle Lucy out of the way?
Tackle him and worry about the gun later?
No matter what I thought of, none of the options jumped out to me as the right choice. But I had to make a decision, fast.
The gun. Go for his gun and put yourself between it and Lucy.
That was my decision. I committed to it. My focus narrowed. I knew what I had to do to save my daughter.
His smile widened.
His shoulder’s bounced slightly.
I couldn’t for the life of me understand why he was laughing until the obvious dawned on me.
My steps.
What’s happening?
The rubber sole of the cross-trainers I wore had a firm grip on the area rug, becoming entangled. My torso moved forward, but my legs remained in a battle of their own with my feet. A tear streamed down my cheek.
No, Abby. Don’t fall. Recover. You can do it.
But as hard as I tried, I could not correct the course of my movements. The pull was too great. The battle with gravity was lost.
I crashed onto the floor before reaching up with one hand, toward him. My eyesight already marred by the welling of tears. “Not her,” I pleaded.
It was all I could do. I had to hope he would take mercy on me and change his mind. If he had to take someone from my family, if there was no changing the outcome of him pulling the trigger, then at least spare Lucy.
“Take me,” I shouted. “TAKE ME!”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
The rays of the sun sparkled across the calm waters of the bay as sailboats cut across. Up above, blue skies stretched for miles without a single fluffy cloud daring to mar its façade.
Reilly drove the SUV. Kang sat in the front passenger seat, and House sat in the backseat. They had just picked her up from the Bureau’s satellite office in Oakland and were driving to a facility in Silicone Valley. As they drove across the Bay Bridge, Kang stared lazily out of the window at nothing in particular. His thoughts were on the events that had taken place a few days ago. In fact, it was all he thought of.
Over and over he would replay that afternoon at Kane’s house. He had been sitting comfortably in a lawn chair, sipping his beer. Kane sat next to him. Ryan stood a few feet away, showing off some of his judo moves. “Uncle Kyle, do you want to see something I learned with my nunchucks?” Reilly and House were laughing over a story he was telling her. Sokolov and Bennie were still picking at a rack of ribs while Green told them about being raised in a hippie commune. Po Po was busy trying to feed people more food. Lucy sang out loud as she walked from group to group.
A great bunch of people had gathered that day to celebrate his one-year anniversary with the FBI. He was glad Kane had gone through the trouble of pulling the party together, even after his insistence that he wasn’t interested. She knew him better than he knew himself.
“We need more ice,” he remembered her saying before heading inside. He’d watched Lucy run after her, with Ryan right behind them.
He’d been staring at the sky, draining the last of his beer when he heard it, the scream from inside the house. He remembered quickly scanning the backyard to see if anyone else had heard it. But it was business as usual.
He knew he hadn’t imagined it. He didn’t question it. He knew that much. He stood fast, flipping the lawn chair over in the process. That was the first that anybody else realized something might be wrong. But the concern wasn’t with the scream from inside the house; it was with him.
He remembered House calling his name, and him not answering. He’d known that he hadn’t the time to spare.
Reaching out for the doorknob, twisting it open and mis-timing the door opening. Idiot. Rookie move. He couldn’t get over that it had even happened.
A few seconds lost there.
Running down the hall had posed no problem. He couldn’t have done it any differently. Or could he have? He could have had used that time to draw his weapon. But why would he? As terrifying as that scream had sounded, was it cause enough to reach for his gun?
When he finally did reach the living room, it had taken a moment or two to comprehend what was happening. Had he lost time there?
Kang had logged over fifteen years with SFPD before becoming an FBI. He had more than enough experience in the field to assess a situation quickly and react.
Had he unnecessarily taken an extra moment? Had reaching for his gun a beat later cost him time he didn’t have to spare? Did it matter? No, it didn’t, because what happened next was what really had cost him time.
His hand had slipped off the butt of his gun.
It had never happened before. He had practiced drawing his gun at least a thousand times over his career. So why had his hand slipped that day? Same gun. Same holster. Had he simply choked? Was what he’d seen unfolding before his eyes been enough to throw him off his game?
Perhaps.
Not only did he have to make a second attempt at drawing his weapon, he pulled forward too early. The barrel hadn’t cleared the holster and because of that, it twisted out of his grasp. The realization that he had just lost complete control of his weapon, that it was falling to the floor, that he would have to once again grab hold of it, that it could even take a nasty bounce away from him… it was unrelenting.
The utter hopelessness he had felt as he looked at his partner, lying on the floor, screaming at an armed man standing in the doorway. Two of them, veterans of law enforcement, and yet neither capable of doing what years of training had prepared them for.
The gunshot echoed off the walls. A single shot. That was all that was needed.
Had he failed that day? In his mind he had. Little Lucy, a person he cared a great deal for, had needed his help more than ever and he had not delivered.
But someone had.
Ryan didn’t freeze when he looked out the second-floor window and spotted a man with his shirt collar torn and what appeared to be blood splattered on his face walking up the pathway to their front door. He wasted no time calling for help and waiting for someone else to do something.
He reacted.
Pivoting on the balls of his feet, he sprinted to his mother’s bedroom at the end of the hall. Timing was everything. He knew where Abby kept her weapon. He knew how to lock the clip into place without fumbling, without having to think it through. He knew how to grip the weapon tightly with both hands. He knew how to switch the safety off. And he did it all seamlessly.
He hurried down the stairs, knowing full well his next move wasn’t to find his mother and give her the gun. The scream he had heard earlier told him everything he had to know.
He watched Kang run past the bottom of the steps, but seeing him didn’t lessen his resolve. It didn’t slow him. It didn’t cause him to rethink the action he was about to take. If he had done any one of those things, the events of that day would have unfolded differently.
As soon as Ryan had a clear view of the front door, he planted his feet firmly on the steps the best he could. He raised the handgun, drew a breath, took aim, and did exactly what he had seen his mother do time and time again. Protect people from the bad guys.
Chapter Sixty
The black SUV exited Highway 101 at the North Shoreline off ramp and then continued west on Stierlin Road toward the mountains west of the city of Mountain View. Their destination was a secured government complex. Neither Reilly, Kang, nor
House had been there before. In fact, all three of them had required the Department of Justice to issue them the appropriate security clearance.
House hadn’t said anything more than a simple hello since climbing into the backseat of the SUV. She was content to be alone in her thoughts, not that Reilly or Kang were bothered by it. The radio was tuned to a jazz station; anything more than that would have disturbed the tranquil state of the vehicle.
House had been friends with Abby for quite some time. She still remembered the day she met the feisty woman, who had a mouth with a mind of its own. Nothing filtered. All raw. She had liked her immediately.
When House had seen Kang pop out of his lawn chair like a kernel of corn in a hot pan, she knew something was wrong. She hadn’t heard the scream; at the time, Reilly was doing his impression of his uncle’s duck call.
She’d hesitated though. It wasn’t long. Still she couldn’t understand why. She’d seen the look on Kang’s face, and yet she’d questioned her instincts, thinking she was reading it wrong. They were at a BBQ. Everyone was having a great time. Why would there be trouble?
House had bolted past Reilly, after Kang. She heard him curse as he slammed into the door leading into the house. She had pulled open the screen door of the porch just as he entered the house.
As she chased after him, her eyes settled on his right hand. It looked as if he was contemplating drawing his weapon. Does he see something that I don’t? This alone had House moving her hand to her right hip.
She heard the second scream and drew her weapon.
Kang came to a stop just after the bottom of the stairs, half of his body dipped out of view—the half that would have told her if he had drawn his weapon.
Then the loud crack of a gun being discharged had echoed throughout the house. Someone had fired a gun. Was it Kang? Was it Abby?
House had raised her handgun, allowing it to lead the way as she came up behind Kang. Move to his left. Get around him and assess, she had thought as she began to side step, her eyes trained down the barrel of her gun.
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