“No, why?”
“That’s literally all I drink. In fact, I usually carry a tin of it around with me, but I recently ran out.”
“Well, you’re in luck.”
I followed Connie into the house, my mouth watering.
Albert played the role of referee, settling any disputes over who spotted a coin first. He also kept an eye on his wife, waiting for her to lead Abby into the house. While listening to the bugs he’d planted in her home, he had heard her mention that she’d run out of her special tea. Buying some had paid off.
Once Connie and Abby were inside the house, Albert headed over to the outdoor kitchen. Under the countertop was a row of built-in cabinets. He reached inside and removed a zippered plastic bag. Inside was a rag he had already soaked in chloroform. He removed it and shoved it into his pants pocket. Then he went looking for Xiaolian.
He found her on the far side of the house, searching under a bush.
“How’s the hunt?” he asked as he came up behind her.
“Not too good. I’ve only found eight.”
“Did you check the shed?” Albert smiled and followed with an exaggerated wink.
“Where is that?”
“It’s that little house over there.”
The shed was on the left side of the house, tucked back into a tall hedge. It was out of sight from the pool and deck, and the only window in the house with a direct view was from his office, which was off limits to the kids.
He had already prepared the trunk that was inside the shed. It was large enough to hold Xiaolian once she was unconscious. Connie had even insisted they put a few bottles of water inside, along with a small flashlight. “She might be in there for a few hours. It wouldn’t hurt to give her a little comfort.”
Albert also went to the trouble of lining the inside of the trunk with acoustic ceiling panels to absorb any noise she might make. Once Xiaolian was deemed missing, they would do their best to play the role of panicked parents. Abby would immediately jump to the conclusion that Xiaolian had run off, to avoid being returned to the facility. Later that night, Albert would remove the trunk and deliver it to their contact. It was a solid plan, one he and his wife felt good about executing successfully. The only hitch was that Albert had no intention of delivering her alive.
Xiaolian ran up to the shed and tugged on the handle.
“It’s locked,” she said.
“I’m so stupid.” He removed a key from his trousers, unlocked a small padlock, and pulled the door open. “Looks like your lucky day. You’ll be the first one to search. Be sure to check the trunk. Hint. Hint.”
Xiaolian raced inside.
Albert removed the rag and followed her.
Chapter Fifty
Min had been sitting slouched at his desk for almost an hour. He still couldn’t move on from what had happened the day before in Devlin’s office. Who the hell does he think he is? Min was growing tired of Devlin’s management style, which consisted entirely of living inside his own bubble, unaware of all the hard work being done by others.
He had long ago accepted that no decision made by Devlin was ever final until it actually happened. He would often make changes to a plan at the last minute, sending Min and his team into a heart-pounding scramble.
And now, picking an entirely new person, one whom no one had heard of before, at the last minute… it was pure Devlin. He should have run her by me, at the least, allowed me to dig into her background and put her through the rigorous testing the other candidates have been subjected to.
As Min continued to stew, the grip he held on the pencil in his hand tightened, his thumb pressing harder against the hexagonal shaft until it snapped in half. He flung the piece he still held across his office in disgust. I am not a low subordinate whose opinion he can dismiss at will. I’m second in command here. That counts for something.
He didn’t have much time, but Min always prided himself on getting the job done. It wasn’t the logistics of the job that concerned him. He knew the location; in fact, while inside Devlin’s office, he had already formulated the basis of a plan, one which he knew could easily achieve the objective. The work was never the issue. It was Devlin. Something had to be done about him. Operating the clinic in a reckless fashion…it jeopardized everything they were working toward.
Min hit the space bar on his laptop and woke it up. Then he located the Mark Hopkins Hotel on Google Maps and worked on a route. The sooner he fleshed out the details, the sooner he could brief his team and they could begin putting the plan into place.
Chapter Fifty-One
I felt my phone buzz in my back pocket. I figured either Po Po or Kang was trying to reach me. Connie and I had been discussing the dojo; she was telling me how happy she was with Master Wen, and Ryan, for making Colin’s adjustment easy.
I reached behind and checked the screen on my phone. It was a text message from Kang.
“Do you need to answer that? It’s fine if you do,” she said.
I shook my head and pocketed the phone. “It can wait until later.”
I wasn’t sure why I didn’t deal with it just then. I never pushed off calls or messages from work, but that day I did. Maybe it was because, at the time, I felt a sense of normalcy, like I was living a stereotypical mom life, drinking tea with another mom as we discussed our kids. For once I wasn’t chasing sickos or worrying about the next time one would attack my family. And it made me feel good inside.
Eventually the guilt got to me. Just as I reached back around for my cell phone again, a loud shriek from outside jerked both me and Connie to attention.
“That didn’t sound good,” she said.
We both hurried out of the kitchen and toward the TV room, where there were doors leading out to the pool. Through the windows, I could see Lucy and Hailey standing on the deck. Connie reached the door before I did.
“What’s wrong?” she asked the kids.
“Lucy, is everything okay?” I followed up.
Both girls were smiling.
“We both have six coins,” they said together.
“Why are you two screaming?” Connie asked.
“We’re not,” Hailey answered.
I brushed a few strands of hair out of Lucy’s eyes. I felt a little silly. I was still jumpy, after what had happened at our home with Walter Chan.
“Sounded like a scream to me,” Connie said. “Where are your brothers?”
“I think they’re looking under the house.”
“There are no coins under the house.” Connie turned to me. “I’m guessing Ryan is under there with them.”
She led the way to the opening of a crawlspace leading under the house. A small door was open. She bent down and called all three names.
“We’re busy,” one of them answered.
It sounded like Ryan, but I couldn’t be sure. “Ryan, come out from under there right now.”
Colin’s head appeared first, then Ryan’s, and finally Merrick’s.
“Why would you guys look under the house?” Connie asked. “Colin, Merrick, both of you know it’s off limits.”
“It was Ryan’s idea,” Merrick quickly blurted.
“I don’t care who came up with the idea. You two know better.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Shi,” Ryan said. He kept his head down, staring at his feet.
“It’s okay, Ryan. We don’t allow Colin and Merrick under the house because it’s dangerous. Now you know too. They should have told you.”
“They did, but I didn’t listen. I just figured there were more coins there because we couldn’t find any more in the yard.”
“How many does everyone have?”
“Lucy and Hailey have six apiece,” I said.
“I’ve got eight,” Merrick answered.
Ryan and Colin were counting.
“I’ve got eleven,” Ryan said.
Colin laughed. “We’re tied. I have eleven.”
“There are fifty coins total. So twelve from the girls, plu
s Merrick’s eight makes twenty. Add twenty-two from Ryan and Colin, and that’s a grand total of forty-two coins.”
At that moment I realized we were missing one child. “Where’s Xiaolian?”
Chapter Fifty-Two
I spun around like a top but didn’t see her anywhere. “Who saw Xiaolian last? Lucy? Ryan?”
“The last time I saw her was over by the pool,” Lucy said.
Ryan nodded. “Me too.”
I hurried back over to the pool. “Xiaolian!” I called out on the way there. Connie and the kids followed.
“Xiaolian!”
There was nobody there.
“Hmm, maybe she’s inside the house,” Connie suggested. “Bathroom?”
We headed inside. I went directly to the downstairs bathroom.
“I’ll check upstairs,” Connie said.
“Xiaolian, are you in there?” I asked as I approached the closed bathroom door. I knocked once and then checked the knob. It was open, but the bathroom was empty.
I met up with Connie in the TV room.
“She’s not upstairs. I even checked the bedrooms.”
“Okay,” I said, turning to the kids who were all sitting on the sofa. “I want everyone to split up. Let’s look for Xiaolian, but nobody leaves the property. Understood?”
All five heads nodded before they darted off.
“Where do you think she could be?” Connie asked as we exited the front door.
“I don’t know. It’s not like her to disappear.”
As I said those words, an empty feeling erupted in my stomach. The worst possible scenario filled my head—the men who were after her had found her. And this time they had taken her. I didn’t want to believe that. I wanted to think she had gotten lost in her search for coins, but as seconds turned into minutes, it became harder to believe that as well.
Connie and I walked down the driveway to the sidewalk and looked up and down the street, thinking maybe she’d wandered off. We both called out her name.
“Do you think she would have left the property?” Connie asked.
“That’s the thing that has me confused. None of this seems like something she would do. And I can’t really think of a reason for her to leave.” I left out the part about her being held at the facility and the dangerous men who’d been hunting her before that. The Shis were unaware of the facility, obviously, and what had happened at our house when Walter Chan had shown up. The FBI, along with other entities in the government, kept a lid on what had taken place. The Shis were aware that I had helped apprehend Alonzo Chan—it had been on the news, but that was where their knowledge ended.
“Where’s Albert?” I asked. “Wasn’t he overseeing the game?”
“He was. Let’s ask the kids.”
We headed back inside the house. All five of them were back in the TV room.
“Did you guys look for her?” I asked.
“Yes, we looked all over the house and around the pool,” Ryan answered.
“Where’s your father?” Connie asked her kids.
All three answered with a shrug.
“Wasn’t he playing referee?”
“He was, but I don’t know where he is now,” Colin answered.
“What about you two?” Connie asked Merrick and Hailey.
They had nothing to add.
I couldn’t understand why all five of them seemed a bit indifferent to Xiaolian missing. Maybe it was kids being kids.
I reached for my phone, realizing the worst had possibly happened and I now needed to call it in. Just as I started dialing, the door leading out to the pool opened. It was Xiaolian.
“Xiaolian!” I hurried over to her and gave her a hug. “Where on earth have you been? We’ve been worried.”
“I was hunting coins.” In her hand, she held a bunch of them. “Did I do something wrong?”
“For a minute, we didn’t know where you were.”
“Where were you?” Connie asked.
“On the side of the house, where the tall bushes are. I climbed inside them to look around.”
While Abby fussed over Xiaolian, Connie slipped away. There was still one person missing.
What the hell is going on here?
Connie hurried over to the shed wondering why Xiaolian wasn’t secured in the trunk as she and Albert had planned.
Did he not have an opportunity?
The door to the shed was closed, but the lock was open and hanging from a metal loop.
“Albert?” she called out softly as she pulled the door open.
She found him sitting on the concrete floor of the shed with his head between his legs.
“Albert! What happened? Are you all right?”
He shook his head slowly, as if he were regaining consciousness.
“Xiaolian is in the house. What happened?”
“I’m not sure. I led her over here. We were alone. She entered the shed. I followed…”
Connie noticed the rag next to him. She picked it up and held it up to her nose. She could smell the chloroform on it.
“Albert, what exactly happened here?”
Before he could answer, voices could be heard growing closer—Abby and the kids. Connie quickly tucked the rag into a box full of outdoor Christmas lights just as they reached the shed.
Chapter Fifty-Three
While the day at the Shis’ had started off great, it ended on a downer. I offered to stick around while Connie tended to Albert, but she insisted that she had everything under control. I waited, at least, until she had Albert upstairs and in bed; he had fought her the whole way. Once he was settled, I rounded up the kids and headed out to the car. Connie walked out with us.
“Not to pry, but did he elaborate on what happened?” I asked.
“He won’t admit it, but I think he fainted. It’s happened before, but he blew it off. He says it was minor dizziness. This time I hope he takes it much more seriously and visits the doctor for a checkup.”
“He should get looked at. Better safe than sorry,” I said.
Before Connie had found him, I’d thought it strange and a bit irresponsible for him to have disappeared, especially since he was the referee. Xiaolian had been nowhere to be found, and I had to admit, during that time, I started to blame him.
According to Albert, he had gone inside the shed to get a can of insecticide—he’d noticed a trail of ants on the side of the house. It seemed like a reasonable explanation for his absence.
“I’m surprised none of the kids stumbled upon him, since they were supposedly searching high and low for gold coins,” I said.
“Well, my three know the shed is off limits, plus Albert keeps a padlock on the door at all times. He might have gone inside right before we started looking for Xiaolian.” She shrugged.
I gave it no more thought and thanked Connie for the wonderful time.
It was four in the afternoon when we returned home. Po Po had just arrived herself. A friend of hers, the youngest and the only one in her group of friends to hold a valid driver’s license, had dropped her off.
She headed inside the house and straight for the kitchen, of course. I told her dinner might not be necessary as the kids were still stuffed from their pizzas. She ignored me and said there was leftover rice that she didn’t want to go bad, so she would make jook. I let her be.
The kids were beat from the day anyway, and all three were asleep early. I had hoped to talk more with Xiaolian, but that didn’t happen. I figured the next day I would have plenty of opportunity, as Ryan had some sort of special training day at the dojo, and Lucy had a Brownie event to attend. She hadn’t officially joined. The club allowed potential recruits to test-drive the Brownies for a day, and that was exactly what Lucy had chosen to do.
I was tired and thinking of falling into bed. But I decided I’d better return Kang’s call. I got his voicemail and left a message. I called Reilly next.
“Hey, boss. Sorry to disturb you on Saturday. I wanted to check in and give you an up
date on Xiaolian.”
I told Reilly about our talks and that the consensus between Kang and I was she’d most likely been raised in a Chinese sports school and that our best guess as to why she shared the same DNA as me is that someone had thought highly enough of me for being the youngest recruit to graduate from the Hong Kong Police Academy that they wanted a mini-me.
“The reasoning sounds logical,” he said. “It certainly begins to explain a lot about her and her background. It’s still a mystery as to why she was smuggled into the States and left on our doorstep.”
“I agree. It could be a distant relative wanting to get her out of that school and far from it. From what I understand, they’re not pleasant places to grow up in. I’ll try pressing this point later with her. If this does turn out to be the case, I’m not sure how that information will fare with our CIA counterparts. They’re under the impression she’s a spy.”
“I’m aware of that, but our job is to provide them with the information. What they do with it, and her, is up to them.”
“That kind of sucks. She’s still just twelve years old. Forget about her training and intelligence. I’ve spent time with her; she’s still a kid at heart. It’s like both sides of her personality—the girl from the sports school and the one who plays with my children—are at odds with each other.”
“I understand that, Abby, but unless you plan on adopting this child, she’s to be returned to the facility on the agreed-upon date. She’s not our property. She’s a Chinese national who entered this country illegally. You and I both know she’ll be deported.”
“That I understand. What I’m worried about is that my assessment of her won’t fly with them and they’ll continue to probe her like she’s an experiment. She’s not. I’m sure if we visited the school she was raised in, we’d find a whole lot of children exactly like her.”
“You’re probably right, Abby, but our job is to investigate federal crimes. At best, we can prove she entered the country illegally and nothing more. Return her, enlighten them on what you’ve learned, and be done with it.”
The Curator: SG Trilogy Book 2 (Abby Kane FBI Thriller 8) Page 19
