by Ty Patterson
‘You okay?’ she asked through lips that had turned dry.
Meghan didn’t answer immediately. She was bent over the last assailant, cuffing him, and when she straightened, tossed spare ties to Beth in an arc, along with a yeah.
‘Where’s Burke?’ Beth looked around after she had secured the hosed man and recovered her weapon. She looked at the line of vehicles ahead of and behind them.
The street was subdued, the shots didn’t seem to have registered any interest. She turned to the Minters’ building. No sign of Percy who normally would have come out to see them off. Perhaps her dad stopped her.
‘I’m here. I called the cavalry. They should turn up soon.’ Burke called out from behind them and stepped out from her ride, a few vehicles away. ‘My shooters are down,’ she grinned. ‘They wanted to argue a mite, but I convinced them that wasn’t a good idea. They didn’t offer much resistance. My badge and my gun calmed them.’
Her grin widened when she took in the disarmed and secured men, several of whom spat in her direction. ‘Broker did say life was never dull when you two were around. You notice anything about them?’
‘Yeah, they’re all Chinese,’ Meghan bent over one of the hoods and searched his body for a wallet, phone, any form of identification. She grimaced when she came up empty and went to the next hood who kicked out savagely. She slapped his legs away casually, rolled him to his belly and patted him down and came up with his cell phone.
That reminds me. She fished out her cell phone and turned the screen to show Beth and Burke, who had joined her, the message she had received just before the goons showed up.
The Chinese gang are after you. Something about honor. Watch your backs. They’re out in full strength. ‘Got this from Chang just before the welcome party arrived.’
She stuffed the phone back in her jeans and looked at the men. ‘Six men. Would that be full strength?’
Running steps from behind them answered her question.
She whirled to face four more hoods, twenty feet away, racing towards them, spread out, armed, angry.
We’re bunched too close. Half turned. Hands nowhere near our guns.
Meghan screamed, ‘THEY’VE GOT GUNS. THEY’RE GOING TO KILL US. HELP!’
The hoods were expecting violence, returning fire, they weren’t expecting a helpless scream. The first two faltered. The other two slowed a step taking their cue from the lead runners.
The slowing was enough time for Zeb to emerge like a ghost from the shadow of a dark SUV.
Zeb had been following the twins ever since they had left the office, staying behind them several car lengths, their GPS trackers glowing green on his screen.
He had called Chang after their departure who had given him the NYPD version of the investigation. ‘That Chinese gang is vindictive. They believe in that face stuff. Women besting them will rile them.’ Chang had warned him.
The warning hadn’t been necessary; Zeb had already decided to shadow the twins. Nothing else on my plate, he thought as he gunned his SUV, turned on its GPS screen, and fell behind the sisters.
He had waited in his vehicle, six car lengths away from the twins’ ride, while they went inside the Minters’ building. He had spotted the six hoods arrive at the same time as the women emerged.
He slid out, ready to take a hand, and stopped when he saw he was superfluous. He hung back behind a pickup truck using its wheel well as cover and felt a surge of pride as he watched the twins take down their attackers.
The equation changed when the reinforcements, four of them, rushed past him, not spotting the crouching man behind the truck.
Go!
Zeb became motion. The beast came to life, flooded him, and turned him into a weapon.
He was three steps behind the last two stragglers. He cut that down to one step and kicked out at the hood closest to him, his foot catching the running man’s ankle, sending him off balance.
The hood stumbled and went flying into the body mass of his three companions, helped by Zeb’s shove.
The four men staggered, one of them swore and turned to yell at his clumsy friend. His eye found Zeb. It widened. His mouth opened to shout a warning.
It got drowned in Zeb’s shot.
One down.
His Glock came down viciously on the temple of another gunman and sent him crashing into the melee. A gunman at the edge of the mass of bodies found his feet finally. He brought his gun up, his face snarling as he turned on Zeb.
Too close to shoot. Zeb rammed his barrel in the attacker’s throat and choked his yell away. He followed up with a head butt and broke the man’s nose. A spray of blood flew and bathed Zeb’s face.
He ignored it, sensing danger to his right. A snapped glance. A third shooter leaning against a vehicle, Zeb in his sights, the gunman’s finger tightening.
Move! Thought became impulse, impulse became action.
Zeb shoved the head butted man in the shooter’s direction, dropped and rolled away, his Glock coming up to cover the shooter.
The shooter’s first shot went into his fellow gangbanger’s body. His second shot chipped the pavement as he corrected swiftly, too swiftly. He didn’t get a third shot.
Zeb’s one-two blew him back against the vehicle, his body rocking the vehicle, sliding off it and falling limply. Zeb’s eyes turned, his gun followed. Three down.
The fourth didn’t offer any resistance. ‘Don’t shoot,’ he shouted, sweat and desperation dripping off him as four guns covered him.
Zeb looked beyond the gunman, at the women, and behind them. No threat. He craned his head behind him. No more gunmen.
He rose to his feet as the beast subsided and became blood pumping through his body, holstered his gun, and secured the fourth shooter.
He straightened when he had finished and looked down the line of vehicles, feeling the tug of something, a pull. He waited for the feeling to strengthen. It didn’t.
‘You called him?’ Meghan asked Burke, her gun still trained on the gangbanger, her eyes on Zeb.
‘Nope. He’s your cavalry.’
Zho’s breath left him in a silent hiss as he watched the brown-haired man take down the four gangsters.
Zho had followed the twins, knowing that the gang was planning a retaliatory attack. Zho knew the gang’s move was a rash one, it was driven by emotion and not the cold logic he liked.
Moreover it was bad for business, it would bring unnecessary focus on the gang. He could’ve stopped the gang with a single word, however, he was keen to see how the twins would respond. Maybe they would be deterred and give up the investigation, though he also knew that was wishful thinking.
He had parked his vehicle, a grey and dusty Toyota, far behind the twins’ ride, had rolled down his window and had slid out a small telescope. It looked like a pipe and projected a magnified view of the street’s activities on a screen.
He had hardly settled back when he surged forward at the sight of the FBI woman. This was bad. He glanced at his phone once, tempted to call the gang boss and call it off. He shrugged and ignored the thought. The street gang had to make their own mistakes and learn from them.
Zho watched the women return and split up to deal with their attackers. He pursed his lips and nodded his head in silent appreciation of their tactics. The gang had already started on a losing note.
The fight was short, brutal, and at the end of it, the women were unharmed, not even scratched. He was reaching out to turn on his engine and pull away when the four hoods rushed in.
And then the brown-haired man showed up and Zho forgot about pulling away. His eyes were fixed on the man, observing his deceptively languid movements. Unhurried, even when a gun was pointing his way. Flowing through air, rather than the cutting motions of most people.
Zho rubbed a hand on his forearm silently and looked down in mild surprise. He had goosebumps on his arms. The brown-haired man dispatched his attackers with ease, his moves striking a chord in Zho’s fighting mind.
&n
bsp; The brown-haired man looked behind him for a long moment when he had finished, a searching look down the line of vehicles, as if sensing Zho’s presence. Zho didn’t move, didn’t breathe.
He knew he couldn’t be spotted, but that didn’t matter. He knew the brown-haired man was different from anyone else he had encountered. He could sense danger, just as Zho could.
He would follow the man and find out more about him. He had to; it was the first time that he had come across a worthy opponent.
Chapter Eighteen
Zeb drove the twins’ SUV, once the cleanup had finished.
Burke’s cavalry in the form of Chang and Pizaka and several NYPD cruisers had turned up once Zeb had subdued the hoods. Chang had rolled his eyes at the sight of the bodies and had looked heavenward. ‘At this rate the city’ll run out of gangs. What are Zak and I to do then?’
Statements had been taken, the gangsters had been questioned. It looked straightforward. The hoods were from the same Chinese gang the twins had come across in Tiemann’s apartment. They were out for revenge, not liking that they had lost enforcers and that they had been overpowered by women. That could not go unpunished.
‘Face,’ Chang repeated once again. ‘You just lost more of it, didn’t you?’ The hoods glared at him as they were led away.
Chang and Pizaka hung around longer, Pizaka’s face darkening in anger at Burke’s revelations. ‘Just when were you planning to tell us?’
Burke stiffened. ‘I just told you.’
Meghan cut in before matters escalated. ‘It’s behind us. Nothing has changed materially. We still have to find a missing woman. Any progress on locating Cain’s hideout?’
Pizaka shook his head reluctantly, his body still radiating heat. ‘Nope.’
Meghan brought Zeb up to speed as he drove, told him about Cali being a FBI agent, and about the FBI’s suspicions of Chinese spying.
‘Burke’s convinced there’s no Chinese involvement in her disappearance?’
‘Yeah,’ Beth replied from behind. ‘We believe her.’
Zeb fell silent, not disputing the assertion. Burke was good, the best FBI investigator he knew. He dialed a number on the dash and a warm baritone filled the vehicle after a single ring.
‘I was wondering when you’d call,’ Broker chuckled. ‘I was following the news, then my honey gave me a download.’
‘Honey? Sarah lets you get away with that?’ Beth hooted in laughter.
‘Nope, but she isn’t here, is she. Looks like y’all are at a dead end now.’
‘Yeah. Got any bright ideas?’
‘Hey, you two are the investigators,’ Broker said defensively. ‘I’m still in DC working on other stuff. You should be the ones–’
‘Broker?’ Zeb interrupted him.
‘Yeah?’
‘Jack Minter was a UN War Crimes Investigator. He was all over Europe. Syria, Iraq, all the hotspots.’
‘You think…?’ Broker spoke slowly over the sound of a bottle being opened and liquid splashing into a glass.
‘Worth looking into.’
‘What the heck are you two talking about?’ Meghan burst out impatiently.
‘What the Wise One next to you is getting at,’ Broker drawled, ‘is that you might want to look at the dad.’
Zeb dragged his attention away and focused on the traffic as Broker spoke to the twins. That nagging feeling had returned, faint, but unmistakeable.
He scanned the vehicles ahead of him. Office workers rushing to their work place. Delivery trucks. Bicycle couriers. Nothing out of the ordinary. The pinging wasn’t from any of them.
He looked in the mirrors, knowing it was fruitless. If they were being followed it was by someone so good that only Zeb could’ve sensed him.
He can sense me too.
He came to a sudden decision. The twins are very good, but this dude, whoever he is, is on a different scale.
‘Take the wheel,’ he rapped out at Meghan as he leaned forward and cut off Broker’s call.
She didn’t argue, reading his tone and body language immediately. She leaned sideways and grabbed the steering with both hands while he unbuckled and slid back the sunroof.
He rose in his seat, stepped over Meghan to let her cross and balanced himself on her seat. He waited for a moment to get a feel for the vehicle’s motion and then grasped the sides of the opening and swung himself up and to the top of the roof.
He crouched, holding to the roof rails, feeling the wind buffet him, hearing but not listening to the horns blaring, someone whooping and whistling. He got to his feet and stretched to his full height, his knees bent slightly like an experienced sailor to absorb the SUV’s rocking. The vehicle was moving slowly, the slow-moving lines of cars and trucks impeding its progress, and it had been the low speed that had encouraged him.
He looked back at the snarly lines of vehicles following them, knowing he was visible to drivers far behind.
Look at me. I’m the one to come after.
Zho stared for minutes, not believing his eyes, his composure momentarily deserting him as he watched in disbelief at the man rise from the roof of the SUV.
Rush hour brought out the worst in New Yorkers. Something about the sluggish flow of metal and plastic, ever changing stoplights and swirls of gas in the air made them curse and swear and drive as if they were in a drag race.
The brown-haired man seemed to pay no attention to all that. He stood calmly, poised on the roof of his SUV as if he was in his backyard. Zho was several car lengths behind him and knew that the man couldn’t see him; yet he instinctively cowered in his seat.
A grunt of annoyance escaped him as he pulled himself upright, his eyes still on the man who seemed to have his gaze locked on Zho. Zho looked back, recognizing what the man was trying to convey.
It was a challenge, one that he gladly accepted as his blood raced and thrummed in his veins.
Zeb climbed inside at a red light, to an icy silence that Beth finally broke. ‘Anyone tell you Batman wears a cape?’
Meghan snickered, not glancing in his direction. ‘Someone would, if he talked to them.’
‘Care to tell us what you were doing? There’s an invention called mirrors. We’ve several of them in our SUV. They let us see who’s behind us,’ Beth continued in her frigid voice when Zeb didn’t rise to the bait.
‘I wanted some air,’ Zeb replied.
‘You could’ve rolled down the windows.’
Zeb looked out of the window, remembering the vehicles behind them. There had been three SUVs, two pickup trucks, several cabs and then the vehicles had blurred and merged.
Suited man in one, bearded guy in another, yet another dude, a woman on a phone, he shook his head unconsciously. Mystery man was far behind, close enough for his chi to alert Zeb, too far to be seen.
‘What did Broker say?’ He asked Meghan and kept looking at her profile till she answered.
‘That we should ask Jack Minter about his investigations.’
She maneuvered their ride past a slow moving cab, cut to the left lane and wheeled into the basement parking at their office.
‘We aren’t at the Minters’ place.’
‘Of course we aren’t, Sherlock. Jack Minter is still fuming, still angry. Let him sleep on it, we’ll visit him tomorrow.’
The sisters had thawed a little by dinner, enough to invite him out, to join them at a neighborhood restaurant. Mark would be joining them, Beth said, her eyes glowing her cheeks pink in excitement.
Zeb declined and when they’d departed, he pulled up a chair and got working on Werner. The first command was to search all the Chinese gangs in the city. Werner printed the details on the screen before he’d finished typing.
Zeb identified the gang that the twins had faced down at Tiemann’s apartment. A low level gang into peddling and extortion. Chang said there are no deeper connections there. Meghan said the same.
He wheeled his seat back and strode to the window and watched the city down below. The
mad office-to-home rush had died, now vehicles moved faster, as folks went for dinner, and drove to watch a show or to catch a movie.
A low level gang won’t have that kind of gangster in it. That man’s a ghost, maybe an enforcer.
He went back to Werner and asked it to search gang affiliations, on a probability basis. Werner came back quickly. Such searches didn’t tax it at all. It could execute such commands in its sleep, though of course, it never slept.
Zeb ran down the list of affiliations, skimming past non-Chinese gangs and paused when he came to the last three names.
14K. Sun Yee Oh. 41S.
The low level gang had Triad affiliations.
Chapter Nineteen
The twins’ cheerful dispositions had returned the next day as Zeb drove them back to the Minters’ apartment. He didn’t mention the Triad link to them, it was something that needed more investigation.
‘Dad’s still fuming,’ Percy whispered as she showed them into the living room. ‘Most of it is an act. It’s the FBI he’s angry with.’
Meghan thanked her with a smile and seated herself on a couch, next to Beth, while Zeb leaned against a wall and became furniture.
Jack Minter stomped into the living room, a scowl on his face, his arms crossed. ‘What?’ he growled, no apology in his voice, his mouth still set in a tight line.
‘Sir, you were a war crimes investigator, weren’t you?’
‘Yeah, what of it?’
‘Your investigations put away several criminals, didn’t they?’
‘That’s what we do,’ impatience laced his words. Grace Minter entered the room and waved at the twins to remain seated, when they rose.
‘He’s all bark, no bite,’ she smiled wanly, apologizing for her husband’s attitude.
‘Did any of those war criminals get back to you? Threaten you?’
‘Several of them. Not just me, most of us received death threats, warnings. It was part of the job.’
