Nothing to Lose (19 page)

“
What?
” That didn't make sense. “They searched me,” I said. “They went through my backpack.”

“After you left, she put our cell phones in her pocket,” Morgan said, glancing at Ling-Kung. “But they took them.”

Ling-Kung nodded grimly. The men hadn't taken Philip's gun. They hadn't even looked for it. They hadn't blindfolded us. They had tied us up in a way that was easy enough to get free. They had thrown us into a windowless concrete room with a thick metal door. And they had taken our phones, so that we couldn't call for help. I felt cold and dizzy and sick and numb.

They had done what they had done because they weren't ever going to let us out. They were never going to open the door. We were going to die down there.

“W
hat happened?” I said to Morgan. It had taken me a while to ask because Morgan had been crying. Morgan—crying! When did that ever happen? And I couldn't stop shaking. Philip was rocking back and forth the way babies do when they're upset, wishing they were in their mothers' arms. Only Ling-Kung appeared unmoved—probably, I realized, because she had been through much worse.

Finally Morgan ran out of tears. She was sitting on the floor next to me, her head resting on my shoulder. Instead of crying, she was saying, “I'm sorry.” She kept repeating it. I had no idea what she was sorry about —if it hadn't been for me, she wouldn't be trapped behind a locked door.

“Morgan, what happened after Philip and I left?”

“For a few minutes, nothing,” she said, “except that what's-her-name there pushed me down. I'm going to have a huge bruise on my tailbone.” There was an edge of anger to her voice, which I took to be a good sign. Regular, normal Morgan tended to be outspoken. “Then all of a sudden we heard a big bang—I don't even know what it was—and she starting pulling at me to get me to stand up, but it was too late because there were three guys in the room. Three guys with guns.” Her voice quavered at the memory. “They tied our hands behind our backs and took us out to the van.”

“But how did they know where to find me and Philip?”

She started blubbering again. “I'm sorry,” she whimpered. “I'm sorry.”

“She told them,” Ling-Kung said.

Morgan sobbed as if everything she cared about had just been ripped away from her. “I'm sorry, Robyn.”

“They put a gun at her,” Ling-Kung said, using her index finger to show me where, holding it against her right temple. “They said, tell us where the boy is or we will shoot you now.”

Morgan sobbed again.

“She was scared. She said he went to the parade. With a girl. With you.”

“I'm sorry,” Morgan said again between sobs and great gasps for breath.

“What about Nick?” I said, suddenly afraid they would go after him. “Did you tell them about Nick?”

“I said Philip was taking you to a bank,” Ling-Kung said. “To get money. No one talked about your friend.”

“I didn't say a word about Nick, I swear, Robyn.”

I glanced at Philip. He was leaning against the concrete wall, his head on his knees. Ling-Kung sat on the floor beside him, her arms wrapped around her knees, her face serious.

The snakeheads didn't know about Nick. That was good. It was also good that Nick had seen me get into a van. But that's where the good news ended. Nick didn't know why I had gotten into the van, or who had gotten in with me. I wasn't even sure that he cared.

Maybe, when I didn't return home, he would tell someone—assuming he cared enough to find out whether or not I had gone home. Maybe he would tell my father where he had last seen me. Maybe he would describe the van, although I doubted that he had made a note of the license plate. But would he tell my father about Mr. Li? About the money, the passport, and the visa? Would either he or my dad link the van to what Nick had been doing? Even if they did, how could they find it? It was just a nondescript gray van. For all I knew it was still upstairs, hidden safely inside the warehouse. And where was this warehouse anyway? It could be anywhere.

And how would Nick know that I had gotten into the van against my will? Maybe he thought I was with friends. On the other hand, my father knew I was spending time with Nick. When he got back, the first thing he would do is call Henri. Henri would tell him that Nick had been at her place, that I had gone to find him. I hadn't told Henri exactly where I would be. But she would assume that I had found Nick, wouldn't she? And when I didn't show up, my father would contact Nick, wouldn't he? And even if Nick didn't think there was anything wrong, my father would. He would look for me. But where would he look?

“Robyn?” Morgan said. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing.”

“You know what I'm thinking?” she said, her voice quivering with fear. “I'm thinking they're never going to open that door.”

 

 

Morgan turned out to be wrong. About an hour after we had been locked in the room, I heard the metallic
tchonk
of the door being unlocked. When it opened, an elegantly dressed Asian man stepped into the room. Philip raised his head. His eyes widened. He sprang to his feet.

“Father!” he said.

Father?

Philip embraced the man. Only then did he step back. A question formed on his face.

“But how—” he said.

“Come, Philip,” his father said, extending a hand.

“But Ling-Kung”—he gestured to her—“her father was murdered. She needs our help. And now—”

“Come, Philip,” his father said again. He didn't look at Ling-Kung or so much as glance at Morgan and me. He wasn't interested in us. “I will explain everything.”

“But Father, we can't leave them—”

Philip's father took him by the arm and started to guide him to the door. Philip balked.

“How did you find us?” Philip said.

“Please, son. Just come with me.”

I saw the same two men from the van standing out in the corridor behind Philip's father. They were both still armed. But they weren't stopping Philip's father from taking him out of the room. Then I remembered what my father had told me, that the big snakeheads, the ones who make the most money, are often legitimate businessmen. They invest in human smuggling the way they might invest in the stock market. Philip's father was a businessman. I wondered how legitimate he was.

I glanced at Philip. He had seen the men in the corridor too. He looked from them to his father and then back to them again.

“I don't understand,” he said.

The man's eyes hardened. He spoke to Philip in Chinese and pulled on his arm.

Philip wrenched himself free. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the gun. The two men in the corridor looked at it but didn't react. I dragged Morgan to the far side of the room. Philip's father signaled the men to stay where they were. Then he looked at the gun in Philip's hand and shook his head.

“Give that to me, son.”

“Those men killed Ling-Kung's father,” Philip said.

Philip's father stepped forward and reached for the gun in Philip's hand. Behind him, one of the armed men said something in Chinese. Philip's face went rigid. Philip's father said something, also in Chinese. He took another step toward Philip. Philip pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Dumbfounded, Philip stared at the gun. He pulled the trigger again.

Nothing.

The gun wasn't loaded.

Philip's father wrenched the gun from his hand. “I'm your father,” he said, “and you try to shoot me!” Stone-faced, he slapped his son. The blow sent Philip reeling. The men with the guns stepped into the room, and Philip's father spoke to them in Chinese.Then he turned back to Philip, and spoke sharply to him. He wheeled around and left the room. One of the men closed the door. I heard the lock turn.

Philip flung himself against the door, kicking at it, hammering at it, screaming his father's name, until he exhausted himself. He sank to the ground.

“What just happened?” Morgan said.

“Philip's father knew the gun wasn't loaded,” I said. “How did he know that?” I looked at Ling-Kung. “Where did your father get that gun?”

“From a countryman,” Ling-Kung said, her mouth twisted around the bitterness of the words she was speaking. “From someone he knew—someone who works for Philip's father.”

“What did he say just before he left the room?” I said.

“He said he has to make some arrangements. That while he's doing that, I should think things over.”

“Think what over?”

“What I want to do,” Philip said.

“I'm sorry,” Morgan said. She started to cry again. I reached for my backpack and started to root through it, looking for tissues to dry her tears. Of course there weren't any. There wasn't anything useful in my backpack.

Wait a sec
, I thought. I felt around some more. I pulled something out and nudged Morgan. I opened my hand to show her what I had. She wasn't sure it would work—“What if we're too far underground?”—but she showed me what I wanted to know. Then we sat together on the floor, waiting.

An hour passed. Then another hour.

“I'm hungry,” Morgan murmured.

Ling-Kung snorted. She was prowling around the room, testing the walls, testing the door and examining the ceiling. Even after we had all more or less agreed that there was no way out, she kept prowling.

More time passed. I closed my eyes and didn't open them again until I heard a noise. A
tchonk
. The door opened again. The men with the guns motioned to us to get up and face the wall. They told us to put our hands behind our backs and taped them together—mine and Morgan's and Ling-Kung's. Morgan was stone-faced now. She didn't cry. She didn't whimper. She said, “You're the best friend I ever had, Robyn.”

Behind us a familiar voice said, “Philip, have you decided?”

“Yes, Father,” Philip said. He stepped away from us, murmuring something in Chinese to Ling-Kung. She spat something back at him right before one of the men taped her mouth shut.

The men prodded us out into the corridor and nudged us toward the stairs. One of them led the way. The other brought up the rear, followed by Philip and his father. We started to climb. I tried not to think about where they were taking us and what they would do when we got there. I just climbed.

The man in front opened a door at the top of the stairs and went through it. I stepped out behind him, into the huge warehouse. Morgan and Ling-Kung were behind me. I looked at the van, which was parked exactly where it had been the last time I'd seen it. But my scarf wasn't lying on the ground beside it anymore. Someone must have picked it up. Not that it mattered.

“Get into the van,” the man behind us said.

I started toward it. Every step I took seemed to push the van farther and farther away. This was going to be the longest walk I ever took.

From across the warehouse, someone called, “Police. Stand where you are.” For a second the world went silent. Then something exploded in my ear and I dropped to the ground.