Stealing the Dragon (15 page)

Sally remained silent, her attention turning again to the locket around her neck. She looked at the gentle smiles and loving eyes, then stared silently at the blood on her hands. She adjusted her balance and eased the pressure of her foot.

Kano assumed the mention of his uncle’s name had the desired effect, and he spoke with renewed bravado.

“Now let me up and maybe I won’t have you killed,” he demanded.

Sally absently took her foot off his neck.

Kano sat up and spat. “You want to know something?” he taunted, a bloody sneer on his face. “I probably enjoyed killing your fucking parents.”

Sally’s eyes refocused. The music from the club faded and died, swept away by the night air. She could hear herself breathing. The patter of Kano’s blood as it sluiced past his ears onto the cement. Her own blood as it dripped off her chin onto her dress. The susurrus of traffic thirty stories below.

“Now help me up,” said Kano, extending his hand with the missing finger.

Sally looked at his hand and then at her own, the blood on them turning black as it dried. With her left hand, she shut the locket without looking at the pictures, hearing the soft click as the latch closed. Extending her right, she bent down and grabbed Kano’s hand in her own and pulled him to his feet.

Kano started to say something, a smug expression forming on his battered face, but Sally kept pulling him forward, accelerating his upward momentum. Bending her legs, she grabbed Kano’s belt with her left hand as she pulled his arm forward with her right, turning her body as she lifted. Before he could get his footing, Kano was already hurtling forward. Sally pushed up against his stomach and dropped her right shoulder, rocketing Kano over her head.

Kano didn’t even start to scream until he cleared the balcony, a high-pitched wail of terror cut short when he hit a flagpole ten stories down.

As Sally watched, Kano’s body spun through the clouds toward the burning lights below. A dead leaf taken by the wind. A damned soul on its way to hell.

She couldn’t hear the body hit the park below, but she watched until it disappeared into the ring of blackness. Then she stood, immobile, at the railing. It was several long minutes before she even blinked.

Holding the locket in one hand, Sally closed her eyes and willed herself to cry, but no tears came. She thought of her parents and the fading memories of a five-year-old, the life she never had and never would. She thought of Kano and realized she felt absolutely no remorse. No guilt. Nothing.

She thought of Jun and the long trip home.

Home.

Sally took one last look at the lights below, then turned and left, never looking back.

Chapter Twenty-eight

San Francisco, present day

The problem with finding a dead body in your trunk is deciding where to put it. As Cape drove through the night fog with the top down, he ran through his options.

He briefly considered leaving the corpse at the house of Richard Choffer, his pretentious ex-client. But since Richard was probably going to sue him, Cape figured depositing a dead body on Richard’s lawn was a bad idea—even if the thought did make him smile.

His responsible side told him to drive straight to the nearest police station, calling Beau on his cell phone on the way. Beau might help him cut through the red tape and stay out of jail, but the fact remained that Cape fled the scene of a crime with a body in his car. The interrogation alone would take the rest of the night. When it came right down to it, Cape didn’t believe Beau could help him on this case, so he drove on.

He was frustrated and angry by the time he crossed Broadway and headed into Chinatown. He was groping for leads, working with none of the resources of the feds and no real connections of his own. He felt more like a pawn in someone else’s chess game than a detective, and it pissed him off.

It was well past midnight, and the street was deserted, tourists and tenants alike having gone inside and turned off the lights. Cape slowed the car as he neared Freddie Wang’s restaurant, scanning the second floor for lights or open curtains.

As he pulled up to the curb, Cape checked the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of himself, his hair tangled from the wind, the crow’s feet etched around his blue-gray eyes. Taking another quick glance at the restaurant, he smiled, pulling away from the curb without stopping. He shook his head at his own reflection, realizing he’d crossed a line and didn’t care.

Taking a right and then another, Cape drove slowly down Grant Street with his lights off until he came to the front of the building where he’d first met Harold Yan. The brass plaque for the Chinatown Merchants Benevolent Association glowed dully in the light from the lone streetlamp half a block away. Twisting in his seat to look the length of the street, Cape put the car in park but kept the engine running.

The corpse was heavy, cold, and a little moist. Cape saw that one of the bags had burst open, the half-melted ice scattered across the bottom of his trunk. With a series of muffled grunts and curses, he managed to get the body out of the trunk and onto the curb. Two minutes later, it was propped next to the front door directly under the plaque.

Rigor mortis had started to set in, but the body was still fresh enough for Cape to position the arms and legs. He crossed the legs at the ankle and laid the arms to the sides, the man’s enormous hands jutting out awkwardly. The head was twisted at an odd angle, and Cape knew he was pushing his luck as it was, so he left it sagging to one side. The expression on the dead man’s face hadn’t changed—he looked shocked to be there.

“I don’t blame you,” muttered Cape. “I’m a bit surprised myself.”

Cape turned and reached into his car, popping open the glove compartment and fishing out a digital camera. Glancing down the street and up at the windows one last time, he quickly fired off a shot, the flash throwing everything into stark relief for an interminable moment.

“It’s been fun,” he said to the corpse, tossing the camera onto the passenger seat and putting the car in drive.

Freddie Wang couldn’t—or wouldn’t—help him, whether Freddie knew his bodyguard was dead or not. And neither could the police.

Cape needed someone of influence to help, and that meant he needed to make his problem
their
problem. Harold Yan got him an interview with Freddie, so he obviously had influence in Chinatown. And Yan had told the press he wanted answers on the smuggling case. That sounded great as a press release, but Cape needed someone with juice like Yan to take an interest.

A personal interest.

Cape didn’t know what would happen, other than Yan calling the cops. But since he was fishing without any bait, he figured he might as well stir up the water and see what surfaced.

And in the meantime, he’d print out a copy of the photo and send it to Beau, just to make things more interesting. As he hit Broadway, he flicked on his lights and gunned the engine, knowing deep down he still had no idea where he was headed.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Hong Kong, 11 years ago

It had been almost a week since Sally had thrown a man off a roof.

The return to Hong Kong took longer than expected, an extra two days while the Japanese freighter waited out a tropical storm. She arrived in the middle of the night, but Master Xan was waiting in his office, fully awake and dressed, as if he’d known the precise moment she would return.

Sally wondered, not for the first time, if Xan ever slept.

“Welcome home, little dragon.” His dark eyes studied her as she bowed. Sally met his gaze, her green eyes hard and clear as she extended her right hand and dropped a roll of undeveloped film on his desk.

“Here are your pictures,” she said.

Xan took the film in his left hand but kept his eyes on her the whole time. “Thank you.”

Sally turned to leave, but Xan raised his hand.

“Is there anything else?”

Sally hesitated before answering. “No, Master Xan. I would like to go to my room.”

Xan nodded. “Jun will be happy to see you,” he said. “She has also been away.”

At the mention of Jun’s name Sally felt a surge of something—excitement? Fear? She caught herself and blinked before answering.

“I’m just very tired.”

“Of course,” said Xan. “We can talk in the morning.”

As Sally turned toward the door, Xan spoke again, his voice so soft that Sally wondered if she were hearing his thoughts.

“You went to Japan looking for something, little dragon,” he said.

Sally turned to face him, her green eyes going gray, dark storms clouding deep green seas. She nodded, her jaw muscles tight as she spoke.

“Justice.”

Xan nodded. “And what did you find?”

Sally held his gaze for a minute, then looked down at her hands.

“Revenge.”

Xan nodded again as she looked up at him. “Sometimes, little dragon, the two are not so different.”

“But they’re not the same,” said Sally diffidently.

“No,” replied Xan. “They’re not.”

Sally remained silent.

“Tell me,” asked Xan, “if I asked you to travel to Tokyo again tomorrow for the same reason, would you still go?”

“Yes,” replied Sally unhesitatingly.

“Would you do anything differently?”

“No.”

Xan smiled, his features softening. “Then you should sleep well, little dragon.”

But Sally didn’t sleep well.

She had gone to bed without waking Jun, who slept ten feet away on a simple bed against the far wall of their room. A small part of Sally wanted to tell her everything, but the rest of Sally didn’t want to speak of Tokyo, or her parents, ever again. She was different now, and as she closed her eyes, she made a silent wish that Jun would still recognize her in the morning.

An hour later, the nightmare came for her.

If you want to kill this man, you will first have to get close to him.

Xan’s words rolled across thunderheads on the horizon as Sally, her arms heavy and useless, struggled in Kano’s embrace. She could feel him stir as he pressed his hips forward, his right knee forcing her legs apart. His scent was a cloying mixture of musk, booze, and sweat that filled her nostrils, his unshaven cheek sandpaper against her skin. As his right hand grabbed her breast and his left pulled her closer, her arms grew heavier, and Sally realized she wasn’t strong enough. She wouldn’t be able to fight him off.

Kano could take her, and there was nothing Sally could do about it.

As his mouth pressed against hers, she saw the horror on her parents’ faces and knew that she had failed. From beyond the grave they called out to her, their voices merging into a single, plaintive wail of despair.

“Sally! Sally, wake up!”

Light from under the door and Jun shaking her, the darkness retreating to the corners of the room.

Sally shuddered as her eyes focused, her body slick with sweat, suddenly cold in the night air. Jun held her at arm’s length, watching her eyes to see if the dream still possessed her. Sally exhaled and forced a smile.

“Sorry I woke you.”

Jun smiled back, her hands still resting on Sally’s shoulders. Wordlessly, she leaned across the bed and hugged Sally. After a long moment she pulled back enough to kiss Sally lightly on the cheek.

“Welcome home,” she said.

Tears started pouring down Sally’s cheeks. Tears she had never found. Tears for her parents. Tears for the last remnant of innocence she threw over the balcony in Tokyo. All the tears that she couldn’t find for more than a decade.

Jun held her and they both cried silently, the tears running down their faces and chests, flowing together on the bed between them, pooling their sorrows. The two girls sat crying for what seemed like a year, the sheets soaking up all the pain and doubt the world had given them.

When there were no more tears left between them, Sally and Jun looked at each other. Their eyes were red but they both smiled, neither shy nor embarrassed.

Without saying anything more, Jun leaned forward and kissed Sally again, this time on the mouth.

Sally gasped briefly, then returned the kiss. Jun tasted of salt and something else, tears mixed with emotions too subtle and complex to put into words.

Sally closed her eyes and felt Kano’s coarse hands fade away. His scent dissipated in the night air, and his twisted mask of lust and hate shrank to nothingness as he fell, plummeting endlessly from her consciousness into oblivion.

The rest of the night until the dawn Sally stayed in Jun’s arms. Looking back, years later, Sally would remember that night as the last time she had a nightmare.

She knew Death would be her constant companion, but she no longer feared or hated him for what he brought and what he took away. She considered Death an ally, if not a friend, the only one she could count on besides Jun.