“First, you may relax,” the man continued, his Cantonese formal and flawless but tinged with a European patois. Considering it was Macau, the accent was likely Portuguese. “We do not intend to kill you, or even harm you. At least, not me personally. It’s merely a business transaction.”
So she had been correct about someone selling her for profit. But it was little consolation.
“Second, in regard to your friends . . .”
This time she did flinch, imagining Gray’s face, Kowalski’s bluster. Were they still alive?
A soft scolding chuckle rose from the man.
“They are alive,” he said, reading her like a book. “But simply for the moment, I’m afraid. It took us a while to track them down—only to discover they had turned up in a most unexpected place, the home of a competitor. Which left me baffled, wondering why? Then I realized it didn’t matter. There is the old Chinese saying: yi jian shuang diao. I think it applies to this circumstance.”
Seichan translated in her head.
One arrow, double vultures.
She went cold at the implication. The Chinese phrase was the equivalent of a more common idiom.
Killing two birds with one stone.
8:58 A.M.
The elevators opened, delivering them from hell to heaven.
Gray followed the swordsman into what must have once been the apartment building’s penthouse. Here there was none of the stifling cramp and grime of the lower complex. The entire space was open, decorated in white furniture with simple, clean lines. The floor was polished bamboo. Potted orchids of every shade and shape dotted the room. A fish tank curved in the shape of a standing wave held myriad snow-white fish. It acted as a divider from a kitchen of stainless European appliances.
But the biggest difference from the hellish landscape below was the amount of light. Even the drizzling overcast day did little to dampen the brightness. Huge windows looked out over Kowloon, high enough to view the shining towers of Hong Kong City. In the center of the penthouse stood a glass-walled atrium open to the sky above, holding a fountain, along with a riotous spread of plants and flowers, all surrounding a fishpond with floating lilies.
A single lantern also gently rocked atop the water.
A slim shape in a belted robe bent over it. With a long taper in hand, she lit a fresh candle in the lotus-shaped lantern.
Gray pictured the festival at Macau, with its thousands of lights, each glow marking the memory of a past loved one.
Gray was marched out of the elevator and toward the atrium.
Kowalski looked darkly back at the elevator. “So why did we climb fourteen flights when they have a frickin’ elevator?”
Its use was likely restricted to the Triad, but Gray didn’t bother explaining, keeping his full attention on the figure behind the glass.
The swordsman led them to a few yards from the atrium door. “Remain standing.”
The woman—and it was plain from her petite bare feet and the curve of her hip that this was a woman—remained bowed before the lantern, hands now folded around the burning incense taper.
For a full two minutes, no one spoke. Kowalski fidgeted, but he had the good sense for once to keep his mouth shut.
Finally the woman gave a deeper bow toward the pond, straightened, and turned. Her robe was hooded against the drizzle, its edges long, folding around her face as she stood. She crossed to the atrium door and slowly slid it open.
With great grace, she stepped into the penthouse.
“Guan-yin,” the swordsman intoned, bowing his head.
“M`h’ gōi, Zhuang.” A pale hand slipped from a sleeve and touched the swordsman’s forearm, an oddly intimate gesture.
The dragonhead of the Duàn zhī turned next to Gray.
“You speak of Mai Phuong Ly,” she said, her voice low and calm but laced with the steel edge of a threat. “You come speaking of someone long dead.”
“Not in the memories of her daughter.”
The woman showed no reaction, a demonstration of her degree of control. After a long pause, her voice came back quieter.
“Again you speak of the dead.”
“She was not hours ago when she came to Macau looking for her mother.”
The only reaction was the slight lowering of her chin, perhaps realizing how close she had come to killing her own daughter. Now she was likely wondering if he spoke the truth.
“It was you at the Casino Lisboa.”
Gray motioned to Kowalski. “The three of us. Dr. Hwan Pak recognized your dragon pendant, said he knew you. So we came to Macau to discover the truth.”
A small sniff of derision. “But what is the truth?” she asked.
Doubt and disbelief rang in her voice.
“If I may . . .” Gray pointed to the pocket of his jacket, where they’d left his phone after the Triad members below had frisked him.
“With care,” Zhuang warned.
Gray removed his phone and pulled up the photo log. He scrolled until he reached a folder labeled SEICHAN. He flipped through photos until he came to one that showed a clear picture of her face. Seeing her now, an ache of fear for her safety struck him deeply, but he kept his arm steady as he held out the phone as proof.
Guan-yin leaned forward, her features still shadowed, making it impossible to read her expression. But in the stumble of her step as she moved closer, Gray read the recognition, the barely restrained hope. Even after twenty years, a mother would know her daughter.
Gray motioned for her to take the phone. “There are other pictures. You can swipe to view them.”
Guan-yin reached out, but her fingers hesitated as if a part of her feared the truth. If her daughter was still alive, what did that say about a mother who failed her?
Finally, fingers slipped the phone from his hand. She turned her back to Gray as she searched the folder. A long stretch of silence—then the woman trembled and slipped to her knees on the bamboo floor.
Zhuang moved so swiftly Gray hardly noted it. One moment the swordsman was at his side . . . the next, he was on one knee beside his mistress, with his Dao saber pointed back at them, cautioning them to remain where they were.
“It is her,” Guan-yin whispered. “How could this be?”
Gray could not imagine the emotions that must be warring inside her: guilt, shame, hope, joy, fear, anger.
The last two won out as the woman quickly composed herself, standing and turning to them. Zhuang joined her, protective—but from the depth of concern in his eyes, it was clear his need to shield her went beyond professional duty.
Guan-yin shook back her hood, revealing a long cascade of black hair with a single streak of gray along one edge of her face, the same edge that bore the curve of a deep purplish scar. It curled from her cheek to across her left brow, sparing her eye. It was too purposefully twisted to be a wound received in a knife fight. Someone had intently and painfully carved into her face, a memento of old torture. But as if to turn such a scar into a badge of honor—to perhaps wrest control from that old pain—she had her face tattooed, incorporating the scar, transforming it into the tail of the dragon now inked across cheek and brow.
It was an uncanny match to the silver serpent at her throat.
“Where is she now?” Guan-yin asked, her voice rising in volume, showing again that steel. “Where is my daughter?”
Gray swallowed back the awe at the sight of her face and quickly explained about the attack, its aftermath, and the abduction on the street.
“Tell me about the man you saw standing beside the car,” Guan-yin demanded.
Gray described the tall powerful-looking man with the trimmed beard. “He looked Portuguese, with maybe some Chinese blood.”
She nodded. “I know him well. Ju-long Delgado, the boss of all Macau.”
A shadow of concern swept her features.
If this hard woman was worried, that was a bad sign.
9:18 A.M.
With a complaint of brakes, the vehicle c
ame to a stop.
Seichan heard the stranger speak in low tones to the driver in Portuguese, but she didn’t understand the language. Doors opened and slammed.
A hand reached to her face. She thrashed back, but fingers merely removed her blindfold. She blinked against the sudden glare.
“Calm yourself,” her captor said. “We still have a long way to go.”
The man was dressed meticulously in a finely tailored silk suit and jacket. His dark brown eyes matched his shaggy hair and manicured beard, the latter shorn tight to his cheeks and square chin. His eyes, pinched slightly at the corners, revealed his mixed-blood heritage.
A glance around revealed she was on the floor of a panel van.
The rear door popped open, stabbing her eyes again with brighter light. Another man stood outside: he was younger, a smooth-faced brute with cropped black hair and massive shoulders that strained his suit jacket. He had striking ice-blue eyes.
“Tomaz,” her captor said. “Are we ready for the flight?”
A nod. “Sim, Senhor Delgado. The plane is ready.”
The man called Delgado turned to her. “I’ll be accompanying you on this flight,” he said. “To ensure I receive full compensation, but also I believe it would be a good time for me not to be in Macau. Not after what is about to transpire in Hong Kong. The aftermath will be bloody for some time.”
“Where are you taking me?”
Ignoring her, he scrambled out of the van and stretched his back. “It looks to be a beautiful day.”
His underling, Tomaz, grabbed her bound ankles and yanked her into the morning sunlight. A dagger appeared in his hands and sliced the plastic ties. Her wrists remained bound behind her back.
Placed roughly on her feet, she realized she was on the tarmac of some remote airstrip. A sleek jet waited thirty yards away. Its stairs were down, ready to receive its passengers. A figure appeared in the open doorway and stepped into the light.
A large splinted bandage covered his broken nose.
Dr. Hwan Pak.
“Ah, our benefactor.” Delgado headed toward the jet, checking the Rolex on his wrist. “Come. We don’t want to be anywhere near Hong Kong after the next few minutes.”
9:22 A.M.
“That’s all you know?”
A mother’s love for her daughter ached in Guan-yin’s voice. She had questioned Gray intently for the past several minutes, probing Seichan’s past, trying to understand how she could still be alive.
They had retreated to one of the sofas.
Zhuang stood guard beside her. Kowalski had wandered over to the fish tank, tapping at the glass, his nose close to its surface.
Gray wished he could fill in more blanks for Guan-yin, but even he did not know the full extent of Seichan’s history, only fragments: a series of orphanages, a rough time on the streets, a recruitment into a criminal organization. As Gray recounted this past, Guan-yin seemed to understand. In some ways, both mother and daughter had taken parallel paths, hardened by circumstances but still able to rise above it, to survive and flourish.
In the end, Gray could not paint a full enough picture to satisfy a mother who missed so much of her daughter’s life. He doubted any number of words could fill that void.
“I will find her,” Guan-yin swore to herself.
She had already passed down a command through her organization to discover where Ju-long Delgado might have taken her daughter. They still awaited word.
“In the past, I failed her,” Guan-yin said, as one finger rose to wipe a tear from the edge of her dragon scar. “My Vietnamese interrogators were cruel, crueler than I suspected even back then. They told me my daughter was dead.”
“To make you despair. To make it easier to break you.”
“It only made me angry, more determined than ever to escape and get vengeance, which eventually I did.” A glint of fire burned through her haunted look. “Still, I did not give up. I searched for her, but it was made difficult in those early years, as I dared not set foot again in Vietnam after escaping. Eventually I had to give up.”
“It hurt too much to keep looking,” he said.
“Hope is sometimes its own curse.” Guan-yin looked to her folded hands in her lap. “It was easier to bury her in my heart.”
Several long moments of silence stretched, marked by the tinkling of the fountain in the atrium.
“And you?” Guan-yin asked, her voice faint. “You have risked much to bring her here, to come to me now.”
Gray did not need to acknowledge that aloud.
She lifted her face to stare him in the eye. “Is it because you love her?”
Gray met those eyes, knew he could not lie—when the first explosion shook the complex.
The blast rocked the entire apartment tower. Water sloshed in the fish tank. The long-stemmed orchids swayed.
“What the hell!” Kowalski yelled.
Guan-yin was on her feet.
Her shadow, Zhuang, already had a phone at his ear, talking swiftly, moving to the wall of windows. Smoke rose up through the rain from below.
Another explosion erupted, sounding farther away.
Guan-yin followed her lieutenant to the window, towing Gray and Kowalski with her. She translated what she overheard from Zhuang.
“Cement trucks have pulled up to all the entrances, coming from all directions at once.”
Gray pictured the large vehicles squeezing down the narrow canyons surrounding this mountain, converging here in a coordinated assault. But they were not cement trucks . . .
Another blast from another direction.
. . . but bombs on wheels.
Someone intended to bring this entire place down around their ears. Gray could guess who: Ju-long Delgado. He must have discovered Gray and Kowalski had come here. The passage of their pale faces through here would be hard to miss.
“We need to get out!” Gray warned. “Now!”
Zhuang heard him and agreed, turning to his mistress. “We must get you to safety.”
Guan-yin stood her ground, back straight, the dragon shining more prominently on her angry face. “Mobilize the Triad,” she ordered. “Get as many residents to safety as possible.”
Gray pictured the mass of humanity below.
“Use our underground tunnels,” she said.
Of course, the Triad would have secret ways into and out of their stronghold.
“You must first go yourself,” Zhuang pressed.
“After you pass on that order.”
It seemed this captain was willing to go down with her ship—and it was coming down. Loud splintering crashes echoed as parts of the complex collapsed. The pall of black smoke now covered the entire wall of windows, as if driven upward by the muffled screams from below.
Zhuang returned to his phone, shouting now to be heard. Moments later, loudspeakers blared throughout the complex, echoing across its many levels, as the command of the dragonhead was spread to all.
Only then did Guan-yin relent.
Zhuang wisely led her away from the elevators. He ushered her through a double set of doors to the same stairs they had climbed earlier.
“Hurry now! We must reach the tunnels!”
As they descended at a run, pandemonium overtook the central courtyard. Multiple fires glowed below. Several floors down, a section of bridge that had spanned the space suddenly broke, spilling a handful of flailing people into the fiery depths. The apartment building across from them began to fold in on itself, imploding floor by floor, falling crookedly away, slowly ripping itself free from the other towers.
Gray ran faster now, leaping from landing to landing. Guan-yin kept pace with him, Zhuang at her side, Kowalski trailing.
A thunderous crack shook the stairs, sending them all to their knees.
The entire stairwell began to peel from the side of the tower.
“This way!” Gray hollered.
He leaped from the stairs, across the growing gap, and reached the tower’s exterior hallway
that faced the courtyard. The others followed. Guan-yin tripped, slipping out of her lieutenant’s arms as he jumped. Left behind, she teetered at the edge—but Kowalski scooped her up and vaulted with a bellow to join Gray.
“Thank you,” Guan-yin said as he set her down.
“We’ll never make it to the tunnels,” Gray said.
No one argued, accepting his grim assessment. Fires raged fiercely below, roiling with smoke, continually fueled by whatever tumbled into them from above.
“Then where do we go?” Kowalski asked. “We’re still a good ten stories up, and I forgot my wings.”
Gray clapped him on the shoulder, appreciating the suggestion. “Then we’ll have to make our own.” He faced Zhuang. “Take us to the closest corner apartment.”
Ever the lieutenant, the swordsman obeyed without question. He rushed them into the inner labyrinth of the tower. In a few short turns, he reached a door and pointed.
Gray tested and found it locked. He backed a step and kicked his heel into the deadbolt. The aged wood frame offered little resistance, and the door ripped open.
“Inside!” he yelled. “I need bedsheets, clothing, laundry, anything we can tie together to make a rope.”
He left this chore to Kowalski and Guan-yin.
With Zhuang in tow, he hurried through the sliding doors to the outside. Like all the other balconies he had spotted from the street, this one had been turned into a steel cage, sealed from the outside with chain-link fencing.
“Help me,” Gray said and set about freeing a section from the balcony rails.
As they worked furiously, the tower rumbled and shook, slowly coming apart as it was eaten below by fire.
At last, Gray kicked a piece of fencing loose and sent it tumbling through the smoke to the street below.
“How’s it going with the rope?” he yelled into the apartment.
“We’ll never make something long enough to reach the ground!” Kowalski called back.
That wasn’t the plan.
Gray moved inside to check on their handiwork. He found the two had managed to knot together a length of about twenty yards. The tower gave a massive shake, helping him make his final decision.