by Janzen, Tara
Jessica was going to have to kill her. She was going to have to kill a woman, and she didn’t know if she could.
“Must be Koo-pare’s,” Baolian seemed to decide on a whim. “Jack Sun did not like old women.” Her smile turned sour and a malevolent light flickered in her eyes. “Jack Sun did not like this not-so-old woman, no? It is what caused his death, this aversion and other things. Foolish, foolish man.
“So, Dove, master of the dying Dragon, my child has been lost to me. Do you know where she is?”
It was a mother’s plea from a viper’s mouth. Jessica didn’t answer.
Baolian’s anger rose with every second of silence. “Do you know?” she asked again, tight-lipped. “Have you seen my Shulan? The child of my heart? If you know, you must tell me, or you will die. You all will die. All, Dove. All, Jessssss-ica Yangston.”
The hiss and the emphasis wasn’t lost on Jessica, neither was the use of her name, but the full meaning of Baolian’s words didn’t hit home until she spoke again.
“Which will be worse, do you think, Dove? A child, or maybe two, without their mother? Or a mother without her children?”
“The girl who came to the Dragon was called Cao Bo, not Shulan,” Jessica said, her voice relaying the sudden deep and abiding calm she felt. Baolian had made a mistake by showing her hand and making her threat. If the situation deteriorated to the point of death, it would be Baolian’s death, not Jessica’s children’s.
“Cao Bo?” Baolian scoffed. “Her name is Shulan, Sun Shulan, and she is a princess of the South China Sea. What I have built will be hers. She is my life. Give her to me, and I will give you and your children life.”
It was an offer Jessica would have accepted, except for the man on the floor.
“What about Cooper?” she asked.
Baolian gave her a curious look. “You value a pet as you value your children?”
Pet? Jessica thought. Cooper was in trouble, big, deep, huge trouble. Thinking she was doing the right thing, she tried not to sound overly eager.
“He has value to me.”
“More value than your children?”
The question was impossible, angering, and just about got the dragon whore shot.
“The question, Ms. Fang,” Jessica said in her best Ms. MBA-from-Stanford voice, “is how much you value the return of your child. If you accept such as the basis of our discussion, fine. If not, if you continue to mistake that the discussion is about my children, I’m going to blow a hole in you big enough to float a hundred-and-twenty-thousand-ton tanker. And that, Ms. Fang, is one hell of a hole .”
Baolian hissed halfheartedly and turned to ascend the dais. When she was seated on her throne, she gave Jessica a petulant look. “Tell me what you know.”
The woman gave all the right signs of conceding defeat. The dismissal of the matter as if it weren’t important, the childish expression, the more reasonable, less reptilian tone.
Jessica didn’t buy the act for a minute.
“Shulan is being held across the Bay. When Cooper and I are safely out of here, and I have had a chance to call home, I will give you the address.”
Baolian clapped her hands and spoke to one of the guards in Chinese. The dialect didn’t sound like the Cantonese of Chow Sheng and John Liu. The guard came forward and from out of a silk-lined box brought forth an old-fashioned phone with a very long cord.
“Talk to your children,” Baolian said, gesturing at the phone. “And then I will talk to mine.”
It sounded like a fair plan to Jessica.
She dialed her home phone number, and Paul answered.
“Hi, Paul. It’s Jessie,” she said, amazed at how calm she still sounded. “Are the kids there?”
“Yes, they’re here, and I just want to say what a wonderful time they’re having on my date with the most gorgeous greenhouse owner in the whole Bay Area. I thought I had a pretty good chance with her but then she met Eric, and he did something really goofy, like tell her how pretty she was, and now I think they’re planning to get married after a long engagement.”
Jessica attempted a short laugh, then wished she hadn’t bothered when it came out like a croak. Her arm was shaking from the strain of holding the gun. Her mind was going a hundred miles an hour trying to keep up with watching three guards, one dragon lady, one hurt dragon man, and manage the most important conversation of her life.
“Can I speak with him, please. And get Christina on the other line.”
“Sure, Jess,” he said, the teasing humor going out of his voice. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but come back on after the kids are finished.”
The children came on then, and talked their little hearts out about the pizza Uncle Tony had made them for dinner, and about the neat lady who liked Uncle Paul, and when Mommy was coming home.
When her brother got back on, she didn’t waste words. “I’m in trouble.”
“Where?”
“Underneath Chinatown, and I’m sure that’s all I can tell you.” A nod from Baolian confirmed her suspicion.
Paul told her what he thought of that in one foul word. “What in the hell do you mean underneath Chinatown?”
“Underneath, as in not on top.”
Baolian made a cutting motion across her throat, warning Jessica to say no more.
“Okay, okay,” Paul said. “I believe you. You’re underneath Chinatown. Fine. Great. Now tell me where underneath Chinatown. Give me a clue.”
It was a great idea, really great, and she wished like hell she could think of a clue she could fit into the conversation without setting off Baolian and the three Ninja Turtles waiting to take her head off. But she couldn’t.
“Don’t let the children out of your sight. Call Luke. Luke Signorelli and do just like he says—shoot anybody who tries to cross the threshold and then drag them inside.” It was the best clue she could come up with, emphasizing her maiden name and hoping somebody had called the cops about the crazy lady who had locked a double-parked car in front of an herb shop in Chinatown.
Anything Paul might have wanted to say was cut off by one of the guards disconnecting the phone from the wall. When he plugged it back in, Baolian gestured for her to make her second call.
“Why drag them inside?” she asked while Jessica tried to remember John Liu’s phone number.
“We’re in America. Criminals have rights.” The number was on the tip of her memory bank, right on the tip.
“Maybe I’ll move to America,” Baolian mused aloud.
The look Jessica gave her said, “Maybe not.”
She’d only called out to the Liu house a couple of times. But either fear or grace finally brought the number up in her mind.
“John? Jessie. Put Bo on the line.”
“Hello?” the young woman said a moment later.
Jessica handed the phone over to Baolian, then was chagrined to realize the conversation between mother and daughter was not going to take place in English. She’d been curious about what a throat-cutting, dragon-whore, pirate mother had to say to a daughter who misbehaved.
Remarkably, the throat-cutting, dragon whore, pirate mother sounded a lot like herself, with an appropriate increase in the chastisement quality of her tone of voice, given the seriousness of the daughter’s actions.
After a few minutes Baolian handed the phone back to Jessica. “Please speak with John Liu so that he doesn’t get himself killed trying to keep my child from me.”
It was a reasonable request, and Jessica complied.
“John. Cooper and I are in trouble, and it will go a lot easier on us if you let Cao Bo, or rather Sun Shulan, go.”
She got an argument, not much of one, but an argument she didn’t have time for.
“Just a minute, John.” She put her hand over the receiver and asked Baolian a question. “How old is Shulan?”
“Seventeen next week.”
“John,” Jessica went back on the line. “She’s younger than she looks, jail b
ait. Give her back to her mother.”
The phone was taken from her and returned to its silken box. The tension in the room had dropped considerably, but Jessica still didn’t have any idea of what would happen next, so she kept her gun trained on Baolian.
Cooper groaned, drawing her attention, and in that second she was disarmed by someone from behind.
Baolian smiled. “The only danger here today was for you and your pet,” she said, acknowledging the man who had stepped out from behind the rosewood screen and taken Jessica’s ninth wedding anniversary present out of her hands. “When Shulan is here, maybe you can take your Dragon and go.”
With a clap of her hands, the guards fell into action, picking Cooper up off the floor and grabbing Jessica.
Maybe? she thought, her mouth dry with fear. She struggled against the men holding her, but to no avail. She was caught, without the skills to take on three well-trained men.
Still, she didn’t make it easy for them to drag her out of the plush room and into the darkness of the maze. Cooper came to consciousness once, when a blast of cold air whirled up out of the tunnels and dropped the temperature by twenty degrees in a matter of seconds.
The guards spoke seldom, leaving only the labored breathing of five people and the sound of their footsteps to echo in the silent bowels of the earth. The walls grew clammy about them, and the darkness deepened, until the only light left was from a lantern carried by one of the guards.
Timeless minutes later, most of it spent walking at a downhill slant, she and Cooper were thrown into a dank, fetid cell with no lantern of their own and only rats to keep them company.
Jessica shuddered from the cold and fear and snuggled closer to the man she was sure she was going to die with.
“Cooper?” Her teeth chattered around his name. She shook him. “Cooper?”
“Yes?” he said weakly.
She let out a squeal when something skittered around the edge of her shoe. “Can you get to your feet?” Her voice took on added urgency. “We need to get out of here. Now, as in immediately .”
Cooper opened his eyes to nothing but darkness; he looked around and saw nothing but darkness. He felt like hell, like somebody had tied a noose around his neck, bruising him and rubbing him raw.
“Where are we, Jess?” he mumbled, not quite back with the living yet.
“I don’t know, but if we can’t find a way out, we’re going to die, or be eaten by something.”
Great, he thought.
“What . . . what kind of something?” he asked.
“I don’t know—ahh!” She squealed again. “What was that? Did you feel that?”
“I’m pretty numb, Jess.”
“I’m getting out of here.” Her voice shook, and he wished like hell he was in better shape to help her.
He’d seen the way she’d fought for him, stood up for him when she’d had the chance to walk away. He didn’t know how she’d found him, or why she’d followed him, but he knew he owed her his life.
“What?”
“What?” he asked back, confused.
“What was that noise you made?”
“I didn’t make any noi—”
An eerie, rumbling grunt punctuated the darkness, stunning them both into absolute paralysis. The grunting came again, rising to a high-pitched whine and growing ever louder before dropping off into a long, sibilant hiss.
Cooper cursed and broke into a cold sweat. Jessica clung to him like he was the last log in the ocean, digging her nails into his forearm.
“It’s an animal ,” she whispered, her voice strained and strident with fear.
“I hope,” he said curtly and without an ounce of confidence.
“It’s an animal,” she repeated. “I saw it on my way down.”
“You saw it?”
“Sort of saw it,” she amended. “It’s in a cage in one of the tunnels. There wasn’t much light.”
“You saw that thing, and you kept coming?” His voice rose in disbelief and kept rising. “I thought I hired you for your brains, not to get yourself killed.”
The grunting sound came again, not quite so plaintive and more searching, as if the creature that made it had lifted its snout into the air to detect a trace of prey.
“Cooper?”
“Yes?” They were both whispering.
“I think it can hear us, and…and is following our voices .”
“I thought you said it was caged.”
“It was . . . at least on one side.”
A long stretch of silence fell between them. “A cage with one side is not a cage, Jessie.”
“I know.”
He took her hand in his and slowly got them both to their feet. “But if it can get out, maybe we can too. From what little I remember from the first trip down, this place is riddled with tunnels. I doubt if there’s a secure hole down here.”
“You’re right about the tunnels,” she said. “They’re everywhere and they always seem to run into each other.”
He tightened his hold on her, giving her hand a squeeze. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a flashlight on you ?”
“Just the little security light I keep on my key ring, which is in my pocket,” she said after a short pause . “Cripes, how could I have forgotten that?” The words were no sooner out of her mouth than a tiny light burst into being in her hand.
Even in its dim glow, Cooper could see she was a wreck, a beautiful, disheveled, damned handy wreck.
The two of them used the light to check out their cell, flashing it along the walls and floor and finding nothing but solid rock – and a pile of bones in the far corner.
Beside him, Jessica immediately started hyperventilating. “Coop, Cooper, my God, Cooper.”
“Dammit,” he swore under his breath. He was going to lose her in this damn place. If they couldn’t get out, they’d either die of hunger and thirst, be tortured to death by Fang Baolian’s guards, or so help him God, eaten alive by whatever was on the prowl in the tunnels.
He took the light from her trembling hand and flashed it in the other direction, toward the cell door, and noticed a very curious thing. It was made out of bamboo poles, not steel bars, and the bottom half of the poles were all gnawed on and broken…as if something had bitten and thrashed its way through the flimsy barrier to get at whatever, or whoever, had been in the cell.
Slowly, with growing dread, he swung the light back to the pile of bones in the corner, and a clear picture formed in his mind, a very ugly picture.
“Baby, I hope you’ve got your track shoes on.” There were going to be running for their lives.
Using all the strength he could muster, Cooper ripped a bamboo pole out of the frame and immediately felt more in control. Now they had a weapon.
The two of them scrambled through the gaping hole with Cooper in the lead. He headed to the left, but got no further than ten feet down the tunnel before they both stopped cold.
“My, God,” Jessica whispered, taking a step back. “I’ve never…ever…ever…”
Her words stumbled along, going nowhere, but he understood. She had never, ever, ever smelled anything as putrid and rank as the smell coming out of the left hand tunnel.
Neither had he. My, God, was right.
With a quick about-face, he turned them in the other direction and took off at a halting run, the best he could manage, which he feared was not going to be good enough.
They were rats in a maze, dead-ending, circling back on their trail, sometimes climbing higher and feeling like they had a chance, only to have their hopes dashed when the tunnel they were in angled back down – and always, there was the smell, gaining in strength, seeming to follow them.
Suddenly, Jessica pulled him to a stop.
“What –“ he started, but she hushed him with a short shhh.
After a moment of stillness, she turned to him. “I hear water.”
So did he. It was dripping off the walls and forming puddles at their feet.
“Jessie –“ he started again.
“Running water,” she interrupted. “Coming from that direction, and somehow above us.” She pointed to a tunnel veering off to the right. “And…and it doesn’t smell so bad.”
She was right on both counts. He could hear the water, too, now, oddly above them, and if he held himself very still, he thought he felt a slight draft.
“Let’s go. Stay close.” The last command was unnecessary. She was all but on top of him as they headed deeper into the darkness. After a few steps, the tunnel took a noticeable slant upward, and so did their spirits. They were climbing.
The sound of the water grew faint at times, and sometimes disappeared all together, but they stayed the course, and when they’d round a turn, the sound of rippling water would return. The higher they climbed, the louder and more consistent the sound of the water became, with the air growing fresher with every yard they covered and the darkness easing off.
Thank,God, Cooper thought. They were going to make it out of there.
They came to another sharp turn in the tunnel, and when they rounded it, he got his first solid feeling of hope. The tunnel they’d been following emptied out into a crumbling, ancient pipeline constructed out of brick and mortar and concrete. It was tall enough for a man to stand, with a small stream coursing down it.
Cooper shone the tiny light up and down its length.
“What is this place?” she asked, holding onto him.
“I’m guessing an old sewer tunnel.”
“It doesn’t smell like a sewer.”
And for that, he was very grateful.
“I doubt if it’s been used in over a hundred years,” he said. “With storm water and flood run-off coming through here all the time.”
“It’ll lead us out of here, right?”
He sure as hell hoped so, but he knew it could just as easily dead end with the tunnel collapsed into a pile of impenetrable rubble.
“Right,” he said. “Give me your hand, and I’ll –“ His words were drowned out by an air-cracking grunt that quickly escalated into a rumbling hiss of endless fury.
Every hair on his neck stood straight up at the sound.