Without A Trace

by Sandra Moore

  Nothing except those sensual lips and strong jaw, the planes of his face and his broad, capable hands now elbow-deep in dishwater.

  Master Wong was worse. From him she sensed nothing at all. Did these guys not have feelings like regular people?

  Still, Johnny’s gentleness with the girls, his patience in letting them clamber all over him and holding Yanmei through his meal, suggested a deep well of something inside him. Still waters run deep, she’d heard her mother say. Perhaps Johnny’s waters ran so deep they didn’t lift their scent to the surface.

  That thought tugged at her, but Nikki mentally shrugged and moved on. “When’s your friend going to call?”

  “Soon. You are too impatient.” Johnny stood from the camp stool he’d sat on for breakfast and began clearing away the dishes.

  Nikki stared. Forget the still waters. He was a judgmental jerk. “Maybe so, but I don’t want to lose this guy.”

  “We won’t lose him.”

  “I’d love to share your confidence, but the last time I looked, nothing chained him to that container he travels in. He could jettison it at will. Then we’ll never find him.”

  “He’ll abandon it only if he knows we know he’s traveling in it,” Johnny pointed out. “He doesn’t, so he won’t.”

  Nikki disliked his logic but had to admit he was probably right. She just wouldn’t tell him so because he was already pretty damn arrogant. “You’re sure your contact can track him down?”

  “Yes.”

  Johnny had gotten through the dishes at a remarkable rate. Master Wong, Nikki realized with a start, had disappeared. When she listened, she heard his voice coming from the dojo.

  “Why does your grandfather have all these kids?” she asked.

  “He does what is before him.” Johnny wiped his hands dry and came back to the table. He sat and gave Nikki a measuring look. “The West assumes our government’s one-child policy is absolute, but that’s not true. One child is the ideal, but a family can have two if they’re willing to pay a social maintenance fee. Still, in our rural areas, girls are not valued as much as boys.”

  “These are castoffs from parents who don’t want to pay a fine?” Nikki felt her throat tighten.

  “Some. Others were left because their parents did not want to suffer the shame of having a second girl.”

  “Aren’t there children’s protective services or something to take care of these kids?”

  “The orphanages do what they can,” he replied. “What they can’t do, my grandfather does.”

  “Before they become slaves,” Nikki whispered, thinking of the Chou Hai and his boatload of cargo headed to Russia.

  “That’s one possible future, yes. Factories or sex. Here, my grandfather sees they are clothed and fed. And educated. When another home becomes available, they go there to be cared for.”

  “They’re adopted?”

  Johnny nodded. “My grandfather doesn’t like to split siblings, so he still has Mingxia and Yanmei.”

  Nikki stood, suddenly restless, and paced to the doorway between the living area and the dojo. Light filtered through the open windows that graced the outer wall, spilling in elongated squares over the hardwood floor where the girls had strewn themselves for a drawing lesson. Master Wong stooped next to each one in turn as they carefully dipped slender brushes into ink pots and drew swooping, gorgeous lines on parchment. Mingxia had her hand on her little sister’s wrist, guiding her movements as she drew a complex character.

  “It’s not everything,” Johnny said at her shoulder, “but it’s what he can do.”

  She nodded. People like Master Wong existed all over the planet, taking in the lost and abandoned that no one else wanted. Though child-care professionals might complain that one old man caring for seven little girls wasn’t the ideal situation, it was more than most people could or would do. People had jobs and children of their own.

  But to think of girls as less than. To feel shame over giving birth to a girl rather than a boy. Nikki couldn’t imagine it, and, cultural sensitivities aside, she felt a sense of anger on their behalf.

  “See!” Yanmei squealed, pelting over to Johnny with her parchment.

  He bent and scooped her up, then admired the paper she held up. He spoke to her quickly in Cantonese, then said in English, “What does that say?”

  Yanmei smiled at Nikki and tucked her forehead against Johnny’s neck.

  “Come on,” Johnny coaxed. He spoke again in Cantonese.

  Yanmei straightened and pointed at the beautiful symbol she and her sister had drawn. “East!”

  “Yes. Very good.”

  “Vah good,” she replied.

  He said something again in Cantonese, and she responded once more, “Vah good.”

  “Smart girl.” Johnny scuffed her hair and set her down. She ran back into the dojo and plopped down next to Mingxia, ready to draw her next character.

  “You’re good with her,” Nikki observed, recognizing the signs of a man at home with children and ignoring the tug that thought provoked in her chest.

  Johnny shrugged. “She’s easy to be good with.”

  “Is your grandfather teaching them English?”

  “Yes. It will help in school and getting a job.”

  A bell sounded, echoed through the dojo. On cue, the little girls gathered their parchments and scurried back into the living area. They dutifully spread the papers on the table to dry, then took themselves off in a flurry of pigtails.

  “Where’s the fire?” Nikki asked.

  “My little ones have their reading,” Master Wong said. He stacked the ink pots and brushes near the sink along the wall. “Now, we practice.” He bowed slightly to Nikki. “You may join us, if you wish.”

  Practice was sitting cross-legged on a cushion for a half hour of mindfulness meditation, which Nikki didn’t come close to mastering. Trying to become aware of everything going on around her was easy—that was part of what she did in the course of her job. But her job insisted she concentrate on her surroundings for a purpose: spot the hidden threat, catch the drug smuggler, save the boat refugees.

  Concentrating on her sensory impressions for the sake of…sensory impressions…was a little unnerving. Thoughts threaded through her mind, sort of like opening Pandora’s box, which reminded her of mythology, which brought her back around to Hecate, goddess of the crossroads, except that she wasn’t originally Greek, was she? And wasn’t she originally goddess of the wilderness and childbirth? And her symbol was the black hound, which when she hit puberty Nikki had found disturbingly apropos in her case because that’s when her gift had kicked in, the nose and all, and that was the year she’d taken trigonometry with Ms. Wilson, and then—Was that a mockingbird? Here in China?

  By the time she got her mind settled down to listening to the songbird, the bell had sounded again.

  Master Wong and Johnny unfurled a wide mat over the scuffed hardwood floor while she climbed onto a wall-hugging stool. Master Wong’s voluminous clothing fluttered when he opened another of the dojo’s tall windows. Outside, shocks of early summer flowers nodded in a steady breeze, scenting the room.

  “Verbena,” Nikki said.

  Master Wong’s entire face seemed to smile. “Yes. Very good.”

  He motioned her to stay where she was, then slipped into soft shoes and paced to the center of the makeshift ring. After a moment, he bowed low to his grandson.

  Johnny stepped onto the mat. He’d stripped to only the black fighting trousers he’d worn the night they’d met—what, like yesterday?—and was barefoot. His lean, muscled chest rippled as he stretched his arms back over his head, then behind. When he deemed himself ready, he bowed low to his grandfather.

  They began to dance.

  Grandfather and grandson moved perfectly to the kung fu form, grandfather taking defensive moves and grandson taking offensive ones. The smooth, circling strikes and kicks were poetry made by the human body, moves of indirection, deflection, turns that directed
energy away or back.

  Nikki sat mesmerized by the flow, back and forth, around the mat, the long, looping moves of the two men practicing this ancient martial art. She’d studied Tae Kwon Do in college, appreciating its blunt force and sudden, violent movements, and had done a short stint in hapkido, with its attention to joint locks and breaks.

  But kung fu—no, this was Chon Fa—took her breath away.

  The two men circled the mat again, and this time Nikki noticed Johnny’s back. A neat scar, long healed, slashed his skin from shoulder blade to neck. When he turned or lunged, it flexed on his skin like a tattoo over muscle.

  Had the cut been deep? she wondered. Had he nearly died? A cut like that could have sliced open a lung.

  When she looked more closely, she found other long-healed scars striping his shoulders and upper arms in a tapestry of pain.

  Johnny and Master Wong completed their form by bowing to each other. Master Wong waved to her. “Your turn.”

  “I don’t know the art,” she protested.

  “Come! I will show you,” he replied.

  Johnny waited impassively, sweat just beginning to dot his firm pecs. “My grandfather’s teaching is legendary,” he said. “You should listen to him.”

  Stifling her annoyance at his bossing her around—again—Nikki shed her shoes and stepped onto the mat. Master Wong patiently took her right hand. She automatically formed a fist, but he tapped it.

  “Too rigid. Energy must flow.”

  She relaxed it into a loose fist.

  “Good.” Master Wong held her new fist up and nodded. “Warrior hand, hand of strife and force.” He patted her knuckles. “Bring other hand to knuckles.”

  She placed her left palm flat against her right fist’s knuckles.

  “Good. Open hand is the hand of peace, stopping warrior hand. All is balance. Now bow.”

  Nikki bowed to him.

  “Chin up, eyes lowered. Proud but humble.”

  She bowed again.

  “Good. Now, you saw the form.” He gestured toward Johnny. “Take your place.”

  She inwardly grimaced. She’d seen the form exactly once, had only paid partial attention to the moves, and was about to humiliate herself in front of two men for whom “proud but humble” ranked right up there with “handsome but bossy.” Nikki sighed.

  Johnny waited. She read no expectation in his expression, but then, she read very little from him, anyway.

  They bowed to each other. Nikki focused on the hollow of his throat. From there, she could be aware of his arms and legs. And avoid those dark eyes that radiated such frustrating neutrality.

  He stepped forward with a knife hand. She countered with the sweeping block Nikki remembered his grandfather using, then executed a front kick. Johnny’s block was featherlight, barely touching her before he advanced with a palm hand.

  And suddenly, she was there, in the zone, her eidetic memory calling up the form in detail, her body flowing with the energy that seemed to swirl around and between them as they moved. Even the complicated block-block-strike-parry combination that she’d admired welled up in her muscles and blood. She knew only the sweat glistening on Johnny’s golden skin, their feet slapping and squeaking on the mat, the slight touches symbolizing the strikes that could, if thrown in earnest, break bone.

  She became aware of Johnny picking up the pace, moving faster with his lunges. Heat radiated from his body as he advanced. She held her ground, moving swiftly, silently, to the side as he pursued her around the mat. Circling once, then twice, until they met in the center in the close-quarters punches and blocks that had them practically in each other’s arms.

  Sandalwood abruptly overwhelmed her senses. Her mind blanked.

  When she looked up from the floor, her jaw ached. Johnny leaned over her, his brow furrowed and wet-dog fur—anxiety—emanating from his heated skin.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Is it still Tuesday?”

  He grinned and held out his hand. “I went too fast. I’m sorry.”

  Her jaw hurt, bad. “I thought you were barely touching me.”

  He shrugged apologetically. “My chi became…aggressive. To match yours.” She allowed him to hoist her to her feet, but he didn’t step away or let go of her hand. “Forgive me. I forgot myself.”

  Nikki inhaled deeply. “Next time, I go on of-sfense.”

  He backed off, grinning, and they bowed.

  She hid her smile until she turned away, flooded with the scent of his sandalwood.

  Chapter 9

  “I have not seen a pupil take such care with her practice,” Master Wong told Nikki a few minutes later when he handed her an ice pack for her jaw. “You learn quickly.”

  Nikki shrugged. “It’s just a memory thing.”

  Master Wong’s steady gaze felt as if it was boring through her skin. He gestured for her to sit on a wooden bench arranged beneath a wall of weapons—swords, the staff, throwing stars, sai, nunchakus hanging from their chains. “Your skills are more than memory or rote. You are a natural warrior. You anticipate rather than expect.”

  Nikki pondered that last statement as she watched Johnny teaching Mingxia to strengthen her fighting stance. She anticipated a phone call from Johnny’s contact at the shipping terminal. She expected Johnny to make light of it, as if Diviner would be waiting around indefinitely. It was already getting into late afternoon, and still no phone call from his friend. Nikki blew a sigh.

  At Master Wong’s querying look, she said, “I’m sorry. I have a lot on my mind.”

  “My grandson will help you through. He is an honorable man.”

  Nikki’s mind flashed on the hot dance at the Electric Dragon that was supposed to have protected her virtue. “I’m sure he is,” she said, knowing she sounded like she didn’t believe the venerable old man sitting beside her.

  “You remind me of my daughter,” he said.

  “Johnny’s mother?”

  He nodded once. “She was quite skilled. Not the natural you are, but had I started her training earlier, perhaps she might have made up in work what she lacked in heart.”

  Johnny was now facing Mingxia, straightening her shoulders into proper form for the horse stance.

  “Her choices might have been wiser. Johnny might not have suffered so much.”

  “What kind of suffering?”

  Master Wong nodded at his grandson. “Johnny’s father expected much from his oldest son. More than a child should be asked to bear.”

  She thought of the scars that laced Johnny’s back. “Did he expect Johnny to become a cop?”

  “Far from it. My grandson was a great disappointment to him.”

  Master Wong seemed to settle into stillness and Nikki fell silent. Whatever Johnny’s parents had or hadn’t done, it sounded pretty serious and Nikki didn’t want to set foot in that territory with a man she’d just met. She dropped the ice pack from her face and gingerly pressed her fingertips against the bruised flesh. Tender. She probably looked like she’d been slugged with a baseball bat. That’s what it had felt like.

  Johnny had barely tapped her.

  Yanmei ran into the dojo and leaped onto Master Wong’s lap. Nikki wondered if she herself had run everywhere at full tilt when she was seven. Probably. She’d been running away from one brother or another, or playing games with them, or chasing them down. God, she’d grown up such a tomboy.

  But where her brothers had teased and challenged her constantly, Johnny guided Mingxia gently, as if he understood the child’s diffidence. Nikki swallowed down the lump rising in her throat. He was such a calming presence, getting Yanmei to sit quietly through breakfast, now coaxing Mingxia, who clearly wasn’t comfortable in her body yet.

  Johnny infuriated Nikki as much as he relaxed her. It was always a toss-up which way it was going to go between them, she thought. One minute they were just sparring and the next someone was getting hurt.

  Outside, the wind shifted, bringing the overconfident, t
riumphant scent of lemons.

  “Do you have a lemon tree?” Nikki asked Master Wong.

  He shook his head.

  “Johnny! Someone’s here!”

  As if she’d called them, a pile of black-garbed men spilled through the dojo’s open windows.

  Nikki grabbed Yanmei. “Mingxia!”

  The little girl ran toward her. Nikki sent them both into the kitchen. “Run to your room!” she shouted, hoping Mingxia’s English was good enough to understand the command.

  She turned. Johnny and his grandfather had become leaping, spinning forms amid flashing silver knives.

  A dark form barreled toward her, knife at the ready. She yanked the closest weapons at hand from the wall—a pair of sai. With a flick of her left wrist, she caught her attacker’s knife blade between the long center blade and barb of her trident-like weapon and levered the knife away. She jabbed the sai she held in her right hand into his thigh. Snarling, he wrenched himself back.

  She let him run. The crack of a gunshot, then another. Holes blossomed in the wall near her head. Master Wong disappeared beneath a pile of bodies. She started forward, then the men sprang back, flung aside as if Master Wong had blown them off with the force of dynamite.

  One fell in her direction. She met his incoming chest with a solid front kick to the sternum. He shrieked and landed on his knees, gasping for air. She popped his skull with a heavy sai butt. He went down.

  She lost sight of Master Wong. Three men were converging in Johnny’s general vicinity, the one behind reaching beneath his shirt. Cursing, she dropped one of her sai and snatched a throwing star from the weapons wall. She’d never used one, but she’d played a mean second base.

  In a breath, she saw her target clearly as he raised his arm, revolver in hand. Men passed between them, chasing someone. She leaned back, slipped on the hardwood, caught her balance, threw. The star vanished, as if by magic, and reappeared buried to the hilt in the man’s bicep.

  The gun fired.

  “Johnny!” Nikki shouted.

  He was rolling on the floor with one of his two remaining attackers, punching as they spun. The other man raised his knife, ready for an opportunity.