Brian stepped into line with Emily.
“If we get separated you need to follow this street down to Little Bourke St. Follow the street up until you reach Chinatown.”
“I can’t. I’m not allowed in there.”
“You will continue along until you find a shop called Lo Lang’s Dumplings. Ask for Li Jun Zhang. He’ll look after you.”
“Look after me?”
He tapped on his cell phone screen. A moment later her phone beeped.
“The co-ordinates are on your phone.”
She looked at her phone and then back at Brian, confused.
“How did you-”
“It’s my job. You do know they’re not as secure as you’re led to believe.”
“This has high security on it.”
“You sure about that?” He raised an eyebrow. “All I can say is that the phone developers have conducted some pretty smart marketing to convince you and the general user population their phones are secure.”
Brian looked over his shoulder, and Emily followed his gaze.
“Can you walk a little faster?”
“Why? There’s no one following us.” She looked over her shoulder again.
Everyone was moving in sync with each other. She received a few disgruntled looks from the men walking behind her. Besides those couple of men, she couldn’t see anyone sticking out or looking directly at them.
“Trust me, there is. Two men. Broad shoulders. Large biceps. Black skin-tight t-shirts. About a dozen people back.”
Chapter 15
Harry walked back over to the window. Looking skyward, he collected his thoughts.
“There’s a video recording you have.” He turned to face Sharon. “It has my family and me on it. You’re going to get it for me.”
“What on earth do you want with it? It’s evidence.”
“We’re going to get some bloody popcorn and ice cream. Then we’re going to watch it. Together.”
“You already know what happened.”
“Get it. And seein’ how young and naive you are, I’m going to show you what type of company you’re working for,” Harry said.
He untied one of her hands from the chair and pushed the phone closer to Sharon. She paused for a moment. Harry raised his gun to her head. She punched in a couple of numbers.
Three rings came through the telephone’s speaker.
“Nobody’s here. They’ve all probably been evac-”
“H...Hello,” a cautious voice on the end said.
Harry believed the owner of the voice was young, and this was probably one of her first jobs out of school.
“It’s Sharon Hann here. Can you get the recent video of client Harry Fry?”
“Uh... but I-” the nervous voice responded.
“Email it through to this computer,” Harry said, waving his gun at Sharon’s computer.
“It’s still... in the backlog of being uploaded to our services.”
“I don’t bloody care. Get it sent through to this computer.”
Harry fired the gun into the roof. Sharon squealed.
“Do it. Now. Or the next one will go in Sharon’s head,” Harry demanded.
“Okay... okay. I’ll do it next.”
“You’ll do it now.”
Harry picked up the hand receiver and slammed it down.
“What do we do now?” Sharon asked.
“We sit in a circle and sing Kumbaya.” Harry shook his head. “What do you think? We wait, and you’d better pray to whoever it is you pray to that the video appears on that computer before I get bored of waitin’.”
Harry paced back and forth from the office door to the window, checking out the door into the hallway and the street outside. Each time, he noted there hadn’t been any new movements. Harry was growing anxious. He quickened his pacing.
A ding echoed through the room.
“What was that?” Harry demanded. He swung around with his gun aimed at Sharon.
“It’s okay,” Sharon said. “It’s just something coming through on the computer.”
“It had better be that damn video.”
Harry stood behind Sharon and watched as she opened the bank’s internal messaging service.
“See here,” she pointed to the bold line of text indicating the details of the email. “One new message.”
She clicked on the email.
“That’s no video. It’s a single of line of jumbled-up words. Where is it?”
“It’s attached behind this hyperlink.”
“Hyper what? Never mind. Just load it.”
Sharon clicked on the link. “Hope this was all worth it.”
“You’d better believe it will be. I’m going to get back what you stole from my family, and you’re going to help me.”
Chapter 16
They were half way down the city block. Emily pretended to look at something across the road and shot a glance from the corner of her eye towards the rear of the crowd.
That was strange. Maybe the men had just disappeared and weren’t following them at all. But why would Brian lie to her? Brian’s been actively trying to save my life so far, hasn’t he? He was on his way to Uni. He could’ve just disappeared with the scurries of people. Instead, he pulled me to safety.
Emily turned to Brian. He was focused. Almost military-like. Shoulders pulled back, head straight, and no emotion on his face.
Unlocking her phone, she looked at the co-ordinates Brian had sent earlier. Chinatown. She recalled the last time she was in a Chinatown community. The time she was forbidden from entering any other Chinese community, worldwide.
It had happened one month ago. She was at a trendy bar in Sydney’s Chinatown, enjoying the music and a drink at the bar with a colleague. Showing him a glimpse of her culture while they were quietly celebrating the successful sting, the successful arrest of a Chinese crime boss who’d been untouchable for the last five years.
The Australian Federal Police had called on her services to assist them with a case they’d been working on and for which they needed an insider. Someone who was trusted and respected in the community and who would give them the edge to make a case against the villain finally stick.
Emily and her colleague were getting up from the bar when a fight between two Chinese gangs erupted nearby. Edging towards the door, she was dragged into the fight, kicked and beaten until she couldn’t move. She remembered trying to fight back, being successful at the beginning but being soon outnumbered.
After blacking out, she woke up in a hospital bed, her frail father looking over her. She hadn’t forgotten the look of pain on his face.
His final words to her were etched in her memory: “You have betrayed our family, your mother, myself. We, along with all Chinese communities, disown you. You are no longer one of us.”
That had been the last time she’d seen him.
Emily felt her arm being pulled. She returned to the bustling streets of inner Melbourne. Her foot extended out over the road. A red man was flashing on the pedestrian traffic light. A driver honked their car horn. Emily looked up and saw a car approaching. She pulled her foot back from the road as the car sped past.
“Focus,” Brian said. “They’re still following us. Back a bit farther than earlier and across the road.”
Emily moved from foot to foot. The red flashing man looked down at her. She glanced down both sides of the road. Nothing. Finally, she stepped out onto the road as the man changed to green.
“Thank you,” Emily said.
Brian didn’t answer.
She stopped a few steps onto the road, the swarm of pedestrians pushing her around, and turned to her side. Brian wasn’t there. She looked behind her, to the curb. Two men were holding Brian back.
He wriggled to get free but the men holding him held their ground.
“Get out of here,” he yelled. “Now.”
One of the men hit Brian across the back of the head with the butt of a gun. Brian’s head flopped over.
>
Chapter 17
Emily looked around, then across the street. She spotted two men, both with similar appearances, looking in her direction.
Turning around, she broke into a run, pushing through the very people who were in a rush to get around her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the men crossing the busy intersection. Car tires squealed and horns blared as the men continued to disrupt the flow of traffic.
Nearly across the street, she saw the red pedestrian man flashing in front of her. Give a girl some time to cross the road, will ya! she thought as she continued to run.
To her left, a noise caught her attention, a heavy engine. She turned to see a medium rigid truck accelerating as it approached the intersection. There was nothing between her and the truck, and it wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down.
With one hard push, she stepped onto the curb as the truck sped past her, ploughing into the build-up of cars already held up across the intersection by the men following her.
She kept running, keeping a tab on her surroundings – street signs, cars, people, dogs, anything and everything.
Behind her she heard women screaming, men yelling abuse and glassware smashing. Not turning around, she kept pushing forward, knowing all too well who was causing the commotion.
Reaching another intersection, she glanced up at the sign. It read, Bourke Street.
Not waiting for any flashing red men to turn green and indicate it was safe to cross, she made her way across the intersection, dodging cars and tapping on bonnets who merely missed her.
The footsteps behind became louder. Pushing people out of the way, Emily stepped out onto the road, running against the traffic, ignoring the car horns as she kept running.
Looking over her shoulder, she saw the men were still chasing her but one of them was struggling with her pace. This was causing cars to stop before they could try to maneuver around them while at the same time trying to avoid hitting other vehicles.
“Suckers,” she whispered.
Putting more effort into her stride, she began to put some distance between them and her.
The next intersection was narrower than the previous one. One-way traffic. Across the street, she read, Little Bourke Street on the sign.
Chinatown.
Turning around, she saw the men were still running towards her, guns now visible in their hands.
“Shit.”
She paused at the intersection and looked back down Little Bourke Street. There were lots of people and cars moving about.
The men were still closing in, both now running.
She shook her head. No, she couldn’t run into Chinatown. Not now. If she was going to step back in there, she needed to be able to slip back into the community unnoticed. There was no way she could do that with men chasing her. She’d probably also have half of Chinatown chasing after her next.
She moved away from the intersection, taking one last look down Little Bourke Street before she broke back into a run.
Need a Plan C, and now, she told herself.
Emily kept running up the road, along the dotted line that separated the lanes of traffic.
She noticed the volume of traffic increasing as she ran. Her elbow room was diminishing to the point that cars and trucks were swerving out of her way. Behind her she heard plastic and metal crumpling as vehicles collided with each other. Not looking back, she pushed on.
She heard more yelling from frustrated drivers and knew her followers weren’t far behind her.
In between her feet connecting with the asphalt, she flicked through the contacts on her cell phone until she found the name she was looking for and dialed the number.
The phone rang. She switched the call to her phone’s speakers.
“Schultz,” a male’s voice answered at the other end.
“Oh, good. You answered,” Emily said in between deep breaths.
“Emily?”
“Yes. I think I’m in some deep stuff.”
“You back in town?”
“You can kinda say that.”
“I’m tied up in a case right now.” His voice lowered. “How about we meet down at our bar, say at four o’clock?”
“Was kinda hoping for earlier?”
“It’s not even lunch time yet.” He chuckled.
“I’m being serious. Some crazy stuff,” she took a deep breath, “has been going down today.”
“Tell me about it. The hostage situation, multiple murders and a derailed tram. We’re all working double time. Even calling everyone in that’s on leave or day off.”
“Yeah. About that.”
“You sound like you’re running. Being back in town making you wanting to break out the sneakers?”
“Funny. Now focus.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“I think I may be in a little bit of trouble.”
“Little?”
“Okay, maybe more than a little.”
Emily stepped off the road and onto the footpath. Pedestrians dodged out of her way.
“There’s someone, some people, who I have a sneaky suspicion might be trying to kill me.”
“Are you sure? Maybe you’ve been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Silence. Emily felt anger brewing up inside her. She thumped a street sign as she ran past it.
“A gunman, in a corridor, shooting directly at me.”
“Fair point.”
“How about an RPG targeted at the tram I’d just hopped in?”
“Coincidence.”
Gunshots.
“Shit.” Emily raised her hand over her head.
More shots followed.
A street sign next to her pinged. She looked up and saw a bullet lodged in it. She continued to put one foot in front of the other.
Around her, people were screaming and scurrying everywhere. The chaos was making it difficult for Emily to get away.
More gunfire.
This time she felt something hit her shoulder. While still running, she pulled her shirt collar down. She felt around the wound but couldn’t feel anything solid in her shoulder.
“What’s wrong? What’s going on?” Schultz asked.
Emily ran back out onto the road, weaving in between the traffic.
“Ah, just ducking some friendly gunfire,” she replied.
The gunfire followed her. Their shots were off, connecting with everything but her. She paused behind a parked tram.
“You call this a coincidence?” Emily asked.
“Where are you? I’ll send some uniforms to get you out of there.”
“No, it’ll be what they want. More police tied up. Who knows what else they’ve got planned in town today?”
Emily risked a glance back. The men were closing.
She needed to move.
An old truck pulled up next to her.
Crouching, she maneuvered around the truck to the passenger side.
She stepped up the steps and opened the passenger door.
“Afternoon.” She nodded at the driver as she sat in and closed the door.
He looked at her, his mouth hanging open. She could see his mouth moving but there were no noises coming out.
“Light's green.” Emily pointed at the traffic light.
“Oh. Yep.” The driver shook his head as he started to slowly shift through the numerous gears. “I don’t have anything of value in here, or at home. I’m just a worker. A hard one at that.”
Emily chuckled.
“I’m not here to hurt you. I’m after a favor,” she said.
“Right.” The driver looked at her out of the corner of his eye.
“Where are you?” Schultz asked.
Emily ignored him.
“See those men back there?” she asked the driver.
The driver looked at his side mirror and replied, “Yeah.”
“I need to get away from them.”
“I’m heading to Footscray. That’s as far as I can get you.”
Em
ily thought for a second.
“I need to call you back,” she told Schultz and disconnected the phone call.
Chapter 18
Emily flicked through her notifications until she found the one with the co-ordinates Brian had sent her. She noticed what looked like a quaint garden area at one end of Chinatown.
“Can you take me to Spring Street?” she asked the driver.
The truck driver thought about it for a moment while he continued to change through the gears.
“Where ‘bout?”
“Spring Street, corner of Spring and Little Bourke. Right here.”
Emily pointed to the intersection. The driver squinted and shrugged.
“It’s on the other side of the city.”
“Can you take me there or not?” she asked.
“Because you asked so nicely, I will. Just don’t get any blood on my seat. Don’t want to have to explain that one to the boss.”
He flipped on the indicator switch and turned into a quieter street. Black smoke puffed out of the exhaust as he put his foot down on the accelerator pedal.
“Thank you.” Emily coughed the fumes out of her lungs.
“Sorry ‘bout that. She’s a little tired,” he rubbed his dash for good luck. “But she still gets the job done. We’ve been together longer than the wife and I. Pretty much a second marriage.”
She smiled and kept an eye on the map on her phone and her surroundings, regularly checking her side mirror, making sure they were alone.
Being careful to keep her shoulder away from the back rest, she sat back in her seat and breathed out a huge sigh of relief.
“What’s a young lass like you doing, getting yourself into trouble?”
“When I know, I’ll let you know.”
“Bad day?”
“Something like that.”
“There’s been a bit of that happening in the city today.”
“I’ve heard.”
“It’s been crazy trying to get around the city. What with all the road closures and detours. You can’t just take this old girl down any street, you know.”
Emily zoned out from his ramblings and watched as the city streets passed by.
The driver made some more turns and the traffic built up again. At least it was flowing here.
The Analyst (Emily Lee Series Book 1) Page 5