Lion

by Matt Rogers

  Would she be a different person, and decide to venture out into the unknown in search of her father?

  So he reached down and took her hand as a low rumble resonated through the black sky overhead, signifying an incoming storm. As if on cue the humidity heightened, the Macau air bearing down on them hot and thick. Slater coughed as they made their way down the street, dwarfed by the tenement buildings on either side of them.

  The complexes loomed, blocking out the sky, dilapidated and rundown and teeming with thousands of residents. Some were out of bed at this hour, roaming the streets in drug-addled states or simply sitting on damp concrete steps and staring out at the world with hollow, sunken faces.

  It boggled Slater’s mind that they had crossed over to these conditions so quickly. It felt like minutes ago he’d been sitting in one of the most lavish VIP rooms he’d ever laid eyes on, being served complementary fifteen-year-old scotch and throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars at the gambling tables in an attempt to distract himself from the past.

  Now he led Shien to the very end of Beco da Perola, where a great grey slab of tiny apartments speared across the end of the street like a vast wall. Slater gazed up at the dwellings, hundreds of balconies poised in the gloom. Another thunderclap tore across the sky, and he hurried Shien toward the ground floor of the building. They crossed a cracked footpath overflowing with weeds and ducked into the apartment complex’s lobby.

  ‘Is this the place?’ Slater said.

  ‘I don’t know. I think so.’

  They stepped into a long stretch of decrepit corridor that smelled of sourness and old age. Slater wondered if the entire building would cave in on their heads, but pressed on regardless. He approached an elderly man with caramel skin and deep wrinkles etched into his forehead, perched behind a simple wooden desk that offered no security to its owner.

  ‘You the landlord?’ Slater said gruffly.

  The man simply raised his head and looked deep into Slater’s eyes, narrowing his gaze as he studied the new arrival. Slater felt suddenly vulnerable, as if the man could see into his soul. He stepped back instinctively, and Shien in turn stepped forward.

  ‘I think he’s Portuguese,’ Slater muttered. ‘Do your best.’

  Shien fell into natural conversation with the elderly man. He responded with single syllables, grunting his replies, darting his gaze from the girl up to Slater, then back to the girl. He pointed directly at Slater and shook his head, muttering a string of Portuguese.

  Shien shook her head in turn, crossed her arms, and pouted.

  Finally, after an elongated period of silence, the man shrugged. Relenting, he handed over a key and gestured to the stairwell at the far end of the corridor, just as dilapidated as the rest of the complex.

  The landlord shot daggers at Slater the entire time they stayed within eyesight.

  When they reached the damp stairwell and began to ascend into the foul centre of the structure, Shien finally decided to speak.

  ‘He was expecting me to come alone. I had to convince him you were added security.’

  ‘So whoever set you loose called this place in advance.’

  ‘It’s all been set up for me,’ Shien said.

  Slater peered up into the dark abyss. ‘Let’s see where it leads.’

  10

  The single key given to Shien by the old man unlocked a nondescript door made of rotting wood on the sixth floor of the complex. Tucked into the core of the building, there were no windows or fresh air in sight. The humidity had reached near unbearable levels, and Slater found himself choking on the heavy atmosphere as he prised the key out of Shien’s tiny hand and slipped it into the requisite lock.

  The handle turned.

  Slater ushered Shien behind him and withdrew the Beretta from his jacket pocket. He took a moment to assess his outfit and realised it was likely the sole reason he’d made it past the landlord. He looked like typical security detail, which must have helped convince the guy to let him through.

  But as he steadily swung the door open — the wood omitted a low creak as it moved on its hinges — he realised he needn’t have bothered acting like security in the first place.

  There was no-one home.

  As soon as he realised the apartment was empty, he ushered Shien straight through, shielding her from the dangers of standing alone in the hallway. He imagined there were any number of drug-addled residents along these corridors, and he didn’t want her out in public for any longer than necessary.

  He swung the door shut behind them, took a deep breath of hot rancid air, and soaked in their surroundings.

  They had been gifted a single-room dwelling with a tiny kitchenette falling apart at the seams and a single yellowing mattress with no linen thrown on the floor. The beige carpet had been torn up in a dozen different places, exposing the cheap wood underneath. There were no windows, and no decorations on the rotting plaster walls.

  ‘They gave you an expensive suite, that’s for sure,’ Slater said.

  ‘There’s no mattress for you,’ Shien said, staring absent-mindedly at her surroundings.

  The conversation with the landlord had clearly drained her of energy.

  ‘I’m not supposed to be here, remember?’

  ‘Oh. Yes. That’s right.’

  ‘Are you tired?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been very scared these past few days.’

  ‘You said you were kidnapped two weeks ago — is that right?’

  ‘Yes. I remember that clearly. And I’ve been held in different rooms since then. There were always clocks on the walls, so I could count the days. Otherwise there was no way to tell how long it had been. The three men who rescued me were the first people I’d seen in a while.’

  Slater crossed to the sink and poured himself a dirty glass of water. He washed it back, his throat parched from the all-out slugfest he’d taken part in earlier that night in the limousine. He took a deep breath, stripped his jacket off, rolled up his sleeves, and rested his massive hands on the kitchen countertop.

  ‘I don’t think they were rescuing you, Shien,’ he said, bowing his head.

  A bead of sweat dripped off his bald skull, splashing against the rim of the sink. He ran the cold water tap, splashed some of the soothing liquid across his face, and took another breath.

  ‘Okay,’ he muttered. ‘One step at a time.’

  ‘What was that all about?’ Shien said. ‘Why are you talking to yourself?’

  Slater turned to check on her — she’d curled up in a ball at one end of the mattress, tucking her knees to her chest and resting her head against the flaking wall behind her.

  ‘I think some very bad people are coming for us, Shien,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what exactly it is you know, but I don’t think whoever captured you had any intention of letting you go. I think that was something else. And if the original kidnap had anything to do with Mountain Lion, then that’s billions of dollars we’re dealing with. There’s a lot of moving parts in a business that big and I wouldn’t put it past them to be dealing in illegal things. I think you were kidnapped for a reason, but I need to find out for myself.’

  ‘You seem angry, Will,’ Shien said quietly.

  ‘Because I have an idea of why you might have been captured. And if it’s true, I’ll become a different person. And I don’t want you to see me like that.’

  Shien’s eyes widened. ‘See you like what?’

  ‘I have … some personal issues. Let’s just keep it at that. Something happened to a family member, decades ago, and whenever I see anything to do with it I lose it. I don’t want you to see me lose it, Shien. So I’ll sort this mess out, but I’ll return you to wherever you need to go first.’

  ‘Will. Why are you doing this?’

  ‘To help you.’

  ‘Yes, but why?’

  ‘That’s just what I do. I already said that. I get wrapped up in situations like this. Maybe I enjoy it — I don’t know.’

  Shien shrank into h
erself, tucking her knees tighter. ‘I don’t enjoy this.’

  ‘I know you don’t. Trust me, it won’t be long before it’s all over. I promise.’

  ‘What do we do now? I thought I was supposed to meet someone. That’s what we were talking about.’

  ‘I feel like this is just one stop on a wild ride,’ Slater said. ‘These guys are professionals. This is just a holding cell, if you think of it like that. If I could guess, there’ll be another address coming. When they have their man in place…’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Shien said.

  ‘I don’t expect you to. Try to get some sleep, okay?’

  ‘Okay. Thanks again, Will.’

  She slid down the wall and adopted the foetal position, keeping her arms wrapped tight around her tiny legs. Slater watched strands of jet black hair fall across her face, masking her features. Within a half-minute she was asleep, breathing deeply, aided along the journey by the drugs coursing through her system. Slater had little experience with sedation, but he hoped some of the effects would wear off by the time she woke up.

  He needed her awake and alert.

  He needed details.

  He stood frozen in the centre of the claustrophobic apartment, sweating freely from all his pores, breathing deep, trying to compose himself in the midst of chaos. There were dozens of variables at play, and he wasn’t sure who would come for them first.

  He didn’t know who had sent Shien on this wild journey, and what motives they had.

  But someone, somewhere, knew they were here. The landlord had expected Shien’s solo arrival, and Slater’s presence had almost certainly startled him into passing the information up the food chain.

  So Slater made sure the Beretta M9 in his right hand was live — ready to fire at a moment’s notice — and he sat down with his back against one of the kitchen cabinets, staring at the apartment’s only entrance door with unblinking eyes. He had learned the subtleties of keeping watch a decade earlier, and he had enough confidence in his abilities to know he wouldn’t falter.

  It didn’t matter how tired he was.

  He would sit in this cramped, sticky apartment on a shiny patch of cheap linoleum and wait for someone to come barging in through the front door with guns blazing, as he assumed they would.

  In the end, he didn’t have long to wait.

  11

  Slater’s watch displayed a time of 6:42am when he heard movement on the other side of the door.

  There were no adjustments to make, seeing that he’d maintained a state of readiness for the full two hours he’d been perched on the kitchenette’s floor. Shien had spent the entire time dozing peacefully on the other side of the room — which, in this case, rested a distance of less than six feet away.

  Slater sensed the presence of a hostile body before he properly heard the man.

  Despite the intruder’s best efforts to remain silent, one of his footfalls sent a muffled, imperceptible noise trickling underneath the gap below the door.

  Slater gave the man zero time to prepare for an assault.

  At the exact millisecond his brain registered the noise, he shot to his feet and hurled himself two feet through the air, hitting the flimsy rotting surface of the door with his shoulder, driving kinetic energy and power and momentum into the wood.

  The weak material simply snapped off its hinges and the entire door frame tipped straight out into the hallway.

  Slater made sure to pull back from the initial charge so that he didn’t sprawl head-over-heels into the corridor, instead leaping over the door and ramming straight into the frozen suit-clad man on the other side. The guy had taken some of the impact to the top of his head, darting out of the way of the falling door at the last second. The explosion of noise and movement had shocked him into hesitation, and Slater had the Beretta trained on the guy’s forehead within a half-second of stepping out into the corridor.

  He looked to be in his thirties, with bronze-coloured skin and Asian features. Slater guessed Filipino and Chinese, or some similar mix. His hair was jet black and close-cropped, and an ugly neck tattoo speared above his collar, reaching for his chin. Some kind of dragon. A massive jewelled earring rested in his right lobe.

  He looked tough, and angry as all hell.

  He stared at Slater with venom in his eyes, as if he were offended by the mere prospect of Slater being present.

  ‘Don’t move,’ Slater said, noticing the chunky pistol resting in the guy’s palm out of the corner of his eye.

  He didn’t dare glance down at the weapon, at risk of being placed at a tactical disadvantage. Instead he kept his eyes locked on the man’s in a deadly stalemate, both of them standing silently in the creaky hallway.

  Nearby, fetid water dripped from cracks in the ceiling.

  More sweat began to flow from Slater’s forehead.

  He felt hot and sticky and awful.

  And, on top of everything, his heart had started to pound mercilessly against his chest wall as the adrenalin of a standoff took hold.

  The guy had his gun pointed at the floor, but Slater figured there was a language barrier, and he had no way of knowing what the man might try. The safest option would be to blow the guy’s brains across the far wall, but he felt inclined to keep the man alive for the time being.

  He wanted answers.

  He’d jumped into a murky situation that he needed to understand better, and this guy would be the first piece of the puzzle.

  Slater gestured with the Beretta, instructing the man to head straight through the open doorway. He planned to interrogate the guy in the privacy of their own place, using Shien as a translator if necessary.

  ‘Will…’ a soft voice called from inside the apartment. ‘You okay?’

  Slater cocked his head ever so slightly in the direction of the noise — either a fatherly reaction, or a simple natural response to someone he knew — but the man in front of him decided to try and capitalise on it. Before Slater could protest, or tell the man what a fool he was, the guy attempted to swing the gun barrel up to meet Slater’s face.

  Slater didn’t even have time to cry out.

  He simply pumped the trigger once, clinically, and blasted a cylindrical hole through the guy’s forehead. The man’s jewelled earring sparkled as he fell to the complex floor and the gunshot tore up and down the empty corridor, echoing off the walls far in the distance.

  Shien screamed.

  Slater needed to obscure the body from view of any curious residents. Before the guy had even finished kicking in his death throes, Slater reached down and wrapped a hand around the upper portion of his tie, yanking him by the throat through the open doorway of the apartment.

  Shien wasn’t used to seeing dead bodies — and the sight of Slater dragging a corpse would no doubt be grotesque — but Slater thought he heard a distinct sigh of relief as she saw him materialise, alive and safe, in the doorway.

  ‘I thought you got shot,’ she said quietly.

  Slater barely heard it.

  The unsuppressed gunshot at such close range had set off the uncomfortable whining in his ears, a noise eerily similar to tinnitus. He waited for the sensation to dissipate, taking the time to dump the corpse in the foot of the hallway and prop the apartment door loosely back into place.

  ‘You killed that man, too,’ Shien said after a beat of hesitation.

  Slater looked to her, then to the body. ‘Yes, Shien, I know that.’

  ‘Was he coming to kill me?’

  ‘He looked rattled. I don’t think so. He wasn’t supposed to show himself. He’s one of the men behind this, and he was meant to keep in the shadows. But they couldn’t resist sending a man down here when they got word that you weren’t alone.’

  ‘I think I recognise him,’ Shien said.

  Reluctantly, Slater reached down and propped the body into a seated position. ‘Ignore the blood. Look at his face. You know him?’

  She cast her eyes up to the bloody mess that used to be his forehead,
scrutinised his features for a single instant, then turned away in disgust. ‘Yes. That’s one of the three men that rescued me.’

  ‘You’ve got to stop saying “rescued”,’ Slater said. ‘These men have bad intentions. They’re keeping themselves out of this for a reason. You’re the scapegoat.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘You’re the one who’ll pay the price if you get caught.’

  ‘Caught by who?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What if I just do as they say?’

  ‘You think they’re good people?’

  ‘I don’t know. You don’t either.’

  ‘Well, this one tried to shoot me,’ Slater said, motioning to the corpse. ‘Whatever you think about the others, he got what he deserved. I’ll try my best to take it easy on anyone else we run into.’

  Sarcasm laced his tone, and Shien noticed. She pouted and turned away, burrowing back into one corner of the mattress. Slater scolded himself for talking openly about murder and flaunting a corpse in her presence. He realised the drugs were still in her system — otherwise she would have broken down long ago.

  He doubted a nine-year-old would have much experience being around the dead.

  ‘Shien,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. Just try to relax, okay.’

  ‘How am I supposed to relax?’ she said.

  ‘I think it’s time I tried to get in touch with your parents.’

  All the blood drained from her face as she turned white as a ghost. ‘No.’

  12

  The reaction threw Slater for a loop.

  Shien withdrew into herself, narrowing her eyes and sliding steadily down the wall. She became groggy and unresponsive all at once, yet Slater knew it was all an act. For nine years old she had talent, but the transition had been too abrupt to have been real. She simply didn’t want to talk about her parents. The thought of getting in contact with them had terrified her.

  Slater grew suspicious, and sat down at the other end of the grimy mattress.

  ‘You can talk to me,’ he said.

  ‘Mmm,’ Shien mumbled.

  ‘Shien. You were perfectly fine ten seconds ago. I know you’re faking it.’