by Amelia Autin
“What? Oh.” She adjusted her purse strap on her shoulder. She glanced up at Dirk, and he was shocked at the deep sadness reflected in her eyes. But all she said was, “If you want to know, just ask.”
He debated with himself for a moment, weighing his elemental need to know what had put that shadow in her eyes against the knowledge that he didn’t have a right to know. His need won out. He pushed his BluBlockers to the top of his head and faced her. “Okay, I’m asking.”
She drew a deep breath, then let it out with excruciating slowness. “Patrick said, ‘Moh ching, moh meng.’ Which translates as ‘No money, no life.’ It’s a common expression in Hong Kong.” Her voice was very low, as if she were having trouble getting the words out. After a minute, she added, “He didn’t mean it the way you might think. He was just reminding me, that’s all.”
“Reminding you about what?”
“The ransom note the kidnappers sent to Sean’s parents? The last sentence was Moh ching, moh meng. Patrick just wanted me to remember, so I don’t do anything—and don’t let you do anything—to make the kidnappers panic the way they did with Sean.”
He didn’t want to think it, but the idea slipped insidiously into his mind and refused to be banished. It was exactly the sort of thing Patrick would say...if he were involved in the kidnapping.
Mei-li looked up at him again. “He’s not involved,” she insisted.
“How did you know I—”
“Because you have a very emotive face.” A faint smile came and went. “A good thing for an actor...not so good if you want to conceal what you’re thinking.”
* * *
Six minutes later, they approached the exhibit mentioned in the ransom note. Normally Dirk would have been fascinated by the historical displays they’d passed and would have taken his time to view them all in detail. He loved history, always had. Which was also why he gladly took on movie projects based on history, like the one he’d shot a couple of years ago—King’s Ransom—with Juliana. Bree had been alive then, just two months pregnant when they’d gone to Zakhar to film on location.
He quickly shut down that train of thought. Bree was dead. But she’d fought to stay alive long enough to give birth to Linden and Laurel, had sacrificed her own life to ensure theirs. He wouldn’t let Bree’s sacrifice be in vain. No matter what he had to do.
* * *
Three minutes before the hour, Mei-li touched Dirk’s arm. “It’s time,” she told him. She already had her cell phone out and was pretending to take pictures, just as she’d done at the Peak this morning. Dirk had removed his sunglasses altogether—he would have drawn more attention, not less, by wearing them as they walked through the dimly lit museum exhibits—and he was doing the same as Mei-li with his smartphone.
They walked the few feet and boarded the junk, and as she glanced at the life-size diorama behind the glass, her mind detoured for a few seconds. She tried to imagine living her entire life in such a tiny space, as the boat people had done, and a few still did. Spending your entire life on a tiny boat, making a living from the sea. Only stepping on land to sell your catch, and not even always then—sometimes boat people sold their fish right from their boats to people on the docks. Such a restricted life.
She couldn’t fathom it. Yes, Hong Kong living quarters were small compared to those in the United States. They were even small compared to the cities in Britain she’d visited. But they weren’t this small.
Then she reined in her wandering thoughts. She pointed her smartphone here and there, as if she was taking pictures, but her eyes were darting everywhere. No one else was around, except the female museum guard stationed off to one side. Might have to do something to distract her, Mei-li told herself. Can’t let her see us leaving the bag. But the kidnapper was nowhere to be seen. Was he watching? Was he—
Dirk’s iPhone buzzed. She’d warned him to mute it inside the museum unless he wanted to draw attention when the call came in. He answered, and just like this morning Mei-li could hear every word he said. Also just like this morning, tears filled her eyes as she listened to the heart-wrenching anguish in his voice, imagining what his daughters must be saying to him. She blinked away the tears that threatened, despite her stern warning to herself that she couldn’t afford to be distracted by emotion. She had to stay focused.
She turned away from Dirk, hoping that if she didn’t have to see him so terrifyingly still it would be easier to bear—and that’s when she spotted the man. She quickly glanced away, not wanting to make eye contact. Not wanting to betray in any way that she’d seen him silhouetted for just an instant in the far doorway...watching them. She observed him from the corner of her eye, saw him move stealthily back, behind the wall. And she knew.
At one minute past the hour—just as it had this morning—the phone call cut off with Dirk in midsentence. She quickly slid the grocery bag from her arm and handed it to him, whispering, “There’s a security guard watching us from the corner. When you see me get her out of position, put the bag under here.” She gestured to the spot. “Push it out of sight as far as you can with your foot, then walk away. I’ll catch up.”
* * *
Despite the emotional turmoil caused by another tearful conversation with his daughters, and their pleas that he come get them away from the “bad men,” Dirk couldn’t help but admire Mei-li’s performance. She raised her voice and said, “I don’t care what you think, it can’t have been easy for women living under those conditions.” She flounced off and headed straight for the security guard, then broke into excited and voluble Cantonese. She gestured back at Dirk, who kept his face averted so he couldn’t be recognized. But he watched Mei-li out of the corner of his eye. It didn’t take much to figure out he was the subject of her tirade, and she was inviting the security guard to join her in the universal female lament of “Men!”
After a minute her tone changed, and the upward inflection at the end of her sentence told him she was asking a question. The guard responded, but Mei-li shook her head as if she didn’t get it. Then she asked another question, and the guard started leading Mei-li away, pointing in the other direction and chattering in Cantonese. Mei-li followed without a backward glance.
Quick as a flash, Dirk tucked the bag underneath the food display, then pushed it out of sight with his foot. He wanted to look around, to see if anyone was watching, but he forced himself to walk away. No one called to him to say he’d left something behind. No museum guard chased him. And the kidnapper—wherever he was—would see that Dirk was following his instructions to the letter. Leave and don’t look back...don’t do anything stupid.
He headed for the museum entrance and only got turned around once. But he quickly backtracked and soon found himself right where they’d come in, in front of a large, colorful mural advertising an upcoming special exhibit depicting life in ancient China.
Only a minute later Mei-li appeared. As soon as she reached him, she asked, “Any trouble?”
Dirk shook his head, unutterably relieved everything had gone so smoothly. “No. No trouble at all, thanks to your award-winning performance.” He allowed himself a small grin. “But couldn’t you find something else to complain about besides men?” he teased.
She laughed gently and took his arm, walking toward the exit. “It was that obvious?” she murmured.
“Hell, yeah.”
She laughed again, deep in her throat, and for just a minute Dirk let himself enjoy the sound of her laughter, the teasing light in her eyes, her face. Love is made of intimate little moments like this, he thought, smiling to himself.
Then his smile faded as all at once the realization hit him that his feelings for Mei-li went beyond gratitude. Beyond desire. But he didn’t know what to call it because he refused to call it love. He’d loved once. Lost once. Never again.
And even if he let himself love Mei-li, they could never
have a future. Because she didn’t know the darkness in his soul. Didn’t know that God would never let Dirk atone for his sins in this life—that others would always pay the price, the way Bree had.
He could never risk it. Could never risk having any woman love him again. Never.
* * *
Dirk walked from the elevator to his hotel suite with Mei-li at his side. It seemed symbolic—if he let himself think that way. He knew he shouldn’t. He’d already reached that conclusion back at the museum. The problem was, he wanted to. Wanted her. Life would be worth living again if he had Mei-li to share it with. To make him laugh. To make him want. Need. Crave. To make him feel again.
The way she already did.
He came to a complete halt at the sudden revelation. Mei-li had already reached the door of his suite, not noticing he’d stopped. “Should I ring or do you have your key handy?” she asked, turning. Then she realized he was a few paces behind her. “What’s wrong?”
He couldn’t tell her. “Nothing.”
He forced himself to move. Forced himself to ignore the temptation to confess what he was thinking, feeling. Forced himself instead to swipe his electronic key card in the door and let them in. He pushed the door open and held it for Mei-li, then everything else was driven from his mind by the sight of Vanessa and Chet sitting side by side on the living room sofa. Rafe was seated in one of the living room chairs, facing the couple; Mike was across the way, lounging in the chair closest to the piano.
Vanessa jumped to her feet. “I’m so sorry, Mr. DeWinter. I know it was wrong, and my conscience barely let me sleep last night. That’s why I went back there today, so I could be hypnotized the way she wanted,” she said, gesturing toward Mei-li. She gulped. “I didn’t mean to fight being hypnotized yesterday. But I was so afraid you’d find out that I...” She trailed off miserably.
Dirk suddenly found himself judge and jury. “Find out what?” he demanded in harsh tones.
Mei-li stepped forward and put a hand on Dirk’s arm, holding him back. “You did something,” she told the other woman with certainty. “But it had nothing to do with the kidnapping.”
Vanessa’s mouth dropped open. “You think I—” Her astonished gaze moved to Dirk, then back to Mei-li. “I love Linden and Laurel.” She choked on a sob. “I would never... How could you think I—”
“But you did something,” Mei-li insisted. “Something you were afraid would come out if you were hypnotized. What?”
Vanessa’s gaze darted from Mei-li’s understanding eyes to Dirk’s implacable ones, and a hot tide of color rose in her cheeks. The color of shame. “I...I...spanked Linden that day. Oh, I know it was wrong,” she cried as a thundercloud descended on Dirk’s face.
“I know when you hired me I promised I’d never spank your daughters, Mr. DeWinter. And I swear I never did it before. But Linden...first she wouldn’t drink her milk at breakfast, no matter what I did. So I finally gave up. Then when I gave the girls their midmorning snack at their little table—you know how they love to watch the harbor through the window—Laurel ate her half a banana, no problem, but Linden stubbornly refused. Said she wasn’t hungry. I never force them to eat if they’re not hungry—you should never do that with children,” she said as an aside. “So I told her, okay, if she didn’t want it, I wasn’t going to let it go to waste. I was going to eat it myself.”
She stopped to drag in enough air to continue. “Then a half hour before lunch, all of a sudden Linden plopped herself down at her table, said she was hungry and wanted a banana. I didn’t have a banana to give her. There were only two left that morning, and you ate one with your breakfast cereal, Mr. DeWinter, remember? The other one I’d cut up for the girls’ snack. But when I offered Linden a pear instead, she threw a screaming fit, carrying on as if I were starving her. I offered her an apple, some grapes, a mango, even. Usually Linden loves mangoes, but not that day. I even told her I’d make a marshmallow face out of those little marshmallows she loves, but no. She wanted a banana, and she was going to cry until she got one.”
Vanessa was practically in tears herself as she continued. “The last straw was when I brought her some strawberry-orange-banana juice in a sippy cup—she loves that juice!—and she angrily knocked the cup right out of my hand. Even with the lid, it leaked on the carpet, and I...” Vanessa buried her face in her hands. “I lost it. I just lost it,” she sobbed.
It had all the hallmarks of the unhappy truth, and Dirk glanced at Mei-li to see if she agreed with him. But her gaze was glued to Vanessa’s bowed head. “So you lost it,” Mei-li said. “What exactly did you do?” Though her words were a demand, there was an underlying note of understanding the other woman responded to.
Vanessa looked up again, misery in every line of her face. But there was a little relief, too, as if she was glad to finally get the truth off her chest. “I took Linden from her chair, turned her around and smacked her bottom twice.” She faced Dirk. “It couldn’t have hurt her, Mr. DeWinter, I swear! I didn’t hit her hard, and her pull-ups cushioned it anyway. Linden was so startled for a moment she stopped crying. But that didn’t last long. She started crying again, this time for Nana, and then Laurel did, too. I was at my wit’s end, so I...”
“So you...?” Mei-li prompted when Vanessa faltered.
“I put them in their cribs in their bedroom and left them there. Crying. I closed the door so I wouldn’t have to hear them and came back into the living room to clean up the mess. I was on my hands and knees, blotting up the juice from the carpet, when the doorbell rang. I thought it was lunch, so I quickly went to throw the dish towel in the kitchen. When I came back, Chet was already in the foyer answering the front door, and...from that point on, everything happened exactly as I told you the day the girls were kidnapped.”
Chet rose from the sofa and put his arms around Vanessa. She buried her face against his chest, and in a muffled, tear-suffused voice she said, “Tell them, Chet.”
“It’s the honest-to-God truth, Mr. DeWinter,” Chet said manfully. “When Vanessa spanked Linden, I couldn’t believe it—she’d never done that before, my word on it. I mean, Vanessa turned me down when I asked her to marry me last month because she said she couldn’t leave the twins. So when she spanked your daughter I was shocked. But she didn’t hurt her. Vanessa could never hurt Linden, or Laurel, either.”
Dirk didn’t know what to say. Relief that his original trust in Vanessa and Chet hadn’t been misplaced—that they weren’t involved in his daughters’ kidnapping—was joined by a father’s justifiable anger that his daughter had been spanked, no matter the provocation. But even as he thought this, he remembered a time or two when he’d been tempted to do the same to one of the girls himself after some particularly naughty behavior. They might look like angels, but they didn’t always act like it.
He’d never spanked them, though. Could never. The harshest punishment he’d ever been able to administer was a time-out. But he could understand how Vanessa had been pushed to the brink, while at the same time not condoning it.
A sharp rapping on the door tore his attention away from Vanessa. And because he’d been expecting it momentarily, he was pretty damned sure it was another ransom note.
Tian Tan Buddha, 4:30 p.m. Climb the stairs to the base of the statue. Locate the deva holding an offering of fruit and pretend to take pictures like a tourist. When you receive the phone call, you will have one minute to talk with your daughters—make it count. After you hang up, place the bag in the cache beneath the stone to the left of the deva. Leave and don’t look back. Return to your hotel and await further instructions. Don’t do anything stupid.
Out on the patio, where they’d retreated for privacy, Mei-li handed the note back to Dirk, a slight furrow between her eyebrows. “Someone has been there—this location isn’t something you would be able to discover on the internet.”
“Doesn’t
that confirm your theory that one of the kidnappers is a local?”
“Yes, but...” She tried to think of how to word this. “Tourists flock to the Tian Tan Buddha. And that floor where the devas are?” she said, referring to where the six Mother Buddhas were located right beneath the base of the main statue, three on one side, three on the other. “There are always people around, so it’s not very private. Even if you can put the ransom where they’re asking you to, it would be difficult to do it without being observed. Same goes for retrieving it. And it’s not the kind of place someone can make a quick getaway—they’d have to run down all those stairs to escape, and there’s something like two hundred sixty of them.”
She had a bad feeling about this, and it was due in large part to the text she’d received right after the delivery of the latest instruction note—Ransom not retrieved. Not at the Peak. Not at the museum. Theories?
She had a theory. She just wasn’t exactly sure how to proceed based on what she knew. If she was wrong...she didn’t even want to think about the consequences if she was wrong.
Dirk’s smartphone went off, signaling an email had been received. “Don’t look at it,” she pleaded, trying to grab the phone he’d pulled from his pocket. “Don’t do that to yourself. Download it. Get the GPS coordinates. But don’t look. I’ll look at it for you.”
He held the phone out of her reach. “I can’t do that.” His voice was firm. Unwavering. And she understood. Because if they were her daughters, she would have had to look, too. She wanted to spare him, but he wouldn’t spare himself. Then his face softened, and he briefly touched her cheek. “But I appreciate the offer.”
Dirk went into the study to download the file onto his laptop, and Mei-li knew he didn’t want an audience, not even her. She used the time to send a text, then called Patrick to tell him where they needed to go and when they needed to be there.
“I filled up the petrol,” he told her. “So we’re all set. But we should leave soon.”