by Wiehl, Lis
He pressed the button to turn off the phone, but it rang again in his hand. It was the manager at one of his restaurants.
“We’ve got a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“A guy burst into the back room. He saw the steroids. He was filming them on his phone. I thought he was a cop or something, and I panicked. I put him in a choke hold. Only it turns out he’s fifteen years old. A kid.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No. I’ve tied him up and gagged him. But now I don’t know what to do.”
The answer was clear. The manager just didn’t want to face it. It was too late to go back now.
It reminded Kenny of the first time he had killed someone. It had been before he had hired Atkinson to be his bodyguard. A man named Longwei had owned the original Jade Kitchen, but he hadn’t wanted to sell it, even though it had been in his best interests, the price more than fair. Kenny had simply meant to threaten Longwei, but somehow the gun had gone off, wounding him in the shoulder. They had looked at each other, both shocked by what had happened. The wound had not appeared to be life threatening. Except that it was. Looking at the blood pulsing out between the fingers Longwei was pressing against it, Kenny had seen what would happen. The hospital would call the police, and the police would not rest until they had answers. Once Longwei had been wounded, there was no way to go back to the moment before. And no path led to a good outcome for Kenny. In a split second, he had realized it was better to cut his losses, that there would be far fewer questions if the man simply disappeared.
So Kenny had taken one step closer, put the gun to Longwei’s temple, and pulled the trigger.
Now Kenny sighed. “I’ll come down and take care of it. What’s the kid’s name?”
“Gabe Quinn.”
A long pause, during which Kenny’s eye throbbed with every beat of his heart. “Did you say Quinn?”
“Yes.”
“Is he conscious?”
“More or less.”
“Ask him what his parents’ names are. I’ll wait.”
A minute later, the manager was back. “He said Mia and Scott Quinn.”
Well, well. This might have been useful information to have. Once. When he could have blackmailed her. Now it was too late. He could only hope that the disappearance of her son would throw her off her stride.
Only maybe it wasn’t too late.
Kenny began to see how he could solve his problems. Didn’t the Americans have a saying? “To kill two birds with one stone?”
CHAPTER 47
It was dark when Gabe woke up. His head ached and his neck felt weird.
Only he realized he hadn’t woken up. Not exactly.
He had come to.
With a rush of panic, he remembered bursting into that room at the Jade Kitchen. The feeling of the arm coming across his throat and squeezing. After that, everything had gone dark.
Now he tried to get to his feet, to run, but found he could barely move. His knees were jammed up against his chin. His arms were pinned behind his back, and his hands were locked together. He was in some sort of small, confined space that pressed in all around him. That reflected every panicked, snorted exhale right back into his face.
Gabe couldn’t scream. He couldn’t even breathe through his mouth. It was sealed shut with some type of tape.
He managed to turn one hand enough that he could run his fingers across the bond that linked one hand to the other. A metal chain. His hands were cuffed behind his back.
Another jolt of adrenaline surged through him. Had he been buried alive?
But wherever he was, it didn’t feel like dirt around him. It was hard and rubbery. And it didn’t smell like dirt. The air was sour and hot, reeking of rot and mold.
He was, he realized, in a garbage can. A big one. Like industrial-size. One they hadn’t bothered to clean before they handcuffed him and dumped him in here. It must belong to the Jade Kitchen.
But what if they had put him in here thinking he was dead? What if they never came back to get him out? How long would it take him to die? Overwhelmed by a fresh wave of panic, Gabe screamed twice, screams that left him shaky and sweating. Even though he had screamed as loudly as possible, he could tell it hadn’t left the inside of his head, let alone penetrated the garbage can and gone out into the world.
He felt a sudden surge of nausea. Closing his eyes in the darkness, he fought it back down. If he threw up now, with the duct tape across his mouth, he would choke and die. He couldn’t afford to cry either. Not if his nose might run and block his only way of breathing.
He had to calm down. He told himself that they wouldn’t have bothered with the duct tape or the handcuffs if they had thought he was dead. And if they had wanted to kill him, they would have done it right away, without bothering to restrain him.
So maybe he was okay. Maybe they were just going to hold him for ransom or something.
But Gabe didn’t really want to hang around to find out what that something was. So where was the garbage can? Was it outside? Was anyone watching him? But any observer would have known he was conscious by now, and no one had kicked the sides or yelled at him to shut up. No one had reacted at all. So maybe wherever he was, he was alone, at least for now. If he could manage to knock the can over, he might be able to crawl out, stand up, and escape. Run clumsily because of his bound hands and numb legs, but still run.
Gabe shifted on his deadened legs, rocking back and forth. He thumped one side with one shoulder, then the other. Each time the garbage can moved a fraction but settled right back into place. Then he tried to stand up, but his legs had gone to sleep and he was too crammed in to get any purchase.
Did he hear something? He held his breath and tried not to panic. Was someone coming? Someone good—or someone bad? Should he try to make noise or should he try to keep quiet?
Make noise, he decided. Because the bad guys were the ones who had put him here. They already knew about him.
He tried again to scream, tried to put power behind it.
And in answer the lid swung back.
Gabe stared up. But he had no idea who the man was looking down at him. Just that he didn’t look surprised.
Gabe realized he should have been ready. Tried to do something. Maybe he could have head-butted this guy. But instead he was just looking up at a short, slender Chinese man. Gabe could tell that he was taller than the man, and with his new physique, he had many pounds on him. Still, this guy was clearly a man, not a boy.
The man’s face was hard. Expressionless. He wore a black eye patch, but it didn’t look funny at all, not with the red divot running down his forehead and then disappearing under the patch. Gabe didn’t want to know what was—or wasn’t—under that eye patch. For a second he remembered the pirate party his mom had put on for his sixth birthday. The guests had all gotten foam swords and eye patches. Gabe had worn a pirate’s hat, and they had followed clues to find a pirate’s hoard of gold-foil-wrapped chocolate coins. Found them right here in the garage he was in now. The garage at his house. Because now he recognized where he was.
Behind the man was a white van with Jade Kitchen written on it. Why had they taken Gabe here?
He was still wondering when the man grabbed the handle of the garbage can and tilted it. Suddenly it went over. Hard. Gabe reflexively jerked his hands, trying to protect his head, but the back of his skull bounced off the side of the can as it hit the floor. While he was still lying there, stunned, the man put his hands under Gabe’s arms and hauled him out. Gabe tried to get his feet underneath him, but his legs were boneless and numb. He lay like a fish on the deck of a boat, his back arched awkwardly over his cuffed hands. He could only watch as the man slipped off Gabe’s Vans, toed off his own shoes, and slipped his feet in Gabe’s.
The man reached out one latex-gloved hand and ripped the tape from Gabe’s mouth. It should have been a relief, and it was, at least physically. He sucked in greedy gulps of air, knowing the man wou
ld only have done it if he had no worries about anyone hearing Gabe.
“Who are you?” Gabe said. “What do you want?” He wanted to sound strong, like a man, but his voice came out weak and hoarse. Were there other men here? Or was it just this one man?
“That does not matter. All that matters is that you caused a big mess and now I have to clean it up.”
“Just let me go and I won’t tell anyone what happened.” The man didn’t even bother to answer Gabe’s plea. He tried another tack. “Whatever you do, you shouldn’t try to kill me.”
One side of the other man’s mouth lifted at that. “And why not?”
“Because my mom is a King County prosecutor and her friend is a homicide detective. If you kill me, they won’t rest until you’re on death row.”
“Oh, I know your mother, Gabe. Her name is Mia Quinn.”
To hear his name in the other man’s mouth made him flinch. And why wasn’t this guy wearing a mask as well as those translucent latex gloves? Gabe could easily identify him. Especially with that eye patch.
At least he could if he were alive.
“Your mother has become a thorn in my side. That is what they say in America, right? She will not stop asking questions. Each time she takes away a little piece of information. Maybe the tiniest crumb. But she keeps coming back. Well, we have another saying in China. ‘An ant may well destroy a whole dam.’ ” His mouth twisted. “So who else lives here? And do not lie to me, or it will go very badly for them.”
Unable to work out if a lie was better, Gabe went with the truth. “Besides my mother, there’s my little sister, Brooke. She’s four. And my friend Eldon and his mom.” What was going to happen to them? He prayed that none of them came home now. Because he realized they couldn’t save him. And he couldn’t save them.
“And where are they all now?”
“My mom’s at work. My sister is at daycare. And Eldon and his mom are at the doctor’s.”
“How long until they are back?”
He still couldn’t see any point in lying. “An hour or too. Maybe less.” But not Brooke, he realized with relief. Because Gabe wouldn’t come to pick her up.
The man put his foot on Gabe’s hip and pushed him to one side. He leaned down and plucked Gabe’s phone from the back pocket of his jeans.
“What do you have on here?” He swiped sideways, looking at all of Gabe’s apps. “Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. And what kind of texts do you send?” He scrolled up and down. “Very good. Fully spelled-out words. I dislike the way Americans always have to have shortcuts.”
Gabe didn’t say anything. How could he get his hands on his phone? If he had it, he could try to dial it behind his back or press buttons with his nose. He was sure if he tried hard enough he would succeed.
“I think first we shall have you send a message to your mother.” The man spoke aloud as he continued to type. “ ‘Mom come home right away. Something bad happened.’ ” He hesitated. “No, if it ends there she might call the police when you do not answer your phone. So we shall make it”—he started typing again—“ ‘Something bad happened that I need to tell you about.’ Perfect. Just enough to make her curious. To make her hurry. To make her think it is something she will want to keep private.” He tapped the bottom of the screen, pressing the Send button.
“What are you going to do to her when she comes home?” Because the man was right, Gabe knew. His mom would hurry home. She would be distracted. Worried. What would she be imagining? That he had been suspended at school? That he had taken some kind of bad drug?
“It is a sad story, really. A story about a boy who becomes addicted to steroids. You know what steroids make people do? They can make them get angry. Very angry. And so one day this boy snaps. He lies in wait and kills his family members one by one as they come home. And finally he turns the gun on himself.
“Then I will go to all your applications. What shall I say? ‘I can’t take it anymore’? ‘It’s all over’? ‘They are better off now’? ‘I’m so sorry for what I have done’? Or maybe something that sounds more angry or crazy. Perhaps—‘I am the angel of death’? With a photo of your mother’s body?” He gave Gabe a cold smile, as if pleased with his cleverness.
“They will never figure out where you got the gun, but kids have a way of finding the things they really want, do they not? Just like you figured out how to get steroids even though they are illegal.” He stuck out one Vans-shod foot and regarded it. “And in case I go tracking blood, I am wearing your shoes. The story without words has to match the story I will use your phone to write. That is why you must die last. In case they can tell the order things happened in.”
He picked up a roll of duct tape. Before Gabe could react, the man duct-taped his legs together at the calf. Then he tore off two new strips, which he slapped against Gabe’s mouth.
With dawning horror, Gabe realized that it would work. Even if anyone tried to run, even if they fought back, even if they tried to hide—they would do all those things whether they were running from Gabe or Kenny. The evidence wouldn’t change.
His mom was going to die today. Maybe Eldon and Kali. And of course Gabe himself. And it would all be his fault.
But at least Brooke would be safe. His mom would think Gabe had already picked her up and she wouldn’t go by the daycare. So his little sister wouldn’t die today. He tried to hold on to that thought as the man turned off the light, closed the door, and left Gabe alone on the garage floor.
CHAPTER 48
Mia sat in the hospital waiting room with Charlie and Eli. As soon as the operation to repair the damage to Jiao’s throat was finished, the surgeon was supposed to come out and give them an update on her condition.
At the sound of a tinny chime, she started. It was her phone dinging, signaling a text. She pulled it from her purse.
MOM COME HOME RIGHT AWAY. SOMETHING BAD HAPPENED THAT I NEED TO TELL YOU ABOUT.
What little adrenaline Mia had left flared up. What kind of trouble had her son gotten himself in now? She took a deep breath and tried to tell herself it couldn’t be that bad. At least he wasn’t calling her from the police station. Or a hospital. The front of her suit jacket was still stiff with blood from when she had placed her hands on Jiao’s neck, tried to stop the girl from dying.
She must have made a sound because Charlie lifted his head from an old issue of Entertainment Weekly. “What’s wrong?”
She handed over her phone. Charlie read the message and grunted, then handed it back. “Something bad? He’s a teenager. It could mean that he asked a girl out and she said no.”
Eli was looking back and forth between the two of them. She knew he wouldn’t judge her, not after the troubles he had had with Rachel smoking pot. She handed the phone to him.
“Gabe just sent me this.”
Eli read it and then handed back the phone with a quizzical look.
“Things with Gabe have been kind of fraught in the last couple of days,” she explained. “Right now he’s grounded, big-time. Because on Saturday”—part of her still could not believe what she was about to say was true—“I found steroids in his backpack.”
Eli’s eyes widened. “Gabe is using steroids? Those can have some pretty serious side effects.”
Mia bit back on her impulse to snap at him. “Which is why I’m treating it seriously. As you know”—she underlined the word you with her tone of voice—“it’s impossible to police a kid twenty-four/seven.”
Deciding not to say anything more, Mia called Gabe’s phone. But there was no answer.
When it went to voice mail, she said, “Gabe—can you call me back? I need to know more about what’s going on.”
A million possibilities ran through her mind. Had he been expelled? What could be so bad he had to ask her to come home right away? And could it be that something he defined as bad was not nearly so bad after all? Had he gotten in another fight with Eldon? Her breath caught. Was it possible he had hurt Eldon? Mia called Kali, but again got
nothing but voice mail. Then she remembered that Kali had had a doctor’s appointment late in the afternoon and that Eldon was going with her. She decided not to leave a message. Kali already had enough on her plate.
A new, even more terrifying thought seized her. Had something happened to Brooke? Was Gabe so young, so panicked, that he would text Mia rather than call 911? She pictured Brooke cart-wheeling down the stairs. Lying unmoving at the bottom. She knew she was assuming the worst, that she was conjuring nightmares from fifteen simple words. Then again, earlier today she had watched a girl try to kill herself with a pen.
Before she hit the speed dial for Rocking Horse Preschool, she relived what had happened. It still confused her. Jiao and Kwong had been talking fast, their words running over each other. The thing was, Mia had thought she heard Jiao say two words she knew. Kenny Zhong.
But she had checked with both Eli and Charlie afterward. They hadn’t heard it. And surely Charlie would have picked up on it.
Kwong/Kenny Zhong—said fast, one could sound like the other. Or Jiao could have said something else entirely.
“What did she say to you?” she had demanded of Kwong after the ambulance had taken Jiao away. “Right before she did it?”
Kwong was trembling. Blood freckled her broad face. She had screamed, “Sorry!” over and over as they scrambled to save Jiao’s life. She was still clutching the bloody pen she had plucked from the girl’s throat.
“She was saying that she was afraid and she did not want to testify. She was saying she should join Dandan.”
“And she did not say anything about Kenny Zhong?”
“Who?” Kwong’s expression didn’t change.
“Kenny Zhong.”
Kwong’s flat eyes met her gaze without wavering. “No. Who is that?”
Mia answered her question with a question. “Then what were you telling her?”
“That there was hope. That life was worth living.” The other woman sighed heavily. “That’s when she pulled the pen from my hand.”
Mia still wasn’t certain she believed her. But the conversation between Kwong and Jiao hadn’t been recorded by the jail because any conversation that involved Jiao’s lawyer was privileged. And she and Charlie hadn’t recorded it because they were trying to keep Jiao safe. They only had Kwong’s word for what had been said in the interview room. And maybe Jiao’s, once she regained consciousness.