by Naomi Paul
“Ha! I’d have accepted Lara Croft, too.”
Zan stood up as well, and Lian introduced him.
“I’m so sorry about your sister,” Crowbar said. “We’re going to make sure Harrison pays.”
“Thank you,” Zan said. He shook her hand and then glanced away. Lian tried not to notice that he was wiping away a tear from his eye with his Standard.
“I, uh,” she began. “I feel a little strange using code names out here in the real world. Is it okay if I tell you my actual name? You don’t have to reciprocate.”
Crowbar looked relieved. “Oh, thank God,” she said. “I wanted to say the same thing, but I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do. I’m Eva.”
“Lian.”
“That’s pretty. Does it mean anything?”
“By itself, it means ‘lotus flower,’” Lian told her. “Which is a little less embarrassing than my full name, which translates to something like ‘pious and incorruptible.’”
“We’re a good pair, then,” Eva said with a smile. “I’m named after the first woman corrupted in the Garden of Eden, so maybe we’ll balance one another out.”
Zan took a casual stroll around the plaza, keeping an eye out for the newspaper that would identify Torch, as the girls fell to chatting about Eva’s year as a humanitarian aid worker in South Africa. Listening to the accounts of Eva’s journeys in a nation struggling to be stronger than the legacy of apartheid and the scourge of HIV, Lian made a silent, personal vow: after she had dealt with Harrison, she would do more to help make a difference to people. University could wait.
Eva was in the middle of telling about her summer at a Siyathemba school when Lian stopped her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a figure in the shadows. Just like this morning, she couldn’t help the feeling she’d been followed.
And just like this morning, she knew it was Matt Harrison.
“What the hell,” she hissed through gritted teeth as Matt stepped out from behind a tree across the plaza and lowered the hood on his sweatshirt.
“What is it?” Eva asked her. “What’s wrong?”
“We have to go,” Lian said, taking Eva’s hand and pulling her up from the bench. “We’ve been compromised.”
“Oh, no,” Eva said, her dark-rimmed eyes going wide. “Harrison’s people?”
“Sort of,” said Lian, quickening her pace. “Come on!”
The girls ran from their rendezvous spot, Lian leading the way, wishing she’d gone ahead and put on the sneakers. She didn’t know where Zan had gotten to, but she hoped he’d spotted the commotion and was on his way to help.
Behind them, she heard Matt’s footfalls on the bricks. “Lian!” he called after her. “Wait! Stop, dammit!”
Stopping was the last thing on Lian’s mind. She pulled up short, nearly crashing into a decorative planter at the curb, and put up her arm to keep Eva from darting into the traffic on Wing Lok Street. Breathless, Lian pointed to their destination. They only had to make it across the two lanes, leap the railing at the opposite curb, and dash for the Sheung Wan subway station, where they’d have a better chance at losing Matt.
But the cars weren’t exactly cooperating. Lian took Eva’s wrist and ran several yards down the sidewalk, away from the subway but toward a bus that was braking at Des Voeux Road. With one lane of traffic blocked, the girls sprinted between honking sedans and reckless taxis, leaping for the sidewalk.
Over the car horns and the pneumatic hiss of the bus, she couldn’t hear Matt anymore. But he had to be back there—and he had probably brought Harrison’s security with him. There wasn’t a moment to slow down.
The girls ran headlong back up the sidewalk, Eva’s dreadlocks bouncing, Lian’s messenger bag slapping angrily against her hip. At last they reached the corner at Rumsey Street, where Lian turned to take them into the subway and instead smacked right into Matt’s chest.
Eva skidded into her, and the two girls stumbled back, toppling onto the sidewalk. Matt stood over them, his gaze intense, and began to unzip his sweatshirt as he reached inside.
“No,” Lian stammered. Her breath wouldn’t come. “Matt, please, wh-whatever you’re thinking of doing . . .”
He drew his hand out slowly, gripping something tightly, and extended it toward her face.
It was the Tuesday Standard.
“Komiko? Crowbar?” he said, dropping the paper and offering his hands to help them both up. “Nice to meet you. I’m Torch.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“No,” Lian said. “No way!” She batted away Matt’s hand and got to her feet on her own.
“It’s true,” he said as he helped steady Eva. “I know how crazy this must seem . . .”
“You have no idea how crazy it seems,” Lian cut him off. “Girls don’t like to be followed, you freak! You were stalking me in the plaza just now, and I swear you were tailing me on my way to school this morning! What is the matter with you?”
“I had to be sure, Lian,” he said, picking his Standard up from the sidewalk and tucking it back inside his sweatshirt. “I suspected it after the big dinner, but I had to be certain that you were who I thought you were. Komiko.”
That word from his mouth was the most disconcerting thing Lian had ever heard. How could this slacker American boy, with his easygoing smile and surf shop mentality, be the infamous Torch, uptight hacker supreme and tireless crusader for justice?
“Wait,” Eva said, her big dark eyes moving between the two of them. “Do you guys know each other?”
“We go to the same school,” Matt told her. “We’ve run in some of the same circles, this last week or so. But from the look on her face, I’m pretty sure Lian had no idea that one of those circles was 06/04.”
Before Lian could reply, Zan vaulted over the sidewalk railing and landed next to her. “Hey,” he said, out of breath and pointing at Matt. “What the hell is he doing here?”
“Good evening, Zan,” Matt said, calm and casual. “I’m here to help avenge your sister.”
Zan shook his head like he hadn’t quite heard what Matt had said. “Hold on,” he said, propping himself against the metal rail. “You’re the other guy? You’re part of the little group, too?”
“I am.”
Eva chewed nervously at the end of one of her blue forelocks. “So . . . you know him, too, Torch?”
“Matt,” Lian said angrily. “His real name is Matt. I’ll let him tell you his last name.”
“Okay, all right, take it easy,” Matt said. “We’re all on the same side, here.”
“Are we?” Lian spat back. “How are we supposed to trust you?”
“How was I supposed to trust you?” he countered. “Your dad is a Hong Kong trade envoy, after all.”
“Oh, that’s rich,” Lian said with a short, mean laugh. “Considering that your father is the man we’re taking down tonight.”
Eva choked on her hair. “What?”
“Rand Harrison is not my father,” Matt said in measured tones.
“What are you talking about?” Lian said. “Of course he is!”
“He’s my stepdad,” Matt said. “I had no choice in the matter. My real name is Cooper.”
Lian stared hard at him. Was he lying? Even now?
“And from the moment he whisked my mom off her feet,” Matt continued, “I’ve suspected that he was dirty.”
It didn’t make sense. Ever since she’d met Matt he seemed like a carbon copy of his dad . . . or stepdad, if his latest revelation was to be believed. Arrogant, brash, a foreigner with no feel or respect for different cultures.
“Why did you let me believe he was your real father then?” Lian asked.
Matt shrugged sheepishly. “It’s all about the persona he wants to project in Hong Kong. Family man, trustworthy. But mainly because I didn’t want to blow my cover. I’ve been watching him longer than any of you. Who do you think was feeding information to Mynah Bird?”
“And look how that worked out,” Lian said.
“Mynah got sloppy,” Matt retorted. “His arrest had nothing to do with me, or with his looking into Harrison Corp. All the same, it scared me off. I sat on my hands for months. But when we started connecting the dots to the dead girl on the beach, I knew I couldn’t stay idle any longer. It was time to bring Rand Harrison down, once and for all.” He looked straight at Lian and flashed his perfect smile. “Whatever you think of me, at least we still agree on that, right?”
Zan stepped between the two of them. “It’s hard to believe you’d use teeth that nice to bite the hand that feeds you, Harrison.”
“Maybe I’m overstating the obvious, Zan,” Matt said, “but you really don’t know a damn thing about me.”
“Okay, enough!”
Lian and the boys all stopped to look at Eva. There was a resolve in her eyes and an edge to her voice. Under all that blue hair, there was probably less than a hundred pounds of flesh, but there was no doubt in Lian’s mind that—at that moment—Eva could have taken them all on and won hands down. This was the determined trouper who had toppled the Junk Bay gangsters, and who seemed like she was not in the mood for infighting just now.
“I don’t care what his real name is,” Eva said. “I don’t care about his story. He’s Torch, and we know Torch. We trust him. As far as I’m concerned, ‘Matt Harrison’ or ‘Matt Cooper’ don’t even exist.”
Matt smiled at her. “Thanks, Crowbar. I think that’s a very sensible way of looking at it.” He ran a hand through his hair and frowned. “But, the problem is, Matt Harrison does exist. And the people in his stepfather’s offices have a pretty good idea of what he looks like.”
“Meaning what?” Lian prodded.
“Meaning, I can’t go with you guys,” Matt said. “I’d be a liability.”
“Oh, right,” Lian said. “So we go charging into the belly of the beast, while your hands stay clean?”
“My hands are dirtier than anyone’s,” Matt said. “I’m all over the office security footage for today. But you can thank me for that later.”
“And why would we do that, exactly?” Lian asked.
“Because,” Matt said, “the building security codes are updated at 4 A.M. every morning. It’s a random alphanumeric string, generated on a stand-alone terminal. If it doesn’t have a net connection, I can’t hack it.”
“So you had to retrieve it in person,” Eva concluded. “And it had to be today.”
Matt nodded, checking his watch. “Exactly. And it’s only good for another five hours and forty minutes.”
“Then we’ve got to go now,” Eva said. “We’ve got to see this through.”
“I hate everything about this,” Lian said. “Some secret code that only Matt could get us, and that keeps him from coming with us on the raid? It just reeks of a trap.”
“I’d go with you if I could, Lian,” Matt said, looking genuinely hurt by her words. “I’d do the whole thing by myself, if that was an option. But I can’t. So I’ve done everything I can to get you in and out without getting caught. Without getting hurt.”
There was real concern in his eyes. Lian tried to ignore it. “How can we trust you?”
Matt spread his hands. “If I’d wanted to sell you out, I could have done so before now, couldn’t I?”
“I hate to say it,” Zan spoke up after a moment. “But I think he’s right. You guys have been planning this, working toward tonight, getting everything in place. It doesn’t make sense to back out at the last minute.”
“Listen,” Matt pleaded with her. “We all know that my stepdad has got cops in his pocket. And after what happened at the school today, it’s a good bet that they’re onto me already. Onto us.”
Eva frowned. “What happened at your school today?”
Suddenly, it clicked for Lian: “The police raided the computer lab. Confiscated everything. I was sure they’d been cross-referencing my log-ins with my searches, putting together the puzzle from the tiny pieces I couldn’t help leaving behind.” She rounded on Matt. “But it was you they were after, wasn’t it? You left them a big fat puzzle piece.”
He blushed, unable to meet her gaze for a moment. “I logged on to 06/04, yeah,” he admitted. “A couple of times. And mostly it was to throw you off, if you were starting to suspect anything. I figured that a few posts during class hours would scotch any notions that I was a fellow high school student.”
Lian smirked. “Well, that’s equal parts clever and idiotic.”
“Yeah,” Matt said. “That pretty much sums me up.”
“Okay,” Eva said. “We’ve got security codes that are set to expire, and corrupt police are going to kick down Torch’s door any moment now . . . so we’ve got no choice. Either we do this right now, or else we call those cops and tell them where they can pick us up. Me, personally, I’m voting against jail time.”
Jail time will be the least of it, Lian thought. Still, out loud she said, “I’m in. Eva and I can handle the break-in. It might go better with just two of us, anyway. Matt, you and Zan head back to the plaza.”
She shrugged out of her suit jacket and began to tug her sneakers on. “I’ve got the blueprints loaded on my phone. You guys keep watch, and if we’re not out in one hour . . .”
“I’ll come in after you,” Zan offered with a brave smile.
“Okay,” Lian said, handing him her messenger bag with the jacket and dress flats stuffed inside. “Matt, let me give you my number.”
“No need,” Matt said. “I swiped it off Mingmei’s phone a week ago.”
“Good. The one-time invasion of privacy is helpful,” Lian said, forcing a smile to offset any hostile tone that might creep into her voice. “If the cops show up, you text me 911 so we’ll have a chance to make a run for it.”
“No problem,” he said, handing her the slip of paper with the day’s security code on it.
Lian read the code twice, committed it to memory, and passed it back to him. “Thank you. And hey, Matt?”
“Yeah?”
“Do me a favor? Smile for me?”
He gave her a confused look for a second, then shrugged and complied.
“Good. Now, if this turns out to be a setup. . . . I swear I will personally smash every one of those perfect teeth out of your skull.”
She didn’t even turn around to watch his smile fade.
TWENTY-FIVE
“That was pretty badass, back there,” Eva said as they moved through the shadows of the underground parking garage. “If we do get popped tonight, at least you bowed out with some famous last words.”
“I’m just hoping I didn’t use up all my bravado making Matt wet himself,” Lian replied. “I could use a little bit for what we’re about to do.”
“Relax,” Eva said. “We’re just two hip young girls, out on the town, who happen across a big shiny skyscraper, and then happen to punch in the right door code on our first guess, and then happen to stumble across evidence in a ninth-floor records room that will happen to bring a global corporation to its knees. It could happen to anyone . . . right?”
Lian smiled. “Not exactly what I’d call an airtight alibi.”
At a run, the two of them crossed a dimly lit expanse of white concrete and painted yellow parking stripes. Lian stopped with her back against one side of the support pillar closest to the building’s rear doors; Eva drew up next to her. They peered in opposite directions around the post, holding their breaths, scanning for movement and finding none. The lot was nearly deserted in the 10 P.M. hour. If luck was on their side, they could make it in and out and not encounter a single soul.
Lian reached around the corner of the pillar, grabbed Eva’s hand, and squeezed. “Here we go,” she said, as Eva squeezed back.
They dashed to the rightmost of the four glass entry doors. Lian stopped when she reached the keyed security pad. If she entered the code, she would leave fingerprints. She cursed herself for the oversight, until she saw Eva reaching into her pocket and pulling out woolen gloves the same shade of blu
e as her hair. As Lian whispered the code, Eva keyed it in.
The door slid open with a whisper.
No alarms sounded, no guards pounced from the darkness. As the girls stepped inside, the door slid purposefully back into place and anchored itself.
Lian finally let herself exhale. So far, so good.
She pointed down the hallway to their left. All clear. The blueprints showed a service lift back here, as well as two banks of elevators in the heart of the building, but they’d agreed that these were likely to be fitted with cameras. The better bet was the emergency stairs at the end of the hall.
Thankfully, the lights weren’t on motion sensors. Matt had reassured them, but Lian was braced to discover his mistakes—or lies—with every step she took. Eva gingerly pressed the bar to open the stairwell door, making only the tiniest of metallic clicks. She opened it just wide enough for the two of them to slip through, before gently letting it click back into place.
A single yellow bulb lit each floor’s number. Lian tugged the sleeve of her blouse down over her left hand so her bare skin wouldn’t touch the rail, and they made their way quickly and quietly up eight flights.
“Jiu,” Lian said, a little out of breath, when they reached the painted symbol.
Eva nodded. “Nine.”
“Yeah. But everything in Chinese means ten different things. It’s a lucky number because it sounds like the word for ‘everlasting.’ And it’s all bound up in dragon symbolism. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that Harrison’s people did their homework and chose the ninth floor on purpose, as some kind of talisman.”
“Where would big business be without ridiculous old-world superstitions?” Eva said with a smirk. “Now, knock on wood, we’re about to find something that’ll keep this dragon from being everlasting.”
“Fingers crossed,” Lian said, smiling.
“You brought your lucky rabbit’s foot, right?”
“I never commit corporate crimes without it.”
Eva turned the handle, and they stepped onto the patterned gray carpet of the ninth floor. Lian hoped that they had got all their nervous laughter out in the stairwell. Now was the time for seriousness and silence.