Dead
in
Hong Kong
R.J. JAGGER
Praise for the thrillers of
R.J. JAGGER
“The pacing is relentless in this debut, a hard-boiled novel with a shocking ending… The supershort chapters will please those who enjoy a James Patterson-style page-turner.”
Library Journal
“The well-crafted storyline makes this a worthwhile read. Stuffed with gratuitous sex and over-the-top violence, this novel has a riveting plot …”
Kirkus Reviews
“A terrifying, gripping cross between James Patterson and John Grisham. Jagger has created a truly killer thriller.”
J.A. Konrath
“Creative and captivating. It features bold characters, witty dialogue, exotic locations, and non-stop action. The pacing is spot-on, a solid combination of intrigue, suspense and eroticism. A first-rate thriller, this book is damnably hard to put down. It’s a tremendous read.”
ForeWord Magazine
“Verdict: This fast paced book offers fans of commercial thrillers a twisty, action-packed thrill ride.”
Library Journal
“Part of what makes this thriller thrilling is that you sense there to be connections between all the various subplots. The anticipation of their coming together keeps the pages turning.”
Booklist
Every book by R.J. Jagger is a standalone thriller.
Read them in any order.
Nick Teffinger Thrillers
Witness Chase
Bad Client
Lawyer Trap
Pretty Little Lawyer
Attorney’s Run
Dark Hunger
Client Trap
Ancient Prey
Dead in Hong Kong
Tokyo Hotel
Bangkok Bite
To Kill A Lawyer
Attorney Prey
Confidential Prey
Trial Kill
Bryson Wilde Thrillers
The Scroll Lawyers
The Shadow File
A Way With Murder
Copyright © R.J. Jagger
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except where permitted by law. This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, businesses, companies, entities, places and events in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons (living or dead), businesses, companies, entities, places or events is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by
Thriller Publishing Group, Inc.
Golden, CO 80401
Printed in the USA
Chapter One
Day One—August 3
Monday Night
______________
NICK TEFFINGER, the head of Denver’s homicide unit, drove home through a dark night in the middle of a nasty thunderstorm. The wipers swung at full speed and still couldn’t keep up with the slop. Duran Duran’s “Rio” came from the radio, loud, the way it was supposed to be. Teffinger sang when the chorus came up, barely able to hear his own 34-year-old voice. Ten minutes later when he turned into his driveway, something strange happened.
The headlights swept across a person sitting on the front steps, in the weather.
He stopped the vehicle in front of the garage, killed the engine, studied the figure for a heartbeat and then swung his six-foot-two frame out. The storm assaulted him immediately, almost horizontal, squeezing into his eyes and sucking at his breath.
The person turned out to be a woman, an Asian woman, very attractive even in her battered state.
She stood up and shouted over the weather, “Are you Nick Teffinger?” The words were in English with a foreign accent.
He was.
“I need to talk to you.”
He saw no car on the street.
She had no purse in her hands.
“Come on in.”
INSIDE, HE GOT A BETTER LOOK AT HER. She was hypnotically beautiful, about twenty-eight, five-five, in nice shape, with green eyes and thick raven hair halfway down her back. She wore jeans and a black T-shirt, both of which dripped freely onto the tile.
“We need to get you dried off,” Teffinger said.
She cocked her head.
“Don’t you want to know who I am first?”
“Sure, who are you?”
“My name’s d’Asia,” she said. “I’m from Hong Kong.”
“D’Asia?”
“Right, d’Asia.”
Nice, very nice.
D’Asia from Hong Kong.
TEFFINGER GAVE HER A LONG-SLEEVE SHIRT from his closet, pointed her to the bathroom and said, “I’ll be in the garage when you’re done. Whatever you do, don’t look under my mattress.” He was sitting in the dark behind the wheel of the ’67 Corvette, drinking a Bud Light and watching the storm through the windshield, when she showed up. Her hair was still wet but combed.
She got in the passenger seat.
He handed her a glass of cold white wine.
“This is my favorite thing in the world,” he said, “watching a storm from right here.”
Lightning arced across the sky as if to prove it.
D’Asia took a swallow of wine and studied him.
“So how long were you sitting out there in the rain waiting for me?” Teffinger asked.
She shrugged.
“I don’t know, half an hour maybe.”
“I’m impressed,” Teffinger said. “I’ve had people wait for me that long before, but they were always someone I owed money to. I don’t owe you money, do I?”
She chuckled.
“No.”
“Good, because I don’t have any,” he said. “You’re sitting in all my money.”
She smiled.
“So who are you d’Asia and what’s going on?”
She sighed.
“Too much,” she said. “Are you sure you want to know?”
SHE TOLD HIM she was a model from Hong Kong. Someone had been following her for the last week or so. She didn’t know who or why but was absolutely convinced that she had been targeted for a hit and that the execution date was here. She had a feeling that the source was someone wealthy and influential and powerful, but couldn’t point to any specific, concrete facts to support it.
The tension got to be too much.
She had to get out of the country.
She flew to the states, to Denver to be precise, to see Teffinger to be even more precise.
“I don’t get it,” Teffinger said. “Why me? What do I have to do with any of this?”
“Nothing if you don’t want to,” she said. “It’s just that Billy Shek said you’d probably help me, if I asked.”
Billy Shek?
“I never heard of him,” Teffinger said. “Who’s Billy Shek?”
“You don’t know him?”
No.
He didn’t.
“He’s a photographer.”
“From Hong Kong?”
“Right.”
“I don’t know any photographers from anywhere,” Teffinger said. “Much less Hong Kong.”
“Well he knows you,” she said, “or maybe he just knows of you. I’m not real clear on it, now that you say you don’t know him.”
Teffinger racked his brain.
Billy Shek.
Hong Kong.
Still nothing.
“Does he go by any other name?”
She shrugged and didn’t know.
; Teffinger drained the rest of his beer and cracked open another one. “So what is it that you want from me, exactly?” he asked.
“I want you to help me.”
“Help you how?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “All I know is that I don’t want to die.”
Silence.
“Well, you did fly halfway around the world and then sat out in a storm,” he said. “I guess that entitles you to something.”
She studied him.
“Does that mean you’ll help?”
He nodded.
“Yeah, I guess it does.” He saw doubt in her eyes and added, “I’m serious.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You have my promise.”
She exhaled.
Then said, “I didn’t expect you to look like this.”
“Like what?”
She didn’t answer.
Instead she leaned over and brought her mouth to his, dangerously close. The warmth of her breath filled his senses. Then she kissed him. He immediately knew his life had just changed. How far and how big, he couldn’t tell.
But a change had come.
Chapter Two
Day One—August 3
Monday Night
______________
TEFFINGER KNEW HE SHOULDN’T FALL IN LOVE with this mysterious woman. She was from Hong Kong. He wasn’t. There was a lot of earth between them.
That was a problem for tomorrow.
Right now, this second, there was no earth.
Right now, she was leading him by the hand into the bedroom. The weather raged against the windows. “You don’t have to do this,” he said. “I’m not looking for payment.”
She chuckled.
“You think this is for you?”
Lightning exploded.
She took him, slowly at first, until he took her back—turning her into an animal, a sweaty animal, a sweaty out-of-control animal who flung her hair wildly and screamed incoherently in Chinese. Then Teffinger laid back, exhausted, in awe.
“Damn,” he said.
Then he closed his eyes, just to rest them for a second.
SOME TIME LATER, which could have been ten minutes or three hours, a strange noise wrestled him out of a deep sleep. He kept his eyes closed but let himself wake up just enough to focus. The storm hammered the house and rattled the windows.
Above that, he heard nothing.
He listened harder.
Still nothing.
He rolled over and reached for d’Asia.
She wasn’t there.
He felt only covers.
Then the strange noise came again, this time with a crashing vibration. He opened his eyes just as lightning ripped across the sky. Two figures were on the floor in a desperate struggle.
“Nick!”
He jumped out of bed and flicked on the lights. What he saw he could hardly believe. D’Asia was on the floor, on her back. A woman with blond hair was on top of her, trying to force a knife into her face. Teffinger took two steps towards the attacker and then lunged through the air.
Instead of reaching her, he fell short.
His forehead caught the edge of the bed and exploded with pain.
His body crashed to the floor and landed on his shoulder.
“Nick!”
He muscled up, desperate, and managed to swing an arm at the attacker before everything went black.
HIS FIRST THOUGHT when he came to was that no one had killed him while he was passed out. The lights were off and the room was dark. A motionless body was on the carpet next to him.
He shook it.
No response came.
“D’Asia!”
She didn’t move.
It was then that he saw a knife sticking out of the woman’s chest. He pulled it out and threw it across the room.
No.
No!
No!
No!
He laid his head on her leg.
Then the lights suddenly turned on.
He looked over and saw d’Asia.
Then he looked at the body. It was an Asian woman, a second Asian woman, with a blond wig, someone he had never seen before.
“WHO IS SHE?” HE ASKED.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t have any idea?”
“No,” d’Asia said. “I’ve never seen her before in my life. Obviously she’s a hit woman.
“Was she the one following you?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
The dead woman was about thirty and athletic. Teffinger went through her pockets and found both U.S. and Hong Kong currency, but no wallet or identification or car keys or anything else.
“No I.D.,” he said.
D’Asia looked distant and said, “I just killed someone.”
Teffinger grunted.
“It was self-defense.”
“I don’t want to go to jail.”
“You won’t,” Teffinger said. “It was you or her. There’s nothing to worry about. I’m a witness to the whole thing.” He frowned and added, “I was so interested in getting you into bed that I never thought to close the garage door. That’s how she got in.”
The knife was a high-quality weapon with a 6-inch serrated blade and a black composite handle inscribed with red Asian characters.
“We need to make a report,” Teffinger said.
“To who?”
“The Lakewood P.D.,” Teffinger said.
“But you’re with Denver, right?”
He nodded.
He was.
“So you won’t be the one investigating?”
“No.”
D’Asia stood up.
Her shirt had blood on it.
“I don’t trust anyone else,” she said. “I only trust you.”
“There’s nothing to worry about.”
She said nothing.
Instead she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. When she came out, she had her jeans and T-shirt on. Both were still wet but no longer dripping.
“What are you doing?” Teffinger asked.
She kissed him, hard and passionately, then ran down the hall and shouted over her shoulder, “I can’t outrun this. I need to go back to Hong Kong and meet it head on.”
Before he could stop her, she was out the front door running down the street, disappearing into the storm.
“D’Asia, come back here!”
SHE DIDN’T COME BACK—not in five minutes, not in ten, not in thirty. Teffinger reached for the phone six different times to call the Lakewood P.D. but never dialed. He took a shower, grabbed a Bud Light and watched the storm from behind the wheel of the ’67.
An hour passed.
He drank three more beers.
D’Asia didn’t return.
She wouldn’t.
He knew that now.
Then he realized why he hadn’t reported the incident. It was because he was coming up with a plan. When he realized what it was, it shocked him.
It was dangerous.
It was wrong.
It could end his career.
But he had no choice.
Chapter Three
Day Two—August 4
Tuesday Morning
______________
PRARIE DUBOIS DRAGGED her 22-year-old French body out of bed and pulled the curtain back to see what the Parisian morning looked like. The first rays of daylight were just starting to wash the City of Light with a golden patina. A barge moved slowly up the Seine. The sky had a few rough clouds, but not many. She threw on sweatpants and a T-shirt, pulled long blond hair into a ponytail, and headed out for a jog through the cityscape.
The cool morning air felt good in her lungs.
She got into a rhythm and picked up the pace, doing five-minute kilometers, or better.
She tried to not think of Hong Kong, but it had been popping into her thoughts more and more frequently since her father got murdered.
That was one week ago, exactly.
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Last Tuesday.
He was shot in the back of the head by a fare, someone who didn’t mind splattering someone else’s brains all over the windshield of a cab for a few measly euros.
HONG KONG.
She had buried the memory at one point, but it came back in the last few days. It happened six months ago, when she was in the middle of her second year of graduate work at the University of Hong Kong.
On a Saturday night, she went clubbing; her and Ushi.
They wore expensive high heels and skimpy clothes that showed off curvy bodies.
They drank.
They drank some more.
The men started to look good.
Then something happened.
A man walked over, put his arms around her and kissed her like he owned her. He was six foot, with a rough bad-boy look and long black hair. She cocked her arm back to slap him, but before she could, he pulled her onto the dance floor.
What happened next wasn’t clear.
She remembered dancing.
Groping.
Drinking.
Kissing.
Laughing.
She remembered wanting to screw his brains out.
Maybe that happened.
Maybe it didn’t.
She couldn’t remember.
WHAT SHE DID REMEMBER was waking up in a windowless room with a serious headache. She was kept prisoner there for two weeks. She had contact with only one person, a man who always wore a black hood. She had no idea who he was, but he wasn’t the bad-boy from the club.
His body was different.
His voice was different.
His everything was different.
She wasn’t mistreated.
Then one day, out of the blue, she was released.
It came with a warning, a crystal clear warning; get out of Hong Kong by midnight and never tell anyone what happened.
SHE FLEW OUT OF HONG KONG at 11:45 p.m. that night and returned to Paris.
She told no one, not even her father, who quit his job at Musee d’Orsay four months after she got back and became a cab driver. That’s what he was doing last week—driving a cab—when someone put a bullet in the back of his head and took his money.
Dead in Hong Kong (Nick Teffinger Thriller) Page 1