Intrusion (A Chris Bruen Novel Book 2)

by Reece Hirsch

  “The message was sent from 4:05 to 5:30 p.m. today. Then the message stops, but the geolocation data is still transmitting.” Another pause. “Based on the coordinates, she’s still in San Francisco, and the address should be 22 Clay Street, at the corner of Clay and Powell.”

  “Chinatown,” Chris said.

  48

  Zoey was still punching in the signal using the HealthBot’s on-off switch when the car came to a stop. She wasn’t sure how long they had been driving, but they had left the freeway about a half hour before, and she heard the sirens and car horns of a city street. The pneumatic brakes of a bus hissed somewhere close by.

  She tried to twist herself around in the trunk so that she could kick out the taillight again, but with her feet zip-tied together it was futile. She knew the lid of the trunk was going to open soon, and it was very possible that she would be murdered on the spot while still trussed.

  If he doesn’t just kill me right away, then he’ll probably want me to walk to somewhere he can hide my body. Easier for him if I walk than if he has to drag me.

  Zoey hadn’t given up, but something like a calm had begun to settle over her. At first she found it hard to accept the reality of the situation—that her life might end this way. She blamed herself for being reckless enough to end up in this nightmarish situation. But as time passed ever so slowly in the trunk of the car, she stopped blaming herself. Zoey figured that if she had drawn someone as evil as Red Sun to her, it was probably because she was doing something that was good. She was proud of the work she had begun with Chris. And she would really have liked to see how the relationship with him developed. But if this was all of the time she was allotted, then okay.

  She heard footsteps on concrete, and then the trunk sprang open. They were inside a garage with fluorescent lighting fixtures glowing over Red Sun’s shoulder. To her darkness-adjusted eyes, the garage seemed brighter than the sun, and she squinted and blinked until she could see him clearly.

  Red Sun had a box cutter and used it to cut the ties binding her feet. He didn’t look her in the eyes, grabbing her legs and pulling them out of the trunk like he was hoisting a rolled carpet.

  As her pulse raced, Zoey found it difficult to breathe through her nose with the gag filling her mouth. She tried to calm herself, slow her breathing, to avoid passing out from asphyxiation.

  He hauled her to her feet, and for the first time she was able to see where she was. It was some sort of warehouse, but it was not like any place she had ever seen before. The space was filled with a riot of multicolored silk and bared fangs. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at. This was the place where dragon floats used in the Chinese New Year’s parade were stored.

  As he was lifting Zoey’s legs out of the trunk, Red Sun touched the HealthBot strapped to her ankle. He spat some sort of curse in Mandarin as he pushed Zoey down roughly on the floor, the back of her head striking concrete. Red Sun removed the HealthBot with a ripping of Velcro and examined it for a moment, then removed her gag.

  “What is this?” he asked. His English was flat and uninflected.

  She gasped and coughed for a few moments, filling her lungs, then finally said, “Just a pedometer. It measures how far I walk.”

  “What else does it do? It has a location signal, doesn’t it?”

  Zoey shrugged.

  “Don’t lie to me!” he shouted. “If you don’t tell me what you know right now, I’m going to end you right here. Right here. Your choice.”

  Zoey figured that Red Sun probably already knew the answer to his question. Answering truthfully would only buy her a bit more time. “Yes, there’s a geolocation signal.”

  He slammed down his satchel, angry for having missed the device. He paced around for a minute as Zoey looked up at him from the floor. Then he seemed to reach some decision, walking away across the warehouse with the HealthBot.

  When he returned, Zoey said, “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

  “No, I don’t. My contract is for Bruen, not you.”

  “But you want to do this, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you find this place?”

  “A friend told me about it. The dragon’s lair.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “The same thing that I did to your friend Geist.” He placed a hand on a heavily weighted satchel that he had slung over his shoulder. “I brought my tools. You don’t know how close you came that day.”

  The sight of Geist bound in the chair, along with the smell of the blood, came back to Zoey in a sensory flood. Once more she tried to tamp down the panic, stay logical, but each time it was harder. The fear was like a rising tide, glossy and malignant, swelling against the floodgates. Soon, she knew, it would overwhelm her, and she’d let loose the scream that was building inside.

  “There must be some part of you that isn’t like this,” she said. “Do you have kids? A wife? A sister? A brother?”

  She thought she detected a change in Red Sun’s features. Zoey figured that it was in her interest to keep him talking. She’d heard that was what someone should do if they were taken. Make the abductor recognize your humanity; make it harder for him to turn you into some mannequin in a fetishistic fantasy.

  Sensing that she might be getting through to him on some level, Zoey continued: “You can’t change what you’ve done in the past, but you can change this.”

  “You should stop. I know what you’re doing, and it’s not helping. If you don’t, I’m going to start here.” He tapped the center of her forehead with his index finger. “Instead of here.” He tapped her knee.

  Zoey forced a smile, but she could imagine how tense it must have looked. “I’m not sure which of those I’d actually prefer.”

  “You’ll know when the time comes.”

  Red Sun was leading Zoey across the floor to the rear of the warehouse, past endless rows of beaded, jeweled dragon floats that glared at them like sentinels of the netherworld.

  Somewhere in the building a door creaked. Red Sun extended a hand to bring her to a stop as he listened for other sounds of movement. He retrieved the gag from his pocket and shoved it back in Zoey’s mouth. Red Sun clutched Zoey by the arm and pulled her away behind a nearby shelf, upon which an enormous scarlet-and-emerald dragon crouched.

  They waited to see who would show themselves. Zoey tested the stiffness in her knees, gauging her ability to hurl herself at Red Sun when the time came, disrupt his aim. If she moved too soon, Red Sun would simply shoot her, and nothing would be accomplished.

  She heard a footstep an aisle or two away. Red Sun heard it too, and he drew his gun and held it ready in front of him. There was a faint rustling in the silk skin of a dragon about ten yards in front of them, like the thing was drawing shallow breath. It was catching the movement of whoever was approaching.

  Zoey tensed and got ready.

  49

  Chris knew that the fastest route to Chinatown from his office in Embarcadero Center was via BART. As tempting as it was to jump in his car and step on the gas, he knew that with Financial District traffic it would take longer that way. Chris had already called the police and given them the address where Zoey was being held, but if he could get there first he wasn’t going to wait.

  He found it difficult to stand still on the jammed train, and if any of the evening commuters that surrounded him bothered to notice, they probably would have thought he looked like a suicide bomber about to flip the switch. Chris couldn’t afford to draw too much attention to himself, though. If he was stopped by BART police, they would find the gun in his computer bag. Even with a permit, he would be detained for questioning.

  While he waited for the train to reach the Powell Street station, he dialed Jefferson Fong on his cell phone.

  “Jefferson, I need your help.”

  “Sure, man. Wh
at’s up?”

  “What do you know about 22 Clay Street, at the corner of Clay and Powell? I checked it out on Zapper Earth, and it looks like some kind of warehouse.”

  Jefferson thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, right. There is a warehouse there. It’s actually kind of interesting.”

  “Interesting how?”

  “I was in there once. That’s where they store the dragons for the Chinese New Year’s parade. They keep them close by because they’re so fragile and hard to move. What do you want with that place?”

  “I’m meeting someone there.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Anything else you can tell me about the place?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Is there a connection to the tongs?”

  “Just about every place in Chinatown has some connection to the tongs. Nothing special that I’m aware of.”

  Chris hung up as the doors opened on the Powell Street station, and he began running—up the long escalator, through the shoppers of Union Square, up the hill to the ornate gate at the Grant Avenue entrance to Chinatown. Maybe it was just his agitated state, but in the early dark under a bright full moon the garish neon of Chinatown looked malevolent. The electric greens were putrescent, and the glowing reds were bloody.

  When he reached the intersection of Grant and California, Chris’s eyes were drawn upward to the brick clock tower of Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral. The inscription under the clock’s face read, “Son, observe the time and fly from evil.” When the cathedral was built, there had been a brothel across the street, but the quote from the Book of Sirach still seemed to be speaking directly to Chris that night.

  A few side streets later he stood before the two-story-tall warehouse at 22 Clay Street. The building was made of old brown bricks that must have been red once. It appeared that at one point in its long history the structure had been charred by fire. It was situated between a martial arts studio and a branch of the Bank of Canton. Chris approached the iron door out front and saw it was ajar. He leaned in close but heard no sounds coming from inside.

  Chris reached into his bag and produced the small, rectangular device that was tracking the HealthBot’s geolocation signal. The display looked much like the Maps app on a smartphone, with a pulsing red dot to represent Chris’s location, and a pulsing green dot that was the HealthBot. Now that he was so close, the display no longer showed a map of city streets, just a red directional arrow pointing him to the device. Pointing him to Zoey.

  Zoey seemed to be moving slowly and erratically. Perhaps she was injured.

  Chris pushed through the door and into a gloomy, cavernous space lit only by a couple of fluorescent security lights. When his eyes adjusted, he was startled to see a dozen dragons from the Chinese New Year’s parade glowering at him from the shelves of the warehouse. Jefferson had not been kidding. It was a strange sight.

  He held the tracking device close to his chest so that its bright display wouldn’t give him away. The arrow directed him forward toward the rear of the warehouse. Drawing closer to Zoey’s location, he still heard no voices or footfalls. It was absolutely quiet.

  Chris turned down an aisle, the tracker’s red arrow directing him to a corridor of multihued silk, beads finely layered to resemble reptilian scales. With each step, the arrow grew larger to indicate that he was drawing very close.

  Chris drew a deep breath through his clenched jaw and then peered around the corner of one aisle and down another. Then he saw what he had been pursuing: a brown tabby sitting in the middle of the warehouse aisle, intently chewing on a paw, trying to remove an unwelcome encumbrance.

  Strapped to the cat’s paw was Zoey’s HealthBot.

  Chris spun around, but it was too late. The iron shelf next to him tipped, and silk and papier-mâché dragons cascaded down upon him. Just before he was buried, he got a glimpse of Red Sun standing nearby with a gun in one hand and his forearm around Zoey’s throat, using her as a shield. Zoey had a gag in her mouth, her hands were bound, her forehead was bloody, and her eyes were wide and screaming.

  She pushed herself backward against Red Sun, throwing him off balance so that his first shot was wild. One of the dragon heads struck Chris, and he nearly fell to his knees. When he righted himself, all that he could see was crimson. He was immersed in a skein of silk as big as a parachute. Chris tore and pulled at the material, but he couldn’t seem to get clear.

  A gunshot sounded, and Chris felt heat and pain in his left shoulder, spinning him back and down. Before he could even process what was happening, he was on his knees, still seeing only a field of red. Chris wanted to fire back blindly at the place where he thought Red Sun was standing, but he couldn’t risk hitting Zoey.

  His thinking was cloudy from the shock of the gunshot wound, but he continued to swim through the red silk, now laterally, trying to avoid further gunshots while freeing himself to find Red Sun and Zoey.

  More gunshots. Several in rapid succession.

  Panic gripped him like a seizure. When sensation returned, Chris realized much to his surprise that he was still alive.

  Could Red Sun have fired that many shots and still somehow managed to miss me?

  Chris lunged forward and finally got his head free of the slippery fabric.

  Stretched out before him was Red Sun, motionless, the front of his shirt a bloody mess.

  Zoey was standing next to the body, but her eyes were still on the source of the gunfire. Chris turned to follow her stricken gaze.

  And there stood Jefferson Fong—owner of Fifth Dynasty Comix, amateur hacker, Southern-fried Chinese geek—holding a very large pistol, with a steely expression that left no doubt he knew how to use it.

  The first thing he did was stand up, go to Zoey, and hug her. As satisfying as that was, it came with a price, as he felt a stabbing pain from the bullet in his shoulder.

  “You okay?” he asked, examining the gash on her forehead.

  She was trying to maintain her typical cool, but he could tell what an effort it was.

  “Yeah. It’s not as bad as it looks. You’re the one with a bullet wound. Are you okay?”

  Someone who didn’t know her so well might not be able to see it, but Chris spotted every tremble and quiver on Zoey’s face, the wild eyes. He knew she was not okay.

  “I will be,” Chris said. “Did he hurt you?”

  “No. He was getting to it, but no.”

  Chris held up Zoey’s bound wrists and considered what tool he could use to cut the zip ties. Jefferson helpfully stepped forward and snipped them with a long and very sharp knife.

  “Who are you, anyway?” Chris said to Jefferson.

  “FBI Special Agent Henry Hua. I’ve been assigned undercover to Chinatown’s triad gangs for several years now. Lately, the focus has been on their connections to cybercrime. The comic shop is a front.”

  “So when we met that day on the street in Chinatown—”

  “It wasn’t an accident.”

  Agent Hua tore a piece of silk from a fallen dragon and used the fabric to pick up Red Sun’s gun, which had landed several yards away from the killer’s body. Hua tucked the gun into his waistband and then kneeled down. First, he checked for other weapons, and then he checked his wrist for a pulse.

  “He’s still alive,” Hua said. “I’m going to call for an ambulance, but he’s bleeding out.”

  Red Sun’s eyelids fluttered. “I can hear you.”

  Hua turned to him and said, “Like I give a shit? You’re dying. Deal with it.”

  Chris went down on one knee to assess Red Sun’s injuries. It was hard to tell without removing his shirt, but it looked like he had been hit at least three times in the chest. It looked bad.

  “There’s an ambulance on the way.” Chris had an urge to keep murmuring reassuring things, because that was what compassionate human b
eings did in that sort of situation, but he reconsidered in light of whom he was talking to.

  Ever since he had killed Li Owyang and Bingwen Ma in that apartment in Shenzhen, Chris had been questioning himself and whether there was something inside him that enjoyed doing that kind of damage. When Chris looked into the eyes of the dying killer, he finally knew that in no way were they alike. Maybe they both had dark impulses roiling inside them, but the difference was that Chris struggled with his, beat them back, and suffered anguish after giving in to them. He would never really know whether he could have avoided pulling the trigger and killing the two hackers, but the fact that he would never let himself off the hook for those deaths was the critical difference between him and Red Sun. Anyone who applied a power drill to another human being was clearly not in the throes of any moral qualms.

  “I’d like to call my brother,” Red Sun said, his breathing labored.

  “Where’s your brother?” Chris asked.

  “In a prison in Shanghai.”

  Chris thought about it for a moment. “How do we know it’s not some signal?”

  “You don’t,” Red Sun said. He looked down at his bloody chest. “I just want to speak to my brother. I did this for him.”

  “Tell me your real name, and I’ll dial the number for you.”

  “Tao Zhang.”

  Chris looked at Hua and Zoey, and they both nodded, agreeing that it was worth the risk. Just learning which number Red Sun wanted to dial to impart his final words could be very useful.

  “Okay,” Chris said. “What’s the number?”

  The killer’s head rolled back, and he gazed at the ceiling. He was fading fast.

  Chris said it loudly this time. “Can you hear me? What’s the number?”

  50

  Tao knew that he was dying, and it didn’t feel as terrible as he’d feared it might. It even felt . . . fitting.