Chapter 3 Run

Qingyue woke to the sound of rain and the slow, sinking terror of remembering.

For one merciful second she did not know where she was. Then it all came back at once, the red light, the weight of her grandfather's head, Yifan's cold voice, the diamond sinking in the paper cup, and her chest clenched so hard that she curled around it on the narrow bed and pressed her fist against her mouth to keep from screaming.

The apartment was small and old, with peeling green paint and a single window that looked out onto a gray alley. Her aunt had brought her here before dawn, tucked a blanket around her, and kissed her forehead. Now a note lay on the table beside a bowl of cold congee.

Gone to meet the lawyer. Eat. Sleep. Do NOT open the door for anyone. I love you. - Aunt Mei

She tried to eat. The first spoonful stuck in her throat like sand.

On the wall, a cracked old television murmured with the sound off. A reporter stood in the rain outside a black-draped building. Qingyue turned up the volume with trembling fingers.

"-farewell ceremony for Lin Zhenhai will be held tonight at eight o'clock at the Lin Ancestral Hall, where family members and business leaders will gather to pay their respects-"

The camera cut to Lin Jiahao in a black suit, weeping into a handkerchief on the steps of the hall. Behind him stood the whole family, heads bowed, faces solemn.

She had not been allowed to say goodbye. Not at the hospital. Not at the crematorium. Not even at the end.

Something in her broke open, quietly, and what flowed out was not grief but a stubborn, aching need. I will see him. Even if it is from the street. Even if it is only the lights in the windows. I will not let him go alone.

Her mother's cream silk scarf lay folded on the table where Meirong had left it, the pearl pin still fastened at the corner. Qingyue lifted it to her face, breathed in the faint trace of jasmine, and wound it carefully around her hair. Then she put on the borrowed black coat, slipped her feet into the flat shoes, and stood for a moment at the door with her eyes closed.

"To God we belong," she whispered, the words her mother had taught her for the dead, "and to Him we return."

She opened the door and walked out into the rain.

The Lin Ancestral Hall rose out of the dusk like a lantern, its windows glowing gold, its courtyard lined with white chrysanthemums. Even from the end of the narrow street, she could hear the low murmur of mourners and smell the incense drifting through the wet air.

She kept her head down, her scarf pulled low, and crept along the stone wall in the shadows. She would not go in. She only wanted to stand where she could see the doors, to know that he was inside, that someone, anyone, was mourning him properly.

Her eyes burned. She wiped them with the back of her hand and stepped to the edge of the curb to cross the road.

Across the street, a black SUV sat idling at the curb with its headlights off.

She noticed it the way you notice a stone in your shoe, a tiny wrongness at the edge of her mind. There was no one beside it. No driver visible behind the tinted glass. The rain streamed down its dark windshield like tears.

The engine growled.

Headlights flared to life, two blinding white suns, and the SUV lurched from the curb and came straight at her.

Qingyue froze. Her body simply would not obey. The light swallowed everything, the road, the rain, the hall, and she heard her own breath stop, and a thin, high sound that might have been her own scream.

An iron arm locked around her waist and wrenched her backward.

She hit the ground hard, rolling across wet stone in a blur of pain and rain, and the SUV roared past close enough to rip the hem of her coat. It slammed into the stone lamppost where she had been standing. Glass exploded. Metal shrieked. The post groaned and toppled.

Someone was lying on top of her, shielding her, a heavy warm weight, one hand cupped behind her head. She smelled rain and cold air and something clean and sharp, like pine.

"Move," said a low voice against her ear. "Now."

She looked up.

A man's face hung inches above hers, rain dripping from his black hair, from the line of his jaw. His eyes were dark, steady, and utterly without panic. She knew him. The tall man at the marble pillar. The man who had been counting something down.

"Who-"

"Later."

He hauled her to her feet. Behind them, the SUV's reverse lights snapped on, and its engine howled as it tore backward off the ruined lamppost. From the opposite end of the street, a second pair of headlights turned the corner.

"Run."

He did not let go of her wrist. She ran, stumbling, her lungs burning, the cold rain stinging her face, her scarf whipping free of her hair. They plunged into an alley. A car waited at the far end, long and black, its door already open. He shoved her into the passenger seat and slammed the door.

The engine thundered. The car shot backward out of the alley.

"Seatbelt," he said, as if he were reminding her to take an umbrella.

The world dissolved into streaks of red and white. He drove with terrifying calm, one hand on the wheel, his eyes flicking to the mirror, swerving through narrow streets so tight the side mirrors scraped brick. Behind them, the headlights flared and multiplied. Tires screamed. Something hit the rear window with a sharp crack, and a spiderweb of white spread across the glass.

Qingyue pressed both hands over her mouth. "They're shooting at us."

"Yes."

"Why are they-"

"Hold on."

He cut the wheel hard. The car swung into the mouth of a long, dark tunnel, and the engine noise doubled, rolling off the walls like thunder. Halfway through, he killed the headlights.

Blackness. Total, pressing blackness. Qingyue could hear only her own ragged breathing, her heartbeat slamming in her ears, and the soft, steady sound of his.

Two sets of headlights roared into the tunnel behind them. They flashed past, close enough to rock the car, and disappeared out the far end.

Silence.

For a long moment, neither of them moved.

He parked in the black belly of an underground garage and cut the engine. The only light came from a flickering fluorescent tube far down the row. Qingyue sat with her arms wrapped around herself, shaking so hard her teeth chattered. Her palms were scraped raw. Her coat was torn. Somewhere along the way she had lost her scarf, and her hair hung loose and wet around her face.

"Who are you?" Her voice came out a hoarse thread.

"Shen Yuhan."

The name meant nothing to her. She stared at him in the dim light, at the cold, beautiful lines of his face, the dark eyes that gave away nothing, the black suit still crisp despite the rain. "You were at the banquet."

A pause. Barely a second. "I was invited."

"You were watching the ceiling. Before the lights went out." Her voice trembled. "Why?"

"Because I'm a careful man." He turned to look at her, and something moved behind the stillness of his eyes, there and gone. "And you're welcome, by the way."

A hysterical bubble of laughter rose in her throat. She pressed her wrist against her mouth until it passed. "They tried to kill me. Who were they?"

"If I knew that, I wouldn't be hiding in a garage." He reached into his jacket and drew out a slim brown envelope, creased and soft with handling. "Three days before he died, Lin Zhenhai sent me this. I've been looking for you since last night."

Her breath caught. "My grandfather?"

She took the envelope with shaking fingers. Inside was a single old brass key, small and heavy, its head engraved with a tiny crane in flight. Beneath it lay a slip of paper in handwriting she would have known anywhere, in the strong, slanting strokes she had watched fill a thousand letters:

If anything happens to me, give this to Qingyue. Tell no one else.

The words blurred. Hot tears spilled over her lashes and dripped onto the paper. She clutched the key to her chest with both hands, and the sound that escaped her was small and wounded and unguarded, the sound of a child who has just been told she was loved.

"He knew," she whispered. "He knew something was going to happen."

Yuhan said nothing. He let her cry. When her shoulders finally stopped shaking, he spoke quietly, and for the first time his voice was not quite so cold.

"That key is why they want you dead. Don't show it to anyone. Don't call anyone you trust."

She wiped her face with her sleeve. "I have to call my aunt. She's the only one who-"

"No."

The word cracked like a whip. She stared at him.

"Not your aunt," he said, more evenly. "Not anyone."

"You don't know her." Anger rose in her chest, hot and protective. "She paid my bail. She put shoes on my feet when the entire family threw me away. She is the only person left who..."

"I'm not saying she's anything," Yuhan said, very calmly. "I'm saying the people who want you dead knew exactly where you'd be tonight. Think about who knew you were in that apartment."

The color drained from her face. "No," she whispered. "No. Not her. You're wrong."

His eyes held hers, steady and unreadable. "Perhaps," he said. "I hope I am."

She turned away and stared at the dark windshield, her arms locked around herself. It couldn't be. She would not let it be. A stranger who spoke in riddles had no right to say it, no right to take away the last warm thing she had left.

Yuhan reached across her and opened the glove compartment. He took out a plain black phone and set it in her lap.

"There's one number in it. Use it only when you're ready to disappear. And Qingyue," he said, as she reached for the door, "stay alive. It is harder than it sounds."

She did not thank him. She did not trust herself to speak. She climbed out of the car, clutching the key to her chest, and walked into the dark with her head high and her heart in pieces.

Yuhan waited until her silhouette had vanished up the ramp. Then the mask slipped.

His hand dropped from the wheel. He turned it over in the dim light and looked at his palm. There, across the heel of it, was a faint red mark, the kind a recoil leaves behind. It had been there since last night. It had not faded.

He looked at the watch on his wrist. The glass was cracked. The hands had stopped at 9:41, one minute before the doctors had called the time of death.

He had been inside the ballroom when the lights went out. He had counted every second of the dark. He had seen the old man fall, and he had seen what Qingyue's face looked like when the world broke open around her.

And he had not told her.

He closed his hand slowly into a fist.

Not yet, he thought. Not until I can bear to watch her hate me.

The fluorescent tube overhead flickered once, twice, and went dark