Page 116 of Shadowing You

Lao Wu was already motoring away. Ethan and Mei Lin were still crawling toward the plastic tarp that covered the cockpit when the driver hit the throttle. The boat spun in a tight circle and flew across the water.

Even with the heavy wool blanket one of the men had tossed him, the cold wind and salty spray were punishing. Ethan sat beneath the plastic on the floor, back against the hull, out of the way of the two men.

Mei Lin’s eyes were closed, but she wasn’t asleep. He’d pulled her legs across his lap and wrapped his arms around her, but it wasn’t enough to keep her warm.

He’d asked her enough questions and seen enough of her throat to guess she had strep. She needed a painkiller and an antibiotic.

What she didn’t need was wind and cold and salt spray. He never thought he’d yearn for the cramped and stinky hold in Lao Wu’s trawler, but it would be a luxury compared to this.

The speedboat was whipping across the chop. Assuming they’d been halfway to South Korea when they’d jumped off the trawler, the second leg of the trip should take less time than the first. He hoped, anyway.

He guessed they’d been traveling for three hours but didn’t want to disturb his wife’s fragile comfort to check his watch. The sun was nearly at the horizon when he saw smudges of gray in the distance.

He didn’t say anything to Mei Lin, not yet. But when the speedboat angled to the south, she sat up and looked around. “We are there?”

“Close, I think.” He’d ask the pilot or the deckhand, except the two hadn’t spoken a single word to them since they’d jumped onto the boat. They moved around them like a pile of luggage. Like cargo they couldn’t wait to unload.

The dark smudges resolved into islands, low, rugged shapes crouching in the water on their left, and then beyond the first one, lights that he guessed belonged to an airport spread along the coast like a small lit city. White and red lights ran in long parallel lines. A plane dropped out of the dusk and skimmed the water before disappearing behind a glass-and-concrete terminal as if it had been swallowed.

The boat angled toward a bridge rising out of the water like the masts of a ship too big to imagine, strung with lights bright against the darkening sky.

They flew under, and Ethan tilted his head back and saw the underside of the deck flick past, the rush of traffic above them.

Then the city was there, more glass towers than he could count, all lit from inside. A needle of a skyscraper rose above the rest. And below that, low and wide, a port—amber light and the cold white of work lamps, cranes standing in rows over container ships, the whole thing humming with activity that apparently didn’t slow after sunset.

He’d expected a fishing village or a back channel—some unmarked piece of coast where two people could be unloaded without witnesses. Instead, they were running straight at a postcard.

“Where are we?” Mei Lin’s voice scratched so much that he winced.

“Incheon, maybe.” He was pretty sure that was the name of the city between Seoul and the Yellow Sea.

She lifted her head and looked around as the pilot eased off the throttle and angled toward a dock set apart from the container yard, a smaller terminal where yachts and passenger boats glowed under orange lights.

He itched to get out his phone and call his father, but Mei Lin tucked up against him and closed her eyes. Apparently, lifting her head to look around had sapped her energy.

The pilot cut the engine. As they drifted toward a dock, he snapped something at Ethan in Korean, sharp enough that Ethan didn’t need a translation.

His partner hopped onto the boards and pulled the boat in close.

Ethan nudged Mei Lin. “We’re here, sweetheart.”

She swung her legs off his lap, and he stood and pulled her to standing. With both backpacks over his shoulder, he waited until the boat had settled.

The pilot barked again and made a shooing motion. Get off my boat.

Ethan helped Mei Lin, one hand under her elbow. When she was steady, he climbed out after her. The engine kicked before he’d straightened. The deckhand hopped back on, and the speedboat angled back into the harbor as if it had never been there. Within seconds it was nothing more than a wake and a set of running lights.

“Friendly fellows.”

Mei Lin uttered a sound that he guessed was supposed to be a laugh.

He turned in a slow circle on the wet planks, studying the maze of deck between here and the shore. Which way should they go?

A figure stepped out of the darkness. As it moved closer, it resolved into a man wearing a long dark coat. Ethan had dealt with so many surprises since he’d left the States that he braced himself for an attack.

But the man was still a good twenty feet away when he said, “You made it.” Gavin walked under the glow of a lamp, then stopped. He lifted his arms, the move tentative and unsure.

Ethan couldn’t remember the last time he’d hugged his father, but he stepped into the embrace.