Page 17 of Shadowing You

Easy for his father to say. Gavin was rich, though compared to the average Chinese citizen, Ethan supposed he qualified too.

It’d been late when Ethan had turned his phone volume all the way up and forced himself horizontal. He’d managed a few hours of shallow sleep, threaded with prayers for Mei Lin.

When the backpack was stuffed with clothes, he grabbed the burner phone—another item Gavin had insisted he buy in Hong Kong—and powered it up.

The last thing he wanted to do was leave his cell behind. It was the only way for Mei Lin to reach him. But Gavin had been unambiguous.

“What if she texts?”

“You’ll see it when you get back.”

“What if it’s an emergency?”

His father had paused to take a deep breath. “What if they’re using you to find her?”

A good point.

After confirming that his father’s number was programmed into the burner, he shoved it in his pocket, leaving his real phone on the nightstand. If anyone was tracking it, they’d assume Ethan was sleeping off jet lag in luxury.

He took the stairs to the lobby and left the hotel via a side door.

Three blocks away, he stood at the curb of a busy street with his hand up, watching ride-share after ride-share roll past without slowing. Nobody hailed cabs anymore, but he hadn’t wanted to log in to any apps on the burner. Who knew what the Chinese government could track these days? He waited, shifting his weight, until finally a taxi pulled over.

Despite the steady traffic, it only took fifteen minutes to reach Wuyi Square. He paid the driver in cash, added a generous tip, and accepted the man’s business card in return.

“I wait for you?”

“It might be a while.”

“You call me.”

Ethan figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a car on standby. He thanked the man, then stepped out and took in the scene.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. A square, obviously, but this was more like a small city, a massive intersection where several roads converged and buildings rose on every side, glass and steel and neon signage stacked above storefronts. The sidewalks were packed with workers, shoppers, and students. Delivery riders weaved through all of it on yellow scooters, others dashing in and out of restaurants.

Music drifted from somewhere. The smell of frying oil from a street cart mixed with exhaust and something sweet he couldn’t identify.

Mei Lin couldn’t have found a better place to get lost in the crowd.

He started walking, looking at every woman he passed—and there were hundreds of them. Not one of them was Mei Lin. He would recognize her, of course. How much could she have changed in six years?

How much had he missed?

He walked the perimeter of the square counterclockwise, then cut across the center.

After another trip around, he headed to the center again and turned a slow circle. People, people everywhere. He stood there, watching them walk by. Talking, laughing, rushing, arguing. On the phone. On foot. On scooters. In cars.

Where are you?

His gaze skimmed past a cluster of delivery riders, a dozen of them or more, all in the same yellow uniforms.

Something hitched inside him.

He slowed down, looked again.

He was probably wrong. He was almost certainly seeing what he wanted to see. He walked toward them anyway, scanning each figure—height, build, posture…

And then his eyes met hers, and he froze.