Page 48 of Shadowing You

And…she had been. She just hadn’t known it.

“Your friend,” he said. “Ying. Is she still there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Could you find out, see if she’d help you?”

Mei Lin looked beyond him. “I’ve been gone a long time, Ethan. If she knew what I did, she might be angry. Everyone knew we were friends. If her bosses asked her questions after I was arrested, she may have lost her job. She may have been hurt. I don’t know what happened to her.”

“That makes sense.” He blew out a breath, but that didn’t help his frustration. How in the world were they going to get that evidence out of the hospital where Mei Lin had worked? She’d be recognized. She could be taken from him again.

“Are you angry with me?” Her voice was small.

He rubbed his lips together, wanting to lie. “I shouldn’t be.”

“But you are. Because I used my friend?”

“I don’t care about that. You put someone I love in a lot of danger.” He leaned toward her. “Someone who means everything to me.”

She looked down, and her lips twitched as if she couldn’t decide if she should smile or frown. “I am sorry.”

“Mei Lin. Look at me.”

When she looked up, he held her hands against his chest. “You did a brave thing, and I’m so proud of you. You did the right thing, even if I would have told you not to. You were trying to save those women and protect others from their fate. I’m so, so proud of you. It’s just that a very selfish part of me wishes you’d never discovered any of it.”

Her eyes shone. “I think I understand.”

He squeezed her hands and stood, needing to move and think. He fixed two glasses of ice water, drained half of his, then refilled it and set them both on the kitchen table. “How did he figure out you were onto him?”

She took her glass and held it in her hands. “I am not sure. I was careful. But my supervisor… Her name was Nurse Wen. She was an older woman, and in addition to telling the nurses what to do, she was in charge of records access. I had to log in to see certain files. I tried to cover my tracks, but maybe she knew.”

“You think she told Lu Feng?”

“Perhaps. They weren’t friends, of course. He was a doctor, and she was a nurse.”

“That would be scandalous.” Ethan added a wink.

She smiled. “China is not Canada or America. Most doctors hold themselves above nurses. It is less so in the village, but Dr. Lu was very formal with subordinates, and Nurse Wen was the same way—very formal, very subservient to all doctors.”

“Dr. Lu couldn’t have done what he did alone, right?” Ethan asked. “Someone must have helped him.”

“Yes. He could not have done it without help. The transportation alone—drivers, paperwork, people on the receiving end. I found some names, but I didn’t know them.”

She’d collected serious evidence. Maybe she should’ve tried to forward it to someone who could act on it.

Or maybe that wouldn’t have helped at all.

“I have a question,” Ethan said.

“Okay.”

“When you called me, you were going to leave without getting the evidence.”

She looked down. “It was not very courageous of me.”

“It was smart of you,” Ethan said. “I’m still on board with that plan. But I’m curious. What changed your mind?”

“Lu Feng was a local doctor with local people six years ago. He had money enough to have me put away, but I never had the sense that he was part of a big…what is the word? Like a…not surgery, but…”