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Office blocks lined both sides of the road, interspersed with the occasional shop, house or apartment block. The district was a little rundown, its flaws even more apparent in the dead of night. Rust ate away at the roller shutters that covered entrances.Corporate signs and logos were cracked and some had flickering lights. Most of the buildings looked as though they hadn’t been painted or cleaned in years.
I picked up my pace, eager to get back to the hostel, and made it another block before my phone rang.
It was Justine.
“Hey,” I said.
“NYPD found three devices,” she replied instantly, and I stopped in my tracks and tried to center myself. Someone was targeting Private, someone dangerous, someone who didn’t care if people got killed.
“Is everyone okay?” I asked.
“Yes. We evacuated the building and the bombs have been deactivated. Sci is pleased because he thinks he will be able to pull some evidence from the devices.”
“He’s probably right,” I replied. “I want you to notify every office about exactly what was found. Tell them to move to a war footing. I want heightened security measures across the board.”
“Will do,” she assured me. “Where are you now?”
“On my way to somewhere safe. Back to Zhang Daiyu. You?”
“Mo-bot and Sci are setting up a mobile command unit in one of the staff trucks so we can continue operations remotely until NYPD clears the building.”
“Call me if anything else is found,” I suggested.
“I will,” she replied. There was a pause and then: “I love you, Jack.”
“Love you too.”
She hung up and I slipped my phone into my pocket. I wantednothing more than to be with her, curled up in bed in my home in LA, but first there was ugly work that needed to be done. The comfort and peace of being back with her would have to wait.
I hurried to the hostel, let myself into the deserted building and went to our room. I unlocked the door and eased it open silently. I went inside to find Zhang Daiyu exactly where I’d left her. She was breathing heavily and seemed to be deep asleep. I shut the door quickly and sat in the gap between the bed and the shower-room wall. I rested my hands on my knees and put my head down on my forearms. Soon the soothing sound of Zhang Daiyu’s regular breathing, rising above the silence, calmed me and I drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER 24
A HUBBUB OF voices invaded my restless sleep. I woke to hear a group of men passing the door to the room. I was immediately alert and on edge but calmed down after a moment when the voices drifted by. They were most likely workers on their way out to start the day. I rolled onto my back and found Zhang Daiyu leaning over the edge of the bed, looking down at me.
“You were talking in your sleep,” she said.
As was often the case, my dreams had been of fire and death. I’d seen more than my fair share of both and carried the searing recollections with me. From the battlefields of Afghanistan to the streets of Berlin, from the slums of India to the palaces of Moscow, death had stalked me and those close to me, and the bombing of Private’s Beijing office had stirred bad memories. One moment I was back in Afghanistan, trying to rescue fallen comrades from my downed Sea Knight. But as the flames ragedaround me, when I looked down at the body I was pulling from the wreckage, instead of one of my Marine platoon I saw the face of Karl Parker, an old friend, the man who’d been assassinated in the New York Stock Exchange while I stood beside him. Trauma sometimes played out like that, disregarding the constraints of time and location, creating a doubly disturbing kaleidoscope.
I felt uneasy at the enforced intimacy between Zhang Daiyu and me. From the expression on her face, it was clear she felt it too.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to … you didn’t say anything coherent, just a jumble of words. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“It’s okay,” I assured her. Military service and field operations as a detective had taught me not to be precious about the awkward situations that often arose.
I sat up and stretched. “How are you feeling?”
“My head is sore and my bones ache,” she replied, “but other than that, not too bad. At least I’m still breathing.”
I smiled. She had a dry sense of humor.
“Thank you for saving me,” she said.
I nodded. “The guy who tried to shoot you planted bombs at our office last night. I interrupted him while he was priming the detonators.”
“Bombs? What the … Did you call the Bomb Squad?”
I shook my head. “He managed to detonate them.”
