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The target startled me by appearing at my shoulder. He must have gone round the van.
“You can waste your time following me, but you can’t changeyour fate, Mr. Morgan. You are out of your depth. You don’t even know what this place is. It is the headquarters of Guoanbu, our Ministry of State Security. I’m going inside. You, well, you should go back to America. Enjoy life while you still can.”
“Nice tattoo,” I said, nodding at the dragons emblazoned on his forearm.
He stepped forward menacingly and thrust his arm toward me. “This? This isn’t a tattoo,” he snarled ferociously. “This is your doom.”
He turned and walked toward the main gates, leaving me stunned by his audacity.
I texted Zhang Daiyu.
He made me too. Meet you at the hostel.
CHAPTER 49
EXHAUSTED, JUSTINE HAD given up trying to sleep in the office and had checked in to the New York Edition, a hotel located a block south of the Private building. She hadn’t felt safe going to the Langham, the hotel Rafael had booked for her, in case he’d given the details to Angel. So she lay on the freshly made bed in her clothes and hoped sleep would take her, but even though she was beat, her mind was racing and wouldn’t allow her to let go of the real world.
She still couldn’t believe Rafael had betrayed them. She thought about him locked in the main meeting room, imagining the crushing guilt he must have been feeling. She wondered what she would have done if Jack had been taken. Would she have done the right thing? Or would she have cracked like Rafael had? She hoped she would have been better than him.
Her mind drifted to Jack, and she marveled at the ease withwhich he confronted danger that would have paralyzed most other people with fear. She had no doubt he’d have done the right thing if she’d been abducted.
He’d have torn the world apart to get her back.
Even the thought of him made her feel better and settled her mind. She soon found herself drifting through daydreams of him. There was nothing specific, just flashes of memory; a day at the beach, lunch at Geoffrey’s in Malibu, hiking in Topanga Canyon.
She woke to the sound of her phone ringing and pulled it from her pocket.
“Hello,” she said without checking the caller ID. She could hardly open her eyes.
“It’s me,” Mo-bot said. Had she been working all night? “We’ve got something.”
“I’ll be right there,” Justine replied and Mo-bot hung up.
Groggy and dazed by lack of sleep, Justine pulled herself to her feet. She felt worse than before she’d slept, but she went to the bathroom, splashed water on her face, and gave herself a stern look in the mirror that said, “Push on.”
Jack wouldn’t let fatigue slow him down and Mo-bot worked through her exhaustion. Justine knew she could do the same. She grabbed her purse and left.
It was a little after 5:40 a.m. It had rained while she slept, so the air was lighter and fresher, and the breeze helped energize her.
A few minutes later, after a short walk north through the stirring city, she was in the office, which was eerily silent until she reached the corridor outside the executive meeting room. She could hear Mo-bot speaking.
When she entered, she saw Sci and Mo-bot sitting at the long table. Rafael was on the sofa with his head in his hands. He looked haunted, like a man who now realized he had made entirely the wrong decisions.
“You’ve engaged local law?”
Jack’s voice came through the speaker console at the center of the table.
“Yes,” Mo-bot replied.
She and Sci had changed clothes at some point in the night, and Justine felt a little scuzzy, wearing the same ones as yesterday.
“We’ve informed them of Alison’s abduction. Told them the suspect is linked to the attack on Lewis and Jessie and should be considered dangerous.”
Mo-bot registered Justine’s presence.
“Justine’s here. The Raid-Box was activated an hour ago. I traced it to a warehouse in Brooklyn. NYPD are putting together a squad. They told us to stay clear but …”
“It’s a free country,” Jack suggested. “Hi, Jus.”
