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Then he opened his eyes and saw Mei-li on her knees beside his chair. She was grasping his hands in hers, and her eyes were alight. “What?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. You remembered, that’s all. You remembered the sound you heard on the phone.”
And when she said that, he remembered. “The Star Ferry. The boat whistle.” He turned toward the floor-to-ceiling windows facing Hong Kong Island, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Sweet mother of God, that’s what I heard.”
“That means when he called you this morning, he was within hearing distance of the Star Ferry—Hong Kong side or Kowloon side, we don’t know, but not that far away.”
Dirk abruptly stood and strode toward the double doors leading out to the balcony, then opened them and walked out, all the way to the railing. “You can see it from here,” he called to Mei-li. She joined him on the balcony, and he pointed out the Star Ferry, inbound toward Tsim Sha Tsui from Hong Kong Island’s Pier No. 7.
He watched the ferry for a moment as it steamed its way across the harbor, until an unbearable realization swept over him. He crashed his fists onto the metal railing without even knowing he was going to do it. In a primal frenzy he grabbed the trunk of the potted tree standing next to him on the balcony. “But it doesn’t mean a thing,” he raged, hurling the tree, pot and all, back toward the glass doors. Wanting to break something. Wanting to hurt himself. “Not a damned thing!” He fell to his knees and pounded his fists on the balcony floor, as if he could pummel the savage pain in his heart that way. As if the physical pain could eradicate the emotional devastation. Then he threw back his head as one harsh word was torn from his throat. “Why?” he demanded of heaven.
“Stop!” Mei-li crouched next to Dirk and threw her arms around him like a vise, valiantly struggling to hang on to him despite his instinctive move to pry her arms off, to pull away, to continue to rage against the futility of it all. He could have done it, too—she was no match for him physically. But his uncontrolled outburst had released just enough ferocious anger that he didn’t fight her off.
Then he realized she was crying.
“Don’t,” she whispered, tears trickling down her cheeks. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
Dirk couldn’t have spoken even if he’d wanted to, because a hot, tight swarm of emotions seethed in his chest, preventing him from breathing. Pent-up frustration yielded to desolate despair, and he wanted to cry, but he couldn’t. He hadn’t cried when Bree died—he couldn’t cry now, either. That emotional outlet was denied him, as if God himself refused to allow him the physical release tears would bring.
“Don’t,” Mei-li repeated, pressing her tearstained face against his shoulder.
He finally found his voice—rough as sandpaper—and said brokenly, “I remembered...but it doesn’t mean anything.”
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Then she nodded and said, “Not this time. But you can’t let yourself give up like this, because next time...next time it just might.”
* * *
All vestiges of Dirk’s rage had been eradicated an hour later. The glass doors hadn’t shattered because the tree’s metal pot had fortunately not reached them. Mei-li had tried to replace the tree in its pot, but Dirk had taken it from her. “Go wash your face,” he’d told her gently. “I’ll clean up my own mess.”
Afterward he’d washed his bruised and bloody hands in the kitchen sink, watching with almost detached interest as dirt and blood and soap swirled down the drain.
“When was your last tetanus shot?” Mei-li asked from the door.
Dirk swung around. She’d washed the tear stains away, but he could still see them in his mind’s eye. And he knew he would never forget she’d cried for him when he couldn’t cry for himself.
He wiped his hands on the kitchen towel, grimacing when a slight trace of pink transferred itself from his hands to the terry cloth. Then he leaned one hip against the kitchen counter and answered her question. “Not quite two years ago. I had a slight mishap with a sword on the set of King’s Ransom, and the doctor thought I’d better have a tetanus shot, just in case.” The slight mishap had involved eleven stitches and a scar in an interesting place—but he wasn’t going to share that bit of info.
“That’s good,” she told him. “It’s not likely, but anytime you have dirt and an open wound...” She came over to where Dirk stood, took his hands in hers and inspected them. The grazes weren’t bleeding anymore, but bruises were already forming. “They’re starting to pile up,” she told him when she raised her face to his.
