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They’d reached the cab by this point, and as Dirk held the door for Mei-li, she said, “My question is, why were those two pilots even here? If they have to wait for parts to repair their plane, why weren’t they—oh, I don’t know—seeing the sights, or something like that? Maybe they’ve been to Hong Kong so many times they’ve seen everything. Or think they’ve seen everything they want to see. But it’s still odd they would hang around waiting for parts they know won’t be here today.”
She pulled her cell phone out of her purse. “Hang on a minute,” she told Dirk as she walked a few feet away for privacy.
Dirk glanced at Rafe, who shrugged his shoulders as if to say he was as clueless as Dirk was, and got into the front seat. Dirk stood where he was, watching Mei-li. Wondering why just watching her was different than watching any other woman. Wondering what set her apart. It wasn’t just her beauty. And it wasn’t just that she turned him on the way he hadn’t been turned on since—
He chopped that thought off. Don’t go there, he warned himself. Not now.
But he wanted to. It hurt how much he wanted to. And that shocked the hell out of him.
* * *
Mei-li disconnected and came back to the cab. “Just calling in a favor,” she murmured in English for Dirk’s ears alone. “I’ll explain later. Thank you,” she added as she slid into the backseat while Dirk held the door for her.
When he was seated beside her, he glanced at her for confirmation. “Hotel?”
“I think so.” She checked her watch, a delicate, jeweled affair that had been a gift from her parents when she graduated from college only a year late, despite having switched majors in midstream. The watch wasn’t practical in her line of work—she’d cracked two crystals over the years and badly scratched a third—but she wore it for sentimental reasons. “There’s nothing more we can learn here. Patrick should be back by now with Vanessa and Chet—I want to hear what he has to say. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m hungry.” She glanced at Dirk. “Did you want to grab something on the way back, or order room service?”
* * *
“We have to leave soon, Gabe,” Bao Feng reminded his fellow kidnapper. “I told you—my girlfriend’s flight arrives just before eight. She’ll be walking through that door by ten at the latest. We have to get them out of here before then.” Them referred to the twin toddlers huddled in the corner of the bed.
“How far away is this place you say you can use?”
“Two and a half hours by bus. An hour, maybe an hour and a quarter by cab.”
Gabe Croft cursed under his breath. “Cab, then. I’m not riding two and a half hours on a damned bus.”
“We could try to find a hotel—”
“With them?” Croft waved a hand at the little girls.
“It’s only temporary,” Feng said, trying to appease the older man. “I told you, my cousin can put us up, but not until tomorrow.”
Croft’s disposable cell phone rang, taking both kidnappers by surprise. They looked at each other, startled. They weren’t expecting a call. Only three people had this number besides them—Terrell Blackwood, the senior of the two pilots who were supposed to spirit the little girls out of Hong Kong and one other. Which one was calling?
Both girls were awake, and both were whimpering beneath their gags as they clung to each other, their huge blue eyes terrified.
“Shut them up,” Croft said. He was the undisputed leader of the two. The brains. The one Terrell Blackwood had contracted with. The one who’d planned this kidnapping so meticulously and hired Feng, a Hong Kong native, to assist him. A smuggler and a member of a Mafia-like Chinese tong, a “brotherhood” with local connections. Fortunate, as it turned out, since Croft was now forced to revise his plan.
He didn’t like that his plan had been shot to hell. That he’d been stuck with the little girls for an undetermined length of time until the plane could be repaired—thanks to Blackwood’s queasiness about putting an end to the girls’ existence.
“Later,” Feng replied, indicating the bottle of chloroform on the dresser. “We’ll have to use that on them for the cab ride. We don’t want to overdo.”
“Then make them shut up some other way.” The cheap cell didn’t have caller ID. Croft didn’t answer, and eventually the ringing stopped. Then it started ringing again almost immediately, and he answered. “Yes?”
