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Dirk went into the study for his laptop, and Mei-li quickly sent a text, ending with, Email to follow ASAP.
Dirk pushed his unfinished lunch to one side, sat at the dining room table with his laptop in front of him and powered it up. Then he forwarded the email to Mei-li without her even having to remind him. When the message appeared in her inbox, she forwarded it while Dirk downloaded the picture. And even though he’d told her he didn’t think he could bear looking at the picture of his daughters, he drew a deep breath, then clicked to open it. Stared at it for a few seconds. Then closed it. And Mei-li’s heart ached for him and what he was going through.
A minute later Dirk opened the file’s properties and scrolled down. Mei-li stopped him for a second, putting her hand over his. “Same camera,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. “That’s good.” Then she let him continue scrolling down to the GPS section.
When they finally keyed the coordinates into Google Maps, she said blankly, “Mong Kok. That’s on the mainland, not all that far from here.” At Dirk’s questioning look, she explained, “It’s all Kowloon, but the best way to explain it is to say your hotel is in the Tsim Sha Tsui neighborhood. Mong Kok is the next main neighborhood to the north. If they went all the way to Tai O, why come back to Mong Kok? At least Tai O is on the same island as the entrance to the airport. Why didn’t they just stay there?”
She was silent for a moment, trying to fit this latest bit of data into the overall picture. “Let me run something by you,” she said. “It’s a theory, but I think all the pieces fit.”
Dirk sat back in his chair. “Let’s hear it.”
“So, the kidnappers planned to spirit your daughters out of Hong Kong,” she began. “But they couldn’t the day the typhoon hit because all flights were grounded.”
“I’m with you so far.”
“The hotels at the airport are fully booked—no flights out means everyone who was planning to leave that day scrambled to find a hotel room. That’s a crucial point,” she added with a little smile to let Dirk know she remembered it was his suggestion in the first place—he needed the encouragement.
“The typhoon is gaining strength,” she continued. “By that time, the Hong Kong Observatory had probably already issued a Signal Eight SE warning. The kidnappers are stuck—they have your daughters and nowhere to stash them. And they need to get under shelter ASAP, so they desperately need a bolt-hole. If they can’t go to a hotel close by, where would they go? Where would they go that they know has space for them and that won’t ask too many questions?”
Dirk’s eyes lit up. “One of the kidnappers lives in Central,” he said. “That has to be it. Not the guy in charge—the American. The other one. The one Vanessa said was Chinese.”
Mei-li nodded. “So they take a cab back to Central. The cabs were still running, remember. They spend that night and the next day at the kidnapper’s apartment. But he’s worried. Maybe he has a girlfriend...or a mother...who might stop by unexpectedly. Or even a roommate. Someone who has a key, or otherwise he could just not answer the door. So he tells the American they can’t continue to stay there. Now, this is where my theory becomes pure conjecture, but it fits. He knows someone in Tai O. Family. Friend. Fellow criminal. Someone. Someone whose place he can borrow for the night. But only for a night. Then he has to move someplace else.”
“Yeah, but if the original plan was to leave Hong Kong, why are they still here? Yesterday—yeah, I get that those private planes weren’t going to receive flight clearance to leave yesterday, but today’s a different story. Except for the plane that needed repair, all of them could have left by now.” Dirk was pointing out the major flaw in her logic...from his perspective. Because she hadn’t yet told him...
She reached over and grabbed her purse, saying as she did so, “Do you remember yesterday when I said I was calling in a favor? Someone did a background check on those five planes and their pilots for me. And this is what they uncovered.” She pulled a sheaf of papers from her purse, which was already flipped to the relevant page, and handed it to Dirk.
“The three legitimate charter services checked out clean as a whistle. The plane going to Taipei flew out very early this morning...with only the pilots and the four passengers on the manifest. The plane and their luggage were searched thoroughly before they took off. No,” she told him gently when he shot her a sharp glance. “The searchers didn’t know what they were looking for, but your daughters weren’t on that plane.”
