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Something was niggling at her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Instead of trying to force it—something that rarely worked—she asked Dirk, “What exactly did the kidnapper say on the phone tonight? And this morning, too,” she rushed to add. “I should have asked you for a verbatim report, but I didn’t.”
“Let me think.” Dirk was silent for a minute. “This morning, he said I was batting a thousand. Baseball reference,” he explained when Mei-li gave him a questioning look. “Because I’d gone four for four on the ransom drops yesterday. Then he said they wanted me to wire the rest of the ransom, instructions would be delivered and I wasn’t to leave the suite.”
Nothing in that conversation stood out, so she asked, “What about tonight? Anything strike you as odd?” Dirk hesitated, and Mei-li’s instincts came quivering to life, like a hound on the scent. “What? Something just occurred to you. What?”
“I heard something in the background of the call earlier,” he said slowly. “Same as this morning. Familiar...yet not. What I mean is, I know I’ve heard something similar, but where I heard it before didn’t seem to fit.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I heard the sound on the phone, all I could think of was the museum yesterday.”
Mei-li’s eyes widened in sudden comprehension. “Boat sounds,” she whispered. “The folk history display. Remember when we walked onto the junk, right before you got the phone call?”
“Yes, but—”
“That display had an audio sound track running in the background,” she reminded him urgently. “Not loud, but...adding to the feeling that you were there, really there. Water lapping against the boat. Sea birds. Boat bells and mournful boat whistles.”
Dirk snapped his fingers. “You’re right. Now I remember. Not intrusive. Just there.”
“Aberdeen Harbour. He was calling you from Aberdeen Harbour. And look,” she said, her voice rising a little with excitement as she clicked on the picture of his daughters that had been sent that evening. “See how that wall curves? You can’t see much of it, but it definitely curves. I didn’t focus on it right away, but that’s exactly how the wall curved on the junk in the museum.”
She caught her breath and her eyes grew huge. “What?” he asked.
“It fits. It all fits,” she breathed.
“What fits?”
“Tai O. Mong Kok. Aberdeen Harbour. The tong one of the kidnappers belongs to. It all fits.”
“Tell me,” he demanded.
“Tai O is known as the Venice of Hong Kong now, but it started out as a fishing village. A Tanka fishing village on the southwest part of Lantau Island. And though Aberdeen Harbour is miles away, on the southwestern side of Hong Kong Island, the boat people there are mainly Tanka. And remember I said that tong is made up of former boat people?”
“Tanka?”
She nodded. “That’s why they spent a night in Tai O. That’s why they moved to Aberdeen Harbour. Even stopping off in Mong Kok makes sense, because it’s well known that certain sections of Mong Kok are run by triads. Whoever he is, that kidnapper has underworld connections in all three places, people who will let him hide out there with your daughters. And that’s not all.”
She pulled up her map software, with the locations where all the pictures had been taken marked with small pushpins. “Those two Aberdeen pictures. Different GPS coordinates, but not all that far from each other. They’re on a boat, Dirk. See? The one from last night here on the promenade—the boat was docked there when that picture was taken. The second one out in the middle of the harbor. That’s where they are. They’re on a boat in Aberdeen Harbour.”
“How do we get there?” Dirk’s face was grim. Determined. Mei-li put a restraining hand on his arm, but he shook it off. “No,” he rasped. “Don’t tell me to be patient. Don’t tell me to call the police or RMM or anyone. My daughters are in Aberdeen Harbour, and I’m going after them.” He strode toward the study door and was halfway across the living room before Mei-li caught up with him.
“Wait,” she pleaded. “I’m going with you. But don’t go off half-cocked. We have to have a plan. They’re armed, remember? At least one of them is—the American. And you saw those sketches of him, his eyes? He’s a killer. He’ll kill your daughters in a heartbeat if you don’t exercise caution.”
