Hilo said, quietly, “You’re obviously thick-blooded, whoever you are, since you’re willing to do things even my worst enemies would not. I’ve led dangerous operations before, so let me tell you something: I’m not the one you have to worry about now. I’ll be as cooperative as a baby goat. Your own men, however . . . I know how dark men can be, how hard it can be to keep them in line. Safe, well-caredfor prisoners are your only leverage right now. If they’re mistreated in any way, none of you will get to enjoy the jade or money you’ve gone to the trouble of getting from me, because you’ll all die very badly.”
“You’re exactly as people say you are, Kaul Hilo,” said the amused voice of the man he was going to kill. “You could be burning in hell and have some arrogant thing to say to the devil. Just to be clear: If we see any police, your wife and sister will both die. If we see any reporters, they die. If we see any of your Fists or Fingers, they die. You may rule Kekon, but this is not Kekon.” The caller hung up.
CHAPTER
45
Very Bad People
Wen’s captors placed her in an empty room by herself and made her sit against the wall with her hands duct-taped together in front of her. They were in a house, but Wen had no idea where. When they’d thrown the hood over her head and pushed her into the car, she’d been hurled back in time to the garage in Port Massy and the agony of suffocating to death. She spent the interminable ride shaking and sweating with panic, certain she would choke or throw up, until at last one of the men noticed her hyperventilating and pulled the bag up so only her eyes were covered and at least she could feel the air on her face and not pass out.
Hours later, she was still seized by intermittent fits of trembling, and her heart would start racing as if it were trying to kill her before anyone else could. She pulled her knees close to her body and tried to take long, deep breaths, picturing herself in the garden back home, sitting by the pond amid blooming magnolia and honeysuckle. She told herself this was not like the situation she’d been through with the Crews. If it was, she would already be raped or dead. These men wanted something from her husband, otherwise they wouldn’t have put her on the phone with him for those two seconds. Hilo would move Heaven itself. He would bring down the full might of the clan to find her and get her out safely. In the meantime, she had to stay calm as he’d instructed, to think clearly and not surrender to blind terror.
That was a difficult task when she could hear Tako moaning in pain somewhere down the hall. The Fist had been shot multiple times while trying to defend her. Steel could not stop bullets, but it could slow their passage through the body, which would’ve only increased Tako’s suffering. Wen hated to hear the sounds, but at least she knew he was still alive. She had neither seen nor heard any sign of Shae since the barukan had stripped her of jade and pushed her into one of the other cars.
Wen rested her head against the wall and closed her eyes. She didn’t sleep, but she drifted in and out of exhausted semiconsciousness until cracks of light began seeping in from around the black plastic taped over the window. The door opened, and a man came in with a plastic tray of food and paper cup of water. He cut the tape around her wrists with a pocketknife and stood over her as she ate. It was a limp meal of instant rice and reheated frozen vegetables. Wen had no appetite, but she ate the food; she needed to keep up her strength. The irony that she’d been dining with Shae in a five-star restaurant the previous evening almost made her want to laugh.
When she was done, the guard motioned for her to put her wrists together so he could bind her again. Wen said, “I need to go to the bathroom.” The man hesitated. He was young, no older than Wen’s own sons, with an indecipherable tattoo on the side of his neck and the faintly hostile look of a nervous dog unsure of its place in the pack. Last night, his boss had posted him in the hallway, pointed at Wen, and issued orders in a tone that suggested the young man was responsible for her, and that he would deeply regret it if he failed. “Please,” Wen said. “The bathroom.”
The young man—she decided to call him Junior—escorted her to the bathroom at the end of the hall. Along the way, she passed an open doorway and saw Tako lying on top of a plastic sheet in a caked pool of his own blood, curled around his stomach wound. His eyes were closed and his face moved in pain with every shallow breath. As the hours passed, his moans had grown weaker but more continuous. His fingers and neck were bare. Even in his helpless state, the barukan had taken his jade.