With a pious look, Amena said, “It’s hard practicing with him. He is very mean.”
My mouth fell open and Amena broke into a smile, chasing after the ball. She came back, stood next to me, and gave me a small hip bump, both of us looking at Jennifer, waiting on the pain. Jennifer shook her head and said, “I can’t deal with two children. One is enough. Help me with the suitcase.”
Amena lost her smile and said, “Why can’t I come with you guys? If it’s not a honeymoon?”
Digging into her purse for her car keys, Jennifer looked up in surprise and said, “Honeymoon? Who said that?”
She looked at me and I pointed to Amena, then picked up the suitcase, hustling to get out of the blast radius.
Jennifer said, “Amena, go inside and make sure you’ve got everything you need. You won’t be able to come back here until we return in a couple of weeks.”
Amena scowled, but unlike she would do with me, she listened to Jennifer and went back inside.
Jennifer came over to me and said, “What was that about?”
Cramming the last suitcase into the back of her little Mini Cooper, juggling the other bags, I said, “I’m getting that Jeep I saw online yesterday. I don’t care how much they’re charging. This is a clown car.”
My ancient Jeep CJ-7 had been destroyed almost a year ago, and we still hadn’t replaced it because I was a picky shopper and hadn’t found one I liked, forcing both of us to use her little midget vehicle. But my attempt to deflect the question fell on deaf ears.
She repeated, “What’s Amena talking about?”
I sighed, closed the hatchback, and said, “She thinks she can’t go because I’m taking you on a honeymoon. That’s it. She came up with it all on her own.”
Jennifer snorted. “We’re not having a honeymoon until we have a real wedding. You can’t weasel out of that by taking me to Australia and then calling it a honeymoon after the fact.”
I raised my hands and said, “That’s not from me. That’s from her. I didn’t say a word. You know the only reason we’re going is to get her settled at school. That’s it.”
Amena came out carrying a small satchel and Jennifer squinted at me. I lowered my voice and said, “Enough talk about why we’re going.”
Jennifer whispered, “If you think going to Australia and hanging out with some old Taskforce guys is my idea of a honeymoon, you’ve got another thing coming.”
I grinned and said, “Hey, he’s giving us a free place to stay. We’re diving the reef. That was your idea.”
Amena came up and asked, “So? Is it a honeymoon?”
Jennifer looked at me and I said, “No, it’s not. We can’t have that until after a proper ceremony.”
“What’s a proper ceremony? You guys go to Australia and I’ll never see you again.”
Jennifer laughed. “That’s not going to happen.”
I said, “What are you talking about? We’ll be back in two weeks.”
She became earnest. “Trouble follows you. It always has. You’re going to get in trouble. And I’ll be left alone.”
I knelt down and said, “That’s not going to happen, doodlebug. It’s not.”
She took my hands and said, “You promise?”
“I do. It’s just a vacation. That’s all.”
She looked into my eyes and said, “Until the bad man shows up.”
And I knew what she was telling me. She’d seen the bad man more than once, and was convinced it was the natural way of things. The bad man just always showed up.
I said, “Don’t worry about that. You’re in the United States. The bad man is gone.”
I saw her eyes tear up and she said, “The bad man is always there. Even here. Don’t leave me to him.”
It broke my heart. I hugged her and said, “Hey, come on. There is nobody out to get you here. You’re going to be in good hands. It’s what you wanted.”
She broke my embrace, looked into my eyes, and asked, “If the bad man finds you on vacation, you’ll kill him, right? Come back to me?”
That took me aback. What kid thinks her parents are going to be attacked on vacation, and then wishes that the parents would kill the attackers? For the first time I realized that this was more than just a foster-parent relationship. We were never going to have a normal family, because we most decidedly weren’t normal, as much as we wanted to be. She’d seen me operate—had seen me kill—but because of her love for me, she couldn’t get it around her head that I was, in fact, worse than the evil she’d encountered. There was nothing on earth that would keep me from protecting her.
I looked at Jennifer and saw a tear in her eye. I hugged Amena and leaned into her ear, whispering, “I am the bad man. Remember that.”
Chapter 3
Yu-Feng “Paul” Kao didn’t consider himself a bad man. When he looked in the mirror, he didn’t see a trace of evil, but he was doing something bad now. And he knew it.
As an officer in the National Security Bureau of Taiwan—a combination of the United States’ FBI and CIA—he had a duty to protect Taiwan. And sometimes that duty led to doing unpleasant things.
Tall and lithe, he had a shock of jet-black hair and an angular face full of sharp contours. His visage looked as if it were perpetually at stage three of a four-stage sketch, the drawing taken away before the artist was allowed to smooth over the rough edges.
He pulled into the tourist parking lot at the Shifen Falls, about an hour east of his headquarters in Taipei, dodging the engorged tour buses and the myriad of pedestrians wandering about like cattle. He found a spot away from the crowds and turned off the engine.
He turned to his passenger and said, “You ready to go?”
A young man with fear in his eyes, the person next to him said, “I guess so. What do I do if he attacks me?”
“He won’t attack. He wants what you have. He wants to make some money. Just don’t forget your cover story. Whatever you do, use the name Feng Main. Don’t slip up and give him your true one. That’ll be a deal breaker.”
The kid nodded, seeming unsure. Paul patted his arm and said, “It’ll be okay. Just don’t forget to turn on the recorder. Get what he has to say, give him the money, and keep acting like you’re a conduit from the PRC. He wants to believe. He wants the pipeline to continue. I’ll wait right here.”
The kid looked up sharply and said, “You’ll wait here? Am I alone? Shouldn’t we have more cops here? More people to help? Once I’m in the park, I’ll be on my own.”
“We already have people in there. If he tries anything, we’ll be all over him. But don’t force that. I need him to continue. I want to break open the entire network.”
The kid nodded vaguely. Paul waited a moment, then leaned back and said, “What’s your name?”
Hesitantly, the kid said, “Feng. My name is Feng Main.”
“What do you do?”
With more courage, he continued, “I’m a university student. I’m a student.”
“Who do you work for?”
Like a robot, devoid of fear, he said, “The People’s Republic of China. The Ministry of State Security.”