Yes, she was spiraling, now. She would run, and they would catch her, and it would be Tinseng’s fault for not stopping her here.
“You won’t be able to go to your sister,” he said. “Or your hometown, or anywhere you’ve lived before. They’ll look for you. If you’re not very careful, they’ll find you.”
“I never expected to see her again,” Marissa said with so much resignation that Tinseng imagined, wildly, abandoning all his plans to help this woman. She saved him by adding, “I can live knowing she is safe. That is more than I had before. I will go wherever you tell me to go. But I must go.”
“Please, I’m—” To have gone through all this, only to lose her now—Tinseng couldn’t stand it. He wouldn’t lose her. “I’m good at this. You have to listen to me; it’s better to stay here. We, listen, I’ll stay, too, protect you, talk you through it . . .”
A hand pressed between his shoulder blades. “Tinseng,” Jinzhao said.
Tinseng blew out a huge exhale. Screwed his eyes shut. “Fine. Okay.” When he opened his eyes again, finality made his voice flat. “You’ll want to get across the border tonight. I can give you the name of someone who can make you a passport. You’ll need money. A lot of it.”
“That is not a problem.”
“Okay. If you ever need help, we’re easily found in Hong Kong.” Marissa nodded her thanks and listened as Tinseng told her exactly what she needed to do. “Now, you should go,” he said after he’d written down the address of a reliable fixer. “Time isn’t on your side.”
Tinseng listened to her footsteps for a moment, then turned and scooped up all the papers onto the desk. He started pulling out drawers, spilling their contents to the floor.
“Come on, help me.”
Jinzhao started pulling everything out of the safe. They worked in silence, moving from room to room. There was no need to rush. The last thing they could do for Marissa was give her time to pack. He was pulling books down from shelves when they heard a car engine turn over: Marissa, leaving. She would never make it to where she wanted to go—but then, Tinseng never thought he’d make it out, and here he was, one house fire away from freedom. He let the book in his hand drop to the floor.
“I’m going to the kitchen. If we’re lucky, they have gas.” He pulled out his lighter and tossed it to Jinzhao, who caught it one-handed out of the air. “Light anything that will catch. Meet you outside.”
Tinseng pressed a hard kiss to Jinzhao’s willing mouth, then ran downstairs. There was humming in his blood. He couldn’t call it joy; its teeth were too bloody for that. Something similar, though. Something he could revel in.
He wished Marissa a fresh start wherever she ended up. He hoped she didn’t start having nightmares like him. Then he thought of the phone call, how she’d hung up saying, “I hope we do not meet again.” He smiled in the dark, a wry little smirk just for himself. He hoped they never met again either.
They stopped the car on top of a hill twenty minutes away. Smoke was already visible for kilometers. In a city, they might have heard sirens; in a city, there was always someone watching. In the country, all they heard was the night symphony of creatures, the buzzing of high summer. If sirens interrupted this quiet, it wouldn’t be for a long time. By the time the fire brigade reached the house, it would be smoldering down to its foundations, the body inside burnt to bone.
“You know,” Tinseng said conversationally as they watched the distant fire grow, “Overall? One of my better vacations. What do you say we do it again next summer?”
13 In blissful harmony. Colloquially: a match made in heaven.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Now. June 25, 1963. Épernay, France.
An hour ago, the detective in the wrinkled suit had led her to a room with no windows, pointed to a chair, and told her to wait. Afraid to contradict him, Yukying sat underneath the vent and shivered. She was beginning to worry this would all fall apart. Cheuk-Kwan had won the argument in the end: They wouldn’t risk complications from plane travel until Mei Jinzhao had been checked by a hospital—what was the point of going through all this if they lost him in the air to a blood clot? So Tinseng took them to a hospital known to Paris Station; the staff was used to looking the other way. If the attendant had suspicions about the fake passport, she kept them to herself, and she hadn’t asked questions about the mugging story. But they must have gotten something wrong: That same day, French police had come to Mei Jinzhao’s hospital room and asked Yukying and Tinseng to come in for interviews.
Now, in the interrogation room, the clock ticked slowly. Yukying rubbed one hand with the other trying to encourage circulation. She wanted to move, but there was Mei Jinzhao, Marissa, and Tinseng to consider. With the weight of all those secrets on the scale, who knew what might tip fate against them? She wrapped Li Xifeng’s shawl tighter around her shoulders and imagined that stronger woman just behind her. Her own fingers felt bony, fragile; she thought about small things in cages and tried not to shiver. A chill, or anger? Her mother’s rage had burned hot, something Cheuk-Kwan had inherited. Whose anger was in her veins, then, cold as glacial melt?
“Ah, yes, sorry,” the detective grimaced as he walked in, file in hand. “The building is old. Survived the wars, so now the city thinks it should be preserved. I’d rather get decent heating, but what can you do? Can we get you some tea? A warm cup to hold always helps me.”
He’d done a convincing job pretending to be thoughtful, until now. As he’d walked her back, he had asked about Hong Kong, and his society manners had made conversation easy. The civility had been so nice that she’d almost forgotten her fear. That, she supposed, had probably been the point.
“No thank you,” she said, and moved her hands to her lap to hide her clenched fists.
“Are you sure? We have a good selection.”
“That’s a kind offer, but I would rather get back to my husband.”
“I understand,” the detective said in the tone of unmarried men everywhere. “So, Mrs. Li. Do you want to tell me how you got involved in all this?”
She took a deep breath, reminded herself of Tinseng’s advice, and said, “I was hoping, detective, that you might tell me what exactly this is.”
“Did they not tell you?”
“I’m afraid not.” Turn it back on them, Tinseng had said. “I’ve been waiting over an hour, and all they’ve said is that I might have known someone related to a crime in France. I don’t see how that’s possible.”
“Perhaps they didn’t want to upset you unnecessarily. We’ve had hysterics before. Let’s start with the simple facts. Who are you traveling with?”
“My husband, my brothers, and our friends Lim Chiboon and Shan Dao.”
“Yes. Shan Dao. He’s in the hospital now—is that right?”
“Yes. He was mugged.”
“And who were the witnesses to that?”
“Myself, and my brother Tinseng.”
“But you didn’t file a report.”
“They were young. A gang. The gangs get away with so much in Hong Kong, so we thought, well, it just wouldn’t do any good.” We’ll blame it on a group we know they hate, Tinseng had said; they’ll believe anything of people they hate. “We just wanted to go home.”
The detective nodded sympathetically as he wrote. “How long did you plan to travel in France?”
