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.

Wen tried to go to him, but Junior didn’t let her; he prodded her straight toward the bathroom and only allowed her to close the door partway while she relieved herself. Wen’s maroon dress, which she had bought only yesterday at one of the trendy shops in the Redwater area, was torn at the shoulder and the hem. At the sink, she splashed cold water on her face, trying to shock herself back into alertness.

On the return trip down the hallway, she stopped in the doorway next to Tako and faced Junior, staring him in the face. “You can’t leave him like that,” she insisted.

Junior grabbed her arm and began to pull her back toward her room. Wen clung to the door frame, struggling and shouting that she wouldn’t go until they treated Tako’s wounds. Junior became agitated. “Bitch,” he hissed as he pried her fingers loose, breaking two of the nails. Two other barukan showed up to see what the problem was. One of them was the leader who’d made the call to Hilo and put her on the phone last night—a wiry, unexpectedly short man in camouflage cargo pants, a black T-shirt, and a carved skull pendant of bluffer’s jade around his neck. Physically, he didn’t seem that formidable at first glance, but the jade rings on his fingers were real, and he had a pinched, ferocious face with protruding eyes and a feral stare. Wen thought of him as Big Dog.

“What the fuck is going on here?” Big Dog snapped at Junior, who began to defend himself in Shotarian. The barukan readily mixed the languages when they spoke.

Wen interrupted and addressed the leader directly. “That injured man is a Fist of No Peak,” she reminded him. “He’s no good to you as ransom if he dies. You have to help him. Call a doctor. My husband will be more forgiving toward you if you do.”

Big Dog sneered. “You think you can still order people around like a queen?”

“She’s right,” said the mixed-blood man with the jade nose ring who seemed to be the second-in-command. “We have to do something about that gods-awful moaning.”

Big Dog drew his pistol and before Wen could even scream, he shot Tako in the head, silencing him. “Took care of it,” he said. Second Dog let out a startled burst of laughter, but Junior turned pale. Wen’s vision blurred. Tako had been her bodyguard for years. He had a wife and two daughters. Her fear of the barukan fell apart beneath rage and disgust. They had never meant to let Tako live. They’d only let him suffer.

“You… you.… dogs,” Wen whispered. “Tako was… was a friend… of m-my family.” It had taken years of effort to recover her ability to speak smoothly, but now stress and emotion made words stick in her throat again. She hated the sound of her renewed weakness when she most needed to be strong against these animals. “You’re… all… dead men.”

Big Dog backed her against the wall, putting his brutal face close to hers. Wen flinched at the menace in his eyes. “Do you think we’re afraid of your husband? Just because you’re used to everyone bowing and scraping to him, you think it’s because of his threats that we’re treating you so nicely? He’s powerless here. He can’t find us and he can’t touch us. Think about that before you decide to open your mouth again.”

Second Dog and Junior dragged her back into the room and shut the door.

The Kaul house was a war room. Multiple phones and computers were set up in the Pillar’s study. Lott and Hejo had the clan’s tech wizards trying to trace the location of the ransom call. The perpetrators weren’t careless; Hejo’s analysts suspected they’d attached a moving cellular phone to a two-way radio, so there was no way to pinpoint where the call had come from. All they could say confidently was that it had originated in Leyolo City, so Wen and Shae had not been transported far.

Federal police might have superior technology to narrow the search further, but Hilo quickly decided against involving either the Kekonese or Shotarian authorities. He could not risk Leyolo City cops getting involved and putting Wen and Shae in greater danger, and he wished to prevent, or at least delay for as long as possible, word getting out that the Pillarman and Weather Man of No Peak were being held hostage by lowly foreign criminals. Already, whispers of concern were circulating in the clan over the Pillar’s abruptly canceled appointments.

Hilo wanted to get on a plane with an army of the clan’s best Fists and go to Leyolo City himself. He would make it known that he was on the hunt. He would offer a staggering reward for anyone who led them to the kidnappers, and he would spread the word that if Shae and Wen were not returned safely within twenty-four hours, he would tear the city apart, kill every barukan member he could get his hands on until he found the men who’d done this, and they and their families would all die.

He voiced this sentiment to Lott, who said, with some worry, “Kaul-jen, of course, every Fist and Finger is willing to follow you and give our lives if it would bring Shae-jen and Wen back, but I’m not sure that’s the best way to—”

“I know that,” Hilo snapped. Leyolo City was not Janloon. He couldn’t land a plane full of Green Bones there. He didn’t control the streets, the police, the government, or the people. Wen and Shae would be dead as soon as the barukan found out he was in the country, and those responsible would flee, knowing he couldn’t easily find them.

Although he was too sick with worry to sleep, he was also bored. After issuing orders, there wasn’t much he could do while he waited for more information. He’d already instructed Jaya not to come up to Janloon straightaway, but to stay calm and remain at her home in Toshon until they knew more. He was finding it hard to do likewise. Lott told him politely but firmly that his constant pacing and the stress in his jade aura were distracting, so Hilo went out onto the patio and smoked, quitting be damned.

In the morning, word came from one of the clan’s secret contacts in the Leyolo City police that the black SUV Tako and Dudo had rented had been found seemingly abandoned on the side of the road five kilometers from the hotel. There were no skid marks, no signs of a car chase or collision, and no signs of mechanical failure. If they’d known they were being followed, Wen’s bodyguards would’ve driven to a safer, more defensible place. The only plausible explanation for them to be calmly stopped in a random location was that they’d been pulled over. If the kidnappers had fake or real Leyolo City police in their employ, they were expert criminals.

“It wasn’t the Matyos,” Lott reported, getting off the phone. None of the clan’s White Rats embedded in the largest of Shotar’s barukan gangs had any knowledge of the abduction. If the Matyos were responsible, there would’ve been some leakage within the gang. People would know something big was going on. Arrangements would’ve been made, safe houses secured, gunmen organized. Either the Matyos were not involved or it was an outsourced job, known only to the highest-level leaders. Given how quickly the operation had been put together, that seemed unlikely.

If the Matyos weren’t behind this, Ayt Mada most likely wasn’t either. Hilo was almost disappointed, even though he knew his oldest and greatest rival had no reasonable motive for a crude ransom kidnapping with such high odds of being botched. But if the clan’s usual enemies weren’t to blame, then who was? The answer came a few hours later. Members of the clan in the Leyolo City branch office had examined all of Shae’s and Wen’s activities since the instant they arrived in Shotar. After they accounted for everyone Shae had met that day, suspicion fell on Wen’s meeting at Diamond Light.

Hami Tumashon, who was on the ground in Shotar, took two of the clan’s Fingers from the Leyolo City branch office and drove to Guttano’s home. They snatched the studio executive off the driveway of his Redwater area mansion, stuffed him into the trunk of the car, and drove twenty kilometers out of the city to a secure location. Through a translator, the terrified man confessed. After Wen had come to his office to demand the release of Danny Sinjo from his contract, Guttano feared for his life. He’d phoned a barukan boss named Choyulo to plead for protection, revealing that the wife of Kaul Hiloshudon had visited him and that she was staying at the Oasis Sulliya resort.

Hami explained over the phone that Choyulo was a member of the Faltas barukan. The Faltas were a smaller gang than the Matyos, although the two organizations maintained an arm’s-length alliance. The Faltas acted as muscle for the larger gang but were also known for their own activities, primarily extortion and corporate kidnappings. They had tentacles into the sports, music, and film industries, and most of the Shotarian gangster films that glorified the barukan were about the Faltas.

“What should I do with Guttano?” Hami asked. The clan’s Rainmaker had been on the business side of the clan for decades, but he had once been a Fist.

Lott depressed the mute button on the phone set and said, “We shouldn’t kill this man now, Kaul-jen. A wealthy Shotarian movie executive going missing will bring in the local police. In any case, we may need to ask him other things about the Faltas.”

Hilo took the line off mute and gave instructions to Hami. “Put Guttano up in a hotel. Have him phone his wife and tell her that he’s been called out of town on urgent business. A problem on a film set, something like that. Post guards to make sure he doesn’t talk to anyone else and doesn’t leave. If we get Wen and Shae back safely, he goes free. If we don’t, he’s dead. So if there’s anything else he can tell us about the Faltas, he should do it, if he wants to see his family again.”

Hilo fell into an armchair and longed for another cigarette. Woon Papidonwa was sitting in the chair across from him with his head in his hands, looking wretched. Hilo wished the man would go back to his own house, as there wasn’t anything Woon could do here, but he wasn’t cruel enough to send Shae’s husband out of the room.

“I should’ve gone with her,” Woon lamented in a whisper.

Hilo berated him more harshly than he deserved. “If you had, Tia would be in danger of losing both parents instead of one. You think you could’ve changed anything?” Nevertheless, Hilo understood deeply how difficult it was for a jade warrior to accept that there came a time when he couldn’t fight his own battles anymore, couldn’t with his own strength and abilities protect those he loved. “Shae is smart enough to stay alive until we figure out a way to get her and Wen back, and we’re already doing everything we can,” he told Woon more gently.

“What can I do to help, Kaul-jen?” his brother-in-law begged.

“You can take care of your daughter,” Hilo replied, stalking back out. Tia was clearly aware that something was wrong. As Woon would not leave the war room, Anden had driven the girl to school that morning and picked her up again in the afternoon. Now Tia was worriedly tugging on her father’s arm every few minutes to ask when they were going home, and why there were so many people in Uncle Hilo’s house.

Woon hugged his daughter but couldn’t bring himself to tell her the truth. He said, “Why don’t you finish your snack and then go over to your grandma’s house.”

Tia ran out of the room after her uncle. “Something bad has happened, hasn’t it?”

Hilo squatted down next to his niece but hesitated to answer. He didn’t believe in lying to children and had never shielded his own from reality. But Tia was different. “Yes,” he said. “We’re going to fix it, so I don’t want you to be frightened.”

“Is it about my ma?” When Hilo nodded, Tia’s eyes welled with fear. “I want to know.”

“Some very bad people took your ma, and your aunt Wen, and two of our Fists while they were on their trip to Leyolo City. They want some things from our clan—jade, money, other important things—before they’ll give them back.”

Tears spilled down Tia’s face as she clutched Hilo’s arm. “Uncle Hilo, you have to get my ma back, no matter what. Just give them whatever they want!”

“I’ll do everything I can, Tia-se, I swear it,” Hilo promised. “But our family has terrible enemies, and sometimes what they want most of all is to hurt us.”

“Why would anyone hate us so much?” Tia wept. “None of this makes sense!”

Ru had walked through the door only a few minutes earlier, having skipped the day’s classes to rush back home. Everyone could hear Koko leaping about and barking with excitement despite his age. Ru came over and crouched down. “Tia, all the grown-ups are busy right now and we shouldn’t distract them. Your ma would want you to be strong and to let everyone work so they can find her and bring her home.” As frightened as he was for his own mother, Ru spoke to his little cousin as if everything would be fine. “Why don’t the two of us go into the other room and play video games? I’ll show you a new one I got last week.” He took the girl’s hand in his own.

“Thank you, son.” Hilo put a hand on Ru’s shoulder, grateful to have one of his children near home who he could count on. Since going to college, Ru had become even more expressive and opinionated. He’d dyed copper highlights into his hair and was wearing a T-shirt that read I’m Nonreactive to Bullshit. He was often bringing up this or that charity or social cause that he thought No Peak should be supporting, but he was also a great help to his parents.

The afternoon light was starting to wane, and Hilo hadn’t slept since the night before last. Wen and Shae had been in barukan hands for eighteen hours. Two million thalirs in cash had been procured from the clan’s accounts and forty kilograms of jade taken from its vaults. Locked in four steel briefcases, they were now being loaded onto a chartered plane. In three and a half hours, a small team of the clan’s most trusted Fists would arrive in Leyolo City with the money and jade. In eight hours, they would make the planned handover with the Faltas.

Eight hours. They would be the longest of his life. In eight hours, Wen might be safe, or he might be searching for her body.

Hilo did not share Shae’s stalwart belief in the gods, but he was not above praying. All his power as Pillar of a great Green Bone clan could not guarantee him anything in this moment other than the promise of vengeance, and that was far less comfort to him than it had once been.