I wiggle my fingers, wiggle my toes, will blood into the frigid appendages of my body. I heave deep breaths to jump-start my lungs and diaphragm. Where am I? Wherever I am, it stinks of urine. Thanks to whatever the Snake Hands Gang injected me with—was it ketamine?—my neck feels like I spent a week on a roller coaster wearing an iron helmet. I winch my eyes open for a fraction of a second, then quickly squeeze them shut again. The white light above my head is too bright, the space too tight, and I can’t change the position of my body. My clothes are still wet from the rain, so I must not have been unconscious for long.
I replay events in my head, searching for the signs I missed, the turnoffs on this winding path that could’ve precluded this outcome. Maybe Jules was right: Maybe my loyalty had blinded me. I had seen my choices too simply, seen only what I wanted to see. Maybe I shouldn’t have come to Beijing at all.
Maybe it’s too late to be having second thoughts.
This isn’t the end, I tell myself, rocking my chin from side to side, scrunching up my face, expending major willpower to suppress the urge to cry. I knock my forehead against the frigid metal like I’m hitting the side of a TV, trying to change the picture. You’ll get out of this. Snake Hands won’t want the attention that comes with killing an American. The police will catch up with them. Sun Jianshui is already on his way.
Dad didn’t send you to China for you to die in this hole.