The taxi driver made two passes around the consulate. The first one established that the Chinese military had set up camp. The second showed military placed strategically at every entry point.
“I told you it wasn’t a good idea to come here. Any other thoughts?” Davis asked.
“One.” Mary had booked Jordan at the Guangzhou Mei Ling Hotel several blocks from the U.S. consulate. The small building was wedged in between the Zhujiang New Town subway station and the Union store, a seller of basic Western and imported foods. Large red lettering in both Chinese and English festooned the hotel’s portico, while inside the front desk glistened in gaudy tiles of shiny gold. “May I help you?” asked a woman behind the desk. She saved her brightest smile for Davis, who stood behind Jordan in line.
“I have a reservation,” Jordan said.
“Passport?” After verifying Jordan’s documents and swiping a credit card, the woman handed everything back. “Would you like two keys?”
Jordan looked over at Davis. “Oh, we’re not together. He needs his own room.”
“Do you have a reservation?”
Davis shook his head and flashed a smile. “It was an unexpected trip.”
“I’m sorry, but the hotel is full. There is much going on in Guangzhou this week. I’m afraid you’ll have trouble finding a room in the city.” The woman glanced between them again. “Perhaps your friend would reconsider?”
“Does it have two beds?” Davis asked.
Jordan looked at the woman and shook her head.
“Let me make a few calls and see what I can find.” After phoning five of their backup hotels, the hotel clerk cradled the receiver. “Sorry, no luck. Everywhere full.”
“How about a rollaway?” This time he looked beseechingly at Jordan. “You wouldn’t really put me out on the street, would you?”
The woman tapped on her keyboard. “I can have the houseman bring up a cot, but there will be an extra charge.”
“I’ll pay for it,” Davis said. “In fact, I’ll pay for the whole room.”
“Nice expense account,” Jordan said, feeling her resolve crack despite her better judgment. It didn’t help that he was so damned good-looking or that he’d just saved her ass. She waited a moment longer before giving in. “You’re buying dinner, too.”
Their room was on the third floor, and she almost retracted her goodwill offer upon seeing the layout. Only slightly more muted in tone than the common areas, the bedroom walls were covered in gold-and-white wallpaper descending to planked hardwood floors. The cot had already been delivered and was crammed into the tiny space along with a double bed, a flat-screen TV, a small desk with an electric kettle and ergonomic chair, a clothes rack, and a sitting area consisting of a small table and two chairs looking out at a small French balcony.
“Look at it this way, it’s bigger than most New York City hotel rooms,” Davis said, dropping his backpack in the middle of the cot. “Where’s your luggage?”
“I’m guessing at the consulate.”
“I take it you had your go-bag with you?”
“In Agent Todd’s car.”
Davis stepped to the window and looked out. “Does anyone know you’re staying here?”
“Not unless someone hacked my e-mail, which is always a possibility. But seeing as we weren’t ambushed upon our arrival, I’m fairly certain we’re okay for the night.”
He seemed content to take her word for it. “Hungry?”
“Starved.” She’d hardly eaten anything since yesterday morning. Just a bite or two before lunch had been interrupted.
While Davis ordered take out from the in-house restaurant, Jordan checked out the bathroom. Separated from the main room by an etched glass wall, it was designed more for aesthetics than providing privacy. After washing her face, she conducted a quick survey of her newly acquired cuts and bruises. Her elbow was red and slightly swollen, leaving her forearm and hand slightly numb. She needed to put ice on it. There were dark fingerprint marks on her arm. Bruises deep enough that if Henry were there, he might have been able to pull fingerprints and ID her assailant. Last, there was a welt where the tip of the gangster’s knife had grazed her stomach. She’d been lucky not to have suffered Todd’s fate. She owed that to Davis.
Which was a big part of why he was in the next room. That and the fact he was incredibly handsome. She couldn’t deny her attraction. Still, it didn’t earn him a pass on explaining where he’d learned to disarm an armed assailant and knock him out cold.
Davis was sitting at the desk typing something on his computer when she reentered the room, so she brewed some tea and then settled into one of the chairs beneath the window. The view was of another wing of the hotel and a small courtyard.
While Davis worked, Jordan pulled out her phone and called Henry. She’d sent him the photo only a few hours ago, so there was a good chance he hadn’t even looked at it yet. Still, identifying the men who tried killing her—twice—was high on her list, and it was worth a try.
Henry sounded pleased that she’d called. After a few seconds of chitchat, she got down to business. “Did you get the photo I sent?”
“Yep.”
“Any luck identifying the gang member?”
“I’m one of the best forensic specialists you’ll find, Rae, but even I’m not that good. The facial recognition software is running, but do you have any idea how many Triad members or suspected Triad members there are?”
“Over forty thousand.” High enough numbers that the odds of the database coughing up a match to one of the men was slim. “What about the tattoo? Did you find anything on it?”
If he was surprised she knew, he gave no indication.
“We had better luck there. The Triad is actually composed of a lot of little Triads, and that particular tattoo is associated with one called the Danxia Triad. It’s a subgroup of the Guangdong Triad, based out of Shaoguan.”
Jordan set down her tea and reached for the small pad of paper and the pen on the table. “Can you spell that?” She scribbled as he parsed out the letters. “Isn’t that close to the area where the fragment originated?”
“Spot on.”
There was the connection she’d been looking for. “I owe you, Henry.”
“Bring me a souvenir.”
Davis glanced up as she set down the phone. “Good news?”
Jordan picked her tea back up and considered how much she should tell him. She needed to be cautious. “Henry ID’d the tattoo.”
“What’s the connection with Shaoguan?”
He had been paying attention. She would have to be more careful. A rap at the door saved her from answering. “I’ll bet it’s the food.”
“Don’t think we’re done here,” Davis said, pushing back the desk chair and crossing to the door. His hand caught the handle, and then at the last minute, he looked through the peephole.
Davis yanked back his hand, and sharp pinpricks of fear propelled Jordan out of her chair. “What is—”
Davis cut her off with a hand signal, but it was his hard expression that made her swallow her words.
“Who is it?” she mouthed, starting forward to see.
Davis blocked her path. “It’s the police. How the hell did they find us?”
The girl at the desk! They’d shown her their passports, and she must have entered them into the system. It was a rookie mistake. Jordan should have realized that the Chinese would be monitoring the hotels and watching for credit card usage. The Communist Party was notorious for tracking foreigners’ movements—especially foreigners they wanted to question.
The Chinese detention centers carried their own reputation—thirty people jammed into a ten-by-ten cell with no blankets, chairs, beds, or pillows. Whether or not a prisoner was brought up on charges, all detainees were made to work for food, and corporal punishment was common. Once in custody, the police could detain them for as long as they wanted—forever unless someone at the consulate found out. Maybe even if they did.
They needed a way out.
Jordan flung open the windows to the French balcony and looked with dismay at the ornamental railing bolted to the outside of the building. Sticking her head out, she could see all the windows were decorated the same and there was not a fire escape in sight. She and Davis were four floors up with no way down.
Leaning out to look at the ground below, she was discouraged to find the night blanketing the small common area that stretched between the two buildings. The dark made it nearly impossible to gauge the distance to the ground or to see what lay directly beneath them. She would guess it was thirty feet to the ground from the bottom of the railing. Farther out, some of the passage had been converted to parking spots, and the lights and action of the city lit up the streets at either end.
The police tried again, this time pounding on the door. Jordan could hear them talking to each other.
“We need to get out of here,” she whispered. “It sounds like one of them is heading back to the front desk for a key. That will only buy us a few minutes. Any ideas?”
“Only one.” Davis picked up one of the chairs near the window and jammed its back under the doorknob.
Jordan smiled. That might buy them an extra fifteen seconds, if they were lucky.
Yanking back the covers on the bed, she stripped the sheets and knotted one to the other. Based on the average length of a queen-sized bed, and subtracting the inches tied up in the knots, one bed provided close to ten feet of makeshift rope. Quick on the uptake, Davis grabbed his camera off the bed, looping it around his neck; stripped the cot; and added his sheets to one end of the chain while Jordan tied the other end to the bottom of the balcony railing. Hung for decoration, she could only hope it would bear their weight.
Davis held up his end of the makeshift rope. “It won’t make it to the ground.”
Jordan reached for the sheet and tossed it over the edge. “It doesn’t have to. If I’ve done the math right, we’ll run out of sheet with just over ten feet to go. That’s a single-story jump. It’s doable. When you get to the end of the sheet, just hang and drop. Let your knees and body absorb the shock.” She could see he wanted to discuss it, but there wasn’t time.
“Go!” she ordered.
“Why me?” Davis moved toward the window. “Oh, I know. It’s because you want to see if this thing will hold?”
Jordan grinned. “That, and I’m trained to go last.”
He hesitated a moment, then swinging his camera around to his back, he clutched the window casings and lowered his weight onto the wrought-iron fencing. Jordan felt a tsunami of relief when it didn’t strip away from the building. Swinging his legs over the top rail, Davis lowered himself down and grabbed onto the sheet.
The policeman outside the door shouted to someone. Jordan tried to listen. “I think they’re back with the key, Nye.”
She watched him rappel down the side of the building, like a climber slipping along the line, holding the sheet above and below his body and using his feet to push off the side of the building. It looked like he’d done something like this before.
As he reached the end of the line, she heard the click of the door.
Behind her, the chair Davis had jammed under the doorknob scraped along the floor. Then its back legs bit and held, giving her a few more seconds of time. Looking down, she spotted Davis waving from the small patch of grass.
Her turn.
The chair splintered as she jumped the railing. Clinging to the backside, she watched the door swing inward and catch on the security chain. Another few seconds.
Ignoring the pain in her arm and elbow, Jordan shimmied down the bed sheets hand over hand. Nearing the end of the makeshift rope, she felt a jerk on the fabric and looked up. A head poked through the window, while someone else’s hands reached through the iron and grabbed hold of the sheets.
“Stop, police,” yelled the man peering down on her. Then came another tug, and the hands started pulling her up.
“Drop,” Davis yelled.
The policeman barked an order. “He’s sending someone to cover the back,” she yelled to Davis. Another pull hoisted her another foot.
With a quick Oh Lord, Jordan let go.
The air swirled upwards all around her. She registered the startled look on the policeman’s face above her and then braced for the landing.
She slammed into Davis’s arms, which was better than hitting the ground. “Where to?” Davis asked, setting her onto her feet. “The consulate?”
She shook her head. It was a six-minute walk or a three-minute run, but that’s where the police would expect them to go. Not to mention the Chinese military had locked down the perimeter. “Head for the subway.”
The Zhujiang subway station sat on the corner, with trains departing in four directions every couple of minutes. Entering through the glass doors, they raced down the escalator while pushing past people on the steps. A cavernous room opened to a series of shops and was divided up by a row of royal-blue columns marching across the white-tiled floor. Signs over the portals to the tracks signaled the arrival of trains and listed their next destinations.
On the far wall, a bank of six or seven self-service ticket machines spit out travel cards for cash or credit. People queued three or four deep. Jordan chose one line, Davis another. Impatiently she tapped her foot, watching the escalator for any sign of the police. Based on the snippets of conversations around her, this was a shorter than usual wait.
Thank God for small favors.
Upon reaching the ticket kiosk first, she signaled to Davis and, pooling their money, came up with the right cash to buy two one-day passes. It gave them on-and-off privileges for the next twenty-four hours. If they could get in and out of a station quickly enough, they’d have time to change trains and disappear before the police figured out in what direction they’d gone.
The next scheduled train departed on Line 3 to the north. Standing on the platform, Jordan had a clear shot of the escalator. Simultaneous with the train pulling into the station, two policemen rode into view. Grabbing Davis’s sleeve, she pulled him along the platform, keeping her face averted. A rush of commuters poured off the train when it stopped, and Jordan took advantage of the crowd. Pushing against the flow, she urged Davis to keep up and boarded the last car. Grabbing two seats in the back, she bent forward and pretended to tie her shoes until the train cleared the station, leaving the two cops behind.