I skidded around a corner, then punched the accelerator again.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t Lien-hua.
I had to be wrong. Yes. I had to be.
A good investigator doesn’t look for evidence to prove his theories, but to disprove them.
And I’d never wanted to disprove myself more than I did right then.
I needed to trust the evidence.
Evidence. Yes. Not conjecture. I was doubting Lien-hua only because of circumstances, events that could be read different ways.
Trust the evidence wherever it takes you.
My thoughts spun backward, funneling hours and hours of our investigation into a few brief seconds.
I had to be wrong. I had to be.
The chains. The cameras. The angles. The videos.
Blind spots.
The evidence room.
Wait. The person who checked on the device in the evidence room was a man. Not a woman.
Not a woman. Not Margaret. Not Lien-hua.
But I needed more than that. I needed more.
You missed something, Dr. Bowers.
Yes, I did.
The handwriting on the envelope, on the wall. I’d seen Lien-hua’s handwriting a hundred times, and even though handwriting analysis has never been my specialty, I could tell it wasn’t hers. And the analysts already determined it wasn’t Melice’s, so unless there was another abductor we didn’t know about…
Not just the handwriting, the video.
And then, everything about the case unraveled again. All the facts began to mount in a new order. My head was finally starting to clear.
The AFIS records were altered.
The thermal satellite imagery showed Hunter slip the device into the car. That’s how Shade knew the police had the device.
Terry mentioned Sebastian Taylor had been sighted.
Crease after crease, my preconceptions unfolded.
Mental origami.
Dupin. Think like Dupin.
The video of Cassandra in the tank was exactly one minute and fifty-two seconds long.
Yesterday Calvin told me to stop looking at the facts and to start looking at the spaces between them. “One cannot adequately understand the movement of the planets,” he’d said, “until one has identified what they all orbit around.”
So what did everything orbit around?
The video.
Yes. That was the key to everything. The one minute and fifty-two second long video of Cassandra in the tank.
And in one crystallizing moment, the final shape of the case became clear. No, Lien-hua wasn’t Shade after all. I’d been wrong, I’d been wrong. Thank God I’d been wrong.
No, she wasn’t Shade.
An old friend of mine was.
No reply from the other room.
Lien-hua called again, “Pat? Is that you?”
No reply. She steadied her gun, crouched. Listened for movement.
“Pat?”
No reply, except for the click of a closing door.
To get to the suite’s main room she needed to walk through one more bedroom. She glided in, made sure the room was clear.
Quickly checked the closet.
Empty.
Bathroom. Shower.
Nothing.
Under the bed.
Clear.
Now to the main room of the suite.
She eased around the corner and saw Creighton Melice standing placidly beside the desk.
“Down,” she shouted. “On your knees!”
He was holding her vase of dying flowers. Both of his hands wrapped in bloody, shredded gauze, the untended wounds smearing blood against the glass. “Nice flowers.” He set down the vase beside her notepad.
“I said get-”
But before Lien-hua could finish her sentence, the dart entered the back of her neck.
Someone else. There’s someone else in the room. Shade.
Lien-hua’s hand involuntarily flew up to her neck, and she tugged out the dart as she whirled around to see if she could identify the other assailant, but the ripple of the curtains told her the person had disappeared onto the veranda. By the time Lien-hua had turned back to Creighton Melice, he was on her with a vengeance, chopping his hand at the gun, sending it spinning to the ground. Then, he came at her with a stylized uppercut and back fist.
He’d studied martial arts.
But she knew the form: Choy Li Fut.
And knowing it, she could counter it. She leaned into this punch and used the force of his momentum against him, driving him backward, then twisted his wrist behind his back. He yanked free, but not until after she’d hammered his side with two brutal alternating straight punches that would’ve brought most men to their knees.
He didn’t even flinch, just pivoted backward and brought an elbow into her face. She tumbled against her vase and sent it smashing into the wall.
He feels no pain. You have to knock him out.
Moss began to grow across her field of vision.
The dart. She’d been drugged.
The whole world tipped sideways, sounds and colors came to life, time began to stretch thin and then wrap around her, and she couldn’t be sure what was real anymore.
Then Melice grabbed her arm, slammed her into the wall, and yanked her backward by the hair to smash her head into the mirror hanging beside the closet, but she sensed him standing behind her just to her left side. It would be a tough kick, but she’d done it before. She kicked up, doing the splits vertically, and slammed her foot into his face. She heard the crunch of impact but no cries of pain, though his grip did loosen and she was able to twist free.
He faltered backward, and she faced him, kicked him once in the side of his left knee, and as he crumpled, she connected another kick to his head, and then she felt her legs giving way, her strength seeping.
“Don’t fight it, Lien-hua,” he said as he shook off the kick and readied himself to come at her again. “It’s better if you just let yourself go. Only a few more seconds and you’ll be like me. You won’t feel anything.”
She took two quick steps, kicked, caught his chin, sent him flying.
Her thoughts stumbled over each other, looking for a place to stand, but found no footing. Lien-hua rushed him, gave him a front kick to his abdomen, and a roundhouse kick to the ribs, and he was down. Still conscious, though.
And now he was getting up.
If you can get to your gun, if you can just get to your gun.
But a smothering weakness washed over her. The world around her turned in a wide, hazy circle for one lingering moment that was somehow both slower and faster than real time. Then, despite her best efforts to stay standing, she began to drift to the ground.
Melice rose to his feet, retrieving her gun and sliding it beneath his belt. “You can feel it, can’t you? It’s taking over everything. I’ll bet you’re wondering what we’re going to do with you when you finally pass out.”
Lien-hua’s legs melted, and she collapsed onto the carpet. She blinked. Tried to focus. The paralyzing sedative was climbing over her quickly. She couldn’t move. Too weak. Powerless. Melice walked to her, stood beside her. Leaned close. “Do you feel like a victim yet? If not, you will. I have quite an evening planned for you.”
He stepped out of the edge of her vision, and Lien-hua tried to rise to her feet, but it was all she could do to roll her head to the side. She saw Melice bend over a chair in the corner of the room and pull something out of a garment bag.
“She’s almost ready, Shade,” Melice said.
Then, a shadow fell across Lien-hua as someone else approached and stood behind her.
The world was being swallowed by a hungry, sweeping numbness. But before the gray sleep could cover her, she saw Melice turn and step toward her.
A red, silk evening gown in his hands.