Ridley Pearson - The Risk Agent

“Does it look like everything is okay? I am not kidding around.”

“So sorry.”

Neither girl had ever seen their boss in such a fit. Li-Shu caught a glimpse of the stacks of yuan Amy transferred into her purse-forty thousand or more. A fortune!

“Store hours as normal,” Amy instructed, relocking the safe, and then closing and securing its outer door. “If anyone asks, I am with a client appraising an estate collection. You do not know the location. You will offer to call me, only if necessary, and then report that you were unable to reach me. I am gone for the National Day holiday.”

“Very well.”

“Tell the others exactly as I’ve told you.”

“Of course.”

“And no wagging tongues.” She directed this at Li-Shu. “This is not a game, Second-cousin’s Daughter. Lips sealed. Pure mind, pure heart. Your rumor-mongering could do me great harm.”

Li-Shu blushed, embarrassed to be so easily read. “Yes, Auntie. I promise.”

“Lock this door behind me. Why was it not locked? What kind of fools leave this door unlocked? Lock it and leave it locked!”

According to the sign, it was never to be locked. Neither woman said a thing.

Amy slipped out the back of the shop and into the stairway. Hearing the lock turn behind her, she began her descent, her senses on immediate alert. An offensive cologne she hadn’t noticed before now permeated the air. Superstitious by nature, and on edge because of Knox, she hurried down.

Damn the maintenance men for allowing so many lights to be burned out. Had it been so dark a moment ago? she wondered.

Rapid footfalls came from behind her. She arrived at the next stairway landing and encountered a man standing there. She gasped involuntarily.

The man grabbed her wrist, spun her and slapped his hand over her mouth.

She tried to call out, but only groaned. The shop door is shut and locked, she thought. No one will hear me.

She reared back to hit him, but was no match. He lifted her off her feet like a rag doll and carried her down the stairs.

Paralyzed with fright, she fought to keep from passing out. It felt like swimming for the surface when deeply underwater.

Her feet bounced down the steps. Another man caught her legs.

They arrived at the ground level to a set of doors. She kicked free, caught the door as it came open and smacked it into the forehead of the man at her feet. He dropped her. The one behind her let go of her right arm. She elbowed this man in the throat, and fell to the stairs as he dropped her completely. The door to the outside thumped shut. She scrambled to her feet and ran into the building, a grid of aisles and shop stalls.

Amy knocked shoppers aside, trying to distance herself from her pursuers. She had the advantage of familiarity. She knew these shops and their keepers.

The two coming behind her split up, taking parallel aisles. They were attempting to box her in. She hurried, dropped to her hands and knees, and crawled into a clothing stall to her left.

“Cousin!” she called out, moving for the back wall. “Muggers! Thieves! You must help me! The door! The door!”

The woman shopkeeper did not hesitate. She raced to the back wall, slid some dresses aside and popped open the hidden door to the storage room. Most shops had such hidden doors.

“Not a word!” Amy said, still crawling. The door clicked shut behind her.

7:40 P.M.

At the intersection of aisles the two men met with a silent exchange-they’d lost her. The leader waved his partner forward and together they began a search, stall by stall.

They tipped over racks, pulled down shelves and cursed at the top of their lungs.

7:41 P.M.

Amy heard the shopkeeper cry out, followed by the sound of destruction. A smack silenced the woman. Then a rake of hangers.

The door to the hidden room broke open.

Amy struck the first man with the tine of a metal hanger, punching a hole in his chest. He screamed and jumped for her, but she ducked and avoided him, smacking the second man. She ran her nails down his neck and let go.

Squeezing past and out into the shop, she ran. Just as she reached the first intersection of aisles, she was tackled from behind. Her arm was twisted behind her and she found herself being carried out the back.

At the moment she was struck by the fresh air, there came a sound like a melon hitting the kitchen floor. Warmth speckled her face.

Blood.

The men dropped her. One lay on the concrete, out cold and bleeding.

A monster with half his face scraped off-a Mongolian, or northerner-brutalized the second man.

Before she fully came to her feet, someone grabbed her from behind and dragged her into a van. She was thrown inside and her abductor followed in behind her. The door slid shut. The tires squealed.

A flurry of Shanghainese cursing. The driver said something to the man hovering over her about “going back for him.” More cursing. A rag was stuffed down her throat, followed by duct tape across her face.

She blacked out.

7:53 P.M.

Melschoi dragged the man deeper down the alley, already softening him up by kneeing him repeatedly in the chest. The man bounced away from him like a puppet.

“Who do you work for?” Melschoi asked in passable Mandarin.

“Feng Qi.”

“Yang Cheng’s man?” Melschoi said, holding him tightly.

“Dui.”

Melschoi contemplated the angles like a mathematician.

“Where have they taken her, these men?” The road rash on his face had not had time to scab, leaving him looking like he’d made out with a cheese grater.

The man’s eyes rolled back in his head. Melschoi was losing him. Melschoi lifted him off the ground and kneed him in the groin, jolting him awake.

“Where?” Melschoi said, his hand now clenching the man’s throat.

The man volunteered an address on Moganshan Road, a former warehouse district that had been partially gentrified into art galleries.

Melschoi knew the area. He leaned in close to the man. “You work for me now. We always have eye on you. You try to run or double-cross me and I will cut off your manhood.”

Melschoi took the man’s mobile phone one-handed and dialed in his own number in order to save it into the man’s phone.

“Whatever you hear, you will pass along to me immediately,” Melschoi said. “If I do not hear from you regularly, you will hear from me.” He held up the man’s wallet so he’d be sure to remember Melschoi possessed it.

He let him fall. “If you try to warn your associates, I come back for you.”

8:40 P.M.

Amy Xue vaguely recalled swallowing something bitter. Her limbs were numb. She tried to speak, but her words were slurred. She took a moment to place herself in her surroundings. Two men: one bruised and beaten. Her shirt hung open, exposing her breasts and belly. She could see she wasn’t wearing pants, but couldn’t feel anything. Her wrists were held to a bamboo pole with plastic ties, the pole tied between pipes.

A man’s low voice spoke Mandarin close to her ear. “The American and the Chinese woman. Names. Mobile numbers. And where to find them.”

She perceived a need to lie, but surprised herself.

“John Knox,” she answered. “The woman is called Grace.”

“We have your phone. Which are their numbers?”

He held her mobile phone up in front of her, but she couldn’t focus. The room was swirling and fuzzy. She felt physically numb and mentally empty-as if all resistance had been bled out of her. Her tongue had a mind of its own.

“The top number,” she said, finally seeing the screen, though dimly, “is his.”

She considered herself such an expert liar-perhaps the best bargainer in all the pearl market. She didn’t know this woman she heard speaking.