The Drowning Game

40

Red Dragon

November 3, 3:00 a.m. CST

Down the internal staircase, Lukas first, then George’s family, then me. Step, step, pause. Step, step, pause. Straining to hear footsteps or voices ahead or behind. Straining to see in the half dark.

Now and again a gunshot cracked from above.

My thoughts banged along with the rapid thrum of my heart. Emily’s words: Chu songs all around. George telling me during one of our games of Go: I am wealthy with my children. Without them I have nothing.

George had to be okay. And we had to reunite him with his family. And if not ... could Lukas or I pilot the remora and get the family away?

A man lunged from the shadows at the bottom of the stairs, gun raised.

Li-Mei screamed.

The man’s shot went wide, drilling a hole in the wall. Lukas leaped forward, swinging the wrench, crushing the man’s skull before he could fire again. Li-Mei pressed the children against her. Neither of them made so much as a peep.

Tough kids.

“Keep going down?” Lukas asked. Blood flecked his face and beard.

I nodded, wondering who had heard the shot and Li-Mei’s scream. We skirted past the dead man.

Once we were belowdecks, I mentally paced off the steps as I held Cass’s drawing in my mind. Deep in my brain, the location glowed.

I touched Lukas’s arm to slow him.

“It’s off the passage that leads to the tender garages where the Zodiacs are kept,” I told him. “There must be a door concealed inside the storage lockers. We’ll reach a changing room and bathroom, then the first garage, and finally the lockers. We’re almost there.”

In the changing room, we stopped.

“Lukas and I need to clear the area by the remora,” I told Li-Mei. “Hide here until we come back for you.” I gave her my Taser and asked if she knew how to use it. She nodded.

Our eyes met. Li-Mei’s gaze was candid, intelligent, worried. “What should I do if you don’t return?”

“Get the children to the panic room. Anyone inside can be trusted. And pray if you believe in prayer.”

She nodded and laid her hand on my arm. “Thank you for helping us.”

I squeezed her fingers, then grabbed a diving knife from the gear in the changing room and followed Lukas down the passage. He had his gun in his right hand, the wrench in his left.

I continued mentally unspooling our steps as we neared the remora. Not much farther. My eyes darted left and right, searching the shadows.

Voices floated toward us from up ahead. Chinese. Lukas glanced back at me, and I nodded.

Keep going.

Just outside the first tender garage, we found Connor.

He lay curled on his side, unmoving. Blood seeped from a gash on his head. Blood from another wound—chest? shoulder?—soaked his shirt.

Lukas dropped to a knee and felt for a pulse.

A cadence sounded in my mind: Not Connor, not Connor, not Connor.

“He’s alive,” Lukas said. “Keep watch.” He stripped off his shirt and used it to bind Connor’s upper arm. Then he directed me to hold open the door to the garage while he dragged Connor inside, out of sight.

“Will he live?”

Lukas took in my expression. “He’ll be okay.”

I couldn’t tell whether it was the truth or a lie to make me feel better. I nodded and tried to step forward, toward the passageway. But my knees gave out, and Lukas caught me. My entire body shook.

“I can’t,” I said.

“It’s adrenaline. That’s a good thing.” He eased me upright. “You’re in fighting form, Nadia. Come on.”

I pressed my hands to my thighs to stop the shaking. Thought of Cass and nodded.

As we exited, a man loomed in the corridor ahead of us. Lukas fired, dropping him. We ducked back into the doorway, and Lukas whispered for me to wait. A few minutes ticked by, and then a second man appeared, shoving George down the passageway, a gun to the researcher’s head, using George as a shield. George’s face was bruised, his shirt torn. He clutched his left arm as if it hurt.

He stopped when he saw the dead man.

“Drop!” Lukas yelled in English.

George plunged to the floor as if Lukas’s shout had physically thrown him down.

George’s captor dropped to a crouch. He still had his gun up. I could see him weighing his options. Shoot George? Retreat? Press forward? His eyes darted back and forth along the passage, looking for the source of the shout.

Lukas stepped out and fired, eternally ending the man’s hesitation.

I moved clear of Lukas. “George!”

“Nadia!” George pushed to his feet. “My family.”

“They’re here,” I told him. “They’re okay.”

George was alive. Connor was alive. I felt as if my heart were beating again. We could do this.

After we’d retrieved George’s family from the changing room, George led us back past the Zodiacs.

This part of the boat had gone eerily quiet. No sound of men running. No gunshots or shouts. What was happening up above?

George opened one of the wide equipment lockers and crouched inside. I heard a click, then the back of the locker moved, revealing a doorway. “The hatch is through here,” he whispered. To his family he said, “Come, come!”

Li-Mei gave me a quick hug. “Thank you.”

“Make something of your life,” I told her.

She nodded, then ushered her children into the wet/dry room beyond the inner hatch.

“They shot Connor,” George told me.

“We found him. He’s alive.” I forced a smile and hugged him. “Never forget the Confucian virtues. Loyalty. Justice. Respect. Harmony.”

“And humanity. RenAI will do her best.” He pointed toward a duffel in the wet/dry room, then leaned in to kiss my cheek. “We will never forget you, Nadia Brenner. You will make Ocean House the company it was meant to be.” One corner of his mouth ticked up. “Keep playing Go. You’ll be a master someday.”

“Given that there are more possible moves in Go than the number of atoms in the observable universe?” I found a laugh.

“And yet humans master it. Remember, giving up is not an option.”

A lesson he’d taught me. And that Cass had taught me as well. An odd mix of sadness and triumph filled me. Against all odds, Cass had succeeded in what she’d set out to do.

“Maybe we’ll play again,” I said, knowing we wouldn’t. Knowing that—whether or not he and Li-Mei found their freedom—I’d never see them again.

I returned his chaste kiss, then closed the inner hatch, sealing Red Dragon against the water that would soon flood the room between the hatches. George opened the hatch leading to the remora and ushered his family into the sub. After he’d closed the remora’s hatch, Lukas and I listened while the sub broke free, and water flooded into the room.

Let them make it to freedom, I prayed. Let them find freedom.

Lukas and I swung closed the door to the concealing locker, and he turned toward me. “You did it, Nadia.”

I was smiling and crying. But there was no time. “Connor,” I said to him, and he nodded.

He moved forward into the passageway, keeping me tucked behind him. My thoughts returned to Red Dragon . Was the crew still confined in the panic room? Where were the rest of Connor’s men? Did Captain Peng still have control of the bridge? Where was Charlie Han?

Was Connor still alive?

Lukas stopped and pressed a finger to his lips. He held his gun in his other hand. He tipped his head, listening. The hull gave a faint shudder in the storm, a regal lady shrugging off the waves. The tenders creaked on their chains.

I caught a whiff of cigarette smoke. Then I heard what had caught Lukas’s attention—men approaching.

Lukas grabbed my shoulders and spun me around. “Hide!” he whispered in my ear.

I’d taken a single step toward escape when Lukas crashed into me.

I fell beneath his weight, slamming my skull against the wall just before I hit the ground, smacking my face on the floor. The pain ricocheted down my spine, my breath squeezed beneath the vise of his weight. The knife jumped out of my hand and skittered away. I scrabbled to get my hands and knees under me, shoving at Lukas, trying to free myself.

“Lukas!”

He moaned and rolled off me. Blood trailed after him. The back of my shirt was wet.

I gave up trying to stand and crouched over him. Blood—so much blood—poured from a hole in his shoulder.

“Get out of here,” he gasped through clenched teeth.

I glanced down the corridor. Whoever had fired the shot had ducked out of sight.

“Work with me,” I told him. I wedged my shoulder under Lukas’s until his back lifted off the floor. Then I stood and gripped him by his wrists, bracing my back against the wall as I hauled him up.

“Run,” Lukas said. “I’ve got your back.”

I clutched his arm, intending to drag him with me if I had to.

A familiar voice made me freeze.

“Turn around, Miss Brenner,” said Charlie Han. “Mr. Pichler.”

Lukas braced his right wrist with his left, his right arm shaking as he tried to raise his gun.

“No!” I cried, knowing he couldn’t fire in time. “We surrender!”

But Lukas turned.

Han’s shot caught Lukas in the chest, knocking him back. His head struck the lockers, jerking him sideways as he fell, the pistol flying into the air and landing somewhere with a clatter.

He rolled onto his back, his eyes meeting mine. I dropped to my knees next to him, looking for something to stanch the bleeding from this new, more terrible, violation.

“Matthew,” he said, his voice barely audible, his hands scrabbling the floor around him for the pistol. “He asked about Xiao’s disappearance. A debt he was owed. Found out tonight.”

Han’s sister? “What about her? Lukas! Hang on. Don’t leave me.”

Lukas’s skin had turned a sickly white, his breathing a labored gurgle. The tears I’d shed for George became wrenching sobs. “Lukas!”

His eyes were dark with pain; blood coated his teeth. “Xiao ... she’s ...” He gasped. “Don’t let them win.”

A man in tactical gear hauled me up and away.

“Lukas!”

Charlie Han leaned over and fired a second time, hitting Lukas between the eyes.

Dai Shujun and another of Han’s men—also built like a slab of rock—dragged me up the stairs to the main deck.

Han and his team had taken over the lounge of George’s stateroom. Ten men were crowded into the space. They’d tossed aside sofa cushions and books, resting their booted feet on once-pristine ottomans. The hidden door next to Han’s bed was open, the dragon mosaic destroyed. The men had raided the wet bar, toasting each other with rousing cheers for their success at having taken over the boat. Maybe they didn’t yet know George and his family were gone. One man had broken the frame holding a scroll from China’s Song dynasty, and as I watched, he rolled the ancient artifact into a tight cylinder. He stuffed the scroll inside a pocket.

I felt a faint smile. The scroll was a fake.

Han barked an order, and the men fell silent. Now someone I’d overlooked when I first entered the room came into view. The first officer—the spy for the People’s Liberation Army. He watched me with a flat expression.

A single gunshot rang out from the aft part of the ship, then nothing; the only sounds were the quieting waves and the patter of rain.

Han took a seat at the table where George had laid out the paintings he’d made of marine animals. He set the gun on the table in front of him.

I remained standing, bracketed by Dai Shujun and my other escort.

Han removed his spectacles, wiped them on his shirt, replaced them. He sighed. “Miss Brenner, you seem to be an ongoing presence in my life. And an irritating one. Where has George taken his family?”

“What family?” I asked.

Dai Shujun drove his elbow into my stomach. I cried out and folded over as pain wrapped around me like a shroud; the other man’s grip kept me from falling.

Had Cass’s last moments been like this?

“You are quite alone,” Han said. “No one is coming to your rescue. Everyone on this boat is either dead or confined or working for me. Where has George taken his family?”

“What family?” I said again.

Dai swung his fist into my abdomen in the exact place as the first blow. The pain ran over me in a swarm. I sagged in the second man’s grip.

“They never boarded,” I gasped. “Too afraid.”

I squinted up at Han. He shook his head as if I were a bad pupil.

“Again,” he said.

The fist landed. I felt as if my insides had exploded. Pain burrowed deep into my organs and bones.

Dai used my hair to pull me upright.

“Where is the family?” Han asked.

I shook my head. If I lost everything else, I wouldn’t lose this: George and his family had escaped.

After the fourth blow, they let me fall to the floor. I curled into a fetal position, rocking in agony.

“Bring the girl,” Han said to someone I couldn’t see.

I listened to footsteps as a man left the room. My heart plunged into my brutalized stomach. What if they’d found George’s family after all?

Sounds wafted around me. Bottles clanking, liquid pouring. Men laughing. I laced my hands over my stomach. At last, the man returned with a shuffling figure whom he pushed to the center of the room. Someone fell to the floor next to me and lay still.

I dragged myself to my hands and knees, struggling to see through the waterfall of my hair. I shook my head until my vision cleared.

My breath left me.

Dirty, her hair shorn, wearing a too-big jumpsuit. Even so, I would have recognized her anywhere.

Cass.

A wave of astonishment and relief and joy roared through me, where before there had been only pain. I tried to say her name and managed a grunt.

Finally, “Cass,” I groaned.

She turned her head. Her lips crooked up, and she reached for me. “Nadia.”

Dai Shujun let out a stream of furious Chinese at Han. I wondered whether he’d known that Cass was alive.

Han waved him off. “Get them up,” he snapped.

The room swam as hands pulled me to my feet. Cass swayed nearby. Our eyes met. The pain in my stomach rose until it squeezed my lungs. Would I come so close to having her back, only for her to be taken a second time?

But she lifted her chin and smiled at me through cracked lips. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“The drowning game,” I whispered.

“I never thought the game would be this hard.”

The door opened and a man rushed in. He leaned down and spoke quietly to Han. Han stood, uttered a few words, and snapped his fingers.

Most of the men grabbed weapons and hurried from the room. Only five remained: Han, Dai Shujun and my other gorilla-size escort, and the man who’d brought in Cass.

And the first officer.

“Trouble, Han?” Cass asked.

He didn’t answer. He picked up the pistol and walked around the table. He placed the barrel of the gun against her temple.

I screamed, thrashing against the men who held me. Dai struck me in the face. My cheek burst into flames; my teeth bit into my lips. The shock of the pain silenced me.

“And now,” Han said, “perhaps you are sufficiently motivated. I know the family escaped. Where did they go?”

I heard Lukas’s words in my mind. Matthew. And Xiao. I didn’t know what Lukas had learned from Matthew, but I found my voice.

“I despise you, Charlie Han. I despise everything you stand for. But I’m sorry about Xiao. You loved her, and George’s father sent her away. It was wrong.”

Han’s expression went suddenly blank.

He glanced toward the first officer, then back at me.

“What did you say?” He spat the words out between gritted teeth.

“I can help you,” I said. “Your sister for our lives.”

“Silence!” Han’s blank expression became an icy mask. “Xiao was a traitor. Whether she lives or not means nothing to me. She betrayed our country.”

In two strides he stood in front of me. Now it was me he held the pistol to.

I heard George’s voice. Your mind is a sanctuary, your heart a still place. I kept my chin high and met Han’s gaze while I eased my hand toward the radio case still clipped to my belt. I was thinking of Prince Sang Nila Utama and his crown—the sacrifice the prince made to bring his people safely to shore.

Come what may, I thought.

“You told me I was foolish not to understand Asian culture,” I rasped, my fingertips unsnapping the radio case as I babbled, stalling for time. “In that one thing, you were right. So I began to educate myself. Confucius said that to put the world in order, we must first set our hearts right. Confucianism places family above the state. Confucius himself resigned rather than serve a bad government. But you, Charlie Han, are crippled. You have set the Chinese Communist Party above your sister. You have tossed her aside. Buried her alive.” My fingers reached steel. I curled my fingers around the hilt of the letter opener. “That is the man you have become while Xiao waited for you to find her.”

“That is a lie!” he cried. “I have looked everywhere for her! I joined MSS to find her. I have never stopped trying to learn what George Mèng’s father did to her. I—”

He broke off and stared at me, shocked that I had goaded him into a confession.

I smiled. “Maybe you aren’t as crippled as I thought.”

I had the letter opener in my hand and a prayer on my lips. For success. For absolution.

A gunshot broke the air, a deafening roar that filled the room. Cass screamed. I braced myself for pain and was astonished to feel nothing more than the pain I already carried. My body shook, my mind spun. Was this cold confusion what it was like to die?

Charlie Han crashed to the floor, followed an instant later by another roar that toppled Dai, the proverbial oak in a strong wind.

In rapid succession, the first officer shot the other two men in the room, dropping them where they stood. My ears rang. The very air seemed to have compressed. Cass stumbled to me, and I pulled her into my embrace, feeling how thin her body was, catching the faintest, impossible trace of her perfume. I leaned back to look at her again, to make sure she was real.

“Nadia,” she mouthed. She pulled me close and, together, we looked down at Han.

He’d fallen onto his back, legs bent, blood turning his gray shirt dark. His glasses lay smashed nearby, and once again I thought how vulnerable he seemed without the lenses. He stared at the ceiling with a look of bewilderment, his hands spasming, a gurgle in his throat.

His eyes touched mine, and I watched as the light ebbed from them, leaving behind only cold onyx. The man who had terrorized my days and haunted my nights was nothing but a corpse.

He seemed smaller in death than he had in life.

I lifted my head. The first officer still had his gun.

Cass and I held each other.

“I love you,” I said, waiting for the terrible roar to sound again. What else was there to say when you were about to die?

“See you on the other side,” she answered.

“I’m not going to kill you,” the first officer snapped in crisp English.

He toed Han’s body, then took the chair where Han had been sitting. He waved to someone in the next room of the suite, and a man came in, half dragging, half carrying another.

Connor McGrath.

The man lowered Connor onto a sofa, then left. The CIA man still had Lukas’s now blood-soaked shirt pressed to his biceps, wincing as he looked around the room and then at me. He didn’t look surprised to see the dead men, but he didn’t look happy, either. When his gaze landed on Cass, though, the darkness in his eyes gave way to astonishment and then joy.

“Welcome back from the dead,” he said weakly.

“Happy to be here,” she answered.

I squeezed her cold fingers. Sounds from outside filtered in—the cries of men, people running. Voices in English and Filipino.

“What’s going on?” I asked Connor.

The first officer answered. “A mess, that’s what.”

“He’s taken over Han’s operation,” Connor said.

“No,” said the first officer. “I am burying Han’s operation.”

I glanced between the two men. “I don’t understand.”

The officer rubbed his chin. “I like you. You have courage and smarts.” He glanced at his watch. “We have a few minutes while my men and the Philippine Coast Guard mop up. I will tell you some of the story so that you hear it from me and not the Americans, who get everything wrong.”

I looked at Connor’s ashen face. “He needs medical attention.”

“He’ll get it soon enough. Don’t worry, I won’t let him die. I need him.”

“Need him for what?”

The officer sighed. “I have a daughter your age. She, too, is very curious. It is a problem.”

I glanced at Connor, who nodded. Cass and I took the chairs across from the first officer, my fingers still tight around hers. It was impossible not to keep looking at her.

He folded his hands on the table. “You may call me General Lin, although that is not my name. I am a senior official with the Second Department. Are you familiar with it?”

Cass and I both nodded.

“Good. I am here to make a little problem disappear—Han Chenglong, whom you know as Charlie Han.”

I remembered what Connor had told me about the feud between the Guóānbù and the Second Department. And his reassurances that the Second Department would not be a problem for us.

A picture slowly began to form, like a yacht taking shape as it emerges from the fog.

“Go on,” I said.

“Some of us,” Lin said, “work for the glory of China. Others work for themselves. Han was one of the latter, and as a Guóānbù officer, he was a problem for the Second Department. Bright but too ambitious. And too determined to use the Second Department as a ladder on his way up. We have been working to find a way to remove him. When we realized he’d set up a false-front business that allowed MSS to operate in Manila and that he was going after Mr. Mèng, we saw an opportunity. The perfect storm, as you Americans say. Han placed himself in the wrong place while conducting the wrong business. The Filipinos are not fond of having Chinese intelligence working in their territory. As it turns out, the US isn’t any happier. I sent, how do you say, a little bird to sing in the ears of the right people. Better for everyone if the MSS falls on its face, to use another American saying. Right, Mr. McGrath? A shared goal.”

“Right,” Connor answered. I saw that the cushion behind him was splotched with red. “What General Lin is reluctant to mention is that he’s a great believer in détente.”

“You embarrass me. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Lin pulled out a pack of Furongwang cigarettes and tapped out a smoke.

“Or, to paraphrase Sun Tzu,” Connor said, “‘in the midst of difficulty, there is also opportunity.’”

Lin nodded his agreement. “Precisely. Han tried to trap us by making sure we were the ones who inspected Red Dragon in Shanghai without finding the family. That way, when he exposed George’s family on the boat, we would look like fools. I don’t like being made to look the fool.” He took a deep drag and frowned. “Yet Han was the misguided one, sitting in front of Mèng’s home in Lijiang, day after day, watching for the family. They’re dead, by the way.”

I let out a small cry, and Lin laughed. “Not literally dead. It was all arranged by your friend there.” He nodded toward Connor. “Every now and then, the CIA does good work. A house fire. Charred bones. DNA. The works. But the bones are from victims of a car accident who died a year ago. The well-paid coroner in Lijiang will announce that a woman and two children died in the fire, and DNA indicates it was the Mèng family.”

“You knew about the fire?” I asked Connor.

He nodded. He was growing paler. “Good detective work on the part of the Second Department.”

“We are very good, yes. With the wife and children declared dead, there remained only George. But as your Mr. McGrath had already planned, poor George is theoretically dead, his submersible crushed. At least he died doing what he loved. And we have wiped away that loss of face.”

“What loss of face?”

“You are too American. No pride. Would I have arrested George and his family if I’d found them on the boat in Shanghai? Of course. I would have had no choice, no matter the promise I’d made to George’s father, who is a great friend of mine. And I would have taken his AI for the glory of the Second Department. But once they escaped, they became an embarrassment. To us. To the party. Better they die than escape. And better Red Dragon fall into the Filipinos’ hands than the Guóānbù take her back to China as a prize.” He looked around the room as if measuring what he was giving up.

“And the AI?”

He waved a hand. “Maybe it is not so bad it leaves China. We don’t need it. We have excellent work coming out of our military university.”

“I thought the Chinese preferred to steal their technology,” I said.

“We’re good at that, too. But we have our own talent. Much of it, admittedly, grown inside American businesses. But we are catching up.”

“China’s National University of Defense Technology,” Connor clarified.

Then General Lin looked at me and winked. A wink that said everything he wouldn’t. Maybe the Second Department hadn’t let RenAI escape with George. Maybe they’d made a copy before George left China.

I closed my eyes for the briefest of moments. Focus on what matters now. They’re safe. George and his family are safe.

Lin pulled out a phone, spoke briefly, then dropped the phone back in his pocket. “Now we should go.”

“Wait,” I said. “What about Han’s sister? Is she alive?”

“Sentimental American. She is. I believe your Mr. Hoffman is making arrangements for her to be returned to her parents after his employee, Lukas Pichler, tipped him off that Red Dragon might run into trouble. Hoffman hoped that securing Xiao’s release would work as a bargaining chip to get you and everyone else off this boat.” Lin grunted. “The power of American businessmen, even behind the thick walls of the Great Hall of the People. But it is not necessary. We won’t detain you. The Second Department wishes to close this investigation and move on.” The general stabbed out his cigarette on the table and stood. “Sad, isn’t it, that Charlie Han died before he could be reunited with his sister? And while chasing a man who will soon be declared dead by our illustrious party. Now I need to get everyone from China off this boat before the Filipinos claim it as their own.”

Outside, the decks swarmed with members of the Philippine Coast Guard. The thirteen crew who’d been in the citadel now stood on the main deck. I saw no sign of Han’s Guóānbù agents. The chief stewardess and the purser were also missing. I imagined their fate hadn’t been good. Connor’s team was present, except for Dale Peterson, who had been shot by the Guóānbù.

The general turned to Connor. “Your men and the crew will be evacuated by the Philippine Coast Guard, who responded to a distress signal.” He gave a small bow. “It was a pleasure working with you.”

Connor bowed in return. “As always, General.”

“You see,” the general said to me. “There is always a choice. Mr. McGrath here could have chosen another bullet over cooperation. I, for one, am glad he made the decision he did. Maybe in the future he and I will have the chance to work together again for the good of both our countries.”

Connor dug up a grin. “Maybe next time don’t shoot me.”

Lin laughed. “Call it friendly fire.”

The general and his assistant moved away. Captain Peng sounded the alarm to abandon ship: six brief blasts and one prolonged blast on the horn.

Cass and I lowered McGrath onto a chair and turned to face each other.

“I knew you’d come,” she said. “My Mazu—the goddess who saves those lost at sea.”

Relief burbled through me, accompanied by terror that—if I hadn’t changed my mind about working with Connor—Cass might have died in China. “I didn’t come for you, though. I didn’t know you were alive.” I felt a deep, if illogical, shame. “I abandoned you.”

Cass’s face was lined with sadness. “Nadia, you took up my work. It’s the same thing. You saved George and Li-Mei and their children. That’s how you came for me. The rest is just details.”

I wasn’t sure whether I was laughing or sobbing. I studied her, the shorn hair, her thinness. There were burns on her arms.

“No one was supposed to die that night,” she said. “Han smuggled me out. The sex worker was supposed to take my place on the cameras, making it look as if I’d safely departed the hotel. I don’t know what happened between Dai Shujun and the woman, but she chose to leap to her death rather than face whatever he intended.”

“Why didn’t Han”—my voice hitched—“why didn’t he kill you when there was no reason to pretend you were alive?”

Cass looked toward the bustling chaos of men shouting, gathering crew members, searching for strays. A man wearing a jacket with a red cross on it was treating Connor’s injury.

Cass said, “He never gave up on the idea that I would tell him something useful. About the boat. About George. But the truth, I think, was more than that. He couldn’t bring himself to kill me because, in some strange way, that would mean giving up on his sister. He never stopped looking for her.”

I thought of Emily. “We’re cogs in a machine built by ambitious men.”

“That’s true,” Cass said. She studied my face, smoothed back my hair. “But it’s not bad being a mere cog. After all, a single cog can gum up the entire works.”

My laughter and tears joined hers as I took her in my arms and held tight.