Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sunlight had slipped past the iron bars and laid a stripe of gold across the quilt.
Mei Lin was alone on the cot, but she remembered Ethan beside her in the dark, the weight of his arm across her waist, the steady cadence of his breath against her hair.
Thank You for bringing us here. Thank You for my husband.
She sat up, every muscle protesting—her back, her legs, her feet. Even her hands ached at the joints.
Ethan’s pack sat against the wall, unzipped. She crossed the room and pulled out the leggings and oversized top she’d worn yesterday morning. They weren’t fresh from the laundry, but they weren’t that dirty, and she was running out of options.
The uniform pants, still damp from the trek through the woods, hung by the door.
She dug out the pouch containing the evidence, zipped it into her coat pocket, then put the coat on and opened the door, letting in a sigh of cold mountain air.
The world outside bore no resemblance to the one they’d stumbled through the night before.
The mist was gone, and the trees rose high above her, dark green against the bluest sky she’d seen in years.
Through the forest, she spied what she was looking for—a small stone outhouse. She made it there and back without falling, which wouldn’t have been an achievement on a normal day but felt like something to celebrate today.
Where was her husband? Surely, he hadn’t left.
She rounded the cabin to the back, then froze to take in the sight. The land fell away in folds of green, layer upon layer, until the farthest peaks paled to gray.
She inhaled a fresh breath, praising God for her life and her freedom, and for the man sitting on a rough plank bench, his elbows on his knees, his coat zipped to his chin.
He was staring at the vista, his mouth moving silently.
He was either talking to himself or talking to God—maybe a little of both.
He turned as she approached and was on his feet and moving before she could speak, his arms coming around her carefully, as if she were made of paper and might tear.
“Hey, gorgeous.” His voice was warm against her hair.
Gorgeous? She didn’t need a mirror to know he was either lying or losing his eyesight. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her face into his coat.
He backed away to meet her eyes. “How do you feel?”
A flippant fine wouldn’t do, so she paused to consider the question.
The answer surprised her. She’d been awake for less than ten minutes and already needed to rest.
He must’ve read her answer. “Come on.” He took her hand and tugged her toward the cabin. “Let’s get out of the cold, shall we?”
Inside, he closed the door, and she realized… “It’s warm.”
“I found some coal…briquettes or whatever, and got them lit.” He nodded at a stove. “It’s doing the work. I was worried about smoke, but I went outside and looked, and I can’t see it.”
“Honeycomb coal smoke is nearly invisible.” She settled at the table. “The smell will carry, though.”
“It’s awful. The air tastes like metal.”
“Does it?” She considered that and realized he wasn’t wrong. “It feels normal to me, but this is how my parents heat their house.”
Something crossed his features, there and gone before she could name it.
He turned to plug in a hotplate. “I got the electricity working, obviously. When I flipped the switch, the light came on.” He settled a tin pot onto the hot plate. “I thought for sure it would wake you, but you didn’t even twitch.”
“I was tired.”
He aimed a smile over his shoulder. “I noticed.”
“I should make breakfast.” She tried to summon the energy to stand again.
“I’ll do it. And in America, we call the noon meal ‘lunch.’”
“Noon? Surely it’s not.”
He glanced at his watch. “Ten till.”
How many hours had she slept? She had no idea what time they’d arrived the night before.
She settled back on the chair and watched him open a can with a small key, the smell hitting her before she saw the contents—oily and briny, the dace and salted black beans she had not eaten since she was a child, and for good reason.
He poured the fish and beans into a waiting pot. “Smells great.”
“That was sarcasm, yes?”
“I’m not complaining.” He produced a covered pot from the corner. “I made rice while you were sleeping. I wanted it to be ready when you woke up.”
“That was kind.” The words ended on a yawn. She rested her head in her hand and watched as he stirred, then spooned it over the rice and slid a bowl across the table to her before sitting down with his own. She watched him attempt a bite.
He was getting better at chopsticks, but his pinched expression told her this wasn’t a meal he would eat again if he could avoid it.
“It’s not the best China has to offer,” she said.
“It’s great.” He shrugged. “Healthy, anyway. And I’m hungry.”
She ate her own. This had never been her favorite, but if Ethan could do it, she could too. If she didn’t, he would worry, and the last thing she wanted was to cause him more worry.
“You took good care of me last night, Dr. America.”
He looked up, grinning. “I forgot you used to call me that.”
“Thank you.”
“I was happy to do it.” He took another bite and seemed to force himself to swallow.
“What would you eat right now if you could have anything?”
“Steak.” His answer came quickly. “Ribeye, medium rare, with a baked potato the size of my forearm covered in butter, sour cream, sharp cheddar, and bacon.” He seemed to be thinking very hard, then added, “And a beer.”
“I didn’t know you drank alcohol.”
“A single beer never hurt anybody. How about you? What food have you been dreaming of?”
“A cheeseburger, two patties, but the thin kind, not the fat ones, with pickles and lettuce and mayonnaise. And crispy french fries with lots of salt, and ranch dressing on the side to dip.”
“No ketchup.”
She shuddered. “Why ruin my lovely meal?”
He smiled. “That’ll be our first meal when we get home.”
When we get home.
If they got home. She set her chopsticks down. “What are we going to do?”
He sat back. “I need to call Michael. I’m sure he’s been working on a plan. Problem is, there’s no signal up here.”
“We will have to leave, then.” The thought of trudging through the forest again made her eyes sting. She wasn’t ready.
“Not we. Just me.” He crossed to a topographical map pinned near the table, tapping a point marked with a red circle.
“I think this is us, here. There’s a town”—he moved his finger to the east—“right here. Opposite from Fuyin, and closer. I assume they’ll have cell service.
If not, I’ll have to find Wi-Fi somewhere. ”
“How far is it?”
“Just a few miles as the crow flies.”
“We will follow a crow?”
He smiled. “It’s an expression. It means it’s a few miles in a straight line, but I won’t be able to walk in a straight line.”
“Ah, I see.” She studied the lines and realized the crow would fly right off the ridge. “We’ll go down the mountain?”
“I will. I charged my phone, and I’ve got a good route mapped out. I think it’ll take a couple of hours down, a couple of hours back.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“You’re staying here.”
“Ethan—”
“You can barely stand.” He came back to the table and crouched beside her chair. “Mei Lin, you need to rest. Determination will only get you so far.”
She wanted to argue, but she didn’t have the energy—which proved he was right. It wasn’t that she wanted to walk for hours again today. It was that she didn’t want to stay by herself. “I don’t want you to leave me.”
“For a few hours, that’s all.” He stood. “You need to rest. I don’t see another way.”
“What if someone comes?”
“You’ll have to run.”
“What if they surprise me? There’s only one door, and the windows are blocked. I could be trapped.”
“I don’t think anyone’s going to be walking up here. If a ranger comes, he’ll come on a bike or a Polaris or something.”
She had no idea what a Polaris was.
“You’ll hear him coming long before he gets here. Just tidy the place up so it looks like it did when we got here last night. That way, if someone does come, he won’t know we’ve been here. He won’t go looking for you.”
She couldn’t think of a suitable argument.
Ethan was right. He needed to contact Michael, and she needed to rest. And the chances that someone would come here today—when the place had obviously been empty for months—seemed slim.
Of course, the chances that she’d have seen both Nurse Wen and Ying the day before, and that the man who’d heard Ying call her name must’ve worked for Lu Feng, had also been slim.
She didn’t want to take any more chances. She wanted to stay with her husband and go to America and be done with all of this.
“You promise you’ll come back for me?” She hated how small her voice sounded.
He took her hands and held them to his chest. “I promise I’ll come back for you.”
“What if something happens? What if you’re seen, or you get hurt, or—?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
She would argue, except this man had come to one of the biggest, most populated nations in the world with no plan at all, and he’d tracked her to the proper city and then found her when she’d called.
If anyone could figure it out, Ethan could.
“I’ll stay and rest. If someone comes, I’ll go down the trail we came up yesterday and wait for you.”
“That works.” He dropped her hands and reached for their empty bowls.
She caught his wrist. “I’ll clean up. You hurry and go so you can hurry back.”
He seemed to hesitate. Maybe he was reconsidering his plan. “If you’re sure.”
“Yes. Go.” Because she didn’t have a better idea. They needed help getting out of China, which meant he needed to talk to Michael.
Ethan put his coat on, and she walked him to the door. “Lock it behind me.”
She put her hands flat against his chest under his coat, where she could feel the steady drum of his heart beneath the layers of fleece and shirt. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
“You promise?”
“I won’t risk making it back to you.” He kissed her lightly, barely a brush of lips. “See you soon.”
She closed the door behind him, then went to the window and watched until he disappeared into the trees.
He had trusted her yesterday, going to the hospital and then on the mountain in the dark. He’d let her lead him through a country that wanted them both dead because she had asked him to. He’d wrapped her cold feet in his own jacket, then kept her warm all night long.
Now he was walking down a mountain in a country he didn’t know, all alone because she was too weak to walk with him.
Bring him back to me, Father. Please. Bring him back.