Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Ethan’s shoes pounded the concrete. Mei Lin was half a step ahead, hair flying, her grip on his hand bruising.
The alley dumped them out at a cross street. She glanced both ways and pulled him right.
His phone vibrated against his thigh. He ignored it.
The new street was busier—a knot of pedestrians, a tricycle truck rumbling past, a woman selling steamed buns from a cart. Cameras, two on a light post aiming opposite directions. There were probably more he couldn’t see.
Mei Lin slowed, and they walked, heads down, hands locked.
His phone vibrated again.
She turned down an alley and exited onto another street, this one even busier than the last.
His phone was still vibrating.
Michael, maybe. Or Gavin. Maybe one of them had a way to pull them out of this. He yanked it out of his pocket and answered without looking. “This isn’t a good time.”
“Ethan?” It was a woman’s voice. “It’s Alyssa.”
His brain caught the name of his half sister, the pretty blonde who looked so much like her elegant mother despite the horror on her face when she’d learned who he was. The one with the mad hacking skills.
“You’re being surveilled.”
“We’re aware. We’re running.”
“There’s a clothing store ahead on your right with a green awning. It has a back exit. Don’t ask permission, just run through.”
He saw it and pulled Mei Lin with him. “Going in.”
He pushed between racks of dresses and T-shirts, parkas and sweaters. Two women looked up from a counter running along one side. They said something in Mandarin.
Mei Lin stopped.
“Come on.” He tugged her hand. The back exit was right there, beyond a rack of children’s coats. “Alyssa says—”
“Wait.”
Mei Lin was looking at the women and at something on the wall behind them. She said something low in Mandarin. The older woman answered, just as low.
“Mei Lin.” He kept his voice down. “We need to go.”
She shot him a look. “Wait.”
The older woman came around the counter, jerked her chin, and beckoned them toward the opposite side of the store.
They went past a curtain, down a short hall, and into a windowless storeroom stacked floor-to-ceiling with boxes.
The woman pulled the door shut behind them and turned a key in the lock.
They were trapped in the dark.
Through the phone pressed to his ear, Alyssa was speaking. “…are you doing? You need to hurry. They’re closing in.”
“Hold on.” He silenced the volume. The room was so small that he and Mei Lin were pressed against each other. He leaned down and spoke into her ear. “What’s happening?”
“They’re Christians.” Her voice was a breath. “They’re helping.”
A bell rang at the front of the shop, followed by a man’s voice. Ethan couldn’t understand his words, but he was loud and demanding.
The woman answered, though her voice was softer. She didn’t sound angry or nervous.
The man spoke again, sharper. Then there were the heavy thuds of boots on tile. Hangers clattered to the floor.
Mei Lin grabbed his arm, her fingers biting into his skin.
He didn’t dare move, or breathe.
Lord, please…
Minutes passed as the boots sounded, sometimes closer, sometimes farther away. Then, they receded.
The bell rang again.
The voices in the front of the shop went on for a few more beats, ordinary now, the rhythm of someone giving directions. It was quiet.
A minute passed, maybe two.
Then a key turned in the lock, and the door opened. The older woman held a finger to her lips and drew them out. They padded down the hall, past a tiny galley kitchen to a door at the back.
Ethan raised the volume on the phone again and whispered, “One sec.”
“Go.” Alyssa sounded frustrated. “What are you waiting for? You’re going to miss your…” Her voice trailed.
The older woman was giving Mei Lin a look, shaking her head.
Alyssa came back. “Wait. I see… There’s a guy at the corner. I thought he was a civilian, but I think… Yeah, he’s looking for something. Or someone.”
Both the woman and Mei Lin looked focused, but not frightened. They knew what was going on. Even Alyssa, a half a world away, knew what was going on.
He was the only one who didn’t.
He couldn’t hear his watch ticking, but he felt every second anyway.
The older woman was still as a statue, her hand on the doorknob, head tilted as if she were listening to the air.
And then, two brisk knocks sounded on the other side of the door.
At the same time, Alyssa said, “It’s clear. He moved on.”
The woman opened the door. A younger man stood on the other side, right in front of it.
The woman spoke to Mei Lin, pointing across a narrow side street at a doorway draped with strips of red plastic—another shop, hardware or housewares, he couldn’t tell from this angle.
Mei Lin gave her a quick hug, then grabbed Ethan’s hand. “Let’s go.” They ran to the store.
“What are you doing?” Alyssa asked.
“I don’t know.” He sprinted after his wife. “But Mei Lin does, and these people are helping us.”
Alyssa was quiet as they reached the red strips and stepped into a shop full of buckets and brooms. A man at the back waved them through a curtain into the back of yet another shop—this one smelled like fish—and out a side door.
They stepped into an alley so narrow Ethan could touch both walls with his elbows.
“I lost you,” Alyssa said.
“That’s good, right?” It meant there were no cameras. He doubted many people came this way. It smelled like trash and death. A thin stream made its way down the center. He didn’t want to think about where it came from. “We’re in an alley to the side of the building we just ran into.”
“Hold on.”
He pulled Mei Lin to a stop. “Do you have a plan from here?”
She looked from one end of the alley to the other. “They just said to come out and turn left. I don’t know where that’ll take us.”
“Let’s see what Alyssa says.”
She nodded, and they stood across from each other in the stinky space. He couldn’t speak for her, but standing still went against all his instincts.
“I think I know where you are. You should head to the left down the alley.”
“We did that.”
“Good. There’s a main road. You’ll have to cross it. I’ll tell you when.”
“Gotcha.” They jogged to the end. The alley ended at the lip of a busy street. He pulled up short in the shadow of the buildings behind his wife and waited. “We’re ready.”
A long pause, then, “Cross now,” Alyssa said.
They bolted across the street between a slowing truck and an oncoming scooter and reached another alley, as narrow as the first. They ran to the end, which opened in a neighborhood.
The houses here were surrounded by walls.
They stayed in the shadow of the taller buildings until they found an opening, then ran between two low walls and came out on the edge of a stand of trees.
He slowed and exhaled his relief.
Mei Lin stood beside him, one hand on a pine trunk, the other still wrapped around his.
“Alyssa,” he managed.
“Still here.”
“What now?”
“There’s a footpath.” Her voice was breaking up, the signal thinning. “Looks like a trail. Walk north until you hit it, then follow it east. It cuts through to the town where you’ll meet your contact.”
“How long?”
“It’s a few miles. Michael says not to dilly dally.”
Right. Because that’s what they’d been doing in China—dilly dallying. “We’re on our way. Thank you.”
“Sure.” A pause. Then, “Stay safe. We’re praying.” She ended the call.
He pocketed the phone, and they started up a small incline into the forest. He was happy to put that town behind them.
For a long stretch, the only sound was their breathing and their shoes on the needle-strewn ground. He kept waiting for shouts, but none came.
“What happened in that shop?” he asked after a while. “How did you know they were Christians?”
“I saw a picture on the wall.” She pushed the hair off her face. “A shepherd with a lamb, so I asked.”
“And she said yes, just like that?”
“Of course.” Mei Lin didn’t seem surprised, but Ethan was.
He thought about the cost of admitting to being a Christian in this country. Not to mention the cost of hiding two strangers being hunted by police.
Those strangers had saved them. If not for Mei Lin, they’d have been caught.
If not for Alyssa watching on the other side of the world, he and Mei Lin might still be searching for a way out of the city. Or they’d both be in handcuffs.
At the hospital in Virginia, Ethan was the senior resident in his department, responsible for managing the chaos of the ER. Here, he was a foreigner who didn’t speak the language and couldn’t tell friend from foe.
He liked to believe he was in control. China had torn that fantasy to shreds.
He bent and kissed Mei Lin on the cheek, receiving a surprised look in return.
“Thanks for getting us out of that.”
“Eh, it is, as you Americans say, another day at the office.”
Laughing, he followed his wife deeper into the forest.