Chapter 48 #2
Grant, built broader than the rest, stepped in from the kitchen.
He must have arrived while she and Ethan slept.
He gave her a brief side hug. “I would never have put you in danger, but when you called out across the meadow, they all shifted to try to find you, which helped us locate them. That’s why we were able to take them out. ”
“And you might have saved his life.” Daniel turned to Ethan. “Not sure how much more your body could’ve taken.”
Grant’s look turned stern. “But next time, do what you’re told.”
“Why do you all keep saying ‘next time’?” She turned in the circle of them. “There will not be another time.”
The men laughed, though she didn’t understand what was funny.
“They get into more trouble than normal people,” Leila told her.
“Extraordinary.” Michael nodded as if that settled it. “Like I said.”
“You keep telling yourself that.” Daniel nodded toward the living room. “Let’s sit before Ethan collapses.”
“I’m fine.” But he settled on the sofa again, and Mei Lin perched beside him while the rest found seats on armchairs and dining room chairs they pulled in from the other room.
Sam and Eliza brought in drinks and more snacks, then joined the circle.
Michael had chosen the loveseat adjacent to the couch, Leila tucked beside him. He leaned forward. “I figured you’d want to know what we’ve learned.”
“Very much.” Mei Lin took Ethan’s hand, bracing herself.
“Gavin already told me how they found us,” Ethan said. “Real estate records.”
Michael nodded. “Gavin’s name is on your birth certificate. Once Lu’s people realized you’d had help getting out of China, they went looking for someone in your past who could give it. Gavin fit.”
“And the people Dr. Lu stole from their families and sold?” Mei Lin held herself very still, almost afraid to hear the answer. “Will they be found?”
“Gavin and Callan are working on that. One of Lu’s men gave us a lot—names, routes, the people moving cargo across the southern border.” Michael’s lip curled on the word cargo. “If it holds up, we should be able to bring the whole thing down. If not, it’s a start.”
A start. It was more than she’d believed she’d ever have.
“Were many men killed?” she asked.
“None of the good guys, thank God. Lu Feng is dead, of course.” Michael’s gaze flicked to Ethan. “You took care of him for us.”
Ethan flinched, but whatever emotion he felt didn’t show on his face.
Mei Lin had been told at the hospital that Ethan had killed the man who’d imprisoned her and then chased her across continents. She knew it, but it was still hard to fathom. She couldn’t imagine how Ethan felt.
“Five of Lu’s men died.” Michael didn’t seem overly concerned. “Two were among the guys who chased Asher. He shot one. The other ran into a tree and would’ve lived if any of his comrades had bothered to help him. They left him with a broken leg and a serious concussion. He froze to death.”
Her hand rose to her mouth. “That is terrible.”
Michael shrugged. “Sometimes, we get what we deserve. After Lu fired and Ethan got in the way, they panicked. We were already in place. Grant took the one aiming at you and Summer. I took the one who’d flanked you and spotted Alyssa.
Lu brought twenty guys into the woods. They’re lucky they only lost five. ”
Twenty. She gripped Ethan’s hand and tried not to do the math—what twenty evil men could have done to these good people.
“I am so sorry,” she said. “I dragged all of you into this.”
“Don’t do that, sweetheart.” Ethan’s thumb moved over her knuckles. “We’ve been over this.”
“I didn’t feel dragged.” Derrick leaned forward to look at Daniel. “Did you feel dragged?”
“You’re not big enough to drag any of us.” Daniel considered the twins. “Most of us, anyway.”
“And human trafficking.” Grant said it as though the matter required no further argument. “Taking down the kind of trash who buy and sell human beings? That isn’t a sacrifice. It’s a good day.”
The agreement went around the circle, every one of them certain. They’d bled and frozen and risked death for people they’d never met—not just Ethan and Mei Lin, but women whose names they didn’t know, who could never thank them, who could offer them nothing in return.
Not one of these men counted the cost.
She had counted her whole life. She’d done the sums her grandmother taught her at four years old and come up short every time.
It was the same arithmetic Lu Feng worked in his ledgers—a human being reduced to a figure, weighed and valued and found wanting.
She had done to herself exactly what he had done to those women.
But a person was not a sum. These men knew it. They’d staked their lives on it that night.
Mei Lin was not more trouble than she was worth. She never had been. She never could be.
āyí had whispered to her on the nights in prison when Mei Lin couldn’t lift her head from the mattress. The Lord sees you. The Lord knows you. The Lord loves you. Mei Lin had repeated the words in her head for years without believing them.
She believed them now.
She tightened her hand around Ethan’s and didn’t apologize for needing to hold on.
“By the way.” Michael turned to her. “Your friend, the one Callan talked to?”
“ài Le?”
“Right. She’s agreed to stay in the country until this is sorted out. Then she’s going home. Her husband and her children…” He almost smiled. “I guess they were pretty glad to hear from her.”
She couldn’t help the tears that filled her eyes and dripped down her cheeks. Thank You. Thank You, Father. ài Le’s family would get her back. She didn’t want to think about what the sweet woman had gone through in the last six years, but now she would be going home.
“That is such good news.” She pressed her fingers to her lips.
The cousins didn’t stay long. Each of them promised to return the next day for the gathering Eliza and Sam would host. When they had gone and the great room held only the four of them and the squeak of Levi jumping on the bed again, Mei Lin turned the week over in her mind.
These people hadn’t known Ethan existed a few months ago, but they’d gone out of their way, spent hours and offered everything—down to risking their lives—to save him, and her.
It was more than she could fathom. She would never be grateful enough.