A small town in C—.
The barrel of the hidden sniper's gun swept over Lu Jia and Zhou Huaijin, then aimed at the old man Zhou Chao, who had been pushed into the yard. The sniper shot a look at the car full of his accomplices—first shoot the old fart who should already have been dead, then get rid of the ticking time bomb Zhou Huaijin. The rest could be taken care of in batches.
In the yard, Zhou Chao, full of terror, was just yelling something. Lu Jia blankly asked Zhou Huaijin, "What's this fake Western devil yelling about?"
"He's praising you as a bandit," Zhou Huaijin said solemnly.
"Oh, really?" Hearing this, Lu Jia straightened his collar and stood at attention. "I'll get uncomfortable if he keeps praising me like that.—Old Mr. Zhou, if you absolutely won't cooperate, that's all right, although…"
His gaze focused on a small red dot flashing on Zhou Chao's face.
"Down!"
The young person holding Zhou Chao had been prepared. His reaction was extremely quick. He held down the old man's head, pulling him out of the way. Immediately afterward, a revolving bullet brushed the old man's white hair, breaking the window behind him with a whistle. The East Asian housekeeper's screaming formed a duet with Zhou Chao's babbling cries.
"Fuck, not even any advance notice. These people leave the country and suddenly they're running wild!" Lu Jia grabbed Zhou Huaijin with one hand and the East Asian housekeeper with the other and swiftly kicked open the door, charging into Zhou Chao's house.
As he was involuntarily pulled by him, Zhou Huaijin inappropriately remembered a line of lyrics—a chicken in the left hand, a duck in the right hand13.
Just then, there were three honks of a car horn in the back yard. Lu Jia whistled and called out, "Coming!" Laden down, he used Zhou Chao's house as cover, carrying them through. A truck with a container was waiting behind to pick them up. "Lao Lu!"
Lu Jia sighed. "Sorry, a fault in my planning, we'll have to trouble the old fellow to jump the hedge again."
Before he'd finished, Zhou Chao, Zhou Huaijin, and the little housekeeper all cried out at the same time as they were thrown over. After their first sneak attack had failed, the armed ruffians quickly encircled, the concentrated sounds of gunshots constantly drawing closer.
In these circumstances, even Zhou Chao had no choice. He scrambled up into Lu Jia's evil truck.
"Where's Da-Zhao?" Lu Jia brought up the rear, slamming the container door. One dangerous bullet after another hit the metal door, denting part of it. He hollered at someone, "What are you still dodging and hiding for? If you waste any more time, we'll all get shot into sieves!"
Before he'd finished, the sounds of motor vehicle engines came from every direction. A few persistent cars had already gone around Zhou Chao's yard. The truck looked very stocky, and in fact wasn't very nimble. It had no room to advance or retreat.
They had probably realized that Lu Jia had been prepared. For the sake of fighting a quick battle, they became increasingly frenzied. Two small-scale SUVs came up on either side. There were guns on both cars. Amidst the wildly flying bullets, the truck's driver sharply turned the steering wheel. The people in the container instantly felt like they'd been thrown into a washing machine spin cycle, tumbling together into a heap.
Outside were the sounds of guns, of car wheels screeching, of collisions. Adding in the screams and groans inside the container…there was no need to open your eyes; you could imagine a soul-stirring scene of lives hanging by a thread.
The truck had dodged the formidable enemy ahead, but it hadn't dodged the pursing troops behind. The heavily burdened container truck was rear-ended with a huge bang. Zhou Chao was scared into clutching his head and wetting himself.
Zhou Huaijin was also so shaken he wanted to throw up, fingers convulsively clutching at the container's wall, clenching his teeth and bracing his arms, displaying a boxing defense movement he'd picked up from TV; perhaps he was planning to demonstrate blocking bullets bare-handed.
But while his heart rose to his throat, the second strike he anticipated didn't come. After being hit, the truck didn't linger, instead hurrying ahead, breaking out of the encirclement. And the bumping outside actually vanished!
For a good while, the only sounds in the container were rough gasping for breath and Zhou Chao's tearful muttering. No one spoke. Then someone turned on the lights inside the container. Zhou Huaijin wiped the cold sweat from the corners of his forehead, exchanging helpless looks with a crowd of companions who'd just survived disaster.
Lu Jia, however, was extremely composed, not a bit panicked. He looked very calmly at Zhou Huaijin. "You doing all right?"
"Not bad." Zhou Huaijin smiled wryly. "I think I'll be used to it soon… What's going on now?"
"It's safe now, don't worry. They wouldn't dare to keep chasing." Lu Jia carelessly rolled up his sleeves and disdainfully lifted Zhou Chao. "Old uncle, you're in good health, but your psychological quality won't do."
"Wouldn't dare to chase? Why?" The container was sealed off, the circumstances outside unseen. Zhou Huaijin made a connection with the "Da-Zhao" Lu Jia had shouted to, in spite of himself developing some abundant imaginings about the driver. "What were you preparing at the hotel last night? Does the driver have some kind of murder weapon?"
A cannon? A rocket? Or a biological explosive?
In spite of himself, Zhou Huaijin became deeply anxious. "It can't be too flashy. There'll be trouble if you alert the police here."
"Nothing so Westernized," Lu Jia said after a moment of speechlessness, waving a hand at him and modestly saying, "An indigenous method."
Zhou Huaijin displayed a vigorous desire for instruction. "What indigenous method?"
"Have you ever gotten one of those mysterious prank calls when you were at home?" Lu Jia smiled at him. In an atrocious accent, he said, "Your son's life is in my hands."
At the villa where Zhang Donglai and his sister were staying, Zhang Ting was staring emptily out the window. She still felt this was very unreal, and she was faintly uneasy. Every time she remembered that she was thousands of miles from home without anyone to talk to, she couldn't resist feeling distressed.
Just then, urgent footsteps suddenly came from outside the door. Someone knocked on her door twice, then almost rudely opened it before Zhang Ting had answered. Zhang Ting turned to look in astonishment and saw the "steward" who'd accompanied them the whole way, his face green. He asked her, "Miss Zhang, do you know where your brother has gone?"
The curtains were drawn in Zhang Donglai's room, and the door had been shut starting last night. He'd picked up two bottles of wine before going into the room, looking like he was planning to drink himself into a stupor and sleep for twenty-four hours to adjust to the time difference.
Everyone was well aware of Zhang Donglai's character as one of Yan City's famous useless rich kids and knew he insisted on sleeping late. No one dared to go bother him in the morning. The outcome was that no one knew what time he'd slipped away!
The security here was first-rate. It would have been much too difficult to sneak in and snatch as hefty a fellow as Zhang Donglai without anyone being the wiser—he had to have run off himself.
"Where could he have gone? Who would he contact?"
Zhang Donglai was a stranger in a strange place here. Never mind speaking a foreign language; if he could remember the whole alphabet, he was already doing right by the nine years of compulsory education. You couldn't even have asked him to go out and buy a pack of cigarettes; where could he have run off to?
The Zhang siblings had been sent abroad for their own safety, but while the two of them had been perfectly safe amidst the turmoil at home, as soon as they arrived at a "safe" place, it turned out to have been a miscalculation, and one had immediately gone missing!
Zhang Ting was too scared to make a sound.
The "steward" who had been ordered to look after them looked down at his cell phone. Someone had just sent him a photograph. In the photograph, Zhang Donglai was lying down curled up with one of the wine bottles he'd taken yesterday lying next to him. His eyes were closed. It was unclear whether he was asleep or… The text under the photograph provided: "If you keep chasing, we'll have to break him to pieces and return him to you."
The "steward"'s hand was shaking. Zhang Chunling had just the one darling son, practically his reason for living. Before coming here, orders had come down from above to put the two siblings above everything, and if anything happened to them while he was responsible…
"Does Donglai know Zhou Huaijin?"
"Who?" Zhang Ting was somewhat bewildered. After a while, she finally remembered. "I…I haven't heard him say so, he only knew one person surnamed Zhou, the one who died a while ago. And they didn't have many dealings before that. My brother said he was a dumb…a dumb something-or-other."
When Zheng Kaifeng had been responsible for the Zhou Clan's Chinese headquarters, Zhou Huaijin, unlike the thoughtless Zhou Huaixin, wouldn't have shown his face in Zheng Kaifeng's territory without a compelling need. He practically didn't return to the country. And he was an elite who had graduated from a famous school, another species from Zhang Donglai and the other idle sons of the wealthy; they wouldn't piss in the same pot. There was no intersection between them. The "steward" truly couldn't imagine how Zhou had managed to get Zhang Donglai away.
"What's the matter?" Zhang Ting's gaze inadvertently swept over the photograph on his phone, and she grabbed the "steward"'s arm. "Has something happened to my brother? He…he was just fine yesterday, has he been kidnapped?"
The "steward" broke into a cold sweat.
Flustered, Zhang Ting said, "But…but I was right next door, I didn't hear anything moving. And there are so many people here… If I'd known the public security outside the country was so bad, I wouldn't have made a fuss about going abroad. Uncle, what are we going to do now? How much money do they want? I'm going to call Dad."
"No, wait!" The "steward" trembled at her last sentence, quickly squeezing out a smile. "Where are you getting kidnapping from? Your brother may have gone to see a friend. He likes to go out. It's all right, there's a tracker on him, set your mind…"
Another photograph arrived before the "steward" had finished speaking. The "steward" couldn't maintain his forced smile any longer—the tracking devices on Zhang Donglai's shirt button, belt, and useless phone had all been found and arranged together, not a single one missing. The other side sent a message saying: "Do you want to come and find us?"
His expression sinister, the "steward"'s fingers shook. He responded to the message: "What do you want?"
There was a "ding" as a response came rather quickly to the message; an ID photo was sent over. The "steward" froze, then slowly raised his head. Everyone's gazes collected on one of the people inside the villa.
The mysterious message said: "I want to swap for this person."
The "steward" was shaken. This person had been specially transferred by Zhang Chunling, sent out of the country with the siblings to avoid the investigations. He was the one who had had dealings with Su Cheng!
The next mysterious message was a time and and address. "We want him alive. If he isn't delivered at the stipulated time, we'll cut something off the little young master and send it to you. No tricks. The little young master is worth more money than this trash."
Under Zhang Ting's tearful gaze, the "steward" angrily threw the cell phone.
Yan City—
When the investigation team had secretly turned the focus of the investigation to Zhang Chunjiu once more, Luo Wenzhou had returned to the leaderless City Bureau.
"What do you have?" Luo Wenzhou asked Fei Du.
"This." Fei Du got out his cell phone full of odds and ends and showed Luo Wenzhou a status update. A friend called "The Philosopher" had posted two photographs captioned "boring." One was a selfie, and the other was a living room scene, a group of people with a stack of luggage, looking as if they had just finished sorting their things and were planning on a long stay.
"That's Zhang Donglai?" Luo Wenzhou stared, looked the pictures over, and couldn't tell anything from them. "Why is he posting photographs now? What's the matter with this photograph?"
"Of course you don't know them, but Su Cheng definitely does. He not only knows them, they must have been in quite close contact. After all, they conspired to run me over on my way back to the office to be investigated…"
"What!"
"Shh—" Fei Du touched a finger to Luo Wenzhou's lips.
Luo Wenzhou's reaction, however, was to slap him on the back of the head, unfeelingly interrupting Fei Du's playacting.
Fei Du: "…"
With his perfect hair messed up by Luo Wenzhou, the somewhat secretive smile on President Fei's face instantly fractured.
"Fei Du, you bastard, didn't you swear up and down to me that it was all right? And here I fucking thought you were reliable!"
"It was all right." Fei Du silently backed away a couple of steps to guard against more of Luo Wenzhou's pawing. "Su Cheng is timid and overthinks things. As soon as he noticed I was on my guard, he'd know the plot had been exposed, and he'd run off immediately. A good-for-nothing like him has no use but to be silenced. But Su Cheng mysteriously disappeared on the way. Given Zhang Chunling's previous style of handling affairs, he would react at once and arrange a retreat for himself. The people who'd contacted Su Cheng couldn't have been the wanted criminals he's been protecting. I guessed that at a time like this, he wouldn't rashly punish his own trusted aides. The most likely possibility was that he'd send the people who had contacted Su Cheng away, along with his own weak spot to what he thought was a safe place."
Luo Wenzhou grabbed his collar and yanked Fei Du back to his side. "Zhang Donglai has landed his dad in it too fortuitously."
"It's not fortuitous. He trusts me," Fei Du said. For some reason, he wasn't smiling now; nor was he using that tone of showing off to the person he liked. He flatly added, "Zhang Donglai is impatient and can't stand solitude. Suddenly arriving in a strange place, his first reaction would be to complain to someone he thought was trustworthy. I tricked him into leaving. The photograph was taken by someone I had pretend to be a beautiful woman in order to entice him."
"When did you arrange this?"
"On the way back to the office for the investigation," Fei Du said. "Su Cheng was a lure I left on purpose. One of my people was with him, keeping an eye on him."
"Where is Su Cheng now?" Luo Wenzhou said.
From the inside breast pocket of Luo Wenzhou's jacket, Fei Du took the cell phone he'd put there himself and dialed a number. The other party seemed to have been waiting for him. It was picked up as soon as it started ringing.
"Weiwei," Fei Du said in a very soft voice, "it's me."
"President Fei, good heavens, I've been waiting so long for you to call!" The girl's voice came over the speaker, her speech so fast it was a little garbled. "I've been worried to death, is everything going well with Lu-dage and the others? You weren't contacting me… I didn't know what to do!"
Fei Du smiled. "It'll be over soon.—Is your big sister there?"
"She is, wait a moment."
A moment later, a somewhat deep female voice came over the phone. "This is Wei Lan."
Weiwei's biological father had died, and her mother had been an irresponsible drunkard. She'd had a bad reputation locally. When Weiwei had been little, other children had bullied her, calling her a "prostitute's whelp." She had a sister seven years older than her who'd protected her since she was small. She was arrogant and obstinate, dropping out of school young and leaving. She'd wanted to break free of the circumstances, take her little sister away from their hellish home; but circumstances were like a prison. How could it be so easy to break free?
After her big sister left, the young Weiwei's mother remarried, but her life didn't change for the better; instead it was adding frost on top of snow. Her beastly stepfather had given the young girl unforgettable nightmares for the rest of her life, until she'd finally gathered her courage and escaped her frightening "home," helped by Fei Du's fund.
At first, the fund had helped her search for her long-gone big sister as it looked for a way to get justice for her. But when the evidence had been conclusive and the police had come to the door to arrest him, Weiwei's stepfather had run away to avoid punishment. Afterwards, his body had been found in a little pool about three kilometers from his house. He'd been stabbed to death. He was entirely naked, some organs cut off his body, soaking upside down in the sludge.
After dealing with the body, the killer had very calmly left, covered in blood. She'd encountered a witness on the way and had even smiled at them. The murder weapon had been stuck into the body's chest, with the killer's fingerprints openly on it.
Judging from the composite drawing provided by the witness and the fingerprints on the weapon, the local police had focused their suspicion on Weiwei's sister Wei Lan and had issued a local wanted notice.
The fund had spent these years looking for her, but she had disappeared without a trace, becoming one of the kept wanted criminals, until the person Fei Du had set to monitor that idiot Su Cheng had reported that Su Cheng had hired a female assistant of unclear origin.
"I think I can get the old fart off my hands now?" Wei Lan laughed softly.
"Be careful," Fei Du ordered gravely.
Wei Lan snorted carelessly. "Save it. Little baby, I was fucking people up while you were at home drinking milk."
Fei Du took no notice of her insolence. He only asked, "Are you ready?"
She had killed someone, after all. She was an escaped criminal. Revealing herself now, she'd spend the rest of her life kicking her heels in jail.
"There's no need for you to worry about me," Wei Lan said. "Fei Du, remember what you promised me."
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Author's note:
(13) The song is 回娘家—the title refers to a married woman visiting her parents.