In the early morning, the lights were off in the ward, the beds were obscured by the dense curtains, and only the instruments flickered in the dim light. The liquid in the infusion bottle dripped down drop by drop, and the heartbeat monitor ticked regularly. Suddenly there was a barely audible moan from inside the curtain.
Jiang Ting immediately opened his eyes, rolled over, and got out of bed.
Sure enough, Yan Xie's anaesthetic had worn off, and the first wave of pain came quietly in the middle of the night while he was half awake, causing him to toss and turn in a trance. The beads of sweat slid down along the sideburns to the pillow, and he kept scratching at the crumpled sheets.
Jiang Ting immediately rang the bell. The chief specialist was on duty tonight in order to take care of Yan Xie. He personally brought the nurse over to check his physical condition, and nodded, "Heartbeat, blood pressure, and the general condition are all good, and postoperative pain is also normal. It's all because this young man is too strong. The family must watch him carefully, and not let him roll over and press the wound."
Jiang Ting saw that Yan Xie's brows were furrowed tightly, his face and neck were soaked with sweat, and he couldn't stop moaning. So he asked, "Can you give him a painkiller?"
Before the director could speak, the newly arrived nurse suddenly said, "Are the policemen in the provincial capital still afraid of pain?"
Jiang Ting said, "Police officers are also human beings. How can they not be afraid of pain?"
The director glared at the nurse, and immediately urged her to go down to get the painkiller, then he gave Yan Xie a shot himself. After a while, Yan Xie calmed down, and the hand that was holding the sheet loosened; he even let out a uniform and calm breathing sound.
"The first night after the operation will always be difficult. Family members should pay attention to the situation at any time. If you have any questions, please ring the bell immediately…" The director explained several precautions in detail and then left the ward with the nurse.
Jiang Ting returned to the hospital bed, but his sleepiness completely disappeared.
Yan Xie's situation seemed to be much more stable, and his face was not as yellow and blue as before, but the cold sweat from the pain had not completely faded away. Jiang Ting stared at it for a while, then he suddenly remembered something, got up and twisted a hot towel. He carefully wiped off the sweat on his forehead, cheeks, and neck.
But just as the towel touched the neck, Jiang Ting stopped moving——his hand was suddenly caught by Yan Xie.
"….." Yan Xie opened his eyes, his vision was still very blurry, and his lips moved a few times: "…Jiang…"
"Shh," Jiang Ting wanted to pull out his hand, "It's late, don't talk."
But when he tried to pull his hand, he couldn't break free. Yan Xie stared at Jiang Ting in front of him, his eyes gradually became brighter, and he seemed to be soberer than before the painkiller was injected: "Why are you…here…"
Jiang Ting didn't answer the question, he just pulled back his hand: "Sleep for a while, don't you feel pain?"
"You…are you here to take care of me?"
In the middle of the night, the ward was very quiet, and Jiang Ting didn't make a sound.
A faint smile appeared in Yan Xie's eyes, and he said, "But I'm in so much pain that I can't sleep."
Jiang Ting said in his heart: Really, the painkiller shot just now probably hit the dog.
"Give me your hand… it won't hurt if you give it to me."
The nurse's gentle footsteps can be heard from the far side of the corridor, and the pale light passed through the crack of the door, creating a vague and warm shadow in the small space. Jiang Ting wanted to stand up and leave, but as soon as his feet exerted force, he was stopped by Yan Xie's gesture of getting up.
The iron reels of the medicine cart outside the door came and went, but no one noticed this little secret stalemate.
Jiang Ting finally let out a soft breath. There was a helplessness in the sound that even he didn't notice. He threw the towel on the bedside table and held Yan Xie's hand, which was immediately clenched tightly by Yan Xie against his chest.
"Do you feel this heart beating?" Yan Xie asked in a low voice in the darkness.
Jiang Ting "Hmm" and said: "What?"
"It's beating so fast now."
Jiang Ting's expression changed slightly, but he didn't speak. Every beat in the chest cavity under the palm of the hand was extraordinarily hot and clear. They remained in this position, and after a long time, Yan Xie's breathing finally slowed down again.
He fell asleep.
Jiang Ting didn't move and just sat there quietly.
...…
A week later.
Public telephone booth on the streets of Jiangyang County.
"I know, I'm fine, I was discharged from the hospital early and stayed at the guest house… Find someone to pick me up, you didn't have to be here…"
On the other end of the phone, Yang Mei's voice was like ten sharp fingernails were scratching on the small iron plate: "How can I not go? How can I not go?! Can that dead ghost surname Yan drive? Why? How did the car get into the river? Did you catch the culprit? Why didn't you tell me anything these days? Where do you live? Who cooks for you? Xiao Liu!! Xiao Liu drove us to Jiangyang, and we're going now——!!"
Jiang Ting tried to interrupt several times but couldn't get in. There was an earth-shattering explosion like firecrackers on the other side of the receiver, so he had to hang up.
In the morning, Jiang Ting left the hospital and went to buy some Chinese herbal medicines, and ordered a live fish at the restaurant next to the hospital. He asked the boss to kill it and boil fish soup together with the herbs and not to put any MSG seasonings. The boiled soup was white, thick and without a trace of fishy smell, ready to bring back to Yan Xie to supplement nutrition.
——Although Yan Xie didn't necessarily need any nutritional supplements, after a few days in the hospital, all the doctors and nurses agreed that the person who needed more bed rest should be Jiang Ting, no matter how you looked at it.
Jiang Ting held a heat preservation box in his left hand and a cup of hot soy milk in his right hand. As soon as he entered the hospital gate, he heard a familiar loud voice behind him: "Hey, Consultant Lu!"
As soon as he turned back, he saw Ma Xiang who caught up to him.
"What are you doing here, making soup? Hey, let me tell you, Brother Yan doesn't need this at all. He is as strong as a male dog. On the contrary, it's you who almost drowned in the river and frightened us. You really need to make up for it quickly."
Jiang Ting ignored this, and handed over the heat preservation box to Ma Xiang to carry: "Why did you come here?"
"Jiangyang County Police Station has screened all suspicious vehicles during the time of the crime, and the results have already been released. Deputy Director Wei said that we will leave for Jianning in the afternoon. So, I came here to report to Brother Yan before I leave."
Jiang Ting nodded silently and did not ask about the screening results.
Although Ma Xiang is carefree, he is actually rough and fine. This level of sensitive information will not be casually told to Consultant Lu without Yan Xie's approval. Both of them are well aware of this.
"How is the situation of the two hostages?" Jiang Ting asked after drinking a mouthful of soy milk.
Ma Xiang said: "Hey, I was about to say this. Bu Wei woke up once in the morning and fainted again. The doctor said that the mental stimulation might be too much, and it was uncertain when she would be able to answer the police questioning. Shen Xiaoqi's situation is more dangerous. He may have fallen on his head and is still in the ICU, and it is said that the doctor can't estimate when he will wake up."
"Is there any danger of becoming vegetative?"
"It's hard to say, I think there's a possibility." Ma Xiang sighed: "There is another thing that is particularly bad — Director Lu and the Unit Deputy Qin personally led people to block the entrances and exits of Tianzong Mountain, but they couldn't find any trace of the kidnapper after two days of searching, and now the whole city bureau is going crazy, hey."
Jiang Ting frowned and slowly paced through the parking lot in front of the hospital building.
His legs are long and his steps are not small, but his pace is very steady and slow. Ma Xiang had to slow down a little to follow him. After a while, he heard Jiang Ting ponder: "The key point of this case is Shen Xiaoqi. Who was the kidnapper? How did he appear in Tianzong Mountain that day, and whether he tried to contact the two children in any way before, including tracking, monitoring, social software chatting and private messages, etc? To only rely on Bu Wei for all the information is far from enough, we still need Shen Xiaoqi if we want to get more clues."
Ma Xiang nodded thoughtfully and suddenly remembered something: "By the way, did you know that Lao Gao picked up a mineral water bottle at the scene?"
"When your brother Yan answered the phone yesterday, I listened to it, but I didn't really hear it. Did you get the test result?"
"We got the results, but…the fingerprints on the bottle and the DNA on the mouth of the bottle point to the same point." Ma Xiang was obviously also very confused, and said, "Only Shen Xiaoqi has touched this water bottle."
Jiang Ting stopped abruptly as if he suddenly thought of something, his eyes were slightly suspicious.
At this time, they had already reached the door of the inpatient department building, and the two of them looked at each other without saying a word. It took several seconds for Jiang Ting to react. After drinking the last sip of soy milk, he raised the empty plastic cup: "Wait for me, let's go up and talk." Then he turned to walk toward the trash can in the distance.
At noon visiting time, the number of people in the inpatient department increased. Standing on the steps in front of the building, Ma Xiang took a few steps to the side with a heat preservation box. After several waves of doctors and the family members had passed, he looked up and saw Jiang Ting in the distance throwing the soy milk cup into the trash can. Then he turned around and walked toward this side.
"Xiao Ma!" a voice suddenly came from behind.
Ma Xiang looked back, and at the same time, Jiang Ting also looked there.
Suddenly, Jiang stopped for a moment.
Deputy Director Wei in plain clothes was carrying fruit and was walking toward the hospital gate. As he climbed the steps, he unexpectedly pointed at Ma Xiang: "I said, why couldn't I find you at noon, so it turned out that you came to see Yan Xie as well. If I knew I would take a free ride with you —— why are you standing at the gate?"
A few meters away, Jiang Ting took back half a step, dodged, and hid in a large group of people who happened to pass by.
Ma Xiang: "Ah, I'm…"
"Waiting for someone?" Deputy Director Wei asked casually.
Out of the corner of his eyes, Ma Xiang glanced at the place where Jiang Ting was standing just now, but the person was already gone.
"—Oh, no," Ma Xiang paused slightly, then turned back to Deputy Bureau Wei: "I came alone, and when I was just hesitating whether to go back and buy more fruit, I happened to meet you."
As he said that, he lifted the heat preservation box on its handle: "Fortunately, I brought chicken soup, otherwise what are the bananas and apples sold in front of the hospital compared to your imported fruit basket. Hey, that would be a loss!"
Director Wei couldn't help laughing: "Look at that monkey-like manner, is your Unit deputy Yan still short of these things? Let's go up."
Deputy Bureau Wei carried the fruit basket into the gate unhurriedly, Ma Xiang turned around for a moment, covertly looking not far away, and met with Jiang Ting's line of sight behind the crowd.
Jiang Ting waved his hand to signal him to go quickly and silently said two words: Thank you.
Ma Xiang nodded, followed Deputy Director Wei and left in a hurry.
...…..
Yan Xie leaned against the head of the hospital bed unhappily, checking his watch every thirty seconds.
Jiang Ting was discharged from the hospital the next day after the operation, and he would come to see him twice every day after that. It's really just two visits. He came to deliver the meal at the exact time and then left after that. So he didn't know whether to be content and grateful to Captain Jiang for personally washing his hands and delivering the soup, or to point at Jiang Ting's nose and curse the——forget it. What's even more excessive is that today, ten minutes have passed since the usual meal delivery time, and Captain Jiang, who was fished up from the water and just patted his butt as if nothing happened, has yet to show up.
Yan Xie was thinking about whether to go to the nurse's station and ask the nurse to make a phone call when suddenly the door of the ward opened.
"Why did you just come, I've been waiting for a long time—"
Yan Xie's voice was choked, and Deputy Director Wei stood at the door inexplicably: "Huh?"
The two looked at each other, and Ma Xiang stuck his head out from behind chief Wei and kept making gestures of killing the chicken and wiping his neck to Yan Xie.
The ward was quiet for a few seconds, and then Yan Xie saw Deputy Director Wei's face which had been stinking for decades suddenly become flushed. He covered his mouth and he started coughing; struggle, contradiction, hesitation to speak, guilt that could not be concealed, etc. were mixed together. After a long while, he choked out a sentence:
"…It's not that I don't want to come to see you, sigh. It's not like you don't know that I've been busy investigating these days… you child, you're still so spoiled."
Yan Xie: "….."
Ma Xiang: "….."
It was like a thunderbolt slammed down, and Yan Xie's heart became terrified, he subconsciously searched eighteen times in his mind——If he is not mistaken, the last time Wei Yao called him "you child" was probably when he was arrested for a group fight 20 years ago for the first time. After that, it became "you dog X".
Deputy Director Wei probably also felt that his old face was a little awkward, so he quickly put the fruit basket at the bedside, and changed the subject: "How are you recovering, What about your parents?"
Yan Xie was not stunned: "No wonder you brought such a large basket of fruits, it turned out you came to see my parents?"
Deputy Director Wei almost hit him on the head: "If I came to see you, do I really need to carry such expensive fruit? Do you dog X eat fruits? Didn't I need to Bring a bowl of red braised pork for you to be satisfied?"
"Well said!" Ma Xiang applauded.
Captain Jiang didn't come, but these people came to disrupt things. Yan Xie was full of resentment and had nowhere to vent, so he could only say weakly: "Don't think about it, I didn't let anyone inform my parents. What did Ma Xiang bring to eat? Is there any meat? Come on, I'm starving."
"What, nonsense! How can you not tell the family about such a big thing!" As soon as Deputy Director Wei heard this, he became anxious and immediately touched his mobile phone to call the old and beautiful Zeng Cuicui. Unexpectedly, as soon as the address book was opened, the phone was snatched by Yan Xie concisely and quickly, and he stuffed it into the quilt: "Don't do it, don't do it!"
"Are you crazy? If you don't tell your family, how should I explain to your father if something goes wrong?"
"If you tell them, my mother will either force me to resign or buy a bunch of 18th-tier internet celebrities lining up to rape me, believe it or not?!"
Deputy Director Wei: "….."
This is really like what the old and beautiful Zeng Cuicui could do.
Deputy Director Wei gave in: "No matter how big of a deal, you should dedicate yourself to the country, and you won't suffer losses."
Yan Xie hummed, and forced Wei Yao to promise to hide it from his family, and tell them only after he was discharged from the hospital, and returned to Jianning. Then he took out the phone from under the quilt and returned it to Deputy Director Wei——who had a keen sense of smell of the old criminal investigator and judged that the mobile phone was contaminated by Yan Xie's foot odor, so he took the towel to wipe it twice before accepting it.
"Who is taking care of you these days?"
Yan Xie said: "Oh, you are asking about this. There is a classmate named Lu from my police academy in Jiangyang County. He also helped me with the investigation of Li Yuxin this time. After the operation last week, he took care of me for a whole night."
After the city bureau went down to the basic level for help, they gave prior notice to the local police to facilitate the investigation, which was a relatively common thing. Wei Yao didn't care, watching Ma Xiang pour out a bowl of snow-white soup from the heat preserving box and hand it to Yan Xie. He asked casually: "Hey? Isn't this fish soup?"
Yan Xie stirred the soup with a spoon without appetite: "Yeah, so what?"
"Xiao Ma told me just now that it was the chicken soup?"
Yan Xie took a spoon.
"I… I ordered it in the restaurant downstairs," Ma Xiang patted his head: "I remembered it was mixed up, but the fish soup is better and lighter."
Yan Xie immediately understood what happened, the corners of his mouth twisted uncontrollably, and he took a sip of the fish soup: "Yeah! Not bad! The fish soup indeed tastes good!"
Ma Xiang rubbed his head and laughed without saying a word. But Deputy Director Wei really thought that the fish soup was particularly delicious, so he sniffed it while wrinkling his nose in doubt. He smelled it, but there was no oil or salt, and the old man didn't smell any umami.
"What's wrong, Chief Wei?" Yan Xie quickly changed the topic and asked, "You are finally willing to come and see me today. Is it because the search has progressed?"
Deputy Director Wei was shocked by "Finally willing to come and see me", but the old man felt that he was in the wrong and was too embarrassed to despise him. So he only muttered a few words before saying, "Progress, there is indeed progress."
"Uh-huh?"
"When the incident occurred, the truck that caused the accident had its licence plate covered. But Lao Huang took the Criminal Investigation Squadron of the Jiangyang County Police Station to investigate for two days and two nights, and finally found a highly suspicious target truck at the entrance of a national highway near Jiangyang County. The driver's face was photographed. Now the traffic video and security monitoring of the nearby road sections have been transferred to the city bureau, and we are preparing Skynet to lock the escape route of the offending vehicle. The accurate results will be available in at most two or three days."
Jiangyang County is not a remote area, and the national security monitoring system is relatively well established. It is unlikely that such a low-level criminal absconds and escapes the palm of the criminal investigators.
Yan Xie sipped the fishbone: "It's really good, hurry up and catch these grandchildren. There is a good chance that they are with the kidnappers."
"Given that Li Yuxin was silenced, this possibility is indeed very high. But I have an inexplicable doubt."
"What?"
Deputy Director Wei didn't answer and asked, "Do you still remember Fan Zhengyuan?"
Yan Xie was stunned, and then remembered the name.
——Fan Zhengyuan, alias Fan Si, chased and tried to kill Jiang Ting in the hospital and ran away, and then was strangled to death by Ajie and crushed into meat sauce, which was thrillingly spread on the highway.
"Fan Zhengyuan once shot you in the south lane of Sanmao Street in Jianning City, leaving a bullet at the scene. But because there is no rifling, there is no way to trace it, and it was preserved by the technical team as one of the physical evidence in the 502 cases."
Yan Xie blinked and motioned Deputy Director Wei to continue.
"The locally manufactured bullets that several criminals shot at you, including the bullet that pierced through your abdomen, were all left in the river, and they have not been salvaged for the time being due to conditions. So I can only have people send the bullet dug out of Xiao Zhang's arm for composition testing, and it was found that its metal composition and gunpowder residue were exactly the same as the bullet left by Fan Zhengyuan."
Everyone present was an old criminal policeman with an experience of more than ten years or even decades, and Yan Xie understood what Deputy Director Wei meant almost as soon as the voice fell.
His face changed.
"The quality of bullets forged by illegal workshops is very unstable. If the metal and gunpowder components of the two bullets are exactly the same, it can only mean one thing: They are from the same batch of products. That is to say, Fan Zhengyuan, who once attacked you, and these several criminals are likely to have some kind of connection."
Deputy Director Wei paused and looked at Yan Xie with a solemn expression:
"It can also be possible that their real target was not Li Yuxin, but you."