“How far?!” Clay shouted into the phone, still pumping his other arm.
“Twenty minutes. Maybe less.”
“Dammit!” Clay hung up and dug in, lowering his head. He bolted ahead with everything he had.
51
Li Na Wei opened her eyes and watched as the dark room sharpened around her bed. Her eyesight was as good as it had ever been, and she glanced around from item to item, scarcely recognizable beyond the soft lime-green glow of her heart rate monitor. The old machine’s rhythmic beep matching itself to the beating of her heart.
It was all she could hear, but something had awakened her. She scanned and listened… waiting. But there was nothing else.
She hadn’t been able to sleep much since finding out about her father. It all felt so surreal. A loneliness she had never felt before wrapped in the disbelief that it was really happening. Yet each time she awoke, no matter how long she had slept, her situation felt increasingly real.
This time, though, something was different. No pain. No chills. This time, it was a feeling. A sick, almost nauseous feeling crawling its way up her chest.
It was the feeling of danger.
She heard it before Dr. Lee, who had just bolted upright in his small cot. The storage room was almost bare, leaving plenty of room for the folding bed, where Lee had slept since Li Na regained consciousness. Now sitting alert on the flimsily-sheeted mattress, he listened carefully to make sure he wasn’t mistaken. That it wasn’t a dream.
It wasn’t. The distant sound came again, louder. The sound of an approaching helicopter.
“Li Na!” He jumped to his feet and ran through the open door, stumbling into a rolling bed parked against the wall. He pushed it hard out of the way, knocking it into the opposite wall and toppling two unused IV stands. Finally past, Lee raced toward the room at the far end of the hall.
“Li Na!”
The teenage girl was already out of her bed. She turned from the window when she heard the doctor shouting. She was still dressed in her thin, light-blue gown.
Lee’s footsteps could be heard approaching. When he finally burst into her room, his eyes focused on Li Na’s shadowy figure just a few feet away and grabbed her arm. “Someone’s coming!”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps the people your father feared!”
“Are you sure?”
He paused, listening again. It was much closer. “Helicopters don’t come here.” He ran to the small cupboard and threw the doors open. Grabbing her clothes, he pushed them into her arms in a panic. “Get dressed. Quickly!”
Li Na needed no convincing. The sickening feeling in her chest was still there, and growing stronger. She fumbled, separating her clothes and then slipping each foot into a pant leg.
Lee ran back to the door and looked back the way he came. A blinding light swept over the small building, shining in through several windows as it passed overhead. The sound of the aircraft’s rotors outside became deafening.
He darted across the hall, into the small kitchen, and raised the lid of a freezer resting against the far wall. Inside, at the bottom, was Wei’s strange metal case.
Lee yanked it out and returned to the room. He again pushed the case into her arms, this time grabbing one hand. “Hurry!”
He led her back down the hallway and into the storage room, throwing his cot out of the way. He yanked the small closet door open and pushed her inside, quickly closing it and pulling the cot back in place against the door.
No sooner had the Harbin touched down that one of Xinzhen’s men, sitting closest to Qin, yanked the door open. The man then leapt from the helicopter with the blades still churning at full speed. His boots hit the hard ground and he tore into a run toward the building. The second man who followed was nearly as big and reached the wooden door just steps behind the first.
It was locked.
Neither bothered looking at Qin as he climbed out. Instead, the second man stepped back and promptly withdrew a large pistol from inside his coat. Without a word, he pointed it at the door and fired multiple rounds into the wooden door jam, shredding it. When the door still didn’t move, he fired twice more. This time, the left side of the heavy door slumped. With one last powerful kick, it swung inward, dropping wooden splinters everywhere.
Inside, Lee ran from the storage room, barely reaching the front door before it burst open.
The first of Xinzhen’s men stepped through the doorway and growled. “Where?”
“Who are you?”
“Where is she?!” he repeated.
When Lee didn’t answer, the large man stepped forward and slammed him hard against the wall.
“I–I don’t know,” Lee groaned, “who you’re talking about.”
Behind them, Qin’s voice was icy. “Your patient.”
Sputtering, the doctor shook his head. “I have several patients.”
“Wei’s daughter. We know she’s here.”
The large man’s hand gripped Lee around the throat.
“I don’t know who that is.”
Qin grinned at him, sardonically. “Oh, I think you do.” He turned and examined the short hallway. He motioned to the right. The second of Xinzhen’s men nodded and stormed down the narrow corridor.
An elderly male patient appeared in one of the doorways with a walker. Xinzhen’s man stopped in front of him, glancing briefly into his room before placing a hand on the old man’s chest and shoving him back inside. The thug moved on, indifferent as the elderly patient toppled to the cold tile.
When he reached the next room, the agent found a bald woman with weak sunken eyes and cheeks lying frail in her bed. Her tired eyes were clearly unable to comprehend what was happening.
It was the next room where he stopped and looked back down the hall at the others.
“This one’s empty.” He looked back inside. “But someone was here.”
Qin immediately stormed toward the room, along with Xinzhen’s first agent who still kept the doctor’s throat gripped tightly in his huge hand.
When Qin saw the bed and its blankets thrown off, he turned back to Lee. “Who was in here?”
The man’s grip tightened when the doctor didn’t answer.
“Where is she?!”
From inside the small closet, Li Na tried to sense what was around her. When she heard the gunshots, she froze. Her father was right. She checked the doorknob for a lock, but found it smooth and featureless. She continued searching with her hands.
There were shelves on both sides, filled with things she didn’t recognize. Some she did, like small cardboard boxes and sealed plastic bags with pieces of plastic inside. Some were softer. Probably bandages.
She stepped back and stumbled into a large object on the floor, slamming it loudly against the wall. Tall, thin objects fell onto her as she scrambled to catch what she couldn’t see. One of the missed items struck her in the forehead.
She cried out softly and rubbed her head. What was the doctor thinking? This was a terrible idea. There was nowhere to go. He must have thought he could convince them she wasn’t there.
But if he couldn’t, this was the worst possible place to be.
With a nervous hand, Li Na turned the knob and pushed, just enough to crack the door open.
She could see part of the bed, positioned against the door. Against the other wall, a shelf held clear tubing, boxes of latex gloves, and linens. After a moment, she leaned out and nervously peered around the closet door.
That’s when she heard the voices.
Qin was eyeing the doctor with anger. He opened his mouth to speak again, but stopped when his eyes caught something behind them. The rest of the hallway was clean. Yet at the far end, two IV stands lay sprawled on the floor beneath a rolling bed that was turned at an odd angle. On the other side of the bed, a dim light reflected out through the room’s doorway.