Mitch’s hand automatically flew down to draw a gun she did not possess. It was a flicker, a notion instantly replaced by the reset of her body into a defensive combat stance, one forearm up to shield, the other to strike, sharp key-points extending between her knuckles.
Gabriel had already moved past both of them to be first through into possible hazard. “Hold it,” he whispered. “I don’t hear anything inside.”
They were at his back (in a classic triangle defense pattern, he noticed; good for them) as he toed the door open. His perimeter senses were keyed up full. His shoulders relaxed.
“Whatever happened here, I think they’ve already come and gone.”
Mitch sagged as though she knew what they would find. The one-bedroom was in a state of disarray that suggested a thorough yet not particularly malicious burglary—drawers dumped, knickknacks scattered. Mitch’s eyes went straight to the desk where it looked Valerie had had her computer setup.
“They took her hard drives,” Mitch said numbly. She dropped the keys in the newly empty space on her sister’s desk.
Gabriel scanned the room. “Two men, I’ll bet. One for lookout, one for the turnover.” He ran a finger over the surface of the computer table. “Powder,” he noted. “They came in wearing latex gloves.” He turned to Mitch. “I don’t suppose she told you what kind of evidence she had?”
“There wasn’t any time,” said Mitch. “She picked me up at Newark when I came in. We had lunch at some fancy joint, one of those places where they have a whole separate menu for water. We couldn’t talk too openly there, with all the waiters listening. She was going to tell me later—but first she had this meeting. I thought it was weird that it was so late at night, but she said these guys had come in internationally, were still on Shanghai time. It was a ‘face’ thing. And the meeting was important to her—she was going to confront them with what she’d found, tell them she couldn’t be involved in any sort of cover-up; she wasn’t telling them what to do, just backing out gracefully herself. You see how well that worked. I was sitting around here like a patsy when the cops showed up, and meanwhile the Zongchang boys were private-jetting it back to the CCC.”
“So,” Gabriel said, “the first, best hope for the new, modern China, the dedicated wannabe chief big grand kahuna of the CCC, this guy who is Russian pretending to be Chinese, the guy hunting for a one-of-a-kind statue of a dead Chinese warlord, comes to New York and, confronted with evidence that he’s not what he says he is, kills the woman who found it and ransacks her apartment?” Gabriel was looking around the apartment—the leftovers of Valerie’s life—with a renewed intensity in his gaze.
“Yeah,” said Mitch. “Or it was done on his orders.”
Gabriel turned to Lucy. “Okay, now I’m interested.” He picked up the ring of keys. “Your sister gave you these?”
Mitch nodded. “In case I needed to go out before she got back.”
The bundle contained four door keys, a main entry key, a foyer key, a mailbox key, a trash-door key and a riot of dead weight in the form of a pewter Empire State Building, a rabbit’s foot (dyed pink), a big rubber sandal with the name VAL embossed on it…and something else.
“What’s this?” said Gabriel, peering closer.
It was a silver charm in the form of a little hardcover book about a half-inch tall. The cover was engraved with the legend DRINK ME.
Gabriel pried the seam with a thumbnail and the tiny book popped open like a locket to reveal its cargo.
“Aha,” he said, looking at the narrow black sliver inside. It was plastic and had tiny metal contacts at one end. “It’s a…thing.”
“Give me that,” Lucy said. Gabriel plucked it out of the book and handed it over. He could navigate the tunnels of the Paris sewer system in the dark and tell you where an obsidian blade was made by the strike pattern on the stone edge; modern technology, though, was not his bailiwick.
Fortunately, it was his sister’s. “Memory stick,” she said, turning the sliver over. “Four gigs. The kind you plug into a cell phone.”
“Like this one?” Mitch held up a unit she’d unplugged from a charger dock that lay overturned on the floor. It looked like the kind of biz-crazy portable device that did everything except unzip your duds and make you see the face of God.
“We have a winner,” Lucy said, popping a hatch on the back of the thing and sliding the stick inside.
Mitch, meanwhile, was staring into one of the desk drawers, riffling its contents. “Her passport’s still here. Some credit cards. ID.” A tear leaked from one eye, dropped and spattered across the back of her hand.
“Let me see that,” said Gabriel while Lucy worked on the phone. “I’d like to see her face.”
The family resemblance was undeniable.
“This is some bizarre stuff,” said Lucy, scrolling through data on the phone’s tiny screen. “Mostly spreadsheets, it looks like. Amounts of money, invoices, bills of lading.”
“She must have known something was going to happen to her,” said Mitch, straining to keep the tremor in her voice from showing. Gabriel could tell she was the sort who wanted to be in control, in charge of her messier emotions, and who would beat herself up for any public display she thought looked weak. “To leave all this stuff behind.”
“We need to print this out,” Lucy said. “You can’t read it properly on a screen this size.”
“I’m sure Michael’s got a setup we can use, back at the town house,” Gabriel said. And to Mitch he said, “You want to come with us? I’m not sure it’s good for you to stay here alone.” He put a hand on Mitch’s shoulder, but she shook it off.
“I’m fine,” she said roughly, sounding anything but.
“I’ll stay,” Lucy said. “I don’t have to be on a plane till tomorrow morning—”
“I’m okay,” Mitch said. “You don’t have to get yourself in trouble on my account.” She turned to Gabriel. “And you don’t have to take care of me, either. I’m not a fragile flower. I’m a soldier, goddamn it. Or I used to be. I’m not going to sit around moaning or feeling frightened—I’m going to find the men who did this and make them sorry they did.”
“Maybe,” Gabriel said. “Or maybe they’ll make you sorry you did. I don’t think you know the kind of power you’re talking about taking on.”
“Listen, stud, if you’re scared and want to drop out, that’s fine,” Mitch said. “You posted bail. That’s plenty.”
“If you want to go up against the CCC and you want to live to tell about it,” Gabriel said patiently, “you’ll listen to me and you’ll do it very, very carefully.”
“He can be a pain,” Lucy said, “but he does know what he’s talking about, Mitch.”
Mitch threw up her hands. “All right. You’ve got something to say, I’ll listen. But I’m not waiting long.”
“Fair enough,” Gabriel said. And to Lucy: “I’ll be back as quick as I can. Couple hours at most. You guys can stick around here that long, right?” Lucy looked anxiously over at Mitch, who was pacing impatiently. She nodded.
“All right. Call me if anything happens.”
Gabriel left them to pick up the pieces at the apartment while he headed back to Sutton Place with the cell phone and the memory stick.
Michael would be able to print the document, and from there, well…they’d see what they would see. He shared Mitch’s preference for action and distaste for waiting around, but jumping into a conflict with the CCC wasn’t something you did lightly.
Or at least it wasn’t something he would do lightly.
It wasn’t two hours later that Valerie’s cell phone, now sitting in a docking station attached to one of Michael’s computers, started vibrating, and when Gabriel opened it and brought it to his ear, he heard Lucy’s voice shouting at him. “Gabriel? That you?”