Code Name Komiko (23 page)

“We’re going to be faster than radio waves,” Lian said, diving for the keypad at the nearest door and punching in the code, still using her middle knuckle. The door opened and the girls bustled inside, pushing it closed behind them. It settled back into its frame just as the pad outside buzzed and its display began glowing red.

She moved to the closest freestanding desk and started trying to shove it toward the door. Eva joined her, and soon they managed to get their makeshift barricade in place.

“Okay, okay,” Lian said, fighting panic. “There has to be a way out.” She wasn’t sure she believed it, but saying out loud seemed to make it sound more plausible. She flicked through the blueprints until she found the office they were in.

Eva looked over her shoulder. “It’s a dead end,” she said.

“The air ducts,” Lian said, pointing to the cooling system on the drawing. “We should be small enough to fit inside them.”

“And then what?” Eva asked desperately, grabbing the phone. “We’d have to crawl more than halfway around the building before we could drop into a hallway by the stairs. It would take us hours! Even if they don’t hear us clanking around over their heads, they’ll have the whole place on lockdown well before we can get out.”

“It might be the only plan we have,” Lian said, taking her phone back from Eva. There was no “911” text from Matt. Of course there wasn’t. Why would he have warned them about a trap he’d orchestrated himself?

She paced the office, teeth gritted, adrenaline the only thing keeping her headache at bay. The whole world was crashing down, and she was powerless to stop it. With an angry, growled sigh, she beat her fist on the glass of the window, nine floors above the darkened streets of the Central District. Some equally dark part of her hoped that the glass would shatter and offer her some sort of escape—however permanent—from this nightmare situation.

That’s when she saw it.

To either side of her, on the other side of the glass, thick cables ran vertically up to a roof rig. And right below her, just ten feet down, was a window washer’s suspended scaffold, paused at the end of the workday on the eighth story.

“Eva!” she hissed. “We have a way out!”

Eva ran toward her, but drew up short a few steps shy of the glass. “Are you kidding me?”

“There’s a window washer’s gantry, one floor down. Look, this big pane opens.”

“Forget it, Lian. This is not a Jackie Chan movie.”

“It will be fine,” Lian said, muscling open the latch. “We just have to—”

The end of her sentence was stolen from her mouth by the whipping wind that buffeted the building.

Eva’s black-rimmed eyes were wide with fear, and she shook her head emphatically, every dreadlock like a shocking blue exclamation point. Lian took one tentative step over the sill, and then held out her hand, beckoning Eva to come with her.

“I can’t!” Eva shouted. “I can’t do it!”

“You can do anything!” Lian encouraged her. “You’re the girl who cleaned up Junk Bay!”

“Junk Bay is at sea level! I’m afraid of heights!”

“You should be more scared of a Chinese prison,” Lian said.

There was a loud clang from over by the office door. Eva turned to look over her shoulder. Lian looked past her and saw the propped-up desk shudder, as someone on the outside tried to get to the inside.

“They’re here,” Eva exclaimed, her eyes welling. “They’re coming in. You have to go!”

“Not without you!”

The desk jumped again.

Eva stepped as close as she dared to the open window, and reached for Lian’s outstretched hand. But rather than grabbing it, she dropped the USB rabbit’s foot into Lian’s palm.

“I can’t go with you,” Eva said tearfully. “But you can still get this to the authorities.”

The desk toppled, followed by the sound of shattering glass.

“If we’re both caught, it’s all been for nothing,” Eva said, pressing Lian’s fingers around the furry memory stick. “So
go
!”

Lian saw the potbellied man charge into the office. Eva screamed. Lian gripped the rabbit’s foot tightly, swung her other leg over the sill, and then let herself drop onto the platform below. She landed on her feet, but felt the window washer’s scaffold judder. She spilled onto her side, snatching out her free hand to clutch at an edge. For one terrifying moment, the building and sky seemed to slide over her like a waterfall, but then she hauled herself into the right position.

She propped herself up on one elbow as she caught her breath, and willed her heartbeat to slow down. Then she grabbed for the control box. The “down” arrow was big and yellow. When she pressed it and the platform actually started to descend the face of the building, Lian thought she might cry with relief.

Overhead, the potbellied man’s furious face appeared as he leaned out the window to see where she’d gone. He bellowed something into his cell phone, but Lian couldn’t make out a word. She lay on the mesh floor of the scaffold, breathing hard, watching as the sidewalk seemed to swell and rise to meet her.

Her exhilaration was shredded by the guilt she felt at leaving Eva behind. They’d gotten the file they’d been after . . . but at what price?

She was two stories high when a security guard shouted up from below her. She peered through the mesh, saw the handgun aimed for the scaffold, and was instantly on her feet. She backpedaled up to the railing farthest from the guard, nearly tripping over a metal bucket of soapy water that sloshed onto her sneakers.

Without thinking, she grabbed the bucket by its edges and dumped its contents over the side, directly onto the guard. He sputtered for a moment, turning away and wiping his face. Lian leapt over the rail, covering the last few feet before the platform reached the ground. When the guard had got his bearings back, she swung the metal bucket with both hands, striking him on the head and sending him to the pavement.

For an insane second, Lian thought of picking up the gun he had dropped. But instead, she kicked it away from his unconscious form as hard as she could, and then took off at a run, rabbit’s foot still clenched in her hand, her shoes leaving wet prints on the sidewalk behind her.

When she reached the plaza for the rendezvous, Matt was sitting on a bench next to her messenger bag, flipping through his
Standard
.

“Lian!” he said, looking up. “Wait, where’s Crowbar?”

“Where’s Zan?” she countered, trying not to look like she didn’t trust him. She didn’t want him to know—yet—that she had figured out his treachery.

“I don’t know,” Matt said. “He went to get a milkshake, like, twenty minutes ago. He hasn’t come back yet.”

“Do you have any idea how made-up that sounds?”

Lian felt her lips curl. “It’s what he told me!” Matt protested.

“Liar!” she said, shoving him hard in the chest. Matt stumbled back, taken off guard. “You handed him over to your dad’s goons the second Eva and I were out of sight, didn’t you? Right before you sent them in after us.”

Matt’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“You sprung your trap, and Eva got caught in it! And I damn near had to chew my own foot off to escape!” She still had the rabbit’s foot clenched tight in her hand. She felt a thrill of victory—if Matt hadn’t planned for her to get back out of the building, then he certainly hadn’t accounted for the notion that she might have gotten what she’d gone in for. It was followed by a shudder of dread when she pondered what he would do if he did become aware of it. What lengths he might go to in order to take it from her?

“Lian, you have to believe me,” he said. “I didn’t turn Zan in, and I didn’t send anybody after you. I didn’t sell you out.”

“Then how did the potbellied man know right where to find us?” she demanded.

“The potbellied . . . wait, Mr. Yeung is in there? He has Crowbar? Oh, no.”

“Eva!” Lian screamed. “Her name is Eva! That’s a real person you just handed over, not some name on a message board.”

“No,” he said, arms held up in a gesture that was half placating, half surrender. Distant police sirens were growing louder. Flashing lights flickered, reflected in the glass and chrome of the buildings around the plaza. “I swear, this had nothing to do with me.”

But Lian was done talking and done listening. She sprinted for her parked scooter, fired up the engine, and sped away, her eyes burning.

I know you’re mad at me. But I hope we’ve been friends long enough that I can ask you for one small favor.

Lian hit Send on the text. It was after midnight, and she was hiding in the bushes, hunched over the glow of her phone. The knees of her pants were stained with grass; her blouse was soaked in sweat and torn at the shoulder where she’d nicked it on a branch. Her whole life depended on the next words that showed up on her phone screen. The seconds became a minute, and geared up to do so again.

One, and only one.

She heaved a sigh of relief and quickly texted back.

Okay: Open your front door, right now.

There was no reply on the phone. But moments later, the door opened, and Mingmei stood in a salmon pink silk nightgown, backlit by the lamp in her living room.

“Okay, I did it,” she said to the night. “Can I close it now?”

“All right, two favors,” Lian said, standing up from her crouch and pocketing her phone. “Please, Mingmei. Please let me in.”

Whether it was because of the desperation in her voice or the twigs in her hair, Mingmei fell uncharacteristically silent and waved her into the house.

“What the hell, Lian?” she asked, once the door was closed. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Lian said in a rush. “I didn’t know where else to go. Things are falling apart, and I didn’t think they’d come looking for me here.”

“Back up a second. Who’s ‘they,’ and why are ‘they’ looking for you?” Mingmei was clearly trying to piece things together in her head. “Wait, does this have something to do with the cops at the school this morning?”

“It does, yes. In a manner of speaking. Mingmei, could I use your computer?”

“So they can march in here and throw my laptop in their evidence wagon, too?” Mingmei looked skeptical. “Come on, Lian, what’s going on?”

Lian heard the panic in her own voice. “Mingmei, if I get through tonight, I promise I’ll explain everything. But right now, there’s no time. I just . . . I need you to trust me.”

For a long moment, silence settled over the room. Lian thought she might collapse on the spot.

“Whatever else happens between us,” Mingmei said at last, opening her arms, “I will always, always trust you, Lian.”

“Don’t hug me, I’m gross.”

“I trust that you are,” Mingmei said, and embraced her anyway. “Now come on, my laptop’s in the kitchen.”

12:38 AM HKT —
Komiko has logged on

“Who’s Komiko?”

“It’s me. I promise, I’ll tell you all about it later.”

12:39 AM HKT —
Blossom has logged on

Blossom:
Got your ping, K. Im surprised youre here. Did the raid not happen?

“Who’s Blossom?”

“I don’t know.”

“What raid?”

“Mingmei, later, I promise!”

Komiko:
It happened, but it went south fast.

Blossom:
Where are the others?

Komiko:
I doubt you’ll see Torch on here again. He double-crossed us, and we walked right into it.

“Who’s Torch?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Komiko:
Torch got the security codes but didn’t go with us into the building. Crowbar and I got in just fine and even made it to the HC finance offices, but our luck didn’t hold.

“Who’s Crowbar?”

Lian didn’t even bother answering.

Komiko:
We found the file on the dead girl . . . but her name’s not Jiao, and she’s not from Yah Tian. Still, we downloaded the document onto a memory stick.

Komiko:
We thought we were home free, but the fat man showed up, the one who was at the beach and later the Family Hand.

Komiko:
He nabbed Crowbar. I made it out and got to the rendezvous, but Torch was the only one there. He’d turned Zan over to the cops and then sicced them on us.

“Wait,” Mingmei said. “I actually know who Zan is. The cops have him? What did he do?”

“Nothing,” Lian said.
He trusted me
, she thought to herself. That’s what he did. But it didn’t seem like the most sensible thing to tell Mingmei at the moment.

Blossom:
Wow! Thats insane. Where are you right now?

Komiko:
Somewhere safe, that’s all that matters.

Blossom:
And you have the memory stick with you?

Komiko:
Yes. I’ve got to get this file to the authorities. I don’t know who’s clean, but I’ll make copies and send them out anonymously until somebody steps up to help.

Komiko:
I just pray I can draw them out before anything bad happens to Crowbar.

She let her head drop, seeing those last images of Eva pressing the rabbit’s foot into her hand, the eyeliner running down her cheeks, the terror on her face.

“Could I have a glass of water?” she asked Mingmei meekly.

“Of course,” Mingmei said. “My house is your house.”

Lian got a glass from the cabinet and filled it with cold, filtered water from the fridge door. It chilled her parched throat like a snowstorm blowing into a desert. She closed her eyes and thought that she had never tasted anything so pure in her life.

“Hey,” Mingmei said, nodding toward the laptop. “I can’t keep track of all the players without a scorecard, but I think you want to see this.”

The chill that flooded Lian’s body when she looked at the screen had nothing to do with the water.

12:50 AM HKT —
Crowbar has logged on

Crowbar:
You will want to pay very close attention now.

Lian blanched. Seeing Crowbar’s name, followed by “You” and “to” instead of U and 2, was absolutely horrifying.

Crowbar:
We know you have data that doesn’t belong to you on a memory stick.