Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two (17 page)

I waited again.

Feeling my shoulders start to relax, I’d just about decided no one was home when the door creaked open sharply. I jumped about a foot, my eyes jerking back towards the newly-created opening.

A Chinese-looking man stood there, squinting at me, his dark eyes openly wary. He looked to be somewhere in the neighborhood of late forties, but had this kind of kicked dog look that I both recognized and that made me wince once I remembered why I was there.

“Mr. Jiāng?” I said.

He opened the screen door wider, still looking at me more warily than not. “Yes? Can I help you?”

Taking a deep breath, I returned his look with a grim one of my own.

“I hope so,” I muttered, hopefully too low for him to hear. I hesitated another beat, then just said it. “My name is Dakota Reyes, Mr. Jiāng, and I’m a private detective.
Culare Modeling School
hired me to look into a series of fake modeling shows where the perpetrators used their modeling school’s name...” Taking a breath, I looked him directly in the eye. “The same ones that might be connected to your daughter’s disappearance.”

I could see from his eyes, along with the flinch after I spoke the name of the modeling school, that he knew where I was going before I finished.
 

Even so, I only stood there, waiting, after I was done with my little intro. I waited for him to react, I guess, or to finish reacting before I piled more on top of what I’d already said.

“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” I said then.

I still couldn’t read his expression, other than to see that anger lived there now. The anger grew more prominent on his face the longer he looked at me, until it eclipsed the wariness of before. The anger didn’t feel aimed at me, though.

He just looked at me, as if thinking, then nodded, once.

“Yeah, okay,” he said.

Stepping backwards into the house, he pushed the screen door open a bit wider to let me in, and I caught hold of the edge, opening it all the way and following him inside.

A few minutes later, I sat on a pristine, pale yellow couch in the middle of a sunken living room with white carpet. I glanced around awkwardly after he left the room, hearing him putter around in the kitchen from a near distance. I wondered at the fact that he’d left me alone in his house after that introduction, but his wariness of me didn’t seem to extend to a concern that I might rip him off, whatever he thought of me otherwise.

I found myself remembering the police sketch on the news that morning, and winced. I didn’t see a television in here, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have one.

My luck, he was in there dialing 9-1-1.

He returned a few minutes later, though, carrying a tray that held a small teapot, two cups, a small sugar and cream set and a china plate with the same pattern holding a number of sugar cookies. I found myself a little unsure what to do with the old school hospitality.

“Err, thanks,” I said.

Then, not wanting to seem rude, I took the tea cup he poured for me and picked up a cookie, taking a small bite out of one corner before using the same hand to gesture vaguely around the room.

“You have a really nice house,” I said, still feeling awkward.

“Thank you.” Mr Jiāng settled onto the couch next to me. Now his eyes bored into my face, as if trying to read information out of my very skull. “Do you know anything about what has happened to my daughter?” he said. “Where is she?”

Putting down the cookie, I shook my head.
 

“I don’t,” I said. “Not yet. Not for sure. And I don’t know where she is. Right now, I’m trying to find out whatever I can about the modeling show she allegedly signed up for on the day she disappeared.”

“Allegedly?” he said, frowning.

I gave him an apologetic look, still gripping the cookie. “We have to say that, Mr. Jiāng. We don’t know anything for sure. It’s all theory at this point. The police would have to say the same thing...no matter what they suspected.”

“Who has her?” he said.

I glanced down and saw his hands tighten on his thighs, creating dimples where each of his fingers clutched his pants. Glancing back up at his face slowly, I calmed my voice and expression at once.

“Mr. Jiāng,” I said gently. “I really don’t know that yet. You need to understand...it’s very possible I will
never
know that. It’s possible the cops will never know, either. But I’m doing what I can to find out, I promise you. And I promise you, whatever I do find out, I will forward that information to the police and other relevant authorities so that they can look for your daughter.”

“You’re not looking for her? For JìngYáng?”

I heard the hurt in his voice and winced a little.

Part of it was hearing her real name, maybe.
 

She called herself “Jazzy” on all of the modeling applications I’d looked at. I could picture the Americanized girl and her somewhat old-school dad, and maybe a mom that was the same as the dad or even stricter. Something about this obviously distraught man calling his daughter by her given name hit me in a place that already felt pretty tender and raw.

I leaned forward, my arms on my thighs, and looked him right in the face.

“I
am
looking for her,” I said sincerely. “But you have to know my chances aren’t good. I’m hoping I can learn enough about the people who took her that I can pass that information on to the cops...or really, the FBI, since I suspect there’s a good chance whoever this is, they’re operating across state lines. Possibly even internationally.”

I saw Mr. Jiāng’s face fall.

Still, I saw the understanding there, too.

In my experience, immigrants understood certain realities of the world a lot better than your average, white bread American did.

That wasn’t
always
true, of course, but it often was.

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “But I don’t think I’d be doing you any favors by lying to you. I want to find her. I really do. But I’m one person, and usually this kind of thing is organized crime. If I’m lucky, I might find the edges of the organization behind the modeling shows. But I would need enough to go to the authorities...and that’s not as easy as it maybe sounds.”

“Who?” he said. “Who is it?”

Seeing the look on his face, I started to shake my head. “I don’t know. Not yet. I don’t even have any solid theories, really––”

“Who?” he said, his voice hard that time, a command.

Still looking at the expression there warily, I shook my head again.
 

“Look, maybe I’m not being clear here,” I said. “I really don’t know anything at this point. Even if I did, I can’t give you names based on preliminary research I’m doing. Frankly, I doubt I’d give solid information to you or any parent, not until the authorities were involved...”

His face turned red as I spoke.
 

“Why not?” he said.

His accent grew audible for the first time, I noticed.

I sighed. “Because I’m not going to risk you doing something stupid that would get you killed,” I said, rubbing my forehead with a hand. I wondered why I was being so honest with this man, who I didn’t know at all. Maybe it was something about his face. Maybe it was the grief he wore like a shroud, or the fact that he used his daughter’s given name, which I happened to know meant roughly “peaceful ocean” in Chinese.

Maybe it was the idea of anyone’s kid being taken for what I strongly suspected she’d been taken for.

Glancing at the mantle and seeing a smiling teenaged face I recognized, her cheek mashed up against her father’s as they both grinned into the camera...didn’t help.

“Shit,” I said, wondering suddenly why this was hitting me so hard.

I remembered Nik saying something about the lock affecting emotions, even apart from how I felt around Nik himself. Did that mean Nik had been opening my lock, too?
 

Rubbing the middle of my chest without really noticing I did it, I faced Mr. Jiāng.

I don’t know why I said it.

Maybe it was for all the reasons I just listed.

Maybe it was that damned picture, which now felt burned into my brain, in a way I knew I’d never be able to extricate the friggin’ thing entirely. Maybe it was because I could tell Mr. Jiāng was going to do something drastic if I didn’t tell him something real, that maybe he really
would
get himself killed. Maybe it was because I increasingly suspected there wasn’t a Mrs. Jiāng, and that little peaceful ocean had been this man’s entire world.

Maybe it wasn’t about any of that. Maybe it was for some other reason.
 

“I’ll find her Mr. Jiāng,” I said, my voice suddenly firm.

I sounded pretty damned certain. Certain enough to startle me, but not enough to get me to back down, because apparently I’m an idiot.

“If she’s anywhere in Seattle,” I added. “...If they haven’t transported her out of here, meaning out of the country...I’ll find her. I promise you I will.”

I saw Mr. Jiāng measure my eyes with his.

After another pause, I saw something in his shoulders relax.

He nodded, once, and I saw the relief in his eyes, too.

I honestly don’t know if that reassured me, or made me feel worse.

8

Mochas, Hot Guys and Hot Pink Cars

I left the Jiāng house about two hours later, feeling something between wanting to kick myself for saying that to him and a more intense resolve than I’d felt up until then.

I was going to find that damned kid, Jazzy Jiāng, if it killed me.

At the moment, at least, I cared about that a lot more than terrorist shape-shifters, or sociopathic Michael Evers, or one or both of them peering into Irene’s bedroom window. I maybe even cared about it more than being fingered as a possible terrorist by Razmun.

The
Culare
case had just gone from my easy, desk-job distraction from inter-dimensional aliens to my number one priority. I knew Gantry would have a fit when he found out that meant I’d be doing a lot more field work, but I’d deal with him when I saw him.

For now, I didn’t care.

After over an hour of looking at pictures of Jazzy and her friends with Mr. Jiāng, and Mr. Jiāng detailing everything he could to me about her life before she disappeared, I felt a little better armed for my search. I drilled him a lot about her friends, especially...particularly the two who disappeared at the same time she did. After he gave me access to her iPad and I read a bunch of her Instagrams and texts, a picture started to emerge of her personality.

I also knew where I wanted to go next.

Jazzy had gone to the nearby high school, and since it was getting close to that time of day, I decided to try and talk to a few of her classmates once they got out. I had some time to kill before that, so I wanted to hit one other place first...the hotel where the so-called “model talent show” had been held.

I found myself thinking about Jazzy herself on the way there, now that I knew a little more about her. I strongly suspected, from what Mr. Jiāng told me...as well as what he didn’t tell me...that little Miss Jazzy Jiāng was a bit of a wild one.

Not
crazy
wild. Not wild like Jake and me, for example, with the reform schools and foster parents and skipping school and Jake being busted for stealing and drinking and me being busted for getting in fights and whatever else. More like normal, teenaged, inexperienced, good-natured, goofy wild. Which unfortunately meant that Miss Jazzy Jiāng was
exactly
the type to get all geeked up about a cheesy modeling contest.