Dragon and the Dove (22 page)

The leader of the guards stepped forward to
key in the lock combination and turn the wheel. When the door
opened with a whoosh, Cooper was pushed forward into a blinding
light. His shoes were removed, and he was pushed forward once more,
this time to his knees in front of a dais covered in rich folds of
pearlized cream silk. The whole room was ornate with gold filigree
and rosewood screens, and richly opulent Oriental rugs. The wool
was softly alive beneath his hands and a welcome cushion for his
knees, colored in shades of richest green to palest peach and
cinnabar.

For a moment he was almost comfortable. The
rug was beautiful, the air was sweet, no one was dragging him
around. Paradise.

Without warning, his head was jerked back by
a rough, skilled hand, sending a shaft of pain ricocheting down his
spine. Another ounce of force or degree of angle and his neck would
have been broken, snapped like a dry twig in a child’s hands. He
clenched his teeth to keep from crying out, though any cry would
have been strangled in the unnatural arch of his throat.

“Koo-pare Dan-yells.” A melodious voice,
soft and seductive, slowly spoke his name, pronouncing each
syllable with practiced precision.

He opened his eyes to that voice, to the
lure in its sultry promise, in the huskiness of her tone, and what
he saw made him wonder what had kept his brother from taking what
she’d offered.

She was exquisite, utterly exquisite, beyond
compare even with her daughter. Any sign of age was solely in her
strangely amber eyes. No flaw marred the perfection of her pale
skin. No lines broke the porcelain serenity of her face. There was
only beauty, ethereal, mesmerizing beauty, rising out of the dais
like a black-sheathed calla lily.

The rounded swells of her breasts, the
curves of her hips, the slender length of her legs were all
lovingly encased in luminescent ebony silk. Her hair was ebony
silk, piled high on her head and held in place with diamond-and-jet
pins. Her mouth was made for sex, her lips full and stained the
color of pomegranate juice to match her long, daggerlike nails

Cooper felt a stirring in his loins and
wondered if he’d lost his mind as well as his control. Fang Baolian
was the woman who had murdered his brother. The woman who had
ordered his own death and failed.

Even as he went over the facts his eyes
traveled the length of her again, accepting that part of his battle
with her would be waged within himself. She was dangerously erotic,
enticing, a challenge to be met and conquered in the most primal of
male-female arenas.

From her hiding place behind a carved
openwork screen, Jessica saw the glitter of lust in Cooper’s eyes,
and she almost shot him on the spot. She’d practically killed
herself trying to find her way through the
disgusting maze of tunnels so she
could save him. She’d splashed and scraped her way through one
fetid corridor after another, and then thrown herself straight into
the breach by slipping into this damn room behind the guards, who
were all as mesmerized by the little bitch in the black dress as
Cooper
,
damn him.
The only thing that saved him was the trace of opium she sniffed in
the air. He may have only been beaten before, but he was beaten and
drugged now.

“I have waited overlong to meet the brother
of Jack Sun,” Baolian purred, and Jessica’s hackles rose. The woman
moved like a cat in heat, descending from the dais to curl around
and rub against the man being held in a viselike grip.

Her long scarlet-tipped index fingernail
scraped along Cooper’s jaw, up his cheek, and into the sun-streaked
silkiness of his hair, carefully avoiding the bloody gash Jessica
saw at his temple.

“But now we have met, Koo-pare, and I would
hope you would have a gift for me. A priceless gift.”

Jessica had a gift for Ms. Fang. She’d
wrapped it in the steel chamber of her .357
Magnum.

Baolian’s fingers trailed down behind his
ear, and in the next instant Cooper was writhing on the floor,
caught in the stranglehold of the Dragon Lady. Jessica saw the
slight oozing of blood running from beneath Baolian’s fingernails.
The only explanation was nearly unbelievable. The woman’s
manicurist did razors.

“Where is she?” Baolian hissed. “You son of
a dung-eating slut! Where is my daughter? Tell me or you shall
die!”

Jessica had never heard a mother’s love
expressed quite so inelegantly, quite so succinctly, and she
suddenly understood what had sent Cao Bo into the Dragon’s den.

She had to make her move, before Baolian did
something drastic, like cut his jugular. She had to make her move,
but she couldn’t get it out of her head that she was a mother, a
woman with responsibilities, a woman who had to be careful.

“Damn,” she whispered, well under her
breath, but it was enough to make every set of eyes in the place
bear down on her.

The only move left to her was to lift and
cock her gun, and point it straight at the dragon whore’s heart as
she stepped from behind the screen.

“Put your hands up . . . bitch.” It was
corny and rude, but the command was also amazingly effective when
backed up by a powerful handgun.

Baolian released Cooper and he dropped to
the floor in a heap, but her hands rose no farther than to
carefully clenched fists at her hips. The metallic slither of a
switchblade being opened sounded in the room. Baolian warned the
guard off with an acid glare and a low hiss—and every nerve ending
Jessica had sizzled in alarm.

The sound wasn’t quite human, and neither
was the expression on Baolian’s face. Her cold, hooded eyes raked
Jessica from head to toe as if she were sizing up a meal. The woman
was no cat. She was a snake, a reptile, a creature of dark power
fueled by the light of love for her child.

The dragon whore glided forward, her eyes
hypnotically fixated on Jessica’s. Jessica tried to blink and
couldn’t. Her inability set off another round of distress signals
in her brain. Fight-or-flight responses flared to life in an
instant, and just as quickly collided in her muscles, derailing
each other and leaving her helpless.

Baolian smiled, a sinister, seductive curve
of red-rimmed lips. With a flick of her wrist and a fanning of her
fingers, she made the razor tips of her nails flash and wink in the
light, sending a straight shot of terror through Jessica from the
top of her bangs to the tips of her toes.

It was going to be a bloodbath.

“Hello, Dove,” Baolian purred, raising her
other hand and letting those tiny daggers fan out and shine. “You I
did not expect today, or I would have prepared a more appropriate
welcome.”

Jessica’s arm ached with holding the gun,
but she didn’t let it drop.

“Are you Jack Sun’s Dove?” Baolian asked,
gliding forward another foot. “Or are you Koo-pare’s Dove? Which
Dragon calls you master? The dead or the dying?”

Jessica was going to have to kill her. She
was going to have to kill a woman, and she didn’t know if she
could.

“Must be Koo-pare’s,” Baolian seemed to
decide on a whim. “Jack Sun did not like old women.” Her smile
turned sour and a malevolent light flickered in her eyes. “Jack Sun
did not like this not-so-old woman, no? It is what caused his
death, this aversion and other things. Foolish, foolish man.

“So, Dove, master of the dying Dragon, my
child has been lost to me. Do you know where she is?”

It was a mother’s plea from a viper’s mouth.
Jessica didn’t answer.

Baolian’s anger rose with every second of
silence. “Do you know?” she asked again, tight-lipped. “Have you
seen my Shulan? The child of my heart? If you know, you must tell
me, or you will die. You all will die.
All
, Dove.
All
, Jessssss-ica Yangston.”

The hiss and the emphasis wasn’t lost on
Jessica, neither was the use of her name, but the full meaning of
Baolian’s words didn’t hit home until she spoke again.

“Which will be worse, do you think, Dove? A
child, or maybe two, without their mother? Or a mother without her
children?”

“The girl who came to the Dragon was called
Cao Bo, not Shulan,” Jessica said, her voice relaying the sudden
deep and abiding calm she felt. Baolian had made a mistake by
showing her hand and making her threat. If the situation
deteriorated to the point of death, it would be Baolian’s death,
not Jessica’s children’s.

“Cao Bo?” Baolian scoffed. “Her name is
Shulan, Sun Shulan, and she is a princess of the South China Sea.
What I have built will be hers. She is my life. Give her to me, and
I will give you and your children life.”

It was an offer Jessica would have accepted,
except for the man on the floor.

“What about Cooper?” she asked.

Baolian gave her a curious look. “You value
a pet as you value your children?”

Pet? Jessica thought. Cooper was in trouble,
big, deep, huge trouble. Thinking she was doing the right thing,
she tried not to sound overly eager.

“He has value to me.”

“More value than your children?”

The question was impossible, angering, and
just about got the dragon whore shot.

“The question, Ms. Fang,” Jessica said in
her best Ms. MBA-from-Stanford voice, “is how much you value the
return of
your
child. If you accept such as the basis of
our discussion, fine. If not, if you continue to mistake that the
discussion is about
my
children, I’m going to blow a hole
in you big enough to float a hundred-and-twenty-thousand-ton
tanker. And that, Ms. Fang, is one hell of a hole
.”

Baolian hissed halfheartedly and turned to
ascend the dais. When she was seated on her throne, she gave
Jessica a petulant look. “Tell me what you know.”

The woman gave all the right signs of
conceding defeat. The dismissal of the matter as if it weren’t
important, the childish expression, the more reasonable, less
reptilian tone.

Jessica didn’t buy the act for a minute.

“Shulan is being held across the Bay. When
Cooper and I are safely out of here, and I have had a chance to
call home, I will give you the address.”

Baolian clapped her hands and spoke to one
of the guards in Chinese. The dialect didn’t sound like the
Cantonese of Chow Sheng and John Liu. The guard came forward and
from out of a silk-lined box brought forth an old-fashioned phone
with a very long cord.

“Talk to your children,” Baolian said,
gesturing at the phone. “And then I will talk to mine.”

It sounded like a fair plan to Jessica.

She dialed her home phone number, and Paul
answered.

“Hi, Paul. It’s Jessie,” she said, amazed at
how calm she still sounded. “Are the kids there?”

“Yes, they’re here, and I just want to say
what a wonderful time they’re having on my date with the most
gorgeous greenhouse owner in the whole Bay Area. I thought I had a
pretty good chance with her but then she met Eric, and he did
something really goofy, like tell her how pretty she was, and now I
think they’re planning to get married after a long engagement.”

Jessica attempted a short laugh, then wished
she hadn’t bothered when it came out like a croak. Her arm was
shaking from the strain of holding the gun. Her mind was going a
hundred miles an hour trying to keep up with watching three guards,
one dragon lady, one hurt dragon man, and manage the most important
conversation of her life.

“Can I speak with him, please. And get
Christina on the other line.”

“Sure, Jess,” he said, the teasing humor
going out of his voice. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but come back on after the kids
are finished.”

The children came on then, and talked their
little hearts out about the pizza Uncle Tony had made them for
dinner, and about the neat lady who liked Uncle Paul, and when
Mommy was coming home.

When her brother got back on, she didn’t
waste words. “I’m in trouble.”

“Where?”

“Underneath Chinatown, and I’m sure that’s
all I can tell you.” A nod from Baolian confirmed her
suspicion.

Paul told her what he thought of that in one
foul word. “What in the hell do you mean underneath Chinatown?”

“Underneath, as in not on top.”

Baolian made a cutting motion across her
throat, warning Jessica to say no more.

“Okay, okay,” Paul said. “I believe you.
You’re underneath Chinatown. Fine. Great. Now tell me where
underneath Chinatown. Give me a clue.”

It was a great idea, really great, and she
wished like hell she could think of a clue she could fit into the
conversation without setting off Baolian and the three Ninja
Turtles waiting to take her head off. But she couldn’t.

“Don’t let the children out of your sight.
Call Luke. Luke
Signorelli
and do just like he says—shoot
anybody who tries to cross the threshold and then drag them
inside.” It was the best clue she could come up with, emphasizing
her maiden name and hoping somebody had called the cops about the
crazy lady who had locked a double-parked car in front of an herb
shop in Chinatown.

Anything Paul might have wanted to say was
cut off by one of the guards disconnecting the phone from the wall.
When he plugged it back in, Baolian gestured for her to make her
second call.

“Why drag them inside?” she asked while
Jessica tried to remember John Liu’s phone number.

“We’re in America. Criminals have rights.”
The number was on the tip of her memory bank, right on the tip.

“Maybe I’ll move to America,” Baolian mused
aloud.

The look Jessica gave her said, “Maybe
not.”

She’d only called out to the Liu house a
couple of times. But either fear or grace finally brought the
number up in her mind.

“John? Jessie. Put Bo on the line.”

“Hello?” the young woman said a moment
later.