Nothing to Lose (17 page)

“I'm sorry,” he said. “We have to tie you up.”

“
What?
” I hadn't been expecting that. “Why?”

The girl removed her scarf and pulled something from her pocket. A knife. She started to cut the scarf into strips.

“Turn around and put your hands behind your back,” the guy said to Morgan. Morgan looked at me, her eyes huge.

“Come on, you can't be serious,” I said.

The girl grabbed Morgan and wrenched an arm behind her back. When Morgan tried to resist, the guy pointed the gun at her.

“Hey!” I said.

A tear rolled down Morgan's face as the girl tied her hands behind her back.

“Now you,” the guy said to me.

“No.”

“Robyn!” Morgan gasped.

“Please,” the guy said. “I don't want to hurt you.”

If I let them tie me up, we'd have no chance.

“Please,” he said again. “Just do as I say and you won't get hurt. After I come back, we'll let you go.”

“After you come back from where?”

“I have to go somewhere. It's important.”

When I'd spotted them, he and the girl had been at the parade. Picking pockets, maybe. Or maybe looking for more unattended backpacks and sweaters.

“You're going to steal again?” I said. “You're going to go to the parade and steal from the people who are there with their kids?”

The guy stiffened. “We're not criminals.”

“You steal stuff, but you're not thieves. You threaten us with a gun, but you're not criminals.” Yes, my tone was sarcastic. No, I didn't care.

“Ling-Kung took your backpack”—Ling-Kung, the girl.
Took
, not stole—“because she was hungry and she hoped you had some money.”

“And now you're going back to the parade to
take
some more money from other people,” I said. Maybe they'd get lucky. Maybe they'd stumble across Nick with his bag full of money . . .

Oh.

I had been walking away from Nick when I spotted the girl. She had called out something to the guy, who was behind me. Behind me, not far from where Nick was standing. Nick, in his bright pink hat, carrying the bag with the Christmas tree sticker on it. A bag that held money, a visa, and a passport with a girl's photograph in it.

“She's not in this country legally, is she?” I said. “That's what this is all about, isn't it?”

Maybe underneath it all he was a nice guy, maybe he wasn't. I had no way of knowing. But one thing I did know—he would never have made it as a professional gambler. If he'd drawn four aces, you'd have known it immediately by the look on his face. Right then his expression was one of pure surprise, which told me that I had guessed correctly.

The girl, Ling-Kung, said something to him in a harsh tone. He shrugged. I looked again at her slight body and her ill-fitting clothes. I was willing to bet she hadn't been in the country very long.

“Was she smuggled in? Is that why you're hiding her? Are you working for the snakeheads?”

“The
what?
” Morgan said.

The girl stiffened. She understood the word.

“You know the snakeheads?” she said. She spoke in a soft voice in clear, but accented, English.

“I know about them,” I said. “I know they smuggle people into the country.And I know nineteen people were found dead in a shipping container just a few days ago.” I looked at her closely, trying to read her expression. She would have made a better gambler. “Were
you
in that container?”

She held herself as tall as she could and looked directly at me.

“She came here to join her father,” the guy said. “Her brother came with her. The trip took a month, but he died when the ship was only halfway across the ocean. When her father found out, he went crazy.

“He didn't know the journey would be so terrible. When he made the journey himself a few years ago, he came as a passenger on a ship, not locked in a container. Ling-Kung said he was so crazy with grief that he didn't think about what he was doing. He got a gun and went to find the snakeheads. But they killed him.”

“
Ohmygod
,” Morgan said in a hushed voice.

“The shooting in Chinatown a couple of days ago,” I said.

The guy suddenly looked tired and defeated. “LingKung's father.”

My knees went weak. I should have let Ling-Kung keep my backpack. I should never have chased her. I didn't want to know these two.

“What about the people looking for you?” I said. “Who are they?” I don't know why I asked because I did not
want
to know the answer.

“Ling-Kung saw who killed her father,” the guy said. “She followed him, tried to stop him. But they shot him. They saw Ling-Kung. They know she can identify them.” I looked at her. Her face was rigid. I tried to imagine what she had been through—locked inside a shipping container with a bunch of other people. Watching nineteen of them die in the container with her, one of them her own brother. Then watching her father die right before her eyes.

“They are afraid of what she will do, who she will tell. If they find her, they will kill her.”

“You mean, those guys who were after you, they're—”

“Snakeheads,” he said.

“What about you?” I asked.

“What about me?”

“You don't have an accent. You must have been here a long time.”

He stiffened. “I've lived here since I was two years old.” He met my eyes directly. “
Legally
. I came here with my father after my mother died. My father is a businessman.”

“So how did you and Ling-Kung—”

“Ling-Kung's family is from Fujian. So is my father's family.” He must have realized that I didn't know what he was talking about. “Fujian is a province in China. In the south. A lot of the people there are poor. A lot of them know people who have come to America, like my father. My father is a big success story. Many people there know about him. After Ling-Kung's father was killed, she didn't know what to do. She thought maybe my father would help her. She went to his office, but he wasn't there. He had left town that morning, on business. But I was there. I work for my father sometimes. At first she was afraid to talk to me. But when I explained who I was, she told me what had happened. But before I could even start thinking about what to do, I saw a car in front of the building. Some men got out. Ling-Kung recognized them—the people who killed her father. She was afraid that they were going to kill her. I hid her. The men came in. They asked for my father, but I could tell they were really looking for Ling-Kung. Finally they went away—I
thought
they went away. But they must have been watching the building. When we left to go back to my house, they saw us—chased us.”

“Why didn't you just go to the police?” I said. “They would have helped her. If she told them what happened, described the people who killed her father, they would have done something about it. They would have found those men and arrested them. They would have protected her.”

He shook his head. “They would also have called Immigration. They would have sent her back to Fujian.”

“At least she'd be safe there.”

“You don't understand,” he said. “You don't know what these people are like. She wouldn't be safe there either. They would still get to her.”

“Maybe she could make a deal with the police and with Immigration. If she helped them find the people who murdered her father, the people who arranged for the shipping container, maybe they'd let her stay here.”

“
Maybe
,” he said. He made it sound like a swear word. “
Maybe
isn't good enough. And here is not safe. She has to get away, but she can't go home. I was helping her.” Helping her by going to the parade. Helping her by looking for a bright pink hat and a bookstore shopping bag. “Then you showed up and ruined everything.”

“You were looking for Nick, weren't you?” I said.

The question seemed to confuse him. “Who?”

“Nick is involved in this?” Morgan said. Sounding more like her old self, she added, “I should have known.”

“Did you know Mr. Li? The chef at Golden Treasures?” I said to the guy.

The girl said something in Chinese. I didn't need an interpreter to understand that my question had caught her off-guard.

“He is my uncle, my mother's older brother,” the guy said. “After those men saw me with Ling-Kung, I was afraid to go home—what if they were watching our house? I couldn't reach my father, so I called my uncle. He's not afraid of the snakeheads. He said he would help us.”

“Help get money and papers for her, you mean?” I said.

They both eyed me suspiciously.

“How do you know this?” Ling-Kung said.

“Nick, my friend, knew Mr. Li. You were looking for someone wearing a pink hat, right?” The guy nodded slowly. “That's Nick.”

Then I thought about what he had just said about Mr. Li—“He is my uncle.”
Is
, not was.

“Have you been hiding out the whole time?” I said. “For the past four days?”

He nodded.

“When was the last time you talked to your uncle?”

“I haven't talked to him since the day after it happened. He told me where I should go and what to look for. Then he told me not to contact him again. He told me it could be dangerous. He said they had probably found out who I was, that they would go around to everyone who knew me. Why? What do you know about him?”

I hesitated. I didn't want to be the one to tell him, but the way this was going, it was important that he know. And there was no easy way to go about it.

“I'm sorry,” I said, “your uncle died last night.”

He stared at me. “Died?”

“Someone shot him,” I said.

For a moment the guy stared at me in disbelief.Then he doubled over. I hoped the snakeheads weren't anywhere in the vicinity because the sound he made would have brought them running.

T
hey talked between themselves, she in a soft lilting voice, he between gasps. He kept shaking his head. He was probably in shock. I didn't blame him. I felt a little rocky myself. This was the biggest mess I had ever been in. All I wanted to do was get out.

“Why don't you let us help you?” I said. “My father knows a lot of people. He used to be a police officer.”

Ling-Kung scowled at me.

“No,” she said. “No police.”

“My mother is a lawyer.”

“A really smart lawyer,” Morgan said.

“She could help. Both of my parents could. They would know what to do.”

But Ling-Kung wasn't having any of it. She kept saying, “No police. No police.”

I turned to the guy with the gun. “What's your name?”

He hesitated, then shrugged, as if he felt he had nothing more to hide—or nothing more to lose. “Philip.”

“Well, Philip, you've got a gun, so I guess that means you can keep us here if you want to. But then what? We can't stay here forever. Neither can you.”

“I can't let you go until Ling-Kung is safe,” he said.

Ling-Kung touched his arm and spoke to him softly in Chinese. Her dark eyes stared up at him, and his gazed down at her. That's when I got it. He wasn't just helping her because he'd stumbled across a poor soul who was in big trouble. Maybe that was how it had started out, but things had changed. Now he was helping her because he cared about her. Maybe even loved her.

When Ling-Kung finished what she was saying, Philip turned to me.

“You say your friend knows. . .” He paused. Pain flashed in his eyes. “Your friend
knew
my uncle.”

“That's right.”

“He's the person my uncle sent to help us?”

Not to help Ling-Kung. To help
us
. He was in love with her, all right.

“He has money and identity papers for her. A passport and a visa.”

Ling-Kung picked something up off the floor. My cell phone. She said something softly. Philip translated: “She wants you to call your friend.”

“I really think you should go to the police,” I said.

Philip raised the gun and put it to Morgan's head. He looked as determined as my father would if anyone were threatening my well-being.

“Call him,” he said.

“I can't. He doesn't have a cell phone. We'll have to go to the parade to find him.”

He stared at me for a moment. “Okay,” he said finally. “We'll go find your friend.” Then he told me what I already knew. “I'll do whatever it takes to make sure she is safe. I mean it.”

“What about you, Philip? How safe will you be after she's gone, if these snakeheads are as dangerous as you say they are?”

The gun wavered a little, but Philip's resolve remained firm. He said something to Ling-Kung. She opened the knife that she had used to cut her scarf into strips. She held it close to Morgan's neck. Philip said something else to her. Then he turned to me.