The Silent Girl

about.”

“Prostitution? Trafficking underaged girls?”

“Prove it.”

She shrugged. “Gee, now that I think about it, maybe I should just let the monkey creature do its thing.”

“It’s coming after the wrong guy! I had nothing to do with the Red Phoenix! Sure, Joey was a weasel. I didn’t shed any tears when he got whacked, but I didn’t order it.”

She looked down at Joey’s obituary. “Someone thinks you did.”

“It’s that crazy lady in Chinatown. Gotta be her behind it.”

“You mean Mrs. Fang?”

“I’m thinking she hired Ingersoll to ask those questions, to find out who killed her husband. He got too close to the truth and that’s how this war got started. If you think the Irish play rough, you haven’t seen what the Chinese can do. They have people who can get past anything. People who can practically walk through walls.”

“Are these people or fairy tales we’re talking about?”

“Didn’t you see that movie Ninja Assassin? They’re trained to kill since childhood.”

“Ninjas are Japanese.”

“Don’t split hairs with me! It’s the same skills, the same training. You know who she is, don’t you? Where Iris Fang comes from? I’ve been looking into her background. She grew up in some secret monastery up in the mountains, where they train kids for that sort of thing. Probably could snap a man’s neck by the time she was ten. And now she has all those students working for her.”

“She’s a fifty-five-year-old widow.” An ailing woman with sad delusions of grandeur, thought Jane. A woman who believes she’s descended from a mythical general and has a fake sword to prove it.

“There are widows, and then there’s her.”

“Do you know for a fact that Iris Fang is threatening you?”

“That’s your job to prove it. I’m just telling you what it smells like to me. She lost her husband that night, and she figures that I ordered the hit. I’m being blamed for the Red Phoenix and for once, goddamn it, I didn’t do it.”

A loud bang suddenly rocked the building. Jane caught a glimpse of Donohue’s face, frozen in surprise, just before the room went pitch-black.

“What the fuck?” yelled Donohue.

“I think the power’s out,” one of his men said.

“I can see the power’s out! Get the generator going!”

“If I can find a flashlight…”

A noise overhead made them all fall silent. Jane looked up as a rapid thump-thump- thump pattered on the roof. Staring up at the darkness, she felt her own heart thumping, felt her palms slicken with sweat as she reached down to unsnap her holster. “Where’s the generator switch?” she asked.

“It-it’s in the warehouse,” one of the men responded, his voice close to her and thick with fear. “Electrical box is against the back wall. But I ain’t gonna be able to find it in the dark. Not with that thing-” He stopped as they heard the sound again, light as raindrops skittering across the roof.

Jane dug in her purse and pulled out her SureFire flashlight. She clicked it on and the beam landed on Donohue, his face gleaming with sweat and fear. “Call nine one one,” she ordered.

He grabbed the portable phone on his desk. Slammed it down again. “It’s dead!”

She pulled her cell phone from her belt. No signal. “Is this place lined with lead, or what?”

“These walls are bulletproof and blast-proof,” said Donohue. “It’s a safety feature.”

“Great. The ultimate dead zone.”

“You’ll need to go outside to get a signal.”

But I don’t want to go outside. And neither does anyone else.

It was getting warm in the room, the walls trapping both their body heat and their fear. We can’t stay in here forever, she thought; someone has to step out and make the call, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be anyone but me.

She drew her weapon and went to the door. “I’ll lead,” she said. “Stay close.”

“Wait!” Donohue cut in. “No way are my boys going with you.”

“I need backup.”

“They’re paid to guard me. They stay here.”

She turned, aiming the light straight into his eyes. “Okay then. You go out there, and take your boys with you. I’ll just hang out here and wait till you get back.” She grabbed a chair, sat down, and turned off the flashlight.

A moment passed in darkness, the building silent. The only sound was Donohue’s panicked wheezing.

“All right,” he finally said. “Take Colin with you. But Sean stays.”

She had no idea whether she could trust Colin; she only hoped he had enough functioning gray cells not to accidentally shoot her in the back. At the door she paused, listening for sounds beyond it, but the barrier was too thick. Bulletproof and blast-proof, Donohue had said.

She slid open the dead bolt and pulled the door open a crack. The darkness wasn’t as deep outside the office; through a high warehouse window shone the dim glow of the city, just enough light for Jane to make out dark rows of hanging meat, like shadowy warriors in formation. Anything could be lurking in that gloom, posing as one more silhouette among those sides of beef.

Jane turned on her flashlight and quickly scanned the perimeter. In one sweep she registered hanging carcasses, the concrete floor, the fog of her own breath. She heard Colin standing right behind her, his breathing shaky with fear. An armed and terrified man was not the sort of backup she’d had in mind. I could wind up with a bullet in my spine, she thought. If the creature doesn’t slice off my head first.

“Where’s the closest exit?” she whispered.

“Straight ahead. Far end of the building.”

Swallowing hard, she started down the row of carcasses. She swept the light back and forth, scanning for movement, for a glimpse of a face, the flash of steel. All she saw were the products of the slaughterhouse, living creatures reduced to hanging muscle and bone. The flashlight felt slippery in her trembling hand. Whoever, whatever you are, she thought, you spared me once before. But that didn’t mean it would repeat the favor, not when it saw the company she was keeping.

More carcasses loomed ahead. Aiming her light straight ahead, she could not see the end of the row. Abruptly she halted, trying to hear through the thunder of her own heartbeat.

“What?” whispered Colin.

“Listen.”

It was just a faint creak, the sound that a tree makes when a rising wind causes it to sway. But the creak rose to a rhythmic groan, as if that tree were swaying with ever-building violence. It’s coming from above us. Jane lifted her light toward the ceiling and saw a suspended carcass swinging back and forth, as if shoved by an invisible hand.

They heard another creak, this time to their left. “There!” said Colin, and Jane swung her light toward the sound. Found herself staring at a second swaying carcass, moving like a giant pendulum back and forth across the narrow beam of her flashlight.

“Behind us!” said Colin, voice rising to shrill panic now. “No, over there!”

Jane spun, her light catching movement everywhere as the darkness came alive with a noisy chorus of clanks and groans and squealing metal.

“Where the fuck is it?” yelled Colin, whirling beside her, wildly swinging his weapon as carcasses swayed all around them. He fired, and somewhere in the darkness metal clanged. He fired again, and the bullet thunked into cold meat.

“Will you stop it, before you kill us both!” Jane yelled.

He ceased fire but was still jerking one way and then the other, in search of a target. No doubt he imagined the creature everywhere, just as she did. Over there, was that the flash of a face, the gleam of an eye? How could anything move so swiftly, so soundlessly? Suddenly she remembered the illustration in the book of Chinese folktales.