Jasmine trailed off. And Han let her. He’d hoped she would provide him with further intel about her sister, and she had. But it wasn’t valuable. Instead, it only made his guilt over what he had to do that much greater.
“That’s not you, right?”
Jasmine’s question drew him away from his guilty thoughts. “What is not me?” he asked, not understanding.
“I don’t know anything about whatever organization you work for—but you said you weren’t like K Diamond, right? You don’t deal in humans?”
His gut clenched, and he tightened his fingers on the wheel. “No. Nothing that breathes—that’s my organization’s number one rule,” he answered. It wasn’t a lie, and even if it was, Han didn’t care about lying. He lied whenever it suited him. Like Victor and Phantom, he was dedicated to The Silent Triad’s future and would do whatever it took to help them advance.
Yet, the partial truth burned like K Diamond’s terrible weed in his throat.
Maybe that was why he confessed. “My mother was trafficked. She was from a rural town in the south of China. Her family was poor, but she was very beautiful. A cousin who lived in the city came to visit and told my mother she could get her a job in the city. The job was how she met my father. He made her his mistress and allowed her to keep me.”
Boyhood memories…things he hadn’t thought about in years flashed like gunshots in the dark. His mother’s beauty. His mother’s sadness. The grateful smiles when he brought her tea. The way she jolted when he shook her awake. As if she’d forgotten that she had a son. As if she thought whatever happened in her dreams was her real life.
“I had a boyfriend back in my hometown,” she once told him. “I promised him to write when I went away. But I never did.”
Han, who’d hated writing practice as a schoolboy, hadn’t understood her guilt over those unwritten letters.
She talked about her hometown a lot. Yet, she never told him its name.
He had not realized that small-but-essential omission was probably intentional. Not until she was gone.
All those old memories rose like shadows and blocked out the cheery Hawaiian sun.
And he found himself telling Jasmine another truth despite himself. “I don’t want anything to do with that kind of business.”
He kept his eyes on the road and refused to look over to see how Jasmine was taking all of this. But he could hear the sympathy in her voice when she said, “Mika was traumatized for years after she found those girls in the crate. I can only imagine what it was like to grow up with one. I’m sorry that—wait, what are you doing?”
Han didn’t answer, just pulled into the turnaround he’d spotted, put the car in park, and got out. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his ears.
He could not do this….
“Where are you going?” Jasmine called after him just as Yaron pulled up behind the Jeep. Fortunately, his driver had followed them and realized what Han was doing when he pulled over without warning.
He could not kill Mika Hayes. At least not on the original timeline. Maybe not ever….
“Are you coming back?” Jasmine asked, now a befuddled voice in the distance.
He might have answered, but he doubted she would have understood. He barely understood.
How could he explain that he was running away from her because he’d just realized how dangerous she was? That she was a bomb disguised as a woman?
Worse than a bomb, actually. A bomb would only kill him. But, in less than a month, Jasmine “Matapang” Hayes had completely upended his life.
He climbed into the back of Yaron’s car and closed the door on any further questions.
Then he scraped a hand over his face and told Yaron, “Drive.”
12
JAZZ
He insisted on driving, and then he left me there. Just left me there on the side of the highway in the passenger seat of my idling car.
I watched him drive away, and eventually, after I got over my shock, I climbed into the driver’s seat, which was where I belonged anyway. But what the hell was that?
No idea because he didn’t answer any of my WTF texts.
Mika went back to Connecticut with Albie the following day. I think something happened with her boss.
The morning after our sleepover, Albie and I came out to the living room to find her curled up on the couch. She insisted everything was fine, but she was so distracted she didn’t ask me about my supposed surfing client or the money she’d figured out I owed him. All she wanted was a ride to the airport—and not to talk about whatever had brought her to Mom’s and Dad’s house in the middle of the night, hours before we planned to meet.
I found myself wishing I could go with them after dropping her and Albie off at the Honolulu airport. I’d only been to the mainland for a couple of competitions in California. I’d never even flown over the East Coast where Han lived. Rhode Island was pretty close to Connecticut. Maybe I’d ask him about it when I saw him again.
