Jiang Hansheng wrapped one arm around her slight shoulders and lifted her into his arms in a single motion.
Pale moonlight spilled down around them. Zhou Jin rested against his warm chest and listened to the steady, strong rhythm of his heartbeat.
Her throat was parched. She asked him weakly, “How did you find me?”
Jiang Hansheng pressed his cheek against her cold, sweat-dampened forehead. He didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said, “I was late.”
Zhou Jin’s consciousness was hazy, drifting between waking and sleep, and she couldn’t press him any further.
By the time they reached the hospital, it was past ten o’clock at night. A curtained partition was drawn across, and the doctor set to work cleaning and suturing Zhou Jin’s wound.
Jiang Hansheng stayed by her side. His dark eyes were perfectly still — watching how the antiseptic cotton swabs were saturated and stained red with blood, watching how the ragged wound was closed up stitch by careful stitch.
Zhou Jin noticed that he hadn’t said a word. His calm was strange, almost eerie — his eyes and brow radiating a pressure as cold and unyielding as ice.
She could guess well enough that Jiang Hansheng was worried about her.
Zhou Jin had just drawn breath to say something when a voice came from beyond the partition: “Zhou Jin?”
Zhou Jin responded at once, and a moment later Yu Dan leaned her head inside.
“How are you doing?”
Yu Dan took one look at her — hospital gown draped over her shoulders, body armor and her black undershirt both removed, sitting there in just a bandeau — and immediately squeezed her way in.
One more person made the small space feel even more cramped.
Jiang Hansheng was the first to rise. He said to Yu Dan, “Would you mind looking after her for a moment?”
Yu Dan was mildly surprised. “Of course.”
Jiang Hansheng walked out without looking back.
Outside, standing in the quiet corridor, he closed his eyes. The crease between his brows deepened.
The violence he had suppressed for years stirred back to life. His mind returned, once again, to the moment his finger had closed around a trigger.
“Does killing feel good?”
The fluorescent lights overhead seemed to flicker out one by one from the far end of the corridor, and Qi Yan’s voice crept through the darkness, echoing coldly in Jiang Hansheng’s ears.
“Since Mr. Jiang has such profound insight into psychology, surely he understands by now why I find killing so necessary?”
His vision blurred. All he could see clearly was the needle of a syringe swaying before him, doubled by the haze.
“I have no choice. Without killing them, I cannot find peace.”
“Take Mr. Jiang, for instance — you appear so upright and law-abiding. And yet, right now, don’t you want to kill me?”
---
Jiang Hansheng closed his eyes. The line from his jaw down to his neck and shoulders drew faintly taut, giving him an air of absolute severity.
He stood there for a moment. Then he bit down hard, and gripped his own trembling wrist with a vice-like hold.
After Jiang Hansheng stepped out, Yu Dan took a seat beside Zhou Jin.
The doctor worked quickly, and before leaving gave a brief set of instructions on basic aftercare and when to return to have the stitches removed.
Yu Dan committed every word to memory.
Once it was just the two of them, Yu Dan fastened the buttons of Zhou Jin’s hospital gown and asked, “Does it still hurt?”
Zhou Jin shook her head.
Yu Dan’s eyes were full of anxiety. “Zhao Ping told us you went after the sniper alone. Do you have any idea how worried Professor Jiang and Captain Tan were about you? Zhou Jin, you got lucky this time — have you ever stopped to think about what would happen if something had gone seriously wrong?”
“I had it under control.” Zhou Jin’s reassurance came out a little perfunctory. She shifted the subject: “Speaking of which, how’s Zhao Ping?”
Yu Dan said, “Flesh wound, nothing serious. He wanted to come see you too, but I sent him back first — I can’t very well look after two patients at once.”
Zhou Jin was quiet for a moment. Only now, at last, did she begin to find a thread of clarity through the fog.
“What about Director Yao?” she asked. “Did they get him back?”
Yu Dan’s expression shifted slightly. She shook her head and said with weight behind her words, “After Director Yao was shot, the group dragged him into a vehicle and fled under covering fire.”
Zhou Jin went still. “How did that happen?”
“We conducted an emergency interrogation of the crew aboard the cargo ship and inventoried the goods on board — it really was just timber. Captain Tan believes Director Yao was set up from the start. These people came with the police as their target all along.”
“Then Director Yao, he…?”
“His life or death is unknown. But Captain Tan has already organized a search and rescue team. We can only hope for good news soon.” Yu Dan made clear that the current situation was far from reassuring and let out a long sigh. “On top of that — Captain Tan mentioned in the briefing that Director Yao had once deployed an undercover operative, code name ‘Cangfeng,’ who has been embedded in this organization for some time.”
“Cangfeng?”
Yu Dan nodded. “Apparently the intelligence on this Jingang Wharf transaction was passed along by Cangfeng. But given how things played out tonight, it’s very likely this operative was already exposed long ago — which means the search and rescue now has two targets.”
“…”
In the span of a single heartbeat, Jiang Cheng’s red-rimmed eyes flashed through her mind, again and again.
“I know!”
The tone of Jiang Cheng’s voice in that moment, the expression on his face — it struck her like a blow directly to the chest.
An undercover operative? Cangfeng?