Page 111 of Shadowing You

“You worked everything out?” Renshu asked.

“The port administrator was a classmate of mine. This is not our first time.”

Renshu seemed satisfied with his answer.

Mei Lin walked on one side of the sailor, her brother on the other. Renshu had put on the dark cadre jacket that marked him as a Party official.

He didn’t look like the big brother she remembered but a leader, the kind of man who expected to be obeyed.

She had the sudden impulse to tease him, but she squelched the instinct.

The rest of the world slept, but the fishing pier was coming alive. A man hosed down a stretch of dock while others loaded nets onto the stern of a trawler. Idling engines sent low chuffs into the cold air, the scent pungent.

Two figures stepped around the corner of a small building thirty meters ahead. They wore dark uniforms and peaked caps. Both had radios at their shoulders.

Her insides twisted.

Mei Lin was thankful for her brother and the fisherman, neither of whom paused at the sight of the guards walking toward them. She tucked her chin into her jacket. It was one thing to blend in on a screen, but standing a few feet away, would the guards realize she wasn’t a boy but a woman?

She let Renshu and Lao Wu drift a half-step ahead, playing the part of a deckhand trailing his elders.

Protect us, Father.

The two men stopped in the center of the dock, blocking the way.

“Who are your friends, uncle?” The older one addressed Lao Wu, the question carrying curiosity. But his gaze was sharp as it passed over Renshu, then settled on her.

Renshu stepped forward and flashed his red badge in front of the man’s face. “Who are you to disrupt official Party business?” He spoke in the clipped northern Mandarin of a Party member on official business, then snapped the credential shut and stowed the badge in his pocket. “Step aside or point me to your supervisor.”

The guard seemed to shrink. “Sorry, Leader. Proceed.”

They moved on, the younger of the two bowing as he passed.

Renshu marched forward, seemingly unsurprised at the men’s immediate obedience.

Mei Lin and the fisherman hurried to keep up.

When the guards were well behind them, she glanced at her brother. “Are you so important?”

“No.” His lips twitched. “But they don’t know that.”

A strange pride rose in her chest. Her brother had learned how power worked in this country and wielded it comfortably. Maybe someday, he would use what he’d learned to honor God instead of the Party.

The fishing boat was maybe fifteen meters long—about the same size as the others bobbing nearby. The sky was still dark enough that the paint flaking along the hull held no distinct color. A wheelhouse the size of an outhouse sat on the deck. A younger man was at the bow, working a line free of the cleat. He didn’t look up as Lao Wu rolled the hand truck onto the gangway.

She followed, holding onto the railing as the wood pitched under her feet. The deck stank of old fish. Lao Wu pushed the hand truck to an open hatch in the deck and lifted the fish bins off the one where Ethan hid and set them aside. Then he and Renshu gripped either end of the third one. Lao Wu went first, backing down a steep staircase.

Renshu followed, bending low to keep a grip on the high end. The bin scraped at the corners of the hatch frame. Her brother’s overcoat caught on something, and he hissed under his breath.

Mei Lin grabbed their backpacks from the other bin and followed, her pulse in her throat at every bump.

The men reached the bottom of the steps in a tight, low-ceilinged space lit by a bare bulb in a wire cage. Lao Wu was bending to set down the bin, but Renshu let go of his end a second too soon. It thumped on the deck with a thud she felt through her boots.

“Be careful!”

Renshu was smirking. “Your husband is the size of a tree,” he said in English. “Next time, marry a shrub, eh?”

She glared at him—hiding a grin—as she lifted the lid.