Page 4 of Shadowing You

Gavin continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “If they decide you’re a threat, they’ll take you into custody. I’ll do my best to get you out, but there are no guarantees.”

“I understand.”

“Mei Lin has a clean ID, a valid passport, and a train ticket. She should have no trouble getting herself out.”

“Great. Then I’ll meet her in Hong Kong.”

“But—”

“Which is it, Gavin?” Ethan shifted so he could see his father’s face. “Is she safe, or isn’t she? You have contacts. What are they telling you?”

“Not enough. I don’t like it.”

“I’m not abandoning my wife to deal with…whatever she’s dealing with.”

Even though, apparently, Ethan had done just that. But he hadn’t known. He’d believed her parents, and they’d believed the information they’d been given.

“Going in won’t help,” Gavin said. “You’ll just get yourself arrested. You have no way⁠—”

“How far would you go?” He worked to keep his voice even. “For Evelyn? Or Delaney? Or any of your daughters? How far would you go to protect them?”

“I’d do anything,” Gavin said. “For every member of my family.” He held Ethan’s eye contact, and Ethan didn’t miss the careful way he’d worded his answer, as if to include him.

It would take a lot more than words for Ethan to buy that.

“Putting yourself in danger isn’t the same as helping. Sometimes, the most useful thing you can do is stay where you’re safe and can coordinate⁠—”

“I don’t have the contacts you have. There’s nothing I can do from here. If I want to get her out, I have to do it myself.”

“You know I’ll do everything I can.”

Ethan looked forward again. People were filling the seats around him while gate agents worked at their stations. “Did you learn anything else?”

Gavin sighed. “Her ID was scanned yesterday for the first time since October⁠—”

“Wait. October? I thought⁠—”

“—of 2020,” Gavin finished. “She took a bus to Zhengzhou.”

“Any idea where she’s staying?”

“Nope.”

Had Mei Lin gone to a hotel? She’d picked up the money he’d wired her almost twelve hours earlier, and he’d wired enough to pay for any hotel in the country, plus meals and whatever else she might need or want. Maybe she’d been trying to stay off the radar. Had she paid cash for a safe place to sleep? Or found a friend?

Or had she sat up all night, avoiding…whatever it was that had her frightened?

His prayers for her safety repeated like a song he couldn’t get out of his head.

“Wherever she’s been for the last six years,” Gavin said, “there’s no official record of it. She had no housing, no job. My contact has two theories. The first is the most likely, that she went somewhere off the radar, a village far from any town, and she stayed there.”

“Why would she do that?”

Gavin shrugged.

Ethan tried to imagine it—Mei Lin running and hiding. Even if she were afraid, she’d have reached out to him. She’d have told him something. “We were married. She was biding time until her visa came through. She wanted to come.”

“Okay.”