Page 174 of Caution to the Wind

“They were in a movin’ car for forty minutes. Last we had a bead on them, they were in South Van. Any idea where he’d take her?”

He was silent for too long.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Jiang, this is Mei Zhen. The girl who kept you safe by pretendin’ to be your girlfriend for half a decade. You fuckin’knowshe’d throw herself in front of a bullet for you, so don’t you fuckin’ hesitate to tell me where the fuck she could be!”

“Like she’s throwing herself in front of his bullet for you?” he countered furiously. “You think she was taken because of me? It’syouwho raided and destroyed Golden Door Bank. It’syouwho married Kate Kay. This is because ofyou, Henning Axelsen.”

“You don’t think I know that?” I shouted over the rippin’ wind and cry flyin’ into my face as I took a hard turn and righted the bike beneath me. “You don’t think I know she’s payin’ the priceIshould be payin’. You don’t think I’d kill myself before I let her be killed for me?”

Heavy breathin’, both of us.

“I’ll see what I can find out, but the triad is in tatters. Whoever was working with Kasper is loyal tohim, not me.”

“You wanna be the Dragon Head of Seven Song, it starts now with you figurin’ out where my girl is,” I demanded before hangin’ up.

As we rode, I tried to think of what could be in South Van that’d attracted Kasper.

If he was gonna kill her by the five thunderbolts, he’d be lookin’ for a river or beach to drown her, and the Fraser River cut through the area. I doubted he’d have the patience to find somewhere to burn her alive, so drownin’ or death by weapon seemed the most likely.

’Til I remembered that one of the city’s biggest Chinese graveyards was in South Van.

I called Curtains over the Bluetooth.

“Six men head to Marine Way along Fraser River to check out the beaches,” I told him. “Five with me to check out Ocean View Cemetery.”

Curtains lifted his fist where he rode beside me, and when we reached the crossroads twenty minutes later, he took five men to the left while I kept to the right.

Bat, Dane, Wrath, Kodiak, and Lysander were with me, even though the latter wasn’t a part of the club. Lion’d sent him with us ’cause he worked with him at his PI firm, and he had skills we could use.

Ocean View Cemetery was semi-famous for bein’ the site of mass burial graves from some of the first immigrants to British Columbia. I knew Seven Song still smuggled people into the country and used the method of mass graves to dispose of the bodies that didn’t make the horrific journey across the ocean on freighters with little food or water.

It stood to reason this might be where they’d kill her and dump her in one such grave.

I was so fuckin’ cold, and it had nothin’ to do with the lashin’ rain as we got off our bikes and crowded together in the parkin’ lot.

“The rains gonna turn everythin’ to slop, but look for any fresh graves,” I told my brothers. “He might’ve buried her alive.”

Fury filled the space between us, the faces of my brothers filled with violence.

My phone vibrated once before it was at my ear. “Talk to me, Jiang.”

“He buried her alive.”

My heart topped dead in my chest.

“Ocean View?” I managed to get out.

“Yeah. I don’t know where, Henning, I swear to you. Kasper handed her over to a crew waiting there and took off. He’s on the way to a private air strip to fly to Hong Kong.” He paused, breath loud and rattling. “You can get to him. I have the address and flight number. Or you can try to find Mei.”

Pain split my body in two. The part of me desperate to murder the man who’d killed Kate, who’d buried Mei alive, with the part that simply could not fuckin’ live without Mei. The need to put my past to bed permanently or pursue a future that felt like the biggest gamble I’d ever made on the other.

It wasn’t even a choice.

“I’ll find her,” I swore. “Don’t think Kasper’s off the fuckin’ hook. He’s a dead man. I don’t care how long it fuckin’ takes me to end him.”

“Right,” Jiang whispered. “I’m on my way. I’ll help you dig.”

I hung up and moved between the grave stones, notin’ that Wrath was already on his knees at an unmarked grave, diggin’ into the wet soil with his bare hands.