Page 20 of Caution to the Wind

“Yeah,” she scoffed. “What you really are is a man with a white knight complex. I don’t need saving, Henning, so why don’t you back off?”

“Like hell you don’t.”

“I can handle Brian.”

“You need savin’ from your own damn self,” I snapped, my hand flexin’ on her chest so she was plastered to the lockers for a moment before I let her go and stepped back to drag both my hands through my hair. “I’ve never met someone more self-destructive. What the fuck are you doin’ hangin’ around with someone like that?”

“Someone could say the same thing aboutyou,” she pointed out with an arched brow, takin’ in my leather jacket and motorcycle boots, the tattoo sneakin’ out the end of my jacket sleeve.

Everyone wanted to pretend they were above judgin’ books by their covers, but the truth was, we were raised to judge, and judge we all did. The difference between one person and another was what their definition of normal was to judge others against.

At Cleo and Mei’s wealthy high school, I wasnotthe norm.

Hell, even when I’d worked at the hospital, before joinin’ The Fallen, I’d been too different to fit in with my fellow residents who drove compact sedans instead of Harleys and wore wrinkled polos on their rare days off instead of old denim and cracked leather.

“Don’t try to talk your way around this one,” I warned. “I’m serious, Mei. First, Cleo says you got detention again, and then this? What is goin’ on with you?”

She canted her chin higher in the air, crossed her arms, and stared at me mulishly. She could be as stubborn as a goat when she set her mind to it, and it was clear she didn’t want to share anythin’ with me.

This was new.

After Kate passed away, Mei transferred all her love for my wife onto me. She told me about her hopes and dreams, those few things that dared to scare her. She shared her quick wit, funny sense of humour, generous spirit, and carin’ nature.

But in the past six months, somethin’ had changed.

Daiyu’s doctors had declared she wasn’t gonna get better.

And the Mei I’d known was slowly dyin’ along with her.

The recklessness in her had ratcheted up, a vibration under her skin that made her twitchy, too eager to displease, too ready to dive into a fight head first.

“Hey,” I said, softenin’ like butter in a pan, reachin’ out to cup the back of Mei’s head and shake it a little. “You used to talk to me. I’m still here. What’s goin’ on in that madly brilliant brain?”

Her lips twitched, eyes scourin’ my face for a long moment. When she finally spoke, the words were so soft I had to read her lips to understand them. “Nothing I can do to help Ma, but I can still help figure out who killed Kate.”

Contrary emotions attacked me simultaneously. A reluctant sense of pride in her, that this young woman would be so loyal to Kate, to Cleo and me, that she’d risk herself in the pursuit of justice. And an overwhelmin’, helpless kinda fury that made my tongue numb in my mouth as poison spilled over it and onto her.

“You listen to me, Mei Zhen. There is nothin’ you can do to bring Kate back, and I’m sorrier than you’ll ever fuckin’ know that you gotta lose two mothers at the age of seventeen. But under absolutely no fuckin’ circumstances are you gettin’ involved in anythin’ to do with Kate’s death. The sheer stupidity of you thinkin’ you can take on a group of murderers makes me seriously rethink your IQ. Do you get me?”

Another stubborn look.

I shifted my hand on her head to grasp the back of her neck tightly. “You get me?”

“I told you I remembered that Kate spoke Cantonese in the end,” she said all in a rush, eyes eager as she beseeched me to understand. “But I think I also remember there was a tattoo on the ankle of the man who kicked me. I woke up from this dream a few months ago, and I knew exactly what it looked like! It was a series of circles within circles. I looked it up and––”

“Enough!” The word barked out of me, and Mei flinched, not with fear, but somethin’ that was somehow worse.

Rejection.

I ignored the way that burned inside me and fixed her with my unhappy stare. “You are not gonna do this. Those people who killed Kate were criminals, and if they were a Chinese gang, they areseriouscriminals. You don’t fuck with people like that.”

“You used The Fallen MC to help you get information about Kate and about some of the women who showed up at the hospital abused and broken,” she pointed out. “Now you’reoneof them. Should I avoid you, using that very same logic?”

“That’s completely different. I’m a grown man and a trained one at that. I can take care of myself.”

“So can I! You know I just got my gold belt in Shaolin kung fu, and I’ve been taking MMA for five years.”

“You’re seventeen years old,” I shouted, my voice ringin’ through the empty hall. My hands were suddenly bracketin’ her shoulders, shakin’ her lightly before I lifted her clean off her feet so she was raised to my eye level. “You’re just a kid. You wanna get yourself killed too?”