Page 35 of Soul on Fire

“She was visiting. She is—was—a good daughter. She would visit me once a year.” A sniffle, but she suppressed it. Bit her lip hard.

“Was that all she was doing here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your daughter was a journalist. Was she investigating something in China? Was she working on an article for theNew York Times, or for other American interests?”

“No. She was seeing her childhood friends. She was taking me to the park. We cooked dinner together every night.”

“And did she ever do any work on her laptop, Mrs. Wu?”

Mrs. Wu’s lips thinned. Her eyes darted to the tea pot. “The tea is ready.” She poured him a cup and passed it over with trembling hands.

He took it, sipped carefully. “This is wonderful tea, Mrs. Wu.”

She nodded, smiling once. It didn’t reach her eyes.

“Do you know who your daughter was going to meet the night she died?”

Mrs. Wu shook her head, her composure fracturing. She took a breath, held it, closed her eyes. “No. No, I don’t know who she was meeting. She said she was going to bed. I didn’t think she was leaving the house that night, or meeting anyone.”

“But she did leave, and she did meet someone.”

Mrs. Wu stayed quiet.

“Did Emily have any enemies? Anyone who didn’t like her? Anyone who she angered because of her work?”

“No, no…”

“Then how did Emily end up in the Zhujiang River, Mrs. Wu? Strangled and with her cell phone missing?”

Mrs. Wu grabbed the edge of her sofa, clinging to the cushion with both hands. She breathed slowly, eyes closed. “The police say it was a robbery,” she whispered. “She was attacked by a stranger. They stole her phone.”

“If it was a robbery, Mrs. Wu, and Emily wasn’t seeing anyone that night, then why did Emily text someone to meet her in Tianhe?”

“I don’t know—”

“Why were all of her internet searches conducted through VPNs? Why was she avoiding state security, Mrs. Wu?”

“I don’t know—”

Bai sighed. He finished his tea and set it back on the tray. “Mrs. Wu, your daughter was murdered. The police will call it a robbery and wipe their hands of the situation. But there are troubling facts about her case that have brought it to the Ministry of State Security’s attention.”

“Emily wasnota traitor,” Mrs. Wu breathed. “She was my daughter.”

“She was killed for a reason.” There was video from a surveillance camera, in fact: two men in black throwing her body into the river. No clear pictures of their faces. “And I believe something she was working on, possibly for the Americans, led to her death.”

Mrs. Wu crumbled, her face buried in her hands, sobs wracking her body as tears slid through her fingers.

“Mrs. Wu, I need Emily’s laptop. Now.”

* * *

Chapter Fifteen

Outside Sake

The Congo Forest