Read Page 39

The threat at the supermarket had not taken.

Wu was not surprised. He had been raised in an environment that stressed the power of men and the subordination of women, but Wu had always found it to be more hope than truth. Women were harder. They were more unpredictable. They handled physical pain better-he knew this from personal experience. When it came to protecting their loved ones, they were far more ruthless. Men would sacrifice themselves out of machismo or stupidity or the blind belief that they would be victorious. Women would sacrifice themselves without self-deception.Advertisement

He had not been in favor of making the threat in the first place. Threats left enemies and uncertainty. Eliminating Grace Lawson earlier would have been routine. Eliminating her now would be riskier.

Wu would have to return and handle the job himself.

He was in Beatrice Smith's shower, dyeing his hair back to its original color. Wu usually wore it bleached blond. He did this for two reasons. The first reason was basic: He liked the way it looked. Vanity, perhaps, but when Wu looked in the mirror he thought the surfer-blond, gel-spiked style worked on him. Reason two, the color-a garish yellow-was useful because it was what most people remembered. When he brought his hair back to its natural state of everyday Asian-black, flattened it down, when he changed his clothes from the modern hip style to something more conservative, donned a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, well, the transformation was very effective.

He grabbed Jack Lawson and dragged him down into the basement. Lawson did not resist. He was barely conscious. He was not doing well. His mind, already stretched, had perhaps snapped. He would not survive much longer.

The basement was unfinished and damp. Wu remembered the last time he'd been in a similar setting, out in San Mateo, California. The instructions had been specific. He had been hired to torture a man for exactly eight hours-why eight Wu had never learned-and then break bones in both the man's legs and arms. Wu had manipulated the broken bones so that the jagged edges sat next to nerve bundles or near the surface of the skin. Any movement, even the slightest, would cause excruciating pain. Wu locked the basement and left the man by himself. He checked up on him once a day. The man would plead, but Wu would just stare silently. It took eleven days for the man to die of starvation.

Wu found a strong pipe and chained Lawson to it. He also cuffed his arms behind his back around a support wall. He put the gag back into his mouth.

Then he decided to test the binds.

"You should have gotten every copy of that photograph," Wu whispered.

Jack Lawson's eyes rolled up.

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"Now I'll have to pay your wife a visit."

Their gazes locked. A second passed, no more, and then Lawson sprang to life. He began to flail. Wu watched him. Yes, this would be a good test. Lawson struggled for several minutes, a fish dying on the line. Nothing gave way.

Wu left him alone then, still fighting his chains, to find Grace Lawson. pqdm.com