Li reached under his jacket to remove his uncle’s revolver from his shoulder holster. His fingers froze on the leather of its empty pocket. The gun was gone. He turned, slowly, to find Yongli pointing it at him. Margaret sat perfectly still between them, not daring to move. She had no idea what was happening here, or why.

“They said she would be shot,” Yongli said. A tear ran silently down his cheek. He was desperate for Li to understand, to know that there was justification in this. “You said you would help, but I knew you wouldn’t. And I was right. They came to me that day. Made it clear I had two choices. Lotus or you. She’d still have been there now, in some cell, if I hadn’t agreed. Next week, next month, it would have been a bullet in the head.” Li must understand—there was nothing else he could have done. “I had no choice,” he said. “I love her.” His face was wet with tears now. “I’m sorry, Li Yan.”

Johnny Ren arrived at the passenger side of the pick-up and pointed his gun in at Li. “Get out,” he said. He had a large pink plaster across one side of his forehead. He was nervous, eyes dark-ringed and wary. Li remembered that face looming over him in the park, in the rain, the intent in those same eyes, the iron fist that had smashed repeatedly into his face. So they had won. He felt sick. All those wasted lives. For what? To buy a reprieve for those terrified executives at Grogan Industries, for Pang and his ambitions. To perhaps find a cure that would get them off the hook. He slipped out on to the dirt road, overcome now by a sad sense of despair in the knowledge that no one would ever know what he and Margaret knew. Guilty and greedy men would escape justice. Ren waggled his gun at Margaret and she climbed out after Li, who ached at the thought of a bullet piercing that pale, freckled flesh, spilling her blood in the dirt of this empty place. He hoped she would have no pain. There had been enough of that in her life. He glanced at her, but she had her eyes fixed on Ren, a strange, wild quality in them, the chipped ice-blue of her irises almost chilling in its intensity.