THE END OF JULY usually marked the end of Yancheng’s rainy season. This year, however, the continual rainfall showed no signs of stopping. Instead, it seemed to get worse.
Two hours after Luo Wenzhou clocked out for the day, he returned to work. Parking his car by the bureau entrance, he ran into the building with only his hood for a shield.
“Sergeant Luo! Second floor meeting room! Hurry!”
Luo Wenzhou shook out his wet jacket, revealing three bloody scratch marks on the back of his hand, and dashed up the stairs two at a time. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. I just got here too.” Tao Ran closed his umbrella haphazardly. “What’s wrong with your hand?”
Annoyed, Luo Wenzhou scratched his wound, which was no longer bleeding. “A light bulb went out at my place. I was midway through changing it in the dark when the old man summoned me here on the double, and I accidentally stepped on His Majesty’s tail—hey, Deputy Lu!”
Speak of the devil.
Lu Youliang waved at both of them and blew toward the meeting room like a gust of wind. Luo Wenzhou and Tao Ran hurried after him.
✦ ✦ ✦
“TODAY WAS THE LAST DAY of Yancheng Number Sixteen Junior High’s student-recruitment summer camp. The school had hired a bus so that the students could visit the Xiling Paleo-Anthropological Museum. In addition to the driver and teacher, eighteen kids total went on the trip; they’ll be entering the sixth grade come fall. They finished their museum tour at five and set off back to the school. They were supposed to arrive at seven, but they didn’t, and no one has been able to contact the bus or its passengers.”
No simple traffic accident would have resulted in an alert to the municipal bureau’s criminal investigation squad at this hour. Luo Wenzhou and Tao Ran exchanged glances, but no one said anything. Deputy Lu pushed open the door to the meeting room; everyone inside made as if to stand up, but Lu Youliang gestured for them to continue. “Don’t mind me, keep going!”
The projector clicked, and a huge satellite map appeared on the screen.
“The lost bus’s license plate said NLXXXX. It came from Hengtong Rental Services. The driver, Han Jiang, is a forty-one-year-old male who’s been driving for fifteen years. The teacher, Hu Lingling, is a thirty-two-year-old female. She’s employed by Number Sixteen Junior High, and she’s a Yancheng local. The bus left the museum’s back gate at 5:05 p.m. and got onto the highway around six. A few parents learned that sections of the highway were temporarily closed due to the weather, so they called Hu Lingling to check in. The teacher told them that the driver had already made a detour, but the driving conditions still weren’t good, so they expected to reach the school one or two hours late. At around 7:40, parents waiting at the school called again, but Hu Lingling’s phone was off. At that point, since the parents weren’t aware of the problem yet, they tried calling their children. Only one call went through, and on it, they heard kids crying and screaming, plus a man’s angry shouts and curses. Four seconds later, the call dropped.
“The parents called the police. A few of the kids had phones with apps for GPS-tracking children installed, but all the signals were in separate locations scattered across the foot of a mountain, so the kids were probably forced to toss their phones out. There’s one kid whose running shoes have GPS tracking, though, and that signal shows that they left their planned route. They’re currently in the southern region of the Xiling County mountains and are continuing south.”
“Was the hijacker on the bus to begin with, or was it hijacked en route?” Luo Wenzhou asked. “Has the hijacker tried to make contact? Or made any demands to the parents?”
“We’re not sure whether there are demands yet. The hijacker hasn’t called.”
Deputy Lu looked up. “Luo Wenzhou, this case involves a number of districts and counties in our jurisdiction. All departments will need to cooperate seamlessly with the SWAT team. You’ll coordinate everything and report directly to me. Can you handle that?”
Luo Wenzhou froze for a moment, suddenly feeling gazes around the room land on him. It was a good thing he had nerves of steel. His face barely moving a muscle, he nodded lightly. “Yes.”
“The kids’ safety is our top priority. Move out immediately!”
✦ ✦ ✦
THE RAIN GREW HEAVIER. It showed no sign of stopping. Next to the teacher sat a girl in a floral-print dress that was already wet from the rain coming in the window. She didn’t dare try to close it, though.
“Dage, what do you want?” the girl heard Hu-laoshi beg. “You can take everything—all the money on the bus. We won’t say a word. And I have contact info for a few parents. If you’re facing some sort of trouble, I can contact them—”
“Shut up,” the man sitting by the driver interrupted coldly, the machete in his hand glinting. “Enough bullshit! Do what I tell you. Keep driving!”
The young teacher looked up and made eye contact with the middle-aged driver in the rearview mirror. She looked at him imploringly, hoping that the man holding the steering wheel would think of something.
But the driver’s gaze held only fear. Looking away, he followed the hijacker’s orders.
Since they’d taken a detour, the bus full of students had been driving down a narrow, muddy road when they encountered a broken-down little car blocking the way. The car had stopped right in the middle of the road, which was too narrow for the bus to drive around the vehicle, so the driver and teacher got out to talk to the owner. He was a haggard-looking young man who, despite his appearance, seemed very amicable. The three of them had joined forces to push the car to the side. But once they’d finally cleared the road, Hu-laoshi felt a blade pressed into her back before she could straighten up again. That apparently amicable young man had been a criminal lying in wait.
The windshield wipers creaked as if they were about to give out. The bus was now well into Xiling’s mountains; there was no one else around for miles.
A sudden flash of lightning illuminated the hijacker’s pale face. “Drive to that empty area up ahead,” he said, “and park.”
The bus driver did so obediently. When the engine noise died, it only emphasized the quiet of their surroundings, which made the atmosphere even more frightening. The teacher’s heart was in her throat. The girl next to her began to sob uncontrollably, and she hurried to cover the girl’s mouth. She shook her head at the other children, gesturing for them to remain quiet so as not to anger the hijacker. As she did so, she took a few deep breaths, striving to keep her panic and terror in check. She reached carefully into her bag.
“You.” The hijacker put the machete against the bus driver’s neck, then pointed at Hu Lingling. Her hand froze in her bag. The criminal’s icy gaze pinned her in place as he ordered, “Don’t try anything back there. Come up to the front.”
In that exact, pivotal moment, Hu Lingling found what she was looking for. She retracted her hand and surreptitiously stuffed the object she’d retrieved into the hand of the student in her arms, then smoothed the girl’s hair soothingly. The girl’s eyes widened. Hu Lingling didn’t say anything, only glanced outside meaningfully. Then she stood slowly, put her hands in the air, and walked to the front, as the hijacker wanted.
The girl wearing the floral-print dress gripped the personal-safety alarm tightly in her hand and hid it behind her back.