Chapter 6
“THE MISSING GIRL, Qu Tong, is eleven. She was originally on the bus, and she tried to distract the criminals from her teacher by throwing a personal-safety alarm out the vehicle window. Then she escaped out the window during the chaos. We don’t know where she is now.”
“Get a few police dogs over here from Xiling,” Luo Wenzhou responded. He was rather calm after having heard Lang Qiao’s report. “It’s okay. A kid can’t have gotten far. Get a few of our colleagues who are good at talking to comfort the parents. To be honest, if she hadn’t run, then the consequences would’ve been unimaginable once the hijackers realized that she was the one who threw the alarm. I think she was pretty smart.”
Fei Du looked back and whistled at his hooligan friends. He could rally these loafers with a single call.
The playboys had been racing around in the rain and hadn’t fully dried off when they were roped into the hostage-saving operation. They only served as props, and they hadn’t caught a glimpse of the hijackers; still, this was enough excitement to last them through the year. They surrounded Fei Du at his first whistle. “Need something else, Lord Fei?”
“Municipal bureau.” Fei Du pointed his chin at Luo Wenzhou, encapsulating the handsome man’s entire career with those two words. “An eleven-year-old girl went missing from the bus. I’ll share her photo soon. If you guys are free tonight, keep an eye out.”
“No problem!” For once, Zhang Donglai could stand up tall in front of Fei Du. He approached them, all smiles. “Hello, Sergeant Luo. You’ve worked hard. If you need anything, just holler! We’re all family here!”
Luo Wenzhou surveyed him impassively. Apparently, after this young master got into trouble before, his family grounded him for over two months; he had probably only recently served his sentence and regained his freedom. Right now, all he was wearing was a pair of holey pants and a vest. He now had his hair in a mohawk resembling a rooster’s comb—a row of long, colorful hair stood atop his head, sticking out this way and that. There was also a word shaved into the back of his head.
“What’s that on your head?” Luo Wenzhou asked.
Standing up straight, Zhang Donglai replied, “It says ‘Endure.’”
Zhang Donglai’s appearance was the result of him “enduring”? Luo Wenzhou couldn’t help but feel some admiration.
“Don’t worry, Sergeant Luo. I’m familiar with the area,” said Zhang Donglai. “It’s lousy with the rich. But aside from their luxury and corruption, there’re no other beasts here for her to run into. For thirty miles around, the most dangerous wild animals are squirrels. She’ll be safe for sure!”
Zhang Donglai’s claims were true enough—Xiling had always been a beautiful, yet remote and unapproachable, region. Even fewer people than usual were around now, due to the rainstorm. How far could a panicked little girl run?
No one was too worried when they first heard the news about the girl, and their work continued as usual. Han Chengzheng, the insane hijacker, was dragged away in a body bag. The ambulance left with Hu-laoshi, who was badly injured, as well as Han Jiang, who was clinging to life. The frightened children left in batches with their parents to undergo a physical exam and therapy. The Xiling canine unit arrived soon after, and a few rescue teams split up to cover more ground by working separately. Zhang Donglai managed to find a bunch of colorful convertibles, which played the theme song of the children’s show Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf as they drove along nearby roads, looking for the girl.
The professionals and volunteers each did their own thing, not getting in each other’s way. They were actually working well together, aside from the fact that the echoing theme song was getting annoying.
Fei Du leaned against the door of his car. “Want to go look at the spot where the girl left the bus?”
Luo Wenzhou unabashedly accepted the free ride. In the car, he poked Fei Du’s shirt collar. “Put your shirt on properly,” he said in a rather old-fashioned tone. “What were you guys doing out here in the middle of the night?”
Fei Du pulled the garment shut lazily, not even checking to see whether the few buttons he did up went through the right buttonholes. The wet fabric hid nothing. In fact, this seemed even more indecent than leaving it open. “Racing.”
“With the car roof open?”
“We were on dirt bikes. Two even flipped over. Actually, before you guys closed the roads, an ambulance took away a guy who’d broken a bone.” Driving the car away carefully, Fei Du for once teased Luo Wenzhou without using his usual rude tone. “Of course, that might be a little too exciting for a middle-aged man like you.”
Luo Wenzhou looked down at his mud-covered boots, mournfully realizing that he might in fact be approaching middle age—
because he really couldn’t understand how empty these young men must feel for them to do something like that.
“What happened to your hand?” Fei Du asked, glimpsing Luo Wenzhou’s three scratch marks. “Who’s got such a bad temper?”
Luo Wenzhou paused for a moment, focusing on the various team reports coming in on his earpiece, then answered, “Your little brother.”
Fei Du looked bewildered.
“Got it,” Luo Wenzhou said into the walkie-talkie. “Pay extra attention to ravines and gaps. After what she’s been through, the kid could be in fight-or-flight mode. She might’ve hidden somewhere.”
He put down the walkie-talkie and turned to Fei Du. “Do these look like scratches from a primate? Where’s your common sense? That cat Tao Ran got you all those years ago—did you forget about him? You two rugrats both get into something new every other day, and then someone has to clean up after you.”
Fei Du froze as the nighttime scenery whizzed past the car windows on either side. For a while, he didn’t say anything. Not until bright lights started appearing before them, a signal that they were nearing the spot the girl had run off from, did he ask in an unreadable tone, “It’s been so many years. You’re still taking care of the cat?”
“What’s the alternative? Give him to you? If you want him, hurry up and take him. And don’t try to give him back to me.” Whenever Luo Wenzhou thought of Luo Yiguo, his hand hurt. He scratched his wound absently. “Park a little farther away. If the kid left footprints, we don’t want to obscure them.”
Fei Du did just as he asked. “Do you…” He cleared his throat. “Do you need to go get a shot?”
Luo Wenzhou was stunned to hear Fei Du voice such a normal concern. He found himself slightly tongue-tied, in fact; this was even more shocking than Luo Yiguo coming to snuggle with him. “N-no…I’m good. The last one I got should still be effective.”
He got the rabies vaccine even more frequently than a dog would. He was invincible for eleven and a half months of the year. The doctor who gave him the shots joked that he should get a membership card and start buying the shots in bulk rather than paying for them one by one.
After his initial shock passed, Luo Wenzhou couldn’t help making a jab back at Fei Du. “How come you’re so filial all of a sudden? It’s making me a little flustered.”
Fei Du’s expression returned to normal, and he also reverted to his usual annoying tone. “Don’t be,” he said with a hint of a smile. “Caring for the elderly is everyone’s responsibility. Tch. Long nights with only a cat for company… Just thinking of that makes me cold and lonely.”
It might’ve been Fei Du’s messy attire, or Luo Wenzhou’s own hyperactive self-consciousness, but even as Fei Du ran his mouth, the sergeant picked up on a hint of seduction in his eyes. That, along with the way Fei Du had all but moaned “long nights,” fired Luo Wenzhou’s imagination, and he couldn’t help accidentally crossing the line.
“‘Caring’ how?” he shot back at Fei Du. “Actions speak louder than words, you know.”
As soon as Luo Wenzhou’s off-color joke landed, both men fell silent, and a mood that would have been difficult to describe settled inside the tiny race car.
Luo Wenzhou knew he’d put his foot in his mouth, and he wished he could retract his words. After a while, he coughed dryly then tried to fix the situation with a not-so-brilliant line: “Don’t forget to pick up some snacks and come visit your old man on holidays.”
Fei Du forced a smile. “Should I bring incense7 as well?”
“Fuck off!”
They exchanged a glance, then got out of the car at the same time, deciding to leave the awkwardness behind in the vehicle.
Suddenly remembering something, Luo Wenzhou turned back to Fei Du. “Oh, right—didn’t you really like that cat initially? Why didn’t you want to keep it in the end?”
Fei Du paused. Faraway headlights suddenly swept over his forehead and brows. Their curves looked hand-carved, as though Fei Du’s silhouette had been carefully designed.
“No, I didn’t, actually. I don’t like pets—they’re too much work. But I would’ve felt bad saying that to Tao Ran’s face. Anyway…” Fei Du looked up, one brow twitching slightly. “Maybe I torture animals to death as a hobby. Maybe I was afraid I couldn’t control myself. That would’ve been hard to explain to Tao Ran, so I distanced myself instead. Do you think that’d be a reasonable excuse, Sergeant Luo?”
Luo Wenzhou froze for a moment. This didn’t feel like another one of Fei Du’s disgusting jokes. Before he could really analyze Fei Du’s words, though, the voice of one of the search-team officers came through his earpiece. “Sergeant Luo, we found the alarm the girl threw out the window and some footprints.”