Watching them bag it as evidence, Jack felt chills thinking that the eight-inch razor-sharp blade was meant for his neck.

Alex leaned on the Dumpster with her fist against her chin, looking toward the bay. It had taken her a half hour to tell, and retell, her story. Jack could see the fatigue in her eyes, could hear the drag in her voice when she said, “I’m sorry, Jack. I’ve got to get back to the hotel, to catch an evening flight back.”

“Can I get one of the uniforms to drive you?” Jack asked.

“No, it’s all right,” she declined. “I’ve got to return the car anyway.”

“Sorry for the craziness,” he said, giving her a big hug. She responded with a gentle kiss to his cheek, and he felt awkward, knowing she had to have the missing woman on her mind.

“Call me when you get back,” she said.

“Sure,” he answered.

“Promise,” she insisted, knowing his police work always came first.

“Okay, promise,” he repeated, watching her go as Nicoll took possession of the bags of evidence.

“These two are done,” Nicoll said as CSU finished photographing the bodies.

Jack recounted events to Detective Nicoll, explaining how he’d tailed the men in the two vehicles, and how they tried to stop him from getting to the woman.

Dead on the wet concrete pavement was the big nunchakuwielding man, with wounds to the upper chest and shoulder, and two closely spaced gut shots, courtesy of Jack, for trying to stab him in the back. He had a driver’s license in his pocket that identified him as Shi Man Chun, from San Francisco. Jack could still feel the welts on his shoulder.

The other dead man was the big guy’s partner, who’d fancied himself a ninja assassin. Jack had drilled two hollow points into his chest that ripped out his back and shredded his rain jacket. One shot had missed, but the last one tore through his eye and blew out the back of his head. A puddle of blood was spreading in the rain.

He definitely wasn’t assassinating anyone anymore.

Fuck him, Jack thought. He tried to kill me but I beat him to the punch. Deal. Next.

In his pockets they found keys, a small sum of cash, and an international telephone calling card. There was a New York driver’s license that identified him as Tsai Ming Hui, rubber-banded together with several business cards. One of the cards was from a Hong Kong law firm, Wo Sun Partners, with a Tsim Sha Tsui address. Another card represented a New York firm, Chi and Chong, Esq., located on East Broadway. The last card was from a Mong Kok Jewelers Association. What surprised Jack was the name scrawled across the back of the New York lawyer’s card: SHELDON LITTMAN. Next to it was the Chinese word TONG. It made clear who was paying Shelly high legal fees.

The techs bagged the bodies for the morgue wagon as Nicoll interrupted Jack’s discovery.

“Congratulations, by the way,” he said. “I heard you got your shorty, Eddie Ng.”

“Patrol did a great job,” Jack answered evenly.

“So you did good up here, Jack.” Nicoll smiled under his mustache. “Killing two bad guys, taking a cold-blooded murderer home. Not bad for a few days in Seattle, huh?”

“Yeah,” Jack agreed reluctantly, flashing back on the dead men’s faces.

“And if anything new develops here, I’ll update you.”

“Thanks.” Jack forced a smile. “I’d appreciate that.” He felt the shock of the day slowly seeping into him.

“If there’s a woman, we’ll find her. And if anyone calls looking for a fake hand …”

Jack nodded, watching them load the body bags. Nicoll got into his unmarked car and followed the meat wagon to pick up the paperwork. Out by the access ramp the cops were hauling away the two remaining goons, and the terminal was quiet again.

Jack went back to the end of the pier and stood there looking out over the water for any signs from the Harbor Patrol or the Coast Guard. The harbor cops had responded to a boating accident off West Seattle, and Jack finally spotted them coming around the point. The Coast Guard had come through Puget Sound, a twenty-five-minute trip. Neither service had reported any sightings over the police band.

Jack waited on the pier until the last of the light, still hoping something would float up. In his mind, he reviewed the two times that he’d seen the missing woman, Mona. Once on a San Francisco rooftop, and now, on a Seattle pier. Based on the running glimpses he’d had, he couldn’t say for certain that it was the same woman. Same general height and weight, sure, but between the short hair and the long hair, the sunglasses, and makeup or lack of it, he couldn’t swear to it.

She’d eluded him again. Floating not only in the wind this time, but out to sea as well. He thought of the broken jade bangle in the prosthetic hand’s grasp. How did it figure? Sooner or later, he knew, Mona was going to surface again.

He returned to his motel room, so exhausted that he didn’t need the little vodka bottles from the minibar to help him crash.

On the Waterfront

Daylight found Jack back at the pier, watching the rain dapple the dark surface of the bay. The terminal area was busy with delivery trucks, tour buses queuing up, ferries docking, and smaller craft making ready to cast off.

He imagined the smell of coffee and croissants flavoring the salt sea air.

They never saw a body surface.

A Coast Guard cutter sliced across the rippling water, its wake white and choppy. Several times, Jack saw things floating: a waterlogged piece of luggage, an oil drum cloaked with barnacles and seaweed, a dead seagull drifting on a black garbage bag.

Nothing.

The icy water beneath the pier was maybe twenty feet deep, he thought, plenty deep enough to drown in, especially if someone was unconscious, or in shock, when they fell in.

Still, the divers hadn’t found anything.

He was there an hour before Nicoll approached him, a cardboard cup of Seattle joe in his hand.

“I tried calling your cell,” Nicoll said.

“My battery died,” Jack explained.

“You know Harbor Patrol’s on top of it, right?” Nicoll asked pointedly, firing up a cigarette.

“I know that.”

“And you know your being out here won’t make anything float up faster, yes?”

“I know that, too.” The Coast Guard was checking flow charts, analyzing the currents, tides, the drag of big ships. The harbor cops had advised him that the riptides were fast, strong, and deep, twenty-five feet in some spots. The tides could suck a body down, swirl it around for days before giving it up. Bodies had been known to float up way south or north along coastal Seattle, and as far out as Alki Point.

Still, Jack felt the same way as he had that night beside Lucky’s bedside, that somehow his presence at the scene might spark an idea, a memory, provide some clarity. He remembered that Ah Por’s clues had been yuh, rain, and seui, water. Water over water, she’d concluded. Now he saw the connections: The attack had occurred in the rain, in a city known for rain. Mona had disappeared, possibly into the water, and water over water could mean the riptides.

He made a mental note to visit Ah Por when he got back to New York.

“So here’s the update on the tong war,” Nicoll announced with a grin. “The two we arrested were illegals. We’re transferring them to INS for deportation. The two dead hatchetmen”—he finished his cigarette and flicked it into the bay—“came up from San Francisco. Motor Vehicles is still checking on the car and the minivan. And the license numbers your pretty lady friend copied down. The big man has a long sheet from Oakland, for gambling, and bootleg cigarettes. The Jap knife’s got his prints on it. The other kung-fu fighter, was a little different. He freelances, somehow, for law firms, and he has a New York driver’s ID. That’s your neck of the woods, isn’t it?”