Code Name Komiko by Naomi Paul Read Free Book Online Page A

reason for her hasty departure, of course, but she promised herself she’d glance at the assignments once more before bed, just so she wouldn’t have told her mother an out-and-out lie.
    Hung Lili gave her a curt nod, said “Be safe,” and returned to her conversation.
    Lian tried to move stealthily back through the restaurant, but she caught her father’s eye and momentarily stumbled in her heels. He said nothing but held her in his stern gaze for a long moment before breaking away to laugh at one of the Australians’ off-color jokes. Lian took the opportunity to exit, but she didn’t quite feel like she’d made it out unscathed.
    Twenty-six floors below, the doorman was able to flag her a taxi so quickly that she doubled her standard tip. Three car lengths ahead of her, the potbellied man was just stepping behind the wheel of a pristine, new-model black Mercedes with Rand Harrison in its backseat.
    “Where to?” her cab driver grunted.
    “I don’t know yet,” she answered. “Go where that Mercedes goes, but not too close, okay?”
    “Oooh,” the driver said in a bored tone. “Intrigue.”
    Maybe his sarcasm was warranted. She did feel a little ridiculous ordering the tail, like she was in some bad American cop show. But she couldn’t help but be curious about the fat man. Back at the beach, she’d figured him for a plainclothes detective, or a senior officer who’d been called out to the crime scene without the time to grab his uniform. So then why was he moonlighting as Harrison’s chauffeur, fetching his coat and driving him to whatever “business” he was attending to?
    Something stank about the whole situation.
    “So,” the cabbie said. “Are you his wife or his mistress?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “This part of town,” he explained. “Wearing a dress that nice, chasing a car that fancy . . . come on. You’re not the first pretty young thing to ask me to follow a two-timer.”
    “I’m
sixteen
,” she said flatly.
    “Intrigue, intrigue!” he replied, looking a million miles from even slightly interested.
    It wasn’t hard to believe that the cabbie was an old hand at tailing, though. He kept a respectful distance without ever letting a full city block come between the cars, and he seemed to know how the lights were timed so that he could hit them properly.
    Harrison, for his part, didn’t appear to be in any particular hurry. The Mercedes indicated a lane change, lazily drifted over, and headed up Gloucester Road for the Cross-Harbor Tunnel.
    “Wave good-bye to the yacht club,” the cabbie told her, just before the tunnel swallowed them up. “When we pop out the other side, I guarantee you’re overdressed for wherever we end up.”
    Lian thought of correcting him—she was not some helpless rich airhead—but she didn’t think he’d believe her. Let him think this was some petty, sordid affair—there was less chance of him remembering her that way, which was a good thing. Instead, she sat back in her seat, the tunnel lights moving over her in a steady rhythm, and tried to figure out some kind of plan.
    The Mercedes emerged into the Hong Kong night and indicated for the Chatham exit. Lian peered through the cab’s windshield, watching the sleek black car ease onto Gascoigne Road and then signal a right turn onto Nathan.
    Every block they drove north seemed to grow louder, uglier, and more sinister. Lian had only ever been through the Kowloon district during daylight hours, and even then, she’d have shied away from most of these places. To either side of them were bars and clubs, beckoning with garish neon, bleeding music that boomed and thudded. Advertisements for fast food and hard liquor and plastic junk seemed bolted to every available surface above her head. The sidewalks were crowded, as they always seemed to be, with the sort of people who’d learned to keep their heads down, their faces hidden from passing cars.
    “Your boyfriend’s stopping,” the cabbie said, nodding