Cold Silence (A High Stakes Thriller) by Danielle Girard Read Free Book Online Page B

traditional Cantonese dish of minced pork and salted fish had never been her favorite, but that of her father and sisters. "I can't wait," she said.
    Her mother clicked her tongue as she did when she was particularly pleased and rang off.
    She was used to this push and pull. Her life had always been a complex draw between two very different worlds. Hers was a traditional Chinese family, despite the fact that they had been in the States for more than three decades. Her two sisters, one older, one younger, both led traditional lives. They were married, each had produced a son, and now Lai Ching had a daughter and Man Yee was pregnant again.
    As a child, Mei had been the rebellious one by Chinese standards. Especially for a girl. After school, she used to sneak to a seedy little theater on the edge of Chinatown that played American action-adventure movies.
    She'd grown up with Star Wars and Jaws and three different James Bonds. In the evenings, she would go into the small bathroom in her family's flat, the only room where she could ever be alone, and practice her defense moves until someone dragged her out.
    She had always wanted to be an FBI agent. Even after ten years, her parents still asked her when she planned to move home and get married. There was no man. Dating, like everything else, felt like a pull between two drastically different realities. She didn't want the life her parents and sisters had, and yet the American culture and its dating rituals seemed completely foreign as well.
    Mei made a note in the calendar, although there was little risk that the plans would interfere with anything other than her job. Her life was almost all work. In her free time, she still devoured the same movies she had always loved.
    Just then, Jennifer Townsend entered the office they shared and closed the door behind her. Mei thought it was a little late to be showing up for work, but she said nothing. Jennifer hung her coat and scarf and pulled off her gloves. Her back turned, she didn't even look at Mei, let alone say hello. It had been like this off and on the entire time Mei had worked with her. Ten years already. They had been young when they'd started working together: Jennifer twenty-six or -seven and Mei only twenty-four. Despite the relatively narrow age gap, Jennifer had always treated Mei as an unwelcome stranger. Things had been getting worse for years, but the last twelve months had been almost unbearable. And Mei knew there were a lot of things Jennifer didn't talk about. The case they were working right now wasn't helping matters. They'd had more late nights and weekends than either cared to discuss. The problem was, criminals didn't keep bankers' hours. And Mei's mother had learned that the later she called, the more likely Mei was to be at the office and actually answer her live.
    Jennifer sat at her desk and unlocked her top right drawer. Mei heard the familiar rattle of a pill bottle before the drawer closed and locked again. It was the same sound she heard a half-dozen times a day. Mei wondered if anyone else had heard it, too.
    There were eight other agents in the Computer Intrusion Squad, but the groups tended to work on cases in pairs, and for convenience, Mei was almost always paired with Jennifer. They were also the only two women. There had been a third—Megan Riggs—ages ago, but she was long gone. Every once in a while, Mei thought about how Megan and her son were doing, if they were still alive. She'd been in the Federal Witness Protection Program for a couple of years, but supposedly a leak had led to the Russian mob tracking her down. From what Mei had heard, the leak had come from the Office of Professional Responsibility and Megan had gotten away. Mei could only imagine where she was now.
    Mei thought it was about the same time that Megan escaped the Russian mob that things with Jennifer started to go downhill. Jennifer and Megan had been close. Jennifer had looked up to Megan, almost like an older