Jade Dragon by James Swallow Read Free Book Online

dropped from the
Lucky Dot on the fourteenth floor. Nikita came out and she listed like a
galleon in high seas, her face puffy and red with drink, screwing up in
irritation at the rain. Another girl came with her—a bottle-ginger
Korean dressed in retro kogal style—and trailing behind a bald fellow
with a simpering, pleading look on his face.
    Ko was out of the car in one swift motion, the balisong still concealed
in the curve of his fist. “Niki!” he shouted, and beckoned her toward
him.
    Nikita threw Ko a look and then smiled back at the Korean and the man.
“Are we going to have a party, then?”
    The faux-ginger girl gave Nikita a sharp prod that was not the friendly
jab she pretended it was. “I’ll take it from here. ”
    “He wanted to go with me—”
    “Girls, I like you both…” said the bald guy.
    “With
me
,” snapped the Korean and this time she gave Ko’s sister a
shove.
    Nikita brought up her hand to slap the ginger girl, but Ko was there. He
grabbed her wrist and turned it. Her slow-burning ire instantly turned
on him and she bit Ko where his forearm was bare.
    The Korean was already melting away. Ko ignored the pain and dragged his
sister, screeching and complaining, back to the car. He forced her into
the passenger seat and they set off.
     
    Nikita spat and hissed at him on the way back to the apartment. Now and
then she would look directly at him and he could see the dull, doll-like
cast in her eyes that told him she was stoned. She alternated between
ranting and babbling, the coherence of her speech ebbing and flowing. Ko
just concentrated on the driving and tried not to think about it too
much. Every time he did, every time he thought honestly about his
dissolute sister’s self-destructive life, it made his gut tighten and
his temper flare. She worked at places like the Lucky Dot ostensibly as
a hostess, which in real terms meant she was paid to look pretty, and
ply the corp clients who frequented the bar with overpriced drinks while
they pawed at her. It was just slighdy less sordid than being a
sexworker. Nikita wasn’t like the girls in the Mongkok sinplexes –
although Ko often said she was to get a rise out of her—in some ways,
she was worse. It made his blood boil to think that the highlight of her
day would be some suited creep, like baldy back, there making eyes at
her.
    “Least I got a job,” she slurred.
    Ko realised too late he’d spoken his thoughts aloud.
    “Not like you,” Nikita went on. “What do you do, little brother? Play
with your stupid cars—” she smacked the dashboard. “Run stuff for the
triads ’cross the border,
steal
? I’m trying to make something of
myself.”
    “How? By playing corp wannabe, by sucking up to every suit that comes
through the door? What, you think one of them is going to fall for you
and make you his mistress, shower you with diamonds and credits? One
day, one of those scumbags is going to take you for games back at his
place and you’ll end up spent and dead!”
    “Don’t judge me!” she shot back. “You’re just like Dad—”
    Ko stamped on the brakes and the Ranger screeched to a halt in the
middle of Kwun Tong Road. In a low voice, without looking at her, he
said, “Don’t talk about him. ”
    Nikita fell silent and after a moment they drove on.
     
    Eventually, Frankie had to use the Penfield beside the bed just to get
some sleep. Half-considered thoughts and strange, ghostly dream
fragments hovered at the edges of his weary mind. Exhaustion and jetlag
struck hard the moment he laid eyes on the bed, the inviting spread of
cream and chocolate-coloured silk sheets open to him in the middle of
the suite. Alice talked about the meeting, but he wasn’t really
listening. He remembered falling asleep in his suit.
    Once or twice he awoke with that peculiar kind of disassociated fear
that comes from finding yourself in a strange bedroom. The subtle
electromagnetic aura of the Penfield generator eventually sent him