Hopefully this chapter will soften the blow of the last cliffhanger. It's one of my favorites, and I hope you enjoy. We're almost there :)
March 26, 1964
As a man who had stopped believing in God years ago, Lucien did not find the abyss in which he floated surprising. He'd certainly expected nothing more of the afterlife, if this existence could be categorized as such. Quite honestly, he'd expected much worse. But Jean expected so much more—eternity not only with her God but with her parents, with the baby daughter God took from her, with Christopher.
I'm sorry, my darling…
Always sorry, never changing, not enough. Mere feet from freedom, he spent his last chance, and now Jean would be alone, not only in life but apparently in death as well.
Gradually, inexplicable sounds—footsteps, coughs, distant shouting—breached the bleak barrier. He recognized those sounds not just as those belonging in the land of the living, but also of the sick and dying.
No, surely not.
Despite the paralyzing darkness, he inclined his head toward the sounds, toward hope. Movement, however, only earned him stabbing chest pain, which sent him gasping for breath that seemed too difficult to acquire for a dead man. If he could spare the oxygen for laughter, it would bubble out of him. He welcomed pain like an old friend, knowing that its presence meant another chance.
A man's sharp Mandarin rose above the din. "Sir, try not to struggle."
The only struggle Lucien felt was the one to open his eyes, the lids suddenly heavy as lead. When he tried to speak, only a rattling rasp came out. Where am I? he wanted to shout. A firm grip trapped his flailing arms. Don't touch me!
"Blake? Blake, it's Fitz. You're safe—oi, let go of him. Blake? You're in hospital. Can you hear me?" A heavy hand landed on Lucien's shoulder but without the usually bracing squeeze he associated with the voice. "Easy, now. Take a few breaths. You're coming out of a bugger of an anesthetic."
Lucien struggled to process the words, for the firmer his grip on consciousness, the more potent the effects of the anesthetic. Slowly, he strung the words together into a coherent thought. A doctor. Fitz. Hospital. Safe.
It's over. It's finally over. No more plotting, no more sneaking, no more violence, no more locks, no more loneliness. Soon he could have Jean, who just moments ago he thought divided from him forever. For all his broken promises, Jean could rest assured that his promise to never leave home without her again would be kept. After twelve months of torture and unspeakable pain, Lucien doubted he possessed the strength to go anywhere alone.
Lucien forced his foggy brain obey the demands of his body. With great effort, his eyelids fluttered, and the darkness disappeared, replaced by fluorescent light and blurry faces.
"There he is," Fitz said, his hand still on Lucien's shoulder.
As the grainy vision gave way to clarity, Lucien beheld Charles Fitzwilliam, a man with a massive frame and a lopsided mouth into a forced half grin, stooping down to Lucien's eye level. His gray eyes, though bloodshot, were sharp, but his mildly unnerving gaze left Lucien wondering if this nightmare he thought he'd woken from had more in store for him.
A nurse brought a cup of water to his lips, and Lucien would have guzzled it if the nurse hadn't maintained her grip on the cup. His subsequent coughing fit nearly knocked him out, but he recovered quickly enough to rasp, "Jiang?"
Fitz didn't have a chance to respond before the doctor demanded that he either give him room to work or leave the room.
As the doctor and nurse asked him banal questions, poked and prodded, and scribbled on charts, Lucien descended into panic. While his immediate worries were for naught, more piled on with every passing second. Did Fitz and his men apprehend Jiang? If they didn't, do they know where he is? Are Li and Ying Yue under the consulate's protection? And Jean—who was protecting Jean? Would he be imprisoned for crimes that Jiang refused to answer for?
"Mr. Blake, you're hyperventilating," the nurse said, her voice clipped and decidedly not comforting.
"I think you'll find," Fitz said, switching to Mandarin, "that if you'll let me talk with him, his vital signs will improve."
When the nurse ignored him and reached for the IV, the doctor held up a hand. "Five minutes," he snapped at Fitz. He gave the nurse a pointed look, and she dropped the IV with a huff.
As soon as the door closed behind the medical team, Fitz held up a hand. "I know you have questions—just let me talk. It'll be faster." He pulled a chair close to Lucien's bed and collapsed into it. For the first time, Lucien noticed the blood—his blood, no doubt—staining the front of Fitz's shirt.
"All that brass, and they still won't bring you a change of clothes?" Lucien teased.
Fitz cocked a bushy eyebrow. "After all my investigative work, you decided to jump in front of a madman with a gun?"
Lucien supposed he deserved the pain that accompanied his chuckle, but he quickly sobered. "Is he dead?"
"Fortunately for you, no, but he's injured and being held for questioning related to the savage murder of four men." Fitz leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and folding his hands. "You are technically being held for questioning as well, but I convinced the local authorities not to cuff you since you're…incapacitated."
"Just how badly am I banged up?"
"From the bullets? Your lung collapsed—not for the first time, I hear—but the bullet in your thigh went clean through. You'll walk with a cane for a few weeks, but you'll live." He paused. "The rest—"
"Doesn't matter right now." With so little of this situation resolved, he had no desire to confront his trauma.
For a moment, Fitz's pursed lips and searching look made Lucien think he would press on anyway, but in the end he nodded briskly and moved on. "Jiang is conscious and quiet at the moment, but we'll get him to talk. You're not going down for this. Nevertheless, I will need you to give a statement to a colleague of mine, who is standing by. The sooner we have your statement, the easier it will be to crack Jiang."
Having expected as much, Lucien moved on quickly. "Jean? My daughter and her family? Mei Lin?"
"Safe. My men have been watching them for weeks now." The following pause unsettled Lucien more than the last.
"Tell me you didn't."
Fitz laced both hands behind his head in an effort to release the tension in his shoulders. "Who else could I have called, Blake? Would you rather I called your estranged daughter? I'm sure she'd love to hear that her husband is the reason you've been missing."
Frowning, Lucien nodded. "I suppose you're right. I just don't want to involve Mei Lin in this—I'm not her responsibility anymore."
"Well, your wife is on the other side of the world—though protected—and she can't get here soon enough to be of any help to you."
Lucien paled. "Does she know?"
"No. I thought I would leave that decision up to you. It's a lot to lay on someone over the phone."
"It's equally shocking when someone you thought long dead shows up on your doorstep," Lucien muttered.
"Which is why I thought that between you, Mei Lin, and I, we could make a plan." Rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, his jaw strained to suppress a yawn. Though the night before had been exhausting, Lucien doubted that the last twelve months had been much easier on Fitz.
"Thank you, Fitz." When his friend tried to wave it off, he persisted. "Don't do that. You saved my life and the lives of my family."
"Jiang should never have been able to find them in the first place. That was our deal," Fitz admitted. "By the time I got your letter, Jiang had already alerted his associates in Australia and Shanghai."
"You couldn't have controlled that," Lucien said. "You came through in the end, and I'm eternally indebted to you."
Fitz snickered. "Bullocks. You just have to keep out of scrapes so I don't have to save your ass again." When Lucien chuckled, Fitz smiled. "Though honestly, the hardest part was convincing my superiors to support my endeavors. Until three months ago, I was working on my own. Even with their help, if Jiang's accomplice hadn't come forward—"
Lucien's eyes widened. "Baako?"
"Yeah. Guilty conscience, I expect. He came to the consulate on the night of the hit, spilled his guts. In any case, he's off the grid, so his conscience can't have overtaken his good sense."
Gaping, Lucien shook his head. "They'd begun arguing, toward the end. Jiang basically cut him off—how did he know where to be?"
"He's a spy," Fitz said with a shrug. "And he learned all his tricks from Jiang. Baako is probably the only person who can get inside that bastard's head."
Eyes fixed, unseeing, on his lap, Lucien shook his head. "They fought those last few weeks, but I never questioned his loyalty to Jiang. Believe me, I tried to change his mind."
"He seemed to me like a man who had run out of time," Fitz said with a sigh. "My guess is he'd been conflicted for months, but he knew Jiang would go underground after this hit."
At the sound of harsh muffled voices on the other side of the door, Fitz sprang to his feet, one hand on his sidearm. Lucien had only just begun to panic—surely Jiang hadn't escaped—when he heard a familiar voice rising above the din. "Fitz, that's Mei Lin."
In two bounds, Fitz reached the door and yanked it open. "As you were," he snapped.
Before he even finished speaking, Mei Lin, clad in a hastily buttoned pink blouse and floor-length skirt, pushed past Fitz into the room. She froze after only two steps, soundlessly covering her mouth with both hands.
Lucien supposed he would have to get used to that expression, a mix of pain and fright and relief, but it didn't make it easier to see. When her hands returned to her sides and she took a tentative step forward, Lucien said, "I'm sorry, Mei Lin. I didn't ask Fitz to call you."
"I am glad he did," Mei Lin insisted, casting a grateful smile over her shoulder to Fitz. Easing into the chair Fitz had vacated to answer the door, Mei Lin covered one of Lucien's startlingly bony hands with both of hers. "I can't believe you are here."
With a wry smile, Lucien said, "Neither can I, to be honest." When Mei Lin's expression showed no signs of lightening, he tried again. "Really, Mei Lin, I'm fine."
Raising her eyebrows, Mei Lin turned to Fitz. "What did you tell me? Two bullet wounds? Three surgeries?" When Fitz nodded sheepishly under Lucien's scowl, Mei Lin squeezed Lucien's hand. "Not to mention a year in captivity. Let me guess—inconsistent meals, confined space, beatings?"
More than anything Mei Lin had said so far, Lucien hated the familiarity with which she spoke of his horrors. He had once vowed to love and to cherish this woman, who had suffered abominably and silently. Instead of answering, he stared unseeing at his hospital bracelet during the strained silence that followed.
Finally, Mei Lin drew a deep breath. "Fitz, would you excuse us, please?"
Before Lucien could object to her unnecessary request, Fitz assented, almost too quickly, and left the estranged couple to speak for longer than they had in over three years.
"You know you can trust Fitz, don't you?" Lucien said as soon as they were alone.
Mei Lin scoffed. "You expect me to trust one of our oldest friends, who still serves the military? I think not."
Having been conscious for mere minutes, Lucien Blake had already lodged his foot in his mouth. "Forgive me."
Mei Lin's milky brown eyes fixated on his face, as if she could stare long enough to read his thoughts. "Tell me. From the beginning."
The beginning was easy. In the beginning, he had been sitting at his desk, secure in his safety and his happiness. But after that—the icy bite of the river, the cinderblock basement, the savage beating and constant terror—
"Easy now." The sound of Mei Lin's voice brought him to the present, to the room, to the vice grip he trapped Mei Lin's hand in. When he started to apologize, Mei Lin shook her head. "It's alright. Just start at the beginning, and we will figure out the rest."
The facts burst forth in clusters, between the more traumatic details that he only occasionally shared. Mei Lin waited patiently during each break, each seemingly endless series of deep, shuddering breaths. While Mei Lin could truly understand the horrors he experienced, Lucien found himself wishing for Jean's hand in his instead. Jean, who could crawl into bed with him, hold him while he spoke, run her fingers through his hair when he faltered. Jean, whose mere presence was a balm, whose phantom voice saved him countless times from surrendering. Jean…
Without recalling falling asleep, Lucien woke, the warm morning light having given way to the smoldering embers of evening. Directly across from Lucien's bed, Fitz, freshly clothed in casual attire, slept in two chairs placed side by side. On a cot to Fitz's left lay Mei Lin, with Fitz's massive jacket pulled over her shoulders. Between the pain killers in his bloodstream and the tranquil mood of the room, Lucien could have slipped back into slumber, but the voice at his bedside banished all drowsiness.
"Hello, Lucien."
The last time he heard his daughter's voice, she had shattered all his hopes, so naturally, hearing it now resurrected all former dreams and gave life to new ones. But seeing her, grown and safe and whole, brought tears to his eyes. Once again, he had appeared in her life only to wreak havoc on it. Did she know the extent of her husband's involvement in his capture? Would he have to tell her and break her heart yet again?
"Li," he whispered, not trusting himself to speak more.
A strand of dark hair by Li's ear had escaped her hastily tied bun, and he longed to brush it back, to fix her hair even though he hadn't the foggiest idea how. One morning, he had tried, only to butcher a basic braid, but the next morning, Li asked him to fix her hair again. Practice makes perfect, Papa.
"Do you need the doctor?"
No, please don't leave. "No, thank you. I—" His voice broke, and he willed his addled brain to find his words in Mandarin. "I'm so glad to see you. You didn't have to come."
Li's eyes darted to her lap, where the knuckles of her tightly clasped hands whitened. "I think I did."
Ducking his head to catch Li's elusive gaze, Lucien asked, "What have they told you?"
When Li lifted her head, her eyes, in which Lucien desired only felicity to reside, brimmed with ire and despondence. "That my husband is responsible for your captivity."
"That's not true."
"No?" she scoffed, swiping at her tears. "He did not write to you under a false name? He did not commission you to locate his father, a vile, murderous man who would have killed both me and my child without hesitation?"
Despite Lucien's firm belief that Gen had no knowledge of his father's crimes, he could not defend the boy. He bore no ill will to Gen for his father's actions, but witnessing the effects of Gen's betrayal on his baby daughter enraged Lucien.
She shook her head and set her jaw, irritated by her emotional outburst. Lucien wished he could assure her that crying didn't make her weak, but he knew she would not believe him. His little girl had grown up in post-war China, where one had to grow thick skin to survive.
Drawing her back straight and her shoulders back, Li continued. "Gen promised that he was completely ignorant of his father's actions after the war, and in time, perhaps I will forgive him. But now…" Her eyes lingered on Lucien's battered, drawn face, and he fought the urge to reach for her hand. If he had learned anything from his first visit and their subsequent correspondence, it was that Li must be allowed make the first move. "Our reconciliation has not progressed as quickly as you hoped, and while I do care for you, I was unprepared for the effect your disappearance had on me."
For nearly a decade, one of Lucien's recurring nightmares depicted the day he sent his girls away. Li's pleading—Come with us, Papa. Don't make us go without you—as Lucien kissed her and her mother goodbye, her wails for him as the military vehicle packed with doomed loved ones drove away. Though Li had not needed her father for quite some time, Lucien's second disappearing act must have dragged her childhood trauma out of hibernation.
Intending to apologize, Lucien opened his mouth, but he tasted his tears instead. "I'm so sorry for putting you through this again."
"You could not have prevented this."
Not for the first time, Jean's cautionary words uttered on his last night in Ballarat tortured him. Your instincts are usually right, Lucien. "I had misgivings. I could have said no."
Li laced her fingers through Lucien's. "I don't believe that. Not when presented with a story so similar to mine, not when you could have reunited a child with his father." She tried to smile. "I may not know you as well as either of us would like, but I know this. You have a heart that yearns to fix things, whether it is possible or not."
Drawing a shuddering breath, Lucien squeezed his daughter's hand. "I make problems faster than I can fix them."
"Perhaps. But sometimes, you bear the responsibility for problems others have caused. That is futile." She paused, allowing her words to sink in, before nodding at Mei Lin and Fitz, still slumbering across the room. "You should follow their example. The more rest you get, the faster your body can heal. And I know you long for home."
"I do. But…" Lucien marveled at the sight of his daughter's hand in his. The last time he held her hand, she still had dimples in her tiny fist. "Right this moment, I'm happy, here with you."