They drove to the address John had given her in comparative silence, with Meg occasionally pointing out Los Angeles landmarks to Liu Shen and Lee Ma.
Approaching the building, Meg cast a quick glance upward at the ultra modern facade, recognizing it as one of those featured in the architectural section of a popular Los Angeles magazine some months ago. It was a swank address, one of the current "in" places to live.
"You know someone who lives here?" She asked, impressed.
"Yes," John replied. "You can pull into basement parking garage."
"In this beater? They don't let anything other than BMWs, Porsches and Jags in there, my friend."
John fumbled in his suit's right breast pocket with his left hand and withdrew a key card and handed it to her.
"Pass this through the mechanism at the entrance. You will not be challenged," he assured.
Meg's eyebrows crept up her forehead, but she said nothing.
John took back the keycard once they had passed into the parking structure, slipping it back into his pocket. He directed her to park in a numbered slot not far from a bank of elevators, then waited while she piled out and came to help him out of the car.
Between Meg, Lee Ma and Liu Shen, they were soon at the elevators. John fished the key card out of his pocket once more and used it on the elevator he'd come to stand before. Meg was finding it hard to contain herself, having expected that they would instead need to go to the lobby of the building and be buzzed in by whoever John was coming to see.
"You sure we don't need any firepower? " Meg asked, not bothering to inform John that as a precaution she had slipped her own .38 into her bag before leaving her apartment.
"No. We are perfectly safe."
Meg slowly realized that there was only one way that could be true, and the key card confirmed it. They weren't actually going to see anyone, the person that owned a unit in this building was none other than John himself.
Meg knew that John had lived in LA on and off for years, working for Mr. Wei, and naturally had to have had some sort of permanent accommodation to have done so. But somehow she hadn't associated him with a building like this, an address like this. She wasn't sure why, his wardrobe alone should have given her some indication that John's lifestyle had been more than comfortable during his tenure in this city.
They rose several floors, then the elevator stopped, the doors gliding open soundlessly.
Meg plastered herself to John's side, her arm going around his waist to steady him, tossing a glance over her shoulder to see how their surroundings were affecting his mother and sister. Their faces, she noted, were impassive, but their eyes had grown large in wonderment.
The elevator opened into the foyer of loft space. Meg had heard of buildings with private elevators, but had never before in her life been in one. She looked at John in combination wonderment and awe.
John was doing the gentlemanly thing, standing back to allow his sister and mother to debark the elevator. Meg hung back with him, waving off his gesture to move in ahead of him. She kept her grip around his waist and they entered together.
The air that greeted them had the dead quality of any room not occupied for a long time. John paused to activate various lights in the condo at a master switch in the foyer.
The air stirred slightly, the stagnant quality seeming to begin to dissipate. Apparently the lights were keyed into environmental controls. Nice. Classy. Expensive.
Lee Ma and Liu Shen moved slowly out of the foyer and into the larger loft area beyond. As Meg watched, they took in their surroundings with nothing less than total awe.
It was an emotion that Meg soon joined them in experiencing. The unit was large, a split level with a curving staircase that rose to the balcony above, off which at least two rooms seemed to branch. Floor to ceiling windows opened up to a breathtaking view of the city. It was an elegant living space, its appointments giving the impression of richness without the pretension that she might have expected of the address.
In fact, the decor of the unit was understated and she realized, totally John. He was not, she knew, a person who reveled in ornamentation and ostentation. The decorating theme was quietly Chinese in flavor, but spare.
"Jesus, John. You own this and you came to my place?? I could have made a house call."
John had been silently watching his mother and sister explore the apartment. He looked at Meg and smiled, "I have good associations with your apartment."
"You're certifiable, you know that don't you? You almost got killed--and so did I--at my place."
"But it is where you live," he stated, as if that explained everything.
Meg looked at him for a long moment, "We should have brought your bags, this is definitely a place more worthy of your family than my dive is. Christ, John, I can't believe you took me to a flea bag hotel when we were on the run from Wei, if you owned a place like this in a security building."
"That was necessary at the time, if regrettable. You deserved far better." John replied. "There is no need to worry about not having brought our luggage, we are comfortable with you, unless you have grown tired of us."
Meg shot him a dirty look, "Don't be stupid. I told you you were welcome to stay on and I meant it. Though I still can't quite figure why you'd want to."
John made no answer except to plant a kiss on her right temple, which in itself, was an answer. She forced down the urge to blush furiously.
Meg tried to dampen her awe for her surroundings, choosing instead to note that John was looking pale. He needed to sit down and soon, or he was going to be on the floor.
She urged him to the elegant black leather couch that formed a border between the open arrangement of kitchen and living room, lowering herself to sit beside him. She watched as Lee Ma and Liu Shen ascended the stairway and explored the upstairs rooms, before turning her attention back to John.
"You look pale. This has already been too much for you," she commented.
"I'm fine, Meg. I will be all right in a few minutes." John said, pulling her close, until her head was on his left shoulder. "I should have thought to offer you the use of this place while I was in China."
"Are you kidding? This place would have intimidated the hell out of my clientele. But that was a lovely thought." Meg said dismissively. She cast a sweeping glance over the loft space, taking it in as a whole. "Its beautiful."
"When I bought this loft, I thought to bring my sister and mother over from China and they would live here. That was before the last job for Wei, which destroyed that plan. There was no time to arrange the sale of this unit after my default on that job. I dared not return before I left. I paid the management company to look after things for me."
"Did Wei's goons toss it looking for you?" Meg had noted no sign of damage, but then with a caretaker, anything broken or damaged might have been replaced or repaired in the months that
followed.
"Our arrangement was that Wei did not know where I lived. I took extra precautions with the
purchase, to hide the ownership so that it could not be traced. That was another reason I did not dare return here. You like it then?
"Very much," Meg admitted, thinking to herself that she liked it more for the insight it gave her into John than for its own sake. She was still pondering the statement he had made about mother and sister living here. He hadn't included himself in the equation. He truly hadn't planned to come back when he left.
"Then I will keep it," John said, "perhaps you will change your mind about living here."
Meg moved her head away from his shoulder, leaning one arm against the back of the couch as she twisted to look at his face. "But you will be moving to Seattle, you'd do better to sell this place and use the money to find something up north. From what I hear, real estate isn't cheap there either."
"I have other resources, I do not need to sell this place to afford another. Working for Mr. Wei was very lucrative, and I lived carefully on what I earned. Aside from this one extravagance. And I got in, how do you Americans say? 'On the ground floor of this deal'. Before the address became so desirable." John explained, looking deep into her eyes. "And it is my family who will live in Seattle. I never said that I would."
Meg was losing herself in his calm brown gaze, "But you're not safe here, John. Wei's gang may be gone, or they might not. In any case the police are still here. Zedkov promised me he destroyed the file he had on you--and he never knew your name, you know. But I don't know how far to trust him, really. You'd do better to make a fresh start in a new place," Meg replied.
"If I did, would you go with me?" John asked quietly.
Meg was taken a back. In all her musings about John, she'd never gotten that far, hadn't dared allow herself to dream.
"I don't know. I've always lived here, I don't know any place else. I haven't thought about it," she said lamely. She was ashamed that she was putting off the answer she knew he wanted to hear and which part of her wanted to say.
"Give it some thought," he responded, touching her cheek. "I don't want to be separated from you again, Meg."
Meg felt her breath constrict in her throat, unaccountably. She decided to head off a full blown panic attack by changing the subject.
Before she could speak, a voice from the balcony above accomplished the same end. John and Meg forced their eyes away from each other to look upwards.
Liu Shen was dangling a stylishly coordinated woman's suit over the railing from its hanger,
"The closets in these rooms are full, brother!" She stated in wonderment.
"I promised you once that I would buy you new clothes when we came to America. Don't you remember?" John stated with indulgent amusement. "Go, try them on!"
Meg looked from Liu Shen back to John, as the younger woman disappeared from view, noting the look of pure pleasure on his face. He looked young, boyish in his enjoyment, the lines of worry and strain finally gone.
Meg spent a moment trying to imagine John shopping for women's clothes. Unable to reconcile the image, she decided finally that he had probably utilized a shopping service.
"What an incredibly thoughtful thing to do," Meg commented, unable to keep a smile from her own face as she saw the delight in his.
John looked at her, "My mother and sister have always had so little. And had to leave behind most of what they owned. It gave me pleasure to think of them having so many new things. But I worry that the clothing will be dated, fashions change so quickly in America."
"That suit was a classic. If the rest of the clothing is like that, don't worry. Classic cuts never go out of style." Meg responded.
They both listened to the distant sounds of lively Cantonese conversation and laughter as Liu Shen and her mother inspected their new wardrobes.
"Is this what you came here for?" Meg asked. Somehow she had her doubts, he'd not intended that his mother and sister accompany them for one thing. For another, the clothing, while necessary at some point, did not warrant rising out of sick bed to retrieve.
"No." John said, moving as though to rise. Meg put a hand on his chest, restraining him. When he looked at her, she traded a stern expression for an openly pleading one.
"John, whatever it is can either wait, or I can get it for you if you will tell me where to look. You really need to just sit here and relax for a while," she said firmly.
Amazingly, he capitulated with no argument.
"There, in that cabinet. A safe. " John gestured towards an elegant piece of furniture some five feet in front of them. It was shaped like a credenza, but in black lacquer finish with some elegant Chinese motif work, "The door to the left is a false front. Please."
Meg rose and walked over to the cabinet, pulling open the door as she knelt on the floor.
As described, the door revealed the front of a safe. She looked back over her shoulder to John, who, on that cue, called out the combination.
Meg spun the dial according to his instructions, the safe door coming open with a snick after she gave the lock a final twist and applied pressure on the handle.
Inside, a gun and ammunition sat on top of several manila envelopes.
"Bring everything," John said as Meg's hand hovered for a moment.
She removed the contents of the safe, rose and brought them to John, laying the items in his lap.
Meg sat back down, waiting to be of further assistance, knowing that John would not be able to manage much one handed.
She watched as he slipped the gun and ammunition into his pocket, then lifted the first envelope up. Meg reached out and helped him open and withdraw the contents. Looking on in fascination as he laid them across his knees.
Immigration documents. Meg looked carefully at them, trying to determine, with her expert eye, if they were real or not. She could not detect any evidence they were anything other than genuine, noted that there was a set each for his sister and mother. She looked at John questioningly.
"Alan helped me. "When things went wrong with Wei I dared not come back to retrieve these. They are genuine. My mother and sister are legal immigrants. In time they can apply for citizenship," he said softly, his finger tracing the edge of the papers.
"What about you, were you able to do the same?"
John shook his head, "I am a more problematic case."
Meg nodded silently, realizing the impossibility of putting down "triad hit man" in the occupation line of the immigration forms.
John opened another manila envelope, Meg aiding him once again.
This time the contents revealed themselves as certificates of some kind. Intrigued in spite of herself, Meg leaned in to inspect them more carefully.
Bearer bonds. She looked up at John in awed surprise, finding herself unaccountably speechless.
"An untraceable form of payment. Mr. Wei preferred these. And so did I. A proper form of remuneration for a ghost."
Meg was dismayed at the John's tone, the pain she detected in his voice. She wondered again, as she had before, how John had survived psychologically in the face of being effectively nameless and stateless. She reached out to cover his hand with her own.
He looked up at her fondly, accepting the quiet comfort she offered. They sat companionably for a moment before John picked up the final envelope and tipped out its contents.
Identification papers. From Hong Kong and dating to before Reunification. Below those, some official looking documents bearing the seal of the government of Canada.
"As I said, my case is more complex. With these it might be possible to apply for U.S. citizenship. I am, at least on paper, a Canadian citizen who emigrated from Hong Kong well before Reunification with China."
"Did Alan help you with these?" Meg asked inspecting the documents. Again, they seemed genuine.
"No, " John admitted, his voice assuming a tinge of irony, "these were Mr. Wei's doing.
Protective camouflage in case it was needed, and part of our agreement as well, after I performed the service that bought my passage from China."
"You don't have a Canadian passport though?" Meg asked.
"They take time to process, which I did not have, as you know, when the need was greatest.
Wei's document forger provided any papers needed for my work for Wei."
"About time something good came from what that bastard did," Meg commented, glancing at her wristwatch. "We have time before the banks close. Did you want to go ahead and get the banking done?"
John nodded. He was still pale, she noted, lines of fatigue returning to his face.
"Or not," she said suddenly. "We could stay here tonight. This was a really good first effort, and you've tolerated it well. But you really should rest. Your color isn't getting any better you know. I have dressing material in the car, and I brought your antibiotics. I know a Chinese place that delivers. The banks will be open bright and early tomorrow."
John appeared to consider for a moment, a slow smile spreading itself across his face.
"I will agree. If you will promise me something," he said, his voice low yet playful.
"And that would be?" Meg asked, intrigued.
"Make love with me tonight."
Whatever Meg had expected, it had not been that, which to her mind was already a foregone conclusion. Still it did no good to appear too eager...
"Your mother and sister..."
"There are three bedrooms. The two above were always intended as theirs. The master bedroom is down here. Over there." John inclined his head to an area beyond the kitchen, beneath the balcony.
"Your arm...." Meg continued to object, playing the game for a minute more.
"Did not stop me before," John replied, bringing her toward him until their foreheads touched.
"I'll say." Meg said softly. "Well, when you put it like that, how can a girl resist?"
end of chapter 8
Approaching the building, Meg cast a quick glance upward at the ultra modern facade, recognizing it as one of those featured in the architectural section of a popular Los Angeles magazine some months ago. It was a swank address, one of the current "in" places to live.
"You know someone who lives here?" She asked, impressed.
"Yes," John replied. "You can pull into basement parking garage."
"In this beater? They don't let anything other than BMWs, Porsches and Jags in there, my friend."
John fumbled in his suit's right breast pocket with his left hand and withdrew a key card and handed it to her.
"Pass this through the mechanism at the entrance. You will not be challenged," he assured.
Meg's eyebrows crept up her forehead, but she said nothing.
John took back the keycard once they had passed into the parking structure, slipping it back into his pocket. He directed her to park in a numbered slot not far from a bank of elevators, then waited while she piled out and came to help him out of the car.
Between Meg, Lee Ma and Liu Shen, they were soon at the elevators. John fished the key card out of his pocket once more and used it on the elevator he'd come to stand before. Meg was finding it hard to contain herself, having expected that they would instead need to go to the lobby of the building and be buzzed in by whoever John was coming to see.
"You sure we don't need any firepower? " Meg asked, not bothering to inform John that as a precaution she had slipped her own .38 into her bag before leaving her apartment.
"No. We are perfectly safe."
Meg slowly realized that there was only one way that could be true, and the key card confirmed it. They weren't actually going to see anyone, the person that owned a unit in this building was none other than John himself.
Meg knew that John had lived in LA on and off for years, working for Mr. Wei, and naturally had to have had some sort of permanent accommodation to have done so. But somehow she hadn't associated him with a building like this, an address like this. She wasn't sure why, his wardrobe alone should have given her some indication that John's lifestyle had been more than comfortable during his tenure in this city.
They rose several floors, then the elevator stopped, the doors gliding open soundlessly.
Meg plastered herself to John's side, her arm going around his waist to steady him, tossing a glance over her shoulder to see how their surroundings were affecting his mother and sister. Their faces, she noted, were impassive, but their eyes had grown large in wonderment.
The elevator opened into the foyer of loft space. Meg had heard of buildings with private elevators, but had never before in her life been in one. She looked at John in combination wonderment and awe.
John was doing the gentlemanly thing, standing back to allow his sister and mother to debark the elevator. Meg hung back with him, waving off his gesture to move in ahead of him. She kept her grip around his waist and they entered together.
The air that greeted them had the dead quality of any room not occupied for a long time. John paused to activate various lights in the condo at a master switch in the foyer.
The air stirred slightly, the stagnant quality seeming to begin to dissipate. Apparently the lights were keyed into environmental controls. Nice. Classy. Expensive.
Lee Ma and Liu Shen moved slowly out of the foyer and into the larger loft area beyond. As Meg watched, they took in their surroundings with nothing less than total awe.
It was an emotion that Meg soon joined them in experiencing. The unit was large, a split level with a curving staircase that rose to the balcony above, off which at least two rooms seemed to branch. Floor to ceiling windows opened up to a breathtaking view of the city. It was an elegant living space, its appointments giving the impression of richness without the pretension that she might have expected of the address.
In fact, the decor of the unit was understated and she realized, totally John. He was not, she knew, a person who reveled in ornamentation and ostentation. The decorating theme was quietly Chinese in flavor, but spare.
"Jesus, John. You own this and you came to my place?? I could have made a house call."
John had been silently watching his mother and sister explore the apartment. He looked at Meg and smiled, "I have good associations with your apartment."
"You're certifiable, you know that don't you? You almost got killed--and so did I--at my place."
"But it is where you live," he stated, as if that explained everything.
Meg looked at him for a long moment, "We should have brought your bags, this is definitely a place more worthy of your family than my dive is. Christ, John, I can't believe you took me to a flea bag hotel when we were on the run from Wei, if you owned a place like this in a security building."
"That was necessary at the time, if regrettable. You deserved far better." John replied. "There is no need to worry about not having brought our luggage, we are comfortable with you, unless you have grown tired of us."
Meg shot him a dirty look, "Don't be stupid. I told you you were welcome to stay on and I meant it. Though I still can't quite figure why you'd want to."
John made no answer except to plant a kiss on her right temple, which in itself, was an answer. She forced down the urge to blush furiously.
Meg tried to dampen her awe for her surroundings, choosing instead to note that John was looking pale. He needed to sit down and soon, or he was going to be on the floor.
She urged him to the elegant black leather couch that formed a border between the open arrangement of kitchen and living room, lowering herself to sit beside him. She watched as Lee Ma and Liu Shen ascended the stairway and explored the upstairs rooms, before turning her attention back to John.
"You look pale. This has already been too much for you," she commented.
"I'm fine, Meg. I will be all right in a few minutes." John said, pulling her close, until her head was on his left shoulder. "I should have thought to offer you the use of this place while I was in China."
"Are you kidding? This place would have intimidated the hell out of my clientele. But that was a lovely thought." Meg said dismissively. She cast a sweeping glance over the loft space, taking it in as a whole. "Its beautiful."
"When I bought this loft, I thought to bring my sister and mother over from China and they would live here. That was before the last job for Wei, which destroyed that plan. There was no time to arrange the sale of this unit after my default on that job. I dared not return before I left. I paid the management company to look after things for me."
"Did Wei's goons toss it looking for you?" Meg had noted no sign of damage, but then with a caretaker, anything broken or damaged might have been replaced or repaired in the months that
followed.
"Our arrangement was that Wei did not know where I lived. I took extra precautions with the
purchase, to hide the ownership so that it could not be traced. That was another reason I did not dare return here. You like it then?
"Very much," Meg admitted, thinking to herself that she liked it more for the insight it gave her into John than for its own sake. She was still pondering the statement he had made about mother and sister living here. He hadn't included himself in the equation. He truly hadn't planned to come back when he left.
"Then I will keep it," John said, "perhaps you will change your mind about living here."
Meg moved her head away from his shoulder, leaning one arm against the back of the couch as she twisted to look at his face. "But you will be moving to Seattle, you'd do better to sell this place and use the money to find something up north. From what I hear, real estate isn't cheap there either."
"I have other resources, I do not need to sell this place to afford another. Working for Mr. Wei was very lucrative, and I lived carefully on what I earned. Aside from this one extravagance. And I got in, how do you Americans say? 'On the ground floor of this deal'. Before the address became so desirable." John explained, looking deep into her eyes. "And it is my family who will live in Seattle. I never said that I would."
Meg was losing herself in his calm brown gaze, "But you're not safe here, John. Wei's gang may be gone, or they might not. In any case the police are still here. Zedkov promised me he destroyed the file he had on you--and he never knew your name, you know. But I don't know how far to trust him, really. You'd do better to make a fresh start in a new place," Meg replied.
"If I did, would you go with me?" John asked quietly.
Meg was taken a back. In all her musings about John, she'd never gotten that far, hadn't dared allow herself to dream.
"I don't know. I've always lived here, I don't know any place else. I haven't thought about it," she said lamely. She was ashamed that she was putting off the answer she knew he wanted to hear and which part of her wanted to say.
"Give it some thought," he responded, touching her cheek. "I don't want to be separated from you again, Meg."
Meg felt her breath constrict in her throat, unaccountably. She decided to head off a full blown panic attack by changing the subject.
Before she could speak, a voice from the balcony above accomplished the same end. John and Meg forced their eyes away from each other to look upwards.
Liu Shen was dangling a stylishly coordinated woman's suit over the railing from its hanger,
"The closets in these rooms are full, brother!" She stated in wonderment.
"I promised you once that I would buy you new clothes when we came to America. Don't you remember?" John stated with indulgent amusement. "Go, try them on!"
Meg looked from Liu Shen back to John, as the younger woman disappeared from view, noting the look of pure pleasure on his face. He looked young, boyish in his enjoyment, the lines of worry and strain finally gone.
Meg spent a moment trying to imagine John shopping for women's clothes. Unable to reconcile the image, she decided finally that he had probably utilized a shopping service.
"What an incredibly thoughtful thing to do," Meg commented, unable to keep a smile from her own face as she saw the delight in his.
John looked at her, "My mother and sister have always had so little. And had to leave behind most of what they owned. It gave me pleasure to think of them having so many new things. But I worry that the clothing will be dated, fashions change so quickly in America."
"That suit was a classic. If the rest of the clothing is like that, don't worry. Classic cuts never go out of style." Meg responded.
They both listened to the distant sounds of lively Cantonese conversation and laughter as Liu Shen and her mother inspected their new wardrobes.
"Is this what you came here for?" Meg asked. Somehow she had her doubts, he'd not intended that his mother and sister accompany them for one thing. For another, the clothing, while necessary at some point, did not warrant rising out of sick bed to retrieve.
"No." John said, moving as though to rise. Meg put a hand on his chest, restraining him. When he looked at her, she traded a stern expression for an openly pleading one.
"John, whatever it is can either wait, or I can get it for you if you will tell me where to look. You really need to just sit here and relax for a while," she said firmly.
Amazingly, he capitulated with no argument.
"There, in that cabinet. A safe. " John gestured towards an elegant piece of furniture some five feet in front of them. It was shaped like a credenza, but in black lacquer finish with some elegant Chinese motif work, "The door to the left is a false front. Please."
Meg rose and walked over to the cabinet, pulling open the door as she knelt on the floor.
As described, the door revealed the front of a safe. She looked back over her shoulder to John, who, on that cue, called out the combination.
Meg spun the dial according to his instructions, the safe door coming open with a snick after she gave the lock a final twist and applied pressure on the handle.
Inside, a gun and ammunition sat on top of several manila envelopes.
"Bring everything," John said as Meg's hand hovered for a moment.
She removed the contents of the safe, rose and brought them to John, laying the items in his lap.
Meg sat back down, waiting to be of further assistance, knowing that John would not be able to manage much one handed.
She watched as he slipped the gun and ammunition into his pocket, then lifted the first envelope up. Meg reached out and helped him open and withdraw the contents. Looking on in fascination as he laid them across his knees.
Immigration documents. Meg looked carefully at them, trying to determine, with her expert eye, if they were real or not. She could not detect any evidence they were anything other than genuine, noted that there was a set each for his sister and mother. She looked at John questioningly.
"Alan helped me. "When things went wrong with Wei I dared not come back to retrieve these. They are genuine. My mother and sister are legal immigrants. In time they can apply for citizenship," he said softly, his finger tracing the edge of the papers.
"What about you, were you able to do the same?"
John shook his head, "I am a more problematic case."
Meg nodded silently, realizing the impossibility of putting down "triad hit man" in the occupation line of the immigration forms.
John opened another manila envelope, Meg aiding him once again.
This time the contents revealed themselves as certificates of some kind. Intrigued in spite of herself, Meg leaned in to inspect them more carefully.
Bearer bonds. She looked up at John in awed surprise, finding herself unaccountably speechless.
"An untraceable form of payment. Mr. Wei preferred these. And so did I. A proper form of remuneration for a ghost."
Meg was dismayed at the John's tone, the pain she detected in his voice. She wondered again, as she had before, how John had survived psychologically in the face of being effectively nameless and stateless. She reached out to cover his hand with her own.
He looked up at her fondly, accepting the quiet comfort she offered. They sat companionably for a moment before John picked up the final envelope and tipped out its contents.
Identification papers. From Hong Kong and dating to before Reunification. Below those, some official looking documents bearing the seal of the government of Canada.
"As I said, my case is more complex. With these it might be possible to apply for U.S. citizenship. I am, at least on paper, a Canadian citizen who emigrated from Hong Kong well before Reunification with China."
"Did Alan help you with these?" Meg asked inspecting the documents. Again, they seemed genuine.
"No, " John admitted, his voice assuming a tinge of irony, "these were Mr. Wei's doing.
Protective camouflage in case it was needed, and part of our agreement as well, after I performed the service that bought my passage from China."
"You don't have a Canadian passport though?" Meg asked.
"They take time to process, which I did not have, as you know, when the need was greatest.
Wei's document forger provided any papers needed for my work for Wei."
"About time something good came from what that bastard did," Meg commented, glancing at her wristwatch. "We have time before the banks close. Did you want to go ahead and get the banking done?"
John nodded. He was still pale, she noted, lines of fatigue returning to his face.
"Or not," she said suddenly. "We could stay here tonight. This was a really good first effort, and you've tolerated it well. But you really should rest. Your color isn't getting any better you know. I have dressing material in the car, and I brought your antibiotics. I know a Chinese place that delivers. The banks will be open bright and early tomorrow."
John appeared to consider for a moment, a slow smile spreading itself across his face.
"I will agree. If you will promise me something," he said, his voice low yet playful.
"And that would be?" Meg asked, intrigued.
"Make love with me tonight."
Whatever Meg had expected, it had not been that, which to her mind was already a foregone conclusion. Still it did no good to appear too eager...
"Your mother and sister..."
"There are three bedrooms. The two above were always intended as theirs. The master bedroom is down here. Over there." John inclined his head to an area beyond the kitchen, beneath the balcony.
"Your arm...." Meg continued to object, playing the game for a minute more.
"Did not stop me before," John replied, bringing her toward him until their foreheads touched.
"I'll say." Meg said softly. "Well, when you put it like that, how can a girl resist?"
end of chapter 8