Code of Honor

42

Sophie Li spoke between ragged breaths, trying in vain to control her sobs. “We have got to call the police.”

She was in the backseat, staring up at the headliner while her daughter used paper towels from the SUV’s glove box to stanch the flow of blood from the wound on her arm. The gash hurt like hell, but there didn’t appear to be any major arteries clipped. They left so quickly that none of them had time to change clothes. James and Martha had grabbed jackets. Peter had on a pair of gray sweats and a white T-shirt, and Sophie still wore the Navy football jersey she used as a nightgown. The emergency go-bag Peter insisted they keep in the closet had cash, copies of their passports, a pistol, and a few snacks, but no extra clothes.

Sophie kicked the front seat. “Peter! Are you even listening to me?”

Li took a corner a little too fast, chirping the tires on the pavement. He glanced in the rearview mirror, his face glowing eerily from the dash lights. “Let’s wait on that a minute.”

Sophie bit her bottom lip to keep from screaming. “Wait? What are you talking about? Who are those people? Why were they in our house?”

“I don’t know who they were,” Peter said. “But it has to have something to do with one of my projects.”

“I think… I… They were speaking Mandarin,” James said, rocking back and forth, hyperventilating. “I caught… a couple… of words.”

Peter took one hand off the wheel long enough to squeeze the boy’s shoulder. “Slow down your breathing, son,” he said. “In fact, everyone slow it down. Count to three while you breathe in. Count to five while you exhale.” He looked in the mirror again. “You, too, sweetheart. It’ll lower your heart rate.”

“One of your projects?” Sophie asked, needing answers.

“There’s been a little trouble at work,” Peter said. “I caught one of my engineers going into the vault with an ID stolen from another employee.”

“And he wants you dead?”

“She,” Peter said. “I don’t think she’s that high up in the food chain. But it could be who she’s working for.”

“We still have to call the police,” Sophie said.

“And we will,” Peter said. “But they’ll go after the people who tried to kill us.”

“Good,” Sophie said.

“Right,” Peter said. “But this feels a little too big for our local department.”

“Then call the FBI,” Sophie said. “I don’t give a rat’s ass who you call, but I want some badges and guns here right damned now!”

“Listen,” Peter said, gripping the wheel until his knuckles went white. “Those guys were Chinese. There’s reason to believe my employee is an agent of the Chinese government. That means the people in our house were also agents of the Chinese government. They could have people everywhere. My number-one priority here is to keep you safe, not solve any crime.”

Peter made another turn, slowing now that he was in town. Sophie wished he would speed so they would get pulled over and she could get a cop to help her.

“Where are we going?” she asked, figuring it out when she saw the sign for the mechanic’s shop.

“We’re going to switch cars,” Peter said.

“Switch cars?” Sophie shook her head. Her husband had gone completely insane. “Just. Call. The. Police. Why do we need to switch cars?”

Peter threw the Mercedes in park in the shadows behind the garage, away from the streetlight. Against her better judgment, Sophie followed him to the back door, completely passing his Audi, which was parked in the garage lot. Peter picked up a rock and made ready to break the window.

Sophie fought the urge to scream. “What are you doing?”

“Their alarm is broken,” he said. “I heard them talking when I dropped the car off for service yesterday.”

Sophie clutched the blood-soaked paper towels around her arm. “Peter, listen to me! We don’t need to break in. Your car is out here. There’s an extra set of keys on my ring.”

“No good,” Peter said. “Those people deactivated our alarm system to get into the house. If they’re that sophisticated, it wouldn’t be much of a challenge for them to track our car.”

“So?” Sophie stared at him, incredulous. “If they can track my car, then they can track your car, too.”

Peter used the rock to smash the window, then reached inside to unlock the door. “That’s why we’re not taking my car.” He grabbed the keys to a late-model Chevy Impala. The paperwork said it was in for a fifty-thousand-mile tune-up, still drivable. He led the way back to the lot. “Come on,” he said, scanning the dark and deserted streets. “They could be right behind us.”

Sophie got in the front seat this time. Peter eased out of the parking lot, heading south toward Chicago.

“And now can we call the police?”

“We will,” Peter said. “But not right away. The police are compelled to follow the law, and that takes time — time that others can use to finish the job they started in our house tonight.”

Sophie choked back a sob, clutching her belly. “Who are you?”

“I’m trying to protect you,” Peter said.

“You… shot those people,” Sophie said.

“They were—”

“I know,” she said, letting the tears take over. “I know it. I trust you. I’m just so scared…”

“Me, too,” Peter said, which, for some reason, comforted Sophie more than if he’d tried to pretend he wasn’t terrified by the attack.

Someone had invaded their castle, the place where they should have been safe. And that man, the one who had grabbed her, he was so… cold. Like he didn’t care if she lived or died. No, that wasn’t true. He wanted to watch her die. She’d seen it in his eyes. The whole thing left her feeling violated and raw — incredibly vulnerable.

Peter put a hand on her knee and gave it a squeeze. “You have to trust that I have a plan. I don’t want to scare you any more than—”

“That’s not possible,” Sophie said. “That guy threatened to cut out the baby.”

“This wasn’t a home invasion. They weren’t dopeheads there to rob us to get money for a fix. We’re dealing with an assassination team sent by a nation-state. Those kind of people don’t stop until they are stopped.”

“But you can stop them,” Sophie said. “I mean, you have a plan.”

“I do,” Peter said. “It’s not necessarily legal, but it’s moral — and it will save our lives.”

James leaned forward between the seats, cell phone in hand. The poor kid was still in shock, his mind searching frantically for the tiniest fragment of normalcy to cling to. “I forgot. Leah’s mom is supposed to pick me up for school in the morning. We were going to work on a project together. I need to call her and tell her I can’t make it.”

Peter shook his head, gripping the wheel. “No calls,” he said.

“She’ll figure it out, hon,” Sophie said. “Let’s work out what’s going on before we talk to anyone.”

“O… okay,” the boy said, his voice hollow, numb now that the adrenaline was ebbing. He slid the phone back into his pocket.