Jackpot

34

Li Feng was getting restless in the bunker. She felt more like Arrow Donaldson’s hostage than an asset. After his last phone call, she saw that Arrow was angry and tried to talk to him. He turned out to be surprisingly interested in her thoughts, and as they chatted, he told her about Bingo and what happened with her decoy.

As they talked, the realization dawned on her that, while Arrow Donaldson was just as powerful in Macau as he claimed to be, if not more, his influence in the U.S. was much less than he’d claimed. Since her ultimate goal was to get to the United States, her continued involvement with Arrow Donaldson worried her. Once the business with Sonny Ma was settled, she’d have to look at other options for escape in case Arrow’s plans crumbled.

Now Arrow had been gone more than a day and she was ready to break out. He’d given her a brief tour of the underground apartment when they’d first arrived, and then he’d just as quickly disappeared again. He’d phoned a couple of times and been by to visit once, but other than that she had been left alone with nothing but a television that wasn’t connected to satellite TV and a computer that wasn’t connected to the Internet. There were plenty of puzzles and a nicely stocked library, but she was neither an old woman nor an eccentric student, so those options didn’t please her. The puzzle she was most interested in solving was how to get out of the bunker.

There was one entrance and it was dual protected with a key that Arrow carried and a code typed into a keypad. The first time Arrow left her alone after dropping her off, she had tried the door handle to test if the key and code were only needed to enter from the outside. No luck. She was locked in. The code was easy enough to figure out, even for someone like her who wasn’t the most observant person in a room, but the physical key was going to be harder to come by. As far as she knew, Arrow had the only one.

She didn’t want to be the kind of person who would fake sexual interest in a man to try and steal something from him. Even if Arrow found her sexually attractive, which she doubted based on his limited interactions with her, she didn’t have the skills or coordination to get the key without him noticing. Smacking Arrow on the head with one of the heavy pans in the kitchen was much more her style, but she worried she would hit him too hard and kill him, which would complicate things more than she was prepared for.

Her luck turned when she had a visitor other than Arrow. She was in the kitchen cleaning up after lunch when she heard the clicking and beeping sounds of the door disarming and opening. She rushed out of the kitchen to see if there was a chance she could get past Arrow before the door relocked, but it wasn’t Arrow standing in the doorway. It was his driver.

Li Feng looked down at the pan in her hand she’d been cleaning when she heard the door open. The driver obviously had a key, and she could hit him as hard as she wanted without complicating things — he was a nobody. She made a run at him before she could change her mind, and swung the pan at his head.

The next thing she knew, she was on the floor looking up at the driver, who was standing over her holding the pan in his hand.

“Did you disarm me?” she asked.

“You tripped.”

“What?” She was in a daze, but looking more lucid — and more angry — every second.

“I’m sorry,” he said, laughing, “I just keep replaying it in my head. You tripped on the rug there, went flying, and landed on the floor, and then the pan knocked you right on the head like some kind of cartoon.”

“You didn’t attack me?”

“No. But it doesn’t seem like I can say the same for you.”

“I guess not,” she said. “I’m sorry. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision.”

“Care to talk about it?”

“I feel like a hostage here. I know it’s for my own protection, and I’m used to living under intense security, but this is... ridiculous.”

“I told him you wouldn’t appreciate this, and that he was making a mistake keeping you pent up.”

“Really?”

“I’m not as dumb as I look. It’s why Arrow finds me useful. I’m a terrible driver, but I’m good at other things.”

“Like keeping women locked in a bunker?”

“That’s not fair. You’re the only other person he’s had stay here other than himself.”

“Oh,” Li Feng said.

“If you really want to get out of here, though, I can help.”

“That sounds like a trap.”

“I don’t get the chance to prove Arrow Donaldson wrong very often. This seems like quite a win for me on that front.”

“You’ll let me out of here? Just to get back at your boss?”

“Arrow Donaldson is your ticket to America, and I trust you recognize that your options are few. Leave me a way to get ahold of you so I can ‘find’ you later when he really needs you. Just don’t get kidnapped or killed in the meantime.”

She gave him her cell phone number and hugged him, then left the bunker. It didn’t take long for her to realize that not getting kidnapped or killed was going to be harder than she thought. She was easily recognizable, and her family had probably already put out word that she was on the loose, which was the main reason she’d needed Arrow’s help in Macau. But she had to get out of that bunker, and part of her wanted to witness Sonny Ma’s fall from grace in person.

Arrow had mentioned the film festival and this producer named Billy Barnett who was causing trouble. Both seemed to be linked to the Golden Desert Casino and Resort that Arrow owned. Maybe Billy Barnett could help her.