The Hunted

26

Hung Jin walked into the Cybercafé wearing medium-size, metal-rimmed glasses, a short black beard, and a nondescript navy blue Nike ball cap. He sat down at one of the computer terminals, ordered a double espresso, and logged on to the Internet.

When he had first received word that Harper Payne was in Colorado, all efforts were diverted to the grand snow-covered state. Now, as his anxious fingers played across the keyboard, he hoped to find messages of success from his colleagues. He entered the private chat room he had set up months ago as a means of secure communication and read through the posted messages. He gulped a mouthful of steaming liquid and resisted the overwhelming urge to smash the monitor in front of him.

His men had thus far turned up nothing.

It was now their appointed time to make contact and talk live amongst themselves — in code, of course. After identifying himself using predetermined phrases and receiving the proper counter responses, Hung Jin relayed the information Lauren Chambers had provided a short time ago. His comrades’ replies took time to decode, further testing his patience.

But encrypted messages or not, their conclusion was clear: Lauren Chambers’s story was not valid. Excluding the possibility that Harper Payne had been buried by an avalanche — and there were no reports over the past several days of one having occurred — they insisted they had covered the most likely areas anyone could go cross-country skiing. No one they had visited had seen a male matching the photo they had shown around. None of the resorts or lodges had any record of him having checked in. There was no evidence of a male matching Payne’s description in any of the local hospitals. No cars had been rented in the name of Michael Chambers. And, perhaps the most telling fact of all, Harper Payne had never been a member of a fraternity while attending MIT.

Regardless of what Lauren Chambers had told her captor under duress, Hung Jin’s men could not confirm that any of the information she had given him was true. He directed them to continue their search for Payne. He would provide further instructions shortly.

In Hung Jin’s court of law — which was governed by his own warped sense of justice — the sentence for lying or withholding key information was death. Lauren Chambers was doing just that. Either one, it didn’t matter. As soon as he returned to the cabin, he would extract the truth from her. If Payne did not go to Colorado to go skiing, then he went there to hide. If Lauren Chambers knew where he was, she would’ve been smart to give it up sooner, rather than later. It would have been less painful for her that way.

Hung Jin swallowed the remainder of the hot espresso in two gulps, then crushed the cardboard cup in his hand. He logged off and left an average tip for the waitress. Above all else, he did not want to stand out in any manner. On the slight chance law enforcement came snooping, he had covered his fingertips with an invisible polyurethane coating. He wanted no record, either physical or otherwise, that he was ever there.

He left the cafe and marched through the snow toward his Lincoln Navigator, thinking of Lauren Chambers, tied up in the cabin, weak and out of her mind with fear.

He couldn’t wait to see her again.