Chapter 4: Why They Ran

"No," I said again, because nobody had answered the first one.

Chan lifted his duffel off the table and set it down on the floor.

"Mara, he has your face now. He has your name. He knows you lied to him."

"He knows I told a bad joke about a shipwreck."

"He laughed at you."

"I noticed."

"A man who laughs at that isn't fooled."

"Then he's not fooled, and he's still got nothing. He didn't see you. He didn't see my truck.

"He went back to his rental, and now he's driving around asking the wrong people."

"We can't be sure."

"No, we can't," I said. "So tell me where you go at dark."

He opened his mouth.

"The bus doesn't come back until Tuesday," I said. "The ferry has a camera at the ramp.

"The only road out goes past the Rusty Buoy, past Rory, past forty people who watched a woman film your friend last night."

Chan shut his mouth.

"If you run at dark, you run on foot, in the rain, along a cliff road.

"And the first person he asks is whoever's in a house with the lights off.

"That's my house. I would like it to stay my house."

Hyunjin sat down at the kitchen table, slowly, holding his burned arm out in front of him.

I got the first aid tin down from the shelf over the fridge.

I took his wrist back and began wrapping gauze in a loose figure eight.

Nobody spoke while I worked.

His skin was warm under my fingers, and he watched my hands.

"Tell me what happened," I said, without looking up. "Not the polite version.

"If I'm going to lie to a man with a fifty thousand dollar card, I'd like to know what I'm lying about."

Chan stood for a while with his jaw working.

Then he pulled out the chair across from me and sat.

"Three weeks ago, in Seoul, Hyunjin started getting letters," he said.

"Letters."

"Fan mail. Everyone gets fan mail. But these knew things. Which hotel. What floor. What he'd eaten after a show."

"Chan," Hyunjin said.

"She asked."

Hyunjin looked at the gauze and said nothing.

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