Bitter Spirits (Roaring Twenties #1)(89)

He forced himself to stay calm. He would not think of the fire in her apartment, or how she’d been drugged. He would not think of what atrocities a kidnapped woman could be forced to suffer in the hands of a man who was trying to liberate Chinatown.

He only thought of what he’d do to that man when he got his hands on him.

Focusing on that, he had Jonte drive back home to keep an eye on Astrid while Bo drove him to Golden Lotus with his crew of men following. But after waking the Lins at an ungodly hour and scaring them half to death, all he discovered was that Mrs. Lin had never asked the herbalist where he lived.

“Is Miss Palmer in trouble?” she asked, gripping her robe closed as she stood in the apartment stairwell next to the restaurant, Mr. Lin standing over her shoulder.

“I think Yip is the one who had the fire set in her room and now he’s taken her.”

“Oh no. This is my fault,” she said in a pained voice. “He seemed like such a nice man, but I should have never sent her to see him.”

“Don’t blame yourself. He’s after me, not her.”

His fault, but he would fix it. He would not lose her. Not if he had to destroy half the city finding her.

He could spare a man to watch Golden Lotus, make sure they wouldn’t be left vulnerable. Mrs. Lin said she’d start calling her friends and find out if anyone knew anything about Doctor Yip. Doubtful, but Winter wasn’t going to discount anything at this point.

He asked the Lins to call his house and leave a message for him there if they heard anything, then walked out into the chilly night air with Bo to rejoin the rest of his men.

“We should go to Ju,” Bo said. “If the men who attacked you at Yip’s shop were patrolling Ju’s territory, then their replacements might be working the same area. They might’ve seen something.”

“If so, that’s great, but I’m not going to sit around waiting for information while Yip does God only knows what to Aida. We’ll drive to Ju’s, but he’s not going to be happy, because I’m going to ask him to call all the tong leaders together for a meeting. If they want to take back control of their booze, they’re going to have to help me find Aida.” He stopped in front of the car. “Doctor Yip seems to want a war. He’s got one.”

• • •

Aida entered the ship on a wide gangplank. The deck was unassuming and quiet, the picture of disuse. The inside was another story. The first-class entrance, a large two-story open room with a staircase, was filled with wooden crates of alcohol—row after row of teetering stacks, some stamped with recognizable brands, others simply marked GIN. Half of them were painted with Chinese characters.

A small fortune in seized booze.

Aida couldn’t quite determine the breadth of the haul, because the ship had no electricity. She could, however, spot the occasional guard meandering in the distance. Maybe ten or twenty men. Probably more she couldn’t see. A path of portable lanterns led them through the maze of crates to the staircase at the far end of the room. Tables had been pulled together here to create a small work area, where more armed men sorted through stacks of paperwork and labels. Nearby, several crates stood open, brimming with bottles nestled inside piles of wood shavings.

When they passed, all workers looked up at Yip, hailing him by some Cantonese name Aida didn’t catch, and bowing their heads.

“You’ve managed quite a collection here,” Aida noted. “Is this where all the booze in Chinatown went?”

“Quite a bit outside of Chinatown, too,” Doctor Yip said with a smile as he stopped to talk with someone at the tables. They spoke in hushed voices for several moments while Aida’s gaze jumped around the room, looking for anything that might be helpful: an unguarded door, a weapon . . . an escape route. The man with the cauliflower ear tightened his grip around the back of her neck.

“Just try it,” he whispered in her ear as pain shot down her shoulder. “I might not be able to hurt you in front of him, but wait until later.”

His grip softened when Yip ended his conversation and rejoined the group. “All right, Miss Palmer, onward.”

A few steps away, lanterns, fuel, and matches were lined up on a desk. Ju’s former thugs both took lanterns. Yip took out a flashlight. They were going deeper into the beached whale.

They headed down a flight of steps to the first level below, passing by more guards. The scents of gin and wood changed to something danker when they stepped into a long corridor. Yip turned on his flashlight and shone the beam in front of them.

“I hope you find your accommodations to your liking,” Yip said as he led them past doors lining either side of the hallway. Passenger cabins. First-class, from their location.

Only the best, Aida thought blackly. But this was no luxury liner built for rich European families to cruise the Mediterranean. This was an old steamer built for transporting large numbers of third-class expatriates from Hong Kong.

Yip opened a locked door at the end of the corridor. “Here we are, my dear. Please enter.” He held the narrow door open.

The cauliflower-eared man shoved her inside the tight quarters. Her knee banged against something hard. She yelped and tried to get her bearings in the dark. Yip carried one of the lanterns inside and hung it on one corner of the double-bunk berths lining one wall. One chair sat beneath the port window behind her, and a small sink sat at her left hip, on the wall opposite the berths. The room smelled of mold and must.