9 Dragons

it seem like he has to respond, and then has to meet.”
    They talked about it back and forth for a few minutes and finally came up with a text that was simple and direct. Sun translated and sent it. Written in Chinese, the message said,
We have a problem with the girl. Where can we meet?
    “Okay, we wait,” Bosch said.
    He had decided not to bring Chu into this unless he had to.
    Bosch checked his watch. It was 2 P.M. He had been on the ground in Hong Kong for nine hours and he was no closer to his daughter than when he had been thirty-five thousand feet over the Pacific. In that time he had lost Eleanor Wish forever and now was playing a waiting game that allowed thoughts of guilt and loss to enter his imagination with nothing to deflect them. He glanced over at the phone in Sun’s hand, hoping for a quick return to the message.
    It didn’t come.
    Minutes of silence went by as slowly as the boats on the river. Bosch tried to concentrate his thoughts on Peng Qingcai and on how the abduction of Bosch’s daughter had gone down. There were things that didn’t make sense to him without having all the information, but there was still a chronology and a chain of events that he could put together. And as he did so, he knew that everything led back to his own actions.
    “This all comes back to me, Sun Yee. I made the mistake that allowed all of this to happen.”
    “Harry, there is no reason to-”
    “No, wait. Just hear me out. You need to know all of this because you might see something I don’t.”
    Sun said nothing and Bosch continued.
    “It all starts with me. I was working a case with a triad suspect in L.A. I couldn’t get any answers, so I asked my daughter to translate the Chinese markings on a tattoo. I sent her a photo. I told her it was a triad case and she couldn’t show the tattoo or talk about it with anybody. But that was my mistake. Telling that to a thirteen-year-old was like announcing it to the world-her world. She’d been hanging out with Peng and his sister. They were from the other side of the tracks. She probably wanted to impress them. She told them about the tattoo and the case and that’s where this all started.”
    He looked over at Sun but couldn’t read his face.
    “What tracks?” he asked.
    “Never mind, it’s just an expression. They weren’t from Happy Valley, that’s all that means. And like you said, Peng wasn’t part of any triad in Tuen Mun but maybe he knew people, maybe he wanted to get in. He was hanging out all the way across the harbor in Happy Valley. Maybe he knew somebody and thought this might be his ticket in. He told someone what he had heard. They put it together with L.A. and told him to grab the girl and send me the message. The video.”
    Bosch stopped there for a moment as thoughts of his daughter’s situation distracted him again.
    “But from there, something happened. Something changed. Peng took her to Tuen Mun. Maybe he offered her to the triad up here and they took her. Only they still didn’t take him. Instead, they killed him and his family.”
    Sun shook his head slightly and finally spoke. There was something about Bosch’s storyline that didn’t make sense to him.
    “But why would they do this? Kill his whole family.”
    “Look at the timing, Sun Yee. The lady next door heard the voices through the wall in the late afternoon, right”
    “Yes.”
    “By then I was on the plane. I was coming and they somehow knew it. They couldn’t risk that I would find Peng or his sister or mother. So they eliminated the threat and tied it off right there. If it wasn’t for the memory card Peng hid, where would we be? At a dead end.”
    Sun incisively zeroed in on something Bosch had left out.
    “How did they know you were coming on the plane”
    Bosch shook his head.
    “Good question. From the start there’s been a leak in the investigation. But I thought I was at least a day ahead of it.”
    “In Los Angeles?”
    “Yeah, back in L.A. Somebody tipped the suspect that we were onto him and that made him try to split. That was why we had to arrest him before we were ready and why they grabbed Maddie.”
    “You don’t know who”
    “Not for sure. But when I get back I’ll find out. And I’ll take care of it.”
    Sun read more into that than Bosch had intended.
    “Even if Maddie is safe” he asked.
    Before Bosch could respond, the phone in Sun’s hand vibrated. He had received a text. Bosch leaned over to look as Sun read. The message,