Jiang Xun jerked backward, slamming his lower back hard against the car door handle. He hissed in pain.
The impact knocked some sense into him, and he belatedly realized he was lying in the back seat of a car. The seat had been reclined flat, and a blanket covered him.
It was the same blanket Jiang Huaixiao had draped over him the night he had climbed out a window to escape the Jiang family.
"Why is it you?!"
Jiang Huaixiao set the honey water in his hand into the center console's cup holder, his movements unhurried. He did not answer his question.
Jiang Xun threw off the blanket and sat up. Beyond the windshield was the hilltop where they had watched the stars last night. The winding mountain road gleamed grayish white in the morning light, and grit rolled across the gravel surface with a soft rustle in the wind.
He pushed open the door and jumped out.
The early morning air in the mountains was bitingly cold. They were parked on a flat patch of gravel, with another Mercedes-Benz van beside them. Secretary Chen was dozing against its door, his head bobbing.
Duan Qizhao lay curled up in the Mercedes-Benz's back seat, wrapped in a blanket. The window was open a crack, and his snores squeezed through it, rising and falling.
There was no Shen Wangjing.
Jiang Xun searched both cars inside and out, then circled the flat clearing, even parting the waist-high bushes beside the road to look.
He was nowhere.
Jiang Huaixiao came around from the driver's side and stood three or four paces away, watching him dart aimlessly around the clearing like a headless chicken.
"Where's Shen Wangjing?"
Jiang Xun turned his head, his gaze so cold that Jiang Huaixiao's brow twitched.
He fell silent for