Page 127 of Jay Bird

“Willow went to them,” he said.

Of course she had. Willow had helped Riley escape. Mia had been her friend before Chen’s group took her. Once she had made it back to the United States, she had sought out the only people she believed might be capable of protecting her.

It was smart. Smarter than Chen had given her credit for.

That mistake wouldn’t happen again.

“Elias says she doesn’t appear to be hiding. She walked out with the other employees at closing as though it were any ordinary day.”

Chen looked at the photograph again, and this time he noticed something he hadn’t paid much attention to before.

Willow was smiling. Not the carefully practiced smile she had learned to give him when they attended dinners or when he had expected her to perform for guests. This was different. Her head was tilted toward Mia, and she appeared to be laughing at something the other woman had said.

She looked happy.

The realization bothered him far more than it should have.

Willow wasn’t supposed to look happy. She had spent months knowing he would eventually find her, and she should have been terrified every time she stepped outside. She should have been looking over her shoulder and wondering whether the next stranger she passed belonged to him. Instead, she worked, drove, laughed with friends, and lived as though she had just moved on. As though the three years she had spent with him had become nothing more than an unpleasant memory she could leave behind.

As though he had become nothing more than a memory.

Chen’s fingers tightened around the phone. “She’s gotten comfortable.”

“It appears that way.”

A humorless smile touched Chen’s mouth. “That was her second mistake.”

Liu studied him. “Her second?”

“Her first was believing she could leave me.”

Chen saved the newest photograph of Willow to his own phone before returning Liu’s device.

“Has Elias identified the vehicle?”

“He’s working on the registration now.”

“Tell him not to rush it. I don’t want anyone accessing records in a way that raises flags, especially if she’s surrounded herself with military personnel.”

Liu nodded.

“I want her watched, but that’s all for now. I want no contact, no attempts to get inside that neighborhood, and absolutely nothing that could make her suspicious.”

He paused before adding the one piece of information that mattered almost as much as Willow herself.

“What about Lily?”

“Nothing so far. Why? I thought you weren’t really concerned with her.”

“I’m not. But Lily could be a way to Willow.”

Chen stood and walked toward the edge of the patio, staring across the immaculate grounds while he considered his next move. There would be plenty of time for action once he understood exactly what Willow had built for herself.

“Going after her in Virginia Beach won’t be simple,” Liu warned. “Not if she’s surrounded by SEALs.”

Chen turned toward him. “Then we don’t storm in.”

He wasn’t foolish enough to underestimate men trained to find and kill people for a living. If Willow had managed to place herself in the middle of that world, Chen needed to understand the threat before deciding how to remove it.