The Thief and the Globetrotter

Chapter Twenty: The Deviation

Diego eased, his posture shifting ever so slightly. "Can you make promises like that?"

She nodded. She could. She could ensure Sébastien's success because if he didn't succeed... well, Rei could manage that too.

She just didn't want to.

"How'd you meet?" Rei asked quietly. Where had Sébastien found this hulking bodyguard? What had Diego done to earn Sébastien's trust? Rei let her certainty fall, her Collingwood training dropping away. Not everything was the competition her father tried to teach her it was. She wasn't trying to win the conversation nor did she intend to interrogate information out of Diego. There was a value to sincerity that she wondered if her brother ever learned.

"Baz was a human wreck that stumbled into my gym looking for a massage therapist," Diego said. "He offered to be my guinea pig for all these classes I took. When he took up parkour and spent more time at that gym, he sent everybody there my way for sports medicine."

There it was. Rei knew what she had to do next, if only to make good on her promise. She had to do what was in her power to ensure Cheng faced the consequences of his desperation.

"You?" Diego asked.

"Art history with my favorite professor. He just wouldn't let me be the smartest person in class," Rei said. She pulled herself up from the chair.

"You already knew each other." It wasn't a question, but it was definitely news to Diego. Rei only nodded in response. They did indeed, in a different lifetime.

Rei took the pencil and notebook still lying on the island where Diego left it as soon as Rei and Sébastien interrupted.

"Should you need to stay good on your word, there's my number," Rei said, penciling it into the corner of the paper. "I've got a few errands to run."

It was best to leave while Sébastien remained preoccupied.

***

For the first and likely last time, Rei witnessed a press conference surrounding her own disappearance.

Her kidnapper remained at large, Cheng informed the small audience of reporters. The police would surely find the perpetrator soon. After all, they now had what they didn't have before: a description of the man responsible. He wore all black, particularly strange shoes and a cowl to hide his face. Caucasian. Athletic. Under six feet tall.

Rei tipped down her sunglasses, eyeing Cheng over the frames. The reporters held all of his attention, his gaze never once flicking to her where she stood across the street.

In the shadow of Sundial Security, Cheng appeared as crisp and mechanical as ever. No amount of corporate improv classes could turn him into a believable performer. Even when discussing the tragic disappearance of his only sister, Cheng gave his account of events as blandly as if he were reporting the weather.

Their legacy towered behind him, blocking out the sun and casting its shadow through the streets. It was theirs, as rightfully Rei's as much as it was Cheng's. Had her father thought the gift would entice Rei back into business? All Sundial did was drive a wedge deeper between siblings. Cheng could never have full control as long as Rei was around.

Did he wish she really was dead?

The police spoke their piece as well, answering the sharp journalists who demanded to know how the perpetrator continued to slip through their fingers. Cheng lamented the loss of ransom money. Reporters asked what their parents had to say about all this.

Rei listened idly behind a newspaper, flicking to the next page every once in awhile, eyes only grazing over headlines.

"What next?" a reporter asked, pen at the ready for Cheng's inevitable premeditated answer.