Soo-jin did not take me to a police station.
She took me to a print shop.
It occupied the second floor of an old commercial building, squeezed between a pharmacy and a store selling office furniture. The metal shutter was halfway down when we arrived, but Soo-jin knocked four times, paused, then knocked twice more.
A man opened the door.
He was perhaps seventy, thin, with silver hair and reading glasses hanging from a cord around his neck. He looked at Soo-jin, then at me, then at the gray backpack.
He said something in Korean.
Soo-jin answered.
The man stepped aside.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“Somewhere Choi doesn’t know.”
“You sound certain.”
“I stopped being certain about anything involving Choi years ago.”
That did not comfort me.
The old man locked the door behind us and led us through shelves stacked with paper, ink cartridges, and cardboard boxes. At the back was a cramped office containing two computers and a scanner large enough for architectural drawings.
Soo-jin pointed at the backpack.
“Everything out.”
I placed it on the desk.
The photograph came first.
Then Kang Jun’s letter.
The paper files.
The two flash drives.
The external hard drive.
Soo-jin stopped when she saw the drives.
“Those weren’t there before.”
“You’ve seen this bag?”
“No. I knew Kang Jun had prepared something, but not where.”
I held up his letter.
“He knew I might find it.”
Her eyes moved toward my name on the envelope.
“Yes.”
“You knew about this?”
“No.”
“Did Mary?”
“I doubt it.”
I looked at the letter again.
Kang Jun had prepared for possibilities nobody else understood.
It made me angry.
It also made me afraid that we were still following instructions from a man dead nine years.
The old man powered on a computer that was not connected to the internet.
Soo-jin explained that his name was Mr. Kim and that he had once handled technical document work for Kang Jun’s legitimate import business.
“Does he know what’s happening?”
“He knows enough not to ask questions.”
Mr. Kim looked over.
In English, he said, “I ask many questions.”
I blinked.
He smiled.
“I simply do not ask them aloud.”
Under different circumstances, I might have liked him immediately.
Soo-jin inserted the first flash drive.
A password prompt appeared.
She tried a sequence of numbers.
Rejected.
Another.
Rejected.
“Stop,” I said.
She looked at me.
“Too many attempts might erase it.”
Her expression sharpened.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. That’s what happens in movies.”
Mr. Kim chuckled.
Soo-jin did not.
She removed the drive.
“The password may be in the transfer sequence.”
I pulled out the page containing the twelve numbered groups.
“The twelfth has no check mark.”
Soo-jin examined it.
“These aren’t ordinary account numbers.”
“What are they?”
“Routing fragments. Dates. Branch identifiers.”
She pointed to the first eleven.
“Kang Jun built layers.”
“And the twelfth?”
“Maybe Mary was supposed to finish it.”
My stomach tightened.
“She went to the warehouse for the ledger.”
“Or for the final key.”
Soo-jin looked at the clock.
Mary Lou had missed another check-in.
No message.
No call.
Nothing.
I picked up the disposable phone.
“Can we contact her?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“If Choi has her phone, we contact him.”
“She didn’t take a phone.”
“Then there is nothing to contact.”
I hated the helplessness of that sentence.
Mr. Kim began scanning the paper records.
Each page appeared on the computer screen.
Invoices.
Company registrations.
Lists of transactions.
Photographs of handwritten accounting books.
Soo-jin copied everything onto three separate drives.
“One for me,” she said. “One for you. One stays here.”
“What happens if they find this place?”
Mr. Kim spoke without looking up.
“They will be disappointed by our prices.”
I almost laughed.
Then a photograph appeared on the scanner.
A road.
Guardrail.
A crushed car.
I stopped breathing.
“Kang Jun’s crash?”
Soo-jin nodded.
There were more.
The truck.
Tire marks.
A damaged sedan.
A man standing in the background.
I leaned closer.
“Who is that?”
Soo-jin enlarged the image.
The face was grainy but recognizable.
Han Jae.
The younger man who had searched Mary Lou’s house.
He was standing beside the wreck before emergency workers had secured the scene.
“That puts him there,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“To prove he was present. Not why.”
“But combined with the payment record—”
“We don’t have the payment record.”
“Mary went for it.”
Soo-jin looked away.
I understood.
If Mary Lou failed to bring it out, the strongest connection remained missing.
Mr. Kim inserted the external hard drive.
Encrypted.
Another password prompt.
He studied the label.
There was no writing except a small scratched symbol near one corner.
A circle divided by three lines.
Soo-jin leaned closer.
“I’ve seen that.”
“Where?”
“Kang Jun used it on shipping documents.”
“What did it mean?”
“Three destinations.”
She opened one of the scanned invoices and searched through it.
After several minutes she found the same symbol beside a shipment entry.
Three destination codes appeared beneath it.
BUS.
LAX.
SEL.
“Busan,” I said.
Soo-jin nodded.
“Los Angeles. Seoul.”
“Why Los Angeles?”
She looked at me.
“Where did Mary meet Kang Jun?”
“California.”
“And your bank?”
My stomach tightened.
“California.”
She began writing numbers from the invoice.
Mr. Kim shook his head.
He pointed toward the photograph of Mary Lou and Kang Jun on the beach.
“What?” I asked.
He tapped the background.
A pier extended behind them.
Soo-jin stared.
“Do you recognize it?”
“No.”
I did.
Not the pier itself.
The sweatshirt Mary Lou was wearing.
“That picture was taken before they moved.”
“How do you know?”
“I bought her that sweatshirt for college.”
Soo-jin flipped the photograph over.
There was writing on the back.
I had not noticed it in the restroom.
Three numbers.
21.
22.
23.
“Her age,” I said. “She was twenty-one.”
Soo-jin considered the other numbers.
“August third?”
“No.”
Something surfaced in my memory.
Mary Lou as a child, sitting at our kitchen table while my husband taught her a simple number game.
Three numbers.
A word.
He used it to help her remember combinations.
“Eight-three,” I whispered.
“What?”
“My husband’s birthday.”
Soo-jin looked at me.
“And twenty-one?”
“The year Mary Lou met Kang Jun.”
Mr. Kim typed 2183.
Rejected.
He tried 8321.
Rejected.
I shook my head.
“My husband always put the largest number in the middle when he made combinations for her.”
Soo-jin frowned.
“That seems arbitrary.”
“It was. Mary hated it.”
Mr. Kim typed 8213.
The hard drive opened.
For a moment nobody spoke.
Then folders filled the screen.
Hundreds of them.
Soo-jin sat down slowly.
“My God.”
I leaned closer.
Company names.
Dates.
Scanned passports.
Bank records.
Audio files.
Videos.
One folder was labeled MARY.
Another was labeled T.
My skin prickled.
“Open T.”
Soo-jin hesitated.
“Do it.”
Inside were photographs of me.
Leaving the hardware store.
Buying groceries.
Walking from my house to Susan’s.
Sitting in church.
Taken from a distance.
Years of photographs.
Not every day.
Not every month.
Enough to prove surveillance had continued.
I covered my mouth.
Mary Lou had known.
For nine years she had known strangers periodically photographed me.
Soo-jin opened another file.
A spreadsheet listed dates beside my name.
Some corresponded with Mary Lou’s calls.
Some corresponded with the annual transfers.
The organization had been verifying that I was alive and still where they expected me to be.
I felt violated in a way I had never experienced.
My ordinary life had not been private.
It had been collateral.
Soo-jin closed the folder.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.”
She looked at me.
“Don’t waste time being sorry.”
I pointed to MARY.
“Open hers.”
That folder was worse.
Photographs of Mary Lou leaving shops.
Entering offices.
Meeting Soo-jin.
Sitting alone beside the river.
Visiting Kang Jun’s grave.
Choi had monitored her far more closely than she realized.
Then Mr. Kim made a sound.
He had found another folder.
AUDIO.
The files were dated.
One date was September twenty-fourth, nine years earlier.
Kang Jun’s crash.
Soo-jin clicked.
Static filled the speakers.
Then a male voice.
Kang Jun.
I recognized him immediately despite the years.
He sounded breathless.
A second voice answered.
Choi.
The recording was short.
Kang Jun said something in Korean.
Soo-jin translated quietly.
“He says, ‘Mary has nothing to do with this.’”
Choi responded.
“He says, ‘Then you should have kept her away from it.’”
Another sound.
Car door.
Wind.
Kang Jun spoke again.
“What?”
Soo-jin’s face had gone pale.
“He says, ‘If anything happens to me, the records leave Korea.’”
Choi laughed.
Then came a sentence I did not need translated because one word was in English.
Mother.
Soo-jin swallowed.
“He says, ‘Your wife has a mother. Remember that before you make threats.’”
The recording ended.
I stared at the speakers.
Kang Jun had recorded Choi at the crash.
“How?”
“Maybe his phone.”
“Why didn’t police have this?”
“Because this copy was hidden.”
I leaned toward the screen.
“That is evidence.”
“Yes.”
“Real evidence.”
“Yes.”
“Enough?”
Soo-jin did not answer.
I slammed my palm against the desk.
“Enough for what?”
“For an investigation, certainly.”
“To arrest Choi?”
“Not necessarily.”
I stared at her.
“He admits threatening Mary.”
“He doesn’t admit ordering the crash.”
“He was there.”
“His lawyer could say he arrived afterward.”
“Han was there.”
“Same problem.”
I wanted to throw the computer through the window.
Mr. Kim clicked another file.
A video.
The timestamp was two days before the crash.
Kang Jun appeared on screen.
Alone.
He sat in what looked like the office from Mary Lou’s house, although the room had more furniture then.
He looked directly at the camera.
He spoke Korean first.
Then English.
“If Theresa sees this, the plan has failed.”
My chest tightened.
He continued.
“I am recording instructions because I may not be able to give them myself.”
Soo-jin leaned forward.
Kang Jun explained that the annual transfer route was designed to create a chain of financial evidence outside Choi’s immediate control.
But there was another purpose.
Each transfer reference contained a fragment of an encryption key.
Eleven fragments would be useless.
Twelve would unlock the master archive.
I looked at the page.
“The twelfth.”
Soo-jin nodded.
Kang Jun continued.
“If Mary completes the sequence, she must not keep the final fragment.”
I stared at the screen.
“She must send it to Theresa.”
Soo-jin and I looked at each other.
Kang Jun spoke again.
“Choi will watch Mary. He will watch me. He may watch Soo-jin. He will underestimate Theresa because she is far away and because he believes distance makes people irrelevant.”
A strange anger rose in me.
Even dead, Kang Jun had understood Choi better than I had.
Then he said something unexpected.
“The final fragment is not a number.”
Soo-jin leaned closer.
“It is a question only Mary’s mother can answer.”
The video stopped.
“What question?”
Mr. Kim checked the file.
Nothing else.
I stared at the frozen image of Kang Jun.
“That man always did like making simple things difficult.”
Soo-jin searched the folder.
A text document appeared beside the video.
One line.
WHAT DID SHE TAKE WHEN SHE LEFT HOME?
I read it.
“That’s the question?”
Soo-jin nodded.
“What did Mary take when she moved to Korea?”
“Clothes. Books. Everything.”
“It must be specific.”
I closed my eyes.
Airport.
Suitcases.
Mary Lou crying.
Her backpack.
Something my husband had given her.
Then I remembered.
“She took his watch.”
“Whose?”
“My husband’s.”
Soo-jin waited.
“He had an old wristwatch. Cheap thing. Mary kept it after he died. She packed it in her carry-on because she was afraid the airline would lose it.”
Mr. Kim typed WATCH.
Nothing.
FATHERWATCH.
Nothing.
I shook my head.
“She never called him Father.”
“What did she call him?”
“Dad.”
DADWATCH.
The screen changed.
A prompt appeared.
TWELFTH FRAGMENT REQUIRED.
Soo-jin stared.
“We still need Mary’s piece.”
My relief vanished.
“She went to get it.”
“Maybe.”
Mr. Kim pointed to the transfer page.
The unchecked twelfth line contained blank spaces.
Then the disposable phone rang.
All three of us froze.
Only one person should have had the number.
I answered.
“Mary?”
No response.
Then breathing.
“Mary Lou?”
A man spoke.
English.
Choi.
“Theresa.”
My entire body went cold.
Across the desk, Soo-jin closed her eyes.
Choi continued.
“We have not been properly introduced.”
I said nothing.
“Your daughter is here.”
“Let me speak to her.”
“In time.”
“Now.”
A pause.
Then I heard movement.
Mary Lou’s voice came faintly.
“Mom?”
I gripped the phone.
“I’m here.”
“Don’t give them anything.”
Someone struck her.
I heard it.
“Mary!”
Choi returned to the line.
“That was unnecessary.”
“You touch her again and—”
“And what?”
I stopped.
He wanted anger.
He wanted me to reveal what I had.
I forced myself to breathe.
“What do you want?”
“The backpack.”
He knew.
Soo-jin wrote something on paper and pushed it toward me.
MAKE HIM PROVE MARY IS ALIVE.
“I want to see her.”
“You heard her.”
“Video.”
“No.”
“Then you get nothing.”
Silence.
Choi had not expected that.
Good.
He spoke more quietly.
“You are learning.”
“I raised Mary Lou.”
“Yes.”
Something in his tone made my stomach turn.
“Bring the backpack to the warehouse.”
“No.”
“Then your daughter dies.”
Soo-jin wrote again.
STALL.
I looked at the encrypted drive.
At Kang Jun’s frozen face.
At the unfinished twelfth fragment.
“You need something from Mary,” I said.
Choi went silent.
I knew I had hit something.
“If you only wanted the backpack, you wouldn’t still need her alive.”
No answer.
“What is it?”
Choi’s voice returned colder.
“Come alone.”
“You first.”
“What?”
“Tell me what you need from her.”
He laughed softly.
“You are not negotiating from strength.”
“Then hang up.”
I almost could not believe I said it.
Neither could Soo-jin.
Choi did not hang up.
That told us everything.
“You have one hour,” he said.
The call ended.
My hand shook so violently that Soo-jin took the phone from me.
“He needs the final fragment,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And Mary has it.”
“Or knows where it is.”
I looked at the question on the screen.
DADWATCH.
Kang Jun had divided the key deliberately.
Mary knew one part.
I knew another.
Neither could open the archive alone.
Mr. Kim suddenly pointed toward the files.
A new folder had appeared after the password entry.
FINAL.
Inside was one encrypted document.
Its filename was a date.
The day Mary Lou left America.
Soo-jin looked at me.
“What now?”
I picked up Kang Jun’s letter.
Then I looked at the disposable phone.
“We stop doing what Choi expects.”
“What does he expect?”
“A frightened mother to trade everything for her daughter.”
Soo-jin’s expression tightened.
“You are a frightened mother.”
“Yes.”
I folded the letter and put it in my pocket.
“But I’m also the only person in this mess he never bothered to learn anything about.”
I pointed toward the three copies Mr. Kim had made.
“Send the evidence in three directions.”
“To whom?”
“One to whoever you trust most outside Korea. One to American authorities. One somewhere public that Choi cannot erase.”
Soo-jin stared at me.
“And the original?”
I closed the backpack.
“I’m taking it.”
“To the warehouse?”
“Yes.”
“That is exactly what he wants.”
“No.”
I looked at the empty drive slot.
“He wants what’s inside.”
I handed one flash drive to Mr. Kim.
“I’m bringing him a bag.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 10: Choi Thought a Mother Would Trade Every Secret for Her Child, but He Had Never Understood the Kind of Woman Mary Lou Had Become
Every December My Daughter Sent the Same Impossible Amount, Until One Tiny Pause Made Me Question the Life She Claimed to Have
Part 9 of 27
