The emergency lights painted the hallway red.
Mary Lou pulled me toward the nearest interview room.
“Inside.”
The door required an electronic badge.
No power.
Locked.
Footsteps came closer.
“Wonderful,” I whispered.
Mary Lou tried another door.
Locked.
The secured hallway had become a trap.
At the far end, two figures appeared.
Dark clothing.
One carried something low beside his leg.
A gun.
Mary Lou saw it.
We ran.
The stairwell door opened manually.
She shoved me through first.
I nearly lost my footing on the first step.
“Careful.”
“You’re the one pushing.”
“Mom.”
“Running.”
We descended.
Above us, the stairwell door opened.
No shouting.
That frightened me more.
Police shout.
People who want witnesses alive usually shout.
These men did not.
Mary Lou grabbed my hand.
We reached the next floor.
Door.
Locked electronically.
Down again.
Another floor.
Same.
“They shut the system,” she whispered.
“Can we reach the lobby?”
“Maybe.”
Footsteps above.
Closer.
My lungs burned.
At sixty-three, I discovered that international conspiracies contain far too many stairs.
Mary Lou slowed for me.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
We reached another landing.
A hand appeared through the rail above.
Gun.
Mary Lou pulled me sideways.
The shot struck concrete.
The sound slammed through the stairwell.
We kept moving.
Then a door below burst open.
A man stepped out.
I nearly screamed.
Soo-jin.
“Here!”
She held a pistol.
I had never seen her with one.
I preferred her immediately.
She pushed us through the door.
An officer stood beside her.
He locked the stairwell manually.
“Who are they?” Mary Lou asked.
“We don’t know.”
“You said Min.”
“I was right.”
“What happened?”
“Later.”
A heavy impact struck the stairwell door.
Soo-jin led us through a records section.
Employees crouched behind desks.
Emergency alarms continued.
Somewhere farther away, people shouted.
“Is Choi safe?” Mary Lou asked.
I stared at her.
She looked at me.
“He knows the names.”
Unfortunately, she was right.
Soo-jin spoke to the officer.
He answered.
“Choi was moved.”
“Where?”
“Secure holding.”
“Who knows?”
“Too many people.”
That was not comforting.
We reached a service corridor.
Soo-jin stopped.
The officer checked around the corner.
Clear.
We moved again.
“What did you verify?” Mary Lou asked.
“Min accessed Kang Jun’s old investigation file.”
“When?”
“Three times.”
“Recently?”
“Once nine years ago. Once four years ago.”
“And the third?”
Soo-jin looked at her.
“Forty minutes ago.”
My stomach dropped.
“He knows about us.”
“Yes.”
“Lee?”
“Probably.”
The officer opened a utility door leading to an underground parking level.
We entered.
Rows of government vehicles stood beneath fluorescent emergency lamps.
Soo-jin pointed toward a gray sedan.
“Get in.”
Mary Lou stopped.
“No.”
Soo-jin turned.
“What?”
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere secure.”
“Whose secure?”
Soo-jin stared.
Mary Lou’s breathing was fast but controlled.
“Min approved this investigation. People with access just opened secured doors for armed men. I’m not getting into another government car because someone says secure.”
The words landed.
Soo-jin lowered her weapon.
“You’re right.”
That surprised all of us.
“What do you suggest?”
Mary Lou looked around.
“My mother’s hotel.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Too obvious.”
“Ji-hoon.”
“He’s in a guarded hospital.”
“Whose guards?”
Soo-jin did not answer.
Mary Lou’s point became increasingly unpleasant.
The officer suddenly raised his hand.
Vehicle approaching.
Headlights swept around the corner.
Soo-jin pulled us behind a concrete pillar.
The vehicle stopped.
Door opened.
A man called her name.
She relaxed slightly.
“Mr. Kim.”
The print-shop owner stepped out.
I stared.
“You?”
He adjusted his glasses.
“You seem disappointed.”
“No. Confused.”
“That is healthier.”
Soo-jin had contacted him when the building lost power.
He arrived in an old delivery van with PRINTING SOLUTIONS written along the side.
Nobody would mistake it for government transportation.
Perfect.
We climbed inside among boxes of paper.
Mr. Kim drove.
Soo-jin sat beside him.
Mary Lou and I crouched in the back like criminals with office supplies.
“This is absurd,” I said.
Mary Lou began laughing.
Not a small laugh.
A real one.
It came out at exactly the wrong time and therefore became impossible to stop.
I started too.
Soo-jin looked back.
“Are you both all right?”
“No,” Mary Lou said.
That made us laugh harder.
Perhaps fear had simply run out of dignified places to go.
Mr. Kim drove us to his print shop.
The shutter came down behind the van.
Only then did Soo-jin explain.
Deputy Chief Prosecutor Min had been quietly removed from direct access to the case after Choi named him.
Someone informed him.
Within fifteen minutes, the building’s power system was disrupted.
The armed men entered using credentials belonging to security contractors.
“Were they after us?” I asked.
“Likely Mary and Choi.”
“Why me?”
“You’re part of the archive key.”
“The archive is open.”
“Lee may not know that.”
Mary Lou sat at the old desk.
“What about Choi?”
Soo-jin made a call through a secure device.
Minutes passed.
Then she looked relieved.
“He’s alive.”
“Where?”
“Moved to another facility.”
“Min?”
“Missing.”
Of course.
People in this story had an irritating tendency to disappear immediately before police wanted them.
Soo-jin opened her laptop.
Investigators outside Min’s chain of command were checking the Busan information Choi provided.
No action yet.
Too risky.
If Lee had access to internal communications, any obvious operation could warn him.
“So what happens?” I asked.
“We verify the ship independently.”
“How?”
Soo-jin looked at Mr. Kim.
He smiled.
“Printing?”
I asked.
“No.”
Apparently Mr. Kim had once worked in freight documentation before opening the shop.
Of course he had.
Nobody around Mary Lou had a simple résumé.
He accessed commercial shipping schedules using legitimate industry databases.
Several container vessels were due to depart Busan the following evening.
Choi had provided a berth number.
Mr. Kim found the matching ship.
The Haneul Star.
Destination listed as Kaohsiung, then Singapore.
A company connected indirectly to Lee controlled several containers scheduled for loading.
Mary Lou leaned closer.
“Could someone hide inside?”
Mr. Kim shrugged.
“People hide everywhere.”
One container had unusual documentation.
Declared contents: industrial pumps.
Weight: significantly below what the listed equipment should weigh.
Soo-jin copied the information.
“That could be Lee’s route.”
“Or Choi sent us toward an empty container,” Mary Lou said.
“Yes.”
“Can we verify without telling Min’s people?”
“Yes.”
Soo-jin contacted a customs investigator she trusted personally.
One person.
No broader alert.
He agreed to inspect the container quietly before loading.
We waited.
Again.
I began hating clocks.
At two in the morning, Mr. Kim made coffee.
At three, Mary Lou fell asleep in a chair.
I covered her with my coat.
Her face looked younger asleep.
Not twenty-one.
Not the girl who left.
But younger than the woman who had faced Choi in the tunnel.
I wondered what twelve years had done to both of us.
There would be time to discover it.
I insisted on believing that.
At 3:37, Soo-jin’s secure phone rang.
The customs investigator.
The container was empty.
Not empty exactly.
Inside were crates containing industrial pumps.
Correct equipment.
Correct serial numbers.
Correct weight once weighed independently.
The suspicious paperwork had been manipulated.
“A decoy,” Mary Lou said after Soo-jin woke her.
“Yes.”
“Choi lied.”
“Maybe.”
I shook my head.
“He gave you the right berth.”
They looked at me.
“What?”
“If he wanted to send us nowhere, why use a real Lee-linked shipment?”
Soo-jin considered.
“Because the shipment itself matters.”
“Or because the container isn’t for Lee.”
Mary Lou sat upright.
“For what?”
“Money.”
Choi’s notebook.
Cash.
Escape routes.
Lee would need resources wherever he went.
Soo-jin called the customs investigator again.
Check adjacent containers associated with the same shipping broker.
One stood out.
Refrigerated cargo.
Medical products.
Its paperwork had been amended six hours earlier.
New container number.
New seal.
New truck.
“Where is it?” Mary Lou asked.
Mr. Kim traced the truck’s logistics record.
It had not reached the port.
Last checkpoint: forty kilometers north of Busan.
Then nothing.
Soo-jin looked at us.
“Lee may be traveling with the container.”
Mary Lou shook her head.
“Too risky.”
“Unless he has no better route.”
I thought about the private aircraft.
A plane that supposedly changed course and disappeared.
“What if the plane was the decoy?”
Everyone looked at me.
“He wants investigators watching airports and coastlines.”
Mary Lou understood.
“While he travels by road.”
Mr. Kim pulled up maps.
The truck route passed near several private industrial properties.
One belonged to a logistics company named Seongjin Maritime.
Soo-jin searched the archive.
The name appeared.
Multiple times.
Payments.
Choi.
Lee.
And one entry from Kang Jun.
Mary Lou pointed.
“What’s that date?”
Two days before Kang Jun’s crash.
A payment from Seongjin Maritime to a vehicle leasing company.
Soo-jin searched further.
The truck involved in Kang Jun’s fatal crash had been leased through that company.
Silence.
“We found the truck connection,” Mary Lou whispered.
Another piece.
Not just Park’s authorization.
Not just Han’s presence.
The corporate chain.
Seongjin Maritime had supplied the vehicle.
“Who owns it?” I asked.
Mr. Kim traced the registrations.
Shell company.
Another shell.
Investment trust.
Then a director appeared.
Deputy Chief Prosecutor Min’s brother-in-law.
Mary Lou stared.
“So Min wasn’t just protecting Lee.”
“No,” Soo-jin said. “His family benefited.”
The conspiracy was becoming less abstract.
People.
Money.
Specific choices.
Soo-jin forwarded the evidence through a channel outside Min’s office.
Then her phone rang again.
This time, she listened without speaking.
Her expression hardened.
“What?”
She ended the call.
“The hospital.”
My chest tightened.
“Ji-hoon?”
“He’s gone.”
Mary Lou stood.
“What do you mean gone?”
“Discharged himself.”
“With a gunshot wound?”
“Apparently.”
“Why?”
Nobody knew.
Then Mr. Kim looked toward the desk.
The wooden compass box was missing.
Mary Lou checked her coat.
Nothing.
Soo-jin searched the table.
Nothing.
Ji-hoon had possessed it last before the reservoir.
But after the shooting, police had catalogued it.
It should have been in evidence.
Soo-jin called.
The evidence record showed it had been released.
“To whom?”
She listened.
Then went pale.
“Deputy Chief Prosecutor Min.”
Mary Lou stared.
“When?”
“Before we discovered he was compromised.”
The compass was gone.
Ji-hoon had disappeared.
Min had disappeared.
And the object connecting Kang Jun’s hidden evidence to his surviving brother was now somewhere between them.
Mary Lou looked at the shipping map.
“Ji-hoon isn’t running.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he spent fourteen years running.”
She pointed at Seongjin Maritime.
“He’s going after Lee.”
Soo-jin shook her head.
“He doesn’t know Lee is there.”
“He might.”
“How?”
Mary Lou looked toward the door.
“Because Ji-hoon was watching Lee long before any of us knew his name.”
Then she picked up her coat.
I already knew what she was going to say.
“We have to find him before he turns Kang Jun’s evidence into revenge.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 19: Ji-hoon Went After Lee Sang-ho Alone, but the Message He Left for Mary Lou Revealed He Had Never Intended to Come Back
Every December My Daughter Sent the Same Impossible Amount, Until One Tiny Pause Made Me Question the Life She Claimed to Have
Part 18 of 27
