Read Chapter 1: — THE COUGH BEHIND THE SCREEN

Li Mufeng stood in the spring sunlight outside Huashi Group and waited for the dizziness to pass.

He had spent most of his twenty-five years cultivating the impression that nothing could unsettle him. He painted with an easy hand, flirted with the confidence of a man who had rarely been refused, and had once mortgaged his only apartment to start an interior-design company because the alternative—working quietly for somebody else—had seemed unbearable.

Five minutes earlier, however, he had been sitting in Qin Yuedong's top-floor office when a woman coughed behind an embroidered screen.

There should not have been a woman there.

Qin, Huashi's general manager, had been negotiating the purchase of Mufeng's failing company, Yifeng Design. The offer was generous enough to rescue Mufeng from debt, pay his employees, and spare his father the humiliation of selling the battered car he jokingly called his Porsche. Qin had poured pre-rain Biluochun tea and spoken with the patience of a man who knew he held all the cards.

Then came the cough: light, unmistakably feminine, close enough that Mufeng could hear the breath at the end of it.

He looked toward the screen. Four panels of Suzhou embroidery showed birds among flowering branches. Nothing moved.

"Good tea," Qin said.

"Very good," Mufeng answered, though his hand trembled against the porcelain.

Now, on the pavement, he told himself there had to be a rational explanation. Huashi was not a haunted mansion. He was not a superstitious old man. The sky was blue; traffic flashed under the sun; winter jasmine moved in the wind.

He crossed toward the underground garage.

The garage was strangely quiet. Motion-sensitive lights came alive one by one as he walked. Ten metres ahead, a woman in a black coat and high heels moved toward the far row of cars. Her posture caught his painter's eye: balanced, controlled, too precise for an ordinary commuter.

A roar exploded behind him.

The woman jumped sideways with astonishing speed.

Mufeng turned. A Jeep was bearing down on them.

He threw himself toward a concrete pillar, but the vehicle clipped him hard enough to launch him across the floor. The last thing he saw before the lights vanished was the woman in black landing on her feet.

He woke in an emergency ward with stitches in his arm, two more above his brow, and a nurse laughing at his first question.

"Did I lose anything important?"

"Only your dignity," she said. "And apparently you faint at the sight of blood."

He refused to believe that. He was still arguing when she handed him a business card.

"The driver's lawyer waited for hours. She left this."

Fang Wenshan, attorney at law.

A lawyer for a minor traffic accident.

Mufeng stared at the card, then at the bandage on his arm.

By the time he walked out of the hospital, one question had divided into two.

Who had been behind Qin's screen?

And who had the Jeep been trying to kill?