Chapter 326 — Sorry

Yang Qiqi was past tears. She bellowed after Wei Zhao's car, "Wei Zhao, I hate you! Just you wait..."

Wei Zhao's car answered her with a puff of black exhaust...

With no other choice, Yang Qiqi fished out her phone and dialed a number. Her voice came out a little aggrieved. "Grandpa Tombstone... were you following me just now... No? Oh, just admit it... I'm at the junkyard. I'm lost. Come pick me up, quick... All right, I'll wait..."

As Wei Zhao drove out of the alley mouth, he saw that Mitsubishi van coming straight at him. He frowned. So the van really did have something to do with the cool girl after all.

After asking a few passersby for directions along the way, Wei Zhao made it back to the hotel he was staying at. The roads were easy enough to find.

Wei Zhao planned to move at night, so he had nothing to do by day. He parked the car in the hotel lot. To ward off car thieves and any unnecessary trouble, he set the blue baseball cap York had given him on the dashboard before going inside.

He did this because he had noticed plenty of cars on the road with caps displayed just that way, and took it for a kind of sign among the Water Blue Gang's members. With a blue baseball cap on the dashboard, no thief would usually give the car a second thought.

Back in his hotel room, Wei Zhao slept first. He meant to move that night: go in, drag Xie Jinbiao out by force, and head straight home.

Meanwhile, in a suite at the Kenhe Hotel, Yang Qiqi sat beside an old man, thoroughly glum. An angry flush colored her cool little face. "Grandpa Tombstone, that Wei Zhao is truly detestable. I swear I'll kill him! He actually dumped me at a garbage dump!"

"You say that man's name is Wei Zhao?" Tombstone was visibly startled by the name.

"Yes... why? Have you heard of him, Grandpa Tombstone?" Yang Qiqi looked at him, puzzled.

"It's nothing..." Tombstone shook his head. "Why don't you skip tonight's operation? I'll speak with the head of the family and have it called off."

"No. I'm going to kill that Hugh Landon!" Yang Qiqi shook her head stubbornly. "I have to prove to Father that I'm a qualified assassin!"

"Very well then, Miss Yang. Do be careful!" Tombstone said helplessly. "But I'll be posted outside the repair shop. If anything happens, call me at once!"

"I know!" A touch of reluctance crossed Yang Qiqi's cool little face. She did not want Tombstone trailing her, yet there was no way to stop him. No doubt Grandpa Tombstone had been sent by her mother.

That night, Wei Zhao made his move. He parked the car a short way from the repair shop he had visited by day, put on the blue baseball cap, and strode inside.

The Water Blue Gang member on watch at the gate only glanced up at Wei Zhao and did not stop him, then dropped his head again to play his handheld game.

At night the repair shop belonged to the Water Blue Gang; ordinary people did not come to a place like this after dark, so it never crossed the guard's mind that a lone Wei Zhao would dare show up looking for trouble.

Wei Zhao kept his head down under the blue baseball cap, and no one paid him any attention. Inside the repair shop there were three hundred if not five hundred others dressed just like him, each busy with his own affairs.

Wei Zhao did not rush to ask where Xie Jinbiao was being held. Instead he circled the repair shop several times, committing the layout and the routes to memory.

"You lot — go take a look at Mr. Weihante's casino. Someone's *** there. Bring him back to me, and have his family and friends put up fifty thousand dollars for his release!" a coarse voice barked at several Water Blue Gang members.

"Yes, sir!" The members took their orders, piled into several cars, and sped off.

The foul-mouthed man from before turned to leave, and suddenly a blade appeared at his throat. "Don't shout, or you're a dead man!"

While Wei Zhao was wandering back and forth through the repair shop, he was in fact also looking for one of the Water Blue Gang's bosses. Ordinary gang members likely would not know where Xie Jinbiao was being held.

After all, everyone had his own piece of business to mind, and snatching Xie Jinbiao to shake a little money out of Xie Guangbo was no great affair — the Water Blue Gang pulled stunts like that all the time. Their leader Hugh Landon himself might not even have known about it!

Hurrington cared only about the gang's final profits; how those profits were earned was left to the mid-level bosses beneath him. So if one wanted to learn where Xie Jinbiao was being held, grabbing some random passerby and asking was not going to work.

That was why Wei Zhao had held off, choosing his target instead. He wanted one clean strike, not a blind roundup of a crowd to be questioned one by one - that would only spook the snake in the grass.

But at last Wei Zhao came across the little boss who had been ordered to send his men to seize the captives, and Wei Zhao was delighted. The man he had been looking for had finally come to him.

"What... what are you doing?" The little boss was about to cry for help, but the instant he heard Wei Zhao's voice he did not dare make a sound. The blade at his throat was real and cold, and he could not be sure the thing behind him would not drive it straight through him with a single thrust.

"The people you seized - where are they being held?" Wei Zhao asked. "No nonsense. Answer, and fast. Lie to me, and don't blame me for what happens next."

"Wh... which one are you looking for? Let's talk this through. Just give me a name, and I'll call my men right now to let him go!" the little boss said cautiously.

"Hmph!" Wei Zhao gave a cold laugh, and the blade bit into the skin of the little boss's neck; a streak of blood welled up at once. "I already told you - no nonsense, answer fast. Are you deaf? Or do you want to die right now? I don't mind killing you and finding someone else to ask."

"No... no, I'll talk..." The little boss had meant to play a trick, to draw out the name of the man Wei Zhao was after and then have his men bring the fellow out as a hostage to force Wei Zhao into submission. But plainly Wei Zhao had no interest in even hearing it.

"Three counts. Three, two..." Wei Zhao pressed the blade harder.

"The basement of the building up ahead. Don't kill me, I've told you everything..." The little boss was terrified now. "It's the building right up ahead. Let me go..."

"One..." Wei Zhao said the final number. "Sorry. My hand slipped."

And so the little boss checked out.