You're a US police officer, what are you thinking about going back to the East for?

Chapter 255 Tracking

Late at night, in the ACU office area, the air conditioner vent was blowing directly at Mia, making the several sheets of unstitched printed paper on her desk rustle loudly.

She reached out and pressed the paper down, then looked up at the clock on the wall.

The clock had just struck three, and there was less than an hour left before ACU closed for the day.

She sat at her workstation, the chair back reclined to a semi-reclined position, her feet propped up on a stack of file boxes on the corner of the desk, ankles crossed, the heel of her left flat shoe tapping intermittently against the plastic edge of the file box.

On the table lay an unfiled firefight report, next to a cup of already heated iced Americano.

Her dead fish eyes drooped as she stared at a shopping page on her phone screen. The product on the page was a slow-rebound squeezeable toy labeled "stress relief artifact," shaped like a cat rolling its eyes.

She kept switching between different screens, considering whether or not to place an order.

Leon might not like this somewhat childish toy, but she also didn't want to give Leon a box of bullets or other meaningless things in their daily interactions.

Across the desk, two middle-aged men sat facing each other, their keyboards shattered from typing.

The one on the left is named Morris. He is fifty-four years old, with thinning but neatly combed hair. He is wearing a light blue shirt with the cuffs buttoned up.

He worked in the administrative section of the branch office for eighteen years. The expense reports he handled could fill three filing cabinets, more than some detectives had ever eaten a donut. He knew the signing habits of every director like the back of his hand.

When Sterling transferred him to ACU, he was leisurely making coffee in the break room when he heard the transfer order and almost dropped his cup.

Although ACU's overtime pay is high, Leon Vance's reputation is so great that those who work for him either get shot or make the news.

The old man typed extremely fast, his keyboard clicks sounding like a machine gun, but he also had a quirk: he would never sit if he could lie down, and he would never stand if he could sit.

If no one is watching him and there are no tasks assigned by his superiors, he can sit at his workstation with a coffee in hand, spacing out all day long. When someone passes by, he quickly switches back to the spreadsheet, his expression more focused than if he were defusing a bomb.

The one on the right is named Frank. He's forty-nine years old, fat, and has two fleshy folds squeezed out from the back of his neck.

He was a few years younger than Maurice, but looked older, with heavy eye bags as if he hadn't slept well for two weeks.

His strength lies in organizing case files. He can meticulously organize a handover report from patrol officer to special police officer, leaving no room for error, even the Ministry of Internal Affairs cannot find fault with it.

But he was also a notorious "check-in refugee" in the branch office.

As soon as the clock strikes midnight, he can pack up his things and disappear through the back door within thirty seconds, never glancing back at his desk.

Besides clocking in and running away, this guy has another problem: laziness.

How lazy was he? The top drawer of his desk was stuffed full of instant coffee sticks and individually wrapped cookies, so he wouldn't have to go back and forth to the break room.

When Sterling transferred him, he and Maurice exchanged a glance in the hallway. Neither of them spoke, but they both read the same message in each other's eyes: "That's it, I can't slack off anymore."

Mia now goes to get off work and comes home normally every day, and her mood has visibly improved. Her deadpan expression hasn't changed, but the corners of her mouth occasionally turn up a tiny bit. It's probably that subtle feeling of "the serfs have turned over and are singing songs," the feeling of going from being the oppressed class to the oppressor class.

"In the seventh column of this B-17 form, the description of the action states that the suspect attempted to climb out of the back window," but the corresponding body camera data is missing. Frank handed a form over from above the partition, his fingers gripping the edge of the paper.

"Then just fill it in," Morris's voice came from under the partition, sounding unusually perfunctory.

"This isn't my job. You're responsible for filing this form; I'm just checking the format for you."

"You just helped me check the format?" Morris leaned back in his chair, turning to look at Frank. "You've checked the format of four forms since eight o'clock, two of which you've checked three times. Frank, are you afraid the forms will grow legs and run away or something?"

"Formatting needs to be checked carefully."

"Does format checking require you to read every single form aloud from beginning to end? I just heard you reading column seven, and when you read the action description, you were reciting it like you were reciting the Declaration of Independence. Are you filing a firefight report or preparing for a presidential inauguration speech?"

"Besides, the form you checked before, I revised it according to your requirements, but it was still rejected. What was the point of your check?"

"Of course I checked it, but your approval process has two extra steps. You have to get Deputy Team Leader Harrison's signature first, and then go through Raymond Garcia's process. It's too slow."

Morris pushed his glasses up his nose. "I'm simplifying your process, you know?"

"You call being lazy simplification?"

Frank's fingers paused for a moment.

"My God, how did someone like you manage to stay in the administration department for eighteen years? No wonder my expense reports keep getting sent back for revisions because of procedural issues. Meanwhile, you're cutting corners without batting an eye," Frank complained.

"Your expense report being rejected has nothing to do with the process; it's purely because the content of your dossier summary is problematic, Frank."

Morris finally turned to look at Frank.

"The timelines in your reports, written in a rush like narrative prose, will prompt the Internal Affairs Department to conduct spot checks. They'll ask, 'Why did the suspect collapse in the hallway two seconds before the officer fired his gun?'"

"If you added a sentence like, 'Doesn't this make the officer seem like a good shot?', the problem would disappear."

Frank paused for a few seconds.

"You're teaching me how to write a novel."

"I'm teaching you how to avoid being summoned by the Ministry of Internal Affairs."

“At least I’ve been working.” Frank put the form down and tapped his fingers twice on the table. “While you’ve been sharpening a pencil since two o’clock.”

Morris glanced down at the pencil in his hand, paused, and then continued sharpening.

"I'm sharpening this pencil for Ms. Torres; she might need to sign it later."

"You spent forty minutes sharpening the pencil with a utility knife."

"Because a perfect pencil tip requires patience."

"I'm here checking the reports, and you just don't want to do any work."

"Yes, but this pencil really does need sharpening."

They both turned to look in the direction of Mia's workstation, probably waiting for her to come and judge.

Mia locked her phone, took her feet off the file box, stood up, and walked to the partition.

She was wearing black police trousers and a close-fitting dark blue polo shirt, with an ACU metal badge pinned to her left breast. Her short black hair was slightly sticking up, probably from leaning against the chair back earlier, but she didn't seem to care.

She glanced down at the form on the partition, then at the pencil in Morris's hand, which had been sharpened to almost nothing but the lead.

"Where is the recorder index on form B-17?" she asked.

"Appendix C, line three," Frank and Morris replied simultaneously.

"Then who will fill it out?"

"Him." The two of them pointed at each other at the same time.

Then they looked at each other. The two seasoned veterans clearly knew the forms inside and out, but neither of them wanted to do any work.

"Okay, okay, okay." Frank raised his hand.

"I'll fill it out, but that doesn't mean I'm admitting defeat; it just means I feel there's no point in arguing about it."

"Boss, do you know why it's pointless?"

"Because Morris will find other tasks for me to fill out later, and after I finish this, he will say, 'Hey Frank, since you've already opened the appendix, why don't you fill out Appendix D as well?'"

"6

Five seconds.

Morris opened his mouth a crack, then closed it again.

"We still have an hour until 4 a.m.," Mia said, looking at the two of them again. "When the ACU returns, all firefight reports must be filed, equipment declaration forms must be in duplicate, and B-17 must be accompanied by a complete law enforcement recorder index and weapons consumption list."

"Frank is in charge of firefight reports and indexes, while Morris is in charge of declaration forms and equipment lists."

"All done. Give me the pencil."

Morris handed him the pencil, its tip sharpened like a sewing needle.

Mia took it, looked at it, and then put it in the pen holder on her desk.

"Thank you, it's well done."

Morris's lips curled up slightly, then he quickly suppressed it, probably not wanting Frank to see him feeling smug about being praised for his sharpened pencil.

"That's all." Mia picked up the iced Americano on the table, took a sip, and found that the iced Americano had completely lost its icy taste, leaving only bitterness and water. Then she turned around and walked back to her workstation.

She sat down, put her feet back on the file box, unlocked her phone, and continued watching the cat rolling its eyes.

The office area was quiet for a moment, but not long after, Frank started muttering to himself again.

"My God, if this were in the administration department, I could finish it all by myself right before the deadline." Frank leaned back in his chair, staring at the spreadsheet on the screen. "Now, it's even worse. Two people have to do it, and there's an extra step of mutual supervision, making it even less efficient."

"You're inefficient because you go to the bathroom three times an hour, spending twenty minutes each time," Morris said. "What are you doing in the stall? Playing video games?"

"I'm thinking about work."

"You're using your phone."

Mia frowned and tapped the table with her pen across from her.

Morris stopped and looked back at his screen, and Frank shut up as well.

This time it was truly quiet. Perhaps they realized that their boss's tapping on the table carried a warning undertone, and that Mia could indeed tattle on them to Sterling at any time. Or perhaps it was because there was only an hour left before they were to leave work, and they all knew that the prerequisite for surviving in this office was to get the work done.

Another hour passed.

The firefight report has been filed, B-17 has been completed, and the equipment declaration form has been printed out, signed, and placed in a folder.

Frank had already stuffed the last form into the filing cabinet and was closing the door. Morris put the unused blank application forms into the drawer and casually threw the crumpled paper full of pencil shavings on the table into the trash can.

Mia stood up, put her phone in her pocket, and grabbed a thin black jacket from the back of the chair and put it on.

"Send me the electronic version of the equipment declaration form by noon tomorrow. I'll confirm it and then send it to Raymond Garcia." She zipped her jacket up to the side. "Don't send it to Harrison. He'll get anxious if he sees it and thinks our equipment is too good."

Frank opened his mouth, then glanced at Maurice, whose expression seemed to be waiting for him to speak first. Neither of them spoke.

Mia walked out of her workstation.

The police station corridor was much quieter at night than during the day.

There was a faint smell of cleaning agents in the air; the floor, which the cleaners had mopped when the day shift officers left, was already completely dry.

As she walked out of the branch office, a night breeze rushed into her collar, making her shiver and pull her coat tighter around herself.

The vehicle depot is located to the left of the branch office, with streetlights spaced two kilometers apart, resulting in a limited illumination area.

She took out her car keys and pressed a button. A silver Honda Civic flashed twice twenty meters away.

She walked over, opened the car door, got in, and put her bag on the passenger seat.

She paused for a moment when the key was turned to the first position, then looked up.

There's nothing on the outside of the windshield.

Only a few patrol cars with their engines off remained quietly in their respective parking spots.

"Are you kidding me? — Can ghosts really come out of the police station?" She muttered to herself, turned the key all the way, and started the engine.

What Mia didn't notice was that on the street corner opposite the precinct's parking lot, in a shadow where the streetlights couldn't reach, a dark brown Chevrolet Suburban was quietly parked, its front facing her.

There were two people in the car.

The man in the driver's seat was named Andrei, thirty-two years old, with broad shoulders and short stubble.

He was Vic's most trusted henchman, having followed Vic for seven or eight years. Andrei almost never asked why, only where to go and when to make a move. But today, he had an unusually puzzled expression on his face.

Vic was in the passenger seat.

Vic is almost fifty years old. His hair is shaved very short, his temples are graying, and he is wearing a dark-colored polo shirt with half of his faded old tattoo showing through the cuff.

He sat in the passenger seat, holding a lit cigarette butt in his hand. A ring of condensation had formed on the cigarette butt, indicating that it hadn't been touched for several minutes.

Vic stared intently at the taillights of the silver Honda Civic in the parking lot across the street, without blinking.

He has been here for almost four hours.

Starting around noon, he left his car here and watched the side entrance of the police station.

Four patrol cars came and went during that time. A black police sergeant in uniform smoked a cigarette at the door. Two office workers came out from the back door carrying paper bows. There was also a woman with short black hair, dead fish eyes, and a petite figure. She was wearing black police trousers and a dark blue shirt. She came out once around 2 o'clock, bought a cup of coffee from the vending machine next to the parking lot, and then went back in.

That's Mia Torres.

Vic repeatedly noted her gait: short steps, fast walking, not paying much attention to where she was going, and large arm swings.

She was looking down at her phone while buying something from the vending machine, completely unaware of anything amiss. She got her coffee and then walked back to the police station without even looking up.

Andrei saw the Honda Civic start up, he reached out and touched the steering wheel, but didn't rush to start it.

"The woman came out," Andrei said.

"Um.

""

"Should we put it on now?"

"Wait until she leaves the parking lot, keep two cars between you, don't get too close."

Andrei placed his finger on the ignition switch and pressed it again.

"Boss, there's something I've been wanting to ask you."

"explain."

"You know what we're doing right now, right?"

97

Vic didn't respond.

"We're tracking a cop right now, and he's Leon Vance's girlfriend."

He turned his head away, his face expressionless.

"We plan to kill Leon, and we'll use this hostage as part of the plan."

Vic stubbed out his cigarette.

"She's not a hostage yet; we're just tracking her today," he said. "Leon, that's for later."

Vic looked through the windshield at the now empty intersection ahead.

"They all say Tyrone has gone mad," Andrei continued, "gathering us, the remnants of the army, to fight to the death with a policeman who can lead people into a building."

"I was wondering before why all the brothers I saw were willing to stay and fight to the death. Then I thought about it again and realized that the reason why all the brothers I saw were willing to stay and fight to the death was because the people who were not willing to fight to the death had already run away, so of course I can't see them now."

"Thinking about this, I know you guys aren't crazy, at least not in that way. So before that, I need to confirm one thing, something I've never asked you before."

Vic tilted his head.

"Go ahead and ask."

Andrei remained silent for a short while, as if he was hesitating about how to phrase his words.

"How exactly did you and Marcus meet?"

"You don't need to know," Vic said, his voice flat.

"I've been working for you for almost seven years, and you've never mentioned it."

"I've seen you take a bullet for Marcus, I've seen you stay up for two days and two nights after the Pink Swan incident, and I've seen you squatting in the Security Order's small room, looking through photos of those corpses over and over again."

"You care about Marcus more than you care about yourself."

Andrei sighed and swore.

"I dropped out of junior high school and hung out on the streets for over ten years. I've seen people who don't keep their oaths of loyalty, people who are greedy for money, people who sell their bosses to the police in exchange for reduced sentences—I've also seen people who keep their oaths of loyalty."

"You were willing to go crazy for a dead man, and I'm still going crazy with you. But I just want to know, what exactly do you owe him?"

He turned his face toward Vic.

"If something really happens to Kang later, I don't want to die next to a madman I don't know."

Vik slowly turned to look at Andrei, then moved back to the windshield.

After several seconds, he finally reached into his pocket, pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, took one out, and put it in his mouth.

"You're right. I'm almost fifty, and I shouldn't be sitting in this car staring at a policewoman's route home from get off work."

I should either be sleeping at home, or I've already run away.

19

He took the cigarette out of his mouth, twirled it around, filter down, and tapped it twice on his glove bow.

"But Marcus isn't the kind of person who can just run away."

Andrei didn't interrupt.

"You asked me how we met."

"West District, streets and alleys, a very ordinary evening."

"I was nineteen, and he was seventeen."

"I was already working at the time, a construction worker. I guess I was a kind person because I saw him being stabbed to death. Instead of running away, I went up and took a few stabs for him."

"Later, I stayed in the hospital for four months, and he sat outside the ward every day waiting for me, without missing a single day."

"When he was discharged from the hospital, he told me that he owed me a life."

Viktor paused.

"But the few blows I took for him can only be considered the first debt."

He rolled down the car window a crack to let the night breeze in.

"After that, we gradually lost contact until I was twenty-five that year, working as a loader at the dock. I had no criminal record, never handled cargo, and didn't even drink alcohol."

"Then one night, my wife said she had a stomachache, and when we took her to the hospital, we found out she had stomach cancer."

"Hu Xian refused to reimburse her, saying it was a past medical history, but it wasn't. Hu Xian found a record of a stomach irritation in her old medical records."

He paused.

Andrei didn't mention Zhen.

"Without proper medical care, chemotherapy costs hundreds of thousands of yuan."

"I sold my house and borrowed from everyone I knew, but in the end I couldn't even scrape together 100,000 yuan."

"There's still a shortfall of 320,000 yuan. The hospital's finance department is calling me every day to urge payment. The calls are even coming to the dock where I work."

"Then one day, they moved her from the ward to the hallway because patients who owe bills don't deserve a ward."

Vic put the cigarette back in his mouth, lit it, and tapped his finger lightly on the windowsill, making a very low sound.

"Then I thought of Marcus."

"At that time, his car theft business hadn't really taken off yet. He had some money, but it wasn't enough to cover my debts. Later, he told me he had a solution."

"He said there was a loan shark named KetchBrad who specialized in lending money to people with gang backgrounds. He charged exorbitant interest rates and relentlessly pursued them, but he was close to the money."

"Marcus said he knew a middleman who could help me borrow 300,000 in his name, and afterwards he would help me cover the losses."

.

He then looked out the window, the smoke slowly dissipating from his lips.

Andrei, who was standing next to him, didn't say anything, he just waited.

"The collateral the middleman wants isn't a house, it's your life."

"Back then, that was the rule when borrowing money in the West District: if you couldn't pay it back, you had to pay with your life; there was no other option."

"I was already on a payroll at the dock at the time, and no silver medal would lend money to someone without a payslip, so I signed the contract."

He took another drag of his cigarette and then slowly exhaled.

"After signing, I did something even stupider."

"Because the money wasn't paid to the hospital all at once, but gradually, after I paid off part of the previous debts and subsequent fees, I was desperately trying to find ways to pay it off every day. If I died, my family would die too, so I couldn't think about ending it all."

"I tried to figure out what to do with the remaining money, and then I found a fake investment manager who told me that the returns would double in just three weeks."

"He said that trading options was a sure way to make money, and I believed him."

"At the time, I don't know what was going through my mind when I decided to believe it."

"And then?" Andrei asked.

Vic took the cigarette out of his mouth and flicked it on the edge of the ashtray.

"In the end, that person ran away, I lost all the money I had left, and I'm still in debt to the loan sharks."

"My life is completely ruined. My wife's chemotherapy is about to end, we've lost our house, and I haven't been back to work. I just sit in my rented room every day, wondering how many more days I have left to live."

After hearing this, Andrei leaned back.

"What happened to that investment manager afterwards?"

"We found it later."

"I didn't find it, Marcus did."

"He chased the man all the way from Seattle to Chicago to Detroit, and finally cornered him in a motel in Gary."

"That night, Marcus put the man in the trunk and drove back to Seattle."

"He used an electric shock to call me over, and the man was still alive when the reserve bow was opened."

He paused for a moment, then looked down at his palm.

He handed me the gun and said, "Brother, this guy's still alive. Do you want to do it yourself, or should I?"

Andrei didn't say anything about Zhen, he just looked at Viktor.

"I said stop."

He placed his hands on his knees.

"That was the first time I had ever killed someone in my life. Before that, I wasn't involved in gangs; I was just an ordinary worker."

"Marcus was standing there the whole time, not urging me or saying anything, just watching me."

"After I finished fighting, he dragged the body out, put it in a body bag, and then told me, 'From now on, you are mine. I will kill anyone who touches you.'"

Andrei was silent for a moment, then rolled up the car window a little and looked at his reflection in the glass.

"Was Marcus like that before? I always felt he was a brutal person and not quite right in the head."

"Yes, he was young then, full of passion, and his brain hadn't been damaged by drugs yet," Vic said.

"Later—I don’t know how the Blood Gang ended up like this. Back when we weren’t the Blood Gang, but just a small roadside gang, we weren’t like this."

Vik looked at Andrei, then sighed.

"Speaking of Shi Zhen, I feel like when we reunited and worked together for Marcus's death, it felt like we were back in the 10 or 20 years ago. That's how it was in the gang back then; we were one big family."

"————" Andrei was silent for a while.

"So what happened to the loan sharks after that?"

Vic looked again at the empty street outside the windshield. "He helped me pay off my debts and removed me from the loan shark list."

"Like I said, he didn't have much money at the time, so he used the land deed of an auto parts factory as collateral."

"The factory owner owed Jimmy a gambling debt. He was the one who later managed Pink Swan. Marcus talked to Jimmy for a whole night, and in the end, all three parties signed the agreement. My name disappeared from the ledger."

He paused.

"So he bought my life. He spent over 300,000 US dollars to buy my broken life, and then used his own life to protect me for more than 20 years."

"Now that someone has killed him, do you think I would run away?"

"————" Vic was silent for a moment.

Then he clenched his fist and smashed the car window, gritting his teeth.

"I know he should have died a long time ago. He was a gang leader who harmed many people. It was right for that cop to kill him. I also deserve to die because I'm a gangster. I know all that, but I have to take revenge. This is something that can't be reasoned with. Can you understand?"

After saying this, he turned his head to the empty road ahead, which was dimly lit by the streetlights.

Mia's Honda Civic had already disappeared around the corner.

Andrei pushed the gear lever up, released the brake, and the Chevrolet Suburban slowly slid out of the parking space.

"Follow her," Vic said.

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