Chapter 39: The Buried Road

The morning after the knives, the bakery named a bun after Shen Mo. Lili read the sign through the school window. "'Three Blade Special,'" she said. "Sesame paste, red bean, and litigation." Mo held the coffee she had given him. It was black, hot, and correctly made. "The knives did not enter the bag." "That will be our defense." Across the street, two news vans occupied spaces normally reserved for bakery deliveries. Strangers stood beneath umbrellas with their phones raised toward Wang Traditional Martial Arts. The red hand remained on the brick beside the door. Madsen's sedans were gone, which did not make the street empty. Ruiz waited inside the entrance with her body camera on. Hollis stood at the front windows, reading each parked vehicle before it passed. He had returned Mo to Wang's voluntary custody the day before and come back at dawn because six men had attacked…