“FOLLOW HIM!”
For a breath, Nadia Lin stood rooted, the restaurant noise and motion stripped away. The fortune cookie and its plastic wrapper lay crumpled on the counter. Her fingers gripped the small slip of paper. The weight of dread sat heavy behind her sternum.
“Nadia! Your order! Thank you, have a great day!”
Madam Win pushed a brown paper bag at her with a green receipt stapled to the folded top. Nadia started and looked up at her. But Madam Win had already turned to the next customer standing in the pickup line.
Nadia glanced over her shoulder. The tall man was already in the doorway, moving out.
He had passed her at the counter moments before, shouldering past her hard enough to make her stagger. Her hand holding the cookie had shot out to catch herself against the counter. He hadn’t looked back—just muttered something that might have been an apology and kept going.
When she looked down the cookie had cracked, the plastic sleeve burst open. The scent of sweet pastry bloomed in her palm. The slip of paper peeked out from the crumbles like a white flag.
Nadia looked at the man, now stepping onto the sidewalk. He had pushed his way past other people coming and going—the man in a red ball cap and leather jacket who had just been next to Nadia had to step aside. An older woman with a shopping bag gave the man’s back an open-mouthed glare.
Nadia looked back to the message.
Then to the door.
She snatched the brown paper bag and darted out after him. She slipped out behind Red Ball Cap and Shopping Bag Lady and scanned the street for the oversized silhouette of the tall man in the vanishing light of evening. She scanned the street left and right—
There.
He stood at the bus stop with a cluster of others, waiting for the #32.
Nadia tightened her grip on the bag and joined the queue a few people behind him, keeping her eyes on his back.
She slid into a seat midway down the aisle, setting her bag beside her. She noted that Red Ball Cap sat three rows behind her. Shopping Bag Lady one row back across the aisle. Two rows ahead, the man sat alone, staring out the window.
Large. Tall… Tall Man, she designated him. There was nothing else really remarkable about him.
Yet when Nadia looked at him, a knot tightened in her stomach.
Something triggered the same instinctive unease the odd messages had been stirring in her for days.
A child will be taken.
You will receive messages.
You must stop it.
The bus lurched away from the stop.
Nadia lifted the paper bag into her lap and reached inside. Her fingers brushed the rim of the steaming soup container. Then plastic crackled beneath her fingertips. A fortune cookie.
Then a second.
And a third.
Three.
Just like the others before.
Keeping one eye on Tall Man, Nadia held the cookies over the bag and cracked them open one by one, letting the pastry and plastic fall into the bag. White slips collected in her trembling fingers.
She remembered sitting in the office cafeteria two days earlier, diving into the delivery bags from the Golden Harvest Moon. Opening the three fortune cookies that came with her meal. Marisol, frowning at the “not funny” fortunes as they tried to rearrange the strange messages into something coherent. Nadia, tying her hair back as she always did when she had an analytical problem to crack.
Nadia had almost thrown them away. But something made her keep them. A feeling. One she had not noticed in years, but the kind that sat ever-present in the back of her mind.
The bus hit a pothole and jostled her slightly as she carefully unfolded the new slips. The low muttering of conversation among the passengers dropped away as she concentrated.
The festival is where it will happen.
You must keep him in your sight.
Panda
Nadia pushed a strand of hair out of her face and sorted the slips in her lap. The first two made sense together no matter how she arranged them.
The festival is where it will happen.
You must keep him in your sight.
But the third message didn’t fit.
Panda.
The bus rumbled downtown beneath the glow of passing streetlights.
The festival.
The Chinese lantern festival was happening downtown all weekend.
And the bus was headed there now.
Nadia glanced at the man two rows ahead.
You must keep him in your sight.
Why? What was she supposed to see?
She turned the slips over again as if the answer might suddenly reveal itself.
Nothing.
Detective Chow Lee would have figured it out already. Nadia almost smiled thinking about it. On television, Chow Lee chased killers through neon-lit streets and cornered them with sharp instincts and fearless certainty.
But Nadia was a timid programmer analyst riding a city bus because a fortune cookie had told her to follow a stranger.
The second set of messages had arrived at her apartment last night with her usual Thursday order from Golden Harvest Moon. She sat crosslegged on her couch, the fortunes laid on the coffee table.
Soup. Lo mein. Three fortune cookies.
It will happen soon.
You must be prepared.
Start at the source.
That last message had kept needling at her while Chow Lee solved fictional murders on Nadia’s television screen.
What would a real detective do? Not an unassuming young woman whose job it was to look for broken code and outdated links. She looked at the screen as Chow Lee collared another gang of scoundrels.
Chow Lee would act. Nadia must be prepared—prepared to act.
Start at the source.
So tonight Nadia had gone to Golden Harvest Moon looking for answers. She stepped into the popular restaurant she’d been going to and ordering from for years. It was bustling with Friday evening business. Dining in, taking out, deliveries… The owner, Madam Win, moved like a cyclone, ringing up sales, taking orders on the phone, assigning guests to the hostess. Nadia stood behind a man in a red ball cap and leather jacket who was paying his bill. Nervously she caught Madam Win’s attention, her stomach trembling as she thought about what to say. But more than that… The gut feeling that something was wrong. The feeling she got when she’d received the previous messages. A sense of danger.
She looked around the restaurant quickly, only to find herself staring awkwardly at Madam Win.
“Hi Nadia, not seen you for long time. Always delivery. You want soup and lo mein?”
“Just soup, please,” Nadia had said, flustered, and pulling out her debit card. A large jar of fortune cookies sat next to the tap and pay console. She reached absently into the jar—
—and the man bumped into her on his way out.
The bus hissed and rocked as it pulled to the curb at Broad Street.
Most of the passengers, including the Woman with Shopping Bag and Red Ball Cap, stood to exit.
Tall Man stood, too.
Nadia rose with them, filing out while keeping her eyes on his looming silhouette. She dropped the slips of paper into her jacket pocket, where they settled alongside the ziplock bag holding the previous six messages. She threw the bag with the soup into a trash receptacle.
Barricades blocked portions of the street. Vans, trailers, and box trucks lined the curbs. Music and carnival noise spilled through the evening air as crowds flowed toward the festival occupying four square blocks downtown. A banquet of rich smells floated up from the food trucks and stalls.
Nadia knew the area well.
As a child, she had loved the lantern festival—the bright lights, sweet candy, games of chance, exotic performers weaving through the streets. She’d come every year with her parents until she was thirteen, when she became too old for such outings. They had continued to come even after that night when Nadia was just five-almost-six years old. When the festival had been huge and intoxicating, and she had wanted to see it all at once.
The memory sat like an anchor—the moment her hand slipped free from her mother’s. One second attached to safety. The next—darting away, swallowed by strangers.
The crowd pressed around her now just as it had then. Bodies moving shoulder to shoulder. Voices overlapping. Too many legs. Too many faces.
For a five year old below adult eye level, the world felt like a forest of legs. She had bumped and stumbled, trying to find her parents again. Every alternating flow of the crowd pushed her farther away from them—a riptide of people.
And somewhere inside that forest, something had noticed her. Something that moved among the forest of legs, hungry and alert.
Even now the memory tightened her chest.
Ahead of her, Tall Man drifted through the crowd at a slow, deliberate pace. He never stopped at the food stalls or performers. Never lingered anywhere long.
His gaze swept rentlessly.
Nadia kept having to rise onto her toes to keep sight of him, and the deeper they moved into the festival, the more people seemed to unconsciously shift around him, leaving little pockets of space in his wake.
The man stopped at a street intersection and stood motionless, his eyes roaming over the crowd.
Searching.
For someone specific.
An opportunity.
Recognition poured through Nadia like a stream of ice water. That same terrible instinct from childhood. The certainty of being singled out. Of being separated from the herd.
Not wanting to drift into his line of sight, Nadia stepped back beneath the glow of a nearby food stall. A red banner with yellow lettering announced it as The Golden Harvest Moon. Madam Win always had concession stands at the festival, she remembered.
Above it bobbed a giant inflatable panda, internally lit so its white body glowed against the dark sky.
Nadia froze. She dug the loose slips of paper out of her pocket, sorting through them.
Panda.
She glanced quickly back at the man to make sure he was still there, then turned toward the booth where a bored young woman stood behind the counter with folded arms.
“Excuse me,” Nadia said to the attendant. “Can I have three fortune cookies?”
The young woman frowned. “We only give them out with orders.”
Nadia pulled a five-dollar bill from her wallet and held it out.
“I’d like three fortune cookies, please,” she said evenly.
The attendant stared at her for a moment, then sighed and reached beneath the counter. She dropped three cookies onto the counter surface.
“No charge.” The young woman folded her arms and went back to looking bored.
Nadia slipped the money into the tip jar instead.
She glanced toward the intersection.
The man was still there.
Stepping away from the booth, Nadia tore open the wrappers and crushed the cookies in her fist. The sharp baked edges dug into her palm. She plucked out the strips.
Expose him.
She is alone.
He has made his selection.
Nadia looked up sharply.
The man was moving now.
Not wandering.
Tracking.
He stalked along the midway behind the crowd, eyes fixed ahead.
A little girl in a pink sweatshirt stood near one of the game stalls, tossing colorful rings onto a field of glass soda bottles. She was about seven or eight years old. She was alone, no adult stood alongside her.
Tall Man positioned himself behind her.
Nadia looked for someone to alert. This was a job for real authorities, now. She tried to find a policeman or a security guard, or even another big man with an air of authority. Someone to confront Tall Man—someone besides her, who barely ever raised her voice.
Her breath came in short stabs, driven by the same terrible certainty she had felt as a child lost in the crowd—the awareness of something dangerous gathering itself to pounce.
The man slipped between groups of people, past Red Ball Cap, she noticed, drawing closer to the little girl. He took a small stuffed bear from his coat pocket. A bear with a pink bow. A lure.
Nadia took action before realizing she had decided to.
She stepped directly into his path.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. Her voice was loud and high-pitched.
The man stopped.
“What?” he said.
“You’re following that little girl.”
A few people nearby glanced over.
The man blinked once, looked at Nadia as if trying to understand what she was saying.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His eyes darted away from hers…
Nervously.
“I saw you watching her.”
His expression hardened slightly.
“Lady, I’m just standing here.”
“You picked her.” Nadia heard her own voice rising now. “I saw you getting closer.”
More people were looking. Witnesses. Allies.
The man shifted to step around her.
Nadia moved with him, blocking the path again.
The man’s jaw tightened.
“You’re crazy,” he said flatly. “Mind your own business.”
He shoved the bear back into his coat pocket and drew himself up, expecting her to back down.
Nadia shifted—then held her ground.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw two security guards approaching through the crowd, their pace quickening as they noticed the tension gathering around them.
Finally!
The male security guard stepped forward first.
“Is there a problem here?”
Nadia pointed immediately.
“He’s stalking children.”
The words came out sharper and louder than she intended. Nearby conversations faltered.
The man looked genuinely startled.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “This woman walked up to me out of nowhere.”
“What do you mean, ‘stalking’, ma’am?” the guard asked.
Nadia swallowed.
“He was watching that little girl. Following her. Waiting for a chance.”
“She’s crazy,” Tall Man growled.
“A chance for what?”
“To do—something.”
“Did he approach her?”
“No.” She searched for something solid. “But he was—closing in.”
The guards exchanged a quick glance. The female security guard looked at Tall Man.
“Sir?” she asked. Casual, investigative—not interrogative.
Nadia felt the ground slipping beneath her. They weren’t reaching for their radios, not calling for backup.
The man spread his hands in disbelief. “I haven’t done anything.”
“You picked her,” Nadia insisted fiercely. “I saw you.” She pointed her finger at him, saw it was trembling. Heat bloomed on her face. Her other hand dipped into her pocket, preparing to draw out the fortunes.
“Daddy?” A tiny, curious voice.
Nadia and the guards turned. The Pink Sweatshirt Girl stood, grasping two colorful rings to her chest, looking at Tall Man. She looked timid and confused, like she was about to be scolded.
Tall Man blew out a long breath. “Hi, Baby,” he said.
At that moment a woman came around the stall, her hands holding concessions. She stopped when she saw Tall Man, then her gaze took in the little girl, the guards, and the attentive crowd.
“Chen,” the woman found her voice. “Chen—what are you doing here? You know the custody arrangements.” She moved quickly to stand in front of the child, who peeked around the woman’s legs.
Tall Man spread his hands in a placating gesture. “I know… It’s just… The Lantern Festival. We always came together. I just—I just wanted to…”
The woman’s face hardened and Nadia looked back and forth between them in confusion.
“You always do this,” the woman said, bitterness in her voice. “You always make me the bad guy.”
The male guard stepped between them, hands outstretched. “Ma’am, do you know this man?”
“Daddy?” the Pink Sweatshirt Girl repeated.
“We’re separated, and there are rules about visitation,” the woman responded, instinctively keeping herself between the child and the man. Possessively—not defensively.
“Do we need to call the police?” the security guard asked, dropping a hand to the walkie at his belt.
The woman flinched and glanced down at her daughter. “No. It’s not like that.”
“So, there’s no problem here?” The security guard looked at Tall Man.
He seemed not so tall and looming now. He appeared deflated, looking past the woman’s legs to the little girl who wore a look of anticipation tempered with the expectation of disappointment.
“No problem,” he said. “I’m sorry. Baby, I’ll see you next Saturday. We’ll go to the jump-jump.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the little bear. “I got you a gift, Baby.” He extended it towards her, and her eyes lit with delight. The woman took a step forward and snatched the bear from his hand, scowling and giving her head a shake.
“Let’s go, Ya Jing,” the woman said, ushering Pink Sweatshirt Girl in the other direction. She cast a look back at Tall Man. “Please, Chen. Let’s not do this again.”
Nadia stood frozen. The security guard was motioning people away. Tall Man watched the woman and child for a moment with a long look of remorse. He stuck his hands in his pockets, eyes downcast, and vanished into the crowd. Red Ball Cap stepped aside and watched him pass.
It all seemed wrong to Nadia.
“No,” she said, raising her voice. “No! He was going to—he was about to…”
The female guard stepped closer, her tone calm and practiced.
“Ma’am, I understand you’re concerned, but there’s no problem here.”
The words hit Nadia like a slap.
“You can’t let him go,” Nadia said, panic rising again.
She moved after him instinctively, but both guards blocked her path.
“Young Lady,” the male guard said firmly now, “this needs to stop. People are trying to have a good time, and you’re being disruptive.”
People nearby were openly staring.
Nadia thought how she must look: shrill, wild-eyed, trembling, fist in her pocket, clutching slips of paper.
“You don’t understand. You have to follow him—keep him in sight.”
“Ma’am…” The female guard’s voice was stern—a warning.
“A child is going to be taken,” Nadia whispered.
“How do you know that?” the female guard asked.
She dug deep, summoned up all her nerve, opened her mouth—
—and nothing came out.
The male security guard stepped closer, hand on his walkie.
“Young Lady, we need to ask you to leave.”
Nadia rode the bus home in silence.
The city rolled past the windows in blurred streaks of neon and streetlights. She sat rigidly in her seat, turning the slips of paper over between trembling fingers.
He has made his selection.
She is alone.
Expose him.
She had.
Hadn’t she?
Then why did it feel as though something terrible was still unfolding somewhere beyond her reach?
By the time the bus reached Orchard Avenue, the adrenaline had drained from her, leaving only exhaustion and shame.
She climbed the stairs to her apartment building slowly, one hand trailing along the rail.
Halfway down the second-floor hallway she stopped.
A brown paper delivery bag sat outside Mrs. Cheung’s apartment door. Folded shut. Green receipt stapled to the top.
Golden Harvest Moon.
Nadia stared at it for a long moment.
Mrs. Cheung usually volunteered at church on Fridays, and didn’t come home until after 10pm. If she ever got food deliveries, it was pizzas when her daughter and the grandkids came over on Saturdays. Delivery to the wrong address? The hall remained silent. No televisions behind the doors. No footsteps. No movement.
Nadia forced herself to keep walking.
In her apartment she locked the door, dropped the slips of paper and the ziplock bag onto the kitchen counter. She upended the ziplock and let the slips flutter out. Ten messages in all.
The overhead light buzzed softly.
Nadia leaned both hands against the counter and stared down at the slips. Why was she getting these messages? She wasn’t a detective. She unraveled codes, she didn’t investigate mysteries. The clues—were they even actually clues?—seemed random and opaque. It was only in the organization that they made any sense at all.
The festival is where it will happen.
You must keep him in your sight.
FOLLOW HIM!
Her throat tightened.
“I did,” she whispered.
But even as she said it, something felt wrong. Tall Man wasn’t a kidnapper. He was an estranged father. Even if he’d tried something, the authorities would be on him in an instant. It didn’t make sense to follow him.
She looked again.
Not like a pretend detective—like an analyst.
Tall Man had caught her attention when he bumped her. He caused her to crack the cookie and reveal the message. She’d been flooded with the sense of dread as he passed, that familiar feeling from years ago.
But… truthfully… Nadia had felt the dark feelings the moment she entered the Golden Harvest Moon—a place she’d always felt safe. She’d grown more anxious waiting for Madam Win to bring out her order. Her unease was peaking just before Tall Man collided with her. While standing next to the person paying at the register. The tension was twisting her, making her fidget. She’d reached to grab a fortune cookie from the jar as the man, in a leather jacket and red ball cap, turned away and headed to the door…
Nadia froze.
She felt the blood drain from her face.
Follow him… Red Ball Cap standing in the doorway. Red Ball Cap on the bus. In the crowd.
“It can’t be,” she murmured.
She had followed the wrong man. Tall Man was large, looming, and inconsiderate. Red Ball Cap was slender, inconspicuous, forgettable.
Her fingers moved the slips around slowly.
He has made his selection.
She is alone.
Expose him.
Was Pink Sweatshirt Girl alone? In the crowd, at the game booth, her mother steps away?
Nadia had lurched into action the moment she saw Tall Man approaching. She had rushed forward, desperate to stop something before it happened.
And because of that—
An alarm exploded on her phone.
Nadia jerked violently, knocking one of the slips to the floor.
She grabbed the phone and looked at the screen.
AMBER Alert
Child Abduction – Broad Street Festival, 5 year old Asian female, tune to local media for details, if observed call 911.
Nadia lost her breath.
The kitchen tilted sideways around her.
Five years old.
The same age she had been.
It all came back with dreamlike clarity:
Lantern lights sway overhead.
The crush of strangers.
Panic.
The terrifying certainty that something unseen has noticed her wandering alone.
Then a gap in the crowd.
An elderly Chinese man stands at the edge of the street looking around, then fixes his gaze directly on her. He steps forward and offers a gentle smile.
“There you are,” he speaks with relief. He takes her hand gently. “Let’s find your parents.” His voice is comforting like warm soup. He leads her through the crowd. Looking up she sees a small white slip of paper between the fingers of his other hand.
She had forgotten that until now.
The old man had guided her to where her parents were frantically searching. Her mother had swept her up and clutched her tightly, her tears splashing onto Nadia’s face. Her father shook the old man’s hand until Nadia thought he might rip it off.
The old man patted Nadia’s head and smiled that gentle smile. “If you ever get lost, look for the signs,” he told her, in the mysterious way old Asian men have. Before her parents could finish thanking him, the old man melted back into the crowd.
In the forest of people, Nadia sensed something gnashing its teeth in frustration.
A sob caught in her throat, brought her back to the moment.
She had failed.
Not because the messages were wrong.
Because she was following the wrong suspect…rushing to action… acting too soon.
Nadia pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes until stars burst behind them. Then she lowered her hands slowly.
Why her? Not because she was a detective. Because she understood code and patterns. Because she recognized the danger, even after twenty years.
Her gaze drifted toward the apartment door.
Toward the hallway outside.
Toward Mrs. Cheung’s untouched, unusual delivery.
For several seconds she stood motionless.
She opened the door quietly, and looked out.
The bag still sat outside the neighboring apartment.
Unclaimed.
Nadia stepped toward it slowly.
This was insane.
Trespassing. Stealing. Digging through someone else’s food because fortune cookies had told her to follow a stranger and prevent a kidnapping.
A few hours ago she would never have done something like this.
But a child was gone.
Nadia picked up the bag.
Back inside her apartment, she ripped it open and looked inside.
Soup.
Lo mein.
Three fortune cookies.
Her pulse quickened.
She cracked them open one after another, scattering crumbs across the counter.
Three white slips.
She sorted them and laid them in sequence.
You still have time.
Start where the river bends.
Save her.
Nadia stared at the messages.
Where the river bends.
The Chatsworth River only had one real bend, near Ellsworth Industrial Park.
Near the abandoned warehouses.
She should call 911.
And tell them what?
What would the old man have told anyone, when odd messages began guiding him?
Slowly, she gathered all the strips and dropped them into the ziplock, except for one.
Save her.
This one she held as she tied back her hair, pulled on her coat, and pocketed the ziplock.
Nadia glanced back around the apartment, then stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind her.