cancer cells in test tubes had been well-received, she realized Sunny meant that the reputation of wild Appalachian ginseng was strong in Asia. As they managed to avoid darting workers with cloths coiled around their heads for elaborate sweatbands, the first shop they came to proved the power of U.S. sang.
She couldn’t read the handwritten calligraphy on the sign, but the U.S. flag was elaborately drawn and colored in on a poster next to a picture of a hairy, two-legged, two-armed ginseng root and an arrow beckoning buyers to step inside. Yes, wild forest Appalachian sang had a strong reputation here and was increasingly trendy at home. If it proved useful in the battle against endocrine-driven cancers, its demand and value would escalate even more.
But suddenly, strangely, this place was getting to her.
Jessie had loved the lofty view from her quiet room in the almost futuristic glass-and-steel skyscraper hotel, with the freighters and junks in the harbor and the mountain-studded monster of mainland China looming beyond. But she felt enclosed, trapped here. This cluttered, crowded shop was a far cry from Vern Tarver’s Fur and Sang Trader at home. Amidst all these unique, jumbled herbs, a strange smell slammed her square in the stomach, fetid, rich, yeasty. The familiar ginseng, yes, but something else, something forbidding, even dangerous.
Jessie glanced around for the source of the smell. Displayed on wooden trays in the long, narrow shop, which seemed like something out of a medieval time capsule, were some things she could recognize and some she could not.
“Bird nests and shark fins—very expensive—for health-giving soups,” Sunny was explaining in a singsong voice as she translated the cards sticking out of each box. “Dandelion for gallbladder cleansing, deer tail for back pain, dried lizard to improve weak kidneys, dried sea horse for asthma and, oh, for sexual problems, too.”
Sexual problems, Jessie thought. The only problem she had was the lack of a man in her life. In fact, her past with guys was as gnarled and twisted as the sang roots she spotted heaped up farther back in the store, where a Chinese woman with a face webbed with wrinkles was pawing through a pile with a calculator in one hand.
Sunny rattled off some Chinese to the old woman, though the only word Jessie could pick out was jen-shen. The Chinese word for the herb meant “root of life.” The woman’s wizened face lifted; she eyed Jessie as if she were going to price her to sell. Though Jessie had longed to see the inside of a ginseng shop in the land where much of the $52 million-a-year market was based, she had to keep herself from fleeing. The woman was not frightening, so what was wrong with her? Was she coming down with some exotic sickness, or were the smells and heat just getting to her? All this seemed so far away from her mother and Kentucky. And from the strange yearnings she’d had for Drew Webb, whom she knew was back in Deep Down.
“She’s saying,” Sunny told her, “last year she had a root she displayed on velvet cloth go for six figures in American money. Came from Kentucky. She wants to know, you have any to sell?”
“She must know it’s all regulated,” Jessie protested. “Did she get that root from the black market?”
“She says she know nothing of black market.”
Jessie’s head was beginning to pound. She had to get out of here. Her heartbeat sped up, as if she’d run miles.
“Now with Americans putting jen-shen in power drinks and health foods,” Sunny was translating again, “costs going up …”
Jessie squinted back into the dim reaches of the shop where women of all ages bent over rows of cardboard boxes on long wooden tables, sorting ginseng. When the shop owner saw where she was looking, she spoke to Sunny, who said, “She say her sorters, even if they are old, have soft, young hands from touching the jen-shen all day. She say the herb preserve yin, the life force, and good for aphrodisiac and keep people young.”
If her head had not been pounding and her stomach roiling, Jessie would have laughed. If ginseng was a fountain of youth, why did this old woman look like some ancient sorceress who had stepped from the pages of a book on primordial myths? She had to get back into the calm of the hotel. She felt a stab of longing for her mother, for the cool, leafy coves in the skirts of the mountains.
“I feel a bit faint,” Jessie told Sunny and managed a polite nod to the old woman. “Please thank her for speaking with me. I’m going to head back to the hotel.”
She walked as steadily as she could, though she felt the urge to run. Had the other-side-of-the-world time zone difference given her delayed jet lag? At least her headache wasn’t caused by staring too long into a microscope at floating ginsenosides attacking tiny cancer cells and tumors in the test tubes. Hours of research sometimes made her eyes cross and her brain blank out. She felt like that now and, worse, as if something in the midst of these towering skyscrapers in old-new Hong Kong were chasing her.
The shrill ring-ring, ring-ring dragged Jessie from deep, dream-haunted sleep. It took her a moment to recall she was in her Hong Kong hotel room. Exhausted, she’d collapsed in bed after her visit to Ko Shing St., almost as if that strange smell in the herb shop had drugged her. Her bedside table clock read 7:17 p.m. She’d missed the afternoon lectures and the tour of the city she’d signed up for. Maybe it was some conference attenders on the phone, wondering if she could meet them for dinner or why she’d missed the tour bus.
She grabbed the receiver. “Dr. Jessica Lockwood.”
“Jess? Sheriff Webb in Deep Down—Drew.”
Her heartbeat kicked up even more. No one has ever called her Jess but Drew. Despite the coolness of the room, she shoved the duvet and covers off. She began to sweat. She’d know that voice anywhere, deep, husky. It was a voice she’d known since her earliest memories, one that haunted her. Something must be wrong at home, very wrong.
“Drew, what is it?”
“You were hard to trace. Cassie gave me your Lexington apartment and your lab number, but then I found this Hong Kong hotel number with a note in your mother’s kitchen. Jess, I know you’re thousands of miles away, but can you come home right away? I’m sorry to inform you that your mother’s missing.”
She gasped. “Missing? What happened? Missing how?”
“As best I can tell she went out counting sang and just didn’t come back. Vern Tarver dropped by her house after dinner yesterday evening but couldn’t find her, though her truck was there. He checked all around, called people, but she wasn’t at Cassie’s—nowhere—so he called me. I rechecked her neighbors and friends but no leads. I’ve had a search party out since daybreak—they’re still out, some even with hounds. But she covers a wide area, and I don’t know her sang counting spots. Do you?”
She raked her fingers through her hair. “Some. I—I’m not supposed to head home until tomorrow. Maybe she twisted her ankle or something like that. Please keep looking. She knows those woods like the back of her hand.”
“Yeah, but some of those spots are secret and deep in. I’m really sorry to have to call you like this. Be assured we’ll keep looking, all of us. You—you did know I’m sheriff here now?”
“She told me. Be a good one, Drew. Please, please find her safe and sound. I’ll make arrangements to fly back as soon as I can, and I’ll call you. Here’s my cell number if you need it.” She recited it to him, and he gave her his.
“But you know it’s better to use the landlines around here,” he reminded her. “Even now, the mountains make a difference. Jess, take care and see you soon.”
The line went dead. For one moment, she stared at the sleek receiver in her hand, seeing Drew that last night, furious, hurt—naked. She’d just been told the last thing in the world she could bear to hear. And from the last and only man she had ever really loved.
2
“You want me to call in more guys with their hounds tomorrow?” Sheriff Chuck Akers asked Drew over the two-way radio. His former boss and mentor, sheriff of the Lowe