Surprise!

Facing the Music - Part 8

Jung Sa Ha stepped into the house with trepidation. Anything was better than standing outside in the gathering dusk with a handgun pointing at her face, but it was intimidating to step into a house with people who - if they had any inkling what she had been up to - would hate her guts.

Her mind whirled with a storm of thoughts. What kind of elderly Korean man pulled out a gun and held it with such ease? Her own grandfather hadn't touched a weapon since his military service in the 1970s. There was also something about their thick, guttural accents that tugged at her mind.

She found herself in a living room. She'd seen snatches of it through the window but inside it was luxurious and tranquil. It smelled of wealth.

The little boy noticed her first. He had been tinkling on a piano in the corner, burbling away in his own language, but immediately he caught sight of her he abandoned the instrument and rolled his chubby little body off the piano stool so he could skip over to her.

"Umma! A woman!" he announced with the delight of a child used to meeting new people. His dark eyes fringed with long lashes assessed her curiously. He chewed on his lower lip causing a dimple to wink in and out on one of his round cheeks. The media often remarked on Yoon Se-ri's beautiful son but Jung Sa Ha had never paid attention, she'd been far more interested in his parentage. Now she was struck momentarily by the boy's cherubic face.

Her attention shifted when she felt the weight of eyes on her. Yoon Se-ri - as elegant as she appeared in all her press photos despite being dressed in a simple pair of beige cotton trousers and an oversized blue cotton shirt - turned from where she'd been washing dishes in the open plan kitchen. Her regard managed to be both interrogating and intimidating. Jung Sa Ha had heard she ruled her board of directors with an iron rod. That when she returned from the dead a few years back her board had been terrified into swearing fealty to her and had remained slavishly loyal since. Jung Sa Ha could see why. Staring into the other woman's cold gaze was almost as daunting as the gun that had just been pulled on her.

The two grandmothers sat in the center of the room on opposite sofas. On the low table between them were flute glasses full with red wine and a wooden board with small black and white disks that Jung Sa Ha recognised as the strategy game, Go. The women stared at her with gazes as cool and repelling as Yoon Se-ri's (was it something women learned in rich socialite school?).

Jung Sa Ha took an instinctive step backward feeling like a mouse stumbling into a cattery, but her back met a hard warm chest and she leapt forward again, whirling until she could see that Yoon Se-ri's new husband had stepped through the door behind her.

"What's going on?" Yoon Se-ri asked.

A man entered the room from a hallway Jung Sa Ha hadn't noticed.

"Grandad! A woman!" The toddler exclaimed, eager to show off his new find.

Jung Sa Ha was appalled to find herself staring at the former chairman of the Queen's Group. Koreaboo had once been sent a photo taken covertly during his prison sentence. The editor was still debating whether to write a story around it when a call had come in that had turned him paler than a stick of chalk. He'd ordered the Art department delete the email that had brought the photo, reset the server to destroy any trace of it and never to mention it again. Rumour had it the chairman kept a reporter on retainer at every news desk across Seoul to report any unflattering stories so he could threaten publications before they went live. Jung Sa Ha had no doubt it was possible. Hell she'd have signed up for the job a week ago.

"This lady is the source of the story," Yoon Se-ri's husband announced.

Jung Sa Ha's body went cold with nerves. There was a long stretch of silence. If her reception had been cool before, the hardening of eyes and tightening of mouths around the room made Sa Ha feel like she'd been plunged into a frozen lake.