Beauty and the Bodyguard

“It’s okay if we run red lights, right?” Lin Yi asked. It wasn’t his car, after all.

“Y-Yeah!” Xiaoxiao, naturally, didn’t care about the fines.

Lin Yi nodded. “Sit tight and buckle up.”

Xiaoxiao thought that Lin Yi telling her to buckle up while they were still in the city was a little much, but she found out a moment later that it was a good thing she did.

She’d been driving for a very long time, and she’d never noticed the qualities the Audi TT had. It made her feel like she’d completely wasted the car’s potential.

Lin Yi was an unstoppable streak on the city roads, not paying any attention to either the traffic lights or the traffic police signaling for him to stop.

“So awesome!” Xiaoxiao was bursting with excitement. “How come I can’t do this? Even the cops can’t stop you!”

“I’m doing this to save someone. You just race around for the thrill. It’s different,” Lin Yi said evenly as he looked in the rearview mirror. There were two police cars on his tail.

Lin Yi was a bit speechless, but thinking about it, what he was doing was no different from street racing. Of course he’d have police cars behind him.

“Whoa, there’s police cars behind you, Lin Yi! Hurry, lose them!” Xiaoxiao wasn’t afraid in the slightest as the intense excitement rushed through her. “I’ve seen stuff like this in movies before.”

Lin Yi rolled his eyes. He’d guessed that Xiaoxiao wasn’t from a normal family by the way she transferred to different schools. Her family had to be pretty influential.

With that in mind, her attitude towards getting chased by the police was quite understandable.

But Lin Yi didn’t want to cause trouble. His first priority was the rescue, not adding extra miles onto the journey by trying to lose the cops. “What’s your license plate number?”

“SA FX520. Why?” Xiaoxiao asked.

“FX520?” Lin Yi repeated. It was a pretty special and personalized plate. “Feng Xiao, I Love You.” It proved just how different her family was to be able to get her hands on a license plate number like that. It was much harder than getting license plate numbers with eights or sixes.1

But Lin Yi didn’t say anything and pulled out his phone to call Lingshan.

Lingshan hadn’t been home for a couple of days now, staying with the team to investigate any sources that could lead to the organ trafficking syndicate.

She assumed Lin Yi had some news for her when she saw him call and quickly picked up.

“Ms. Braindead, the license plate number is SA FX520. There’s two police cars pursuing me. Tell them to stop.” Lin Yi hung up before Lingshan could even respond.

“Huh?” Lingshan looked at her phone in shock before glowering. That damned Lin Yi was actually giving her commands! She decided to beat his face bloody the next time she saw him.

As pissed off as she was, she didn’t want to anger Lin Yi when she needed him. Indignant, she called the traffic police squad. “Tell them that SA FX520’s handling an operation. Have them stop the pursuit.”

As expected, the police cars behind him disappeared awhile after the phone call, and he even passed the coming traffic booths without any police chasing them.

“Holy! Lin Yi, just one phone call?” Xiaoxiao’s eyes widened in shock. She had some influence herself, but getting the entire city’s police to ignore her with one phone call wasn’t something she was capable of!

“I’m trying to save somebody,” Lin Yi said coolly. “Don’t put me in the same category as heiresses like you.”

“Hehe, well, still! You’re really cool!” Xiaoxiao punched the air in excitement. “By the way, who’s Ms. Braindead?”

“A friend of mine,” Lin Yi said.

“Then why’re you calling her Ms. Braindead? Is she dumb?” Xiaoxiao asked curiously.

“It’s just what I call her,” Lin Yi said helplessly. It wasn’t really something he could explain to somebody else.

“Can you nickname mee too?” Xiaoxiao felt that the girl had to be pretty close with Lin Yi for him to give her a nickname like that. It would explain how one phone call was enough to solve everything.

This girl was driving Lin Yi crazy. Who even asked to get nicknamed voluntarily? Lin Yi decided to ignore her and shut his mouth. He realized that Xiaoxiao was the sort of person who’d beam if you gave her a bit of sunlight and flood tears when you were a little mean to her. Just talking to her caused a lot of trouble, so Lin Yi decided that he won’t say anything.

Xiaoxiao was a little upset to see Lin Yi ignoring her. She turned away to look out the window.

They were almost at Dunmeng Street when Lin Yi’s phone vibrated. It was a text.

“Boss, I can’t wait anymore! I’m going in! They might be doing something to Fen!”

It was from Xiaobo. Lin Yi frowned. So Xiaobo couldn’t control himself after all, diving into the lion’s den all by himself. Wasn’t he just causing trouble?

But he did understand Xiaobo’s feelings. Anyone would find it hard to hold back when his beloved was kidnapped.

Lin Yi called him, but Xiaobo’s phone was off, as expected. Xiaobo must’ve made up his mind.

Dunmeng 7th Street held a compound that seemed to be part of a factory. Lin Yi drove closer and saw that there weren’t any other buildings. These were the outskirts, after all. Other than bare land, there weren’t any buildings.

“Who are you!” Lin Yi had just reached the compound’s entrance when two buff men walked out to stop Lin Yi.

“Tourists,” Lin Yi said, looking afraid while he assessed the situation. This was an isolated and guarded place. It didn’t seem like something planned by Zhaoming.

If Zhaoming had wanted to kidnap Fen for revenge or for venting his anger, he wouldn’t have been able to get such a fortified base of operations this isolated in a short amount of time. Was this a different person or group?

What Lin Yi didn’t understand was why these people wanted Fen. It wasn’t likely that she’d offended anybody.

“This is private property. Stop hanging around and leave!” one of the men said after looking at the car. It was a sports car with a boy and girl in it, meaning that they were probably a couple out for a cruise. He didn’t pay it much thought and waved them away, signaling for them to get out.

“Oh, okay. Sorry!” Lin Yi started the car and acted as if he was going to reverse when he slammed on the gas pedal, crashing the car right into the two men.

Two loud thuds and the buff men flew away before landing on the ground, bloody and unconscious.

“Ahhhh!” Xiaoxiao shrieked in shock. She was crazy herself, always beating people up and had even stabbed someone before, but… Lin Yi ramming his car into people without even a second thought was more than enough to stun her.

* * *

1. 520 sounds like “I love you” in Chinese. Eights and sixes are good in Chinese, and fours are bad, because it sounds like die. So 444 would be “die die die.” Literally no Chinese would have three fours like that, haha. Well, maybe some would.