Even Jiang Hansheng — a man supremely skilled at concealing his emotions — could not prevent the color from draining from his face the instant he heard those words. Something dark and unreadable moved through his eyes.

Zhou Jin had drawn close enough to catch the words through the receiver, indistinct but audible: “give Officer Zhou my regards.”

The surprise barely had time to register before her eyes found his — the slight pallor in his cheeks — and something instinctive rose in her, bypassing rational thought entirely.

Without a moment’s deliberation, Zhou Jin reached out and pulled the phone from his hand, pressed it to her own ear, and asked, “Hello — who is this?”

Jiang Hansheng’s expression changed sharply. He moved to take it back. Zhou Jin planted her rear shoulder against his chest and gave a quick blink, signaling him to stay quiet.

Jiang Hansheng, mindful of the wound on her shoulder, did not dare use any real force.

Qi Yan had not expected Zhou Jin to pick up. A beat passed, and then he laughed softly. “Officer Zhou?”

Zhou Jin’s brow furrowed slightly. The voice was familiar — she simply could not place, not immediately, where she had heard it before.

The other party deliberately lowered his voice, speaking in a cool, shadowed tone. “What’s this — Professor Jiang never mentioned me to you?”

His inflection was saturated with mockery and contempt. It set Zhou Jin profoundly on edge, and when she considered that this same man perhaps spoke to Jiang Hansheng in exactly that manner, a nameless spike of anger flared up in her chest.

Zhou Jin said, “Are you someone worth mentioning?”

Before Qi Yan could reply, Jiang Hansheng snatched the phone back and ended the call.

“Zhou Jin, how could you just—”

He looked up and met Zhou Jin’s gaze head-on — close and direct, nearly interrogating — and everything else dissolved on his tongue, his trailing words carrying nothing but helpless resignation.

Silence stretched between them. Perhaps ten seconds passed.

Then Zhou Jin suddenly remembered whose voice that was.

“It’s him?”

Working in criminal investigation meant not only memorizing the faces of suspects — if you had heard someone’s voice, you were expected to identify it on the spot. And it had not been long at all since she had crossed paths with this particular person. She could not have been wrong.

“The man I encountered at Jingang Port — the one carrying the sniper rifle!”

Zhou Jin’s spine went rigid. She looked up at Jiang Hansheng with eyes sharp as a blade and asked, “Who is he? Why would he be calling you?”

Jiang Hansheng went still. Was Zhou Jin suspecting him?

Out of professional habit, he instinctively drew on his expertise to read her — her words carried undisguised suspicion, yet her body language showed absolutely no trace of wariness or defensiveness.

A classic contradiction between word and action. It made an accurate reading difficult.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Zhou Jin’s impatience was building. “My master just told me he suspects there’s a mole inside the department. I didn’t believe it before, but now it’s looking very possible. If these people can get hold of your personal phone number, what else could they track down?”

Compared to the officers constantly on the front lines, Jiang Hansheng as a criminal investigation consultant should have been far more insulated from this kind of risk.

So what was happening now?

Zhou Jin clenched her jaw, cursing under her breath without sound: These absolute bastards.

Jiang Hansheng said nothing. He watched her furrowed brow, the small, tight pacing back and forth as she worked through the problem — the way she habitually tucked the stray strands of hair behind her ear, then absently pinched her own earlobe as she thought.

What he confirmed, without any remaining doubt, was this: Zhou Jin was worried about him. Worried for his safety.

Zhou Jin was still tied up in anxious thought, turning over the problem, when Jiang Hansheng — who had been silent at her side — let out a sudden, quiet laugh.

There was something in it of a man who could not decide whether to laugh or despair.

Zhou Jin had no idea what had just passed through his mind across a thousand twists and turns. Her brow shot up and she said with some heat, “What are you laughing at?! Give me your phone — I’ll go tell the tech unit to run a trace on it.”

She reached for his wrist.

The darkness in Jiang Hansheng’s eyes deepened. He stepped back half a pace, his back meeting the wall. Zhou Jin, too focused on getting the phone, moved forward without thinking — and walked straight into his chest.

She moved to step back. Jiang Hansheng did not give her the chance. His arm came around her waist, and he said, quietly but directly, “Zhou Jin. I want to kiss you.”

Zhou Jin blinked. “What?”

“I want to kiss you.” He repeated it, and this time there was something almost like an earnest plea in his voice.

“…” The warmth rose immediately in Zhou Jin’s cheeks. She glanced self-consciously to either side and hissed at a lower volume, “Out of absolutely nowhere — what is wrong with you?”

Jiang Hansheng was right there, so close that Zhou Jin could only hear him, see him, feel him — the rest of the world had no purchase.

He kept his emotions reined in as tightly as ever, and yet Zhou Jin could always find it — that faint, forlorn quality tucked somewhere in the lines of his brow and eyes. It called to something in her nature, something she could never quite hold back from responding to.

Like right now. No matter how inexplicable the request, Zhou Jin wanted to answer it.

“Alright, alright.”

Her fingers slipped into his soft dark hair, leaving it a little disheveled.

Zhou Jin tilted her head and, with a quality of quiet, intimate reassurance, began from his chin — tracing along his sharp, lean jaw with lips and the faintest press of warmth — all the way to the hard curve of his ear, and finally settling on his mouth.

A long, ardent kiss.

Jiang Hansheng’s breath came unevenly when it ended. He said her name. “…Zhou Jin.”

Zhou Jin gave a soft sound of acknowledgment, her hand finding its way to the small of his back. “Hansheng,” she said, “don’t worry. Whoever comes looking for trouble, I promise I won’t let them hurt you.”

“…”

Jiang Hansheng felt the absurdity wash over him again — a helpless impulse to laugh — as the heavy, oppressive weight that had been gathering in the air dissolved, effortlessly, at a single sentence from her.

Zhou Jin was puzzled by the lightness that had come over him. She drew back a little, and meeting his faint, composed smile, she asked, “You don’t believe me, do you?”

Jiang Hansheng should have nodded.

For a long time, he had concealed from Zhou Jin the danger lurking in the shadows around them, protecting her in his own way — because he had not trusted her. Had not trusted that she could fully bear the weight of knowing someone was watching her from behind.

He understood that feeling far too well.

Ever since he had laid out the bait for Qi Yan five years ago, he had spent nearly every hour of every day in vigilance against being consumed by the dark. The constant state of high alert had honed his powers of observation to a razor’s edge — but that honing had always exacted its price in the grinding away of the spirit.

He had not wanted Zhou Jin to live in that perpetual undercurrent of unease.

But her response had completely defied his expectations. She had not retreated. She had not shown fear. And beyond her concern for him, there was not a single thread of suspicion.

Zhou Jin possessed a courage that was entirely her own — the pure, uncomplicated will to protect others. She had held onto it even after being betrayed.

It was this courage that Jiang Hansheng admired in her.

He did not nod. Instead, he answered with quiet sincerity, “I believe you.”

“Those are your words, and I’m holding you to them.” Zhou Jin extended an open palm toward him, her manner shifting entirely to something businesslike. “Jiang Hansheng, Professor Jiang — Major Crimes Unit investigator Zhou Jin is now conducting a routine spot inspection. Please surrender your phone and answer my questions truthfully.”

Jiang Hansheng exhaled a breath with a small, restrained smile.

Zhou Jin raised an eyebrow and crooked a finger at him, indicating he should cooperate.

“No need to run the trace,” Jiang Hansheng said slowly, the faintest blink. He had made his decision. He was going to lay it all out for her. “I know who he is. His name is Qi Yan.”

Zhou Jin thought she had heard wrong. She paused, blinking. “Qi Yan?”