Free Kiss of the Blue Dragon by Julie Beard

that would even out her rough edges. It didn’t work out that way. Gigi never missed an opportunity to remind me that she was adopted while I was only a foster child. It didn’t matter to her that the Bassetts couldn’t adopt me because Lola wouldn’t give up parental rights. Meanwhile, Hank Jr. and I had become the best of friends.
    “Come in and say hi to Henry,” Sydney said, leading me by the elbow.
    “I’ve got to go.” Gigi slipped the handle of her handbag to her shoulder. “Say, sis, let’s do lunch.”
    “Sure, Gigi,” I replied, confident it would never happen.
    I found Henry in his book-lined study. No surprise there. He was the recently retired Dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He finally had time to catch up on all the pleasure-reading that his role as head of one of the most prestigious journalism schools in the country had prevented.
    We chatted about family stuff. It seemed Gigiwas considering a third stab at marriage, no pun intended. Husband number two had fallen off the face of the planet. I half expected him to be found stuffed in one of Gigi’s suitcases.
    Sydney and Henry no longer asked if I was dating seriously. They knew it was a touchy subject. When I was twenty-four, I’d fallen for Peter Brandt, a hot-shot investigative reporter who was vying for a job at WFYY, the network TV station where Henry still wielded clout. As soon as Peter got the job, I got the cold shoulder. Six months later he married some rich chick from the north shore. Talk about humiliating. What a fool I was to think a con artist’s kid stuck in the foster care system would grow up to belong anywhere. But I’ve never let myself be used again.
    Sydney went off to make tea, leaving me to get down to business with Henry. I told him what had happened in the past twenty-four hours and that I thought Marco was too distracted by his own agenda to be of much help in finding Lola. Henry stroked his neatly trimmed, silver vandyked goatee as he listened, leaning back in his burgundy-leather manor desk chair.
    Then he pushed a button under his desk and a transparent screen lowered from the ceiling. His veined hands caressed the touch screen keyboard imbedded in his desktop and words splashed up on the screen, changing too quickly for me to follow.
    At lightning speed images from International News Database appeared, one after another, warping into a new map, article or photograph. Henry couldread at lightning speed, which was pretty much a requirement for journalists these days. With the ever-increasing capabilities of computers, information overload had practically turned into information fusion. He scanned the most recent IND articles and archives.
    Henry leaned forward, his concerned expression intensifying. “I have no idea why the Mafiya would be interested in Lola. But I can give you a quickie course in history and geography so you can make your own deductions.”
    “Thanks, Henry. I don’t need to tell you I nearly failed both subjects in school.”
    He smiled as he grabbed a chair and pulled it next to his. More than anyone, Henry had always appreciated my special talents, even though they were the exact opposite of his own. He’d offered to give me a full ride to Northwestern University, but I was too proud and tried to pay my own way. At the same time I was spending too much time in the tae kwon do studio and flunked out of college.
    Still, I’d used my natural talents to support myself even without a degree, and I think Henry was proud of that. While he wished I’d chosen a more cerebral and safer career, he admired my courage and skill and said it was important to pursue my own goals instead of borrowing them from somebody else.
    “Have a seat, honey,” he said.
    I did, and prepared myself to listen and learn as a map of Chicago flashed in the screen.
    “As you know,” he began, “Russian immigrantsflocked to the north side of Chicago in the 1980s before the fall of the