by Marni Bates
I didn’t even need Mackenzie Wellesley to point it out.
Chapter 12
“We’ve got good news and bad news.”
Those were Ben’s first words when the three of them finally returned to the massage parlor where Houston and I had been waiting with growing levels of impatience.
“Just tell us what you know,” Houston said tightly, which was a good thing because I wasn’t sure I could speak beyond a croak. The image of Neal lying facedown in his hotel room kept flashing through my mind in a slow-motion slide show.
Flash.
Boss Man screaming at Neal.
Flash.
Boss Man drawing back his foot like a professional soccer player.
Flash.
Boss Man’s foot plowing right into Neal’s gut.
Flash.
“Neal’s not dead,” Ben said reassuringly, and I went boneless with relief. “According to the woman we talked to in the lobby, he was still breathing when he left.”
“Left?” Houston looked skeptical. “The thugs just let him go?”
“Only one of them was able to make it out of there before the police showed up. Apparently, uh, drug dealers prefer to keep a low profile even when someone messes up a deal.”
Ben paused while Houston and I soaked in that bit of news. Drug dealers? It kind of made sense . . . until Neal entered the picture. Because no way would he ever get mixed up with anything illegal.
“You suck at this, Ben,” Liz said disgustedly. “Okay, here’s what we heard: The cops showed up to find two big guys using Neal as their own personal punching bag and booked the three of them for drug trafficking.”
“Neal was arrested?” I couldn’t hold back my incredulity. “No way.”
Amy burst into tears. She wasn’t pretty crying either; big messy tears rolled down her face and mingled with snot, and yet I still thought she looked like an anime character. Just a very sad one.
“Hey,” I said soothingly. “It’s going to be okay, Amy. We’ll get him out of there.”
“Oh yeah? How are we going to do that, Chelsea? They found cocaine in his room and hauled him off to jail so that they can kill him!” That last part emerged as a gasp/sob combo. “They’re going to kill him!”
Yeah, well, since it sounds like Backup may be recruiting more backup right now, your scene could leave us equally dead!
I didn’t think she could handle hearing that, even if it was the truth. Taking my suitcase from the pile they’d grabbed from the hotel, I pasted a confident smile on my face.
“Why don’t we walk?” I suggested, even though moving through the crowds and vendors would be slow going. “Neal’s safe now, Amy. We’ll just explain to the authorities that there has been a misunderstanding and get him out. This is good news.”
Amy’s red-rimmed eyes became pitying. “You don’t get it, Chelsea. This is Cambodia. The government takes its cues from the drug dealers, okay? Just like American politicians are owned by big business. So if these thugs want to shank Neal in jail, he’s a dead man. And even if some people in power don’t listen to the cartel, they’re going to give him a death sentence to prove that Cambodia is tough on drugs now.”
I was speechless.
“He’s a dead man. He was caught in the room with drugs so . . . game over.”
“She’s right,” Liz said. “I hate to admit it, but she’s absolutely right.”
I stared at them in disbelief. “So you want us to just wipe our hands of him and say, ‘Oh well, not our fault!’ ”
Houston raked a hand through his hair in exasperation. “What do you think we should do, Chelsea? March over to the nearest police station and tell them they’ve got the wrong man? Yeah, that’ll go over well.”
“We can’t do nothing,” I insisted, clutching my tote in one hand and my suitcase in the other. “Wow. And you guys thought I was the shallow one!”
The weirdest part was knowing that this was the perfect opportunity for escape. I couldn’t have invented a better excuse to flee the country. My professor was in jail, and not even my parents could blame me for buying the first ticket home. They might not be happy to see me, but they still couldn’t twist this into becoming my fault.
But they didn’t want me around. The only person who genuinely did was Neal.
And sure, his whole bubbly aren’t we all one big, happy family routine was annoying. The guy was probably chatting with the guards or trying to visualize his way out of trouble. His geekiness was off the freaking charts . . . but he was also the nicest person I had ever met. Any other professor at Lewis & Clark would have balked at the idea of taking an outraged high school girl halfway around the world, but I doubted Neal had even hesitated. Instead, he had welcomed me at the airport the same way he did everything else—with boundless enthusiasm. And despite my general attitude, not to mention the whole drinking-in-the-airport incident, he had refused to think the worst of me. If anything it had just made him more determined for us to bond.
And somehow his plan had worked because I couldn’t turn my back on him now. Even though a large part of me really wanted to bail.
“It’s not that simple,” Liz protested.
“Yes it is! It’s exactly that simple. We either help him or we let him die. Those are the options. So let’s come up with a way to save him. You guys are all shelling out thousands of dollars for a fancy liberal arts degree. So think!”
Ben nodded. “We should call Lewis & Clark. Get them to start calling the embassy on his behalf and pay for us to catch the first flight out of here.”
“That doesn’t guarantee Neal’s release, but it’s probably our best shot,” Houston agreed.
“Not good enough. What about bribery?”
Houston, Ben, Amy, and Liz all stared at me as if I had just lost my mind.
“What? It works, doesn’t it? Usually.”
Liz shook her head. “The drug cartel’s pockets are way deeper than ours.”
“Okay, then let’s keep brainstorming on our way to the embassy. Here’s a tuk-tuk, let’s—”
“Stick our noses where they don’t belong?” Houston interrupted.
“I’m going to get all of us out of this stupid country alive, Houston. And I’m done running away just because you’re scared. If you want to take off again, that’s up to you.”
He gritted his teeth. “I’m not running away.”
I smiled sweetly. “Then you won’t have a problem with the plan.”
“Um, I do.” Amy waved her hand as if she wanted me to call on her in class. “How do we know one of those guys isn’t still looking for us?”
Ben shrugged. “It was just an interrupted drug deal, right? There’s no reason to start chasing us.”
Amy’s nose crinkled. “It just . . . doesn’t make any sense. The thugs enter the room, see Neal, and freak out because they’ve got some new guy crashing their transaction. All of that stuff fits. I even get why they would beat him up. But that doesn’t explain why one of them ran through the lobby shooting at Houston and Chelsea.”
“Oh, I can come up with plenty of reasons to want to shoot Chelsea,” Houston muttered.
I glared at him. “Nice.”
But Houston was back to being all business. “Amy’s got a point. The guy kicking Neal—”
“Boss Man.”
“He said something about being double-crossed. Maybe somebody showed up while Neal was in the lobby with us and screwed Boss Man over?”
Amy’s face was so scrunched she looked like a frustrated hedgehog. “That’s a pretty small window of opportunity, but I guess something must have happened.”
“This is important; I want everyone to read my lips: I had nothing to do with this. Nada. Nothing. Zip. Zilch.”
“Still not blaming you, princess.”
For the first time Houston didn’t sound like he was gagging on my dad’s term of endearment. Then again, he might have been slightly too preoccupied with the whole Cambodian drug dealer fiasco to layer th
e word with the proper amount of scorn.
“You say that now, but whenever you need a handy scapegoat, everybody starts looking sideways at me!”
“That’s just because you’re pretty.” Liz elbowed me lightly in the stomach to diffuse the tension. “We can’t take our eyes off you.”
I snorted. “Save it for your girlfriend, Liz.”
Her eyes instantly went all soft and dreamy. “I wish she were here right now.”
And for half a second everything almost seemed normal. We were back to being a group of college kids (okay, and me) discussing our love lives in a Cambodian marketplace, as if the past few hours had never happened.
Except there was an imprisoned teacher and a hotel riddled with bullet holes to prove that it had.
“If Sara was in this mess with us, you’d be way more freaked out.” Amy pointed out.
“Nah, Sara can hold her own. She’d probably start up a massive campaign to free Neal. Email all the human rights organizations that she supports. And if that failed, she would probably try to deal with the cartel directly.” Liz grinned. “Never mind. I take it back. She’s better off in Australia.”
“You know some of those ideas aren’t half bad. Maybe we could—”
Houston didn’t give Amy a chance to finish. “Right now we need to focus on our immediate concerns. You know, like finding a place to sleep without tipping off any guys with guns.”
I had to agree with him. It wasn’t cold yet, but the temperature was definitely dropping, and I didn’t relish the idea of sleeping on the streets. Especially since that was an excellent way to have all our possessions jacked. Sure, the locals in Cambodia had been warm and friendly, but that’s because we were tourists willing to spend money on Buddha statues and shot glasses and cheesy shirts. That didn’t make the poverty level any less striking . . . or potentially dangerous.
Liz nodded and began shepherding us into a pair of tuk-tuks, squeezing inside mine after directing the drivers to take us all to the cheapest place around, which apparently meant we would be staying at the Happy Wonder Hostel. It looked like the preferred destination for broke college-age travelers and enormous Cambodian spiders alike. I can tolerate being around people with questionable hygiene for limited stretches of time, but disgusting, hairy creatures with too many spindly legs are a different story. I’d rather have another showdown with a gun-toting maniac than wake up to find a spider skittering across my leg. I shivered in revulsion, as my mind involuntarily replayed the moment I had spotted an outdoor vendor selling spiders that were fried before being eaten.
That’s right: My parents had banished me to a country where people enjoyed snacking on spiders. Maybe that should have seemed insignificant in the wake of Neal’s drug-related problems, but it’s not easy dismissing something so disgusting. The least my dad could have done was warn me about the culinary surprises in store for me. Had I known about the spider thing, I probably would have tried to convince airport security to detain me in London. And then I wouldn’t be stuck wondering if there was a very scary man with a gun searching the streets of Cambodia for me.
At the very least, I wouldn’t have been forced to stay in a crappy hostel while I tried to figure out a way to get all of us home alive.
Oh yeah, my parents had a whole lot to answer for already.
Chapter 13
We booked one room for the five of us.
Correction: Houston booked one room for the five of us, and when I pointed out that some people appreciate a little thing called privacy, he ignored me.
Actually, that’s not quite true.
He not-so-politely asked me to shut my enormous yap. Then he ignored me.
Jerk.
I should’ve called him out for it. I should’ve told him that Neal’s absence didn’t make him the adult in charge. There was no transfer of power that had taken place. No wills had been signed—not even a deathbed promise had been given. All of us were in the exact same position: lacking one overly enthusiastic leader. As far as I was concerned, that didn’t give Houston any right to make decisions for the rest of us.
But I was too tired to put up a fight . . . and this time it wasn’t just because my body hadn’t adjusted to the heat. The exhaustion went bone deep, leaving me with barely enough energy to express anything more than mild annoyance. I silently tagged behind Liz all the way up to the room, clamping down on my bottom lip every time my tote banged painfully against my side. The others probably wouldn’t have noticed a muffled yelp, especially since I was willing to bet they were all thinking the same thing: A few more steps and I can collapse.
I clenched my teeth and tried my best to fight the urge to spend some quality time facedown on a mattress.
Neal desperately needed help.
We didn’t have a plan. We didn’t know who those guys were or what they wanted or how Neal had been dragged into this mess. We didn’t even know if the three not-so-funny Stooges had friends already combing Siem Reap for the blond high school screamer and her male companion.
And I didn’t think sleep would magically produce those answers.
But it was like part of my brain had walked into an area with crappy reception, leaving the remaining half muttering, Hello? Can anybody hear me? Hello! Meanwhile, the rest of my body was repeating: The person you have dialed is currently unavailable. If you would like to leave a message, please leave your name and number after the beep.
Yet even in my exhausted, zombie-like state I still balked at the idea of sharing a space with the boys.
Stupid.
Completely childish.
It’s not like I thought their cooties could get me while I was asleep or that one of them would become overwhelmed by lust. At most, I might have to listen to one more of Ben’s ridiculous come-ons.
Hey, babe. Guess you really dodged a bullet tonight. Still . . . want to see my guns?
Eye roll.
But when I saw the room and imagined sleeping with one of the guys right next to me . . . I panicked. Five students, two double beds. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that was going to get awkward.
“I’ll take the floor!” I volunteered. “Toss me a pillow and let’s call it a night.”
Houston eyed me suspiciously. “Is this a pity play for one of the beds, princess?”
“Nope. Actually, if I can just have a pillow, I’ll sleep in the bathtub. That’s probably spider-free, right?”
“There’s room for all of us in the beds,” Amy pointed out. “Although you should probably share with Houston and Liz.”
Ben raised his eyebrows, and I couldn’t help wondering if our resident good girl was trying to make a move on him. Weirder things had happened. Probably.
Amy blushed. “I didn’t mean it like that. Chelsea and Liz are smaller than I am, and since you’re bigger than Houston it seemed like a good way to . . . reach equilibrium?”
“Uh, yeah. That’s not going to work for me.” Taking matters into my own hands, I leaned over one mattress and snatched a pillow. “Problem solved. If any of you need to use the bathroom, I suggest you do it now.”
“Is it because I’m gay?” Liz demanded, folding her arms under her chest. “I’m in a relationship, Chelsea. Although even if I wasn’t with Sara you still wouldn’t be my type. So if that’s why you’re freaking out, you can relax.”
I shook my head and wished there was a way to skirt the issue entirely. “I won’t share a bed with anyone. I don’t even like sharing a room, but since Cowboy over here insisted, I’m trying to adjust.”
I didn’t want to say the words because I knew they might make me sound . . . damaged. But since the only alternative was to let Liz believe my personal space issues centered around homophobia, I didn’t really feel like I had a choice. Not unless I was willing to tank a growing friendship in the process.
And surprisingly, that was no longer a sacrifice I was willing to make.
Houston studied me as if I were a tricky multiple-choice question on a final e
xam. “Why the trouble sharing, Chelsea?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Okay, well, thanks for clearing that up.” Houston’s voice sounded low and sleep-heavy, and for some reason the combination struck me as oddly intimate. I couldn’t remember ever hearing Logan slip into that low register.
Maybe it was a college-boy thing.
Still I had more important things to focus on than the way his wry tone tugged on my impulse to smile, such as transforming one Spartan bathtub into a makeshift bed composed entirely of towels. As far as I was concerned, passing out in an uncomfortable white cocoon was still infinitely better than sleeping with my body pressed against someone else.
I hated that Jake still affected such a basic decision. Our relationship was supposed to stay in the past, not rear its ugly head in Cambodia. But that didn’t change anything. Knowing intellectually that I had no reason to distrust Houston and Ben didn’t alter my knee-jerk reaction to flee.
Maybe because the person I didn’t trust was myself.
All it had once taken were a few nice words to leave me desperate for more attention. I’d been caught in a downward spiral long before I even recognized the danger.
You’ve got moves, girl! Dance with me.
Sure, it had started out that simply. Some grinding on a makeshift dance floor and a bit of hair swishing later and I’d be drinking in the compliments. And when reality pressed a little too closely, I would toss back another shot so I could pretend that I actually wanted to be there.
I played the part everyone expected of me.
And by the time it sank in that the role only left me feeling empty, it had become an automatic response.
The only way to kick the habit was for me to be the one in control, and as luck would have it . . . I became pretty skilled at getting my way. Which, contrary to common opinion, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I tried to explain that to my dad once, but he didn’t get it. He insisted that using my social skills to score free English tutoring sessions was morally wrong. And okay, maybe I should have paid Mackenzie Wellesley something for her time.