Forming the Association had been Zelda’s idea.
Dax had the foresight and people skills; she ran the execution and the strategy. She stayed the silent partner. Safer for both of them.
It was a dark path they walked. They were hardly better than vigilantes, no matter how noble their goals might be.
“Keep it quiet about Macmillan,” she said. “We don’t need the Colonel panicking.”
The CIA had sent the Colonel to pressure them about the TZ, to stress its importance, something Dax didn’t need to hear. A full 87% of the scenarios involving the TZ getting sold ended in biological and nuclear exchanges.
“Rio will find him,” Dax said. “Rio is very attached to Macmillan.”
“We need Macmillan out of the equation,” she said. “As soon as he identifies Jazzman, he’s out. He’s coming apart.”
Dax said nothing. It was true, of course. The only surprise was that it hadn’t happened before.
Macmillan had first come to their attention via rumors inside the terrorist Mero’s organization—a gringo prisoner who claimed to have tracked Mero with nothing but a voice recording.
It had piqued their interest, to say the least.
Zelda herself had gone into the field to check out the story. She learned about the train bombing, and soon had a name: Peter Macmillan Maxwell, Ph.D. Records showed him losing his family and fiancée in the event. Maxwell had listed a Mexican national as his contact on the medical forms: Alfredo Domingo.
Professor Alfredo Domingo was a Caribbean creole specialist and a friend of Maxwell’s; Domingo’s seaside villa had been the Maxwells’ destination. From Domingo, Zelda learned that Maxwell had new theories on the way slang spread, and apparently he was doing some sort of work on psychological and aspirational aspects of pronunciation. Domingo felt certain that Maxwell could use what he knew to track a man.
Dax and Zelda had been thrilled. It had taken them a full year to locate the elusive Mero—and they had resources. Networks.
This linguist had nothing but a recording.
They sent Rio in to kill Mero and extract the man. By the time Rio had reached Mero’s camp, Peter Macmillan Maxwell was a walking, talking death wish who could see nothing but vengeance. The man had lost everybody, after all. He’d spent a night helping other survivors pull the dead and dying from wreckage in the dark, bug-infested jungle, and then survived weeks of beatings from Mero’s men. In hindsight, they really should’ve patched him up a bit, psychologically speaking.
Instead, Dax had him thrown into the harshest wilderness survival training possible. Macmillan had turned out to be tenacious as well as brilliant, and quite a talented fighter—one of those men who was good at everything. Dax sometimes suspected Macmillan might have eventually managed to kill Mero on his own.
At any rate, they’d needed Macmillan in the field, ASAP, so they’d wound him up and set him off as a mere shell, disconnected from everything that made a man human.
Dax and Zelda had no use for happy, well-balanced Associates—they tended not to deliver. Darkness was predictable; happiness was not. Happy people had the luxury of simply being. And they had more to lose.
Dax and Zelda worked a delicate dance of keeping the Associates from self-destructing while engaging their demons.
Dax took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“Your head?” Zelda asked.
“I’m fine.” He replaced his glasses.
“Okay,” she said quietly.
“There’s a special place in hell for us,” he said.
She straightened his tie as they pulled up to the restaurant. “I’ll bring the flame-proof croquet set.”
Chapter Eleven
Bangkok
A Dr. Pepper craving—that was Laney’s excuse for her four a.m. stroll. The front desk girls believed her. Sujet didn’t, but he’d keep quiet.
Tamroung Road was busy even at four in the morning. Mostly that was because of all the hotels in the neighborhood, but then, Bangkok tended to be restless and vibrant at all hours. It was a nice night, with a slight breeze cutting the oppressive humidity.
She strolled nonchalantly around the corner. The street that ran up the side of Hotel Des Roses had just two lanes, and it was darker and gloomier than grand Tamroung Road. Which suited her just fine. She stopped at a square manhole in the sidewalk—the liquor delivery hatch, the secret way to get into the basement. She’d walked over it many times and never thought about what was beneath until the night of the dumbwaiter crisis.
Voices from the other direction. She slunk into the shadows as a couple stumbled up the street, clasping the key, feeling like a spy, shocked at herself for even going this far.
Oh, the Shinsurins would so unhappy if they knew. Niwat would think she didn’t trust them to handle this. Rajini would feel betrayed. Laney could hear her: why didn’t you wake me up if you were so concerned?
But Laney was tired of leaving her fate to others.
When the coast was clear she crouched at the hatch. There was supposed to be a locked door below it, and two people were supposed to open the doors simultaneously from either side, like an armored car or something, but Pramod the busboy had told her that it was a big hassle for the receiving guys, so they often left the inner door open. She hoped it was open now.
She unlocked the outer door and slowly pulled it up. She tried the inner door. Sure enough, it fell open—with a loud bang that nearly stopped her heart.
She froze, listening for sounds.
Nothing.
She climbed partway down the metal ladder, easing the outer door down over her head until it snicked closed. Down the rest of the way she went, into a concrete corridor lit by garish fluorescent lights. This would be lower level one, aka LL1. She snuck past the liquor storage area and kept on, passing some sort of mechanical room, and then a door with warning signs about chlorine. The massive hotel pool would be nearby. She found another stairwell; this would lead to LL2—the basement security area that housed the shooting range.
And the detention area.
She headed downward into the sticky, stuffy depths, every nerve on high alert. The stairwell terminated at another locked door; her shooting range key worked, as she suspected it might. She snuck in and closed the heavy metal door, leaning against it, sweating. Shaky.
Past the point of no return. If Niwat caught her here, she’d be turned out for sure. Well, hell, she might have to leave anyhow. She needed to know firsthand what she was dealing with.
She proceeded down the dark hall toward a splotch of light cast through an open door. She froze when she heard the faint strains of voices. Arguing. A woman’s voice. No—a TV. A Wanida rerun, it sounded like.
She crept in further, then knelt and peeked into the room. TVs lined the walls, but two guards were fixated on the TV in the corner. The Thai soap opera was just starting.
She crawled past and tiptoed on down the hall. She crept around the corner and down another hall to the end. After a few more turns and one dead end, she found an unmarked door with a dirty window in it. The detention area.
She peeked in.
The room was dim, lit only by a buzzing fluorescent bulb in the corner, but she could just make out what looked like a jail in there—bars marking off a square cage in the corner. Too dark to see if anyone was in there.
Was she really doing this?
Hell, yeah.
The door creaked when she entered. She froze like a rabbit, listening.
Nothing. She eased the door closed and just stood there, squinting into the gloom of the cage. Her breath caught when she finally made him out, sprawled in the shadows with his back to her, bright hair faintly illuminated by the anemic light.
Not moving.
Her pulse raced. The Shinsurins wouldn’t kill a man just to protect her. They wouldn’t.
She moved closer, straining to see if his chest was rising and falling. They’d clothed him in pants and a T-shirt that appeared to be soaked with sweat.
Surely that was a sign of life.
“Come back for more target practice?”
She jumped at the voice.
“Because you could certainly use it,” he added.
“Lord, I thought…” She closed her eyes in brief thanks that he was alive.
“A regular Annie Oakley.” Still he just lay there, like a wounded beast.
“I’m not in the mood for jokes. I want to talk about Rolly.”
No response.
She looked around and spotted a camera above her head. It probably wouldn’t record in the darkness, but she took out a pencil and nudged it up, then moved nearer to the bars. She wished she could see his face. You couldn’t connect with a person’s back.
“I know Rolly probably promised you a goodly sum to turn me over,” she continued. “Probably threatened you to boot.”
Still he didn’t turn around. She grabbed the bars, frowning at his sweat-soaked back. What were the Shinsurins thinking? Keeping a man in a cage wasn’t right. Even a thug of Rolly’s.
Rolly’s. It still didn’t sit right. How could this man be Rolly’s? It defied her intuition.
“Look,” she said. “I know the Shinsurins made you an offer. And I’m sure they don’t want you down here. And I sure don’t want it. If only you would agree to keep quiet about seeing me. If you care at all...” Did he?
Silence.
“I have a home here, and a life that’s a little bit worth living. Maybe I should think about moving on, but that takes time. Please, if you would just take the money. I can’t go back to him.” Oh, God, she was begging. She’d meant to come in rational. She steadied her voice. “That’s what I’m asking you. Forget you saw me and we can get you out of here.” She looked nervously at the door hoping Wanida was enough to keep the guards occupied.
“Don’t worry,” he said, tracking with her somehow. “They’ve only come by twice, and they never bother to come in.”
He shifted there in the dark, finally turning to look at her. His face and shirt were half covered in something dark. Blood.
“Oh, my God! Are you okay?”
“Define okay,” he said.
Anger surged through her. This man had been hurt on her behalf? It didn’t matter who he was or what he’d done. “This is wrong.”
“The keys are right there on the wall.”
She swung her gaze around—keys hung from a hook on the wall. She could let him out. “I need to know you won’t tell Rolly where I am. You’ll get out if and when we have assurances of that.”
“If and when you have assurances,” he repeated. Like that was funny.
“What?”
“You really need to specify both if and when? Once the if is handled, the when is a permanent state.”
She gripped the bars. “Well, thank you, Professor Devilwell, PhD in asshole arrogance.”
“You’re welcome.”
Carrying on so nonchalantly when he was a beaten-up prisoner in the basement of a Bangkok hotel? Was it just another day at the office for him? “How about if you talk normal like a human?”
“Rolly didn’t send me,” Maxwell said. “How’s that?”
She gripped the bars more tightly. She’d needed to hear that. Everything inside her screamed for him not to be Rolly’s. Should she believe it? “Then who sent you? What were you doing copying my files?”
Silence.
“So you have no explanation.”
“Look,” he finally said. “I have nothing to do with this Rolly of yours. Take it or leave it.”
“Why should I? Why should I believe you after all of your lies?”
“Because I’m telling you the truth.”
“I need to understand why else you’d copy stuff off my computer.”
He grunted, watching her with that implacable gaze. Even lying there in defeat, he radiated power, virility. Slowly he sat himself up. She let go of the bars and stepped back, as if he could get her from in the cage.
“Oh, don’t worry.” Chains clanked as he lifted his leg. “I’m attached to the wall by leg irons. I hate to say it, but I’m afraid this type of guest service is going to cost the Bangkok Imperiale Hotel des Roses a half a star. With so many luxury hotels featuring featherbeds these days, leg irons on a concrete floor is something I simply can’t overlook.”
She felt sick. Leg irons? Did Rajini know about all this?
He reached behind to grab something. His eyeglasses. They flashed in the darkness as he put them on. “What’s more,” he continued, “providing a rusty metal can instead of proper bathroom facilities simply doesn’t cut mustard with today’s traveler. That will cost the Bangkok Imperiale des Roses yet another half a star.”
“You think this is a time to joke?”
“I’ll take that as a rhetorical question.” Some of his hair fell in his face as he leaned forward and rubbed his ankle under the leg iron. There was blood even in his hair. He was hurt and he covered it by being an asshole.
“I’m trying to talk to you real.”
He lifted his eyes to her and leaned back against the far wall.
“Just don’t tell him where I am,” she said. “I’ll give you money. I have money in the bank I can get at in a few days. I’ll pay you everything I have. Don’t you want to get out?”
“I’m not here on behalf of Rolly.”
“Why else would you copy the recording of my show? And the Shinsurins know you’re not a guest lecturer at the university, so I don’t want a story about that.”
“Ah.”
“Obviously you weren’t there to attack me or rob me. ‘Cause you could’ve, with three guns on you. So much for guns being dullards’ tools. The end of the conversation for somebody who has nothing left to say.”
“Oh, I meant every word. They are dullards’ tools. It’s just that my conversation ended long ago.”
She had a strange thought, suddenly. “You didn’t take my laptop,” she said. “That would’ve been easier.”
“Hindsight’s 20/20.”
This guy, like nothing was serious. Well, screw it—it had been a kindness. “I still believe what you told me about when you were a kid. To have to say goodbye to all the familiar people and places over and over. I know you know what that’s like.” She paused, scuffing her foot, thinking about their connection. “You know what it’s like when you can never go home again.”
He groaned, but she could tell from long years in front of an audience how people listened, where they were in their ups and down. And she always, always knew when they were tracking with her.
Maxwell was tracking with her. It was a strange feeling, lording over this wounded lion in a cage. Ironic how he brought the bravery out of her.
“You know what it’s like to have everything ripped away from you, and to be all alone.”
“If you’re not going to let me out, then go away.” He pulled off his shirt to reveal his muscled torso, gleaming with sweat. He bunched it up under his head and lay across the floor, stretched out on his side.
He was kicking her out?
“I’ve had a long day,” he added.
She watched a bright bead of sweat dribble down over the curve of his bicep, pausing at the lowest point to gleam and fatten. Then it plunked down onto his chest. Twinges kicked up in her belly as it continued downward, traversing the muscles of his chest. She had the impulse to go in there, to rest her hand on his hot, slick skin. Good lord, here was this man, like a wild, wounded animal in a cage, and she was all kicked up about him.
A real letch, that’s what she was.
“Maybe it serves me right, you here. I’ve been feeling things are off. Eerie somehow. I didn’t listen to that.” She softened her voice to a whisper, trying to hide the sobby feeling trying to climb her throat. The hell if she’d cry. “If you could hold off on telling him. Give me a few days to get things in order and get a running start, and then you can tell him and collect your money. That would work, right?”
A spell of silence widened o
ut between them. Then he said, “Laney, if you have an instinct to leave, you don’t have a few days. For that matter, if you think I’m Rolly’s guy, why are you here?”
She grabbed the bars. “I know. I don’t know.”
“Have you ever seen those flocks of little brown birds, the way they’ll all fly away at the least disturbance? Most of the time there’s no danger. But that instinct, that’s their protection, and it’s as formidable as claws or teeth. That’s how you need to be on the run. The second the instinct hits, you’re out of there with whatever you’re carrying. You don’t wait until it’s so obvious that a man in a cell in the basement of a tropical hotel has to point it out to you. No, you fly.”
“I’m not ready. I have nothing—”
“If you have two feet you’re ready. And, while I’m giving you advice—really, up in front of audiences every night for two years? It’s a miracle you haven’t been found by this guy and his friends. It really is. If I ever write a book on how not to be on the run, yours would be the color story. How not to be on the run, step one: find a job where you’re performing in front of different people from across the world every night, for maximum exposure. Step two: wear a hat with a face-covering net to announce that you’re in hiding.”
“The hat again?”
“Did the Shinsurins tell you that was a good idea? That hat?”
“It’s a 1940s torch singer look—”
“No. It’s a piss-poor disguise. Your best long-term solution is to fight like hell to get guest worker status somewhere like South Korea or Hong Kong. If I were you, I’d head down to Koh Samui first. You can get off-the-books employment there.” He went on about transport, establishing a guest worker identity. “Whatever you do, get out of here. Change your hair, start over. Guest worker status would let you move around without being at the mercy of others. How long until your fake passport expires?”
She bit her lip. How would he know she had a fake passport?
“Come on. You’re not working under your real name. You’re getting paid in cash. A free room. But that passport could be flagged if it was stolen. And it will expire.”
Off the Edge (The Associates) Page 10