The French girl smiled. “You have met him, my friend.”
And Rajini had lied.
Maxwell did work at the university. And a man chained up in a cell was not comfortable. She felt her world shift off its axis.
Her best friend. A liar. She’d opened her heart to Rajini.
“Does he have any kind of specialty?” Laney asked.
“Syntax, I’d say,” the American said.
“Phonetics, too,” the French girl said.
“He kind of does it all,” the American said. “We’ve been mostly talking about slang and jargon in this class, markers that set people apart. And the unsaid.”
The French girl nodded. “He has many controversial opinions on the unsaid.”
“Like what?” Laney asked, walking alongside them, still reeling. Her best friend.
“Linguistic microexpressions,” the French girl said. “It’s a kind of language tic that can spread…” She went on, and Laney nodded like it made sense to her. Some of his work, they told her, had forensic applications.
“He can arrest me any day of the week,” the American said.
Laney thanked them and headed over to the university bookstore, mind racing. Obviously the man in the cell was Maxwell.
I’m absolutely sure that he doesn’t work there. I saw proof. Do you need to see proof? Is that what you need?
Rajini had lied. Or was she being lied to herself? But then, what was the proof?
And if the Shinsurins were lying about this, what else?
She thought about calling the police about Maxwell, but how could she be sure the Shinsurins didn’t own the cops the way Rolly had?
Fear crawled up her neck. Cut off from her brother. Unable to trust the Shinsurins. Alone in this far-off place.
Except for Maxwell.
Crazy to think of Maxwell as her sole ally in this place, considering what he’d done, but he was her people. He’d never technically lied to her. And he seemed to care about her safety. They were both in trouble. Both with somebody to run from. She highly doubted he’d return to finish teaching the class.
It was there that she got the idea to break him out.
It was Saturday. Without access to the bank, she didn’t have enough money to go on the run—she didn’t even have enough for a train ticket, but if she broke Maxwell out, he would help her—she felt sure of it. He’d owe her. It was the perfect solution.
A good eight hours before she could even think about going down.
She bought his newest book. Yeah, that was definitely him on the dust flap. She sat on a couch in the student lounge and started reading. If she hadn’t known the author and the man in the cage were one in the same, she’d sure know it from reading the book; even the sentences sounded like him. He seemed to know everything about words and the way different people used them.
He went on for pages about the sentence “The car ran over the dog” without ever talking about what it really meant—a dog, dead in the street, which was a very sad thing. It seemed a kind of madness to her, to obsess over how the sounds all go together and not the meaning. She didn’t agree with it, and it made her excited to discuss it with him. And just to see him.
She wouldn’t be leaving without him this time.
Chapter Sixteen
Anders sat in the lobby reading the Bangkok Post. Whenever he utilized a newspaper as a prop, he thought of his father, who would sometimes joke around by putting a hole in whatever newspaper he was reading and looking through it at young Anders. An eye in the newspaper. Hilarity ensued.
These days, scrolling through a smartphone was more naturalistic, and it allowed you to reposition yourself, as if for better reception or light. But sometimes Anders genuinely wanted to read the paper. What’s more, he was feeling happy and confident about finding Macmillan now that he had a photo. And a name.
Hitters coming up in the business disdained anything scholarly, as if ignorance was impressive. As if the mind had nothing to do with the gun. Fine with Anders. It meant less serious competition.
He’d gotten his research chops in college, and he sharpened them every chance he could.
It was thanks to his research chops that he now had the identity of Macmillan, aka Dr. Peter Maxwell, PhD.
Though the name he’d used with the police after the San Juliano train bombing was Peter Macmillan Maxwell. At which point his identity had split in two—Macmillan and Maxwell. He now had current photographs of him, courtesy of his good friend, Google.
It was beautiful.
Maxwell was in Bangkok for a guest teaching post. Linguistics. That would be how he hunted. Speech. Words. Anders almost hated to kill him.
Almost.
And he’d seen the man just the day before, wandering through the lobby. Right there. Macmillan hadn’t come through for a day or so, but he’d be back. Meanwhile, he’d start discreetly questioning the staff. Somebody would be able to point him in the right direction.
It was as good as over. Simple point and shoot now.
Chapter Seventeen
She stopped at the drugstore on the way home and picked out a tall bottle of water and some hydrogen peroxide for his wounds, then she grabbed a protein bar, a chocolate bar, and a pack of paper clips. In the movies guys always used paperclips to pick locks. If those didn’t work, she’d damn well find the leg iron keys.
She grabbed a box of condoms. Just in case.
Ten minutes later she was pushing through the revolving door of the Des Roses lobby, only to spot Niwat and Jao standing at the desk, looking sternly in her direction.
Hellbuckets.
The two of them beelined over to her and pulled her into the lobby waiting area. “Where were you?” Niwat asked.
“Shopping.” She lifted her bag in answer, then quickly lowered it when she thought about what she had in there. “What’s wrong?”
“We were worried,” Jao said. “Considering your visitor.”
“Right,” she said, blood racing. “So unbelievable.”
Niwat seemed to be studying her bag a little too closely; she looked down and was horrified to realize you could see through it. Maxwell’s book was partly visible…as was the side of the condom box.
Casually, she twisted the bag by the handle, sure they could read her nervousness. “I just wanted…chocolate and stuff.”
“You know you can always ask the kitchen for anything,” Jao said. He was the biggest of the brothers; he had a crew cut and a wild passion for Thai boxing. “You should stay close to the hotel. Just for now.”
Her heart pounded. Were they being…too intense? She didn’t know Thai culture enough to get nuances like that. “You’re probably right.”
“If you go out again, one of us would be happy to escort you,” Niwat said.
“You guys have done so much,” she said. “I don’t want to drag you all over.”
“It’s no problem,” Niwat said.
“Even if it’s bra shopping?”
This got them tongue-tied. She put all the sunniness she could muster into her smile as she began to back away. “Just kidding. Later, gators.”
She could not get into the elevator fast enough. With shaky hands she stabbed the button for the third floor five times. She tried to keep her sunny face but her heart was banging clear out of her chest, and it seemed like forever until the doors closed.
She just needed to last through the night until she could grab Maxwell and get out. It was dangerous to set off without her passport and money, but a partner would make all the difference. She wouldn’t be alone.
Her show went off normally, aside from her nervousness, which she felt like everybody could see.
At one in the morning, Laney finished packing up as much of her life as she could into her sturdy new backpack: expired passport, toiletries, money, the condoms, hats, and whatever else she could think of.
She slipped into the lobby and up to the front desk, thankful no Shinsurins were around. A few patrons sat around in th
e lobby. The night guards stood watch at the door. Would they let her out? She decided to sneak out the pool exit.
She chatted with Sirikit until she saw her chance to grab the key to the liquor hatch.
Minutes later she was down on LL2, slipping past the guards’ room. They were asleep when she passed, thank goodness. She headed deeper in, and quietly let herself into the cell room. There he was, stretched out on his side on the far end of his cage, hair tousled. They’d given him a brown shirt.
“Maxwell!” she whispered.
He sat up—stiffly.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “I couldn’t believe when I heard you were still here. I should’ve waited to make sure the hairpins worked out.” She grabbed the keys from the hook.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“What does it look like?” She did her best to project cheerful confidence even though he didn’t seem at all happy to see her. “I brought paperclips. Assorted sizes. Those’ll work better than the hairpins, right?” She unlocked the cage.
“You’re supposed to be gone. You need to be gone, dammit!”
“Lucky for you I’m not. We have to get you out of here. We’ll help each other.”
“No. Laney…” He sat awkwardly, feet tucked behind him. “I’m fine.”
“Right. I don’t think so.” She entered the gloomy cage, knelt in front of him, and started digging in her pack.
“You have to get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving without you.”
He grabbed her wrist. “Go. I don’t need your help. You understand?”
“Save it for someone who might believe it.” She yanked her hand away and pulled out the paperclips. “We need to hurry, so don’t fight me on this. Everybody’s lying to me but you. So you’re getting out whether you want it or not.” She extracted two of the best-looking paperclips and extended them to him on her palm. “Start your picking, Devilwell,” she whispered.
He stared down at them for a long time, saying nothing.
“I’m not leaving you here again. Nothing you say’ll change that.”
A bit more time passed, and then he looked up at her. And her blood froze. He wore that empty smile he’d had on when she held him at gunpoint. The smile that put a wall between them. “Unbelievable,” he said.
“What?” she asked, hating the waver in her voice.
“I use you in every way possible,” he began smoothly. “And then I decide to give you one decent bit of advice about being on the run and you can’t quite go with it, can you? Here you are, bothering me and dabbling in things you don’t understand. Trying to help me when I neither need nor want your help. You really are a fool.”
She paused only a moment. “I get it.” She began to unbend a paperclip. “You don’t want me in danger or something, so you’re being jerky. Chivalry noted and rejected.”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“I think it is.”
She felt his eyes on her. “And this is the expert assessment from the woman who thinks a cornpone hee-haw singing show is a capital way to hide?”
His words were a punch in the gut. “Excuse me?”
“Cornpone hee-haw singing show,” he repeated. “It’s rather precise, don’t you think? Hardly needs a supporting cast.”
“I know what you’re doing,” she said.
“You don’t know the first thing about me.”
“I know you think words are your bitch. Just some shell game for you to play. Making things real that aren’t, or putting a new face on things you don’t like. But guess what?” She fixed him with a good glare. They were close enough to kiss, but that wasn’t in the air now. “When a man is chained up in a cage like a circus tiger, then it’s the right thing to help him. And doing the right thing is always the right thing. And I’ll tell you something else: when a dog gets run over by a car, it’s a goddamn tragedy, not an exercise in phonemes. So take the fucking paperclip and unlock yourself.”
He laughed that beautiful laugh.
“You think it’s funny?”
“Oh it’s not funny so much as delicious,” he said. “I see you read my book.”
“That’s right. A whole lot of bunk designed to hornswoggle folks.”
“What a coincidence,” he said. “That’s what I was planning on calling my next book. A Whole Lot of Bunk Designed to Hornswoggle Folks Two. What do you think?”
She didn’t like his tone. “Sounds about right.”
“Feel free to leave a one-star review on your way out.”
She worked on unbending the other paperclip. “You’re coming with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Why not? You think you can’t get out of those leg cuffs with the paperclip? ‘Cause if you can’t, the guards are asleep right now. I’ll go in and find the leg keys.”
“Don’t,” he growled. “Do you have any idea what Dok would do to you if he found you down here?”
A chill went over her. Niwat wouldn’t hurt her, but Dok…he had a point about Dok. “Get picking then, Devilwell.” She held the paperclip out to him, willing her hand not to shake. What if she’d been wrong about everything? What if she was really and truly alone?
He just looked at it. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Then I’m not, either.” She set it on the ground in front of him and stood, pulling the candy bar from her backpack. Casual as could be, she slung the pack over her shoulder, leaned against the bars, tore off the wrapper, and took a bite. “Mmm.”
Maxwell watched her eat with a strange expression—she couldn’t tell if it was hunger or loathing.
Please, she thought. Don’t make me go alone.
She took another bite.
Chapter Eighteen
She was killing him. Just like that first night.
She’d called herself cowardly, but she was nothing less than a warrior, standing over him, waiting for him to free himself even though she was scared shitless. Laney and her supplies and her attitude and her unshakeable moral compass. It was perfect that she’d insulted his book. Of course she’d hate that chapter. She had no time for his various reductions, just like Rio. She thrived on emotion. Connection.
He wished he could tell her the truth—he was a spy, and all he wanted was to get back to the console room before the drugged guards woke up.
He couldn’t. The truth would endanger them both.
The farther she got from him and the hotel, the safer she’d be.
He swallowed, steeled himself. He had to make her run.
Do it, he told himself.
“Question, Laney. Has it ever occurred to you to wonder why I never asked you to go to the police?”
“I figure the Shinsurins are buddies with them.”
He closed his eyes. He wanted to move his feet into a position that wouldn’t make his toes feel like they were on fire, but he couldn’t let her see them. The last thing he needed was her pity.
“Or maybe I have more to fear from the law than from the Shinsurins,” he said.
She simply took another bite. “We both need to get out of here. You’re coming with me.”
“How do you know I’m not a killer?” he asked.
“Because I know.”
He gave her a cold smile. “It’s sad. You’re pretty, but you’re not very well-educated. Though I do love the socks.”
She just looked down at him. She had to be nervous. “I’m not buying what you’re selling, Devilwell. I’m done being fooled by people.”
He didn’t have to fool her—that was the grim truth. He’d died in that train. He’d lost everything that made him human.
“Come here,” he said.
She frowned.
“Come here.” Before she could move away, he lunged up on his knees, grabbed her wrists, and yanked her down to him. Her candy bar flew.
“Hey!” she tried to pull away.
He forced himself to tighten his grip, hating that he might be hurting her. Everyt
hing in him raged in protest. “Look in my eyes. Ask me if I’ve killed.”
She struggled. “Let me go.”
He gave her a shake. “Ask me. You say I’m not a liar. Don’t you want to know?”
Fear in her eyes. “Please—”
“Ask me!”
She glared. “Have you?”
“Yes. I’ve killed fourteen men. Eight by gunshot and three by slitting their jugulars. Did you know that slicing a man’s neck takes roughly the same amount of pressure as slicing into a papaya? I bet you didn’t know that.”
Fear in her eyes. He could see what he’d become reflected there; he was a hunter, a killer, a tool of the Association.
“I know what you’re thinking, Laney. That’s only eleven. And you’d be right. There was another man I killed by smashing his skull with a twenty-pound free weight. Then there was the time I jammed a wooden spear clear through a man’s neck. I whittled the thing myself. I even shot a man in the back of the head once.”
“I don’t believe you,” she whispered, glancing at the door.
“I think you do.”
The man he’d shot in the back of the head had been dying painfully. It had been a mercy killing, but the others hadn’t been about mercy.
He transferred her wrists to one hand and grabbed her hair into a ponytail, forcing her to look into his eyes and see the truth of his words, the bleakness in his soul. It made him want to die.
“Let me go,” she whispered in a small voice.
He twisted his fist in her hair, using it to control her head like reins on a horse. She drove a knee into his thigh, sending bolts of pain up and down him.
He barely noticed. He couldn’t be deeper in hell.
“Please,” she whispered.
He twisted harder, pulse racing. “There was a whole stretch of my life—weeks on end—when I sat awake at night fantasizing about killing a man by ripping out his throat with my teeth.” The truth. It was how he’d thought to kill Mero, way back when he was imprisoned in the terrorist’s compound. “I visualized it in my mind just like an athlete would—the way I’d angle my head for the best canine penetration.”
Her eyes changed. Turning away from him finally.
Off the Edge (The Associates) Page 14