Page 115

She exhales a silent huff of laughter and nods. “Good enough, I guess.” She sips her beer. “Well, I may as well start at the beginning. When I first left Australia, I came here, to Thailand. I was on an island called Ko Pha Ngan.”

Her story comes out haltingly at first. Then, as she goes on, the words begin to tumble out, until they become an unstoppable torrent that continues through the delicious Thai omelets our hostess brings, most of the beers in the fridge, and until the moon is high overhead. By the time Abby reaches the point where I burst into the hotel room in which Rodrigo Cardeñas was keeping her, I need something a hell of a lot stronger than a fucking beer.

I walk inside on the pretext of fetching wine, but in reality, to give myself a hot minute to process what I’ve just heard.

I knew Abby spent time in a Colombian prison.

But somehow, I never imagined what that really meant. The concrete floors, the cell shared with so many women she couldn’t turn over without waking the others. Two years of living in silent fear, just waiting for the moment the evil bastard who shot her boyfriend came looking for her.

Then the sheer relief of escape, the desperate need to put as much distance between herself and that terrible, corrosive fear as she could. The desire to find some kind of normalcy again.

The terrible burden of carrying secrets that can never be spoken aloud.

I carry out the wine and two glasses and pour us one each. I pull the cigarettes from my pocket before I realize what I’m doing and glance guiltily at Abby, but she just laughs and puts out her hand. “I think we can both take a leave pass on good behavior for now, muscle boy. Hand them over.”

I light her cigarette and we both sit back, watching the moon play on the water.

“You still haven’t said his name aloud. I understand why,” I add when she tenses. “And I’m not asking you to. But I do want to know if it’s one I would know.”

“No.” She shakes her head with a certainty I trust. “Although, to be fair, the name I have is definitely not his real one. It’s just an alias he gave us, a nickname. I know most of the people you’ve done business with, even if just by reputation, and I’m sure none of them are him.”

“But you’re certain it’s him who owns this SK place in Myanmar?”

She nods. “It fits. All of it. Particularly the way Juan died—or rather, disappeared. That’s this man’s style. He makes people rich or he makes them his. But those who won’t bend, or who become a problem, he makes disappear. It’s how he stays ahead of the game, in control of it. It’s why the triads run SK for him. I can guarantee they’ve been given the cocainetrade, plus a small slice of SK’s action, in return for running security at the compound. The big boys, the triad heads, aren’t anywhere to be seen there, unless they’re on the other side of the fence living it up in one of the private casinos. It’s all the minions, the underlings who work for pay and favors.”

“How many people, do you think, were working there?” I can’t quite wrap my head around the kind of operation she’s describing. I’ve heard rumors before, maybe read an article or two about scam farms, but the reality Abby is describing is mind-boggling.

“I honestly don’t know. But there were over five hundred people living on four floors in my dormitory alone. And there were at least two more buildings like it. There were others, too, as many again, in a separate part of the compound. Lucky told me the people held in those buildings were used for webcam work. You know what that is?” She shivers, gulping her wine as she glances at me.

“Yeah,” I say shortly. “I know what webcam work is.”

She flushes, looking away. “I’m sorry,” she mutters. “I know how awful this all must be to hear.”

“No.” Horrified, I touch her arm, gently turning her to look at me. “That is, yes, it’s awful to hear that something that fucking diabolical exists, let alone that you were forced to spend so long in it. But Iwantto hear it, Abby. I want to know every last detail of what happened to you. Back in the years before we met, and every day since I last saw you. There isn’t anything you can say that I don’t want to hear, Skip. Not one fucking word.”

Abby swallows, her eyes wide as she looks at me. “There is something else,” she says slowly. “Something I probably should have said right at the start.”

My heart thuds dully, and I force myself to keep smiling. “Like I said, Skip. Keep it coming.”

Fucking masochist, Dimitry.

I know what she hasn’t said. The one topic she’s carefully avoided right from the start: the fact that she wasn’t ever planning on coming back.

And no, I don’t want to fucking hear it.

At the same time, I know this isn’t the time or place to reinstate my old habit of selective fucking hearing either.

So I smile my dumb ass off and touch her hand. “Just spit it out, Skip. Whatever is on your mind, I’m here for it, as the kids would say.”

But for once, my smile goes unanswered. Abby’s eyes are deep hollows, full of something I can’t quite read.

“I thought that going home might help me sort out what kind of life I wanted,” she says quietly. “I thought that maybe I’d run away before I ever really gave that life a chance. That if I just tried normalcy on for size for a while, that I might find it fit, after all.”

And did it?

I want to scream the question, but I settle for swallowing the fucking wine and wishing like hell it was vodka.

“I knew from almost the first day that it would never fit.” She gives a quiet laugh. “I love my hometown, believe it or not. I love the landscape and the beauty. The isolation. And I love my parents, as boring as they might seem.” She glances sideways at me.