Page 49

Dimitry

Bangkok, Thailand

“ L ie down in the bottom of the boat.” I steer the vessel out into the busy canal, keeping the engine running low. “There’s an old canvas you can cover yourself with. Just stay hidden until we’re away from the center of the city.”

Abby lies down, drawing the canvas over her head.

At least that hides the bruises on her face.

My fist clenches around the tiller.

Why did she stop me from killing the man who gave them to her? And what if the bastard did worse than give her bruises?

The boat jerks, and I force myself to focus on steering between the river traffic.

The boat Paddy bought for us is an engine-powered longtail, typically used to ferry passengers.

This one is on the small side and fairly shabby, which I hope will help us escape notice.

It’s about ten meters long, with a high prow, flat body, and an overhead canopy.

Abby is curled between two of the bench seats.

She’s lost so much weight she barely makes a dent under the crumpled canvas.

I’m almost grateful for the busy waterway that makes conversation impossible for the time being.

Because after months of thinking of nothing but what I would say to Abby if I ever saw her again, now that we’re face-to-face, words have completely fucking failed me.

Were you planning to come back to me?

It’s a ridiculous question, given the circumstances in which I found her. Juvenile. Selfish to even think, let alone ask.

And yet it’s the only question that matters to me.

Sure, I want to know what deal she made with the mudak in that hotel room. Not that it matters, since the fucker is already walking around on borrowed time. He’s a dead man the minute I unravel whatever shitstorm is going down here.

Yes, I want to know who took her and why. Where she’s been for the past few months.

Why I found her all but naked in a hotel bedroom.

I wrench the boat around a water taxi, so close I almost clip it.

But all of those questions, no matter how disturbing their answers might be, pale into insignificance next to the first one.

Were you planning to come back to me, Abby? Do you want to come back to me now?

And I can’t ask those questions. Not now, and not until this entire thing is over.

Or are you just trying to avoid hearing what you already fucking know?

I know that the only reason Abby is currently lying a few feet from me is because she wants to keep her parents safe. I know that if there’d been any option tonight other than coming with me, she’d have taken it.

She’s here right now because I’m her only choice .

I saw it in her eyes in that hotel room. In her panicked expression when Pete mentioned the embassy.

I trust him , she told her father.

But that isn’t true. Not really.

Because if Abby really trusted me, she never would have left me in the first place. And she sure won’t trust me now, after she disappeared and I didn’t look for her.

I glare at the nighttime lights shimmering on the river. On Paddy’s advice, I’m avoiding the small canals where traffic is slower and tourists more noticeable, taking a direct route straight down Chao Phraya River, which eventually opens into the Gulf of Thailand.

“If you make it that far,” Paddy told me, “turn west, toward the mangroves and rice paddies. You’ll be easier to spot, but there’ll be less people looking.”

Where we’ll go from there, I have no idea. Right now we just need to be out of this city.

“There’s water and some food in a crate,” I say in a low voice, keeping my eyes on the river. “But go lightly. I’m not sure when we’ll be able to restock.”

“I’m fine.” Between the canvas barrier and the engine noise, Abby’s voice is barely audible. “Do you want me to pass you anything?”

I bite back the urge to laugh. It seems a stupidly polite conversation to be having under the circumstances.

“No,” I say shortly. “Stay down until we’re clear of the city. As far as I know, nobody will be looking for me. As long as you stay hidden, we have a decent chance of getting out of here.”

“They’ll notice you sooner or later” comes Abby’s muffled reply. “No chance anyone is going to mistake you for a Thai fisherman, even wearing those ridiculous pants. ”

I flick my eyes toward her in surprise. Abby’s face is still hidden, but her dry comment sounded suspiciously like a return of her customary snark.

It’s an opening I’m definitely going to take.

“That’s the second time tonight you’ve called my clothes ridiculous.” I strive for a light tone. “And after I changed them just for you, too. I’m hurt.”

A faint gurgle of laughter comes from beneath the canvas. It’s the sweetest sound I’ve ever fucking heard, and suddenly, I don’t want it to stop.

“Besides,” I carry on, finding myself grinning despite it all, “you’re wearing the same ridiculous pants I am, so you can’t talk.

And at least my T-shirt is a plain black one.

Yours has a rainbow heart with glitter around it and the word peace in the center, which means that whoever chose it clearly doesn’t know you at all. ”

“Oh, wow.” Her swift retort is music to my ears. “This, coming from a man who doesn’t even know how to wear a pair of Thai pants properly. You look like the kid who failed origami, the way you’ve tied those things up.”

“ Tied ,” I fire back. “Get it? Thai pants, tied wrong...”

“Oh my God.” I can almost imagine Abby’s exaggerated face palm beneath the canvas. “Good to see your dad jokes have not improved, muscle boy.”

My grin widens. “Well, Skip, if we’re doing insults, I have to tell you that the Bangkok coffee shops put your barista skills to shame, not to mention offering service with a smile, which I know is a new concept for you.”

There’s a rustle as she turns over beneath the canvas to meet the challenge, though her face remains hidden. “If you ever manage to tell a joke that actually hits, muscle boy, I might smile at it.” The mischief in her voice gives me a delicious, familiar thrill I just want to hang on to.

“I’ll have you know that the Thai girls think my jokes slay,” I say loftily .

“That’s only because you tip them enough to laugh.” Abby giggles. She actually giggles. “I’m surprised you had any money left to buy a boat.”

We continue down the river, trading insults back and forth.

And despite the men chasing us, and the fact that I have no fucking idea what’s coming next, I can’t remember the last time I felt so happy.

A pale rose dawn is rising over the water as we putter out of the river, past an old fort, and onto the mangrove-lined gulf coast. There’s barely a quarter tank of fuel left according to the flickering needle on the gauge, and nothing ahead of us except mud and low trees.

I throw my phone down onto the canvas where I estimate Abby’s stomach to be.

“Ouch!” Her middle finger rises over the material. “If you were aiming for my face, you missed, dufus.”

“My mistake,” I say, grinning. “Make yourself useful and check Google Maps, see if there’s anywhere around here we might be able to refuel.”

Abby’s hand hovers over the phone. “Having a phone is a mistake,” she says quietly.

“Not this one. Came courtesy of Luke’s army mate. Completely untraceable, apparently, and it’s got a local card in it.”

“You have dodgy friends, muscle boy, you know that?” But at least the tension is out of her voice.

“You can talk,” I say, steering close to the mangroves. “You are the queen of dodgy deeds, Skip.” It’s skirting a little close to reality, but that’s how it’s always been between Abby and me. Jokes. Banter .

Always edging closer to the uncomfortable truths neither of us want to address.

It’s our weird comfort zone, and how we’ve always managed to navigate the difficult conversations we’re both too fucking afraid to address head-on.

But right now isn’t the time to start switching it up. Right now we need to get undercover, until I can work out what to do.

“If we turn up the next canal,” Abby says, “there’s a small settlement, and just past that, a remote homestay hidden in the trees.

It looks like they take tourists. But if we turn up in this boat,” she adds, “we’ll stand out.

Best to ditch it and go in on foot. You can buy fuel for a two-stroke engine at any roadside stall, so better to do that and come back for the boat at night. ”

I stare at the canvas in surprise. “How the hell do you know it’s a two-stroke engine?”

“I’m the daughter of an Australian farmer, muscle boy. Put diesel in a two-stroke engine and my father would have my hide for breakfast. And besides.” An edge of tension creeps in beneath her light tone. “I lived in Thailand for nearly a year. I know how things work here.”

I swallow my thousand questions. “Good,” I say briskly.

“Unfortunately, you can’t do the talking, since our goal here is to keep you as low-key as possible.

So for now, you’re going to be my girlfriend who’s just had food poisoning, and I’m going to be your dumb tourist boyfriend buying a room for the night. ”

“Well, at least you won’t have to act,” Abby retorts. “And think of something other than food poisoning, because I’m starving.”

Grinning, I steer the boat into a small inlet and tie it fast to a stand of mangroves.

Abby throws back the canvas and winces as she stands up. I glance at her, then quickly shift my eyes away from the horrific bruises on her face.

There won’t be any need to lie about her being sick , I think. The only problem will be convincing our hosts that I’m not the reason for her injuries.

“Listen,” I say abruptly as I gather our meager belongings. “We’re going to need a decent story to explain the state of your face.”

I meet her eyes directly for the first time since I covered her with the canvas in Bangkok and immediately wish I hadn’t.

Perhaps, if I’d looked a moment earlier, her blue eyes might still have been sparkling with mischief. Instead, the haunted look is back—only in the light of day, it’s a hundred times worse than the vague impression I got last night.

Shadows have colored Abby’s eyes as long as I’ve known her.

They come and go like clouds over a still sea, sometimes so fast I think I’ve imagined them.

But now the shadows don’t pass over the top of the sparkling blue.

They lie in the depths, a constant reminder of whatever unnamed hell she’s been living for the past months.

Despite a savage, all-consuming desire to wreak bloody vengeance on every motherfucker responsible for that hell, I force myself to smile. “Any ideas, Skip?”

The last thing she needs from anyone right now is more savagery.

Abby rummages around the boat and comes up with a faded scrap of material that was once brightly patterned but has clearly been used more recently as a rag to clean the boat.

“Tell them our bikes got stolen,” she says as she wraps it around her head like a scarf, tucking her blonde hair beneath it.

“You can say I fell off when it happened. That will explain why we have no bags with us and why we’re arriving on foot.

You can say we paid for a ride on a local boat, which dropped us off nearby.

” She frowns. “Pity we didn’t get sunglasses with the costume change. ”

I fish around in the various cubbyholes on the dash and come up triumphantly, waving a pair of old aviator sunglasses. “Ask, and you shall receive.”

She rolls her eyes. “More like stand and deliver, when it comes to you.” She puts on the sunglasses, and I swallow hard as the haunted eyes disappear behind them, along with the worst of her bruises.

We wade through the muddy estuary and wash the mud off our feet in the silty water before emerging onto a dirt track.

I keep up the banter on the half-hour walk to the homestay.

Anything to keep her smiling, and myself from noticing her concave belly over the fisherman’s trousers or the horrific bruises everywhere my eyes touch.

Not to mention the burns.

They haven’t escaped me either. But if I look at those, I will lose it altogether.

Finally the wooden roof of the homestay comes into view. “Keep your head down,” I murmur as I spy a woman lighting an incense stick on the wooden walkway. “And wait here.”

I approach the woman, smiling reassuringly, and in true idiotic tourist style, bumble my way through the explanation with a combination of sign language, her broken English, and my use of a clearly inadequate translation app.

I pay the two-night minimum and extra to have our meals brought to us.

The woman leads us along a wooden walkway to a small three-sided hut on stilts over the water.

It has an open-air bathroom, a veranda that juts out over the canal—and a very large bed in the center of the room.

The woman leaves us standing alone in the hut, both of us looking anywhere else but at the bed.

“You take first shower, if you want.” I say it as casually as I can manage. “According to our hostess, the bar fridge is fully stocked with local beer. It works on an honor system, apparently.”

Abby snorts. “They clearly weren’t expecting you, then.”

“Hey!” I open a mercifully cold beer and flip the cap off in her general direction. “At least let a poor sailor drink before you start insulting him.”

“It’s not even midmorning,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You’re terrible.”

I reach into the fridge and come up waving a bottle of chilled sparkling wine and a carton of orange juice. “I can also make mimosas, Miss Snobby Britches.”

Abby gives the gurgle of laughter that has always melted my insides and walks toward the bathroom. “Just don’t put ice in it, muscle boy, or we’ll both wind up with Thai belly for real.”