by Kyle Mills
“No, I guess not,” he said, punctuating his words with a slow shake of the head. “Honey, I don’t know what you stole—and I don’t want to—but whatever it is, it was a big mistake.”
“I didn’t steal anything.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “There’s a gentleman on his way here now who’s very interested in talking with you. I don’t think you’re going to enjoy the conversation much, though.”
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” she said quietly. “It doesn’t have anything to do with me. I’ll tell them what they want to know. I don’t really have a choice now, do I?”
The man took a deep breath of the foul-smelling air and coughed loudly as it lodged in this chest. “Doesn’t really matter now. The Thais were asking an outrageous amount of money to help me find you. Comes out of my pocket, you know, so I had to do a little negotiating. I’m afraid I promised them whatever’s left of you after your, uh, conversation.”
She looked around her at the seeping walls and the hole in the floor of the cell that passed as a toilet, sucking her lower lip between her teeth and trying not to let her mind project the meaning of the man’s words. “Why are you telling me this? You just want to be sure I know who’s responsible for killing me?”
“No,” he said seriously. “I guess I wanted to offer an apology. I’ve read and heard a lot about you in the past few weeks. A person like you shouldn’t have to die like you’re going to.”
Darby stepped forward and wrapped her hands around the rusting bars, getting as close to the man as she could. “I appreciate the sentiment, but in the end, I don’t think it’s going to do me much good. Why don’t you help me get out of here? It’ll be good for your soul.”
He laughed. “I feel bad, honey, but I don’t feel that bad. I worked hard all my life and didn’t get shit for it. This job is paying enough to get me a new house and a hell of a nice sports car, with some cash left over for gas.” He turned and started for the door.
“You’d do this to me for money?” Darby called after him. “For money?”
“What other reason is there?” He stopped for a moment, but didn’t look back at her. “I’m sorry, I’ve really got to get out of here. The smell is starting to get to me.”
thirty-nine
As morbid as it was, she’d played the game for years.
Blizzard, rockfall, avalanche, unidentifiable intestinal parasites, and tropical disease. No matter how grim her situation, it seemed that she could always think of a time she’d been worse off. It would always be something like, “Sure it’s a hundred and twenty-five below zero, but remember that time the rock we were anchored to started sliding toward the edge of a cliff and we couldn’t get untied from it?” Unfortunately, that little mental trick wasn’t working this time. Instead, she’d been forced to accept that the situation was hopeless and start to think about exactly what that meant.
The cell was almost completely desolate. The only sound came from the occasional drip of water as the humidity accumulated on the stone ceiling and finally fell to one of the puddles in the floor. She didn’t have a watch, but from the position of the sunlight struggling through the tiny hole cut high in the wall, she assumed that she’d been there about twenty-four hours. She hadn’t so much as heard another human voice since her brief conversation with the semiremorseful American who was responsible for imprisoning her here.
She couldn’t decide whether her solitude was good news or not. The next people she saw would undoubtedly be very interested in what she’d done with their precious file. And that was another game she couldn’t win. If she told them, she would be turned over to the Thais for disposal; something that would be extremely unpleasant and probably fairly time-consuming. If she resisted, they’d force her to talk and then turn her over to the Thais.
Darby’s sense of smell had long since shut down, but she could still feel the heaviness of the air as she knelt down next to the rusted metal bed frame that was the cell’s only piece of furniture. The night before, in the pitch dark, she’d managed to dislodge a good-sized stone from the wall and had spent the night working quietly with it on the edge of the bed. She wasn’t sure how long it had taken, but now one of the wires that made up the empty mattress platform stuck straight up, the end ground to a shiny, razor-sharp edge. It gleamed in the weak sunlight like the escape it was. Her only way out of there.
She held her wrist over it, closing her eyes and trying to slow down her breathing. Her friend Sam, a gifted philosopher in a bizarre kind of way, had always been a staunch believer in the evils of karma. He’d decided long ago that if a person had too much good luck in life, it was just the gods setting him or her up for a fall. It looked like he’d been right. For both of them.
She pressed her wrist down on the sharp point, but not hard enough to puncture the soft skin there. A vertical slit in each would make her impossible to save, particularly in a country where the medical system had broken down along with everything else.
What would it be like? Would there be nothing—like before she was born? Would her soul go to a holding pen for reassignment to some infant still in the womb? Or were the Christians right? She certainly hoped not—their God wasn’t much of a fan of suicide. He might decide to confine her to this cell for the rest of eternity, as effective a hell as anyone could ever dream up.
Time got lost as she knelt there. It was so much harder than she had imagined. She generally thought of herself as reasonably courageous but maybe it was just that she’d always been too preoccupied trying to cheat death to really think about it. The end of her life had never been more than a tiny spark in the back of her mind.
The sound of voices suddenly penetrated the sturdy wood door that led to the outside world, floating to her on the foul air. The words were Thai—too muffled and too angry for her to understand. As the shouting grew louder, she pressed her wrist a little harder onto the sharp edge of the wire. A tiny drop of blood was briefly illuminated and began winding its way down to the bed frame.
The shouting stopped as abruptly as it had started. The sound of a key rattling in the door echoed eerily around her, filling the sudden silence. This was it.
Come on. Darby. Do it.
She had a few more seconds. They still had to walk through the door and into the narrow corridor—giving her plenty of time before they could unlock her cell.
She watched, unmoving, as the door opened and three men came toward her through the gloom. Two were short, thin, and dark; obviously Thai, though one walked with a regal gait that she’d never seen in this part of the world. The other man was much taller and broader, most likely an American, and death to her.
Mark Beamon felt as though he’d been almost physically pushed back when the door opened. The smell was indescribable—different from the house with the rotting state trooper—but in its way, just as bad. The Thai “cop” with the keys walked through the door first, splashing through the oily puddles that had formed on the ground and becoming a little bit out of focus as he moved through the steamy haze inside. The elation Beamon had initially felt at having potentially found the elusive Darby Moore suddenly disappeared. There had to be some mistake. They couldn’t have put that little girl in here.
“After you, Mark,” Somporn Taskin said in an upper-crust British accent that seemed as if it should belong to a member of the House of Lords and not the retired head of the Thai police.
Beamon had been interested in a more clandestine entry into the jail where Darby Moore was allegedly being held, but Sherman’s friend had opted to just stroll in the front door. The reaction to their arrival had been fascinating. No less than five cops had surrounded them, speaking to Taskin in rapid-fire Thai that was a little too loud, like frightened children talking to themselves. The unarmed Taskin had been completely calm, speaking in quiet tones that seemed to be physically wringing the sweat from the grimy policemen surrounding him. There was no mistaking that they were nearly paralyzed by their fear of this little Oxford-educated
man.
In Beamon’s experience, the power to intimidate was inherited with many jobs—and head of the Thai police was certainly one of them. But you couldn’t inherit the ability to terrify. No, you had to earn that.
“No. Please. After you,” Beamon said, a little embarrassed but making an effort not to show it. He didn’t know if it was the reaction of the Thai cops or something that he sensed on his own, but he was uncomfortable with the thought of this impeccably dressed, painfully polite man getting behind him.
Somporn Taskin smiled graciously and strolled through the door, apparently unaffected by the condition of his surroundings. While Beamon had never even imagined anything like this half-abandoned jailhouse, Taskin seemed to be completely at home.
The already unbearable heat seemed to double as Beamon stepped reluctantly through the doorway. He covered his mouth with his hand and coughed quietly as he followed his host.
The scene was almost surreal. Darby Moore, wearing bright purple shorts and a red tank top, was kneeling by the frame of a bed, apparently praying. It looked like one of those old movies that had been hand-painted frame by frame, like she existed in color and her surroundings existed only in black and white.
“It looks like you’ve gotten yourself into a hell of a mess, young lady,” Beamon said, lighting a harsh Thai cigarette and hoping that it would help deaden his senses.
“Guess so.” Her voice was almost too quiet to make out
Taskin said something in Thai to the cop, who immediately started toward the cell door with a ring of keys.
“Stop,” Beamon said before he made it to the bars. The Thai cop halted and looked back at Taskin, who did nothing.
Beamon’s eyes had finally adjusted to the se mi darkness, clarifying Darby and the cell around her. She wasn’t praying. Her wrist was pressed against a jagged wire protruding from the bed. On her face was an expression of calm resignation. Shit.
“Somporn,” Beamon said. “Would it be okay if I spoke with Darby alone for a moment?”
“Of course.” Taskin motioned to the cop, who followed subserviently. “I’ll prepare for our departure, Mark. Meet me out front whenever you’re ready.”
Beamon kept his eyes on Darby as the cop hung his keys on the wall and followed Taskin out. “I guess things are looking pretty grim.”
Darby’s head turned slowly toward him. “You’re the man I saw in Wyoming.”
Beamon smiled and wagged a finger at her. “You outsmarted me on that one. I was really pissed.”
She looked around her. “Well, it seems like you won in the end. So, you’ll excuse me if I cut our relationship short”
“No. No, I won’t,” Beamon said as she turned her attention back to the wire beneath her wrist “You’d be the second young suicide I’ve seen in a week. I’m starting to get depressed.”
When she turned her head to look at him again, her eyes were a little more lucid, a little more probing.
“Look, Darby. We really don’t have much time here, so let me lay it out. I don’t think I’m the person you were expecting. I know there’s a man chasing you, I know that he’s hired a Slovenian climber that you have a history with. Let me assure you that I’m not connected with them in any way—”
“Then who are you connected with?”
“Good question. I haven’t actually worked that out yet. My name is Mark Beamon. I used to work for the FBI. Maybe you’ve heard of me?”
“No.”
Beamon remembered that the girl’s profile didn’t exactly suggest a fanatical interest in current events. “All I can tell you is that I’m here to help you. I’m honestly not sure that I actually can, but I’m willing to try.”
She laughed bitterly. “Like you helped Sam and Tristan? No, you want me safe and sound so that you can find out what I know. Nice try, Mr. Beamon, but any naïveté that I might have once suffered is gone now.”
He flinched as she pressed her wrist down a little harder on the wire.
No one should have to go through what she had over the last couple of weeks and sure as hell no one deserved to end up in this place. The problem was, psychobabble just wasn’t his forte. Especially when it came to this particular girl, whose motivations and lifestyle still baffled him. One thing he didn’t question, though, was her ability to do what she was threatening.
“What if I am here to hurt you?” Beamon said, abandoning the sympathetic route that didn’t suit him and moving back to logic, which had always treated him well. His words got her attention. While she certainly had the willpower, self-termination just wasn’t in this girl’s nature.
“If you’ve got that wire nice and sharp, you’ll probably get a good vertical cut in one wrist and a marginal one in the other before I make it through that cell door. I’ll yell for help and get a couple of those creepy little bastards outside to hold you down while I put tourniquets above your biceps. My ex-girlfriend’s a doctor—forced me to learn first aid backwards and forwards. I imagine that would keep you alive long enough for me to make you tell me what I want to know.” He paused to light another cigarette. “Don’t your?”
His words had the desired effect—her wrist moved back a half an inch or so and she focused on him again. “Why would you want to help me?”
Beamon shrugged. Another good question. Utter stupidity and a self-destructive nature was the answer. But that probably wouldn’t play that well under the circumstances. He opted to paint a more rosy picture.
“One, I’ve been paid a lot of money to, and two, because I have a thing for underdogs. That’s why I got into the FBI in the first place. Hell,” he said, letting his voice trail off in volume a bit. “I’ve got a goddamn Yale education. It’s not like I couldn’t have gotten a decent job.”
She stared at him for a long time, obviously struggling with what to do.
“Seems to me like you’ve got nothing to lose,” Beamon said finally. “Look, I don’t mean to rush you, but I don’t know where the guy who put you in here is and I’d rather not stay in one place for too long. If I’m lying, you’re screwed whether you try to do yourself in or not. If I’m not, we have a chance, albeit a small one, to get out of this godforsaken country alive.”
“You think you can just walk in here and make me trust you?” she said, looking back down at the shiny piece of metal beneath her wrist. Beamon’s breath caught in his chest and he wondered what the hell he’d do if she cut herself. He could keep her alive for a short time, but the chances of finding a doctor anywhere within a hundred miles was about zero.
She suddenly stood. “I don’t want to die like this.”
Beamon let his breath out slowly and walked over to get the keys to the cell. “Good choice,” he said, opening the door as she moved cautiously toward him. He held out his hand. “Mark Beamon.”
“Darby Moore.” She took his hand in a grip that seemed too powerful to belong to her.
“Nice to finally meet you, Darby. Now why don’t we get the hell out of here before somebody decides to shoot us.”
They walked quickly through the door at the end of the holding pen and out into the relative cool of the police station. There were four men in the front office, all cluttered around a single table pushed up against the wall. Beamon didn’t make eye contact as he and Darby moved past them and out the door into the sunlight.
There were another five uniformed cops standing in the lightly traveled street that ran along the front of the police station, forcing the cars driving the road to slow and steer around them. The feeling of minor triumph Beamon had felt when they cleared the building faded under the weight of their stares.
“Do you have a car?” Darby said as the four cops from inside followed them out the door and took up a position behind them.
“Not exactly, but we do have a ride,” Beamon said, scanning the street for any sign of Somporn Taskin. The brightly colored shops that lined the sidewalk across the street were mostly boarded up now, but still contributed to the visual distortion be was get
ting from the foreign surroundings. It took him a few moments to realize that Taskin and his car were gone.
“Shit”
Darby grabbed his upper arm and leaned in close to his ear. “I still have problems, don’t I, Mr. Beamon?”
The whispers of the cops surrounding them grew to a more conversational tone as they quickly gained confidence. Beamon leaned forward and looked up the street again as the Thais continued to use Somporn Taskin’s unfortunate absence to pump themselves up. “Call me Mark, hon. After all, I think we’re going to be sharing the same shallow grave tomorrow.”
“Maybe we should get out of here, then,” she suggested.
“Seems sensible.” Beamon put a hand in the small of her back and they started down the sidewalk. The cops were yelling now, but it didn’t sound like they were following. Beamon and Darby had covered about fifty yards when they heard the sound of squealing tires as a car came skidding to a stop in front of the police station.
“What the fuck is going on!” screamed an American voice that he didn’t recognize.
Beamon looked over his shoulder and saw the head and torso of a heavyset Caucasian man in his fifties poking from the sunroof of a black Mercedes. “You recognize that
guy?”
“Uh huh.”
“Let’s run.” Beamon sprinted forward, dragging Darby along behind him. He heard the screech of tires again, and when he looked back, the car—and worse, the Thais—were coming up behind them fast.
“Down the alley,” Beamon yelled. Their positions had reversed within a few seconds of their attempt at a getaway and Darby was now dragging him. He could already feel the blood pounding in his head, protesting the sudden exertion, stifling heat, and deadly Thai cigarettes.
“Come on, Mark!” Darby shouted as they ran through a narrow alley and into a crowded outdoor market. “If we cut through here, there’s a big department store we can go through and get out the back!”
Beamon was unable to speak at this point, but followed along, already starting to stumble over colorful baskets of vegetables and slow-moving short people. He tried to stay low, knowing that his brown head would poke up a good six inches above the Thai national basketball team’s.
