Dox headed back toward the bike, sighting down the barrel through the night vision as he moved. This time he approached from the opposite direction. The changeup was just a precaution — he didn’t expect any more opposition after the three he’d dropped. So he was surprised to see another Khmer, this one barely a teenager from the look of him, squatting in the dark at the side of the dirt road. In one hand he held a cell phone, in the other, a knife.
Dox’s finger started to ease back on the trigger. But good lord, he was just a kid. A kid.
He circled silently behind the boy, walking toe-heel, the soles of his sneakers soundless in the dirt. When he was directly behind him, he raised a leg and kicked him hard in the back of the head. The boy sprawled facedown, the knife and the phone hitting the deck alongside him. Dox kicked them out of the way. The boy cried out and tried to rise. Dox planted a foot between his shoulder blades and drove him back into the dirt.
He scanned through the night vision and detected no problems. He looked down at the boy. “What the fuck are you doing out here, son?”
The boy moaned and coughed, then spat out something in Khmer. It didn’t sound like Pleased to meet you.
“I don’t speak Khmer. You know any English?”
“You fuck your mommy!”
Dox snorted. “Well, I don’t know if that’s a maximally useful phrase to travel the world with. You might do better with, ‘I’ll have a beer, please,’ or ‘Pardon me, I’m looking for the restroom.’ Now I asked you what you’re doing here.”
“I watch for big American. He come, I call.”
So a lookout on the more obvious approach to the bike. Either they couldn’t find anyone older, or they recruited this kid as cut-rate labor. “What’d they pay you?”
“Five dollar.”
“How much if you kill me?”
“Twenty dollar.”
“Well, it looks like you’re shit out of luck either way. But tell you what. If I pay you twenty, will you just vamoose? Leave, I mean.”
The boy turned his head as though trying to see Dox’s face, to gauge whether the offer was serious. “You give me twenty dollar?”
Dox reached into his pocket and took out a pair of twenties. “I’ll give you forty. Here.” He leaned closer and dropped the bills on the kid’s hand. The kid gripped them and squinted. Dox wasn’t sure if he could see them in the dark.
“It’s forty. And you’re lucky I didn’t kill you. Get yourself a better job. Those guys who hired you were underpaying you and they would have sold you out in a heartbeat regardless. Christ, where are your parents anyway?”
The kid glanced back at him again. “No parents.”
Dox wondered whether he was being played. Still, he took out three more twenties and handed them over.
“Now I’m going to step back, and you’re going to get up and run along the river. Forget about the toys you dropped. Just run away. Don’t make me regret letting you go.”
He stepped back. The kid hesitated, then stood up and took off like a rocket. It was only then Dox realized how scared he must have been.
Dox made double time back to the bike. Other than the three cooling Khmers, there was no one around. He drove a half mile, then stopped and broke down the rifle, wiping each piece with a rag and slinging it into the river. He purged the phone, pulled the battery, and sent all that in, too. Last was the duffle bag. Then he drove back to the city center. Along the way, he purged, broke down, and tossed his personal mobile phone, too. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure they’d followed him via a tracking device in the rifle, so no sense taking chances.
There were no more flights that night, but he’d catch something to somewhere in the morning. Best not to linger after a job. Especially one that had turned out like this. He’d meant it when he told Gant he didn’t think anyone would bother to retaliate on Gant’s behalf, but he didn’t see any upside to testing the theory, either. Besides, there was always the law to be careful about, too.
He thought about immediately checking into a more obscure local hotel, but then decided against it. Best not to do anything too out of the ordinary, like suddenly disappearing from Raffles. The staff knew him too well at this point. No, better to check out tomorrow morning like a normal person, earlier than anticipated by his reservation but nothing remarkable, either.
By the time he reached the hotel, he realized he was starving. He wolfed down a meal of beef lok lak and amok trei in the hotel restaurant, then went up to his room and took a long shower. That kid. It really bugged him. Like hell they would have paid him, even if he’d done what they’d hired him for. They were just using him. And Dox had almost killed him.
He thought about calling Chantrea. But he didn’t know what to say. He had to leave town tomorrow and he doubted he’d be back for a while, if ever.
He was still wired from everything that had happened, but by the time he was done with the shower, the parasympathetic backlash was kicking in and exhaustion washed over him. He got in bed and was asleep almost instantly.
The room phone woke him. He glanced over at the bedside clock and saw it was just past midnight. He wondered who the hell would be calling him. Who even knew he was here?
Then he realized — Chantrea. She must have been trying him on his mobile, but he’d dumped it. He almost didn’t pick up, but then he did.
“Hello.”
“Hello,” she said. “I’ve been trying you on your mobile. It goes straight through to voicemail.”
“I’m sorry. I lost the damn thing. I had kind of a bad night tonight. Ate in the hotel restaurant and crashed early. I’m sorry I didn’t call.”
There was a pause. Then: “Are you… are you alone?”
Shit, he hadn’t even thought about her thinking something like that. “Yes, I’m alone. I was just tired. Really.”
“Do you want me to come over?”
He paused, feeling sad and torn. “The truth, darlin’? I do. But I have to leave tomorrow morning, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. Or even… if I’ll be back.”
There was another pause. “I see,” she said.
“And if you come over tonight, I just… I just don’t know.”
Another pause, longer this time. Then she said, “I want to. If you want me.”
He felt himself weakening. He knew he was being stupid. “Are you sure?” he said.
She was sure.
She got there a half hour later, and he was kissing her the second he had the door bolted behind her. And she was kissing him back with equal abandon. They pulled off each other’s clothes and threw them aside as though the garments were on fire, and he tried to take his time with her but she made it clear she didn’t want that, and she was wet when he touched her, so wet, and God he was glad she called. He still had condoms in the room from before he’d met her, and by the time the sun came up they’d used three, talking and dozing and laughing in between, the second round slower than the first and the third slower still, each of them wanting to make it linger because it was likely to be the last.
The alarm clock on her mobile phone woke them at eight. She showered and dressed and he pulled on a robe to see her to the door. He felt groggy and guilty and happy and sad. He wanted to say something but didn’t know what.
Chantrea paused by the door and touched his cheek. “I’m glad.”
He smiled. “I am, too.”
“You don’t look glad.”
“Well, I’m sad, too, I guess. I… I like you, Chantrea.”
“I like you, too.”
The way she said it was so direct and open. He wanted to believe it was true, that there was nothing more to it.