Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (15 page)

“Hello, I’m trying to find my sister. Do you have a Marguerite Riley registered there?”

“Just a moment please.”

Benny stared down the narrow street and began inching his way closer to the front of the hotel. Every time the door opened, he tried to see inside.

The voice came back on the phone. “Hello? Are you still there?”

“I’m here,” he said.

“Yes, your sister is registered at this hotel.”

Benny picked up his pace. He reached for the door.

“I believe she is in the restaurant right now.”

Benny clicked the phone off and thrust it into his jeans pocket. When he yanked open the door, he saw the double doors leading to the restaurant across the lobby. He ran across the lobby and stopped at the threshold. All the tables were occupied by diners except one. A single dirty plate and a half-finished glass of beer were all that was left. A slender girl was taking an order from a large family of European tourists. Benny grabbed her arm and she let out a cry of surprise.

Benny pointed at the empty table. “Was an American girl sitting there?”

She nodded her head.

“Where is she?”

The girl looked confused. She obviously had not seen her customer disappear.

The father of the family spoke in English with a heavy German accent. “They went into the kitchen.”

He spun around to face the big blond man. “They?”

“Yes. An older American man joined her and they left a few minutes ago.”

Benny didn’t bother with thanks. He ran for the kitchen door.

Thanon Phra Arthit
Bangkok, Thailand

November 17, 2012

The first thing Riley did was make Peewee take his damn hat off. He pulled it off his head, folded it flat, and handed it to her. Without it, he could get lost even in a crowd of Thai people—with it, he was unmistakable.

“Don’t call me old man,” Peewee said. “I can keep up. I still go to the gym every day.”

“Good,” Riley said. “I’ll remember that when we have to start running.”

They were making their way up the dark alley, deeper in the Banglamphu district, away from the river and the main road along the waterfront. The narrow passage was filled with garbage from the back doors of all the shops and restaurants on either side. But the doors were all closed—not surprising, given the stench from the rotting food and the sound of scurrying feet, which she assumed belonged to rats. Riley still hadn’t stopped to put her sandals on—something she wanted to do before she injured herself in the dark.

On the left, she saw a door that was propped open with a block of wood. She poked her head into the crack and saw an empty musical instrument shop. The lights were off, but the shop was lit from the neon sign outside the front window. Guitars and ukuleles hung from the ceiling, while drums and percussion instruments she did not recognize littered the floor.

“Come on. Inside.” She swung the door wide and they stepped inside. Off to their right, she heard the sound of a toilet flushing. “Make sure the front door’s open. I’m going to put my shoes on,” she whispered.

It only took a couple of seconds to pull the sandals out of her backpack, but she had trouble sliding her dirty feet along the soles and under the straps.

Riley was bent over, tugging at the heel strap of her shoe, when she heard a door open close by in the darkness. She wiggled her toes to slide them in, and just as her heel at last slid through the strap the straw end of a broom whacked her across her back.

“Ow!”

Riley stood up and blocked the next blow from the broom. The lady was screeching in Thai at her. Holding her hands in the universal sign of surrender, Riley backed toward the front of the shop. She heard Peewee open the shop’s front door behind her.

Then beyond the woman, close to the back of the shop, she saw movement. The back door swung inward and the light from the street lit the pale blue work shirt and reflected off the threads of silver in his hair.

“Go, Irv!”

Just as Riley made it out the door, she heard a loud
crack
as the broom handle hit something hard and the shop owner started screaming again.

This street wasn’t much wider than the back alley, but it was full of nighttime tourists out to have a good time in Bangkok. While the
crowd would slow them down, that was a good thing for Peewee. She heard him struggling to get his breath. But it would also slow the man behind them. Riley was certain the shopkeeper and her broom would not hold him back for long.

She turned left and herded Peewee past the restaurants with couches and burning tiki torches, the tattoo parlors, and the clothing stores selling knockoff designer labels, back down in the direction of the river. She couldn’t have explained why, but the streets of the city seemed to pose a greater danger. She always sought refuge on the water.

They reached Thanon Phra Arthit sooner than she thought they would. It seemed they had not really gone so far in that dark, garbage-filled alley. The traffic was jam-packed and a skinny, white-gloved Thai traffic cop was trying to move the cars along. He held his palm up toward the pedestrians as he waved the cars along.

When Riley stepped off the curb in front of a bright pink taxi, the cop blew his whistle at her. Placing one hand on Peewee’s shoulder, she steered him across the street with her. The taxi screeched to a stop and the driver poked his head out the window and began yelling at her in Thai. She continued at a brisk pace, dodging between and around vehicles as though she were deaf, despite the traffic cop who was blowing that damn whistle and sounding like a tea kettle in hell.

As she reached the far sidewalk, Riley heard a woman scream and risked a quick glance over her shoulder. The traffic cop had his wood baton out trying to stop the guy Peewee had called Benny. On the sidewalk behind them, a crowd was gathering around someone who was on the ground.

She grabbed Peewee’s hand and said, “In here,” and pulled him into the lobby of the Hotel New Siam Riverside. In the window she had noticed a sign about riverside dining, so she figured they could cut through and get off the street.

Irv’s breaths were wheezing in and out and his shoulders slumped. She hoped he wasn’t going to collapse on her. Yeah, he worked out,
as he’d said, but still, he was ninety-three. Then again, there weren’t many ninety-three-year-olds who would have made it this far.

The concierge stepped out from behind a podium with a broad smile on his face. “May I help—”

Riley brushed him aside and kept moving. Over her shoulder, she said, “My grandfather wants to see the river. Which way?”

The man pointed to the dark bar, and he began extolling the virtues of the menu in their restaurant. He didn’t make it past the first course before they were out of earshot.

Behind the center bar, floor-to-ceiling windows showcased the colored lights of a bridge and the high-rise buildings on the opposite bank. There was a surprising amount of traffic out in the middle of the river.

At first she couldn’t see any way out of the bar. Then, far over to her left, she saw a sliding glass door that stood open. When she got to the opening, she saw a broad cement deck and the turquoise water of a large swimming pool. Two handsome young men in hotel uniforms stood on either side of the door. When Riley and Peewee started through, the young men both put their arms out to stop them.

“Sorry, the swimming pool is closed.”

“We don’t want to swim. My grandfather wants—” Riley began to explain, but Peewee just bulldozed his way through the young men. He seemed to be counting on their courtesy toward their elders, and it was working. She hurried to catch up to him.

On the far side of the pool was a concrete wall about four feet high that separated the hotel pool deck from the riverfront. When Riley leaned over the wall to look down at the wooden public walkway, she saw that the planking was another five to six feet lower than the pool deck. A ten-foot drop wasn’t a big deal for her, but for old bones, she wasn’t so sure.

They both looked back at the windows that fronted on the pool deck. Across the bar, they had a clear view of the black-and-silver-haired man speaking to the concierge.

“Benny,” Peewee whispered.

Riley saw Benny reach into that leather satchel he carried and pull out a long stick. She remembered him using it to hit people at the market.

Peewee said, “You go on. Jump.” She turned to look at him and the expression on his face looked like a combination of fear and resignation. “I’ll deal with Benny.”

“I’m not leaving you, Irv.”

“If you give me the prayer gau, he’ll have no reason to hurt you.”

Benny had started through the bar, but he hadn’t seen them yet.

At the base of the wall at their feet, Riley noticed a long aluminum pole with a pool skimmer net on the end. She reached down and grabbed it. “Watch out, Irv.” She swung it up and over the wall and rested the end against a solid wood piling on the far side of the walkway.

She laced the fingers of her hands together and lowered them in front of Peewee. “Put your hand on my shoulder and one foot here.” He shook his head, but put a foot into her makeshift step. She hoisted him up until his butt slid onto the wall. “Swing your feet over to the other side,” she said as she placed her palms on the wall and jumped up. In a second, she had vaulted over and landed on the boardwalk with a jolt. She had flexed her knees and managed not to fall. The aluminum pole had stopped a couple walking hand in hand. The man reached out to Riley and offered her a hand to steady herself.

“No, help him.” She pointed at the old man above, who was wrapping one leg around the pole. The man grabbed Peewee’s knees and eased him down the pole to the walkway. When the tourist let go of him, Peewee stood and smiled up at the couple, but Riley grabbed his hand and jerked before he had time to open his mouth. They dodged
around another couple of tourists and began running down the walkway toward the ferry landing. Seconds later, she heard a loud thud as someone jumped onto the planks behind them.

At the ferry dock ahead, there were several clothing vendors as well as a small shop that sold sweets, cold drinks, and cigarettes. A cluster of tourists milled around looking at the goods as they waited for a boat. When Riley plunged into the middle of them, she thought she heard someone call her name.

She looked around. The ferries used the T end of the dock along the outside of the pier, but there were several boats tied to an inside finger pier off the main dock. One of them was a long-tail that looked like it had been there for a while. The other boat looked like a smaller ferryboat, with a forward helm station and a deck built over the upswept bow. A cover ran the length of the boat, blocking her view of the inside. The boat was backed into the dock and there was water chugging out the stern exhaust. There was a dark silhouette of a Thai man who stood at the stern rail waving at her with one hand as he held the dock with the other.

Running footsteps closed in on them from behind, and Peewee’s breathing was audible over the sound of the boat’s engine.

According to Peewee, the man behind them was a killer. From her one close-up look into the man’s eyes, she believed it. She yanked and pulled him left. They ran down the dock.

“Riley!” the boatman called. His English was accented, but it was clearly her name. He waved again.

She turned down a short finger pier and pulled Peewee up even with her.

The boatman stepped back from the bulwark and reached out both arms. She gave Peewee a push. He fell into the man’s arms and the man eased him down to a sitting position in the bottom of the boat. The boat wasn’t tied to the dock and the gap was widening. Riley took several steps backward, then ran and jumped.

Her arms windmilled as she flew through the air. One foot caught on the side of the hull and she landed with a crash on her side in the bottom of the hull just aft of the boxlike structure that covered the engine and only a couple of feet from Peewee.

The boatman had disappeared forward and the engine was already revving up as the boat slid out onto the dark river.

From where she lay on the floorboards, she could see Benny standing on the dock. She started to sit up to see what he was doing. He was lifting that stick of his up to his face and putting it by his mouth.

“Get down!” Peewee shouted, and he threw himself across her upper body and flattened her.

She heard a thud.

The boat was gaining speed and the bow was rising out of the water.

“Get off me,” she said.

Breathing hard, the old man pushed himself up and rolled off her. He sat up and pointed at the side of the engine cover. There was something sticking out of the wood.

Riley reached out to touch it, but Peewee’s hand clamped onto her arm.

“Don’t touch it,” he said.

“What is it?”

Before Peewee could answer, she heard a familiar voice behind her.

“Nice landing, Magee.”

She twisted around so fast she nearly knocked Peewee down again.

There, standing on the far side of the engine cover, was Cole Thatcher.