Off the Edge (The Associates) (17 page)

Somebody was lying. Who?

“It was the first thing Niwat did—check the university story.” Rajini squeezed a lemon into her tea. “Leave it.”

“You know for a fact he checked it. The university story. And you’re absolutely sure he doesn’t work there.”

“I’m absolutely sure that he doesn’t work there,” Rajini said. “I saw proof. Do you need to see proof? Is that what you need?”

No good would come of saying yes to that question. “I want him released.”

“It’s not your call. The man entered a guest’s room under false pretenses and was stealing something. It’s out of your hands.”

“The whole reason they kept him was on my behalf.”

Rajini gave her a look. “Let this be, Laney. It’s out of our hands. The man is fine. They’ll make a deal, and that’s that.”

Laney dumped sugar into her tea, heart racing. Rajini was a master at stonewalling disgruntled guests. Laney didn’t appreciate being on the other end of that.

At all.

She was thankful when their food arrived. She ate quickly and left, telling Rajini she needed to practice a new song.

Back up in her room, she sat on her bed, all jumpy and paranoid. It was getting to be like the old days, not sure who she could trust. Eyes everywhere.

Just then, she spied Maxwell’s business card on the floor. She picked it up and uncrumpled it. Peter Maxwell, Ph.D. A local number was on the bottom.

What would happen if she called it? Who would answer?

She grabbed her phone and punched it in. It rang a good ten times followed by a series of clicks—the phone transferring to another phone. A woman’s voice: “Bangkok International University.”

She asked for Peter Maxwell.

Hold please. Again the ringing. The operator came back. “He’s not there.” She told her to try back. No, she didn’t know when Maxwell would be in. His hours and class schedule were on the website.

The website.
Hello
. How had she not thought to Google him?

She went to her laptop and put in Peter Maxwell and linguistics. The number of entries surprised her. He’d even written two books.

Well, she could go around with business cards saying she was Lady Gaga; that wouldn’t make her Lady Gaga.

Then she found an image from the back of one of Maxwell’s book covers.

It was a low-res, black-and-white photo, but it looked a whole lot like the guy down in the dungeon. He had different glasses, but the same blond hair. The same face shape—a sort of masculine diamond; a movie star face shape. Pleasing. Perfect.

You couldn’t tell for certain if the Maxwell in the photo had gray-blue eyes, but the glint was right—that mix of arrogant humor and lively curiosity. Even in a basement cell in Bangkok, he’d had that glint. But she couldn’t be sure from just the picture. Could the man in the basement have chosen this identity because they were lookalikes?

Rajini had told her flat out that he wasn’t a teacher at the university. That she knew it for a fact. That there was proof. Maxwell said that he did teach there.

Who was lying?

The answer to that question seemed massively important. It would tell her everything about who to trust.

The Bangkok International University wasn’t far. According to the website, Maxwell was teaching in a weekend program. His Saturday class began at three. Less than an hour.

She’d get the truth. She was done being handled. Doner than done.

Bangkok International University was located in Dusit, the government area of Bangkok, which was lusher and less cramped than the business and tourist-oriented areas. The central school building was a large, mostly glass structure with colorful art showing through from the inside, like candy in a case.

School was in session, with students from all over bustling around. She asked directions and finally made it to a shiny, modern lecture hall where adjunct professor Peter Maxwell was to be guest lecturing. She raced up the steps, hoping to catch the real Maxwell in action. She arrived at the doors just in time to face a wall of students—mostly women—coming out.

“Is Professor Maxwell in there?” she asked one woman.

“No. We have a TA this week.”

“Is he sick?”

The woman shrugged. “They said he won’t be in.”

Mildly helpful. She thanked her and went up to a pair of women. “Did Professor Maxwell say anything about where he’s gone? I really need to find him.”

“Hah,” one of them said. “Get in line.” She had a French accent.

“Others are looking for him?” Laney asked.

“Who doesn’t want to run into the good professor?” the French woman said.

Laney stuffed down the flare of possessiveness. She pointed at the book in the French woman’s hand. “May I?”

The French woman handed it over.

Laney pointed at the back picture. “Does Professor Maxwell have different glasses from these?” Laney asked.

“Yeah. Less frame. Less big and clunky.”

“Goldish? Thin gold on the sides but mostly glass?”

“Yeah,” the first said.

Like the ones worn by the man in the cell. She was getting a bad feeling about all this.

“What color are his eyes?”

“Have you met him or not?” the American said. “‘Cause if you’d met him, you’d know.”

“Blue-ish silver,” the French woman told her. “Quite piercing.”

“Is his hair longer now than in this picture?”

“A tiny bit longer,” the American said. “Tucked behind his ears. Why?”

Goosebumps climbed the back of her neck. “I just need to figure out if I’ve met him,” she said. “Does he wear a white T-shirt under his button shirt sometimes?”

The French girl smiled. “You have met him, my friend.”

And Rajini had lied.

Maxwell did work at the university. And a man chained up in a cell was not comfortable. She felt her world shift off its axis.

Her best friend. A liar. She’d opened her heart to Rajini.

“Does he have any kind of specialty?” Laney asked.

“Syntax, I’d say,” the American said.

“Phonetics, too,” the French girl said.

“He kind of does it all,” the American said. “We’ve been mostly talking about slang and jargon in this class, markers that set people apart. And the unsaid.”

The French girl nodded. “He has many controversial opinions on the unsaid.”

“Like what?” Laney asked, walking alongside them, still reeling.
Her best friend.

“Linguistic microexpressions,” the French girl said. “It’s a kind of language tic that can spread…” She went on, and Laney nodded like it made sense to her. Some of his work, they told her, had forensic applications.

“He can arrest me any day of the week,” the American said.

Laney thanked them and headed over to the university bookstore, mind racing. Obviously the man in the cell was Maxwell.

I’m absolutely sure that he doesn’t work there. I saw proof. Do you need to see proof? Is that what you need?

Rajini had lied. Or was she being lied to herself? But then, what was the proof?

And if the Shinsurins were lying about this, what else?

She thought about calling the police about Maxwell, but how could she be sure the Shinsurins didn’t own the cops the way Rolly had?

Fear crawled up her neck. Cut off from her brother. Unable to trust the Shinsurins. Alone in this far-off place.

Except for Maxwell.

Crazy to think of Maxwell as her sole ally in this place, considering what he’d done, but he was her people. He’d never technically lied to her. And he seemed to care about her safety. They were both in trouble. Both with somebody to run from. She highly doubted he’d return to finish teaching the class.

It was there that she got the idea to break him out.

It was Saturday. Without access to the bank, she didn’t have enough money to go on the run—she didn’t even have enough for a train ticket, but if she broke Maxwell out, he would help her—she felt sure of it. He’d owe her. It was the perfect solution.

A good eight hours before she could even think about going down.

She bought his newest book. Yeah, that was definitely him on the dust flap. She sat on a couch in the student lounge and started reading. If she hadn’t known the author and the man in the cage were one in the same, she’d sure know it from reading the book; even the sentences sounded like him. He seemed to know everything about words and the way different people used them.

He went on for pages about the sentence “The car ran over the dog” without ever talking about what it really meant—a dog, dead in the street, which was a very sad thing. It seemed a kind of madness to her, to obsess over how the sounds all go together and not the meaning. She didn’t agree with it, and it made her excited to discuss it with him. And just to see him.

She wouldn’t be leaving without him this time.

Anders sat in the lobby reading the Bangkok Post. Whenever he utilized a newspaper as a prop, he thought of his father, who would sometimes joke around by putting a hole in whatever newspaper he was reading and looking through it at young Anders. An eye in the newspaper. Hilarity ensued.

These days, scrolling through a smartphone was more naturalistic, and it allowed you to reposition yourself, as if for better reception or light. But sometimes Anders genuinely wanted to read the paper. What’s more, he was feeling happy and confident about finding Macmillan now that he had a photo. And a name.

Hitters coming up in the business disdained anything scholarly, as if ignorance was impressive. As if the mind had nothing to do with the gun. Fine with Anders. It meant less serious competition.

He’d gotten his research chops in college, and he sharpened them every chance he could.

It was thanks to his research chops that he now had the identity of Macmillan, aka Dr. Peter Maxwell, PhD.

Though the name he’d used with the police after the San Juliano train bombing was Peter Macmillan Maxwell. At which point his identity had split in two—Macmillan and Maxwell. He now had current photographs of him, courtesy of his good friend, Google.

It was beautiful.

Maxwell was in Bangkok for a guest teaching post. Linguistics. That would be how he hunted. Speech. Words. Anders almost hated to kill him.

Almost.

And he’d seen the man just the day before, wandering through the lobby. Right there. Macmillan hadn’t come through for a day or so, but he’d be back. Meanwhile, he’d start discreetly questioning the staff. Somebody would be able to point him in the right direction.

It was as good as over. Simple point and shoot now.

She stopped at the drugstore on the way home and picked out a tall bottle of water and some hydrogen peroxide for his wounds, then she grabbed a protein bar, a chocolate bar, and a pack of paper clips. In the movies guys always used paperclips to pick locks. If those didn’t work, she’d damn well find the leg iron keys.

She grabbed a box of condoms. Just in case.

Ten minutes later she was pushing through the revolving door of the Des Roses lobby, only to spot Niwat and Jao standing at the desk, looking sternly in her direction.

Hellbuckets.

The two of them beelined over to her and pulled her into the lobby waiting area. “Where were you?” Niwat asked.

“Shopping.” She lifted her bag in answer, then quickly lowered it when she thought about what she had in there. “What’s wrong?”

“We were worried,” Jao said. “Considering your visitor.”

“Right,” she said, blood racing. “So unbelievable.”

Niwat seemed to be studying her bag a little too closely; she looked down and was horrified to realize you could see through it. Maxwell’s book was partly visible…as was the side of the condom box.

Casually, she twisted the bag by the handle, sure they could read her nervousness. “I just wanted…chocolate and stuff.”

“You know you can always ask the kitchen for anything,” Jao said. He was the biggest of the brothers; he had a crew cut and a wild passion for Thai boxing. “You should stay close to the hotel. Just for now.”

Her heart pounded. Were they being…too intense? She didn’t know Thai culture enough to get nuances like that. “You’re probably right.”

“If you go out again, one of us would be happy to escort you,” Niwat said.

“You guys have done so much,” she said. “I don’t want to drag you all over.”

“It’s no problem,” Niwat said.

“Even if it’s bra shopping?”

This got them tongue-tied. She put all the sunniness she could muster into her smile as she began to back away. “Just kidding. Later, gators.”

She could not get into the elevator fast enough. With shaky hands she stabbed the button for the third floor five times. She tried to keep her sunny face but her heart was banging clear out of her chest, and it seemed like forever until the doors closed.

She just needed to last through the night until she could grab Maxwell and get out. It was dangerous to set off without her passport and money, but a partner would make all the difference. She wouldn’t be alone.

Her show went off normally, aside from her nervousness, which she felt like everybody could see.

At one in the morning, Laney finished packing up as much of her life as she could into her sturdy new backpack: expired passport, toiletries, money, the condoms, hats, and whatever else she could think of.

She slipped into the lobby and up to the front desk, thankful no Shinsurins were around. A few patrons sat around in the lobby. The night guards stood watch at the door. Would they let her out? She decided to sneak out the pool exit.

She chatted with Sirikit until she saw her chance to grab the key to the liquor hatch.

Minutes later she was down on LL2, slipping past the guards’ room. They were asleep when she passed, thank goodness. She headed deeper in, and quietly let herself into the cell room. There he was, stretched out on his side on the far end of his cage, hair tousled. They’d given him a brown shirt.

“Maxwell!” she whispered.

He sat up—stiffly.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “I couldn’t believe when I heard you were still here. I should’ve waited to make sure the hairpins worked out.” She grabbed the keys from the hook.