Off the Edge (The Associates) (24 page)

“The night guards!” she whispered.

“They’ll be drowsy,” he said.

They ran through the lower level maze.

You could hear a mobile phone ringtone as they neared the room. One of the guards was stirring, the other fast asleep. A man lay on the floor, cuffed to a pipe. They hurried on.

Minutes later, they were emerging out the liquor hatch into the balmy haze of early morning. Shouts echoed around the neighborhood.

“This way.” He pointed. They set off running.

“No Sawadee Palace?”

“Too much heat,” he said.

They headed up the back streets toward the canopied entrance of a vegetable market, closed for the night.

“Through here,” Maxwell said, pulling her around the sawhorse barrier over the protests of a vegetable seller setting up shop. They raced through the narrow lane between tents. “Out here,” Maxwell whispered. They snuck behind a generator and slipped out the side, onto a small, dark street.

“Walk normally, but keep to the shadows,” he said.

It was hard to walk normally when all she wanted to do was run, but she trusted Maxwell. His shirt hung open, and his chest glistened with sweat, rising and falling as he breathed.

“You used to have a white T-shirt,” she said.

“You know how white shows stains.”

He wouldn’t have made the joke if he could see the blood on him. But he had a point—thank goodness the material was dark.

On they went. One block, then another. He seemed to be limping. She eyed his boots. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m
fine
,” he whispered. “Smile.”

She smiled at a man pulling aside the gates of a café.

They turned onto another street. Two motorbikes buzzed by. A few cars zoomed up and down. People on the early shifts, she thought. The entryway lights of a massive apartment complex flickered off as the rosy sky brightened.

“That old blue Mercedes heading this way,” Maxwell muttered. “It keeps showing up. Probably Rolly’s guys.”

Pulse racing, she bowed her head and turned her eyes discreetly to a car with smoked-glass windows.

“Don’t look! Good God, stop looking so alert.”

“Stop looking
alert
?” She felt madly, painfully alert. How could she not be? Rolly’d had her. She’d killed Harken with a hammer. And her brother…

“Think of something else.” Maxwell said. “I can believe they’ve found us.”

“Rolly always has good help,” she said.

“They’ll be waiting for backup,” he said casually, as if to model the mood he wanted out of her. “Stay cool.”

He didn’t understand: she couldn’t just disconnect like that.

“If they think we see them, they’ll come out after us,” he added.

The car slowed, blocking the vehicles behind it. Honks filled the muggy morning.

“Not good,” Maxwell muttered. “See that alley? Get ready to dart in.” Then, “Now!” They darted into the alley and ran. They turned onto another street, then another, heading into smaller, more out-of-the-way lanes with uneven sidewalks and shabbier storefronts, all still gated against the night.

Maxwell stopped in front of a rusty gate and guided her into the shadowy corner. “Be small.” He crouched and started fussing with the lock. Laney peered inside at what appeared to be an abandoned shop, nothing more than a gaping garage-like stall, empty except for tables and crates stacked in the back. Maxwell swore, and then he smashed the rusted old lock with the butt of his gun and lifted the gate a couple of feet. They scooted under. Once they were inside he pulled it back down.

“Back here.” He led her to the back of the space, where he arranged the crates into a small wall. They hunkered down behind them in the dark.

Laney leaned up against the concrete block wall. “I’ll never be able to repay you for this. For everything. Two times now—”

“Don’t,” he said softly. “You don’t have to.”

“No, I was going to die back there. A death worse than…”

“Than death?”

“Yeah,” she whispered.

“A death worse than death. You’ve been spending too much time with that Rolly.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I know.”

She checked in her backpack and almost wanted to cry when she saw Amy in there, coffee mug, dirt, and fragile stalk still intact. Amy the fighter. Amy had survived the trip.

“Got a phone in there?”

She handed over her phone. He set to taking the back off and pulling out the battery, then he put it back together and made a call. There he sat, wounded and fierce and magnificent beside her, conversing in half sentences and grunts the way you do with somebody you know very well.

She peered out at the street through a gap in the small wall of crates. No doubt Maxwell had intended for there to be a gap. He thought five moves ahead on everything.

Traffic had picked up now that the sun was up, and the air was threaded with diesel, curry, and incense. People walked by now and then, most in Western clothes, but you saw the occasional splash of orange robes or a brightly colored sarong wrapped around a person’s waist.

Her mind felt electric with crisscrossing threads of thought: her brother in trouble or worse. Rolly out of jail and after her. The Shinsurins. And had Rajini been in on it?

“Rajini saved me,” she said when Maxwell was off. “We were friends in the States and she helped me when I needed it most. Why would she save me just to betray me?”

“How long were you friends?”

“Just a few weeks, but…” Shivers crept over her. “No way was it all arranged, if that’s what you’re getting at. No way was she playing me from the start.”

He looked down and started texting. “She was, Laney. The Shinsurins work with your ex. Think about it.”

Thinking about it made her feel sick. She’d poured her heart out to Rajini—she’d confided in her.

Maxwell shifted his feet as he typed, moving them carefully one way, then another, brow furrowed. At one point he winced.

“Your feet—”

“I’m fine.” He shut off the phone.

She didn’t know what to do with this man who seemed to think words could cover everything, this man who lay injured on cell floors making jokes about how many stars the hotel should get instead of saying,
Help me. Hold my hand. It hurts.

“All that jerky attitude in the basement. You could’ve told me what you were doing. You could’ve let me in.”

He gave her a look.

“And I know he’s not dead,” she said. “My brother’s not dead.”

He just squinted at the half-ripped down Orangina poster on the concrete wall opposite them.

“I bet you anything Rolly did some computer shenanigans where he took over the account from Charlie and locked him out. Maybe he’s been fake emailing to Charlie just like he’s been fake emailing with me. Maybe Charlie’s out there thinking
, this doesn’t sound like Emmaline.“

“That’s one scenario.”

“
One scenario
,” she repeated. “Thanks a lot, Devilwell. I wasn’t sure if that was one scenario, so that’s real helpful.”

“I won’t insult you by telling you that’s what I think. If you want a companion who will say everything just the way you want, I’d suggest a ventriloquist’s dummy.” He pulled the back off again. “Though I can’t recommend them in firefights.”

“He’s alive, dammit.”

“Laney—”

“Don’t bother,” she snapped. “You like a precise word. Like dead. Can’t get more precise than dead.”

“No, you can’t.” He whispered this like it stung. It surprised her; he seemed so impenetrable to her with his hard fortress and his cool humor. She had the urge to tear his walls down, to get inside. That man she’d connected with at the night bazaar hadn’t been fake. Had he?

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“You could be tracked. I don’t see anything obvious, but…” he replaced the back. “Stay there.” He crept away from their post behind the crates and slid through the shadows along the wall to the gate. When a truck passed, he hurled the phone onto its bed.

Her phone. Gone. Just like that. She hugged her knees to her chest, trying to blot out the sound of the hammer connecting with Harken’s head, the way the vibrations had traveled up her arm as his skull gave way with a crunch. She’d taken a life. And her brother might be dead, her home was gone, her best friend had been her enemy all along. All exploded in a flash of violence.

“I hated that phone anyways,” she said when he came back. “I didn’t need that phone.” And then she began to laugh. It wasn’t even funny, and here she was laughing like a lunatic.

The next thing she knew, she was sobbing—great, heaving, all-consuming sobs.

She felt strong arms wrap around her. “Laney.”

She pushed her face into his neck as he pulled her in tight. “I’m sorry,” She sobbed into his solid frame.

“No, it’s okay. It’s okay.” He held her tightly, rubbing circles on her back. It felt comforting to be held by him, to have him rub her back. Just a stupid thing like that. “Shhh,” he said.

“It’s more than one scenario,” she blurted out. “It’s my brother.”

“I know,” he whispered into her hair, tightening his hold, rocking her slightly. “You’re right.”

“He could be alive.”

“Yes.”

“Why can’t you say so?”

Such a long silence passed, she wasn’t sure he heard. Then, “I don’t want to give you false hope.”

“He might be alive. How is that false hope if we don’t know?”

“You’re right, that’s just me,” he whispered. “Just me. Bottom line is we don’t know.”

Just me.
She tried to imagine Maxwell full of hope for something; she found she couldn’t. “Sounds like you had some experience with false hope.”

He said nothing.

“Tell me,” she said. “Let me in.”

“Don’t,” he said simply.

“You have to let me in.”

“No, you have to trust me,” he said.

“How can I trust you if you won’t let me in?”

“This is not the time,” he said.

“This is exactly the time—”

He pulled away, finger at his lips. Had somebody found them? He put his attention back to the front.

A ratcheting sound. The gate. Somebody out there.

Her blood raced.

He put his lips to her hair. “Breathe.”

The sound stopped. There was shouting. Then nothing. So they’d only pulled it up a little bit and then left.

She squeezed her eyes shut as the moments ticked on.

“It’s okay,” he whispered after a bit. “Somebody’s out searching the neighborhood.”

“What are we going to do?”

“My people are coming. That’s who I called.” He pulled the magazines out of the guns—hers, the one with a silencer, and the one he’d taken from Harken. Just one bullet between all three.

“Crap,” she whispered.

“You can get a good deal of mileage from an empty gun.” He was animated, alert. “Tell me more about Rolly. He’s military?”

“Army Major. Then he went into military contracting. Moving parts and solvents. What’s going on? What’d he do?”

“Let’s just say, he’s moving some very dangerous parts and solvents.” He kept an eye out front, quizzing her about Rolly, his guys, and his travel habits. He drew a picture in the dirty floor with a nail and asked if she’d ever seen any such tattoos on Rolly’s guys. She’d seen one of them, a clawed snake.

She knew what he was doing: he was keeping her out with all these questions. Staying on the surface, but she wouldn’t believe that man from the first night was an act. She wanted that man back. She meant to get him back.

A dog barked outside the gate and Laney stiffened. Soon there were two dogs, maybe three dogs.

“Strays,” Maxwell whispered.

“Strays telling everybody in the neighborhood we’re in here,” she whispered back.

“Dogs bark,” he squeezed her hand. “At cats, at rats.”

“And people.” The barking grew louder.

“Don’t let them smell your fear,” he whispered.

“How am I supposed to do that when they won’t shut up? They’re causing my fear.”

“Take control of your thoughts—take it back from those dogs.”

“Right.”

The barking kept on, biting into her nerves, growing more and more frenzied, telling the world they were there.

She shut her eyes. “I can’t.”

Footsteps. A sudden car honk made her nearly jump clear out of her skin.

“All just sounds,” he whispered. More footsteps. The barking calmed, then started back up. Maxwell tipped the gun up. “All just sounds.”

“We have to drive them off.”

“That’ll make it worse.”

“We can’t just sit here.”

“We can and we will.” He rested a heavy hand on her arm and fixed on her eyes. “The dogs’ vocal cords vibrate, sending pressure waves through the air,” he said coolly. “Nothing more. You understand?”

She nodded.
Waves.

“If you make it into parts, it’s easier to deal with. Sound alone can’t hurt you.”

Something clicked into place, then. “That’s what you do,” she said.

“What?”

“You rob the meaning out of things by cracking them into pieces.”

He twisted up his lips, as if amused, an expression that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Cracking things into pieces lets you understand more.”

“Maybe so, but that’s not what you’re up to. I think you chop things up to control them. It’s what you did in your book. And with these dogs. Nothing but waves, my ass.”

A glint appeared in his eye. “So I chop them into bunk designed to hornswoggle folks, you mean?”

“Your jokes. All your words and your jokes, they keep you on the surface. You pretend like there’s nothing underneath, but guess what?” She jabbed his chest with her finger. “Guess what?”

He wrapped his fingers around hers, eyes dangerous. “What?”

“There
is
something underneath.”

He drew her close and whispered into her ear, “Are you putting that in your one-star review?” His lips caressed the shell of her ear as he spoke, sending sparks all through her. “You can’t know how I’m looking forward to reading it.”

“I will write it,” she said, breath going shallow. “‘Cause it’s not enough for me. I’m a dissatisfied customer, Devilwell.”

“Dissatisfied?” He tightened his hand on her finger and pulled her closer. “In every way?”