13
Slater stepped into a musty hallway with a total absence of natural light.
Except for the soft glow of a dining room at the end of the tunnel.
He peered through the doorway and noticed the familiar polished wooden tables and carpeted benches reminiscent of the traditional Nepali teahouses. They’d be staying at similar spots all the way along the trail. Violetta had told them that much, at least.
There was the soft aroma of warm food, but no-one in sight. No guests. No owner. No-one to greet them.
But it was overcast and foggy and moody, and the owners probably figured there’d be nobody stopping by for the rest of the day.
So then why do you smell food?
Instinct told him, Bait.
To make it feel legitimate.
But he’d sent King a message by going first, and he wasn’t yet ready to stoop to that level of paranoia. Now it was there, though. The doubt. Festering in the back of his mind. Creeping up on him, making him reconsider everything.
If it’s not Perry who snatched Raya, it’s the porter.
And if it’s the porter, then the whole trekking company can’t be trusted.
Had Violetta used the same company as Parker? Could she have been that stupid?
Slater doubted it.
But even if she hadn’t, he figured the staff knew each other. They probably communicated back and forth every now and then. They would have each other’s line.
To organise.
To coordinate.
To bribe.
Slater spun in the shadows just as Utsav backed off a few steps.
Separating himself from… what?
Slater sensed movement to his left. He wasn’t sure how, because there was nothing but an open doorway leading into dark musty living quarters, but there was something darker in there. A shadow. A silhouette.
When the guy lunged at him, Slater was ready.
He caught the knife hand as it protruded from the doorway and twisted at the hips and used the attacker’s momentum to hurl him on past. The hallway was tight, and the guy crashed into the opposite wall at full speed, which seems mildly disorienting in the movies but in reality can break bone with a single awkward impact. So the guy winced and froze up for a second as he crashed off the wood, his shoulder and elbow probably cracked, and Slater took the opportunity to throw his own elbow like a World Series pitcher swinging for the fences.
It connected with the force of a bat, and the accuracy of … well, an elbow.
Right on the jaw.
All that carnage took an eternity to process in Slater’s mind, but in reality it played out in a second and a half. There was the throw, the bounce, and the elbow, and suddenly the guy was out cold on the teahouse floor with a broken jaw, violently twitching in unconsciousness. He was small but strong, with a weathered face and light brown skin. Probably Nepali.
Slater twisted on the spot and pointed down and said, ‘Who the fuck is that, Utsav?’
The guide kept backing up, horror spread across his face.
But he couldn’t take his eyes off the unconscious guy.
So it wasn’t the horror of being ambushed.
It was the horror of the planned ambush failing.
Slater took a step forward, and Utsav turned and ran into the darkness. The guide cried out something in Nepali as he fled, his voice shaking.
Outside, Slater heard the faint commotion of a brawl.
King.
But he couldn’t concentrate on that any longer, because there was a cacophony of movement behind him.
Coming from the dining area.
Coming from the light.
So he spun and saw three men roughly the same size materialise in the doorway, backlit by the yellow glow. They were small like the first guy, and they were armed. All three had knives. Same as the first. Little sharp switchblades, like box cutters, capable of severing an artery with the slightest flick of the wrist.
Probably real hard to get your hands on a firearm all the way out here.
Slater’s heart rate shot through the roof, and he thought, Forwards, or backwards?
Easy answer.
He charged.
14
King had his hands on the guy before either he or the driver could react.
The silhouette turned out to be a man, maybe five-foot-five and a hundred pounds lighter than King, but he had a knife. He swung hard, narrowly missing King’s abdomen, sending King’s pulse skyrocketing.
King smashed the bones in the guy’s knife hand to pieces with a stabbing front kick, then bundled him up like he weighed nothing and bounced his skull off the wooden corner of the building with a double-handed shove. Like the sound of a coconut hitting concrete as his skull rattled, the guy went down in a crippled heap.
King twisted on the spot and pointed down and said, ‘Who is that?’
The driver didn’t respond.
‘No English, right?’ King said.
The guy stood there sporting a guilty half-smile. Like there was something up his sleeve. Like he honestly didn’t expect to fail. He was being confronted by a six-foot-three two-hundred-and-twenty pound hulk of a man who’d just smashed one of his friends into unconsciousness, but he still seemed barely fazed.
Then sharp headlight beams lit up the fog, coming in off the main trail. Two, then four, then six.
Three sets.
Three cars.
They surged down the uneven road between the husks of long-abandoned buildings in the ghost town King suddenly realised they’d been led to like flies to shit. They were big vehicles, built to handle the trail, and they must have been keeping a respectable distance the whole time. Then again, the driver had spent half the journey on the phone, babbling in Nepali, and any number of those calls could have been to the backup crew, coordinating logistics, working out where the best place would be to silence their unwanted guests.
Evidently, it was here.
King hovered by the corner of the building, keenly aware that he wasn’t armed, debating whether or not to run for—
Then the SUVs arrived, one by one, and three men got out of each truck. Nine total. Six had knives. Three had their fists.
Probably real hard to get your hands on a firearm all the way
