“Have I?”
“Your English. You speak it like a native, and your accent is Middle America.”
“Californian, actually.”
“Really?”
“Hollywood High.”
“You’re kidding.” Nate pointed at his chest. “Santa Monica High.”
“Samo? Beach brat, huh?”
Nate nodded. “When I could be. So you were born in the States?”
Daeng took in a long breath. “No.” He paused before adding, “Moved there when I was young. Came back here after high school.”
There was obviously more to the story, but Nate knew Daeng had shared all he wanted to for now.
As they reentered the temple grounds, Daeng said, “Feel free to have a look around, or you can wait in the classroom. If you need me, I’ll be in that center building over there.” He pointed at a group of small buildings beyond the stupa near the river, then gave Nate a wai and walked off.
With little else to do, Nate decided to do a little exploring.
He was standing just inside the temple, his eyes fixed on the golden Buddha that dominated the room, when he heard someone enter behind him.
“Peaceful around here, isn’t it?” Quinn said.
“It is,” Nate agreed. “I can understand the appeal.”
“Can you?”
“Of course I can.”
“And yet, you’re here to take it away from me.” Before Nate could respond, Quinn said, “This isn’t the place for us to talk.”
Without further comment, he turned and walked outside.
They ended up back in the classroom. Quinn closed the door this time, and once they were both sitting at one of the student desks, he said, “Tell me.”
“Four days ago, I got a call-” Nate stopped himself. “ You got the call. I returned it.”
“From who?”
“Peter.”
Quinn nodded as if he’d expected the answer.
“He wanted to talk to you, of course,” Nate said, “but I told him you were unavailable, and if he had something to discuss, he should tell me.”
“He must have liked that.”
Nate smirked. “Oh, yeah. It definitely put him in a good mood. He said he needed to talk to you and only you. He had questions about an old case.”
“Mila Voss.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t tell me that right away. Not until after I explained you were on a, um, sabbatical, and reaching you was not easy. That’s when he insisted I find you, and tell you he wants to know why Mila Voss is still alive.”
Quinn looked over at the wall, his expression unreadable.
“Since I didn’t know where you were, I contacted Orlando,” Nate said. Orlando was Quinn’s girlfriend and sometimes partner. “She was reluctant at first to say anything. When I told her what Peter wanted, she said almost the same thing you did-‘But Mila Voss is dead.’ Only when she said it, I could tell she thought it was true. You, not so much.”
Quinn hesitated, then said, “How is she?”
“Worried about you.”
“She said that?”
“She didn’t have to.”
Quinn fell silent for a second. “Where was Mila seen?”
“Peter didn’t say. Only that if I didn’t find you as soon as possible, things could get very uncomfortable very fast.”
Quinn’s head drooped, and Nate thought he heard him whisper something. A curse, perhaps.
“Who is she?” Nate asked. It was something he’d been wondering since he’d talked to Peter. He’d asked Orlando, too, but she wouldn’t tell him. She did finally say that Quinn was somewhere in Thailand, but she didn’t know where specifically. She only had the name of a woman in Bangkok-Christina-and a code phrase that would let the woman know it was all right for her to tell Nate where Quinn was staying.
Instead of answering Nate’s question, Quinn said, “Do you have your phone?”
“Of course.”
“Get Peter on the line.”
CHAPTER 6
Most mornings when Quinn had woken during the past few months, his only thoughts were of the classes he would be teaching that day. He wished it was the same this particular morning.
The previous fall, his work as a cleaner had nearly caused the deaths of his mother and his sister. The safeguards he’d put in place, the firewalls he thought he’d built between himself and them, had all failed. If it weren’t for his quick action and that of some of his associates-most notably Nate acting as bodyguard for Quinn’s sister, Liz-his mother and sister would have died. Nate had been shot in the process, and nearly died himself.
The realization that his work could so affect the ones he loved shattered the illusion of the life he imagined he’d created. He became mentally paralyzed, unsure if he could ever return to the dangerous life he was so good at, especially if it meant the innocents he cared about could be harmed.
For two months he did nothing but hole up at his house in Los Angeles. He returned no calls, pursued no new jobs. The easy assignments he’d already committed to, he gave to Nate.
It was a visit from Orlando that finally shook him loose.
“You don’t have to do this anymore,” she told him. “But you also don’t have to make any decisions now. You have the luxury of time. Take as much as you want. I think you should go someplace unfamiliar, where you can clear your mind. If you want, I can suggest a few, and use some of my contacts to line something up.”
He thought about it overnight, and when he woke the next morning with her in his arms, he said, “I want.”
He wandered for a few weeks after that, first visiting his mother in Minnesota, then spending a week with his sister in Paris as they continued to try and rebuild a relationship that had been broken for so long. After that he headed to Thailand, where the mysterious Christina had sent him to Wat Doi Thong.
In the first few months at the temple, he’d continued to have the same dream every night-though dream was probably not the right term. It was more like a sleeping memory. A hospital room in London. Nate asleep on the bed, recovering from his wound. Liz sitting beside him, holding his hand, then turning to look at Quinn who had entered a few moments earlier.
“What?” she said in the dream, and in the memory.
He took a step forward. “How…how’s he doing?”
Liz held his gaze for a second. “He was awake for thirty minutes. The doctors said that’s a good sign.”
In the memory, they talked about Nate-a neutral topic, less painful. But in the dream they would skip ahead, and he would find himself standing beside his sister as she asked, “Who are you?”
The question hurt more than she could have possibly realized. His fault, not hers. He’d hidden his true life from his family. Hell, he’d barely talked to Liz since she was a kid. He’d thought it was the right thing to do. He’d thought it would be best for her. But now it seemed so pointless, years wasted, the bond they once had destroyed. He wished there was a way to return to the relationship they’d had before, but as good as he was at visualizing all the scenarios in his work, he couldn’t see the way back to that. “I…I just wanted to…I thought…I thought I was
