East (The Hunt for Alan Martin #2)

Chapter 1

ONE

She had no choice, really.

Chloe Silver picked up her vibrating cell phone and turned it off, slipping it into her cargo-pants pocket.

She didn’t have time for a check-in with her sister.

Sure, she wanted to know how Selah was faring two weeks after a train derailment followed by a crazy off-road adventure in Washington State, but . . .

Well, Selah’s boyfriend, North Gunderson, had rescued her, so probably, yeah, just fine.

And Chloe had her own timeline—

“Miss Chloe! We need to go!” Malai, calling up from where he stood on the street below her guest apartment, his voice rising through the clutter of street sounds of Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand.

Motorcycle engines whining. Vendors hawking their wares in Thai and Burmese.

The occasional blast of a car horn when someone’s patience snapped in the snarled, never-ending gridlock.

Her home base for her current freelance investigation.

“I’m on my way!”

She shoved her last field shirt into the canvas duffel—a beat-up bag that had survived three war zones and a category-five hurricane. Sweat already beaded along her hairline thanks to the sluggish ceiling fan that barely stirred the afternoon heat.

She’d already packed her camera bag—telephoto lens, extra batteries.

Memory cards sealed against the humidity that turned everything to rust. Three years of dangerous assignments had worn the leather strap smooth under her touch.

But the camera did the job. Caught the images that backed up her stories and put her on the map of investigative journalists.

And this time, she hoped to save lives.

Six months. Six months of interviewing grieving families in stifling huts, smoky with incense. Six months of photographing symptoms that made no medical sense.

And this story . . . this story might win her a Pulitzer, if she could get to the bottom of it.

And, of course, live to tell it.

She’d be fine. Just fine.

Don’t think about it.

Diesel exhaust drifted through her apartment window and mixed with the ever-present smell of fish sauce and the scent of the white champaca trees outside her building.

A soft knock, barely audible over the street noise, interrupted her packing.

She opened the door. Malai now stood on the second-story verandah that circled the house.

One of Captain Wong’s Free Burma Rangers, he was shorter than her and looked about twenty.

A lie. He’d been an Fbr for over a decade, since his teens, and knew how to move in and out of the jungle like a panther.

His smile, however, made it easy for him to walk into villages, earn trust. Frankly, she trusted him with her life.

He ate a roti filled with banana and sweetened condensed milk wrapped in paper.

“We’re late.”

“I need to stop by the hospital first.” She shouldered her backpack. “Ten minutes.”

“The captain will not be happy.”

“The captain will understand.” She locked her door, the metal key slippery in her palm. “There’s a boy I need to see.”

She headed along the deck of the Thai house where she sublet the guesthouse apartment. A find, really—in the middle of a busy street, but behind it, a garden filled with bougainvillea, jasmine trees, and a small pool.

Not a terrible place to hide out between her missions for truth.

She caught her landlord, a woman in her mid-seventies, in the garden as she headed down the stairs and called out to her. “I’ll be back in a day or two, Mrs. Saetang.”

The woman stood, nodded under her wide-brimmed hat. “Be safe, Miss Silver.”

Malai’s motorcycle waited outside, the engine ticking as it cooled under a tamarind tree. The vinyl seat burned through her pants as she climbed on, gripping his tactical vest to keep from sliding off as they merged into traffic.

Chiang Mai’s late-afternoon assault hit every sense at once.

Grilling meat from roadside vendors created a haze that made her eyes water.

Engines, horns, shouting voices competed with tinny Thai pop bleeding from shop speakers.

Street vendors called out in sing-song voices—fresh fruit and cell-phone cards for sale to anyone with enough baht.

Children darted between vehicles. Fearless. The kind of confidence that came from growing up in organized chaos.

NGO offices flashed past, air-conditioned lobbies that promised relief from the heat visible through glass doors. Restaurants serving the steady stream of aid workers who made their living caring for refugees along Thailand’s most porous border.

And that was the problem. The latest surge of refugees had come in sick and dying, and no one could figure out why.

Maybe today would be the day.

The regional hospital sat on the town’s outskirts, a concrete building radiating heat like a kiln. Palm trees drooped in the still air, fronds coated with red dust that settled on everything. As they pulled up and she got off the bike, the asphalt felt soft underfoot, melting.

“Wait here,” she said to Malai as she headed toward the door. “This won’t take long.”

She pushed inside the hospital to the scent of antiseptic and floor cleaner, but as she headed into the ward, she caught the underlying reek of human suffering—unwashed bodies, sweat, the sense of despair.

Ceiling fans pushed the heat around instead of providing relief. And the ward’s windows hung open, trying to catch any hint of breeze.

She found six-year-old Kamon in the children’s ward, cross-legged on his narrow bed with a coloring book open on his lap. His dark hair fell across his serious brown eyes. Three weeks ago he’d been dying, fever burning through his small body while his hands shook uncontrollably.

Today? Carefully coloring elephants with new crayons.

“Kamon,” she said softly, her footsteps muffled by the worn linoleum. She spotted a bowl of mangoes—so his grandmother had been here.

“Miss Chloe!” He held up the coloring book, pointing to the elephants, and spoke in Burmese. “I’m making a picture for you.”

A nearby nurse translated for her.

“It’s beautiful, Kamon. Thank you.” She perched on the edge of his bed, the thin mattress compressing under her weight as she waited for the nurse to translate her words. Then, “Are you feeling strong today?”

He nodded.

“That’s wonderful.” She grabbed her camera. “May I take a picture? To show people you’re getting better?”

She captured several shots. Afternoon light streaming through the ward’s windows highlighted his progress from the skeletal figure he’d been weeks ago. Through her lens, color had returned to his cheeks. His eyes held focus instead of the distant confusion that had marked his illness.

“Dr. Tobias says I go home soon. Back to my village.”

Oh, um . . . He must not know that his village had been burned by the Tatmadaw, and she wasn’t going to be the one to tell him. “That’s very good news.”

She packed her camera away, thanked the nurse and headed down the hall. She spotted Dr. Tobias Nnamdi in the lunch room, at a plastic table, with a steaming bowl of curry soup that smelled of coconut milk, lemongrass, galangal, chilies—foundational Thai flavors.

Another perk of living in Thailand.

Sweat beaded on his forehead. His scrubs showed damp patches, and when he looked up, his dark eyes held exhaustion.

Still, he smiled, teeth white against his dark skin.

“Chloe. Perfect timing.” He gestured with his spoon.

“Mrs. Pensri made this for the staff. Her daughter’s one of our recovering patients. She wanted to show gratitude.”

“Smells amazing, but I need to get going.” She glanced out the window to the street, where Malai waited. “I just came in to check on Kamon. He looks better.”

“His recovery gives me hope that we’re starting to understand early-stage treatment.” Tobias took another spoonful, eyes closing briefly as he savored his dinner. He even groaned with culinary pleasure.

Reminded her of her brother, Jake.

“I’m not sure what her secret ingredient is—she says she ran out of her usual spice mix and used one from the aid packages they got at the village. I think she needs to package and sell it.”

He reached into his lab coat and produced a small foil packet, handed her one. “They come in the food aid shipments. She says she uses one per bowl of curry, but I used the whole thing. Delicious.”

“I’ll have to try it.” She pocketed the packet. “Speaking of villages, you should probably know that I’m crossing into Myanmar tonight. Another outbreak, twenty kilometers from the border. Same symptoms. Same pattern.”

Tobias’s spoon stopped halfway to his mouth, curry dripping back into the bowl. “Absolutely not.”

“It’s not your decision.”

“It’s a medical decision. Which makes it exactly my decision.” He set his spoon down, pushed his bowl away, and reached for a cloth to wipe his mouth. “The Tatmadaw has increased patrols in that sector. Three aid workers detained last month.”

The breeze from an oncoming tropical storm swept into the room, mixing with the curry and the cloying smell of hospital cleanser. Her stomach knotted. “The Free Burma Rangers know the territory. They’ve been shuffling medical supplies across that border for years.”

“This isn’t like your other assignments, Chloe. Press credentials won’t help if you’re caught by forces that don’t recognize international law.”

“Children are dying.” Her hands clenched into fists. “Someone’s systematically poisoning remote villages. Nobody with authority knows or cares. If I don’t document what’s happening, who will?”

“Then go through the proper channels—”

“Which will take months while more families get murdered.” She shook her head. “I’ve covered conflicts in worse places than Myanmar. I know how to stay alive.”

“This is different.” Tobias pushed back from the table. “This has gotten personal for you.”

Right. Kamon. Yeah, she’d gotten too attached, but that’s what happened when a six-year-old asked you to save his life. And the life of his sister.

She looked away, her throat tight.