Chapter 3
THREE
This was not how it was supposed to turn out.
Chloe hugged her knees to her chest, watching Skeet work on the fire. She’d slept in worse places—bombed-out buildings in Syria, abandoned bunkers in Afghanistan, overcrowded refugee camps where the smell of human suffering hung like fog. But this felt different. Worse.
Maybe because she’d never left a colleague behind before.
Rain drummed against the canvas. Each drop found its way through the jungle canopy to splatter against their makeshift shelter. Five hours of hiking through terrain that fought every step. Yet it felt like eternity since they’d fled the burning village.
Their refuge sat in a natural clearing where ancient trees formed prison walls around them.
Trunks disappeared into darkness above, while vines twisted from branch to branch.
The ground beneath the shelter sloped toward a stream that murmured over stones, the sound a complaint against the oppressive weight of the thick jungle air.
And inside it all, Dr. Tobias’s voice echoed in her memory: Don’t let this story die. His phone sat like a stone in her pocket.
At the fire, Skeet scraped steel against his flint. The sparks caught tinder, and he cupped it in his palms—dry bark shavings and pocket lint—breathing onto the tiny glow. Patient but determined.
She still couldn’t land on how she felt about him pulling her away from the house. Grateful? Angry?
Maybe he’d made the decision she couldn’t.
The fire caught, and he set it on the ground, feeding microscopic twigs to flames no bigger than his thumbnail, building heat grain by grain until larger kindling caught.
“There we go,” he said as the fire crackled to life, casting light across his mud-streaked face. “Nothing like a little ambience to improve the accommodations.”
She took a look at him over the flames. Sure, she’d seen him before—usually at her family’s home whenever Jake wanted to host a cookout. But she could count those times on one hand, and frankly, it had been a hot minute.
Besides, this man was far, far from the tanned guy wearing a T-shirt and board shorts and throwing a frisbee.
This man bore all the marks of the Navy SEAL he’d been. Fierce cheekbones emerged from beneath the grime, and when he glanced up, his green eyes held depths that reminded her of North—that same intensity, that same quiet strength that drew her sister Selah like a magnet.
And suddenly, she got it. The memory of his arm around her waist as he hid her from the Burmese army found her. Maybe she hadn’t hated that.
So right now she’d go with grateful.
“You seem to know this area pretty well.” She pulled her jacket tighter as the temperature dropped with the failing light.
“Nah, I’m just really good at pretending I know what I’m doing.
” He fed another stick to the flames, sparks spiraling up into the humid air.
“Though I have been in Myanmar before. Different circumstances, but the jungle’s pretty much the same everywhere.
Wet, hostile, and full of things that want to kill you. ”
He’d been in Myanmar before? She nearly asked, but he stared at the flame, a faraway look in his eyes, and maybe . . . maybe that wasn’t any of her business.
She didn’t have to be an investigative journalist every minute of the day.
Chai emerged from the jungle carrying an armload of bamboo, water dripping from his dark hair. “Perimeter’s secure. No movement for the last hour.”
“Oh good,” Skeet said with a grin, suddenly back from where he’d been. “We’re officially the only crazy people wandering around the jungle in a monsoon.”
“How bad is the situation?” Chloe gestured toward the darkness beyond their small circle of firelight. “I mean, really?”
Chai set down the bamboo and crouched beside the fire, his weathered face grim in the flickering light.
“The government’s been cracking down on ethnic minorities for decades.
Karen, Shan, Kachin—anyone who doesn’t fall in line with central authority.
” He pulled out a field knife and began splitting bamboo.
“The village you were in today harbors the Karenni. That makes everyone a target.”
“Even civilians?”
“Especially civilians.” Skeet’s voice lost its usual lightness. “Easier to control a population when they’re too terrified to resist.”
Her chest went tight, thinking of Mrs. Nu Paw.
“Okay, so now that we’re all nice and cozy,” Skeet said, arranging larger pieces of wood around the fire’s perimeter, “mind telling me what you were actually doing in that village? Because Jake’s message, passed on from Selah, was pretty light on details. Something about investigating sick kids?”
Chloe pulled out her notebook, pages damp but still legible.
“It started six months ago in Chiang Mai. I was covering refugee stories for various publications when this aid worker approached me. Said families were reporting strange illnesses in border villages—children developing tremors, then respiratory disease, and finally, heart conditions.”
“Okay, so far this sounds like a tragic but normal third-world medical story. What made you think it was worth risking your neck over?”
She pulled her jacket tight. What she wouldn’t give for her sultry apartment.
“It was Tobias, really. He kept seeing kids brought in with the same neurological issues. He decided it had to be something they were ingesting, but their parents weren’t getting the same severe symptoms. Some complained of headaches, fatigue—but they chalked it up to the heat or hard labor.
It was the children who were developing tremors, losing cognitive function.
Tobias thought it was a dosage issue—children’s bodies can’t process even small amounts of certain alkaloids the way adults can.
We traced it to a pattern—free medical supplies would arrive in a village, families would use them for a few weeks, then children would start getting sick. ”
Skeet paused in his fire tending. “What kind of medical supplies?”
“We thought it might have been malaria powder, but that didn’t make sense. And then we wondered if it might be some candy they gave the children. But none of the children reported any candy. Frankly, we even thought it might be the curry seasoning.”
The fire popped, sending sparks into the humid air. Chai looked up sharply from his bamboo preparation. “Curry seasoning?”
“Yeah. It came in packets with rice and other foodstuffs. But even that wasn’t right, because everyone ate that.”
“Well, that’s not ominous at all,” Skeet muttered.
“I know. It seemed to be weirdly linked to the aid packages.”
The joking tone vanished completely from Skeet’s voice. “Someone’s poisoning kids through food aid?”
“That’s what Dr. Tobias suspected. He’d been documenting cases across the region, trying to identify the toxin. That’s why we went to the village—to document the outbreak, treat children if we could, and collect samples. Food, water, anything that might help identify the toxin.”
“And now he’s dead,” Skeet said quietly.
She recoiled, her breath caught.
He looked at her, suddenly solemn. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. He was a friend. And now . . . the only person who can solve this is gone.”
“Not the only person.” Skeet moved closer, his shoulder brushing hers as he adjusted the fire. “You’re still alive. You have his recordings, his research.”
She nodded.
And then, “You don’t think, I mean . . . was his death an accident?” This from Chai.
She stared at him. “I don’t know. I ate the same thing he did when we went to the village.” She frowned. “Although . . . I didn’t eat Mrs. Pensri’s curry at the hospital. I’ve had it a dozen times and it’s never made anyone sick before. But Tobias was sweating before we even left.”
Chai nodded, stirred the fire. “Do you think someone murdered him?”
Skeet answered before she could. “I think that if there is someone trying to kill children, then . . . I don’t know why they wouldn’t try to stop the good doctor—or you—from finding out how. Or why.”
Her mouth went dry.
Sparks crackled in the air.
“Hey,” Skeet said. “Good thing you’ve got professional bodyguards now. Even if one of them is devastatingly handsome and modest.”
Despite everything, she almost smiled.
“Listen,” he said, getting up and going to his pack. “You said there was someone distributing the aid packages. Got a name?”
“Yes. A Dr. Radi?. Mrs. Nu Paw mentioned him, but I have no idea who he is or . . . how to find him. Apparently, he’s been going to villages and giving out aid packages—medicine, food, seasoning for the curry. And kids are getting sick.”
Chai looked up from his bamboo preparation. “My wife works at a number of medical clinics in Chiang Mai. She might have seen this doctor.”
Chloe’s eyes fixed on him.
“Don’t get excited there, Ace,” Skeet said. “Right now, we stay hidden. Tatmadaw forces patrol these hills looking for refugees.”
“Your fire won’t help.”
“My fire is tiny, and we’re surrounded by bamboo. I promise you, no one can see this. You hungry?” Skeet held up an MRE package from his pack. “Beef stew or chicken with vegetables? Both are equally terrible, but the beef stew has slightly less cardboard flavor.”
“I’m not really—”
“Beef stew it is.” He tore open the package, pulling out the heating element and chemical activator. “Can’t solve international conspiracies on an empty stomach. Trust me, I’ve tried.”
While they waited for the food to heat, Chai constructed a clever water-collection system using bamboo sections and their canvas overhang. Rain funneled into the makeshift containers, providing fresh water that Skeet treated with purification tablets.
“So . . . um . . .” Chloe said, accepting the heated MRE pouch and pressing the warm aluminum against her palms to stop the trembling in her fingers. “How’s Selah doing? Last time I talked to her—”
“She was in a train wreck and running across the country with a known spy?”