The measure of intelligence is the ability to change. – Albert Einstein

I hope I don’t have to move him. He looks very heavy. – Dao to Thomas

“So, do I get to know anything about this place we're going?” Thomas began hopefully as the pair took their seats in the cockpit. Though Jase could offer little assistance in flying the complicated craft, he preferred not to sit alone in the cabin of a jet for the full twenty or so hours until they reached Bangkok. In truth, any other pilot would have called in backup for such a long flight, but Jase needed Thomas solo for the assignment, and Thomas had always proven more than capable.

“What do you think?” Jase responded sardonically.

“Well,” the pilot continued. “You usually entertain me pretty well up here, and this flight isn't looking promising. Plus, considering that you're flying solo, it might be prudent to give someone an idea of your plans.”

“The problem is, Thomas, as you well know,” Jase uncharacteristically provided the explanation, “that if you know my plans, that knowledge can be used against both you and me. I don't...”

“Do you really think that will happen? Never once in all the years that we've worked together has anyone traced you to me. Do you think they'll start now?”

For a few moments, Jase pondered, and after deliberating, decided to allow a concession.

“I can give you a way to contact me,” Jase allowed. He had ditched his cell phone in a grocery store dumpster in Boston, but he planned to buy a burner at the stopover in Tokyo. “I'll give you the number of my cell phone for a specific purpose. Only if you get wind of the fact that someone is on my tail, you text me the details.”

“What if that saucy brunette calls?” Thomas smirked.

Though Jase understood Thomas's interest, the thought disturbed him. “I’m trying to disengage from Amélie, and she’s more trouble than help right now.”

“Disengage...” Thomas ventured skeptically. “Is that what you call what happened in your apartment? I’m used to seeing women look at you like that, but I’ve never seen you look at a woman that way.”

The misunderstanding flummoxed Jase for several seconds before he realized Thomas’s meaning. “Wait, Nessa?” Jase finally asked incredulously. “Why would you ever call her saucy?”

This time, Thomas seemed confused. “The way she was laying into you, I assumed she had a bit of a temper.”

At these words, Jase laughed out loud. Of course, the word aptly described Amélie, but Nessa? Suddenly, the defiant lift of Nessa's chin and the angry spark in her eye flashed into his mind. From Nessa, they felt like strokes rather than blows. Such a pleasant memory on a serious mission temporarily lifted Jase from his sullen mood.

“I guess I could see that, and you're right. I’m not having much success disengaging from Nessa. I thought you meant my French friend.”

“Her?” This time, Thomas laughed. “I wouldn't have used such a nice word for that woman.”

“You're smarter than you look,” Jase smirked. He did not want to talk about Amélie. He also couldn't afford to talk about Nessa, or even to think about her. How would he focus on logistics if he kept obsessing over their last kiss? Disengage? If only he could.

Twenty hours, he pondered. Such a long flight. Could he really go twenty hours without thinking of Nessa? Suddenly, the cockpit seemed confining, as did the companion. Since he couldn't keep his mind off of Nessa, he opted instead to try his hand at sleep after all. Maybe when he awoke, his adrenaline would have settled, and he could think more objectively about the road before him. “And I think I know just the word you mean,” agreed Jase, rising abruptly. “I'm gonna catch a nap so I can function in the morning. Wake me if you need me to come keep you awake. I would prefer that the plane didn’t crash.”

Though Thomas shot Jase a sour look, Jase refused to respond. Instead, he pretended he hadn’t noted the silence reproach, plodding directly to the plush recliner in the rear of the plane. Within a few minutes, he had succumbed to slumber. Once he awoke, he would find little rest for far too long.

For the first time in months, Jase slept hard, so hard that he remembered the stiffness of waking as he eased into the awareness of dreams. Jase had not dreamed of Belize or Felicity or menacing firearms in almost a month, but tonight, his dream bore marked similarities to his past dreams. Similar, he realized, but not identical. The night's dream differed in some significant details. He could distinguish a tropical-looking sky, but the smell seemed wrong. Less ocean breeze and more city smog. Smog in Belize? Impossible. Also, the cry of the seagull sounded more like squeaking tires, and the velvet sand did not caress his feet, it scratched mercilessly along his back. Why did the grey sky hover so closely overhead?

“Wake up, mister,” a high-pitched voice chipped away at Jase's slumber. “They come back. I just see them on two streets over.”

Though Jase tried to concentrate on the words, he couldn't burst through the bubble of unawareness. The foreign accent and grammatical mistakes should have clarified the person's origin, but Jase could not discern the details. He missed Felicity’s usual warm tone or Nessa’s sultry purr. The child-like squeak pricked like a dripping faucet.

The usual terror did not appear before him, but a new terror materialize as his physical vision began to operate. In his other dreams, the nightmare eyes had preceded Felicity’s bullets, but the order seemed all wrong this time. Jase had already felt the ocean breeze, he had already heard the voice, though slightly altered. Why, then, had corporeal orbs suddenly approached him, intense and vivid in their broken hopes? So like Meg's. As they came nearer, Jase stumbled backwards until his hand grasped a cold stone. Was this to be his tomb, yet another metamorphosis of his torment? He groped wildly at the wall behind him searching for an escape, sure that he would find none.

All at once, he encountered, not cold stone and not the emptiness of a doorway, but the soft warmth of a human touch beneath his fingers. The surprise brought one phrase to Jase's mind; they come back, the voice had said. Even through his stupor, he processed the likely meaning of these words, and they compelled him to his feet as he fought against the pounding in his head to rise off the ground.

After securing his footing, Jase turned toward the hand that now grasped his sleeve. Attached to the hand Jase spied a diminutive arm and followed its line to the almost irrationally petite frame of a little girl. The complex sentence the voice had uttered could not have emitted from this girl's button mouth. Under other circumstances, he would have laughed at the child, but as Jase grew aware of his surroundings, the significance of the words sunk into his slowly defogging consciousness.

“Who did you see?” he begged even as he stood and followed the diminutive footsteps of his guide. “Who's coming?”

“I don't know,” the little girl replied. “The man who say me to watch you just say no one can find you. I hear other men asking for dark hair American.”

Even as Jase pressed through the crowd, his sight grew clearer, and he began to take in the incalculable volume of information that crushed into his brain. Not a dream. He remembered the claustrophobic streets of Bangkok from previous visits and realized that he now stood in a marketplace, probably on the north side of the Chao Phraya river. A ribbon of green stretched to his right as he turned to face what looked like a patchwork of shops and homes crammed together at odd angles.

Jase had absolutely no recollection of leaving Thomas's plane, and the black hole in his memory wrenched his mind into focus. “What happened to the man who told you to watch me?”

“I show him out the back of the store. He need run fast, he say.”

Understanding came quickly as Jase pushed past the haze in his brain. Though he couldn't imagine how someone had accomplished it, he recognized that he must have been drugged. The obscurity of his thoughts when he awoke implied a chemical stupor, and Jase realized that he had no idea how long he had slept.

“What day is it?” he interrogated the urchin.

“Same day you come,” she replied casually, dragging him into a nearby building. “I see two men, one hair like luwaladee flower, and other like khao niao mamuang.”

Jase tried to remember the translations of these words, but couldn't concentrate long enough to decipher the extremely foreign dialect.

“Follow,” the girl ordered, and Jase obeyed. “Call me Dao.”

“Star,” Jase smiled faintly, and the child turned to look at him with surprise and pleasure.

“Phuutf phaam saar thaim daif mair khraph?” the child queried curiously.

“A little,” Jase replied in the child's own language, and the pair continued in her more comfortable tongue.

“Where did you learn?” she asked.

“I have traveled a lot in my life. Where did you learn English?”

A sly grin painted the girl's face, “If you don't speak English, you don't make as much money. I learned young.”

“How old are you?” Jase wondered ironically, and Dao pulled him up a narrow staircase and across a rickety bridge to the other side of a narrow canal.

“I am eight years old,” she answered with deep gravity, as if she had achieved an enormous feat by this fact. Meg had been ten.

Because of her size, Jase had trouble believing that Dao had reach even that age. He would have guessed no more than five years old. Perhaps being a little more mature than he had thought, she had noticed more than he had assumed.

“Did the man who brought me say anything to you besides to watch me?”

“Yes. He said let him know when you have a phone.”

Jase breathed a sigh of relief. If Thomas still had access to his cell phone, his security probably hadn’t been compromised.

With Jase in tow, Dao ducked into a small row house just north of the canal. Jase tried to protest, wanting to lead her to a more strategically advantageous position, but Dao insisted. Given her inside knowledge of the neighborhood, Jase decided to concede to her. Plus, some instinct told him that Dao understood more than her age would otherwise signify.

“I wanted to bring you here before, but you are too big for me to carry. You'll be safe here for a while.”

Huffing a laugh, Jase settled into the southwestern corner of the room. From that vantage point, he had a nice view of the bridge over which he had traversed as well as the walkway that led in front of the row houses.

“Is there a back entrance?” he asked Dao.

“No,” she replied. “Only the roof. No one goes there but me.”

“Will your parents come home soon? I need to leave as soon as I get a cell phone.” Though Jase felt relief that his stint in unconsciousness had not cost him too much time, he needed to get out of Bangkok and to some place less infested with his enemies. Jase had four days to accomplish his goals, and his confidence of success diminished by the hour.

“I can get you a cell phone if you have money,” the girl offered not answering his question. Jase chuckled at the coy tilt of her head as she batted her eyelashes at him. Someone had taught her to play on the sympathies of the stupid Americans, and she expected a lucrative payout for her services. Under normal circumstances, Jase may have persisted in his questioning, but today he needed help fast.

“As long as you haven't taken my wallet, then I have enough,” he assured her. “American money, though.”

With that, the teasing eyes sparkled, and her short hair bobbed as she nodded her head emphatically.

“Here are 100 American dollars,” Jase offered, reaching into his back pocket. “You get me a phone and a charger, and you can keep what's left, as long as the phone works well. You know what a charger is?” This time she gazed at him reproachfully, and despite his dire circumstances, he smiled at the chastisement. “Fine. You take care of me, and I'll take care of you,” Jase offered to Dao's obvious pleasure.

“I'll be right back,” she effused.

As soon as the precocious child had passed over the bridge, Jase began a perusal of his surroundings. His first point of order came in ascertaining the vulnerability of the ceiling trap door, a necessary piece of knowledge in case someone cornered him in the home.

After a quick assessment of the home and any possible weapon, he found only a long, machete-type knife and a small kitchen parer. He left them both in their place, the small one all but useless and the large one unwieldy.

Jase looked skyward and easily spied a rectangular hatch that lay loosely across a hole in the metal roof. Of course, he had scaled many more imposing edifices, but he felt an admiration for the little girl's ability to maneuver up through the trapdoor. Perhaps a ladder lay nearby in a closet, though Jase saw no evidence of any type of storage space.

After stepping gingerly onto a simple wooden table, Jase used his arms to pull his head and shoulders through the hatch. Above him, the modern skyline of Bangkok stretched heavenward, and below him, the dirty streets milled away into the distance.

He hoisted himself the rest of the way through the hole and seated himself on the metal roof, making sure to stay near the edge so that the frame of the house could support his weight. Even so, the metal creaked and threatened to sag beneath him; no adult could sneak up on Jase from there. The roof on which he perched joined several other roofs to make a continuous metal plane that would have served Dao nicely if she wanted to evade pursuit.

From his raised vantage point, Jase could determine his likely location. Away to the northwest stretched Sukhumvit, the famous shopping district of Bangkok, and his location in relation to that landmark as well as the condition of the properties around him identified his post as the notorious Klong Toey slum. Since she inhabited the slum, a hotbed of criminal activity, Jase wondered tacitly what duties lay in Dao's day to day routine.

Was she a victim of a smaller scale, less grandiose version of Bill's human merchandising? If she were lucky, she just ran drugs for a male relative in the drug trade. Though dangerous, at least such a task would provide her with relative freedom and protection. He knew that within a few years, if she didn't escape, the malefactors in her community would likely find a more nefarious use for her.

I can't save the world, he insisted to himself, focusing instead on the task at hand. As soon as Dao returned with the cell phone, Jase would contact Thomas to figure out what had happened on the plane and make sure his pilot had escaped injury. Afterward, Jase would secure transportation to Chiang Mai and begin his more in-depth investigation.

Jase's perch on the roof lay on the very edge of the slum, separated by a fifty-foot span from the more aesthetically pleasant Klong Toey market. Ironically, few tourists knew the squalor which lay less than a block away from their campy commercial district.

The first time Jase heard the sound, he directed his gaze toward Sukhumvit Road in attempt to ascertain its source. Instinctively recognizing danger, he decided to extrapolate himself from the closed and isolated area that he now occupied, opting to move to the nearby major commercial avenue. This would prove an easier route by which to traverse unobserved through the city. Though he would technically pass more people on that route, the sheer volume of traffic would obscure his presence. He rose to his feet, looking for his next foothold.

After the second time he heard the piercing “Mister!” the direction and content of the noise registered in his consciousness, and his plan morphed from one of self-preservation to one of rescue. Jase cursed himself for sending a child into a perilous situation.

All at once, he noticed the incongruous color of the head which bobbed through the crowd. An unexpected mop of light brown hair weaved through the crowds, a contrast to the almost solid mass of dark brown and black that topped the other forms on the street. Occasionally, Jase could catch a glimpse of Dao's waving arm and short bob of black hair several feet below the blondish-brown head.

Immediately, Jase jumped down from the roof to the walkway and dashed across the canal. He tried to keep the light-colored head in view as he ran. Even as Jase watched, he could see the force with which the larger man dragged Dao toward some unknown destination.

Within seconds, Jase had gained the other side of the bridge and, rather than speed down the stairs, he hopped onto a nearby shingled roof and hurried along the rooftops toward the retreating pair. Jase needed to maintain his superior vantage point, and the street's row houses, of a much better construction than those in the slum, provided Jase with a clear path down the street.

From his high ground, Jase gained on the two he pursued until he could look straight down on them. He had signaled Dao not to acknowledge him, and she now kicked and squealed in an attempt to free herself from the man's grasp. “I told you!” she was squealing, “the airplane man paid me to take an American phone! I can sell it for good price, so I agree. Money now, money later! I know no other man! Let me go!” You little genius, Jase praised silently. Dao knew how to spin a lie, but she had chosen to do so on Jase’s behalf. He had to get to her fast.

As Jase gained a clear view of the fleeing pair, he paused, recognizing the imminent danger to himself in the man's identity. Of all possible people to have Dao, she now lay in possession of perhaps Jase’s closest acquaintance at ProtoComm - Perry. The presence of Jack’s right-hand man complicated Dao’s rescue since Jase needed above all else to avoid detection.

Bill no doubt suspected Jase sought some way to kink up the works at ProtoComm. For the time being, though, no one inside ProtoComm could know for sure that Jase had arrived in Bangkok, even though the drugging implied that they expected him to try. With Dao's clever story, she had obscured the certainty of Jase's arrival, and as long as no one saw him, though they could make assumptions, they could not know for certain that Jase had landed in the foreign land.

If he engaged Perry now, therefore, Jase would have to either kill the man or knock him out before he could discern Jase’s identity. Or, Jase realized, he could just abandon the little girl to her fate, like many in his position would have done. Pragmatism demanded him to stay focused on his mission. Pragmatism be damned, Meg reprimanded him. Jase laughed at the interesting way his mind had chosen to manifest his sweet little sister. Of course, she had slung her share of epithets toward her stepfather, so she wouldn't have considered the language beneath her.

Her squeaky little voice, though, had sounded just enough like Dao's that Jase's indifference evaporated. He jumped down onto a parapet and back to the road, landing only a few feet from the two retreating figures. Throwing a twenty-dollar bill at a street vendor, Jase grabbed a traditional Thai robe and a hat and continued after Dao. He circled around the pair and placed himself on the side with Perry, waiting until he caught Dao's attention again before continuing.

After passing several shops, Jase spied what he wanted and nodded toward Dao who increased her resistance. He crept beyond the pair and grabbed a bicycle from the bike shop he had marked as his destination. Gripping the bike, he shoved it violently into Perry's path in such a way that, no matter the man's agility, he could not avoid stumbling over the metal spokes. As Jase had hoped, Dao sprinted immediately from her captor; she exhibited surprising adeptness in her evasive maneuvers.

Rather than go after Dao, Jase ducked into the shop from which he had taken the bike, bending his head in a humble way so as not to attract attention. He pulled out forty more dollars and handed them to the female attendant, placing a finger to his lips to indicate to her that she should remain quiet. Though she might have resisted his entreaty otherwise, she responded instantly to his money.

After waiting a few seconds, Jase turned to peek out into the crowd. He could spy the light head darting through the crowd almost a block away, and Jase began to scan the ambling masses as he climbed onto the bike he had just bought. Of course, he should have found a way to ascertain Dao’s safety, but Perry's presence offered too valuable an opportunity. If Jase could find a command post for ProtoComm, half of his job would be over.

When Jase had followed the man for several blocks, Perry entered a waiting car, and when the vehicle entered the freeway, Jase cursed with frustration. He could have stolen a car and tried to continue, but he still felt compelled to check on the little girl's well-being.

He stopped and parked his bike, seating himself on the curb to think. If Bill's men had Dao on their radar, they must somehow suspect that she had information about Jase. They must have been watching the airport and keeping tabs on Thomas's evasion. How had Thomas gotten Jase out unseen? If Jase made it out of Thailand alive, he would pay his pilot a huge bonus.

Without Thomas, Jase would have lost the battle before he began. Jase couldn’t figure out how ProtoComm had known about his flight, though. Thomas said he had double checked everything, and Jase trusted Thomas implicitly. Yet somehow, Perry knew the time, place, and date of the plane's arrival. Only three people knew Jase's plans: Nessa, Briel, and Nick. Then again, Jase’s computer of late had proven far too easy to hack.

“Mister,” the whisper came, and Jase turned gratefully to see Dao's little cherubic face peer at him from under a low canopy. “That was great! He never saw you! By the time he stood up, I had run backwards almost to my street! Ha, ha! That man was stupid. Ha!”

The girl's delight brought a chuckle to Jase’s lips, an experience he had not expected during his misadventure with Bill Henry. Even her spirit, though, brought Jase back to the gravity of his situation. Dao still wore the innocence of youth, but soon enough, she would hit a reality hard enough to shatter her inherent levity.

“What does your dad do, Dao?” Jase ventured into the subject highest in his mind. “Are you safe in your home?”

“My father is dead,” she stated matter-of-factly. “Many of the children in Klong Toey have no parents, and we live with whoever wants to use us and is willing to feed us.”

Though Jase's western sensibilities wanted to revolt against this truth, he knew the reality of Thai poverty, and as far as possibilities went, her situation seemed relatively mild. The facts that someone took care of her and that she bore no visible signs of abuse spoke of a minimal amount of suffering in her life. So far, Jase lamented. Even had Dao lived with a loving family, she would find herself in grave danger with Perry after her.

“You stay with me for now, then,” Jase insisted. “Can you still find me a phone?”

Dao giggled and shrugged her shoulders. “Look around you,” she ordered, and only then did Jase realize how many small electronics shops stood among the boutiques and five-and-dimes that lined the street. Not to mention that several of the boutiques seemed to carry some sort of cell phone paraphernalia as well.

“And any of these will work for me?”

“No one here pays for a plan. We buy these and use them until they run out of minutes, then we buy a new one when we need it.”

“Conveniently hard to trace for the drug traffickers in your neighborhood.”

“My medicine man is nice to me,” Dao insisted. “He gives me food and only hurts me if I lose his stuff, which I almost never do.”

So, she did work for a drug dealer. At first, Jase scoffed at the bizarre moral code which allowed the little girl to exonerate her employer, but then Jase remember his own recent past. No one could have employed more convoluted gymnastics to appease his conscience than Jase had.

“And when you grow up? What will you do then?” Jase asked slowly, afraid of how naïve the girl might prove. Her answering duck of the head educated Jase on the depth of her knowledge. For a moment, she couldn't meet his gaze, but then she shrugged and tried to appear unimpressed.

“Oh, they have jobs for the older girls, if I live that long. Maybe I will die before I grow too old to run.” She sounded almost hopeful. For several seconds, the pair just stared down at the ground before them. They then began a slow pacing back to Dao's home.

With Dao’s kidnapping demanding all of his attention, Jase had temporarily lost sight of his purpose for embarking to Thailand in the first place. During the silent journey back to Klong Toey, Jase began to consider how to make up for the lost time. He knew three things for sure. First, that Bill had planned a major transaction sometime in the next four days. Secondly, Jase had found the name Shan, a name which implied many things but defined none. Lastly, Jase had another name, a name for which he had no leads whatsoever: Ang San.

What would he do when he left Dao and headed north? Jase could not devise any concrete plan, and the fact bothered him. Apparently, Nessa had guessed right. Jase had ended up in Thailand with no real plan and no leads. On a whim, he turned to the little girl beside him.

“Have you ever heard of something called 'Ang San'?” he queried.

Dao sounded uninterested. “A park. East side of the bay. For people with money; not a place someone from Klong Toey could go. They would kick me out even if I didn't have any goods from my boss.”

A park. So much time spent searching for the mysterious identity of Ang San, and the reality held little mystery. To find out more information, Jase would need to stake out the park. As if he didn't already have enough on his plate staying alive and trying to get to Chiang Mai.

“That girl was looking at you,” Dao stated unexpectedly, and Jase whipped his head up to ascertain of whom the little girl spoke.

“Where?”

“Over there,” she pointed toward a crowd. “The one who is as tall as a man, though not as tall as you.”

Her comment made Jase laugh as he scanned the crowd; in Dao’s experience, the men tended to stand barely five and a half feet.

“See the one who sways when she walks?”

Indeed, Jase spotted a head of hair that seemed lighter than the average Thai, though not by much. He immediately recognized the cut as that of Nessa.

His heart pounded in his chest. What could possess her to risk coming after him? He didn’t have time for another interruption, but if he didn’t send Nessa home immediately, she would find herself in significant danger, and that fact would render all his other considerations moot. Perry had already shown his hand, and Dao had claimed he had a companion. If Nessa got on their radar, she would no doubt become a pawn in their game with Jase.

“Can you find your way home?” he asked Dao distractedly. “I need to follow that woman.”

“No!” Dao insisted vehemently. “I will go with you!”

Her tone broke through his reverie, and he turned to face her for a moment. He realized that she sounded scared.

“My master is gone to China today, and I have nothing to do. I could help you get around.”

Of course, she was right. Jase couldn't leave the child alone in a city into which he had led men who were now after her.

“You’re right; I could use your help. I need to make it to Chiang Mai by tomorrow. Do you think you could help me find transportation?” Even as he spoke, Jase kept Nessa's retreating form in his sights, weaving through the crowd until, just as he spoke the last sentence, she boarded a bus. Jase cursed.

“You mad at me, Mister? I won't get in your way.”

“No, Dao. I'm not mad at you. I need to follow that bus.”

“Here,” Dao smiled and directed him to a row of motorcycles on their left. “It's for my boss!” she called out to the protesting shop owner, at which the man shook his head but stopped his protest.

“So, your boss is in charge of this neighborhood?” Jase queried curiously as he climbed on the bike.

“He shares with a few others,” she replied as she jumped up behind him. “But everyone respects my boss. He protects the shop owners, and they pay him back whatever he asks.

Jase silently replied that fear of retribution could prove a powerful motivator, but he didn't say it aloud. Let her continue in her naivety as long as she could.

With Dao in tow, Jase hopped on the bike. After several minutes of driving, he followed the bus to a stop and watched as the tall, sexy brunette descended to the street. Much to his relief, she strode directly through the door of a twenty-story hotel, an apparently higher-end establishment. Now that he knew her hotel, he could find a way to contact her.

First of all, though, he set up surveillance in a café next door, bought Dao some sort of fruit drink, and began to charge his new phone.

“Tell me what happened,” Jase commanded into the receiver. After a wasted hour of watching, Jase unplugged his phone and led Dao from the café. He wanted to approach Nessa, but he decided that meeting her in the hotel would prove too risky. Instead, though he wouldn’t get the gratification of seeing her again, he would contact her by phone and arrange a secure meeting place. Once he had her in his presence, he felt certain he could persuade her to go home.

“You made it!” Thomas gushed into the phone. “I didn't know if I had signed your death warrant when I hid you with that little girl.”

“She did a great job,” Jase assured his friend, patting Dao on the head. “How did I end up out of the plane and in that hole?”

“So, you were completely out of it? The way you were mumbling about the ocean...”

“I don't remember a thing, Thomas,” Jase insisted, pulling Dao back across the bridge toward her house. “I fell asleep in the plane and woke up with a little girl tugging my sleeve.”

“Well,” Thomas explained, “when you wouldn't wake up, at first I thought you were dead.” Thomas chuckled nervously. “Then I saw you breathing, and realized that you were unconscious. Initially, I thought that you must have found some hidden stash of booze in my cabin, but then reality hit me. With all the precautions you told me to take, I should have expected trouble. I think that my plane may have been compromised.”

Jase could hear the tight intensity of Thomas's anger, the violation of a pilot's prize possession - his plane.

“Of course, if the plane were compromised, someone could easily have placed a tracker and known exactly where we landed, regardless of my caution in communication and planning. I couldn't leave you there, so...”

At Thomas's awkward pause, Jase wondered about the usually brazen man's reticence.

“I unloaded you on a baggage cart.” Thomas jumped in quickly before Jase could ask. “I didn't know how else to move you! You were too heavy for me to carry you very far!”

“It's okay, Thomas,” Jase interrupted his friend's nervous stammerings. “It was well thought out. I'm just grateful you got me out of there before someone else found me. Did you see anyone?”

“Maybe,” Thomas hesitated. “I saw someone in the street after I got you in the tuk-tuk thing. He had light hair, which wouldn't have shocked me with all the tourists around, but he was staring at the cart as if he could see through it.”

In light of recent events, Jase suspected that the pilot had seen Perry.

“I hate to do this to you, Thomas, but you need to lose your cell phone.”

“What?” Thomas complained. “What about all my clients? My life is on this thing.”

“Did you back it up before you left?” Jase queried.

“Well, yeah,” the pilot agreed peevishly. “What's your point?”

“Considering how easily someone found me,” Jase explained, “I have to assume that someone had inside information about my mission. Before I left, my computer was hacked by a person who did not want me to come to Thailand. I have to presume that this person accessed my other files from my computer which included your contact information, specifically your phone number. With that number, whoever is after me can track your every movement. Whoever that is also knows that I will likely contact you. As a matter of fact, that person will likely access your phone records before too long and find this number, which of course means that I have to get rid of my phone, too.”

A moment of silence passed before Thomas sighed in resignation. “So, if we both give up our phones, how will I contact you?”

“Well, in any other circumstances, I would tell you to go home, but I have a favor to ask you.”

“Another one?” Thomas mumbled. “As if I haven't done enough.”

“Remember the brunette from the apartment?”

Jase didn't like the suggestion in Thomas's chuckle. “Who could forget her?”

“Well, she followed me here, and I'm going to call her. When I contact her, I'm going to have her meet you at the place where you left me with Dao.” Jase felt confident that if anyone listened to their conversation, the directive would prove vague enough to resist deciphering. “Tomorrow. I'll be on my way out of town, but I need you to fly her back to the states no matter what. I don't care if you have to knock her out - get her back home safely!”

“I got it, Jase. I understand about this one; I saw you two together. I'll take care of her.” After a short pause he added, “At least this chore will be pleasant. I thought you were going to ask me to traipse through the jungle or something.”

“You're a life-saver, Thomas. Just look for Dao tomorrow afternoon. And destroy your phone.”

“Got it,” Thomas replied, then after another pause. “Take care of yourself, Jase. You can't take on the world.”

“I'm not. I'm just taking on one man.”

Thomas pause, and Jase could hear the skepticism in the silence. “You're at a disadvantage, though – you have to follow the rules.”

“Since when?” Jase tried to joke.

“Since forever,” Thomas offered matter-of-factly. “They may be your own rules, but you stick by them. Would you do me a favor? Give me something to make myself feel better? Give me someone to call when I'm done with this so I can know you’re okay.”

“Fine,” Jase allowed. “Dao will have a number you can call. If you haven't heard from me in four days, call and see if I've contacted her. If I haven't, you'll know I didn't make it.”

“Some comfort!” Thomas mumbled. “Okay, Jase. Good luck.”

“And, Thomas,” though Jase had long ago accepted the possibility, stating it made his stomach clench. “I'm giving Dao a key. If something happens to me, I want you to give it to Nessa. She can have anything in my apartment that she wants.” Jase paused, his gut churning again. “And tell her that I love her.”

“You'll make it out of this, Jase. You’ve worked too hard to make it where you are. Go kick that guy's ass!”

“You got it,” Jase laughed, mustering up a pleasant tone before hanging up the phone. You’ve worked too hard to make it where you are, Thomas had asserted. And Thomas only knew half of the story.