Page 55 of The Big Fix

Darius squinted at Dante. “Why?”

“I just wanted to be sure. You know how he hates conjecture.”

“That’s true,” Darius agreed. “But in this case, I think you’re right.”

Dante turned to me. “I ruled out a number of gangs this morning and have settled on the Red Wa or Tommy Yu as being behind the attacks on us.”

The Red Wa, one of the most powerful organized-crime gangs in Thailand, was a small fish compared to Tommy Yu, Asia’s El Chapo.

“Nothing happens in Bangkok that Yu doesn’t know about,” Dante said, “so I’m going to make an approach.”

“What? No,” I said quickly. “That’s for me to do, not you.”

Dante grimaced. “If you think about it a second, you’ll agree that if you go, and they want you, then we’re done. But if I go, then they’ll leverage me to get to you.”

I felt my stomach muscles tighten into a knot at the thought of the choice in front of me. It was a risky move to confront the man either way. Yu’s reputation for extreme violence preceded him. But my gut told me that if I didn’t confront him myself, Owen would be the casualty.

“It has to be me,” I said eventually. “The fact of the matter is, if I am the target, as everyone agrees I am, they’re not even going to talk to anyone but me.” I looked at Darius and then Dante. “Let’s be honest, it can only be me.”

Both were quiet.

“Yes?” I prodded them.

“Yes,” Darius agreed.

Dante nodded.

“I’m counting on you two to get me the hell back out.”

More silent nodding.

Garland joined us. “So you plan to just walk in the door and ask him who’s trying to kill you?” He must’ve heard the plan as he made his way around the house, keeping watch.

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do, unarmed.”

“That’s tactically unsound, sir,” Garland said flatly.

“This is the play,” I informed him.

“It’s a stupid one, sir.”

The thing was, twenty years ago I’d failed to protect my friends Ronan and Sara Moss, and it felt like I’d been paying the price for their deaths ever since. Twenty years of living with the nightmares, of feeling their dead eyes boring holes in my back, twenty years of wondering what if. I wasn’t about to let it happen again. Not ever.

“There is a vast criminal network that cocoons this city,” I told them. “We’re surrounded by enemies, none of which are going to tell us what’s going on. My contacts can’t help us determine what’s afoot here any more than we can with boots on the ground. This is what we have left.”

“You’re forgetting, though,” Garland reminded me, “that we just killed a bunch of their people.”

“Rules of engagement,” Dante chimed in. “Yu gets kill or be killed. The key to survival is understanding what’s really at play here, which, I’ll bet you”—his gaze met mine—“comes down to greed. Tommy Yu has no interest in you specifically, or whatever the true motivation here is. He’s been hired—if we’re right—to drive you into a trap. Certainly to get you through his front door. So if you can appeal to his desire for a more significant stake than what he’s been promised…that’s our in. Think about it. The second-biggest criminal organization this side of Asia has been reduced to being a hired killer. Mere thugs. That can’t sit well with a man of Yu’s reputation.”

“What are you planning to offer him?” Garland asked me.

“Myself. If this is about me, there’s no other carrot to dangle.”

“I think you’re fucking crazy, sir,” Garland reiterated his opinion. “But you’re the boss.”

I turned to Dante. “For what feels like the millionth time, I’m counting on you not to lose sight of me. So when I land in the belly of the beast…”

“Which you will,” he husked.