Brett Battles - Little Girl Gone

Talk about thorough, Logan thought. Aaron and his friends were apparently not willing to just toss whatever they’d cleaned up into the trash. They wanted it burned. That was too bad. It would have been nice to see what was inside those bags.

“…he’s heading back to the taxi now,” Daeng finished.

Logan looked down the street. A few seconds later, Aaron came out from the building and climbed into his cab. The pursuit then continued as before.

The third stop was at a building that couldn’t have been more different than the one Aaron had just visited. It was a modern-looking, glass business tower, twenty stories high. One of Daeng’s men was able to get into the lobby just as the elevator doors closed on the car Aaron was in. The man watched the indicator. It stopped on the fourteenth floor, then headed back down.

“Send him up,” Logan said, after Daeng asked him what he wanted to do.

According to the man, there were several different suites on the fourteenth floor: an import-export business, an accounting firm, and a few offices that were only marked with names of people.

“Make sure he doesn’t give himself away,” Logan warned.

Daeng shook his head. “He won’t.”

Suddenly he pressed the phone tightly against his ear, listening hard.

“I think the farang just came out of one of the offices. My man can’t talk.”

There was a tense several minutes when they didn’t know what was happening, then Daeng said, “They’re in the main lobby, heading out. He says another man came out of the office, too. A farang also. They both got onto the elevator, and my man joined them.”

“You’re kidding,” Logan said, concerned.

“It’s okay. Standing in the hallway like he was, he’d have been more noticeable if he hadn’t gotten on.”

That may have been true, but it still had Logan worried.

“He says they didn’t talk on the way down, but did give each other a little nod as they got out at the bottom. Also says our guy is now carrying a large envelope.”

An envelope? Logan was very interested to see what was inside of that.

Daeng was silent for a moment, then said, “The two farang are outside now. The young guy is heading back to his taxi, but the other one is walking down the street. What do you want to do?”

“Your guy in the building, is he the only one other than us following the cab?”

“No. There are three others.”

Logan raised an eyebrow, impressed. “Then have him follow this new guy, and see where he goes. The rest of us will stay with the cab.”

Suddenly they had quite an operation going. Along with the group following Aaron’s taxi, there was a man tagging after the guy who’d gotten out of the cab before Aaron had burned the duffle bags, and now there was this new guy, too.

Logan’s phone began to vibrate in his pocket. He frowned as he read the name on the display screen: DAD. Things were a little too crazy at the moment to deal with his father, so Logan sent the call to voicemail.

A half a minute later, his phone rang again.

“Dad, not now,” he said, realizing the only way to get rid of him was to talk to him.

“Logan, is that you? I think we got disconnected before.”

“No, I sent you to voicemail on purpose. I’m a little busy here.”

“We haven’t even heard from you. We didn’t know if you made it or not.”

“I made it, okay? I’ll call you later.”

“Have you found her?”

“That’s what I’m working on right now .”

“Oh. Oh, okay. So you’re busy?”

“Dad, please. I’ll call you later. I promise. Okay?”

His father said nothing for a moment. “Tooney wants to know what you really think the chances are of finding Elyse and bringing her home.”

Logan took a breath. “Better than I would have hoped. Now, I really gotta go.”

“Wait, there’s something else you need to know.”

“What?”

“Elyse’s mother is on her way to Thailand.”

Logan paused. “Sein?”

“She finally called Tooney back. Yelled at him for not telling her what was going, then said she was going to go take care of it herself.”

“How did she find out?”

“We don’t know.”

“Great. Just…great.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Dad. Nothing you could do. I’ve really got to go now.”

“Okay. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Daeng was staring at Logan as he hung up. “What was that all about?”

“A complication we don’t need.”

“What complication?”

Before Logan could answer, Daeng suddenly pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the screen. He then pushed a button, said something, then listened for several seconds. Finally, he looked over. “It’s the man I have following the guy from the meeting with Aaron.”

“What’s going on?”

“Apparently, he entered another office tower. My man followed him up to the eighteenth floor, only when he got out of the elevator he was on one of those floors where a single company uses the whole space. There was a reception area and a waiting room, but the guy he was following was gone. My man immediately came back down.”

“Did he get the name of the company?”

“Let me check.” Daeng talked into his phone again. The back and forth went on longer than Logan would have thought. Daeng then said, “Sorry. His English isn’t so good, but he knows the alphabet, so I made him spell it for me. He had to find the directory downstairs first. The place is called Lyon Exploratory Research. Mean anything to you?”

Logan shook his head. “Never heard of it.” He pulled out his notebook, and jotted down the name so he wouldn’t forget.

“The cab’s pulling over again,” Daeng announced. “They’re at…oh, crap.” He leaned forward and said something quickly to the driver.

Suddenly they were accelerating down the street, no longer trying to blend in with the traffic. They came around a corner onto a wider road, then stopped in front of a large building with hundreds of people milling around.

“Where are we?” Logan asked.

Daeng already had his door open and was starting to climb out. “Hualamphong train station,” he said. “Come on!”

Logan jumped out, and ran after Daeng through the crowd.

“I told my guy to follow the farang inside.” Daeng lifted his phone back to his ear, and had a quick conversation with his man. Without warning, he came to a sudden stop, grabbing Logan’s arm so he’d do the same. “He’s just inside. Seems to be waiting for something.”

He led Logan over to a spot against the outside wall.

“Maybe this is just another quick stop,” Logan suggested.

Daeng shook his head. “His cab’s gone.”

“So where’s he going then?”

“Trains go all over the country. He could even go all the way to Singapore if he wanted. Or he could head over to the MRT, the subway, and take it to somewhere else in the city.”

Daeng’s phone vibrated once. The conversation that followed only lasted a few seconds before he lowered his cell again.

“That was about the farang who got dropped off earlier. He said the guy just pulled up in front of the train station.”

“ This train station?”

“Yes.”

That explained who Aaron was waiting for, Logan thought.

Daeng nodded toward the street. The man who had been on clean-up duty with Aaron was walking toward the station entrance. Logan was pretty sure the guy had no idea who he was. Still, he turned away as the man neared just in case.

Daeng was on his phone again, this time with the man inside the building. “As soon as the two farang found each other they were joined by a third.”