Cargo: A Leine Basso Thriller by D.V. Berkom Read Free Book Online

as she brought the gun closer. “I need your friend’s contact information.”
    Alak covered his lap with his hands, the whites of his eyes showing. Beads of sweat rolled down the sides of his face.
    Leine smiled as she leaned forward and encircled his wrist with her fingers. He tried to wrench free, but her grip proved too strong. His expression changed from anger to fear as he realized that things were going south.
    “I need your friend’s information. Now,” she repeated calmly.
    Distress plain on his face, Alak feverishly scanned the café and their surroundings. Finding no one sympathetic to his plight, he returned his attention to Leine. Leine tightened her grip and his hand started to turn white. He stared at his fingers and then at her. Something in his eyes changed, and Leine knew she had him.
    “His name Sam. But he not tell you who he work for.”
    “Oh, I think he will.” Leine released her grip and he straightened, rubbing his wrist.
    “Then he know it me.”
    Leine shrugged. “And I care because…”
    “Many people die.”
    “I’m only interested in Kylie. If you give me what I want, then no one has to die.”
    Alak nodded, and glanced to each side as though making sure no one was within hearing distance. “Sam sell girls to man name Victor Wang. This all I say. I not know where find this man, and Sam no know. I find girls, Sam drive them to arrange place, and someone else pick them up. I no meet Wang. Sam only meet once, when he apply for job.”
    “Give me your cell phone.”
    Alak crossed his arms. “Why you need?”
    “Give me your phone,” Leine repeated, stretching her arm across the table.
    By the look on his face he was battling whether to give up his electronic lifeline, not sure what the crazy-ass woman across from him was going to do with it. After a brief pause Alak reached into his pocket to fish out his phone, and laid it on the table. Leine was glad to see it was a well-made knockoff and not a cheap burner phone, easily discarded. She had him tap in his security code and then open his contacts. She jotted down Sam’s number along with the numbers Alak called the most often and his contact information. Then she downloaded a simple tracking program and gave it back.
    “If anything you’ve told me isn’t true, then I will find you.” She stood up and threw a few baht onto the table. “You don’t want me to find you.”

Chapter 7
     
    Leine returned to her hotel around five and headed to the bar for a drink and a light dinner. Her interview with the guide, Charlie, didn’t turn up anything new, and the Kiwi sisters hadn’t responded to her calls. Sam the driver wouldn’t answer his phone, and Leine didn’t bother leaving a message. She’d find a way to contact him if she ran out of options. She powered on the burner phone she’d picked up at the airport, and while she waited for her drink to arrive called a number she hadn’t used since the last time she’d been in Bangkok six years before.
    “You will find good fortune at the Golden Dragon,” a man’s voice said in Thai.
    “And it rains long in the mountains,” Leine answered with the prearranged code in the same language, then switched to English. “Please, may I speak with Kavi if he is available?”
    The man on the other end paused briefly. “One moment.”
    The bartender brought her a Sazerac and Leine signed for the drink. A few moments later Kavi came on the line.
    “Is this the dear friend who promised to call whenever she had the good fortune to arrive in this beautiful city of treasures?”
    Leine smiled at Kavi’s words. He’d been her regular contact whenever she had a job in Southeast Asia, and they’d spent many a night drinking and commiserating in his office overlooking the Chao Phraya River. Kavi was married to a sweet Thai woman named Phan, a diminutive lady with an amazingly fierce temper, which Kavi refused to bait. “I tested her patience once and only once. I will never do so