Paying Back Jack by Christopher G. Moore Read Free Book Online

regular; then he kept an eye on her as he dressed. He thought about how civilians slept in a different way. They could sleep through their own deaths, he thought. He reached over to her handbag, a fake Prada bag bought from a Sukhumvit street vendor, and tucked ten thousand baht into the front pocket.
    At the bar the night before, Jarrett had asked if her father’s bees were dying, like the ones in America. She’d blinked, shrugged. She didn’t know. Her father had abandoned the family and taken the bees with him. They’d been alive when he loaded them into two trucks.
    â€œWhere you from?” she’d asked.
    â€œAmerica, but I’m working in Afghanistan.”
    â€œYou on holiday?”
    He smiled. “Working holiday.”
    â€œI need the money to get back into the bee business.” It was a clever variation on the handicapped-mother and water-buffalo-with-a-heat-stroke stories.
    â€œHow much do you need?” His question hadn’t been serious.
    â€œTen thousand baht.”
    â€œThat’s a lot.”
    Wan had shrugged. “I just started working. I haven’t saved anything. Not yet.”
    She’d left her lady’s drink untouched. The
mamasan
who’d been eyeing her progress with the customer swept in from the shadows and ordered her to drink up. Wan had sipped her drink until the mama-san drifted away and flopped onto her stool in the corner.
    â€œMy father come at night with his friends and take away all of the hives. He left us nothing. He loved those bees more than he loved us.”
    Jarrett had automatically divided the hotel room into coordinates. He moved from space to space, checking the curtains, the windows, the bathroom door, and going through the ying’s clothes and handbag. He found her ID card and tried to read it, but the Thai script defeated him. Her cell phone was turned off. He examined her makeup, lipstick, and brush, along with an inhaler, wrapped hard candy, and a box cutter. He slid open the blade and let dawn sun touch the sharp edge. Closing the blade again, he slipped the box cutter into his pocket.
    His movements had a purpose. Jarrett wasn’t just being sensitive; he was putting himself through a training exercise. The beekeeper’s daughter—number thirty-eight, Wan—was young, alert, in top physical condition. Exactly the type of person Jarrett liked to test his stealth skills against, sharpening them for use in the field. Moving around a room without waking someone was a specialized skill in his line of work. Not everyone could do it—go unnoticed, unheard.
    Using his training to anticipate another person’s reaction required regular practice. Working yings were a good challenge. They had street smarts and basic nighttime survival training. They worked in a world where they had to calculate each move in advance. Theypracticed the art of deception, set up emotional ambushes, and orchestrated side plays to defend their position and throw their customers’ counterattacks into disarray.
    Jarrett studied her on the bed. In the bar she had clung to him. She’d carried out the role of the playful ying, and her catlike purring and brushing of her body against his leg, side, and arm were precursors. Only cats and humans toy with their victims before killing them. She was playing with him, finding the vulnerable center before striking. A working ying acquired the unique ability to convince her customer that their roles were reversed, that she was the target. And she needs him for protection. The only magic in the relationship was this sleight of hand.
    Once inside the back-alley hotel room, she’d whispered to him that the bees had started dying in Thailand, too. Whole colonies had collapsed. Her eyes had grown large, as if she could see the horror unfolding as she spoke.
    She had smiled when he’d asked her about what she wanted out of life.
    Jarrett stood at the room door and took a last look