“You should be.” Dana’s voice is pointed.
“I don’t think so,” Lena remarks. “I’ll just find a hostel—”
“He’s planning to kill you.” The revelation comes with a force too overwhelming to absorb. Even Lena looks shocked. “There. You wanted to know? Charlie was going to murder you. All along, he was planning it. As of ten days ago, he still is.”
“What are you talking about?” Lena’s voice sounds muddy, and there’s a rushing noise in my ears.
“I thought he was crazy. I thought he was just talking up a fantasy, you know, the way he always did—saying stuff he didn’t believe in. He kept saying he was going to lead you two here, ‘like lambs to the slaughter.’ And that he was going to kill one and make the other suffer. He said one of you is branded. He didn’t want to pull the trigger himself. He was planning to hire someone. So you needed to be branded. Like I said, I didn’t believe him, thought it was all some elaborate game. Then you two show up, lured here by Charlie like he said you’d be. And then this.” She grabs Lena’s wrist, turning it over so we can all see the crudely etched lamb tattoo. “You’re branded. ‘Like lambs to the slaughter.’ He wasn’t making any of it up. If you stay here, you’ll die.” Lena’s face is bright red, as if she’s angry; but I can see that she’s trembling from fear. “Charlie said,” Dana continues, standing up and poised to leave, “that he had too many selves. That he had to kill one off, to simplify things. And that killing one off meant killing it entirely. Don’t you get it?” Her voice is animated, tense. “He couldn’t handle it anymore. In order to simplify his life, he has to kill one of you. Maybe then he’ll reappear. He kept quoting something to me, something from a book he read. The Lazarus Project. And showing me this crazy music video.” Lena pales at this. “You know what I think?” Dana asks. “I think he plans to rise again like Lazarus. With a clean new life. Once you’re dead.” She stares at Lena as she says it, and Lena blinks.
“The music video,” Lena says. “Can I see it?”
Dana shrugs, then pulls out her phone and accesses a video on YouTube. Lena stares at the screen, transfixed.
“Here’s the part he kept showing me,” Dana says, scrolling through the video. “Around eight-eighteen. Here.” I look over Lena’s shoulder now. An image of shoes—empty but for rose petals fluttering from above—fills the screen. “He said for him, it’s about death. The death of a woman who’s been walking straight into it all along.” Then Dana pockets her phone and delivers the final punch. “I’m only trying to help you. I have no idea where Charlie is right now. He could be in this bar, he could be down the street. But one thing I do know: If you don’t leave Bangkok as soon as possible, Lena is going to die.”
25
Charlie
You need to take extra measures to ensure the plan goes smoothly. You need to dot every i, cover every base. For a while, you aren’t sure it will work. You hold your breath, watching them from afar. That part’s easy; you have access to their email accounts, their smart phones. What’s hard is that you’re losing patience. And you’re running out of money. There’s the money you owe Anand, and there’s money you owe Dana. You owe so much money. The thought of it makes your palms sweat. It makes your heart pound, because there’s no way out. Or maybe there is, but it’s narrow and risky.