Page 26 of Wired Courage

Sophie turned her head to wipe tears from the stinging spray on her shoulder.He had to be alive; he just had to.

And Connor?

She couldn’t imagine her life without the man who had been her first lover since she’d escaped Assan Ang. Though he’d betrayed her in the cruelest way by faking his death to dodge the authorities, he’d worked hard and sacrificially to make up for it. He was the only person besides Dr. Wilson, her therapist, who knew all of her secrets and shared her passion for the wired world. Connor was more than a friend, and always would be.

Sophie finally reached the coast, and her laboring heart sank as she faced an impenetrable-looking mangrove swamp. She grasped onto a tree with wide, buttressing roots that dug deep into the silty bottom, and tied the dinghy to one of the roots for a moment so she could assess the situation.

The mangrove jungle was alive with sound; the squawks of kingfishers, the chatter of an egret, the chirps of plovers. The mangroves themselves creaked and groaned, their bark rubbing against each other as if in conversation. And everywhere, filling Sophie’s nostrils, the thick, fecund smell of rotting vegetation.

After drinking some water and eating a restorative energy bar, Sophie took out the GPS again. This time she used a satellite map program to get an aerial view, and determined that the mangrove swamp probably extended no more than a mile inland.

She put the paddle outside of the dinghy to take a depth reading. The murky water was only a couple of feet deep—but that couple of feet would be home to many snakes, crabs, and other waterborne hazards. Sophie checked that the wet/dry hiking shoes she had donned were strapped on carefully, and she stuck a leg out of the raft.

Simple things, like climbing out of the dinghy without capsizing, were taking up way too much time and energy. Sophie suppressed a stab of worry.

Armita had not given her a deadline for their meetup. She would know that Sophie’s journey, alone as specified, and trying not to be detected by the Yam Khûmk?n, might be difficult and hazardous—though she’d have no idea that Sophie had lost all of her backup. Haste was not going to help Sophie get to Armita faster; in fact, it might cause her to make the kind of mistake that could get her killed.

Up to her knees in brackish water, her feet sunk into a muddy silt bottom, Sophie took the flare gun and the first aid kit out of the dinghy and stowed them in her backpack. She took time to deflate and wrap up the raft, and walked into the trees, carrying the crudely rolled inflatable. Once deep enough into the mangroves not to be visible from the ocean side, Sophie stowed the raft and its collapsible paddle in the branches of one of the mangroves. She put a pin in the GPS. Worst-case scenario, if she had to reuse the flimsy craft, she could find it again.

Though carrying Momi? How could she paddle? Maybe a sling to keep the baby close . . . and hopefully the wind would be at her back. It seemed way too dangerous to use the raft again, but she would do whatever she had to, to get her child home.

Tightening down the straps of the backpack, Sophie forged deeper, the GPS in her hand as she navigated the tangled roots of the mangroves. She kept her eyes moving and her arms and legs as far away from the reaching branches and roots as she could.

A great heron flapped up in a whirl of wings, startling Sophie, and she fell back against one of the mangroves. She shrieked as she landed on something moving. She recoiled, almost losing her grip on the GPS as she jumped away—only to see a harmless four-foot python withdraw higher into the branches of the tree.

Sophie calmed herself with an effort, refocusing and taking another reading on her direction using the GPS.It would not be good to get lost in here. The mangroves were a maze, their spreading roots creating little islands, and often so close together that there was no way to pass between them. This forced Sophie to keep moving laterally to wherever she could find a way through, and without a GPS to give her a direction, she would soon have been hopelessly lost.

Stories of people wandering or snakebitten in the mangroves, starving and dying only meters from well-trafficked areas, were the stuff of urban legend in Thailand.

She pushed on, only stopping when she felt a vicious pinch on her foot, all the way through her hiking shoe. She kicked wildly, and a large, blue-tinged crab flew out of the water to hit one of the trees. Her kick detached it forcibly from her toe. On another day she might have laughed; today it was one more threat knocked down, nothing more.

Sophie took deliberate calming breaths, her eyes scanning the thick growth around her for any of the multitudinous types of tree snakes or large, stinging insects. She moved even faster, swishing through the water as quickly as she dared.

Once again, the journey seemed to take forever, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours when Sophie grasped onto a mangrove’s wet roots and hauled herself out of the water onto a slippery mud bank. Checking her heading, she pushed forward through heavy brush toward a thin line on the screen showing some kind of track.

Sophie tried to remember her early years in Thailand, but the truth was, she had never spent time in the wilderness; she’d always stayed close to home at the family compound near Bangkok. She didn’t remember ever having come this far out into the countryside. The idea of bushwhacking through virgin jungle, alone, would never have occurred to her family with anything but horror.

The muddy bank gave way to waist-high grasses interspersed with tropical trees. Sophie ate another energy bar, supplemented by a couple of guavas. The food gave her enough energy to pick up her pace to a trot once she found a narrow cow path.

She kept a close eye out for the area’s worst hazard, the monocled cobra. Cobras liked grassy areas, and this type of field was their favorite kind of habitat. Mostly feeding on rats and mice, cobras were aggressive when frightened—and the last thing Sophie needed to deal with right now was an extremely venomous snakebite.

The baaing of animals ahead speeded her on—where there were domestic animals, there were people!A few hundred yards farther, Sophie felt her spirits lift to spot a native farmer dressed in simple clothing tending a herd of goats. She greeted him in Thai with a grateful smile and a small bow, ignoring his astonished expression at her unexpected appearance. “Can you direct me to the road? I am lost.”

He did better than that, escorting her, along with his bleating charges, all the way to the dirt track she’d identified on the GPS. She thanked him and then dug into her pocket, producing a handful of colorful cash. “Can I hire you to take me to the outskirts of Bangkok?”

Chapter Twenty-One

Day Twenty-Five

Connor followed the Master down a dank, mildew-smelling hallway to a flight of cut stone stairs. His legs were still weak from being bound for days, and his belly was hollow—he was long past the point of mere hunger. He gritted his teeth and gripped the rough wall to help pull himself forward, but dizziness forced him to lean against it.

The Master turned to look at him, then without a word, looped Connor’s arm over his shoulder and helped him up the stairs. At the next landing, he told the ninjas stationed there to take Connor to his chambers and prepare a bath. “Treat his injuries. I will be along to speak with him after he has had time to rest.” Connor kept his head hanging, not letting on that he understood the language.

“Your chambers, master?” Disbelief was clear in the ninja’s voice.

“You heard me the first time.” The Master made a gesture with his hand. The man dropped to the ground and began doing push-ups.

Another ninja rushed forward to take Connor’s weight. “Right away, Master.”

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