Chasing the White Lion James Hannibal (essential reading TXT) 📖

with her gun, Miss Talia tore his weapon away and shouted questions in English.

The teenager only lowered his gaze.

Miss Talia grew impatient. She lifted him to his feet, asking again, stern and insistent.

“Mai chai, mai chai.” No, no. Thet Ye shook his head and waved his hands to stop her. Pastor Nakor had shown him another way. He pushed between them and laid a hand on the boy’s arm. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore. Look around you.” He nodded at the two unconscious guards. “They are finished. You are not their slave anymore. You do not have to be like them.”

The teenager met his eyes.

Thet Ye saw him daring to hope. “Yes. You are free. God has done this for you. But he wants the girls to live. Please, tell us where the soldiers took them.”

“The girls are here.”

His answer made no sense.

At Thet Ye’s confused look, the teen pointed at the back wall, entirely engulfed in flame. “There is a second room, with access from the other side.”

A second room. The back wall was a divider between the two halves of the warehouse, built of wood and paint like the inside of the camp church. Hla Meh had been near him the whole time.

The fire had opened a gap in the center of the wall, filled with swirling smoke. Thet Ye told the man on the screen what the boy had said, and the man told Miss Talia. And while she spoke in earnest with her friends, Thet Ye stared at the gap.

“I am Thet Ye. I am Brave Life. I am not afraid of the fire.”

He spoke the words three times, building his courage, then ran for the wall of flame.

OUT OF THE CORNER OF HER EYE, Talia saw Thet Ye, Po’s son, break away. He rushed the wall of fire before she could stop him. He didn’t slow. He didn’t falter. He ran at full tilt, leaped through the dripping gap, and vanished.

Talia was at full sprint by the time he jumped. She jumped three steps later. The fire licked at her arms and neck, but the flame could not hold on. She made it through and heard Finn come through after her. The boy turned and gave them an affirming nod.

As Finn caught up to her, he snorted and coughed. “Glad to meet this little daredevil’s approval.”

The second section of the warehouse matched the first, down to the guards and visitors.

Eddie’s drones flowed through the gap and took them down. Talia and Finn recovered the keys from an unconscious guard and began unlocking the doors.

Emergency services had arrived on scene. Sirens surrounded them. Water and soot rained down from above. A team of firefighters broke the door in with a battering ram.

As the firefighter helped the girls out of the building, Talia called for the one who had brought her there. “Hla Meh!” She had to call only once. Thet Ye found the girl first. The two held hands for a few heartbeats, then clung to each other at the center of the chaos.

CHAPTER

EIGHTY-

ONE

AERION AS2

CENTRAL UNITED STATES

FORTY-NINE THOUSAND FEET

FROMHISSEATINTHECABIN, Finn glanced at their prisoner, who lay unconscious on a gurney in the center aisle. “He looks so peaceful when he’s sleeping.”

“Don’t be fooled.” Talia sat across the table from him. “When he’s awake, he’s a handful. Tyler said he made a scene in front of the Thai Ranger colonel, tried to convince the man Tyler would kill him.”

“How’d that go over?”

“The colonel knows Tyler too well. He agreed to let us smuggle Bazin out of the country in exchange for full credit for taking down Boyd and capturing the whole pod of black-market whales in the Grand Bazaar.” She laughed. “Tyler didn’t want credit anyway, but he milked the deal. He made the colonel promise to find Lionel a proper home.”

The colonel had gladly agreed, and his medics dressed the Russian’s wounds for travel and set up a morphine drip. Talia glanced back to check on him. She had little reason to worry. Bazin’s wrists and ankles were cuffed to the gurney rails. Darcy poked at the restraints, and Talia gave her a Stop that look.

“What?” the chemist asked with a shrug. “I like the clinking sound they make.” Her eyes drifted over to Eddie, who swallowed and looked away.

Talia turned back to Finn.

He lifted his chin. “What about the Compassion kids?”

“Ewan’s got them well in-hand. He said Compassion’s meticulous documentation procedures mean they’ll be back with their parents in a couple of days.”

He seemed to read the however in her tone. “They weren’t all Compassion’s kids, though, were they?”

“No. Only our thirty-four. The rest face a mountain of red tape. To both Thailand and Myanmar, they are nonentities. It’s hard to return children to their parents when those children don’t officially exist. But there’s a little hope.” She allowed herself the hint of a smile. “I know one State Department employee who will take a vested interest in this and work tirelessly on every case.”

“Jenni.”

She nodded.

“You love your foster sister, don’t you?”

“So much.”

Finn lowered his gaze to his hands, then raised it to meet hers. “I’m glad for you. Family’s important.”

She sensed the pain and longing in the way he said it. Talia didn’t know what to say. “I . . . have a new addition to mine. The little girl. Hla Meh. She needed a sponsor—someone to write her letters, show love and care from afar, maybe even visit her once in a while. I’m not the best at letters and such. I barely return texts and emails. Maybe you could help.”

He smiled. “I’d like that.”

Finn’s fingers made a motion toward hers, but Eddie slapped the table across the aisle and shot a hand in the air. “Something’s wrong. Something big.”

The team gathered around Eddie and Darcy as the geek sent his tablet display to the full-wall screen. Tyler came out of the flight deck, leaving Mac to fly. “What’ve you got?”

“A message from Franklin—the Dark Web