His carefully chosen outfit—worn jeans, wrinkled polo shirt, canvas sneakers, and a Bangkok University baseball cap pulled low—was meant to suggest backpacker or English teacher.
Her eyes narrowed. “You are not teacher.”
Aw.“No, ma’am.”
“Military?”
Right.“Was.”
That earned him a nod. The scent of jasmine incense drifted up from her open doorway and mixed with cooking smells from inside. His stomach clenched with memory.
He hadn’t come to Thailand to eat, for Pete’s sake.
“Miss Chloe, she is good girl. Work very hard for sick people. But she ask many questions. Make people worry.”
“What kind of questions?”
“About children who get sick. Who die.” Mrs. Saetang glanced toward the busysoi before stepping closer. Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “She show me pictures. Very bad pictures. Children sick, mothers crying.”
His chest tightened. Maybe some kind of epidemic. Had to be connected to why she’d crossed into Myanmar.
“When did you last see her?”
“Two days ago. She pack big bag with camera.” Genuine concern layered the old woman’s voice. “A man come for her. Dangerous man.”
“Free Burma Rangers?”
Her eyes sharpened. “You know these men?”
“I know their reputation. They’re good folk?—”
“They find trouble.” Mrs. Saetang shook her head. “I tell her, young ladies should not go to places where they go. There’s a war there. She say someone must tell truth.”
Classic war-correspondent mentality. Truth over survival.Sheesh.No wonder Selah had sent him after her. If she were his sister, he’d hide her passport.
“She leave anything behind? Notes, contacts?”
“You come.” Mrs. Saetang produced a key from a bowl near the door. “I have spare for emergencies.”
He supposed this felt like an emergency.
The lock turned with a soft click. A small place, with afternoon light streaming through thin window curtains. A one-bedroom with a wooden floor, small kitchen, and an apartment sofa, a round table big enough for two wooden chairs, and books piled on the floor.
He walked into the bedroom. A single bed. A throw rug. And on the other wall, a sort of investigative obsession. Photographs of sick children—dozens of them—covered every available surface, pinned in clusters with colored string connecting faces to locations. And on a whiteboard propped on a table shoved against the wall, a crude hand-drawn map of the Myanmar border region marked with red dots. GPS coordinates written in precise block letters. Medical symptoms listed in columns. Timelines sketched in multiple colors.
“She work on this every night,” Mrs. Saetang said. “Lonely. Just pictures and papers and computer.”
Skeet moved closer. The photographs showed children in various stages of illness. Glassy, unfocused eyes. Drool. A kind of confusion that spoke of neurological damage. Village names were written beneath each cluster—some Thai, some Burmese. All in remote border regions.
“She very smart girl,” Mrs. Saetang continued. “But too brave for own good. Say children dying and nobody care because they live in wrong places.”
It looked like multiple villages across the border region, all marked with dates showing the outbreak spreading systematically from location to location.
What was she into here?
He pulled out his phone and took a few pictures.
“She find something important,” Mrs. Saetang said from the doorway. “Last few days, very excited. Say she know where sickness come from.”