Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Michael begins his investigation in the Da Nang market district. He learns from witnesses that Rita was forcibly taken by two men in a black sedan. At the police station, he receives a veiled warning. A contact in Bangkok identifies the kidnapper as Tran Van Loc, a dangerous smuggler who moves victims within hours. The stakes rise: Michael now knows he has less than two days to find Rita before she disappears into a trafficking network. He heads toward the river, where the warehouses of Loc's operation likely hold the key.
The market district of Da Nang thrummed with late-afternoon life: motorbikes weaving through alleys, vendors shouting prices, the clatter of metal spoons against clay pots. Michael Stone moved through the crowd with the practiced economy of a man who had once dropped into a jungle at midnight with nothing but a compass and a rifle. His eyes swept left, right, up to the balconies, down to the cracks between cobblestones. In his hand, a small photograph—Rita smiling, brown hair falling over one shoulder. The purser had given it to him from the ship’s manifest.
He stopped at a fruit stall where a weathered woman in a conical hat sorted mangoes. He held up the photo. “Did you see this woman last night? Around nine?”
The woman looked at the picture, then at him. Her face was a sealed door. She pointed a wrinkled finger toward a narrow alley. “She bought fruit. Very pretty. Alone. Then she walked that way.”
“Was anyone following her?”
The woman’s eyes darted sideways, then back to her mangoes. “Maybe a man. He stayed in the shadows. I didn’t see his face.”
“What did he look like? Tall? Short?”
“Not tall. Dressed dark. Scar here.” She touched her own cheekbone. “I don’t want trouble.”
Michael nodded, slipped a few dong into her palm, and moved into the alley. The walls pressed close, lined with drying fish and forgotten bicycle parts. The air smelled of salt and motor oil and something metallic. Halfway down, a glint caught his eye. He knelt, fingers brushing against a small silver earring shaped like a crescent moon, wedged between two stones. He remembered Rita wearing a pair like it on the ship—she had turned her head and the light caught them. He pocketed the earring. His hands were steady, but something cold settled in his chest.
The alley opened onto a larger street. A row of motorbike repair shops stood silent, owners packing up for the night. He approached a wiry man in a grease-stained shirt and showed the photo again.
“This woman. Did you see her?”
The man squinted. “I saw her. She was taking pictures of the market. Then a car came—black sedan, no plates. Two men got out. They talked to her. She looked scared.”
“Did she go with them willingly?”
The man shook his head. “They grabbed her arm. She tried to pull away. They put her in the car and drove fast.”
“Which direction?”
“East. Toward the river.”
Michael’s jaw tightened. Organized. Clean. Not a random snatch. He thanked the man and walked to the nearby police station, a squat building with peeling paint and a single ceiling fan that barely stirred the humid air.
Behind a wooden desk, a sergeant with a thick mustache looked up from a newspaper. Michael introduced himself, showed the photo and the earring. The sergeant barely glanced at them.
“Tourists disappear all the time,” he said, his voice flat. “They wander, get lost, maybe fall in the river. We file a report. Nothing more.”
“She was taken by force. Two men in a black sedan. That’s not wandering.”
The sergeant shrugged. “Maybe she owed money. Maybe she met the wrong people. This is not your country, Mr. Stone. You should go home.”
The warning hung in the air like smoke. Michael leaned forward, keeping his voice low. “I’m not going anywhere until I find her. Who runs the east side of the river?”
The sergeant’s eyes narrowed. He stood slowly, his bulk casting a shadow over the desk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do. Give me a name.”
For a long moment, they stared at each other. Then the sergeant’s gaze flickered—almost imperceptibly—to a photograph on the wall behind him. A group of men in uniform, one of them with a scarred cheek. He said nothing. He didn’t have to.
Michael turned and walked out, the sergeant’s stare burning into his back.
Outside, the sun was sliding toward the horizon, painting the sky in layers of orange and pink. Michael pulled out his phone and dialed an old contact in Bangkok—Somsak, a former intelligence officer who still had his ear to the ground. The line crackled, then connected.
“Michael? Long time. You in trouble?”
“Maybe. I need information about the criminal networks in Da Nang. Someone on the east side of the river. Scarred face, runs muscle.”
A pause. “You’re talking about Tran Van Loc. He runs a smuggling operation out of the old fish warehouses. Drugs, weapons, sometimes people. He’s dangerous. Why?”
“He took someone. An American woman.”
“Then she’s already gone, my friend. Loc doesn’t keep hostages. He moves them within hours.”
Michael’s stomach tightened. “Where?”
“Probably to a camp outside the city. Or onto a boat. If you want to find her, you have less than a day, maybe two. After that, she disappears into the system.”
“Thanks, Somsak.”
“Be careful, Michael. Loc has men everywhere. And the local police are in his pocket.”
Michael ended the call and stood still as the market noise faded into the evening. The stakes had snapped into focus. Rita was in the hands of a man who trafficked people, and the clock was ticking. He had no backup, no official support, only his training and a fierce, personal resolve that felt older and sharper than he’d let himself admit.
He turned east, toward the river. The old fish warehouses lined the bank, dark hulks against the fading light. Somewhere in one of them—or beyond, on a boat already slipping into the night—was Rita. He would find her. But now he knew the cost and the count.
He walked into the deepening twilight, a single man moving toward a line of silent buildings, the river lapping against rotting piers. And for the first time since he left the jungle, the thrill of the hunt burned clean in his chest, warm and alive.