Chapter 7
Chapter 7 — What She Knew
On the inland road toward Tam Ky, the motorbike begins sputtering from a nearly empty tank. Michael and Rita pull off at an abandoned roadside shrine to assess their situation. In the quiet, Rita reveals the real reason she came to Vietnam: she had been privately investigating the agricultural equipment shipments from her department store's import division, which she suspected were being used as a front for smuggling. She had traced discrepancies in cargo manifests before she ever boarded the cruise ship. Loc didn't kidnap a random tourist — he kidnapped someone who was already on his trail. Michael processes this as the motorbike dies completely. They are on foot, inland, with four rounds and a secret that makes them worth more dead than alive. A truck approaches from behind on the road.
The motorbike coughed.
Not the steady pop of a engine under load — a stutter, the kind that meant fuel starvation. Rita felt it in the handlebars before Michael heard it. She throttled back, coaxing what she could from the tank.
"How far to Tam Ky?" she asked.
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