Must Come Down by Brett Baker

Author:Brett Baker [Baker, Brett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Independent
Published: 2017-08-26T22:00:00+00:00

21

Chapter 21

The knock on the door woke Fabrice just as the first rays of sunlight peeked over the horizon. He balanced on the divide between sleep and coherence, and dismissed the knocks. The person knocking on the door of his room, 1408, at the Wanda Vista Quanzhou persisted though, and Fabrice shook remnants of sleep from his mind, and got out of bed.

“Who is it?” he asked as he took two steps toward the door. He then remembered where he was, and that the only person he knew, Dian, would have called his name through the door to ease his mind about knocking.

Fabrice assumed the worst and looked around the room for a way to defend himself. Nothing else seemed suitable so he removed the belt from his pants, wrapped it around his hand like brass knuckles, and proceeded toward the door. The knocking stopped, but his paranoia didn’t. “What do you want? I’m trying to sleep.”

“Open the door or I can’t help.” Three more soft knocks, almost too quiet for Fabrice to hear.

Fabrice approached the door, took a deep breath, and cracked it open. A man’s face leered back at him, inches from his own.

“I’m here to see you Fabrice. Let me in.”

“I’m sorry, buddy, but you’re going to have to give me more than that. I’m not letting you in just because you tell me to do so.”

“If I stay in this hallway much longer I’m a dead man. So you can let me in and hear what I have to say, or you can leave me out here and I’ll go to the grave without talking to you. The choice is yours.”

“What’s this about?”

“You said to come to your room at the Wanda Vista Quanzhou. I’m at your room. I’m sure you know what it’s about.”

“How did you know I was here?” Fabrice asked.

“You told us,” the man said. “You came to talk to us at the airport. I saw you. I’m here. Are you going to let me in or not, because either way I have to get out of this hallway.”

Fabrice closed the door, and looked back toward the room. He half-expected someone to emerge and attack him, feeling as if the man at the door couldn’t act alone. He had to be involved in some great deception. But Fabrice dismissed his concern as part of the paranoia of adjusting to life in another country.

He opened the door, stepped out of the way, and let the man inside.

“It’s about damn time,” the man said. “Are all of you fucking Americans so paranoid? You’re not the one who’s life is on the line here. I don’t know what you’re so fucking scared about.”

“Your life is on the line?” Fabrice asked.

“Probably. Unless you toe the line here your life is always on the line. And maybe you can’t tell by the way I’m providing covert information at an obscene hour, but I don’t toe the line. That puts me in danger. Constant danger.”

“Thanks for coming. But why

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.