Livia Lone (Livia Lone #1)(100)

Other things were different, too. Some of the distant hills were startlingly, almost unnaturally green—terraced with exotic teas now, she had heard, a cash crop the hill tribes had embraced in preference to the subsistence agriculture of Livia’s childhood. But much was still the same. The red dirt that had once caked her bare feet. The smells of the earth and the plants and the trees. The gentle blue of the sky. The villages she passed were still marked by rickety wooden shrines, intended to ward off evil spirits. She hoped they were more effective now than when she had been small. But she doubted it.

She rode on, higher, deeper into the forest, until the trail beneath her stopped and she could go no farther. She took off her helmet, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and looked around. She smiled. Nason would have liked this spot. There was an opening in the forest here, framed by trees to the left and right, looking out over a valley surrounded by lush hills and a line of green mountains beyond. A haven overlooking a beautiful, emerald world, a place where they had known hardship but still had been happy, and innocent, and safe, before anything truly bad had ever happened to them.

She opened the kickstand and dismounted. Then she set down the helmet, took off the pack, and unfolded the portable shovel inside it. She began to dig a hole at the base of a small durian tree. She liked the idea that as it grew, the tree would absorb Nason’s ashes. From the tree’s branches, Nason would have an even better view of the forest paradise that had been her home during her brief time there. And it seemed right that she would become part of the tree that produced the fruit she loved so much.

For a while, as she shoveled out clods of the red earth, Livia’s mind drifted. She forgot what had brought her here. She was just back in the forest. Digging a hole. It might have been a dream.

And maybe it was a dream, because the forest felt different now. How, she wasn’t sure. Something seemed . . . missing. Or maybe it was just her memory playing tricks on her.

When the hole was deep enough, she stopped and mopped her face with her sleeve. It was good to use her hands like this again. To be in the forest, sweaty and dirty from hard work.

She retrieved the urn from the pack, knelt, and carefully emptied Nason’s ashes into the hole. Then she went to the pack again and brought over the wooden Buddha she had carved as a girl in Portland. She placed it atop the ashes. “To help you sleep,” she whispered.

She stood and filled in the dirt. When she was done, she knelt again.

She put her hand on the spot, as though she might feel Nason’s presence there. As though her touch might comfort her sister, the way it always had before.

“Goodbye, little bird,” she said, and started to cry.

Suddenly, around her, the forest came to life with the calls of hundreds of birds. She looked up, startled. That’s what had been missing. The sounds. The birds Nason had once imitated with such uncanny accuracy.

She knew they must have gone silent at the sound of the bike’s engine. And of her digging afterward. It was no more than that.

And yet. And yet. And yet.

She looked around at the trees and smiled through her tears.

“I love you, little bird,” she said in Lahu. “I found you. I won’t look anymore.” Her voice caught for a moment. Then she said, “But I will never forget.”

She stayed and listened to the birds for a long time. When the sun began to get low in the sky, she started back.

She didn’t know where she would go from here. Well, Seattle, of course. She had several cases, victims who needed her help.

But beyond that?

She thought about Malcolm. She had never really thanked him for everything he had done for her. And not just the jiu-jitsu. Everything.

Of course, if she contacted Malcolm, she would have to ask about Sean. And who knew where that might lead. But for some reason, the thought of it leading somewhere didn’t make her feel bad.

She thought about the Homeland Security task force Donna had mentioned. She thought if this task force involved Thailand, there was a good chance she might join it. Dirty Beard and Square Head, and the other man in the van, and the man who had whipped Kai—they were all probably somewhere in Bangkok. Probably cops, like Skull Face. She wanted to find them. Settle those last debts.

But even more than that, she wanted to find that little girl—Lone’s last victim. The one who had looked at her so beseechingly. She badly wanted to help that girl. Needed to.

And she would. She would help her. And others like her. She would.

One way. Or another.