The sun blazed into the cave opening, roasting Kamon’s skin. He blinked himself awake and glanced around, searching for Malia. She was gone. He pounded a fist onto the rock bed above him where he last saw her crying herself to sleep.

He was such an ass.

He should have curled her into his arms and reassured her that they could make things work. He should have put aside his wounded pride and did what he could to put her at ease. He should have dug deeper to find out what could have been so bad that she wouldn’t trust in him to help her through it.

So many should haves—zero sympathy for what she was feeling in that moment. Instead, he let his own issues cloud his judgment and take over his emotions. Now he was left with only a memory of her, and he left her with a tainted version of who he was.

He needed to find out what he could do to salvage what remained of their budding relationship, or at least their friendship. If that’s all she truly wanted, he’d accept it. He’d never push himself on a woman. But she clearly felt for him as he did for her. Her body, her kiss, her touch all told him more than words could ever say.

Kamon needed help though, and only one man could pull off the impossible. He needed to get in touch with John “Tex” Keegan. The guy could find information on anyone, anywhere. A former Navy SEAL, Tex had helped Kamon’s SEAL team out on numerous occasions behind the scenes. While no longer active duty, once a SEAL, always a SEAL. He never questioned, nor turned down a fellow SEAL in need.

Minor problem—Kamon’s phone was gone, along with his wallet. He needed to hoof-it back to civilization and find a way to get in touch with Tex. Jinx was probably his best option, being his roommate. He just hoped he’d take a collect call from Thailand.

Kamon slipped on his pack and climbed his way down the rock hill and made his way through the dense jungle until he found a dirt road and prayed it would take him to Nong Khai. He glanced at the mid-morning sun and the road appeared to be going to the north. It was a good start.

Thailand’s humidity and blazing sun put his endurance to the test. But Kamon had been through intense heat and sun on several of his missions in the Middle East, wearing a shit-ton more clothes and gear. Maybe his time off softened him a bit, or the fact that he wasn’t facing life-threatening gun-fire and IED’s blowing up in his face.

Then again, he didn’t have a canteen full of water, nor any MRE’s to eat like he did in the desert. He’d eaten all of three bilimbi fruits in twenty-four hours. For his six-foot, two-hundred pound muscular body, he needed more sustenance. But Malia wasn’t around to guide him with what was edible in the jungle. With the luck he’d been having, he’d find the most poisonous plant guarded by the most poisonous snake. He’d just have to press on and make it to Nong Khai and hope Jinx would take his call.

* * *

Kamon finally reached the city and got a hold of Jinx who put him up in a hotel so he could shower. Somehow Jinx managed to have a brand new phone and new clothes waiting for him. He didn’t care how he managed it, whether he phoned a friend or pulled some magic juju shit, Kamon was just thankful.

He grabbed the phone from the counter and plunked down on the bed in a towel as he dialed up Tex.

“Hello there, S O Kamon Aromdee, codename—Shadow. What can I do for ya?” Tex said before Kamon could even introduce himself.

“Okay, they told me you were good, but that was off the chain. This is a brand new fucking phone!” Kamon replied, unable to hide the awe in his voice. “How do you do that?”

“If I shared my secrets, then everyone would do what I do and I’d be out of a job.” He chuckled. “I’m retired military now. Have to make my living somehow. But you didn’t call me all the way from Thailand just to say hi, what do you need?”

“I know we don’t know each other well, Sir, but I know you’ve helped members of my SEAL team in the past with some intel. I was hoping you could help me gather some information on a woman who may be in danger.” A nervous buzz stung his stomach. Part of it was worry about the level of danger Malia could possibly be in. Part of it was the level of danger Kamon would be in once Malia found out he’d dug up intel on her.

“Well, I’m always glad to help out a fellow SEAL whenever I can. Lay it on me,” Tex said.

“I don’t know much. We’ve barely known each other two days, but I know she’s in some kind of trouble and it may have to do with the local drug syndicate here in Thailand. She said she’s working for some casino, just over the border in Laos. But I think there’s much more to the story, and she said she didn’t want me to get involved for my safety. I even told her I was a SEAL, and that made her back off even more.” Kamon choked on the last part of his sentence, the worry knifing his gut even more.

“I see. Well, do you know her name?”

“Malia Danpae. The only thing I know is she’s originally from Thailand and that her parents were killed right in front of her when she was five by this drug lord. A couple from the states, I think she said San Diego, adopted her internationally. But why she’d end up working in a casino in Laos doesn’t make sense.” Kamon pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a frustrated sigh.

“Well, I’ve dug up information on people with less details than this. I’ll see what I can find. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can,” Tex said.

“Thanks. I owe you one,” Kamon replied with relief in his voice.

“Just protect the girl. That’s payment enough. That’s why I do this,” Tex said before clicking off the call.

That’s all he wanted to do was protect Malia, even if she didn’t want to be a part of his life. Letting out a sigh, he got himself dressed. He still had to take care of his mom’s ashes before he could get back to worrying about Malia.

According to his mother, his dad’s ashes were spread along the Mekong River near his father’s childhood village. So that was where he was about to head. He grabbed his new wallet and phone off the dresser, and the medallion laying next to them caught his eye. He almost forgot to put it back on. After adjusting it around his neck, he headed to the lobby and waited for his taxi.

Miles of wooden houses on stilts lined the banks of the river once they left Nong Khai proper. Hoards of small boats dotted the coast filled with men casting nets and poles, only the protection of their wide-brimmed bamboo hats to ward off the scorching sun. The driver pulled up to a boat ramp and let Kamon out.

He made his way down the embankment to the sandy edges of the shore. Sweat clung to his body like a second skin. The stench of fish, dirt, and body odor hung heavy in the humidity. How could people live in this country? Then again, most didn’t know about life outside of their village ways. He’d seen that a thousand times on his journeys with the military. This would be all they’d ever know.

He took a hard swallow and clung to the urn, a part of him not ready to let go of his mom yet. Why it hit him harder now than even at her funeral, he had no idea. Perhaps too final of a moment, at least with the urn, he still had her with him. Kamon hadn’t really shed tears for his father upon news of his death, since he didn’t have much of a relationship with him to begin with. He was merely a man who sent money to his mom and brought him trinkets, like the one around his neck.

“You spread ashes now?” a voice said behind him.

Kamon whirled around and two ladies in plaid shirts and bamboo hats stared at him. “Huh? I mean, yes, I’m going to. In a minute.”

“No, you spread now. We need fish here.” The older of the two women stared him down.

“I’m sorry. I’ll just find a different spot,” Kamon said, taking a step beside her.

She clutched him by the elbow, halting his get-away. “Better to do it quickly. The longer wait, the longer it take for spirit to release. Do not cry. They sense worry and will not rise to the beyond. Let them go.”

A ball of emotion wedged in the back of his throat. He clutched the urn closer to his chest and nodded before turning back to the edge of the river. “Maybe I should keep her. She’s better with me. My father never loved her, not in the way she deserved. I was the one who was there for her always. Not him. Why would she want to spend eternity following his ashes?”

The old woman placed a hand on his back. “Spreading ashes on water helps wash sin away. They get to heaven faster. If that is what he did to cleanse his sins, that may be why she wants to follow.”

He swallowed hard and choked back the tears drowning his eyes. With a nod, he opened the lid of the urn and a light breeze swirled around him lifting the ashes from the jar and onto the wind, dropping them across the ripples of the river.

The younger of the two, still close to probably fifty or sixty years in age, stared at him as he turned around and closed the lid on the urn. She pointed to the medallion. “Yaza.”

Kamon shook his head. “No. My father gave me this when I was a child. I barely knew him, but he said it would protect me. I never knew what it said, but someone told me it looks a lot like the medals that Yaza’s men wear. But, believe me, I’m not one of them. It’s just a worthless piece of jewelery.”

“Then why you wear it close to your heart?” The older woman said. Tilting her head, she inched her way closer to his face. “It can’t be.”

He hitched a shoulder. “What?”

“Rune?” she gasped, clutching a hand to her heart.

“No,” the other woman said shaking her head. “Impossible.”

The older woman turned Kamon to face the other one. “Look into his eyes. You will see your brother’s tears. The ones he shed for you the day he protected your honor and let Yaza take him in your place. Look!”

The younger of the two stared at Kamon’s face and an uneasy wave of nausea bloomed in his stomach. “What are you talking about?”

Tears welled in the woman’s eyes and she dropped her fishing basket and ran up the embankment.

“You are son of Rune Aromdee, no?” the older lady asked.

Kamon blinked in astonishment. “What? How could you possibly know that?”

“I see my son in you. He lives in your eyes. In the pain on your face as you wash away your mother to meet him. He wore that same expression every time he came back from seeing her.” The lady cupped his cheek.

Fear and excitement rode the waves pitching and rolling in his stomach. Was he really staring into the eyes of his grandmother? “Is this for real?”

“The medallion you wear was given to him by Yaza himself. A symbol of notoriety of only his closest men.” His grandmother stepped back and adjusted her bamboo hat.

“Wait, my father worked for Yaza? He worked for a drug lord?” Kamon held down the bile rising in his throat.

She removed the hat from her head and wiped the sweat from her brow with her arm. “All is not what you think. Rune worked his way through the ranks so he could make enough money to send back home to our village. Because if he didn’t, they would come for Boonsri, his sister. Yaza wanted her for his wife, but she was only thirteen.”

He stared off at Boonsri still walking away. Was she mad at him or his father?

“Your father was killed because he told Yaza he was done working for him. He had a son and a wife who needed him. After twenty years working for him, Yaza killed Rune without a second thought, with his own hand.” She clutched her hat to her abdomen.

Kamon heaved on the bile lurching in his throat and shook his head. “No, this isn’t happening. This can’t be right. This can’t be real.”

“What I have shared with you is truth. If you cannot accept that, there is nothing more I can do for you. If you wish to know more of your father and your family, then I welcome you to our home this night, my grandson. The choice is yours.” The woman turned and walked after her daughter up the embankment.

Maybe it was after effects of second-hand opium. He’d no sooner let go of his mother’s ashes and by some weird cosmic coincidence his grandmother and aunt happen to be there right when he did?

But the only way to get the answers he claimed he wanted was to go after them. The problem was, as Malia had once said, sometimes the answers we seek were better left unfound.

“What’s the matter with her?” Kamon said, jogging after his grandmother.

“Boonsri still wears the guilt of Rune’s death. She believes that if it weren’t for her, he would not have been taken by Yaza. What she fails to see is, if it weren’t for him, I would have lost two children.” She stopped outside a rickety old shack and dropped her fishing gear inside.

“So this medallion my father gave me, it’s a sign of Yaza? I had an encounter with some of his men on my travels up here. If it was supposed to protect me, why did they beat me and take me captive?”

His grandmother gasped and closed her eyes, letting out a heavy sigh as she reopened them. “Because while Rune was still alive, he was in the chain of power with Yaza. No one would dare threaten anyone who wore his sign. But each one is engraved with the men’s names.” She slid her hand under the metal against his neck. “See, right here, it says Rune. Anyone who knew him would now know him as a traitor to Yaza for choosing his family over the empire.”

“Great, so they already know I’m Rune’s kid. Probably thought I was there trying to get retribution or some bullshit like that.” Kamon sighed.

His grandmother shook her head and walked along the dusty street, stopping outside a bight-yellow two-story abode. It was modest, but one of the nicer houses along the road. “You should just leave. You’ve finished your business here.”

“Wait, I just found you and my aunt, and you want me to leave?” Kamon’s voice warbled more than he intended. He found long-lost family and they didn’t seem to want any part of him. Maybe that’s where his father got it from. But a stab of regret in that thought punched him in the gut. If what she said was true, about him wanting to leave the drug cartel to pursue a life with him and his mom … well, it didn’t matter since that never happened.

“It is you who already have pre-conceived notions about us. I see in your eyes you already think you know who Rune was, and this information does little to change that. I have longed to look upon the face of his child, to not only see my son again, but to see his legacy.” A glassy sheen shimmered in her eyes, but she never shed a tear. “You are already so much like him. Not only with your image, but with your strong heart and your attachment to your mother, one that mirrored Rune’s devotion to her, and to you.”

Kamon shook his head. “But I hardly ever saw him. I barely knew the man.”

“Everything he did in this life was for someone else. First with me, once his father died. Then with Boonsri, to ensure her safety. Then for you and your mother. Everything he did was for you, to make sure you were safe. He made sure you were protected and far away from this life, never to know of it and the demons inside constantly pulling at him. You were the goodness, the light that guided him out of the darkness. You may not have known him in person, but think about the life you lived. He made sure you and your mother were taken care of, never to want for anything. He had armed guards always keeping a watchful eye when he couldn’t. This house,”—she fanned her arms to the yellow wooden home behind her—“all given out of the blood, sweat, and tears of Rune.”

Guilt sank Kamon’s heart deep into his chest. He’d only ever thought the worst of his dad, assuming his mom was just some woman in a list of ports he visited. Just dumb trinkets brought home to keep them happy until his next visit. He had no idea his father took care of not only him and his mother, but his grandmother and his aunt. He carried the brunt of his cruel world on his shoulders.

He dipped his head. “I wish now I could have talked to him, more than ever.” Raising his head, he locked eyes with his grandmother, hardening his stare. “I promise I’ll keep watch over you, and Boonsri, just as he did,” Kamon choked out the words through the knot of emotions in his throat.

A smile curled over the woman’s wrinkled lips. “That is what Rune would have said.”

Kamon’s pants buzzed and he nearly jumped on top of his frail grandmother. He’d never been so off-guard in his life as he had been in the past forty-eight hours. Between Malia and now his long-lost family sharing information he’d never imagined, his life spiraled out of control faster than a botched Halo jump at twenty-thousand feet.

He pulled out his phone and looked at the message. Tex said he already had some intel for him on Malia and to call him when he could from a secure location. That couldn’t be good.

“Come inside. I have something of yours.” She waved him after her as she entered the house.

“What could you possibly have of mine? I’ve never been here before.” Kamon followed, a nervous twitch in his gut.

The smell of fish and dirt still clung to his nostrils, now mixed with some kind of incense burning inside the house. Wooden floors creaked beneath his weight, yet shined bright in the sunlight beaming in through the windows of the open common room of the house. His grandmother barely made a sound as she shuffled across the room, taking small determined steps.

She dug out a metal chest from a crawl space behind a small sofa along the partitioning wall between the kitchen and the family room. “Rune left this for you.”

Kamon blinked at the gray box, dull and ordinary looking, like something a teenager would make in metal shop. He ran a finger over the lock on the front of it. “How am I supposed to open it? Did he leave a key?”

His grandmother smiled. “You wear it around your neck.”

“What?” Kamon fingered the medallion and yanked it off. He studied the indentations on the metal and looked at the circle on the lock. He matched them up and turned the medallion counterclockwise, popping the lock open and he lifted the lid.

A manila envelope lay inside and Kamon opened it up. He pulled out a stack of cash and picture after picture of a man, he assumed was Yaza, murdering people, walking through the opium plants, meeting with people and shaking hands, most of which Kamon didn’t recognize but a couple of the older men from the temple were in the photos. He assumed those were Yaza’s top yes-men.

“What is all this?” Kamon looked at his grandmother.

She paused before taking a deep, labored breath. “What Rune was killed for.”

“What?” Kamon choked out. “I thought you said he was killed because he wanted out of the drug business?”

She gave a slow nod. “When Yaza refused to let Rune go, he planned to blackmail Yaza for his freedom. He said it would be enough evidence to take down his empire. Rune told me, should something happen to him, I was to give it to you, his son. He knew you would come looking for answers one day. He wanted you to have them.”

“But wouldn’t Yaza have coming looking for this information if he knew it was out there?”

“He did. Which is how we got this new house.” She fanned her arm around the room. “He destroyed our former home in search of it. Rune used the last of his money to rebuild it. The rest is in the box, for you and your mother. We did not know where to look for you. Rune took your location to his grave, for fear that Yaza would come for you or your mother. He shared only one picture of you and your mother. It is in the box.”

She reached in and pulled out a black and white photo of him at age six or so holding his mother’s hand. Kamon barely remembered being in the picture, only how adamant his father was they take it. His mom wasn’t fond of pictures, but she gave in at his insistence.

His grandmother placed the photo in Kamon’s hand. “He carried it with him always. But on the night he faced Yaza, he put it in the box and gave it to me, as if he knew he would not be coming home. He wanted no trace to you or your mother.”

Anger and regret flushed Kamon’s veins. Anger at Yaza for killing his father, destroying the chance at a normal life Kamon could have had with him. And regret, at doubting the devotion of his dad all those years, thinking he willingly chose a life without his family. Rune never once scolded Kamon for his attitude or reluctance in affection when he would see him. Kamon realized in that moment, the look in his father’s eyes was true regret. Only it wasn’t regret for having a family, as he originally thought of his dad. It was regret that he couldn’t be with them, for fear of their safety.

“That’s why he kept mom and I in Hawaii,” Kamon choked out.

“Ahh, Hawaii.” She nodded. “That makes sense. It was where he could travel to see you when he would make a run to bring the drugs to the United States.”

Kamon eyed something else in the corner of the box. He picked up what looked like a poker chip. “What’s this?”

“The location of Yaza’s headquarters. He owns a casino, just across the Friendship Bridge in Laos.”

Kamon’s mouth went dry. “In Vientiane?”

His grandmother gave a terse nod. “You are familiar?”

Kamon shook his head. “I’ve never been. But I know someone who has. And I think she’s in a lot of trouble. I’m so sorry, grandmother. I wish I could stay and talk and get to know you and my aunt. But I have to help someone who may be in in a lot of danger.” He stared into her eyes as he cupped her hand in his own. “I promise though, I will come back to you. And I’m going to put an end to this Yaza bastard, once and for all. He’ll never rip apart a family ever again.”

“You cannot do this on your own, Kamon. Do not be foolish like your father. He wanted you to have a life free of this, not run headfirst toward it,” his grandmother scolded.

Kamon smiled. “I promise you, I won’t be alone. I’ll be bringing the cavalry with me. I’m a United States Navy SEAL. I specialize in taking out the garbage of the world. It’s what I’m trained to do.”

A watery twinkle filled her eyes. “Rune would be so proud of you. I wish he could have gotten to see you now.”

“I’m sure he’s with me,” Kamon replied, clutching the medallion in his hand. “He always has been.”