Badge of the Death Game

Chapter 031

The taxi rolled to a smooth stop in front of the Crownline Royal Hotel, its engine idling as the three of them pushed open the doors and stepped out into the early evening air.

Before they had even cleared the curb, the driver leaned halfway out his window, still going.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, please, just hear me out one more time! I'm telling you, I've got connections you won't find anywhere else. The returns alone, three hundred percent annually, guaranteed. You won't regret it!"

"Keep moving," Evan muttered under his breath, not breaking stride. "That guy's obviously running a scam."

Hank gave a single, firm nod beside him, his expression saying everything his words didn't.

The driver had spent the entire ride pitching them. Three hundred percent annual returns. Guaranteed. He'd even pulled out his phone to show them photographs of what he called "live investment events," images packed wall to wall with people, the whole spectacle looking uncannily like a real estate sales floor on launch day. Soren had watched the photos scroll past without comment, quietly wondering what kind of person actually fell for something like that.

The three of them walked through the hotel's entrance and into the lobby. Soren glanced up at the pendulum clock mounted on the far wall. Just past six in the evening. Through the tall glass facade behind them, the Bangkok sky had already begun to deepen, the last of the daylight bleeding out into a dull amber haze along the rooftops.

"This is the right place?" Soren asked, turning to Evan. "Where's Mike's army buddy?"

Evan was already checking his phone. "He said he's coming down now. Yeah, this is definitely the place." He looked up from the screen and swept his gaze around the lobby, taking in the marble floors, the tall floral arrangements, the soft gold lighting that made everything look quietly expensive. "Uncle Mike said the guy's a senior executive at some security company. Must've landed a serious contract to be operating out of a hotel like this." He paused. "You think he's protecting some international tycoon or something?"

No one answered. Soren said nothing, and Hank simply looked around with the calm, unhurried attention of someone cataloguing the room rather than admiring it.

They settled into the lobby sofas to wait. It didn't take long.

A young woman in a hotel uniform approached them, her smile polished and perfectly calibrated. She addressed them in Mandarin, her pronunciation clean and unaccented.

"Excuse me, are you three friends of Mr. Mark?"

Soren's eyes moved to her briefly, then drifted, almost casually, to the two men in black suits standing near the entrance and the front desk respectively. Both were still. Neither was looking at anything in particular. Neither needed to.

"Mr. Mark? Mark Dalton, right?" Evan glanced at his phone again. "Yeah, that's us."

The attendant's smile widened slightly. "Wonderful. Please follow me. Mr. Mark is waiting for you upstairs."

"Great. Come on, let's go." Evan stood and reached for Soren's gear bag.

Soren raised a hand. "I've got it."

He picked up the bag with his left hand, and his thumb, in one motion that looked entirely offhand, unclipped the zipper latch.

The attendant led them across the lobby toward the elevators. She pressed the call button, and within moments the doors slid open. As they stepped inside, the two suited men from across the lobby fell in quietly behind them, positioning themselves at the back without a word.

Hank glanced at them once, then turned away and pulled out his phone. A moment later, Soren felt his own phone buzz.

He drew it out and read the message.

Hank: Those two behind us. Something bulging at the hip on both of them. Looks like guns.

Soren locked the screen and slid the phone back into his pocket. His expression didn't change. He didn't look at the men. He didn't look at Hank. He simply stood there, bag in hand, eyes forward.

Evan, meanwhile, had noticed none of it. "Sounds like Uncle Mark is doing pretty well for himself," he said, his voice easy and conversational. He glanced at the attendant. "Is Mr. Mark a regular guest here? Seems like a big deal, sending someone all the way down to the lobby just to bring us up."

"Mr. Mark is indeed one of our valued guests," she replied pleasantly. "His annual spend at this hotel rarely falls below two and a half million baht."

"Two and a half million baht?" Evan blinked and looked sideways at Hank.

"Roughly fifty-something thousand US dollars," Hank said.

"Damn. That's real money."

The elevator hummed upward. Soren had moved to the right corner of the car the moment they entered, putting the wall at his back and the full interior in his sightline. The two suited men occupied the left side. The attendant stood near the panel. Hank and Evan were in the middle. The car wasn't small, but with six people it felt close.

The attendant pressed the button for the fourth floor. Neither of the suited men moved toward the panel.

Evan had gone quieter now. Maybe it was the silence. Maybe it was the way Soren and Hank hadn't said a word since they got in. He glanced sideways at the two men near Soren, and one of them caught it, fixing him with a flat, hard stare.

Evan immediately looked away and found something very interesting to study on the elevator wall.

The doors opened.

Noise rolled in before anything else, a wave of voices, laughter, and the mechanical chime of machines.

"Yes! I hit it! Seven times the payout! Come on, pay me, pay me now!"

"Son of a — I'm cleaned out. That was my last dollar."

"God, my luck has been absolute garbage today..."

The fourth floor of the Crownline Royal Hotel was a casino. A large one.

Evan stared. "Did we... get off on the wrong floor?"

"This is the right floor." The suited man who had glared at Evan earlier was smiling now, though the expression didn't reach his eyes. He put a hand on Evan's shoulder and pushed, not hard, but not gently either. "In you go, kid. Our boss has been waiting."

They moved through the floor. A floor attendant materialized from somewhere to their left, carrying a silver tray with several flutes of champagne, smiling as he extended it toward them.

"No, thank you." Soren waved him off without slowing.

Evan didn't touch the glasses either. He was starting to get the picture. He let the attendant pass and leaned slightly toward the suited man beside him. "So," he said carefully, "Mark Dalton is actually your boss, isn't he."

The man said nothing, which was answer enough.

Evan's jaw tightened. "So we're the 'friends' who were supposed to bring money."

"Smart kid."

"Look," Evan said quickly, "we're really not that close to him. We've never even met the man in person. You can't exactly call us friends."

"Funny, you were calling him Uncle Mark about five minutes ago." The man shrugged. "Doesn't matter. You're here. As long as you pay what's owed, nobody gets hurt. Simple as that."

Evan looked at Soren.

Soren met his eyes for a moment, then gave a small, even shake of his head. "Fine," he said. "Take us to him."

The man made a short, satisfied sound. "Knew you'd see reason."

He led them through the casino floor and down toward the far end of the room, where a private room sat behind a closed door. Two more men in identical black suits stood outside it, arms loose at their sides, watching the three of them approach with the particular blankness of people paid to look intimidating.

As Soren's group drew close, one of the guards raised a hand, signaling them to stop. The other stepped forward, hands already moving toward Soren's gear bag.

Soren's posture shifted, something almost imperceptible, a slight drop in the shoulders, a coiling stillness that ran through him from the ground up. Every muscle pulled taut.

Hank reacted instantly. He stepped sideways, half-blocking the bag from view, and addressed the guards in sharp, loud Thai.

"What do you think you're doing? We're here to deliver money. You want to explain to your boss why you're helping yourselves to his payment before he even sees it?"

His voice carried the right kind of indignation, loud enough to draw a glance from a nearby dealer, and his body language was just exaggerated enough to sell it completely.

Hank knew exactly what was at stake. If Soren's equipment was taken, they stopped being a threat and became leverage. Whatever happened in that room would happen entirely on someone else's terms.

The two guards exchanged a look. One of them started to push forward anyway.

Then a woman's voice came from behind the door.

"Boss says let them in."

The guards stepped back.

The tension in Soren's frame released by a fraction. Just a fraction. He'd been ready. If Hank hadn't moved when he did, things would have already gone a different direction.

The attendant stepped forward and pushed the door open, her smile still in place, unchanged from the moment she had greeted them in the lobby downstairs.

"Right this way, gentlemen."