Hour of the Rat by Lisa Brackmann

later.”
    A FTER I GET ANOTHER hour and a half of sleep, after I get up, get dressed, find the nearest coffee place, and have my first cup, I think about what to do next.
    I can go back to the Gecko. See if I can corral Erik and get something useful out of him. I’m not sure how I would actually do that. Confront him? Accuse him of setting me up? Would that do any good?
    Or I could look for a young British guy with a bad limp and a bloody hand.
    It seems so easy when people do this kind of detective stuff on TV, you know?
    “
N I HAO
. S O IS Erik here?”
    The same waitress who served me last night smiles—nervously, it seems to me—and shakes her head. “No. Sorry.”
    There aren’t too many customers this time of day. I guessthey’re all out rock climbing or what have you. A couple of younger Chinese women checking out a Lonely Planet guide to Tibet; an older Westerner reading a novel and drinking a cup of coffee.
    “Do you know what time he’s coming in?”
    “Sorry, no.”
    “Gee,” I say. “Because he told me I should stop by if I wanted to, you know, go rafting.”
    “Oh!” She brightens considerably. “Sparrow can help you. I’ll fetch her.”
    S PARROW , NOT SURPRISINGLY , IS tiny. Short, spiky hair, tanned, the beginnings of crow’s-feet, with a wiry build that suggests she got that way from doing healthy outdoor activity. A miniature jock. She wears a hoodie that says, in red, CLIMB ON .
    “Hi,
ni hao
.” She sticks out her hand, American style, though she’s as Chinese as they come, pumps mine like she’s shaking a cocktail.
    “Hi.”
    “So you want to go rafting? I have space for tomorrow.”
    “Maybe.” I hesitate. “Can we sit and talk about it? I have … uh, kind of a leg injury.”
    We sit at an empty table in the back, next to a bookcase full of travel guides and dog-eared paperbacks. “If your leg is hurt, maybe rafting not a good idea,” she says with a frown.
    “Yeah. I wasn’t sure.” I reach into my bag, grab the folded paper with Jason’s photo, smooth it out, and push it across the table. “Look, I’m actually trying to find this guy. He’s the brother of a friend of mine, and they’re worried about him. Do you know him? Have you seen him?”
    She stares at the photo. “Looks like David. But David has … light hair. No beard.”
    Score!
I mean, hair color can be changed. Beards can be shaved. Easy.
    He’s calling himself David.
    “The colors are a little off in this picture,” I say. “You know, it’s a photocopy.”
    “Huh,” she says, and the way she says it, I can tell she’s drawing back, getting suspicious, wondering why I’m asking her these things.
    “Is he around?” I ask.
    “Not now. Been gone for a while.”
    “Do you know where he is?”
    She shakes her head. “Maybe camping.”
    I lean back in my chair and watch Sparrow for a moment. She’s staring down at the photo. I don’t think I’m going to get anything else from her.
    I take a chance. Reach into my bag, get out my card case, and extract a card with my name, my email address, my phone number. I hold it out to her with both hands.
    “I just want to tell his family that he’s okay,” I say. “If you hear anything, if you hear from him, please call me or email me.”
    She hesitates. Takes the card. Makes a show of studying it, in polite fashion.
    “Okay,” she says. “I give you mine.”
    I WALK OUT OF there with Sparrow’s card and consider what I’ve learned. Which is that Jason was in Yangshuo and he’s calling himself David. And whatever it is he’s up to, it’s something worth sending an amateur goon to try to … well, I don’t know. Scare me? Hurt me? Kill me?
    I’m thinking about all this wandering down Xi Jie, trying to ignore the vendors who want to sell me wooden frogs “for give you good luck!” when my phone rings.
    I grab it. A number I don’t know. My heart starts pounding. Maybe I’m getting somewhere. Maybe it’s even