KARMA COLADA

Chapter Twenty-One

"FOR the last fucking time, we were robbed!" Leon snapped at the officer taking his statement, wincing when a sharp pain exploded on his left cheekbone. His hand flew up to his face, or at least, it would have if it wasn't cuffed to the chair.

"Are you trying to make things worse for us?" came Naomi's dry remark.

Naomi herself was cuffed to the chair beside him, her body practically hunched over in defeat. He shot her a disdainful glare.

Leon was wrong about her.

Instead of an angel, she was the most infuriating hellion.

"I hate repeating myself."

"So you've said," she drawled in a tone not unlike a bored teenager, "twice in the last fifteen minutes."

If Leon wasn't sufficiently riled before, he was now.

"This is all your fault. If you just minded your own damn business, my passport and iPhone would still be here, in my pocket, where they belong," the words flew out of his mouth like a stream of bullets aimed at Public Enemy Number One (Naomi).

Naomi recoiled into the back of her chair. "I thought she needed help! What was I supposed to do?"

"How about let somebody else do the job? But no, you just had to be the one to help the decrepit robber. You just had to be Miss Goody Two-Shoes. The Indiana Jones of good karma. God, woman! Don't you ever let up from being so goddamn righteous all the time? How anybody can stand having you in their lives is a huge fucking mystery to me."

Naomi stared at Leon blankly, glassy-eyed.

Her lips quivered almost imperceptibly; a micro-movement that instantly made him regret what he said.

"Enough shouting!" the officer (ironically) shouted, banging his fists on the metal desk. He palmed the top of his shiny bald head, as if rubbing it even harder would make Leon and Naomi disappear.

The officer took a deep breath in before speaking again, "Now Miss Wu, explain again. You tried to help old woman?" he directed his question to Naomi and she nodded numbly in reply.

After clearing her throat, Naomi replied, "I tried to help her cross the street. And she pulled a knife on me and demanded that I give her my bag."

Leon tried to ignore the tremble in her voice, choosing instead to glower at the police officer, who was furiously scribbling onto a piece of paper.

"She had a knife?" The officer reiterated.

"It was a walking—" Leon interjected but the officer sent him a look that said 'Zip your face or I'll put a bullet in it'. Leon sank into his seat with a petulant scowl in his face.

"Actually, not exactly. She had a walking stick with her. She twisted it open and one of the ends had a b-blade in it," Naomi stumbled over her words and Leon bit the inside of his cheek, feeling like a giant asshole.

He hadn't even considered how traumatized Naomi must be by the whole ordeal. Despite the fact that the thief was old enough to be someone's (great) grandmother, being threatened with a weapon wasn't exactly a thrilling experience.

"Oh." The officer's jaw suddenly locked. Then he rubbed his head again, and Leon knew there was something he wasn't telling them.

"We're not the first victims, are we?" Leon asked, although he already knew the answer to that by the officer's flattened lips.

"She target tourists who come to Bangkok. Especially people who have..." he stopped to think of the appropriate words, before settling on, "soft heart."