We talked from night until dawn. When early morning came, Pollard went to look for a phone from the villagers.
At about noon, he returned, forlorn and empty handed. He told us, "It seems some police officers are coming up here. You can see for yourselves."
Everyone was enthusiastic at the news, but Naomi immediately became wary. "Why the sudden visit?"
Momentarily stunned, Pollard replied, "Rumor has it that they came to look for some people, but I don't know the details. Why don't you have a look?"
They were looking for people?
We all shared a look, suddenly suspicious of this turn of events. Would they come this far to look for us?
Taking into account the many mountains we'd climbed and the many paths we'd walked the past few days, we were so far off from where we started. Weren't they wary of ringing any alarm bells if they made it too obvious that they were really trying to find us?
"What's wrong?" Pollard asked, confused, sensing how anxious we were.
We didn't want to stir up any trouble for him, so our replies were instantaneous. "It's all good!"
Naomi was the most vigilant among us, and she didn't trust easily. After a pause, she said, "Whatever it is, we still have to be careful. Worst case scenario, we can still keep going. We could still meet people from town who can help. We could go to the border embassy for help."
At this, everyone nodded in agreement. It was the only way forward.
After making our decision, we said our goodbyes to Pollard and Yannie and left in a hurry.
Just before we could leave, however, we heard the sounds of trampling footsteps outside.
"What should we do?" Rainie pulled on the hem of my clothes tightly, flustered.
"Let's take a look first!" I said, as I glanced at Naomi, and walked out of the door.
Naomi's lip curled. "Hey, listen. We are not trespassing, we escaped here."
The man frowned then as he spoke to the police chief. The police chief's gaze swept attentively over us, paused for a moment and said something back.
After a while, things started to make sense. Apparently some people had the Myanway police search the border after reporting someone missing in the area.
After some more clarification, the people looking
for us didn't sound like bad people, but rather, our searching family members.
Naomi looked at us and said, "Which of our families has this much influence on the police from Myanway?"
We couldn't say. Tina hesitated and said, "I don't know much about that. My dad works for the government at the country border, but he didn't know that I was brought here. It's very unlikely that he knows I'd be here!"
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