Rob Hourmont

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You Will Die in Bali

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Disclaimer

This book is a work of fiction inspired by true events. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is coincidental. The author makes no claims as to the accuracy of events depicted and has changed certain details to protect the identities of individuals involved.

CHAPTER 1: The End Game

The ceiling fan spun lazily overhead, doing little against the oppressive morning heat that clung to his skin like a second layer. He opened his eyes to another day in paradise, though the word had long since lost its meaning. Outside, palm fronds rustled in the breeze, and somewhere in the distance, a rooster crowed its territorial claim over another perfect Bali morning. The sounds that once enchanted him now felt like mockery.

He reached for his phone before he was fully awake, although he didn’t sleep much these days—a reflex born from weeks of hypervigilance. The device lying close to him, as his beloved ex-wife used to do, was his only remaining lifeline and his tormentor, the thing that connected him to the outside world and the thing that delivered his daily dose of terror.

The screen lit up: 7:03 AM. One notification.

WhatsApp.

His stomach tightened. The number was unfamiliar, but that meant nothing. They changed numbers constantly, sometimes multiple times a day. He sat up, his T-shirt damp with sweat despite the fan’s futile efforts, and stared at the notification banner. His thumb hovered over it.

Don’t open it. Just delete it. Pretend you never saw it.

But he had to know. Not knowing was worse and could have marked the end.

He tapped the message.

A photo loaded on the screen. His rental bungalow. His current rental bungalow, the one he’d moved into just a day ago. Taken from the street, shot at an angle that showed the blue gate, the window of his bedroom. The morning light in the photo matched the light streaming through that same window right now. A cold flash of realisation hit him, and sweat now poured off his face.

They knew. They always knew. But how?

Below the photo, three words in Indonesian: Kamu akan mati hari ini.

His hands began to shake. He didn’t need Google Translate anymore—he’d seen variations of this message enough times to understand. You will die today. Or maybe it was You’re going to die today. The subtle grammatical differences didn’t matter. The meaning was clear.

He dropped the phone on the bed and pressed his palms against his eyes, trying to steady his breathing. Four months ago, he’d stepped off a plane at Ngurah Rai International Airport believing he was starting the greatest adventure of his life. He’d been so certain. So stupidly, blindly certain.

But now, he was stuck in a horror movie that wouldn’t end.

The phone buzzed again. Same number. A second photo—closer this time, zoomed in on his bedroom window. The thin white curtain was drawn, but they’d captured the faint glow of his phone screen from inside. They’d been watching when he opened the first message.

They were watching right now.

He rolled out of bed and moved to the window in a crouch, feeling ridiculous and terrified in equal measure. He pressed himself against the wall and carefully lifted the edge of the curtain with one finger, just enough to see the street below.

Morning traffic flowed past—motorbikes mostly, with the occasional car weaving through the casual chaos that defined Bali’s roads. A woman in a sarong swept the sidewalk in front of the warung across the street. A man sat on a plastic stool beside a food cart, smoking a cigarette. Everything looked normal, but everything was wrong.

Was that man watching the bungalow? Or was he just waiting for customers? The motorbike parked under the banyan tree—had it been there yesterday? The teenager on the corner looking at his phone—was he one of them?

He let the curtain fall. Paranoia or pattern recognition? He couldn’t tell anymore. The line had blurred weeks ago.

He did a mental inventory, the same grim accounting he performed every morning now. Cash remaining: roughly eight hundred US dollars, maybe a bit less. Everything else was gone. His bank account—drained after the endless amounts he’d paid to keep going. The fifty thousand he’d invested in the American’s restaurant—vanished into the black hole of Bali’s creative accounting, lies, deception, and broken promises. His savings, his safety net, his stupid dream of building a new life—all of it gone.

His passport was here, at least. Small mercy. He’d kept it in his backpack ever since the raid. One thing they hadn’t taken yet.

Friends who could help? He had none. The other expats he’d met in those early, hopeful weeks had slowly distanced themselves as the situation with his wife and business partner deteriorated. Some had offered advice—just leave, mate, move on and best, away—but none had offered sanctuary. Nobody wanted to get involved in local disputes, especially when those disputes involved people with connections to Bali’s criminal networks.

The police? He’d tried that route once, when his wife was abducted.

The officer had listened politely to his meager Indonesian and English, which he barely understood, nodded sympathetically, and then suggested that perhaps he should try to “work things out” with his wife. When he mentioned the death threats, the officer’s expression had shifted from sympathy to something like amusement. This is a family matter, the officer had said. Maybe you should be a “more better” husband, a phrase Indonesians like to use, when pointing out flaws.

He left the police station, knowing he was on his own. Fear never left him since that day.

His phone buzzed again. Different number this time.

He picked it up with trembling hands. Another photo. This one from yesterday—walking out of the Circle K minimart on the main road, plastic bag in hand. He remembered that moment. He’d bought water and a sandwich, the cheapest calories he could find. The photo was crisp, clear, taken from maybe fifteen feet away. Someone had been following him, close enough to see the expression on his face, and he’d never noticed.

The message below was in English this time: We’re always watching.

His breath came in short, shallow gasps. The walls of the small bungalow seemed to be closing in. How long did he have? Hours? Minutes? The message had said today. Did they mean it literally, or was it just another psychological game to keep him off-balance and afraid?

It was working.

He forced himself to think. Assess. Plan. The skills that had served him well in his old life—the analytical mind that had made him successful in business back in the States—felt slow and stupid now, dulled by fear and sleepless nights.

Airport. Could he make it to the airport? It was forty-five minutes away on a good day, longer if traffic was bad. He’d be exposed, visible, trackable. They could be waiting there. The brother had friends everywhere, or so he claimed. The last time he had seen him, the brother had smiled and said, Bali is a small island. You can’t hide. It hadn’t sounded like a warning. It had sounded like a promise.

The British Embassy in Jakarta? That would require getting to the airport, getting on a flight, getting to Jakarta—too many steps, too many points of failure. And what would he tell them? That his ex-wife was sending him threatening messages, her brother and friends stalking him? That he’d lost money in a bad business deal? They’d tell him to hire a lawyer, to work through local authorities. They wouldn’t understand that the local authorities were part of the problem.

He could disappear into another part of Bali, find another cheap place, pay cash, keep moving. But how long could he keep that up with only eight hundred dollars? A week? Two? And they’d found him every time so far. Three different places in one week, and they’d found him within hours each time.

A memory surfaced, unbidden and unwelcome. His first morning in Bali. October 1st, just after the first beautiful sunrise he’d witnessed. Walking out of the airport into the warm, humid air, seeing her waiting for him by the driver he’d arranged. Her smile. The way she’d run to him, wrapped her arms around him, whispered You’re finally here into his ear like a prayer answered.

The butterflies in his stomach. The absolute certainty that this was real, that this was right, that this was love.

God, I was such a fool.

He stuffed clothes into his backpack with shaking hands. Underwear, T-shirts, shorts—he didn’t care what, just grabbed whatever was closest. Passport from the side pocket where he always kept it. Phone charger. The eight hundred dollars, divided between his wallet and a hidden pocket in the backpack’s lining. That was it. Everything he owned that mattered could fit in one bag.

How had it come to this? Twenty years of building a life in America, as an Englishman—marriage, kids, career, home—all of it imploded in divorce. Then, twenty weeks of building a new life in Bali—new love, new business, new hope—all of it imploded in betrayal and deception. He was fifty years old, and he’d been reduced to a fugitive in paradise, running from ghosts and gangsters with nothing but a backpack and fading options.

Three sharp knocks on the bungalow door stopped him mid-thought.

He froze, backpack half-zipped in his hands. The knocking echoed in the small space, impossibly loud.

Silence.

His heart hammered against his ribs so hard he thought it might crack them. Blood rushed in his ears. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

The knock came again, harder this time. More insistent.

A voice called out in Indonesian, male, muffled through the door. He didn’t catch the words, but the tone was casual, almost friendly. That meant nothing. The friendliest faces in Bali had been the most dangerous.

He backed away from the door slowly, eyes fixed on the doorknob, waiting for it to turn. There was a back entrance through the small kitchen, a door that led to a narrow alley between houses. Could he make it? If he ran now, if they hadn’t covered the back exit—

The knocking stopped.

The silence that followed was somehow worse. He stood perfectly still, barely breathing, listening for any sound. Footsteps retreating? Voices conferring? The scrape of a key in the lock?

Nothing.

Then his phone buzzed.

He looked down at the screen. Another message, another unfamiliar number.

We know you’re inside. Come out and talk. We just want to talk.

His mouth was dry. His legs felt weak. Talk. Sure. Just talk. He had been led into that trap before by the American and his ex-wife. We need to talk, settle things properly, was how they liked to phrase it. Then, two minutes later, “you took advantage of my sister, you took advantage of me, they both claimed. You owe a lot of money. Pay, or we’ll make you pay.”

Another buzz. Another message.

Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.

The doorknob rattled. Someone was testing it, seeing if it was locked. It was—he had installed an extra deadbolt when he arrived—but how long would that hold if they decided to force it?

He grabbed his backpack, slung it over his shoulder, and moved toward the kitchen. His trainers were by the front door, out of reach. Didn’t matter. He’d run barefoot if he had to.

The back door was unlocked—he’d made sure of that, always planning his escape routes now. He eased it open and peered into the alley. Empty. Morning sun slanted between buildings, throwing sharp shadows. A stray dog nosed through garbage bags piled against a wall.

Behind him, the sound of splintering wood. They were breaking in.

He didn’t look back. He slipped through the door, pulled it quietly shut behind him, and ran.

The alley was narrow, barely wide enough for one person, the walls of adjacent houses pressing close on either side. His bare feet slapped against concrete littered with rocks and broken glass, but he didn’t slow down. Pain could wait. Everything could wait except getting away.

He emerged onto a side street he didn’t recognize. Left or right? He chose right, arbitrarily, and kept running. A woman carrying offerings for a temple ceremony stared at him as he passed. A child on a bicycle swerved to avoid him. He must have looked insane—barefoot, wild-eyed, clutching a backpack like his life depended on it. It did.

Behind him, somewhere in the maze of houses and alleys, he heard shouting. They’d discovered he’d run. They were following.

He ran faster.

The paradise he’d flown to four months ago had become his prison. And his executioners were hunting him through streets that all looked the same, under a sun that blazed without mercy, in a country where he didn’t speak the language and couldn’t tell friend from enemy.

He had no plan except to keep moving.

He had no hope except to survive the next hour.

And he knew, with the kind of certainty that settles in your bones and won’t be argued away, that if he didn’t get out of Bali in the next twenty-four hours, he would die here.

The island that had promised him paradise was going to be his grave.

CHAPTER 2: Six Months Earlier

He didn’t stop running until his lungs burned and his legs threatened to give out beneath him. He found himself on a busier street, one with enough traffic and pedestrians that he could blend in, become invisible for a few precious minutes. He slowed to a walk, trying to control his ragged breathing, trying to look normal despite the blood seeping from cuts on his bare feet and the wild panic that must have been written across his face.

A food vendor gave him a strange look. A tourist couple stepped around him with a wide berth. He was drawing attention—the opposite of what he needed.

He ducked into a small warung, ordered a coffee he didn’t want with the few rupiah notes crumpled in his pocket, and sat in the corner where he could watch the street. His hands shook as he lifted the cup. The sweet Bali coffee tasted like stale candy in his mouth.

His phone buzzed. He nearly dropped it.

Another message: You can’t run forever.

He stared at the screen, at those four words that held more truth than threat. They were right. He couldn’t run forever. Not with eight hundred dollars. Not in a country where he didn’t speak the language. Not on a small island. Not when they seemed to find him no matter where he went. He seemed to be leaving a trail, or they had people on the lookout for him everywhere.

How had it come to this?

The question had haunted him for weeks now, but he already knew the answer. He knew exactly when it had started, exactly where he’d made the first fatal mistake. The real question wasn’t how—it was why. Why had he been so blind? Why had he ignored every warning sign? Why had he traded one disaster for another, one broken marriage for one that nearly killed him? Why did he jump into a business venture with a man he barely knew?

Stupidity? It was desperation.

He closed his eyes and let the memory wash over him. Not the fear, not the running, not the death threats. Further back. When it had seemed like salvation instead of damnation.

Six months earlier.

September. New York City. His apartment—if you could call it that. Studio sublet in Harlem that cost too much and offered too little. Divorce papers signed three months prior. Kids staying with their mother in the house he’d paid for and no longer lived in. Fifty years old, starting over, and the starting over felt more like shutting down.

Jeff had sat on the edge of his bed—a mattress on the floor, really, because he hadn’t bothered with a frame—scrolling through his phone. Instagram. The refuge of the lonely and desperate. Other people’s lives looking better than his own. Other people’s happiness thrown in his face with every filtered photo and carefully curated caption.

He should have been working. Should have been making calls, chasing leads, rebuilding the consulting business that had withered during the divorce proceedings. Should have been doing a thousand productive things.

Instead, he was scrolling. Searching. Looking for something. Hope and a new life.

That’s when he saw her profile.

@NoraBaliSweet

The name alone stopped his thumb mid-scroll. The photo stopped his breath. A woman—Indonesian, he assumed from the name—standing on a beach at sunset, arms spread wide, face turned toward the sky. Beautiful didn’t begin to cover it. There was something about her smile, about the pure joy radiating from the image, that reached through the screen and grabbed something deep in his chest.

He clicked on her profile before his brain could talk him out of it.

More photos. Beach scenes, tropical flowers, her face laughing in nearly every shot. Her bio was simple: Finding beauty in every moment. Accountant by day, nature lover and dreamer always. Uluwatu, Bali.

An accountant who looked like a goddess. A woman who seemed to radiate the kind of happiness Jeff had forgotten existed.

He sent a direct message before he could overthink it.

Your photos are beautiful. You seem to find joy in everything. What’s your secret?

He hit send and immediately regretted it. Too forward. Too desperate. She’d never respond. Why would a woman like that respond to a middle-aged divorced man she’d never met?

She replied within an hour.

Thank you! No secret, just gratitude. Bali teaches you to appreciate what you have. Are you traveling here?

And just like that, they were talking.

The first week, they messaged daily. Simple exchanges—how was your day, what are you working on, tell me about New York, tell me about Bali. She asked about his life with genuine curiosity. He found himself sharing more than he’d intended. The divorce. The kids he missed desperately. The feeling that his life had imploded and he was standing in the rubble, trying to figure out what to rebuild.

She listened. No judgment, no platitudes, just understanding.

Starting over is scary, she wrote. But also exciting. You get to choose who you want to be now.

By the second week, they’d moved to video calls.

That first call, seeing her face live, hearing her voice—it did something to him. She was even more beautiful in motion, more alive, more real. Her English was good, accented but clear. She laughed easily. She asked questions about his life and seemed genuinely interested in the answers.

“You look sad,” she said during their third call, tilting her head and studying him through the screen. “Even when you smile.”

“Long couple of years,” Jeff admitted.

“Then you need new years. Better years.” She smiled, and it felt like sunlight. “Maybe you need Bali. The island heals people, you know. Broken hearts, broken spirits. Come visit. See what I mean.”

He laughed it off, but the seed was planted.

The calls became daily. Then twice daily. Morning for him was evening for her, and they’d talk before he went to work. Evening for him was morning for her, and they’d talk before she started her day at the hotel where she worked as an accountant. She’d show him views from her life—lush green rice paddies, volcanic mountains in the distance, the perpetual summer that made New York’s autumn seem gray and dying by comparison.

“What’s keeping you there?” she asked one night, three weeks into their conversations. “You said yourself you have nothing tying you down.”

“My kids—”

“You see twice a month. They live with your ex-wife. Jeff, I’m not saying abandon them. I’m saying, what are you building there? What are you living for?”

The question hit harder than it should have. The truth was, he didn’t know. His consulting work felt hollow. His apartment felt like a cell. His life felt like treading water in an ocean that was slowly freezing over.

“If you could do anything,” Nora continued, her voice soft, “go anywhere, be anyone—what would you choose?”

He looked at her face on the screen, at the warmth in her eyes, at the possibility she seemed to represent.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Something different. Someone different.”

“Then come here,” she said simply. “Come to Bali. Visit. See if paradise might suit you better than prison.”

“I can’t just—”

“Why not? Book a ticket. Come for a week. Two weeks. Stay with me—well, not with me, we’re not married, but nearby. Let me show you the island. Let me show you what life could be like when you stop punishing yourself for the past.”

It was crazy. Completely crazy. They’d known each other less than a month. They’d never met in person. He had responsibilities, obligations, work to do.

But did he? Really? His clients were scattered; most of his work was remote anyway. His kids would be fine; they were already fine, already adjusting to the divorce better than he was. And his life, his careful, controlled, suffocating life—what was it worth if he woke up every morning wanting to go back to sleep?

“Let me think about it,” he said.

She smiled, and it reached her eyes. “Don’t think too long. Life is short, Jeff. Shorter than we like to believe.”

He thought about it for 2 days. Knowing what he would decide the whole time.

Two days of going through the motions. Work calls that meant nothing. Walking through a city that felt emptier every day. Staring at his phone, at Nora’s smiling face in her profile picture, at the messages she sent—good morning, thinking of you, the sunset was beautiful today, wish you were here to see it.

On the third day, she video-called him at an unusual time—middle of his afternoon, middle of her night.

“I can’t sleep,” she said when he answered. She was in bed, hair loose around her shoulders, makeup gone, looking somehow even more beautiful in her vulnerability. “I keep thinking about you.”

“Yeah?” His heart was doing something stupid in his chest.

“Jeff, I know this is crazy. We’ve known each other for a couple of weeks. But I feel something with you I haven’t felt before. Like we were meant to find each other. Like maybe you’re the reason I’ve been alone all this time—I was waiting for you.”

He should have been skeptical. Should have recognized the love-bombing, the fast-tracking, the intensity that built too quickly to be real.

But he was fifty, divorced and lonely and convinced that love had passed him by forever. And here was this beautiful woman, this warm and caring and vibrant woman, telling him he mattered. Telling him she felt something. Telling him there was still possibility in his life.

“Come to Bali,” she whispered. “Come meet me. Let’s see what happens. Isn’t it worth a try?”

He booked the flight that night.

United Airlines, JFK to Ngurah Rai via Qatar. Departure October 1st, arriving October 2nd local time. One-way ticket because maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t want to come back. Total cost: twelve hundred dollars he probably shouldn’t have spent.

He told Nora immediately. Her reaction—pure joy, tears, a smile so bright it hurt to look at—convinced him he’d made the right choice.

“You won’t regret this,” she said. “I promise you, Jeff. This is going to change your life.”

She was right about that.

The warung owner was staring at him now, probably wondering why the crazy foreigner with bloody feet had been nursing one coffee for forty minutes.

Jeff dropped some cash on the table—too much, but he didn’t care—and walked back out into the heat. He needed to find somewhere safe, somewhere they couldn’t find him. At least for tonight. No, do the other thing. You know you need to. It’s the only way, if there’s a way.

Robert Hourmont

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