His handcuffs might be government issued, but her father had spent years teaching her unsavory skills. With the right tools, she could get out of any bindings.
She’d silently opened the window for the misdirect, fled to the kitchen, grabbed her go-bag, and waltzed right out the front door.
Agent Avi Anand. Even the alliteration annoyed her, so much so that she’d already decided to keep calling him Krish in her head.
Two years ago, after her mother had been arrested, Mr. Hot Shot Agent had left her at least half a dozen messages. So she’d tossed her phone. Then, somehow, he’d found her new number.
He just wanted to talk, Krish had said back then, in a smooth voice that hadn’t sounded nearly as gravelly or as low as it did in person. He understood that she hadn’t had any contact with Rushali since she was a child.
Except, that was a lie, because she, her mom, Mira, and Rhea had had that rather perverse family reunion before her mom was arrested. Sejal had been drugged up, but she remembered enough of it that she knew she didn’t want to talk to any agents about it.
So she’d run. Sejal had always been kind of a rolling stone, so it hadn’t been too hard for her to fully embrace a mobile lifestyle. Compared to the masters in her family, she was an amateur at disappearing, but moving often and using cash and aliases was enough to keep law enforcement off her tail. Or so she’d thought.
Rhea Auntie, what have you done?
When you showed up to rescue me from our mom, did you do it just to take over Cobra? Or did you really care about your nieces?
You lied to me forever—did I ever really know you? Did you ever love me?
Am I loveable?
Sejal shook her head. Given their complicated relationship, Sejal actually had no problem with confronting her aunt and asking her what the fuck was going on now. But, bitch, please, she wasn’t about to help a fed. And she knew her sister wouldn’t, either, for all that Mira was as lawful as they came.
Should she call her sister? Text her?Hi, Mira, I kissed a stranger in a bar, and it turned out he was an FBI agent who’s looking for Rhea, who may now be the head of Cobra, so I wanted to warn you that he might come to youand alsotry to use you as bait. Anyhoo, how’s married life going?
Sejal could clearly envision the long-suffering and disappointed look that would take over her sister’s face when she got that text.
You’re just like Dad.
Nah. Now that she’d had some time to think about it, and her adrenaline had evened out, Sejal knew that Mira was safe. If Anand really was going to use Mira, he would have gone to her first. She was much easier to find than Sejal was, for one thing.
Sejal checked the screen at her gate. It had been a gamble coming to JFK. She’d wandered off and on subway trains for a couple of hours in case anyone was following her, but she’d finally decided her best chance of outsmarting the cop on her trail—the cop, ugh!—was to go to the one place he’d wanted to take her himself: the airport.
Another thing to be annoyed at him for. Forcing her to leave this city without packing a proper bag and collecting her stuff and saying goodbye to the barista on the corner.
She settled her hands over her backpack. Her emergency stash of funds was much smaller now that she’d paid out of pocket for alast-minute one-way flight to Heathrow. The attendant had been confused for sure, since Sejal was probably the first person since 1995 to buy a same-day ticket at the counter with all cash.
Sejal hadn’t put much thought into where she was going. She needed to put some distance between her and this place. Besides, Kenneth was in London now. Her surrogate dad had lived in America for much of his life, but he’d been born in England, and had always talked about retiring there.
Speaking of Kenneth... she dug her burner phone out of her bag. She dialed a number from memory and waited. It went straight to voicemail. She cursed, then dialed another number. A chipper British woman answered on the other end. “Hillview Estates, this is Jolene, how can I help you?”
“Can you please connect me to Kenneth Washington?”
The woman’s voice changed, became subtly annoyed, and Sejal braced herself. “Is this Mr. Washington’s daughter?”
Ken had been the one to call her his daughter, decades ago, and Sejal had never corrected him. Because she loved it. “Yes.”
“Miss, we’ve been trying to call you. Your father has been harassing our aides again.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. She didn’t need this now. “Harass how?”
“He filed a complaint that they were racist.”
She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. “I mean, were they being racist?”
“Absolutely not!” Shock dripped from the woman’s words. “Apparently, they refused to provide him with the steaks and cigars he asked them to smuggle in. Absolutely no one here at Hillview is racist.”
Hillview was a ritzy assisted living facility with a population representing a couple of overlapping demographics that weren’t historicallynotracist, so Sejal doubted that, but she didn’t have time to argue with this woman at the moment. “I’ll talk to him.”
