Finishline’sin sight. You justhave tomake it a few more days and this’ll all be over. Once you find your brother, you could even go on a proper vacation. Somewhere tropical.
He twisted his torso to get out the kinks. He’d never really taken a vacation. Trips, yes. But they were usually for work, or he turned them into work by waking up early and hitting the pavement to learn as much as he could. What he’d give, right now, for some sand where he could lie out and listen to the crash of the water on the shore and sip a huge margarita.
But not yet. Not while his brother was out there somewhere, waiting for his help.
Krish refused to consider the alternative... that Avi was already gone. There was no point in hurting or killing Avi, and there had been no sign of a struggle in the house or the car parked neatly in his garage. Surely Cobra wouldn’t waste an FBI agent, especially one they’d gone to the trouble of setting up for corruption charges.
Come on. Get your ass in gear and track down your little fugitive.
He checked the window first. A quick look outside told him that their rental car sat in the same spot where he’d parked it when they arrived. The keys were still in his pocket, but he wouldn’t put it past her to know how to hot-wire the car.
He turned away to grab his phone and spotted her bag on the table. The lotto ticket too. So she hadn’t gone far. Sejal was much too territorial to leave her stuff behind.
With no compunction, he opened the bag and searched it. There was a wad of cash in there, which he thumbed through. Not a lot, a couple hundred, max, but she wouldn’t abandon perfectly good money. No weapons, which made sense. She wouldn’t have gotten past TSA with one of her switchblades. She’d probably taken the pepper spray with her, wherever she’d gone. That could be good or bad.
He put the bag back exactly where he’d found it. No need for her to know he wasn’t a hundred percent on board with the whole trust thing.
He pulled out his phone. A quick glance around the room told him his sweatshirt was missing, which meant she was probably wearing it. Good.
Paranoid about Cobra making him disappear, too, with no way for his mom to find either of her sons, Krish had sewn GPS trackers into the lining of both his jacket and his sweatshirt. He hadn’t been thinking about that when he handed Sejal his sweatshirt to wear while driving her home, but it had definitely come in handy after she had broken out of the handcuffs and fled to the airport later.
Krish navigated to his tracking app. He frowned at the screen and the blinking green dot. She was across the street? Why would Sejal be...
Oh. The bar.
He let out a breath. Okay. It was better than running off with a trucker, he supposed, but not for the first time he marveled at the way her mind worked. They had her mysterious ex—who, after a day in the car together, she still hadn’t told him muchabout, despite his probing—and possibly Cobra after them, and the woman was at a bar, undoubtedly running some game. She was really cherry-picking the whole concept of laying low.
Krish stomped across the street, his irritation growing with every step. How was he supposed to trust her when she ran off at the first chance and did things that jeopardized their lives?
There were more cars in the bar’s parking lot now, which made sense, given the time. Loud music spilled out onto the pavement.
There was no bouncer at the scarred wooden door, and Krish pushed it open. The scent of stale beer, sweat, and weed slapped him in the face, and his eyes took a second to adjust to the dimness.
The music might have been hopping, but nobody was on the dance floor. It took him a second to spot Sejal, because she was surrounded by a crowd. She’d tied her hair up at some point, revealing the buzzed side of her head. It shouldn’t have been seductive, the ponytail, but Krish had to curl his fingers into a fist, so great was the urge to touch that shaved head.
Krish stepped into something sticky and kept walking, though inwardly he shuddered. He wasn’t as uptight as Sejal had judged him to be, but he did like clean shoes.
The twangy music was so damn loud he couldn’t hear what she was saying until he was a few steps away. “Now, this one’s not a magic trick. It’s a matter of science. Do you see these six cards, Jenny?”
The Black woman across from her immediately nodded. “Yes.”
“They alternate red and black?”
The woman focused on the cards spread in front of her on the table so hard her eyes nearly crossed. “Yes.”
“It’s an established fact that red cards are a little heavier than black cards.” With a flourish, Sejal gathered up the cards, turnedthem over so they were face down, and dropped them. “See?” She picked up the first card and flipped it over. Then the next. Then the next. All black. The three red cards were on the bottom.
“You moved them around,” a man standing behind Jenny growled, and Krish took a step forward.
Except, Sejal looked amused rather than worried. She’d taken off his sweatshirt, which hung over the chair behind her, so when she crossed her arms over her chest, her breasts were plumped up over the neckline of her top. A hot pink bra strap peeked out at the shoulder. For someone who loved neutral clothes, she sure appreciated colorful underwear.
Not that Krish noticed, because he kept his gaze firmly on her face, which was the only place where someone who was a conscientious FBI agent and therefore on the opposite side of the law from her would keep it.
“How would I move it? You could see my hands the whole time.”
“I don’t know. You did it.”
“Do you trust Jenny here?”
