“I like good food. Non-Cheeto food.” Krish shifted, moving his arm away from her. The cab of the truck felt more cramped than when they’d first sat in it. “You can pull over here and let us out.”
“You sure this is it?” Deep pulled over to the side of the road and peered into the dark. His brow furrowed. “There’s nothing here.”
Sejal took a good look at their surroundings and immediately concurred with their driver. The road stretched ahead of them, bordered by a forest of trees. Was Krish’s safe house in the woods?
“Yes, this is it. We’ll be fine,” Krish assured the truck driver.
The man looked about as convinced as she felt, but he nodded. Sejal shivered as the icy wind cut through her sneakers and sweatsuit when they disembarked. It might be fall on the East Coast, but it was almost winter in the Mountain West.
She looked longingly after Deep’s taillights. “Tell me we’re not walking far.”
Krish tugged on his baseball cap brim and started walking. “In ten minutes, we’ll be in a nice warm living room.”
That sounded good, but it also meant they had at least ten minutes of cold ahead of them. He walked down the incline, toward the woods. She followed behind him, her trepidation growing with every step. “Uh, is this where you kill me?” she asked, as they were swallowed by the forest.
“If I was going to kill you, I could have done it like ten times before we got this far,” he said, practical as ever.
“You didn’t have a remote dumping ground before,” she muttered as she stepped over a log.
“Do you give all your potential murderers ideas on how to kill you and dispose of your body?” he asked.
She hadn’t realized she had a real viable potential murderer until today, but Alexei fit the bill now.
It was a jarring readjustment. She hadn’t exactly been cowering in fear of Alexei all these years. The evidence her father had found on him and threatened him with decades ago had been so damning that he’d left her alone immediately. But not if he thought she’d fucked with his money, it seemed. And here she’d dragged Krish into it.
He dragged you into it, and nothing has changed since you first decided to go with him.
Except he’d saved her life. Twice. John and Viktor could have nabbed her back in New York if Krish hadn’t pretended to be her boyfriend. And that was nothing compared to how he’d helped her escape back in that parking lot.
What Would Dad Do?
Dad would have taken anyone’s help, the risk to them be damned. He’d always been out for number one, and number one didn’t include anyone but himself—not even his kids.
But Sejal wasn’t like that. Other people might think she was, even her own sister might think she was, but she truly wasn’t.
It was seductive, how much easier it was to survive when you had a partner. But since when had her life been easy? She needed to get away from Krish before she started to expecteasy. Because he’d leave her once he got what he needed from her, and the crash would be harder if she started to rely on him—on anyone—for anything.
A bird hooted in the distance, and Sejal looked up. The tall trees nearly blotted out the moon. How on earth was Krish moving so confidently through the woods with barely any light to guide them? Was this more of his elite training? “Are you a former Boy Scout or something? I can’t even see if we’re on a path.”
“No, I’ve been here before. And I spent a lot of time camping as a kid. My mom believed in survival training.”
What an interesting mom. “Is the house much farther?”
“Yes. But we won’t walk the whole way.” They emerged from the copse of trees to find a rough trail, with tire tracks embedded deep in the soft soil. Krish walked across the path and stood under a large maple tree. Sejal winced as a blinding light cut through the darkness, shining down on them from above, from somewhere in the branches. She shaded her eyes.
Krish had no problem looking up into it. He waved his hands, and the light blinked off, then on, then blessedly off again.
“What the hell was that?” She lowered her hand.
Krish’s shadowy figure leaned against the tree. “That was the doorbell.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that the caretaker knows we’re here, and now we wait. They’ll come pick us up in a few minutes.”
The caretaker?How big was this house? “We can’t just walk up to the house?”
Her eyes had adjusted to the dark enough to see the corner of his arrogant mouth kick up. “No.”
