About the Author

AARTI V RAMAN lives in Mumbai, India and has a degree in mass media from Mumbai University. She has always dreamed of being either a romance writer or a lawyer and decided to pursue a writing career from a very early stage.

Aarti has already published a romantic thriller under the name Aarti V and has more works coming out in 2014. Her favorite dream of writing for Harlequin Mills and Boon has finally come true and she hopes to continue this fantastic relationship with many more love stories and fascinating characters.

Aarti loves to watch movies, TV series and read other romances and travel to different places in order to find a new hero and a new story.

Kingdom Come
Aarti V. Raman

This book is dedicated to

Mom, my own true North

The Big Guy in the Sky

Navneet Bhaiya, because he took us all along to meet the Big Guy. (winks)

Yashesh and Nams. For me, from now on, December will always be yours, guys. Happy Wedding Month, my beautiful, wacky couple. I love you both so much! And Santosh and Kinjal, Gauri and Viraj, whose weddings I couldn’t attend because I am busy with Kingdom Come. I hope this makes up for my absence, guys.

Akshay Kumar, Kit Bale and Edgar Ramirez, all of whom have helped me to mold Krivi’s head and heart and eyes. No, but seriously. Thanks.

Ass Back Home by Gym Class Heroes feat. Neon Hitch. Your song looped, looped my book. Thank you.

And Abby. For the thing in the night. Again.

For all the brave soldiers, known and unknown who defend this fair world against the enemy, both without and within. And for all the women who are strong enough to stand by their sides and give them their hearts.

Four special people need to be simultaneously thanked and dedicated to, so am picking the dedication for them. Pippa Roscoe, Assistant Editor at Harlequin UK, who stuck by me for two long years and didn’t once tell me I sucked at writing Harlequin Romance. And, I finally don’t, Pippa. Amrita Chowdhury, Country Head of Harlequin India, who took a chance on a total unknown because she really believed in my voice. Varsha Naik, yes, you chop my book. But I like the way you do it. Live long and chop more. And lastly, Deepika Singh, Harlequin India marketing director, who followed up with one desperate woman’s desire to be published by the greatest romance publishing house in the world.

You guys have rocked my world.

Thank you

Akshay Kumar, for providing so much inspiration that I just had to write you down. My style.

Edgar Ramirez, for being the intensity I was looking for.

For my mum, dad and lovable, zany family who decided what the heck, let’s go to Kashmir, anyway. I would never have been able to figure out where to set Kingdom Come, if it weren’t for you guys. Thanks a ton.

DCP Randip Dutta of the CRPF and his lovely wife, who were kind enough to give me a glimpse of the hard life of a soldier and the woman who stands by him. Thank you for that, and for the Dal Lake boat ride through cold, driving rain. I can never forget that.

Jaysh. Honey, you are the rock, upon which I stood while writing this one.

Abbas, for being generous and amazing enough to be my OCD. I couldn’t have done this without you. I seriously wouldn’t have.

My entire iPod playlist, every single song was chosen with a very specific purpose.

Dhee, Nams, Suki, Sonu, Pra, VJ, Amitava, Yashesh, Karths, Pooj, Jaysh, Abby, Chitta, Chitti, Bharti Chits, Mom and Dad who didn’t blink an eyelash while encouraging me to aim for the stars. Who didn’t think me less than capable of something like this.

Max, for always being the one that I love.

“How do you kill a man who has no Achilles heel? You cut off his foot.”

—Tom Jones.

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Thank you

Epigraph

prologue

STEP ONE: IDENTIFICATION

one

two

three

four

five

six

seven

STEP TWO: IDENTIFICATION

eight

nine

ten

eleven

twelve

thirteen

fourteen

fifteen

sixteen

STEP THREE: DISARMAMENT

seventeen

eighteen

nineteen

twenty

twenty-one

twenty-two

twenty-three

EPILOGUE

epilogue

Endpages

Copyright

prologue

London

Midnight

January 30, 2008

He had to get out.

Krivi Iyer figured that as long as he had breath, bone, blood left he had to try and get out. That as long as he could still think, still plan, he should get out. He should get out before he snapped. And did something.

Unforgivable.

He ran rhythmically, his feet pounding the pavement. The rivers of sweat running down his back, soaking his body, already drying in the cold night air. He ran on, dreamlessly. Endlessly. There were no thoughts here. No need for thinking. No need for wondering. For what ifs. He didn’t have to be anything here. Not even himself: Krivi Iyer. Krivi didn’t want to be himself ever again.

His Nikes were well-worn, with the tread marks of a long time of usage. His grandmother would have called them scuffed and ruined. His socks were somewhere between the shade of white and pristine white that he tried to aim for when he remembered to do his laundry. The music playing on his mp3 player was pulse-pounding rock. The more noise filled his head, the less his head hurt.

It had been six months now. Six months to the day. And there were no words, no actions, nothing that meant anything to him anymore. They had told him, the price he had to pay for doing what he did: for doing it so well. No one knew, more than him, that what he did always had consequences.

He’d told this countless times to new recruits, to freshers who were cocky when they entered, with a heartless smile and dreams of glory and courage. They didn’t know what price they had to pay for all of it. For the glory, the courage and the dreams.

He dreamed of them sometimes.

The fallen. The ones who had gone away to a deep, dark, dreamless place. He didn’t believe in either heaven or hell. Sometimes he doubted if life or death held meaning for him. But he did believe, absolutely, in right and wrong. In truth. In justice. And in freedom. He believed in choice. He believed that we all got exactly what we wanted, because we chose it. Knowingly, unknowingly.

But Gemma hadn’t chosen anything.

Gemma had no need to pay for anything. Gemma had been bright and cheerful and happy. She’d brought light into his world when he didn’t think he could see anything except black. She’d made him see himself. She’d made him laugh at himself. Gemma had been everything to him. She’d been light and laughter. Sunshine and life. She’d made him see exactly what was missing in his life. What he’d never thought about. Missing her would kill him, he thought while mechanically streaking past the benches at Notting Hill Public Park.

Gemma would laugh no more.

His fear, his anger increased with every step. The dreams that he avoided when he ran, came back to haunt him virulently. And he dropped down on his knees in the middle of the pavement. The concrete grit digging into his skin, making little pores and sticking to his sweaty skin. Rock poured out of ears that should have bled at the appalling noise level. His shoulders were shaking at the abrupt loss of motion.

His hands were shaking too, when he pulled his cell phone out of his shorts pocket and looked uncomprehendingly at the terse text message. His mind was caught up in the past. It was still trapped in a moment where flash and fire and earth exploded. Where worlds stopped and worlds ended. It was caught in a frame of time when a bomb went off in a car and killed not one, not two, but four lives.

Krivi didn’t know how he was going to live with any of it. The ghosts. The fear. The guilt. The anger. The fear of anger. The fear of memories. Everything hurt right now. Even looking at a cell phone display. Sweat was pouring off his face so he could barely read the message.

Application accepted. Briefing in two days. Report to headquarters for further instructions.

A part of his mind that wasn’t wrapped in the hard kernel of grief, understood the words. Knew what to make of them. He hated that part of his mind. The part of his mind that was relief. That rejoiced at one word.

Escape.

Nearly four years later …

On the other side of the world, a man was watching the person who was torturing him play five finger fillet.

The game was simple.

You placed your palm on a flat surface, spread your fingers wide and then started moving the knife point in the spaces between the fingers. Slow, slow, fast, faster and then so fast your movements were an indistinct blur. And you did it without taking your eyes off your opponent.

The man, Raoul, watched the knife flash in a staccato burst that was a silver dizzy motion. Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut. The point flashed back and forth, back and forth until he felt physically sick.

Sick.

He wanted to throw up, but there was nothing inside of him to throw up. He looked at his side of the table, which was a disgusting mass of sick, saliva and blood. Raoul felt more bile rise up in his throat as he saw the mess.

“If you vomit again, I will make you eat it, Raoul,” his torturer said in a perfectly pleasant voice.

Raoul’s chest heaved as he tried to settle his nausea and escape out of the bonds he was tied in. He was only successful with the first.

The knife paused; the silence deafening.

“Good boy, Raoul,” the torturer approved. “Now if only you’d been a good boy yesterday and not blabbed with the pretty chica.”

“Madre Dio! She is nothing. She is a stripper. She will not talk, I promise. On my mother, I swear.”

His torturer smiled. A cold, killer’s smile. The knife point gleamed like a jewel as the torturer twisted the blade this way and that. A slow, concerted movement that was hypnotic in its grace.

“Your mother is dead, Raoul,” the torturer said softly. “You know that. So is Maria. You know that too.”

“Spare me then. Spare me, please!”

Raoul started babbling in a mixture of Portuguese and English. Prayers, incantations, invocations, beseechments. His tears mixing with the blood flowing from his busted eye. He was blind in one eye because of the force with which the torturer had heaved a rock paperweight at it.

But he could live with the blindness. He could live. Madre Dio la vida.

The torturer gave him a sharp look.

“I am bored.” It was a flat statement.

Raoul was still screaming obscenities when the knife struck, sure and true. Piercing the jugular. Blood and life poured out of Raoul. The canary who sang.

The terrorist was called The Woodpecker.

The terrorist’s specialty was bombs in public places. Signature and calling card rolled together in one burning mass of twisted metal and humanity.

The file on The Woodpecker was three inches thick, tying the terrorist to so many international bombings that the organization was getting worried now. No one person, no one terrorist was supposed to be such an efficient, soulless killer. Hold the fates of people in their hand so callously.

The man who was the terrorist’s father, the terrorist’s mentor, looked at his child’s file, filled with the exploits of a lifetime of terror and mercenary killing. He had encouraged, honed the skill, the spark, the madness that had led to the creation of this file.

The Woodpecker.

The bird that chipped and chipped away at the branch in a tree to make a nest for herself and her chicks.

The Woodpecker who never gave up.

The man shut the file closed and leaned back in his swivel chair. He looked out at the cloudless blue skies that denoted summer on the beach. And felt a weight around his heart, an organ he had forgotten existed. He tried to name the emotion that was weighing down his heart and identified it as … regret.

Tom Jones smiled; a regretful smile as the gears of his devious, devious mind started moving. He picked up a satellite phone and made a call and set in motion his plan. Things couldn’t be helped anymore.

They had to change. And change was always good. He had always believed so.

STEP ONE: IDENTIFICATION

one

Ladakh

India

July 2011

It was said that God himself lived in these hills that surrounded the Northwest Frontier of India. The air was purer than air, clean and pure oxygen. The waters gleamed an unholy turquoise and the sky was an infinite, uniform blue. The horizon was a stretch of land and sky that met as far back as the naked eye could see.

Nature’s paradise.

And it was called Ladakh.

It was also home to some of the worst atrocities humanity had committed against itself. Ladakh, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, was on the very border that separated India from its neighboring countries, and was therefore fair game, for all the neighbors that wanted to encroach and possess it. Although, by some miracle, Ladakh itself had escaped being the target of the constant cross-border violence that raged in the most turbulent political state in India, the nearby town of Kargil had not been so lucky. It was home to war and fallen heroes in the last decade. And the rest of Jammu and Kashmir was not safe either.

But these places were in the rest of the beautiful part of the country that formed the crown jewel: the Himalayas. Ladakh was in demand, for the territory was valuable in itself too for the special metals mined here. The scenery was so stunning; it actually took your breath away.

The team of six, fatigue-clad men who entered the lonely, isolated cave on one such hillock on the roughest terrain did not pause to look at the stunning, breathtaking scenery. They were dressed in green-black camouflage outfits that just barely hid them in the approaching dawn. Ladakh was not just known for lush greenery and foliage; it was as much desert and sand as it was flowing streams and lovely air. A study in contrasts, the land was, as much the people that inhabited it.

The team leader, with black marks on his face, stopped at the mouth of the cave, and indicated the two next to him to go ahead. They removed tiny chemical lights, lit them by breaking them and sprinted inside like black ghosts. They were the reconnaissance guys, who would give intel on the situation inside the labyrinthine caves. The team leader marked their position on a tiny handheld, where they were just two green dots racing away like pinballs.

There were four more dots on the tiny handheld, one for each man on the mission. A radio crackled to life as the green dots stopped and the team leader tapped on an earbud inside his ear and spoke quietly.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Route’s clear. Can’t see target, but there are no unknowns out either. Intel seems fine. These guys do not do rounds.”

“They left no one to guard the target?”

The leader’s voice was expressionless, ghost-like in the early morning air. If he was surprised at all, he didn’t let it show. Surprises were not part of the package on retrieval missions, their intel had to be one hundred percent correct or lives could be lost. And the intel had been; they would leave someone behind to guard the target.

Kidnapping and ransom was tricky work at best, FUBAR at worst.

“Not as far as I can see. I could check again, do sweeps.”

“Do it.”

The team leader held the handheld out, so his teammates could also have a view of the green dots moving around in several directions, checking for bogies and guards, with the heat signature scopes on their sniper rifles. Recon guys had a hard job, they went in first, sometimes with no knowledge of what was going to meet them inside a situation, so they only packed light ammunition. Sub-machines with automatic loading, throwing knives, whatever got the job done.

The rear guard carried firepower, the grenade launchers that could level a school building in no time. But the launcher had to be assembled, and that could take up to three minutes, depending on the situation and how many limbs the rear guard had left, when the launcher was called for.

The team leader was neither recon, nor rear guard. He and his partner were the guys in the middle of the action. The ones who had to hold it together when things went to hell, as they sometimes did in their line of work. They had the hardest task of all. Retrieval of the package, at any cost. And sometimes, they had to pay the cost.

So far, this mission was routine. Things were progressing as they should because of the solid intel provided. Apart from the glitch of there being no one to guard the target.

The ransom drop-off point was in the middle of the market in downtown Leh, where the industrialist father would pay ten million rupees for his sixteen-year-old daughter who had been taken from her boarding school in Dehradun. The DP ensured plenty of cover could be provided for both the good and bad guys. But, regardless of how thoroughly they wanted to cover their asses at the DP, would they be so overconfident as to leave their location unguarded, along with the target inside?

No. The team leader knew that, understood that, but … there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it except hope they wouldn’t run into trouble anyway.

“Boss?” The radio crackled again.

“Yeah?”

“We can hear screams. They’re pretty loud.”

“OK.”

“Boss?” Recon one was waiting for instructions.

The team leader exhaled. “The coast is clear. I’m coming in. Rear guard can wait here and guard the entrance. Hopefully we can be in and out in five.”

“Roger that.”

The team leader looked at the four men around him and murmured, “Cover the entrance. If you see movement, radio in. Hold off as long as you can in the event of serious trouble. And worst comes to worst.”

He nodded at the man holding a long, metal case that looked like it could hold an accordion. The man stroked the case, as he would a particularly loved pet.

“Level the place. Yeah, we got it, Boss. Go, save the girl. Like you always do.”

The team leader didn’t crack a smile at the moment of levity, he just fixed on his number two with a myopic stare and said, “Evacuate the girl however you can. It’s a priority.”

“Boss.”

He handed the handheld to him, switched his scope on and went in low. A wraith all in black, melding into the darkness, becoming one with it. No one could even hear him breathe. But they weren’t supposed to. Darkness was his companion, his lover. He was all right in the dark.

The leader walked in, because the cave roof was about fifteen meters in height, which gave him enough room to move in. He’d already told the recons that he was moving in and arriving at rendezvous point in two.

The cave sloped off east, and then slipped in three directions. He consulted a GPS strapped to his hand and took the third one. The cave became danker, smelling of cold air which was not the same thing as fresh, cool air. His combat boots made no footfalls as he moved at a steady clip, ready to anticipate trouble at any moment.

The cave split again in two directions, and he again consulted his GPS and moved further in, until he came to a well-lit passage, and saw the shadows of both his men. They were at the ready, even though their weapons were held loosely at their side. Ex-military were always ready. And Kirschner Security only employed the best, and each of these men was alive only because they were the best.

“Boss?” Recon two spoke in his ear.

“Yeah.” The leader slung his own weapon on his shoulder and strode forward. “Behind you.”

The Recons moved fluidly and let him pass them, as they journeyed further in. About five feet into the long, alarmingly well-lit tunnel he heard it too. The screams of a young girl. Heedless, terror-filled and continuous. They were not words, they were not prayers or tears. They were just screams. Just pure terror.

He stopped for a split second and then nodded once. All three broke into a run and sprinted the last five hundred yards till they came to a wooden door that the leader simply ran through with his momentum. The door splintered apart, because it had been shoddily constructed and couldn’t withstand assault from a one-ninety-pound male specimen.

The recons swung their weapons in a wide arc while the leader advanced quietly.

“All clear,” Recon one murmured.

“All clear,” echoed Recon two.

The room, a fifty-by-fifty space was empty. Just walls, a table and a freezer that probably held beers as much as body parts. And it was devoid of both Alina Gujjar, the teenage daughter of Mahesh Gujjar, or any guard that might have been foolish and smart enough to escape detection from the heat signature scopes. There was an opening from the room and it was well-lit too.

The leader walked into the next room, from where the screams were emanating. His heart was slow, his breathing steady and he had acute tunnel vision. He could only see the next step, the next movement, his adrenaline on punch-high and his reflexes cold-purpose.

“Going in to retrieve package,” he murmured. “Radio silence from here on.”

And stepped into the room. The scream and the sight in the room stopped his heart.

Alina, a slender girl in filthy jeans and a torn white sweater, was screaming and crying sightlessly. Her shoulder-length hair was matted and she was bound to a ring on the rock wall of the cave. Her hands were tied to a wire that looped through the ring and were jerked tight enough to have almost cut off circulation if the girl moved much. She was not gagged, evidence of the hoarse animal sounds coming from the girl. But, her legs were stretched in front of her in a loose binding, a length of wire running around the ankles and on the ground to a covered contraption on the side.

“Shit.”

The leader moved forward and placed his weapon on the floor beside him for easy reaching. He knelt down in front of the girl and touched her. Lightly on the shoulder. She screamed harder as she focused on him. Saw the painted face and hell-black eyes, the camo outfit and the utter sense of menace he exuded. Her eyes were open in permanent petrification and she was hysterical.

“Hi, Alina, I’m Krivi,” he said, gently. “I’m going to get you out. Right now. I promise.”

“Wha—what?” she whimpered, tears running streaks down her muddy cheeks.

“I am going to get you out in five minutes.”

“But—there is a … there is a …” Sobs started shaking her thin shoulders and she hung her head and just wept. A hopeless, wrenching sound that should have melted the hardest, stoniest heart.

But the leader, Krivi, had no heart that anyone knew of so he just touched the girl on the shoulder, with a little more pressure this time. Enough that she looked up.

“Alina, listen to me. Will you listen to me?”

She nodded, her eyes streaming anyway.

“Stop crying. Can you do that?”

“I … I …”

“Brave girls don’t cry. They are heroines who get out of terrible situations and tell their grandkids about their youthful adventures,” he said, in a quieter, reassuring tone. That just set the girl off again. He considered his options and looked back at recon one who’d just come into the room.

“Detonation cord,” he said, nodding at the girl’s feet.

“Shit.”

“I’ll look into it. You get the girl out. Now.”

“Roger that.”

Krivi moved away from the girl but she screamed and he turned back and said, “I am here, Alina. This is my friend, John. He’s going to untie your hands. If you stay still, it won’t hurt at all. Can you do that?”

“Kri … Krivi,” she whispered, a small whisper of a terrified girl.

Krivi smiled, even though it felt like stretching taffy. “Yes?”

“There’s a lock. On my neck. There’s a lock.”

His smile faded and he looked at recon one, who had already removed a small wire cutter that could run through steel nylon rope if it needed to. And it had on three separate occasions.

“I am going to unlock it and you’re going to be out of here right now.”

Her lips trembled as she looked at the calm, rock-like face of the man kneeling before her, but she refused to cry again. And Krivi gave her points for that. It took a lot of cojones to not give in when the situation went FUBAR.

“Promise?” she asked.

He nodded and held out his hand. She took it with trembling fingers and just held on. Krivi squeezed once and then barked, “Scoot her forward. Give me specs. I am going to look at that.”

He turned to the gunnysack-covered contraption where the wire that had tied Alina’s legs disappeared under. He removed the gunnysack carefully knowing any movement could be fatal, trickily fatal.

Bombs were like that.

It wasn’t a very smartly made IED (improvised explosive device). There was a black cylinder with three different wires protruding out of it, and a small pin held the mouth of the cylinder shut. A few sticks of C4 were strapped to the outer body of the cylinder, as if to underline the point of an explosion and the three wires, all yellow, ran to a point under the wall and then disappeared.

“Now we know why they left no guards,” he murmured, almost to himself.

“Yeah,” Recon one, John, agreed.

He smiled reassuringly at the girl and said something too low for Krivi to hear. But Alina smiled and let him reach for a clean piece of cloth and wipe her face with it.

Krivi focused all his attention on the IED. It was a pretty standard bomb, with a decent-sized blast radius given the amount of C4 wrapped around the cylinder and det cord that were designed to confuse and fluster and a trigger mechanism that was probably pressure-controlled, rather than remote-controlled.

Hence, the lock on the girl.

He unsnapped a pair of pliers and carefully removed the main firing pin from the mouth of the cylinder and laid it on the floor. He looked at the wire that disappeared into the wall and knew there was no way they could remove it all out without setting off the pressure mechanism on the trigger, even though he hadn’t even seen the trigger yet.

There was no other way to it.

Krivi unsnapped his throwing knife, a tiny thing with a blade so sharp it could slice the hide of an elephant, and started severing the C4 from the cylinder. It took moments, because they’d just tied the packets to the outside with cords. That done, he carefully wrapped the explosive in tarp and placed it in his backpack that recon two took away immediately.

Half the firepower was gone right there.

Now he turned his attention to the girl, who was somehow miraculously calm.

“Alina.”

She looked at him with a small smile and he froze infinitesimally. A girl in her position should not have been smiling. It was why he couldn’t understand humans at all, any more.

“Will you let me look at the lock now?”

She nodded and John, recon one, carefully pushed all her hair to the front while she presented him with her nape.

It was taped to her neck. The three wires came out of the wall and ended in a tiny device that was locked together with a padlock. The reading on the device read forty-five kgs. The girl’s weight. Any more and she would blow them all up. He couldn’t touch the thing without setting it off. And he couldn’t touch the wires without setting it off.

“The lock,” recon one said.

Krivi looked up, nodded approval. The lock could be reached from the top. If he was careful enough and steady enough, he could then, maybe, gain the three seconds required to sever the connection from the girl.

Big maybe.

“All right. Get out,” he said.

Recon one shook his head.

“That’s an order.”

“Not following it, Boss.”

“Bastard.” But it was said without any heat and made Alina smile. Krivi smiled at her too, a flash of white on a betel-brown face and said, “That’s a bad word. Don’t use that in front of your dad, OK? And don’t tell him I used it either.”

“OK.” She smiled again.

“I need you to hold absolutely still, Alina. Totally still.”

“Like the statue, right?”

He nodded.

Krivi unfolded to a kneeling position and crawled right beside Alina. Recon one stood back and watched as his leader inspected the tiny device and the lock over it.

It was going to be delicate as a surgery, getting to the lock without touching the trigger mechanism or the wires. But John also knew if there was any man alive who could do it, it was Krivi. The man had ice water for blood and a brain that was blade-sharp and just as deadly under pressure.

Krivi removed a cigarette from his pocket and looked at it for a second. He smiled, a strange, weird smile and put it back in his pocket.

John watched as Krivi stooped over Alina’s head, his breathing rock-steady and his hands steadier as he used a pair of picks and went to work on the lock. He twisted one, and it stuck in the place of the key, then he used the other one, without moving the position of the lock which wasn’t easy at all, to snick the lock open.

It worked after three seconds of quiet breathing and absolute, deafening silence.

The lock opened with an audible snick and the pressure mechanism moved. Alina breathed deeply, her shoulders shaking and Krivi snapped the lock back, but not all the way back to lock it.

Recon one breathed easy and shared a grim look with Krivi.

“Alina?” Krivi said.

“Yes, Krivi?”

“I am going to remove the lock now, all the way out and I want you to leap into John’s strong arms and just hold on, OK? He’s going to run really, really fast and take you out of here. Can you do that?”

“Yeah.”

“John, you ready to take my girl out?”

John’s lips tightened but he said easily, “Alina’s my girl, Krivi. Don’t poach.”

“We’ll see, Johnny Boy. We’ll let Alina decide. Right, Alina?”

She giggled, but didn’t nod her head. She was aware of the lock on the back of her head.

“On the count of three,” he said quietly, looking at recon one. Recon one nodded slightly, because he got it. There was a growing chance that Krivi was not going to make it out in time, but there was not a damn thing he could do about it right now.

“Boss,” was all he said.

“One.” Krivi’s steady hand went to the lock. “Two.” He flicked it open, sliding it out and pushing Alina away in one motion.

“Three.”

John snatched the girl and ran straight and true, without a backward glance.

Krivi didn’t spare them a glance either, he held the pressure mechanism gingerly as a timer started counting down the seconds. He had twenty seconds before he cut the wrong wire and blew himself to kingdom come.

“Five,” he murmured, measuring the position of the wires from the detonator. All three yellow wires ended in a tangle, so he wasn’t sure anyway that he wasn’t going to be blown up.

“Eight.”

He picked one out and held his pliers over it.

“Twelve.” He picked the next one out and his fingers trembled in a fine reaction. He steadied his hand and cut the wire. The timer stopped its deathly countdown. And he placed the pressure mechanism detonator down as carefully as if it was still alive.

He pushed the earbud on once.

“Hot load is cold. I repeat, hot load is cold. Coming out now. How’s the girl? She all right?”

There was no answer from the other end for a minute. And he waited, while sweat poured off his face in rivulets, even though the temperature inside the cave was close to five degrees. The black paint he’d worn had run off, washed by his perspiration and his hand was steady again as he pushed the pliers back into his Army knife kit and shoved it into his pocket.

“Boss?”

“Yeah?”

“Get the fuck out of there. Now.”

Krivi chuckled, a strange ghostly sound in a tomb.

“Yeah. Roger that.”

Then he slung his weapon on again and walked out, as calmly as he had come in. In the five minutes that he had told his teammates he would.

The team was lodged in Holiday Inn, paid for by a very grateful Mr. Gujjar who was probably placing an armored tank around his kid round about now. The whiskey was flowing freely in John’s room, which was Party Central. And the sounds of raucous male laughter could be heard two floors down. John walked out of his room and rapped on a door two doors down. The door opened a crack. Krivi still in his fatigues, with the shirt off, stood at the entrance.

“Come on out to the land of the living,” he invited.

“No,” Krivi said. “Thank you.”

“You did a good thing there today, Boss.”

Krivi’s face remained impassive. “We all did our jobs, John. Now go. Have some fun.” His lips twitched but his eyes remained the same. Black and flat, with not much to read in them. In fact, nothing at all to read in them. “Go on out to the land of the living.”

John smiled and tipping his head once, went back the way he’d come. It was a futile hope to think the boss would come and join in the revelry when he hadn’t done so once in all the years that John had known him. John understood death, the awful pressure of it and the horror of it. But every time he saw Krivi Iyer, he was reminded of something worse than seeing death firsthand. He was reminded of war victims who couldn’t understand life or death because neither made sense to them. Then, he stopped thinking about his boss and tossed a shot back and partied because he’d escaped his fate again.

Back in his room, Krivi stripped down to his skivvies and roamed the hotel room like a caged animal. He gave a fleeting thought to joining his men, but dismissed the thought immediately. He didn’t know how to laugh and horse around and pretend that everything was A-OK just because they had cheated death tonight. This time. This party would go on for hours, because they were all getting a hefty bonus for getting the girl out and recovering the money too.

All in a day’s work for K&R experts.

But he wasn’t a kidnapping and ransom specialist. He wasn’t even team leader because he wanted to lead a bunch of decent, strong men down dark tunnels or into dangerous situations, being responsible for their lives. Most of these men had families, wives and children: the whole enchilada. They carried around pictures in their wallets and had emails and scheduled phone calls when they were in rotation for missions. He didn’t know how to relate to them. He had no one. No pictures in wallets or emails from loved ones or scheduled phone calls.

He only had an awful, empty blackness that sometimes got filled when he stared sure death in the eye and understood today was the day he would die. Today was the day he would die. When Gemma had died along with Joe and the unborn baby, he might as well have died with them.

He didn’t know how to live anymore, because he literally had nothing to live for. His family, the ones still surviving, had long since lost hope on the brooding, dark man he had become. And it had been months since he had even spoken to his parents. For all intents and purposes, he was all alone. Just the way he liked it.

He was here in India, his birthplace, and he knew there were relatives scattered in various cities who would love for him to visit. Aunts, uncles and second cousins who his parents were regularly in touch with through the wonders of modern technology, back in their little farm in Surrey. But he didn’t feel the need to reconnect with family or his birthplace, even though he was home. He was alone and that was best.

Alone meant safety.

He stopped at the window and looked out over the white-tipped mountain ranges which were particularly beautiful in twilight. At that moment before day changed into night and everything was just slightly out of focus. Krivi smiled. It was weird. He was noticing the sunset and the beauty. Maybe coming home had not been the worst idea of all. And India, no matter how long ago he’d left it, was still home. His motherland, even though his passport was British.

He placed his hands on the sill and leaned out, deeply breathing in the unadulterated, mountainous air. Breathed in life. Sometimes, it was the only thing that mattered.

Life.

And tonight, there was a little girl who was sleeping safe in her own bed with her parents around her, standing guard over her dreams. Safe from all the monsters who roamed this world, looking for easy, pluckable prey. She probably had years of therapy ahead of her to recover from this ordeal, but she was alive and she was unharmed and that was the only thing that mattered.

He closed his eyes and reached for the cigarette he’d placed in his shirt pocket. He used a match and lit it, blowing smoke deep in his lungs and letting it out into the pure mountain air. Watched the gray smoke pass on, ethereal and wispy, getting lost in the little flurry of snow that began to fall on the Holiday Inn. He’d smoked half his cigarette when there was a peculiar beeping from his bag.

Krivi straightened instantly, on animal alert. He crossed to the bag he’d placed on the dressing table and extracted a bulky instrument that vaguely resembled a cellular phone. A satellite phone with the latest scrambler codes that bounced between at least three satellites, if he wasn’t wrong. This phone was the only way he could call his family and be completely untraceable.

He pressed a button and said, very quietly, “Iyer.”

“Hello, Krivi, my boy. You’ve been a hard man to track.”

Krivi sat down on the bed abruptly.

“Harold,” he said, shortly. “How did you find me?”

Harold Wozniacki, Assistant Director of Operations, MI5, laughed gregariously, a jarring sound that echoed in the hotel room. Krivi winced and listened to his blast from the past laugh as if he hadn’t laughed in years. All his pleasure in the moment, the evening, was gone.

The cigarette in his hand had burned down to more than three-quarters and he flicked it out the window with an accurate throw. It wasn’t the decent thing to do but he couldn’t care about butt disposal right now.

“What do you want, Harold?” he asked, when there was a break in the laughter.

“Should I answer the first question, my boy?”

Krivi shook his head. “No. What do you want, Harold? Whatever it is, the answer’s no. You know that.”

“Hey, maybe my kid has been kidnapped and I need you to rescue her. Defuse a bomb or two along the way,” Harold rejoined, full of joie de vivre.

“You have a son, Harold. And he is in the Army. If someone has taken him, they would have already lost a limb or two. Or their head.”

Harold must have spread his tentacles wide to get this much current intel on him. Probably even called in a few favors.

“I thought you would have forgotten all about me by now, Krivi.”

“I never forget, Harold. You know that.”

There was a beat of silence and then Harold exhaled. “What do you know about The Woodpecker?”

“The bird? Not much.” But he sat up straighter. “Why do you ask, Harold?”

“A series of bombings in Benghazi,” Harold answered instantly. “Car bombs. IEDs, with circuitry fucked up so badly it would have taken a rat to clear it. Remote detonation on start-up. Semtex and plastique as primary explosives, with marble shrapnel. Recognize it?”

Krivi felt cold, colder than he’d felt in four years. His vision sharpened, his breath slowed, his heart slowed. He gripped the phone so tight, his knuckles showed veins.

“What are you saying, Harold?”

“You know what I am saying, Krivi. Come back, and you can find the son of a bitch who took out Joe and Gemma.”

“No.”

The word was short and cold.

“Come back, Krivi. The Woodpecker is a dangerous entity. No fear, no consequences. But no one can catch him because there are rumors about identity, no one can confirm. Gun for hire type and with no moral compass to guide him, from the looks of things. People are getting hurt, Krivi. You can help stop that.”

His other hand clenched in a fist. His short nails dug into the skin of his palms.

“No, Harold. Goodbye.”

“Krivi, there’s a face and features match, eyes, skin color, mom’s date of death and DOB with a civilian. Ninety percent chance of siblings. That’s a huge chance for someone we haven’t ever seen. We need confirmation and you can get it for us. The female is in India, in Kashmir. Transport wouldn’t be a problem for you. You can nail The Woodpecker.”

“It’s a fucking awful codename for a terrorist.”

Harold chuckled weakly. The sound seemed wrong in the conversation they were having.

Krivi loosened his grip on the phone. Looked at the blinking red light that indicated call active on the satellite phone. He thought about the last four years and the six months before that. He thought about all those days and nights when he had sat and thought about nothing else but finding the person responsible for killing his soul.

“I pull the trigger,” he said.

“Now, Krivi—”

“I come back, I do your ID, I catch the bastard and I pull the trigger and watch the life bleed out of him. Do we have a deal?”

“Krivi, I don’t think—”

“Goodbye, Harold.” He made to press the end call button.

“Goddammit. Wait.”

Krivi waited.

“Fine. You come back, run the op and we will see where we end up. Deal?”

“I come back, run the op, ID the female, find out her connection to him and when we get the bastard; I put a bullet between his eyes. Deal.”

Harold Wozniacki was a smart man. He knew when to weigh his options and he knew when to hedge his bets. He also knew that Krivi Iyer was the best man for the job because there was no one else with his unique skill set. And that skill set included, cold, purposeful, lethal vengeance.

Harold sighed.

“You always were a stubborn bull, my boy. Fine. Come back and we have a deal.”

Krivi smiled. And it was a terrible thing to see. “Good. Send me the details at the—”

“Holiday Inn, Ladakh. Yeah, I know.”

Krivi shook his head, the call ended. And every muscle in his body loosened just as his brain sharpened.

The Woodpecker. It was an awful name for a cold-blooded murderer. But there was no name suitable enough for a monster like that. And he was going to kill this monster and pay his blood debt once and for all. Maybe, he could even die in the process. Maybe, God would be that kind.

If ever there was a God.

Krivi took out his cellphone, the one provided by his employers and punched in speed dial two.

When his boss picked up he said, very briefly, very clearly, “Jim. Krivi Iyer. Yeah, everything went down OK. The girl’s OK. I am calling to let you know I am done. I quit.”

Jim asked something and Krivi answered, “Why? Just something I have to take care of. No, not a woman. I quit, Jim. You can wire the rest of my funds to Ladakh. Thanks.”

two

Srinagar

India

May 2012

Ziya Maarten had never looked forward to early mornings, till she came to Srinagar, the heartland of some of the most beautiful country she had ever seen. She’d done the Euro backpacking trip, fresh out of school, saving up for her grand adventure when other girls her age had been trying out graduation day dresses and making out with their boyfriends in shady corners.

Ziya had worked two jobs, as a library helper and a waitress at a trendy Soho café, in order to see the Eiffel Tower, Pisa, the Coliseum and the sandy beaches of Corfu. Kids who bounced from foster home to foster home, learnt the value of being grounded to places rather than people early on in life. Places that you had been to, places that you dreamed about, were something else altogether. They were permanent. They were forever.

People, on the other hand were so much more inconvenient to love. People came and went. More often than not, they left you. And she’d experienced more loss in her twenty-nine years than she’d wanted. Ergo, she’d traveled extensively and wide, as a troubleshooter for an organic chemical fertilizer company that operated out of England and had ties in China.

Ziya had worked hard after high school too, getting into Trinity, which was no mean feat and then getting her business admin degree from the London School of Economics. All on scholarship. Because foster kids were really on their own after age eighteen. And, it had been a stroke of luck that she had become roommates with the most interesting creature in Trinity, who was waiting for the love of her life to finish his Army training.

Noor Saiyed, a Kashmiri princess who had only spent the summers in India till her twenty-seventh birthday which fell this year, had simply refused to let Ziya be alone. She had cajoled and laughed and giggled and drunk her way into Ziya’s life, until they really were Best Friends Forever. Last year she’d given those goofy, tacky, matching BFF bracelets to Ziya as a gag gift. And this, from a woman with an IQ in the triple digits, and who had made the Dean’s List all four years of her undergrad as a literature major at Trinity. Ziya couldn’t hold out against someone with so much love and sunniness and eternal optimism, even though Noor was as impulsive as Ziya was methodical and pragmatic.

And, when Noor, had told Ziya that one of her distant relatives had an interesting job opening back in Kashmir, managing a fairly large estate and the various business concerns that made up Goonj Enterprises, one of which was manufacturing cricket bats, the most popular sport in the sub-continent, Ziya had been hard-pressed to not at least give the interview a fair shot. And she had flown into Srinagar Airport, after a connecting journey filled with innumerable delays.

Ziya had been fully prepared to turn down the job, because she didn’t think she was suited to just settle down in one place, no matter how interesting and challenging the running of it was.

She had not counted on Kashmir. Her first view of the mountains that ringed the hilly terrain of Srinagar had made her catch her breath. Her second view of the Dal Lake, totally frozen in winter, with the houseboats moored in for the duration like soldiers hunkering down for the long haul, had clutched at her heart. And she’d wanted this job, the managing of an estate she knew almost nothing about, with a desperation that still worried her.

Kashmir was a place, you could love a place.

But, she loved Goonj too. The house of wood and stone, set high up in the hills, overlooking the lake, which flickered like a bright jewel on a clear spring night that she could see down her bedroom window. The challenging job of overseeing the different business interests of the Akhtar family, all of whom were settled in other parts of the world and wanted nothing to do with the house and the business.

And Dada Akhtar.

Grandpa.

Ziya sighed as she looked out her bedroom window and saw Dada Akhtar puttering around with his beloved rose bushes, his tiny gardening scissors going snip-snip on the bad leaves. His beady eyes large behind the gigantic glasses he wore with obvious pride. He was nearing eighty, a retired military man, who was now content with looking after his roses and holding court over his family when they deigned to visit him.

He was the grandfather she’d never had.

Ziya pressed a hand against the chilled glass of her window and called out, “Good morning, Dadaji.”

Dada Akhtar, still spry and having all of his senses whipped his head up and smiled a wrinkled smile at the woman he already considered his newest granddaughter. Mostly because she loved Goonj almost as much as he did. It was home. When he died, it would his resting place. Laid to rest next to his beloved wife Saira, underneath an apple tree in the very first orchard that his grandfather had planted with his own hands.

“Good morning, Ziya. It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

Ziya smiled, pushed a swathe of tousled hair away from her face and answered, “Absolutely, Da. Still in love with your roses?”

He held the pair of scissors in a kind of salute and touched one vivid, blood-red bloom with something close to reverence. “As much as I love you, baby girl.”

She laughed, shook her head and was about to close the window when he called out her name.

“Yes?”

Dada Akhtar smiled, a crafty glint in his still-sharp eyes. “Krivi’s coming over for breakfast. I think he has the figures for the new venture you were talking about.”

Ziya caught herself before her smile slipped and irritation took its place. There was no reason to be irritated, therefore she wasn’t. The logic always worked for her. She nodded and said, “I’ll set an extra place for him then.”

She shut the window on Dada Akhtar’s boom of knowing laughter, as if watching Ziya squirm was a source of particular amusement for him. She tied her blond highlighted hair back in a tiny stub, because it barely brushed her shoulders as it is. Less maintenance, less hassle she’d always claimed. But secretly, she was vain enough to know that short hair went particularly well with her face and accentuated her best features while minimizing her flaws.

Now, padding into the bathroom just off her bedroom, she examined that same face while brushing her teeth diligently. It was an average kind of face, with great cheekbones, pale gray eyes, a too-wide mouth and a stub of a nose that looked a little out of place with the rest of the features. She had a nose ring, a tiny clip-on that she wore sometimes and Noor claimed it gave her a fey quality that attracted men in droves. She didn’t know about the fey thing or the droves, because she rarely had time for either of them.

The rest of her wasn’t that bad either, she conceded as she showered rapidly. Nice legs, thank God, and a figure that was curved but with a tendency to go to fat if she didn’t watch out. So she watched out and ate sparingly when she could and binged when she couldn’t resist the temptation anymore.

Besides, work at Goonj meant a lot of walking, even sprinting in some cases. Spring was the best time to get a lot of traveling and work done, because it ended so quickly. And she had several inspections scheduled over the next few weeks over the fields and the cricket bat manufacturing plant and the lumber lot too. The lumber union was demanding a renegotiation of their contract and that was one particular headache she was eager to solve.

Her plate was full, and breakfast had to be made for five people. So, why was she wondering about her decidedly unsexy body in the middle of her shower?

Him, the answer came to her mind immediately.

Krivi Iyer, the new manager who Bashir Akhtar Salman had hired to help her with the management of the estate. She hadn’t been present at his interview. All she knew was that he’d shown up one day in a battered Jeep with a duffel bag full of clothes and unreadable black eyes. He’d arrived six months ago, and they’d barely spoken ever since.

She got on well with people as a rule, it had been drummed into her in B-School, and before that in her various foster homes, the early ones … when she’d tried so hard to be the kid, the one kid they would keep and not send back after six months or a year or two weeks. Agreeability was a learned nature for her.

Yet, she couldn’t make herself look Krivi Iyer in the eyes long enough to make herself agreeable to him. And he, strangely enough, kept to himself too. They never spoke unless there was a business matter to attend to. Sometimes she’d even wondered if he was all there in the head, then she would look into those pitch-dark eyes and know. He was all there in the head all right. He just looked through her. So she made an effort to ignore him as thoroughly and effortlessly as he ignored her, and the plan was working splendidly.

Ziya dressed in jeans and a pullover, ran a brush through her now-free hair and without a trace of makeup, walked downstairs to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Her Google Nexus smartphone, which had been Dada Akhtar’s welcome to Goonj present for her, was already in her hand and she was running through her schedule for the day.

She again blessed Da, as she did every time she punched in keys on her cute-yet-edgy cell phone and smiled fondly as she ticked off making breakfast on her to-do list.

Goonj was laid out in a typical Indian manor house fashion. There was the huge living room which also served as the dining room when the occasion warranted it and the kitchen next to it, with the mudroom just off the back of it. A simple wooden staircase led to the two upper floors, where all the bedrooms and Dada Akhtar’s study and office were.

Ziya’s own rooms were on the second floor because Dada Akhtar had insisted a single girl like her was not staying by herself in the gamekeeper’s cottage, just at the edge of the gardens that surrounded Goonj.

The cottage had been unoccupied till six months ago, when Krivi Iyer had arrived and parked his second-hand Jeep and duffel bag there. Till date, Ziya had found reasons to never visit him at his own place.

Any off-hours business that had to be conducted was done either over the phone or in Dada Akhtar’s home office.

Ziya shook her head and muttered, “Stop acting like a sixteen-year-old ninny.” And entered the kitchen.

“Well, honey, talking to yourself is considered an evolved form of ninny-ness,” a sexy female voice drawled from the inside.

Ziya chuckled and reached for the coffee pot before addressing the comment and its maker.

Noor, dressed only in shorts and a tank top, sexy, sleepy attire with an opened hot pink hoodie thrown on for fashion as much as modesty, raised her coffee mug in a toast. She had the kind of face that stopped traffic. Heart-shaped, with sharp, green eyes that could turn sultry or throw daggers, and a mouth that was made for sex. That with a killer body that she dressed to maximum effect. She could have been a supermodel but she had chosen academia as her calling.

“Just because you are an Oxford scholar doesn’t mean you can make words up, my dear.”

She fired up the gas and placed the iron skillet on it, dropping in a healthy pat of butter while she scrounged the refrigerator for eggs. Scrambled eggs were a morning staple around here. She glanced over her shoulder at Noor who cradled her mug for warmth. “You want?”

Noor shuddered, and the sweatshirt slipped a little to show one tanned shoulder. “No way. That much carbs in the morning will make me a beached whale and then I won’t look hot at my wedding. And, hey, ninny-ness is too a word. I can prove it to you.” Noor took the English language more seriously as the season’s latest fashion.

Ziya broke open the eggs and mixed in the milk, salt and pepper, and the chopped tomatoes and onions which were already frozen in a Tupperware box. She added them and sliced a green chili open right down the middle and added that too. Whisked everything together and poured it over the skillet.

“Don’t just sit there, my beached whale,” she said mildly. “Pop the bread in the toaster, would you? Make extra. Krivi’s coming over for a breakfast consult.”

Noor laughed; a husky sound and whistled. “Ooh! Krivi’s coming over for a breakfast consult, is he?”

Ziya didn’t bother to answer her best friend. So Noor singsonged, “Ziya and Krivi sitting on a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”

Ziya removed a toasted bread slice from the pile Noor was adding to, and stuffed it in her opened mouth. Noor’s lovely green eyes rounded in indignation and she munched on the slice before she removed it with a sputter.

“That was low, Zee.”

“Really? It looked pretty justified to me.”

Noor’s toast dropped out of her hands as she squealed and turned around to the man who’d just spoken.

Ziya watched indulgently, affectionately as her best friend launched herself on the military-uniform-clad man who’d come in through the mudroom. He topped at about six feet, and was leanly muscled as befit an officer of the Indian Army, and he had drop-dead good looks and hazel eyes that complemented Noor’s own beauty.

She was kissing him quite enthusiastically, winding her long legs around his lean waist. And he kissed her back, pressing her closer to him for just a second, a second too long before he slid her off his body.

Noor grinned back at Ziya.

“Look what the cat dragged in, Zee.”

“I thought it was your irresistible lure that brought me here, baby,” Major Sameth Qureshi murmured, as he brushed a tender hand over his beloved’s tumbled hair. He made himself move away from her, even though it was becoming increasingly difficult to move away, to stay away, when all he wanted was forever with her. But, the life of an Army man’s wife was not for Noor Saiyed, impending PhD from Oxford. And he didn’t know how he could let her go either.

Right now, that beauty queen face softened into pure beauty that shone from her untarnished soul, through those eyes he saw in his dreams. Noor, who had never known true loss or unhappiness for a single minute of her sheltered life. And, if he had his way, she never would.

“I didn’t want to give myself that much credit. Zee would accuse me of having a bloated head,” she stage-whispered.

“Zee doesn’t have to accuse,” Ziya pointed out dryly. “She already knows about your bloated head, honey. Morning, Sam. You staying for breakfast too, I suppose?”

Sam nodded and stepped fully back from Noor. He dragged his eyes away from her face and smiled at Ziya. A big brother smile. Ziya Maarten was the best friend a girl could have, and she was the closest thing he had to a sister. He worried about her, as much as he admired her for her drive and grit to simply forge ahead and get things done.

“Morning, Ziya. Yes, I came here for your breakfast actually. Not Noor’s supposed lures,” he added with a wink.

Noor rolled her eyes and punched him in the arm before strolling away to pour him coffee. Ziya followed Sam’s eyes as they watched his girlfriend with a kind of helpless fascination she’d always found vaguely pathetic.

“You two are a riot, aren’t you?” Noor sulked as she dumped the mug in Sam’s surprised hands.

Ziya leaned down and picked up the fallen bread slice and gave her a wry look. “You make it so easy, honey. How can we resist? Right, Sam?”

Sam dropped a kiss on top of Noor’s head and slid into a chair next to her. “If I answer that, she will skin me alive.”

Noor brightened and leaned into Sam and said, “Nope. If you answer that, I will make you marry me.”

Sam’s dark eyes shuttered and his face hardened into the soldier that he was. “We have discussed this already, Noor and—”

“We didn’t discuss anything,” she cut in icily, while Ziya fanned the gas flame higher in an effort to drown out the conversation. “You just nixed the idea before we could ever discuss it, Sam.”

“Noor, I told you already, the Army is my career. And it’s a dangerous one, a terrible one. I can’t stand to have you waiting for me when I go to war.”

Noor’s face took on a pugnacious look. Even though they’d had this same argument, practically every day since she’d come back three months ago in order to claim him. Thirty-one, in the Rulebook of Noor, was the right time for a bachelor to settle down. And she was damn well not going to celebrate another birthday as a single woman.

“And I told you, there are millions of women all over the world who do the same every day. If they can, why can’t I?”

“Because.” He raked a hand through his buzz-cut hair and exhaled loudly. “Those women are not the love of my life; who I can’t stand going mad with grief. Besides, what about Oxford and your PhD?”

Noor shook her head. “You cannot sway me with that line, Major Sameth. And do NOT make this about me. This is about you and your inability to commit to a woman, as I am discussing IN detail in my doctorate. I tell you, Ziya. Be it Victorian times or post-post modern, the male as a species prefers to hunt alone than find a mate.”

“Noor.” He reached for her hand and she used it to cradle her coffee mug. “It is not as simple as that …”

“Sam, I love you,” she said, implacably. “You’re the love of my life and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. It’s as simple as that. We’ve been doing this for almost a year now. I can’t wait anymore, I won’t. You should understand that and you’re going to regret not saying yes to my proposal because pretty soon I won’t want you anymore.”

Sam shook his head and looked helplessly at Ziya. “Help, please.”

Ziya shook her head too. “I have a call. I have to take it right now.” She held her phone out like a weapon and backed out of the kitchen.

Noor’s laughter made her smile and she still had that same soft smile on her face, as she entered the living room and collided into a wall of sheer, hard muscle. Terrifyingly hard arms came around her and held her steady when she would have dropped her beloved cell phone.

Ziya stepped back at the same instant that Krivi did.

“Thanks,” she managed, when she got her breath back.

It puzzled her that she’d lost her breath for even a second.

Krivi looked at her for a single, electric second, the hard planes of his face set in even more rigid lines than Sam’s, who was a career military man. He didn’t have a traditionally handsome face; it was too blank and hard for that. But he had a strong jaw and eyes that were bottomless, soul-sucking every time she looked directly at them.

Ziya shot his pursed lips a covert glance and thought, OK, class-A kissable mouth. Then immediately berated herself for allowing that thought to slip in.

“You should never turn your back while entering a room,” he suggested.

“I hardly think that terrorists are going to gun me down in my own living room.” She hoped her face was as mild as she’d made her voice to be.

He had stepped back from her as if she was a live bomb which could explode at any second. There was ignoring, and there was indifference and then there was outright abhorrence. And this man was displaying the third emotion with his emotionless face in spades.

He couldn’t bear to touch her.

“All the same. Please, be careful.” He didn’t take his eyes off her face, as he continued, “Hey, Major. How’s it going?”

Sam threw his hands up as he stalked out of the living room.

“I am not coming back till someone can talk sense into that woman.”

That woman came storming behind him, whirled him by the shoulders and kissed him hard. Gripping the front of his shirt collar to keep him in place and plastering her body to his. Sam kissed her back with equal passion, not able to keep his hands or his lips to himself for even a single second.

Ziya looked at Krivi who looked at the passionate couple as if they were specimens at a zoo. A specimen he hadn’t ever encountered before.

When Noor dropped down to her feet, she said, “‘ Bye, Sam. Don’t come back unless we can talk like two rational adults who are madly in love and are willing to work on the future.”

Sam’s lips tightened and he nodded once, and wearing the trademark Ray-Bans that every military man owned, stalked out. His razor-straight back radiating tension.

Noor turned to look at Ziya with absolute misery on her face.

“I am going to have ice cream for breakfast. Chocolate ice cream,” she announced defiantly.

“I’ll get the bowls out in a second, OK?” Ziya said, gently.

“Yeah.” She sniffed once, and then gave a wobbly smile to Krivi. “Love sucks, K. Don’t ever fall into it.”

Krivi smiled at her, a strange stretching of his muscles that made the muscles in Ziya’s stomach jump. And she realized she’d never seen him smile before today. Not once. He had even white teeth that stood out against the dark tan of his face. A thundercloud of a face. And his smile was extraordinarily sweet despite the hard mouth it came out of.

“Don’t plan to, sweetie. Want me to beat the Major for you?” he offered, shoving both hands into his jeans pocket.

Noor sniffed again and shook her head. She laid her head on Ziya’s shoulder, which was sort of like seeing a giraffe lean on a gazelle, since Noor was a leggy five ten and Ziya barely topped five five in her bare feet.

“Not yet. We’ll keep that as the last resort.” Her dull eyes brightened and she fixed Ziya with an enthusiastic grin. “Maybe K can knock him unconscious and we can get him to the nikaah venue and then he won’t have any choice than to say Qubool hai.’’ I do, in Urdu.

“Yeah, good plan, Nuria.” Ziya used her nickname to good effect. “Get your future husband passed out to the wedding.”

Krivi shrugged his broad shoulders under his sheepskin jacket that was definitely not from the Hindukush region and said, “It’s as good a plan as any, I suppose. Just let me know an hour before, OK?”

Then he winked and Noor gasped and chuckled as he continued, “I promise I won’t even damage his face so you’ll get your perfect wedding pictures.”

“I’ll hold you to that, K. Zee, I’ll see you in my room. I don’t want Da to castigate me again when he finds out I fought with Sam. Da and Sam need to continue being buddies.” It was at times like these, that Ziya remembered that Noor was a warm, considerate woman who put other people’s feelings before her own and was not just a ditz holding out for a diamond ring.

Noor squeezed Ziya’s shoulder and shooting another bright smile in Krivi’s direction sashayed back into the kitchen.

Ziya looked at Krivi. Krivi tried to look back, but he only managed a left-of-center gaze and her lips tightened in annoyance. He’d winked not a minute ago. Not one damn minute ago! Was she such a troll that he couldn’t feel any kind of warmth towards her?

“Noor’s feeling bummed out. She doesn’t show it, but—”

“We can do this in the afternoon. Read up on the report by then.”

Krivi dropped a thick file in her general direction and she caught it with the same hand that held her phone. There was a little bit of juggling on her part when she tried to make sure she didn’t drop the papers inside the file. So she was frowning when she looked up to thank him.

And found only empty space where he had been a second ago.

“I don’t need this,” she announced to the empty air and stalked back into the kitchen.

It was the morning for an ice cream breakfast, after all.

Ziya put in a full hour with Noor, sympathizing, encouraging and alternating with sharp words that defended Sam’s actions before she escaped to the sanctuary of her own office. The two bowls of chocolate ice cream she’d had, sat heavy on her stomach and she knew ruefully that she’d have to forego lunch.

Since it was a remarkably beautiful day, she decided to bike it down to her office in Srinagar. Usually, she used the four-wheel drive Rover, but the ice cream had put her in the mood for some immediate exercise. And, she needed to burn off the steam of her anger against one Assistant Manager who moved like the goddamn air. Da was in his office, probably playing Internet poker against thirteen-year-olds, and so she left without informing him of her whereabouts.

The bike ride down the small hillock was bouncy but invigorating and, on flat land, there was a bike path that she was the only one who used with any consistency. People preferred walking in Kashmir, or driving. Because of the hilly, rough train.

She, with her Western lifestyle and her obsession with keeping the weight off, wanted to bike it up and down like Lance Armstrong. Not the best example, she acknowledged, as she chained up the three-speed outside the simple brownstone that housed Goonj Enterprises.

It was set in front of an apple orchard that produced award-winning apples every couple of seasons. There was an apple cidar unit in the back lot, and then, for miles on end on either side of the highway were timber lots owned by the Akhtar family. Some of the timber was cut down and sold to local manufacturers, small craftsmen who needed that special chinar, maple tree bark, for their carvings and carpentry. And the rest of it was used to manufacture cricket bats.

The first time Ziya had entered the workshop where the cricket bat was made, she’d been astounded by the easy precision and perfect syncing of the wood being cut and the final product.

The brownstone was divided into offices for Krivi and Ziya and a few other personnel and a souvenir and apple cidar tasting shop on the other hand.

And every day, when the store opened for business, like it had for the last year when she’d first decreed that it would, Ziya made it a point to walk through and greet the first few browsers and have an encouraging word with Poppy, the Australian girl who manned the store. She did the same today too, but she was late by almost two hours and the place was pretty deserted.

The store was called Goonj Curios and Souvenirs, because she’d wanted to reinforce the brand name of the family enterprise and it sounded powerful and mysterious. Goonj in Hindi meant echo, and it resonated with the warm feeling she wanted every customer who came in to leave with. Echoing in their hearts forever.

Poppy was showing a couple of Japanese tourists around the store, so Ziya quickly waved to her and kept moving forward to the back entrance and to her office.

The storeroom was next to the shop and her office was on the next floor. She quickly jogged up the stone steps and entered her office with a small sigh. Her legs were aching a little because she’d pedaled furiously in her anger and she uncapped a bottle of spring water she kept on the sideboard and drank it down thirstily. Then she dropped her messenger bag on her comfy desk and opened the file that Krivi had thrust at her.

A knock sounded on her door and she looked up to see Viven, her assistant come in with a tray of bottles.

“These came in by mail. You have to let them know by Friday latest, and they can get on to bulk manufacture in a week.”

Bottles for the apple cidar they produced in the back lot.

“Put it down here, I’ll get to it in a minute.” She indicated the edge of her cluttered desk and Viven whistled as he placed the tray, after clearing a pile of papers.

“I have told you I could clear all this stuff up for you, Ziya.” He smiled goofily, a kid who was doing his MBA long-distance and had dreams of opening his own restaurant in the hills for adventure enthusiasts. “It’s my job as your assistant to help you out any way I can.”

“And it’s my job as your boss to kick your butt if you touch my stuff, sweetie.” Ziya smiled, a sharp grin and Viven shook his head and ducked out.

Krivi came in without knocking just as Ziya had opened the file. She looked up a split second before he entered, her inner radar alerting her to his silent, morose presence. He was dressed much like her. Jeans, a pullover in dark brown and work boots. He didn’t even wear a watch but she knew he was always on time. Every-fricking-where. It was uncanny and a little frightening.

“You read it?”

He didn’t sit down, didn’t hover at the edge of her desk. He just stood, casually, but on full alert like some soldier on duty, taking up all the space in her cozy, little office. Ziya resisted the urge to lean her chair back and regard him better. Since, with his six-two height and her current position he pretty much loomed over her across the room.

“No. I just got in.”

“OK. I will come back when you have.”

“That’s all right,” she said, tapping the file. “I think I sent you most of the stuff that you used to collate the report. What’s your gut tell you?”

He blinked, as if he was unsure of what he’d just heard.

“I beg your pardon?”

Ziya smiled and tapped the folder again. “The saffron field. Yield-to-seed ratio, output and expenses. Is it sound to go into it, right now? With the shaky situation of the market?”

“Isn’t that your job to figure out all the angles?”

She nodded and pushed her hair back behind her ear. His eyes twitched to her small ears for a microsecond and she dropped her hand back.

“Yes, it is.” Ziya leaned back in her chair to regard him better. “I just wanted your opinion. I assume you do have one.”

Krivi nodded. “Yes, I do.”

She waited a beat and then drummed her fingers over the folder again. “And this opinion would be …”

“We have a meeting day after tomorrow in Pehelgam. I think you should take it. The man seems sound, and his finances are in order. It’s a risk you can afford to take.”

She smiled again, but this time there was a bit of warmth in it. “Thank you. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Again, his hard eyes twitched, as if she’d said something that could set him off.

“What was?”

“Talking. Communicating. It’s what all the cool people are doing.” She kept the smile on even while she felt the temperature drop in the room by a good ten degrees.

“I wouldn’t know,” he replied, honestly. “I have never been cool.”

“Of course, you haven’t.” She shrugged. “I’ll look through the report again. See if I can spot a gremlin. But I think we should go see a man about a field too.” She waited a beat more to see if that would crack the impenetrable ice surrounding him.

It didn’t.

Ziya nodded, her eyes cool again. “I’ll see you day after tomorrow then. You can drive us down in the four-wheel. It’s not a problem, is it?”

He didn’t say whether it was a problem or not. All he said was, “Day after tomorrow. Nine a.m.”

And then he was gone, closing the door behind him in a soundless movement.

Ziya huffed out a breath and twisted the bottle of water in her hand. Men, she mused, were the strangest species on earth. And Krivi Iyer was the king of this species. Too bad he looked exactly like how she’d expect an ex-war vet to look. All surly and brooding, frighteningly efficient. And good enough in jeans as he must have in uniform. Then, because it was unprofessional to daydream about hot ex-war vets during business hours, Ziya turned back to the folder and started reading up on the pros and cons of buying a readymade saffron field.

three

The next day, Noor made a slight but significant change to their plans. First, she insisted on coming because she was so damn bored working on her ‘Commitment in literature was a hoax’ thesis. And secondly, she was missing Sam and she didn’t want to, so she was going down to Gulmarg and indulging in a day of sightseeing and souvenir shopping. And pigging out on junk food.

Noor was what you’d call an emotional eater. Ziya knew her best friend’s moods as well as she knew her own, so she knew the deep hurt Noor was hiding under her flippant arguments. So, she simply texted Krivi to tell him that they could take two cars down, since Noor and Ziya would probably end up spending the night in Pehelgam.

He sent a word back in reply.

No.

No explanations, no excuses and definitely no deference to the boss’s wishes. Just a no.

She was half-tempted to go down to his cottage and give him a good tongue-lashing for such insubordination, but then her Inner Bitch reared her head and argued that the best revenge in this scenario would be compliance. She’d seen the acute distaste in his eyes when he’d touched her yesterday, which meant that he wasn’t a big fan of her company. For whatever godforsaken reason. So, what better way to avenge her piqued ego than by making him suffer her presence for as long as she could? And that made her mind up and she only sent a single Cool back.

And her last thought, before she slid into deep dreamless sleep was the way his eyes had gone absolutely still when he’d been looking at her. And the way that stillness had touched off something inside of her. A tiny explosion of … something. An explosion for a man who couldn’t even look her in the eye.

So, she consigned him to the deepest bowels of Hades and slept dreamlessly.

The next day, more of the amazing spring weather continued, as Ziya woke up at six a.m.

The sky was so blue it was unreal, and the world looked so fresh and silent, Dada Akhtar’s roses were in vivid Technicolor against the green of the garden. There was a river of fog winding down the ground, and she leaned out of her window and breathed deep. Closing her eyes, just … glad to be alive. Glad to be here and living this moment in Goonj.

Echo.

She opened her eyes and looked straight at the gamekeeper’s cottage. By some twisted uncanny coincidence, the cottage’s owner stepped out of the entrance at the same time and into his Jeep. Ziya shut the window closed with an audible snap. He was not the first thing she wanted to see any morning.

But, two hours later when she was packing for her overnight trip, he was what she thought of and she couldn’t understand her hopeless attraction at all. Especially, because asking Noor about it would be an exercise in futility and awkwardness since she already suspected some deep love-story schtick between Ziya and her taciturn assistant, incurable romantic that she was. And Noor would never keep her trap shut if she caught even a whiff of the tumult and confusion and plain anger running through Ziya’s mind.

“Hey, babe,” Noor said as she came in, without bothering with the knocking. “I have to borrow your earmuffs since …” She stopped dead as she saw the mass of jumbled clothes on her best friend’s bed.

“Did a tornado just pass through here?”

Ziya raked a hand through her short hair and kicked at a stray white tee that had fallen off the pile on her bed.

“It’s a business meeting. But we are going sightseeing later on and I have no fricking clue how to dress up and down at the same time.”

Noor manfully kept her full lips from splitting into a wide grin at the outraged picture her friend made, standing in her flannel pants and cute T-shirt. Ziya dressed more for comfort than she did for style.

“Want some help?”

Ziya gave her a speaking look through dark eyes. “No. I want to not go on this stupid meeting and then have to listen to you whine about how Sam is messing with you for the rest of the day. I have the harvest reports to get through, and the labor union is breathing down my neck and—”

Noor bounded over to her side of the bed and slapped her once. On the cheek. Lightly.

“Shut up,” she advised mildly.

Ziya’s eyes flashed, but she shut up. She rubbed her cheek and said, “I am going to talk to Sam about the benefits of staying single.”

Noor stuck her tongue out and retorted, “You need my help, you thrift store ragamuffin. So let’s not make idle threats here. Capisce?”

Ziya’s shoulders slumped and she conceded defeat.

“I am in your hands, Mistress Gabbana.” She was the undisputed expert on style and fashion as much as the state of politics in 19th Century England, the time period of her doctorate.

Noor grinned, ran a friendly hand on Ziya’s shoulder. “Make that Mistress Dolce. It just sounds better, doesn’t it?”

Ziya sighed and agreed. Because right now she needed Mistress Dolce’s help and she was running out of time because the Crypt Keeper without a watch would arrive on the dot of nine and she didn’t want to deprive him of her presence a second longer than she had to. And because no one was there to counter argue the point with her, she absolutely believed in its logic.

Pehelgam was a small town on the national highway, a tourist hub, just like most of the state’s territory was, and it had many focal points of sightseeing that were a must-see for everyone who visited the place. There was Chandanwadi, an ice cave that never melted through which the river Lidder flowed. Betaab Valley, which was about four acres of parkland where a very famous Bollywood movie had been shot. And, in the beautiful distance, one could see the Himalayan ranges in their majestic splendor.

Since, tourism was the biggest trade for the town; out-of-town vehicles were not allowed to operate inside city limits. Recently though, security had been upped in this sensitive spot because of IED bombings in nearby Sonmarg and Gulmarg in 2008. Pehelgam had, by the grace of God, escaped terrorist attacks but the tourists, army and visitors alike knew that was just fate and not coincidence.

Because of Sam’s pull with the local authorities, all Krivi had to do was flash a Military Vehicle pass and they were allowed to pass through without incident. Noor noted the action and some of the animation died from her excited face.

They stopped at the Paradise Inn, which was one of the circuit houses in town which select guests could use. Local businesses from Srinagar were one of the privileged few. Noor took off for a nap and made Ziya promise that they would do the cable car ride before sunset today. Since Gulmarg was a good two hours away, it was going to be a little tight.

Ziya and Krivi arrived at the Jaan-e-Bahaar estate where the saffron fields were located and their owner Bashir Khan awaited them.

The fields were on the highway itself, and were blooming with healthy orange strands and little purple wildflowers that made her want to run out and gather up an armful. Krivi braked smoothly at a convenient spot off the shoulder of the road and Ziya hopped down before he could do much more than engage in neutral.

His eyes followed her slim, jeans-clad figure as she ran nimbly between the rows of saffron and wildflowers and suddenly knelt down and just touched a single bloom. His heart thudded uncomfortably, once, and he gripped the steering wheel tightly before deliberately loosening his muscles one by one. He went out and joined her at a brisk pace and was once again caught off-guard at the sheer, unguarded pleasure visible on her face.

Ziya Maarten didn’t know the first thing about camouflage. And he couldn’t understand how she’d survived without getting her heart shattered into a million pieces given her rough childhood and adolescence. Either she was the most deluded creature he’d ever come across, or the strongest woman.

Ziya, unaware of the conflict inside her assistant manager’s brain, just smiled goofily at him as she knelt between the sea of flowers. Breathing in the heady scent of one of the costliest spices on earth. In a reputable restaurant in London, a pound of saffron would be bought for a cool three hundred pounds without a flicker of an eyelash. Not to mention its dollar equivalent in the rest of the world. Ziya already had feelers out in a couple of places in downtown Mayfair and a place in Manhattan that were in desperate need of saffron.

Milking them was not in the plans, but a healthy profit was nothing to sneeze at. Business School Tenet number twenty-three.

“It’s goddamn gorgeous, isn’t it?” she asked.

Krivi stuffed his hands in his pocket, a dark, unreachable shadow of a man in the bright noon sun.

“Yes,” he answered. Because saying otherwise would have been a lie.

Ziya stood up, brushing the mud off the knees of her jeans and smoothed the siren-red blouse she wore tucked into the waistband. It billowed out fashionably against her slim waist, and on her feet she wore smart black boots. Low-heeled that made for easy walking and she carried a black blazer that she slipped into when she caught sight of Bashir Khan coming their way.

Krivi noted the way she fluffed out her short hair against the collar of the jacket but kept his eye on Khan too. And the way the blond streaks shimmered golden in the afternoon light.

He struck his hand out to Bashir Khan before she could.

“Krivi Iyer,” he said briskly, in Hindi. “We are representing Goonj Enterprises. This is Ziya Maarten, Operations-In-Charge.”

Bashir Khan, a local Kashmiri who smelled of the saffron he grew and cigarette smoke shook hands with Krivi, sizing him up instantly. He regarded Ziya for a moment and then smiled as he shook hands with her too.

“Welcome, Miss Maarten. And may I say you are as lovely as your voice,” he added in perfect English.

Ziya smiled, pleased but her silver-gray eyes were cool. The man might have charm but this was still a business meeting. She nodded at the rows of flowers below them and said, “You have a beautiful set-up, Mr. Khan. The sunlight is adequate, your irrigation system seems to be in perfect working order and the harvest seems to have been particularly kind to you this season.”

Bashir smiled modestly, his light green eyes cooling too.

“Allah is kind, Miss Maarten. And please, let us not be formal. Call me Bashir miyan.” Brother, in Urdu.

“Bashir miyan,” Krivi said politely, “I was wondering if we could take a look at the property. Photographs haven’t done it any justice.” He tacked on a smile at the end, but caught Ziya’s frown before she hid it.

Why was she frowning when he was trying to be agreeable?

“Absolutely, Mr. Iyer. This way, please.” Bashir invited them on a well-worn pathway between the hedges. “And later on, if you are satisfied with what you’ve seen, maybe we can have a cup of kahwah.” A local tea brew that tasted delicious and smelled even better. “And talk terms.”

Ziya smiled, non-committal and distant. “I’m afraid Mr. Iyer doesn’t make the decisions around here, Bashir miyan. I do. I have the degree in business management.” Her smile turned a little nasty. “He doesn’t.”

Bashir grinned and bowed before her. “As madam says.”

Ziya offered her elbow to the man and he took it gallantly, leaving Krivi behind to follow if he chose to.

“Tell me about your rainfall scarcity backup plan,” she invited. “And I am very interested in finding out if organic pesticide is as effective on the southern part of the property as it is here.”

She might have been distracted by a hot ex-war vet who seemed to put her down every chance he got, but she still knew her work better than anyone else. And she was damned if some man was going to take her work away from her.

As Bashir talked her through his operation, elaborating on the points that she particularly wanted clarified, she resisted the urge to look back and check the thundercloud expression on the man following them. She would have been surprised to find that he wasn’t angry at her high-handedness at all.

In fact, if Ziya had looked back at all, all she would have seen in his midnight eyes were covert speculation and outright admiration.

“Where have you guys been?” Noor demanded a couple of hours later as she got in the car.

She was dressed in butter-soft jeans and knee-high boots with three-inch heels. Her coat was a leather floor-duster that swept in her wake like a regal cape. In fact, with her flowing hair and the Jackie O glasses she wore on her thin nose, she very definitely resembled a princess from some visiting principality.

She plonked on the passenger seat before Ziya could open the door for her.

“Can I get off first?”

Noor wriggled her butt and edged to the side so Ziya could get out and into the back.

Noor punched Krivi in the arm in a sisterly gesture. “You are late, mister,” she announced. “I had to have room service and you know I hate that.”

Ziya rolled her eyes as she settled herself in the back, after shrugging off the jacket and carefully folding it before placing it in the seat next to her. Next to her laptop briefcase. Because their meeting had run over, ending with a very successful kahwah tea meeting, she didn’t have time to change and get into more comfortable clothes.

“At least you got to have lunch, sweetie. We only had kahwah chai and you know how much I hate it,” Ziya retorted.

Krivi shot her a look on the rearview mirror as he gunned the engine and they took off in a blur of gravel. Her stomach dipped again at the unreadable emotion in his eyes and the easy, almost animal confidence with which he handled the Rover as he drove. His long, dark fingers caressing the wheel in a gesture she couldn’t help but notice. Dammit, but she didn’t want to notice anything about him.

“I didn’t know you hated kahwah,” he said, as he took the exit out of the city, flashing the Military Vehicle pass again at the checkpoint. “We wouldn’t have drunk it you’d said something.”

She shrugged, and felt her shirt blow out against her. “It wasn’t important. Bashir miyan was more inclined to negotiate in my favor if I drank the tea. And I knew that.”

“Smart strategy.”

She pressed her lips because she didn’t think he meant it as a compliment.

Noor on the other hand burst out with an amused chuckle and said, “You have no idea how strategic my Zee is, K. She scalped the sorority chicks in Trinity one semester because one of them had dared her to wear a bikini in December for Pledge Week.”

Ziya thunked the back of Noor’s beret-clad head. “Stop talking. Now.” She threatened.

“You want to know what she did?”

Krivi didn’t answer, so Noor continued anyway. “She posted a notice on the college website and charged a pound for all the frat house boys to see her parade in a Victoria’s Secret ensemble outside their frat houses. At two a.m.”

Krivi’s lips twitched but he kept his straight face on. “The sorority girl’s boyfriend was one of the idiots who paid up, I assume.”

“Yep,” she confirmed with an urchin’s grin. “He was. And all of his friends too, who were, of course, her girlfriends’ guys. Needless to say, there were a lot of breakups that week. And my Zee got a lot of desperate offers for dates.”

“Of course.”

“Noor?” Ziya said conversationally.

“Yeah, Zee.” Noor fiddled with the radio controls right as her cell phone started ringing. And the display picture was Sam. She turned the volume on high to drown out the sound of the ringing.

“If you don’t keep your trap shut I will rip my earmuffs off your pretty ears. Along with your ears.”

Noor held her hands up in a gesture of surrender and tossed her phone to the backseat, and Ziya sighed. The rest of the ride was accomplished to the sound of raucous music and the intermittent ringing of a cell phone.

The first thing Krivi noticed when they got to the Gulmarg Tourist Office parking lot was that the immediate area was almost empty of parked cars. The horse handlers were also leading their horses away from the sloping parkland. The tourist mania that was May in Gulmarg was also conspicuously absent.

Then his twenty-twenty vision spotted something near the cable car station. The station was about a kilometer into the parkland and was swarming with people. At first glance, they looked like normal civilians, tourists. But his veteran eyes could make out the outlines of firepower hanging from the sides of the perimeter guys. Which begged the immediate question, why the hell was a perimeter being formed at the cable car station at all?

Krivi recalled similar situations from news reports and snippets of news broadcasts he’d read and seen over the years. Unidentified vehicle in Srinagar contains IED. Ten dead, forty-four injured. A car bomb in July of 2011 resulting in the death of twenty-two people and several more injured. Some maimed for life. And that deadly suicide bombing of the Raghunath Temple, where terrorists affiliated to one of the jihad groups entered the temple twice, and killed closed to sixty people, injuring almost a hundred of them, all of them unarmed. All of them innocent.

Security was not just an issue in Kashmir, it was a foreboding presence. And seeing military personnel at the cable car park could be a regular exercise. But something in his gut, his spidey sense, told him that wasn’t the case.

He was out the door before he could stop himself.

“Krivi?” Ziya called out, in an uncertain voice.

He looked back at the two women still sitting inside the car.

“Stay inside. Don’t move,” he ordered.

He was sprinting towards the cable car station and covering it at a rapid clip before Ziya could process his action. Then she turned the door handle and leaped out of the Rover. Noor followed her, jumping out and keeping pace with her stride effortlessly. By now, Krivi was a distant blur as he’d already reached the perimeter.

“You know, he’s going to be very mad because we didn’t listen to him,” Noor said, as she tried to keep her breathing even in the freezing temperature.

Sunset was about forty minutes away and the air was turning colder by the second.

“He’s not my boss. I am his employer,” Ziya corrected Noor as she walked rapidly to the crowd that was formed around the cable car station. “He has no right to order me around.” She wasn’t sure but she thought they were all military personnel, which was very odd and a whole lot frightening. There were only a couple of reasons why the Army would make an appearance at a hopping tourist spot. Noor gasped next to her and caught her arm, pointing at the crowd.

“Sam’s Jeep. I see his Jeep, Zee.” Noor sprinted past Ziya, all her fear and love focused on the jeep and the man inside it.

Ziya ran faster and passed her and was almost at the crowd when she was lifted off the ground and thrust back with an almost violent force.

“What the fuck do you think you are doing?” Krivi asked her tonelessly, his black eyes pitch dark.

She stumbled away from him and Noor crashed into her and he steadied them both. His fingers biting into her skin.

“I asked you two to stay in the goddamn car.”

“She said … you’re not … her boss. Sam’s Jeep.” Noor bent over, trying to catch her breath.

Ziya simply glared at him and tried to stalk past him. He hauled her back again with insulting ease and this time her fist plowed into his stomach. It didn’t even faze him as he stared at her with infuriating calm.

“Go back,” he repeated, as if she was a five-year-old.

Noor’s eyes were streaming and she screamed, “Sam. Sameth! Answer me if you’re here.”

Krivi closed his eyes as the crowd parted and turned as one to look at the two females and one male who’d intruded on their party. Then, Sam came forward, walking fast and then with every step running towards Noor. She couldn’t be held back even by Krivi’s hard arms as she ran towards him and he caught her up in a bruising embrace.

“Go back,” he yelled, as soon as he’d taken his lips off hers.

“No.” She shook her long hair back, her Jackie O glasses on the ground somewhere, naked fear in her eyes. “Not without you.”

“Nuria—” He closed his eyes.

Ziya sighed and shook herself free from Krivi’s tight hold. Her skin hurt with the force of his fingers on her. He didn’t look all that happy with the way she surreptitiously rubbed her shaking fingers over her upper arm.

“Noor, maybe we should—”

“No.”

Sam looked at Krivi who shrugged; a movement that Ziya felt because she was still standing way too close for comfort.

“IED? Insurgents?” Was what he asked.

Sam nodded, hooked his glasses up. “IED. Found in a child’s backpack. The tourist admins were not sure at first, and by the time they reported it the thing was live. BDS is ten minutes out.” BDS was the Bomb Disposal Squad of the Indian Army that handled, well, disarmament of hot loads.

“IED?” Noor shrieked.

“Stop the hysterics,” Ziya said firmly, taking her friend by the arm. And shooting a fulminating look at Sam at the same time. “Sam’s Army guys are going to disarm the thing before we know it. It’s his job, isn’t it, Sam?”

“Yes.” Sam nodded reassurance emphatically, but his expression was very grave. He looked at Krivi.

“Can you make it out of here, pronto?”

Krivi walked forward and removed his wallet. He flipped open the worn, black leather which was torn at the edges and flashed a badge at Sam, whose eyes widened when he saw it. And severe speculation and respect filled them a second later.

“I could take a look,” he offered quietly. “If you can tell me the specs.”

Ziya’s stomach did a slow, nauseating roll as she heard the casual words. She suddenly understood Noor’s hysteria a lot better than she had five seconds ago. Her fists clenched at her sides as Sam spoke about a standard Iraq-style IED.

Cylindrical container with suspected C4 and an initiator pin that held the mouth of the container closed. Trigger mechanism was probably det cords, and there seemed to be no timer, except the tourist fools had moved the backpack and the load had jostled and gone live. Power source was a tiny switch that had been hidden in a side-zipper that had flipped on when the fool admin guy had handled the package.

Krivi nodded as if he understood all these terms.

Then he said, “Standard disarmament procedure isn’t it? Works with pliers, cutting off the PS is first priority.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah. I’ll talk to my superiors. Give me sixty.”

Ziya swallowed as he went back in and Noor went after him. She was stopped by the guards and her gestures became threatening.

“Krivi?” Ziya asked, trying to even her tone.

He didn’t turn to look at her. “Yeah?”

“You’re going to defuse that bomb?”

He shrugged and her stomach pitched violently. She reached out and caught his arm which made him turn to look at her. Her eyes were shadowed, her quietly lovely face was composed but with the vivid red of her shirt blowing against her slim form he became aware of a terrible fragility in her.

“Don’t blow us all up to kingdom come, OK?”

He smiled. A real genuine smile that made her heart clench with sudden, appalling fear. And he disengaged from her light hold. “I won’t. I promise.”

Then he disappeared inside the perimeter, which of course, let him in and not Noor, moving with lethal grace and the absolute promise of using it.

As Krivi suited up inside the five-hundred-pound bomb suit they had on emergency supply, all he could focus on was the mission. His breathing slowed, evened out in time with the beat of his heart. Back when he’d been a rookie, one of his instructors had spoken about adrenalin and how it affected your responses and actions. When a split second was all you got to save your teams’ and your own life.

The spine tingled as the hormones shot up and down, energized your body, giving you renewed strength and vigor making you capable of almost superhuman feats that included, but was not limited to, throwing cars off mothers and children. Your senses came on ultra-alert and you were superhuman for the few seconds it took for you to do the impossible.

The instructor had called this the Moment of Absolute Clarity. Krivi’s adrenalin worked the other way around. When he needed to make the hard choices, like today, getting into a bomb suit, his heart rate slowed down to well below the prescribed resting rate. His vision didn’t get sharper; it just narrowed to the next step, just the next step in front of him. He didn’t catalog the big picture or his surroundings and his hand was steady as a rock. He was all purpose, all mission. And nothing else.

He clipped on the communication unit and spoke into it, “Alpha Two, this is Alpha One. Radio check.”

“Read loud and clear, Alpha One.”

He flipped on the protective webbing that covered almost the whole helmet and slowly, painstakingly walked forward. A hulk of a man wearing five hundred pounds of body armor that would do him no good if the explosive he was going to disarm was disturbed in the wrong way.

The child’s backpack was a red one, from the brand Jansport. It had three zippers, and two of them were open. A small iron cylinder peeked out of the last opening.

The IED.

There was a steel pin on the mouth of the cylinder that he would have to carefully remove, without disturbing the integrity of the explosives inside or setting off the fuse. He got down on his knees, pliers at the ready. And gently, as if he was handling the most exquisite woman, lifted the firing pin out. A tangle of wires came out with it, and all he heard was his own breathing. Measured, steady, calm as if he was meditating. Which he supposed in a way, he was. He peered inside and saw the C4, three stacks of them all lined up inside like swaddled babies. Beneath he saw the shrapnel apparatus. Razor blades. He sucked in a breath and murmured into the comm unit, “Clear out all unnecessary personnel, right now. This is dangerous.”

“What have you found, Alpha One?”

“Razor blades as shrapnel. Enough C4 to level this place right up to the parking lot. And a fuse that I am going to need some time to figure out, because I have to switch off the power supply first. Clear them out, pronto.”

He was inspecting the outside zipper pocket where a tiny black device jutted out. It looked like a remote control but with the parts all exposed, so there was just a jumble of wires and circuits. Krivi removed the heavy protection-lined gloves and threw them on the ground. He continued probing the circuits, trying to find the one that would lead him to the battery. Nickle-Iron (NiFe) cells that he could see stuck on to the side of the remote. He tried to visually trace the wire out, but he couldn’t, so he again stuck his fingers inside the mess and murmured into the comm unit, “Hope the area is cleared, boys.”

“BDS is en route. ETA five minutes.”

“Awesome.”

But he continued inching his way into the tangle of wires until he found the one he was looking for. Delicately, with the precision of a surgeon, he stripped the insulation and looked at the tungsten length inside. It would burn inside of a second with the proper spark. He touched the wire end that was attached to the NiFe cells and gently shook it. When nothing happened, he decided to brave the fate again and yanked the cells out of the remote, along with the tungsten length.

Still nothing happened. Then, he set the power source aside and turned his attention to the bomb. He’d disconnected the initiator firing pin but there was still the main fuse that needed to be clipped off. He looked critically at the wires that were attached to the steel pin and began running his hands over each of them. Finally, he struck gold with the fourth one which led into the cylinder, and he reached inside, his palm hitting the C4 bundles. His heart thudded once, hard. He reached and yanked the wire away from the C4 and it came out easily. Krivi looked at the length of det cord in his hand and let it dangle in mid-air.

“Alpha Two,” he said clearly into the microphone at his mouth. “Hot load defused. I repeat, hot load defused.”

For extra measure, he took his palm out and smashed the power source into tiny pieces and watched the tungsten wire embed itself into the gravel. Then he stood up, his legs creaking under the weight of Kevlar, rubber and his own aching bones.

Reaction.

Immediately, three Army personnel rushed to his side and began to cut into the backpack itself and get to the explosive inside, exclaiming over the amount of shrapnel that would have destroyed any living thing into shreds if the bomb had exploded.

Krivi backed off, his footsteps leaden.

A hard hand clamped on his shoulder and he turned around slowly, hampered by the suit. Sam’s grateful, but clear eyes stared back at him. He tapped on the visor of the helmet and Krivi pulled it off. Sweat from his hair and temples dripped down his nose and he let the helmet dangle on his side. He started ripping the suit apart.

“Thank you. Just … thank you.”

“Are they gone? The both of them?” Ziya. He couldn’t believe that she was the first thing he wanted to ask about and it was disquieting.

“No. They’re sitting in the car, waiting for you to drive them.”

Krivi nodded, brushing a hand through his soaked hair. Sam smiled, slightly. “You were cool in there. Glacier cool. Done this before, haven’t you?”

Krivi nodded. “Done everything twice, Major. Can you do me a favor?”

“Name it.” The offer was instant, sincere.

“Take your female back to the hotel with you, all right? One hysterical woman I can handle … but two’s a little out of my league.”

Sam grinned, which was a little ridiculous under the circumstances. But he nodded and matched his steps with that of Krivi’s.

“You’re afraid of two women? You, who just saved us all from certain death?”

He didn’t answer. Just shrugged off the sweltering hot suit and quietly wished for an icy cold waterfall he could just drown himself in. The temperature was now a cool fifteen degrees and he was sweating like a pig. And, he was pretty sure, underneath the suit he smelled like one.

Dirt and sweat and fear.

They reached the edge of the parking lot and Noor shrieked as she caught sight of the two men. Sam sighed and said, “Yep. You get the other one, soldier.”

He ran forward to intercept Noor who was crying and babbling, her floor-duster kicking up little circles of dust as she sprinted towards them.

Ziya, Krivi saw, was just walking with slow, measured steps towards them. Her eyes level with his. They revealed nothing, but were pure luminescence. Quicksilver, glowing, like the sunny streaks in her pixie hair. And for a second he wanted to find the same warmth in them that she gave everyone else.

Sam was half-supporting Noor to his own Jeep, who didn’t even bother to turn around and acknowledge the hero of the hour. All of her attention was focused on the man holding her.

Ziya reached Krivi, her hands firmly inside the pockets of her blazer, which she’d buttoned up in defense of the weather.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hey,” he said.

“You didn’t blow us all up.”

“No,” he agreed. Lighting the one cigarette he carried in his pant pocket with a match. “I didn’t.” He drew smoke in.

Ziya stared at the burning paper and tobacco and stated, “But you don’t smoke.”

“No,” he agreed. “I don’t. Can we drive back now? I am in desperate need of a shower.”

Her lovely lips pursed as if she wanted to make an acerbic comment. But she only nodded at the cigarette.

“Finish that before coming in. I won’t have the car smelling of filthy tobacco.”

Ziya turned around and started walking back and Krivi couldn’t help it. He watched her straight back and bent head and started to smile. Really smile. Infinitely glad to be alive, just so he could make her eyes flare up at him again.

He threw the butt on the ground and crushed it under his boot heel and walked forward. Leaving the bomb suit where it was. Lying on the ground next to his half-smoked cigarette.

four

One of Wood’s earliest memories, were of catching stray chickens at the farm and eating the eggs raw, after stealing them from underneath the big fat mama hens. Foster care had not been much help in Wood’s case, with that monster of a father playing the cops when they showed up and beating the shit out of Wood’s older brother when he got drunk and mean. Mama had split after the brother’s birth and Dad had taken it out on Wood and his brother’s hide.

Wood had learned early on to stay out of the big man’s way and not make any noise. It was the reason why Wood had not said a word till age four.

One night, when the father was whaling on the brother, who never woke up from that beating, Wood called the cops and watched, hiding in the barn with just a one-eyed cat for company, as the cop cars came and took the entire family away. Wood ran into the woods that night terrified that the father would come back and beat the life out of Wood too.

But, Wood had not gotten far. Another man had followed Wood into the woods surrounding the pretty farmhouse in Chesapeake, Maryland. That man had been gentle and spoken in a calm voice and had the kindest eyes Wood had ever seen. That man had given Wood a Snickers bar and a tissue to wrap it in when Wood had only eaten half of it, sitting under the oak tree where Wood had fallen and was crying inconsolably when the man turned up.

That man had taken Wood to a nice clean bed in a strange motel and asked Wood seriously, whether this family, Wood’s family was what Wood wanted. Wood had answered instantaneously, no. The man had asked if Wood wanted a different family, with only, say a dad and no one else. But an exciting fun life, filled with adventure and faraway places, with trips and no school if that was what Wood wanted.

And Wood had answered as instantaneously. Yes.

The man had offered his hand to be shaken by a small, malnourished five-year-old. And had called himself Tom Jones. Wood had called him Dad since that day.

The Woodpecker smiled and bent the thumb of the blindfolded man sitting in front, back all the way. The man screamed; a high-pitched, keening wail. He clutched his ruined thumb and whimpered; snot and tears running unchecked down his face.

The man wept openly.

“Please, please,” he whispered, shrinking into himself. Hunching his shoulders, trying to occupy as little space as possible. “Please, I am sorry. I won’t mess up the order again. I won’t.”

Wood came forward with a cigar trimmer. An unlit cigar was clamped to the terrorist’s lips. The room in which the man, the pizza boy, was tied in was large. Airy. It had plenty of natural light and white curtains. There was a huge white bed on a raised dais with fluffy curtains on the four posts shielding it. A dream cloud of a bed. The sheets were made with military corners because Wood didn’t allow anyone to touch them. The Woodpecker was odd like that.

The pizza boy, Hank was his name, was still dully crying, holding his broken hand to his heart, his thin shoulders moving with the force of his sobs. There was blood on the lower part of his face, pouring down in a thick trickle and a gap where Hank’s nose had been. The Woodpecker moved forward and yanked the thin blond head back in a sharp, painful movement, “If you don’t stop crying, I will reach down and yank your voice box out. You understand?”

Hank cried harder, beyond mere fear now.

“I wanted pizza, you know,” Wood ruminated. “An American specialty, even though it originated in Italy in the nineteenth century. I even specified very clearly, when they asked me, that I wanted half and half. Chicken and pineapple on one side for the carbs, and olives and sundried tomatoes on the other. No peppers, because they mess up my sleep. I stated it, Hank. So clearly.”

“I … I’m sorry for delivering the wrong pizza. I really am. I really am.” Hank started sobbing louder now, his wails echoing off the white walls of the sunny bedroom with the white bed.

“Please don’t kill me. Please don’t.”

The Woodpecker smiled and leaned forward on the table. The blade of the cigar trimmer flashed unholy silver as the terrorist clipped off the butt and it fell down on the carpeted floor in a rush of leaf and tobacco. The acrid scent of nicotine permeated the air around them.

Hank’s already fearful, hysterical, ruined face took on epic proportions of roundness as he heard the methodic way with which The Woodpecker handled the knife.

“Why would I kill you, Hank?” Wood smiled. “I am not an unreasonable person. I just want a little respect. People should respect each other, don’t you think?”

Hank nodded, desperately, like a bobblehead. “Yes, yes. Yes!”

“Good. So you agree that we should be respectful towards one another.”

“Yes. Hell, yes!”

“Then why did you not show me any respect, Hank?” Wood asked, sorrowfully. “Why did you call me all those awful, awful names and said that I could take the pizza if I wanted or I could just eat dirt and die.”

Hank’s eyes, never clear, started streaming again.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I won’t ever do it again. I won’t say anything to anyone. Just let me go. Please, let me go. PLEASE!” He screamed in the end.

The Woodpecker frowned. “Don’t shout; it’s not polite. I can’t let you—”

The door to the massive bedroom opened and a tall man with piercing silver eyes and graying hair strode in. He was dressed in a conservative three-piece suit and he had a classically handsome face. A face that people would remember if only because of those remote eyes.

The man was Tom Jones. The Woodpecker’s father, for all intents and purposes. He looked with mild distaste at Hank’s wasted form and then with censure at The Woodpecker who was chewing on the butt of the cigar instead of lighting it. Something like defiance gleamed in those cold, dead eyes.

“You’ve made a mess over dinner,” he observed mildly.

“He brought me the wrong pizza,” Wood said indignantly. “He gave my order to somebody else.”

Tom untied Hank’s legs, wrinkling his nose at the distinct smell of urine emanating from the boy’s pants. They all wet themselves in Wood’s presence. After he was done, he straightened and looked coldly at his kid.

“This is a seven star hotel. You cannot stuff a body down the trash chute here.”

The Woodpecker smiled sweetly. “I was going to burn him and then flush his remains down the toilet.”

Hank screamed again, terrified beyond anything. An inhuman sound. Tom Jones reached behind and clipped him once on the jaw. A hard punch. Hank’s head lolled onto his shoulder, his lower lip bleeding slightly, as he finally, mercifully fainted.

“Send the boy back, Woodie. Please.”

The terrorist nodded and came to stand next to Tom. Tom put a comforting arm around Wood’s shoulder; who leaned into the embrace with an ease that was natural. Tom Jones was the only person in the whole world The Woodpecker trusted. Tom squeezed Wood’s shoulder. A fatherly gesture.

Wood sighed. An incongruous sound, given the bloodied boy tied at their feet.

“I want pizza, Dad,” the terrorist said, sounding so alarmingly like a teenager. Another incongruity.

“Let Hank go. I’ll get you your favorite,” Tom promised.

Wood smiled and nodded.

“OK, Dad. If you say so.”

And with that, Wood went to dispose of his handiwork in a more conventional fashion.

“And then, Krivi just picked Zee up and put her back down about two feet away without breaking a sweat, Da,” Noor narrated. “Ziya was spitting mad, I could practically see the steam coming out of her ears, but you know how she is?”

Noor paused, only to shove a bite of crisp naan, wheat bread that went well with most Indian curries before picking up her story again.

“All ice-queen and icy eyes. So, she pulled that routine with K here.” She grinned at the silent, hulking man who was calmly eating the food on the table as if not just forty-eight hours ago he hadn’t defused a dangerous piece of explosive.

They had all, Sam included, decided to brave the night and come back home to Goonj rather than hang around Pehelgam and wait for morning light. So, Noor had slept on Sam’s shoulder in the back while Ziya had scrunched herself against the passenger window and Krivi had driven them back. Not even fazed by the prospect of a hard ride after the day he’d had.

Ziya had concluded then and there that the man was not just superhuman, which he undoubtedly was, but that there wasvery little human in him. Rest, food, sleep, these things didn’t matter to him at all. He wasn’t even any different these two days than he’d been for the last six months. He looked the same, remote and with a hard face that could break granite. He dressed the same, jeans and sweaters to ward off the mild chill that signified the end of spring.

Yet, for the life of her, Ziya couldn’t understand why she suddenly found everything about him distractingly appealing. Even his usual morose taciturn behavior couldn’t make her stop watching him covertly, through the corner of her eye. At the way those long, tanned fingers used the fork to shred some chicken before chewing it slowly. Those same hands had touched an unexploded ordnance and come off the victor.

Those same hands had touched her too. With such unbelievable strength she still had finger marks on her arm that she’d covered with a long-sleeved shirt. But it wasn’t the pain she remembered or even her own justifiable anger at his high-handedness in ordering her about. It was just the sensation of his fingers touching her flesh. Hot, searing on impact. As if there was a current running between them that had shorted a few circuits in her brain.

Made her aware of a very unpleasant fact about Krivi Iyer. Namely, that she was aware of Krivi Iyer. More than she’d wanted, more than she thought possible and now, more than was comfortable for her. Because he was still the same, silent assistant manager who refused to look her in the eye for the eight hours that they shared office space.

Ziya turned back to her own food, determined to not join in Noor’s delighted ribbing of her. Determined to not let anything get to her. Most of all, the way Krivi was plowing through his food, as if he couldn’t eat and get away from the dinner table fast enough. Such an unsociable animal he was. And yet, he’d smiled at her with something close to sexiness. And promised her he wouldn’t blow them all to kingdom come. Heroes, Ziya decided, were a strange breed. And she wanted nothing to do with them. She ate some of the field greens on her plate and looked up to see Sam grinning wryly at her.

She quirked a brow and mouthed, “What’s up?”

Sam shook his head and addressed his next comment to Dada Akhtar who’d stopped eating while the saga was being unfolded for him. In full, Technicolor detail. And certain embellishments on the part of one Noor Saiyed.

“I wasn’t there to see Krivi tackle on my Amazonia.” Sam smiled fondly at Ziya who rolled her eyes at the nickname. “But I did see how he did the linebacker routine to stop Ziya and Noor from breaking into the perimeter. And still lives to see daybreak. Strong man, you are, K. And very lucky too.”

Since the last comment was addressed directly to him, Krivi looked up and saw Dada Akhtar’s avid, grateful face. He did the decent thing and smiled modestly.

“It’s nothing, Major. Always glad to help out in an emergency.”

“But this wasn’t an emergency. This was a bomb threat, Krivi. A whole different world from the word emergency, son.”

Noor hugged Krivi’s side who was sitting to her left and announced, “Superheroes are extremely modest, Da. Don’t you know?”

“And what else do you know about superheroes, Kid?” Krivi asked her, his eyes indulgent.

Sam caught Ziya looking at him again and grinned.

“Maybe Ziya has some thoughts on superheroes, huh, Zee?”

Ziya gave him a bland look. “The only superheroes I know are extremely flawed because they feel the need to hide their humanity under tights and outside underwear, which is an extremely tacky fashion choice,” she ended judiciously.

Sam looked a little nonplussed but Krivi’s lips twitched and there was a look of interest sharpening the remoteness in his black eyes.

“Touché, Zee,” Noor said. “But you have to admit, K would look extremely hot in tights and outside underwear.”

Krivi put his fork down and looked interestedly at Ziya, who wrinkled her button nose and said, “I wouldn’t know. My imagination is not that vivid.” And she carefully did not look at the man in question.

Dada Akhtar reached over and squeezed Krivi’s shoulder in a gesture of support and affection.

“Whatever the reason, whatever the circumstance, I am just glad that you were there today to look out for my two girls. I can’t begin to thank you for this debt, beta.” Son. His beetle-black eyes gleamed with emotion under bushy white brows, surprising Krivi. Moving him a little, enough that he covered the wrinkled, still-strong hand with his own and returned the squeeze.

“It’s not a debt, Salman,” Krivi said, formally. Uncomfortable by the sudden somber tone of the conversation. Uncomfortable even more to find that every eye around the small table was finally on him.

“And I don’t think—”

“Krivi?”

Ziya’s low voice made him stop. Mostly because she never called him by his name. Just like he never did hers. Ziya. A small, short name for a very complicated, hard-to-figure-out woman.

“Yeah?”

“Shut up and accept the compliment for what it is. Yeah? Da doesn’t shower praise on just anyone. You need to swallow that chip on your shoulder that’s obstructing your throat and say thank you graciously. Yes?”

She smiled pleasantly, although her eyes were roiling like storm clouds. He again had the insane urge to grin at her, the way he had when she had told him off for considering smoking in the car, but wisely kept the impulse and its consequence to himself.

“Yes, ma’am, Miss Maarten,” he murmured.

And, turning back to Dada Akhtar, said in perfect Urdu, “Thank you, for being so kind as to call me a hero. I don’t deserve it but I will try and live up to it, anyway.”

“You’re welcome, beta,” Dada Akhtar managed.

“I think we can safely say that between Sam and K, we are not going to have a problem if aliens invade Goonj, Da,” Noor said, confidently.

And after a second of disbelieving silence, the whole table burst out laughing. Dada Akhtar laughing so hard, his little pot belly shaking with his mirth. Noor and Sam put down their forks and held onto their stomachs, tears running down their faces. And even Ziya was smiling and chuckling as if the joke had been funnier than it was supposed to.

Krivi smiled because it would have been rude otherwise. But he knew aliens were scary beings because you didn’t know the first damn thing about them. Least of all, how to beat them. Ziya’s silver eyes lit up with laughter and humor as she gave him a passing glance. Yeah, he thought morosely. He didn’t know the first thing about beating this alien woman.

Noor prowled into the kitchen where Ziya was busy scooping out vanilla ice cream into bowls which held gulab jamuns, scrumptious round balls made from flour, saffron and floated in sugar syrup, her favorite.

“I am going to bloat,” she wailed, even as she took a golden jamun out and stuffed it whole in her mouth. An expression of utter bliss crossed her face before she opened her dreamy, satisfied eyes and nailed her best friend with an intuitive expression.

“K is hot.”

“Hmm?”

Ziya didn’t really hear the statement, because she herself was contemplating popping one jamun in herself. As penance for being attracted to someone who was so obviously not good for her.

“I said, K is hot,” Noor said patiently. “Like, hero hot. And that’s a lot of hotness, babe.”

Ziya shook her head in disbelief.

“Stop talking and eat dessert, honey. Your brains are obviously scrambled.”

Noor poked her in the shoulder. Hard enough that Ziya stopped ladling the ice cream and shot her an annoyed look.

“What?”

“You like him. You want to jump his bones because he hauled you around like a sack of potatoes and then, like five seconds later, went and saved the world. All without breaking a sweat. Or even being unduly concerned about you or the world. It’s hot. All that implacable indifference.”

Ziya chuckled.

“Yep. Brains. Scrambled. Definately.”

Noor shook her head.

“You can lie all you want to me, baby. But the truth is there in your eyes when you think no one is looking at you.”

“And what truth would that be?” Ziya’s face was rich with amusement.

“You look at him,” she answered promptly. “You don’t want to, but you look at him.”

All the amusement faded from her eyes and she said, “Shut up, Noor. You have no idea what you’re saying.”

“I do. And it scares you, because he really is who he is. And you are intrigued by the indifference and the hero complex.” Noor was so confident in her assessment that Ziya was sure she must have slipped up and said something to her after all.

But, then common sense reasserted itself and she said, “I am not intrigued by a man who has all the manners of a retarded mute and what you call hero complex, I call macho arrogance. And yes, he is indifferent to everything, but mostly to me and I return the favor,” she ended sharply. Sharper than she had intended because it was all so close to what she herself was feeling. She just wasn’t ready to admit it out loud yet. If she ever would be.

Noor’s eyes were rounded in dismay. And Ziya asked her, “What? Now what?”

There was a loud cough from behind her and Ziya whirled around, ladle at the ready. To see the object of her derision standing at the kitchen entrance. Thundercloud face and impassive eyes.

The ice cream dripped onto the floor as he told her with a straight face, “I am not indifferent to your gulab jamuns. If that counts for anything.” Then he nodded at Noor and said, “I’m taking off now, Kid. The … fulsome praise has more than satisfied my appetite.”

Then he turned and left without acknowledging Ziya at all.

Ziya took a deep breath as she struggled to handle her anger and embarrassment at having been caught bad-mouthing him. An employee, no less. Which was inexcusable in her book, even though it was all his fault, no doubt.

Noor watched as a host of emotions flitted across her friend’s usually calm face and she said, casually, “He does pack a punch when he opens his mouth.”

Ziya flicked a distracted glance at Noor who was enjoying her second gulab jamun. She came to a decision that had been simmering at the back of her head for a long time, and she placed the ladle on the table carefully. And she wiped her hands on the small dishcloth she wore around the waist of her jeans.

“I have to end this,” she said, mostly to herself.

“Go, Zee.”

But Noor’s encouragement fell on deaf ears as Ziya half-walked, half-ran out the kitchen and down the passage that led to the living room and then out the door, without pausing to grab a jacket against the chilly night. Srinagar had cold nights in spring and tonight was no exception.

Ziya had to run downhill, and it was a mostly easy path but even then she was winded, her breath coming out in gasps that made little white puffs of air as they escaped her lungs. She could see Krivi’s dark form moving ahead, almost at the edge of the fence where the gamekeeper’s cottage began.

She put on a sprint and reached the wooden gate just as he was going to unlatch it. Ziya tapped him on the shoulder; having to reach up to do it since she was not in heels but practical Nikes. Krivi whirled around with dizzying speed, something feral leaping into his eyes that she instantly shrank away from.

“Don’t do that again. Ever,” he ordered her. “I could have punched your lights out.”

Her small chin went up haughtily, the gray eyes flashing stormy. “You could try, boy-o. Who the hell do you think you are?”

He inclined his head and stepped a discreet inch back as her anger and seductive, female scent swirled in a thick condensation around them. Tightening the bubble around them.

“I am the Assistant Manager of Goonj Enterprises. The other stuff’s not important.”

She shoved him back with one hand, and he was so surprised at the gesture that he actually stumbled. She came forward and did it again. But this time, he was prepared so he caught her wrist in one loose hand. When her other wrist came up with a swing, he caught that one too.

All without taking his dark eyes off her furious, beautiful face.

“What are you spitting at me for?”

“Ziya,” she said coldly.

“I beg your pardon?” He restrained her with a simple hold, while she struggled, trying to escape his fingers, his touch and the stupid, insidious heat filling her at her proximity with this insufferable maniac!

“Ziya!” She practically shouted. “My name is Ziya. Learn it, live it. I don’t care what you do outside of the office, or here in Da’s home, but I am damned if I am going to have you talk to me like I am some small child that needs to be pacified, or worse a woman who doesn’t know what she is doing.”

Her chest was heaving, and because of the way he held her, almost in his embrace, he could feel each movement against his own, suddenly rioting body. He tried to step back again.

“Look—”

“Look, Ziya!” She yelled. “Are you deaf? Or just that cruel? Let go of my hands, you arrogant baboon. I don’t need this from you.”

“Stop moving, please,” he said, in a low voice. His patience strained, his own emotions running up to take the place of the patience.

“I won’t! I am your boss! I am good at what I do and I have lived twenty-nine years without some Neanderthal telling me what to do every five minutes, goddammit. You take your orders from me, Krivi, not the other way. Now let me the hell go.”

Ziya blew a gold-streaked bang off her forehead and glared at him, so mad, so very mad at the casual ease with which he could subdue her and the indifference with which he held her. She was even madder at herself for wanting to talk to him at all, and cursed her wayward hormones to hell and back.

“Ziya—”

“Good.” She smiled, and it was blade-sharp. “Now say it a million times and we won’t have a problem.”

Something snapped. It could have been a twig, could have been the air, or it could be his control which broke free from the restraint of four long years and he dragged her closer and ravaged her mouth.

Ziya was so surprised, shocked out of her wits, that for a single, trembling second she just hung in mid-air, gravity having no pull on her muscles. It was Krivi, his mouth that held her anchored. Then his hands dug into her wrists and she grabbed his hands in return and kissed him back.

Hard.

Using her teeth to bite at his lower lip, hard enough to draw blood. And he groaned as he staggered back, taking her with him. They hit the fence and he released her hands to run restless, rough hands over her shoulders, into the short mop of her hair as he ruthlessly kissed her. And she opened her mouth and let him in to do exactly what she’d ordered him not to. Take over.

But being taken over was a glorious melding of tongues and breath and a scent that could only come from a man who’d faced down death. Taken over meant running her hands over the hard planes of his shoulders, and into his hair. Clutching it hard, desperately as she tried to take the kiss deeper. He bent her back, holding her still by the head, taking a single kiss into depths she hadn’t known existed until she groaned. And only half in pain. They both sprang apart in the same instant.

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