Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
ISHA
I had a clean exit. All I had to do was walk out the door and not look back. And I ruined it.
Ranveer Sisodia had no right to ask me anything. After all that we had been to each other and not been at the same time, my private life was none of his fucking business. So why was he so upset about my meeting another man? And why did I care enough to reassure him that I wasn’t?
I should have let him believe that I was meeting someone who valued me for what I was. Someone better than him in every way. Instead, I had rubbed myself against his hardness shamelessly and almost begged him to kiss me. That was how it had always been. No matter how much he hurt me with his words, one touch and I was ready to melt into his arms. But that was all in the past. We had kept each other at arms’ length for far too many years now for me to slide back into my old bad habits.
So why did I invite him for a ride?
After all, I wasn’t planning to wander aimlessly through the desert. I was going to Gulab Mahal, and if I took him there when I felt so vulnerable, I’d end up telling him way more than he had a right to know. I’d be giving him a peek into a part of me that was so private that even Diya didn’t know much about it.
I held my breath and hoped Veer would refuse to go with me. But a slow smile broke over his face and he looked so pleased, as if I’d offered him a rocket ride to the moon. It was only a rough ride through the dunes, for fuck’s sake, I thought crossly.
He shut the front door softly and followed me to the massive garage at the back of the palace which housed all of Bhai Sa’s vintage cars, but when I made for the purple and pink ATV, he shook his head in dismay.
“No way,” he declared with a scowl.
“Stop being such a chicken,” I said, rolling my eyes. “It was just a small bump.”
“You drove into a fucking boulder. I almost got crushed like the coyote from the Road Runner cartoon.”
“That was your fault! If you hadn’t distracted me with the constant annoying commentary, I would have kept my eyes on the road,” I countered, referring to our disastrous drive through the desert during Bhai Sa’s anniversary celebrations.
“That wasn’t a commentary. That was me begging you to slow down because you were driving like a demented daayan,” he argued.
“Like I said… chicken,” I teased as I hopped onto the vehicle and backed it up to where he stood looking like a furious fallen angel, with his tall, lean body, his smouldering dark eyes and that annoying cleft in the middle of his chin which softened the unforgiving, harsh lines of his granite jaw. I had often wanted to trace the little hollow with my tongue. I pulled my eyes away from it and forced myself to glare at him.
“Hop on, Laajwanti! Or I’m leaving,” I said, strapping myself into my seat and winding a scarf tightly around my face to keep out the sand.
“You told me we were going for a drive,” he argued. “In a car.”
“Nuh-uh. I never mentioned a car. It’s not my fault you jumped to the wrong conclusion,” I pointed out.
Veer grabbed the spare helmet with a little snarl.
“Fine! But I’m driving.”
“Over my dead body,” I retorted. “You don’t have to come with me if you’re going to be a chauvinistic pig about it.”
“This isn’t chauvinism. I’m just trying to survive. I don’t want to be decapitated when you decide to ram the ATV into another boulder, thank you very much.”
“Fine! Then go back to bed,” I snapped, revving the vehicle.
Veer hopped on before I could ride off and the ATV swerved dangerously for a minute. I cursed under my breath and struggled to get it under control because crashing into the wall of the garage would only prove his point.
We drove past the sleepy security guards and Veer clutched the bars above him as I picked up speed.
“We’re not flying to the moon. Slow down,” he muttered.
I accelerated defiantly and we sped through the desert in silence.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going or is this a kidnapping? Oh my God! You’re going to kill me and bury me in the desert, aren’t you? Just because I spiked your drink.”
I turned to him with a crooked grin.
“Don’t flatter yourself. I wouldn’t waste so much effort on you. Like I said earlier, I can just throw you to the hyenas.”
Veer let out a strangled cry and motioned to the road frantically.
“Eyes on the road! This isn’t a suicide mission, Princess!”
“Such a chicken,” I said, rolling my eyes.
We had left the palace far behind and were cutting straight through the desert, all the way to Gulab Mahal. We could have gone through the inner city because that was a shorter route, but I loved driving through the seemingly endless desert that appeared to join the horizon at some point. All that nothingness and silence soothed the anxiety roiling inside me. We were the only creatures racing through the desert in the dark, except the hyenas and jackals who could be heard in the distance.
“We’re going to a very special place,” I said finally.
“And does this place have a name?”
I opened my mouth to reply but a sudden movement in the distance caught my eye and I slowed down a bit.
Veer looked around in surprise when I killed the engine and we slid down the dune before us silently in the dark using nothing but our momentum. I pulled up the handbrake as soon as we reached the bottom.
“Are you mad? This isn’t the time for dune bashing,” he hissed.
“Hush. There’s someone around,” I whispered because sound carried easily in the silence.
“So? The desert is public property,” he retorted.
“Actually, no. Do you see that metal fence on the far side? The land on the other side of the fence belongs to the army. We’re ten kilometres from the Indo-Pak border. The land on this side of the fence belongs to us. There’s no thoroughfare here, so anyone lurking around here is trespassing on our property,” I said grimly.
“I can’t see anyone,” he replied, craning his neck to look out of the vehicle.
“There! Did you see that flash of light? Sit still and don’t make a sound,” I ordered.
We sat there in the dark, waiting for the intruders to show themselves. But we saw nothing apart from the occasional flash of light. I hopped out of the vehicle to root around in the storage area under my seat, and let out a relieved breath as my hand found the night vision binoculars in the emergency kit Bhai Sa insisted on keeping in every vehicle in his garage.
I trained the binoculars on to where I last saw the flash of light and in the dim moonlight, I finally saw them. I caught my breath at the sight of around six men commando-crawling through the desert towards the fence.
Veer grabbed the glasses from me and whistled softly as he counted the men.
“Who the hell are these men?”
“Mules,” I said bleakly. “They are going to pick up a consignment of drugs from the border.”
Veer turned to me in surprise.
“Why doesn’t Dheer stop them?”
“He’s spent the past nine years doing exactly that,” I replied angrily. “When my father was alive, hordes of these men would drive up to the border in big trucks with his blessing. Bhai Sa put a stop to all that after a very bloody battle against the local mafia. And now it looks as if they have started up all over again.”
I jumped out of the vehicle and began walking in their direction.
“Are you mad? Isha! You can’t follow them,” said Veer, grabbing my arm and pulling me back.
I shrugged out of his hold and glared up at him.
“I need to take a closer look at them, Veer. If Bhai Sa has to confront the bosses about violating the truce, he needs evidence. And I’m going to find it for him. I need to get close enough to take pictures of their activities.”
“No! You need to drive home and inform your brother. I’ll keep an eye on them,” he argued.
“You know nothing about their ways,” I scoffed.
“And you do?”
“Yes,” I said proudly. “I spent the past nine years helping my brother hunt down the people who were misusing our lands. Don’t worry about me, Veer. I can take care of myself. But that was a good idea. You drive back and tell Bhai Sa what’s happening.”
“I’m not leaving you alone here with those men, Isha,” he snarled.
“Fine! Then stay out of my way and make sure you don’t get us caught,” I snapped.
Why did men just assume women - especially chubbier women - were weak and helpless? I didn’t need Veer to keep me safe. I could save my own ass and his if it came to that. What did a playboy prince like him even know about tracking smugglers in the desert?
“Isha, even if you’re leading a double life as a secret agent, it does not make sense for us to go after those men because they are six armed and desperate men, and we are just two pampered royals.”
“You might be a pampered royal,” I scoffed. “I’m anything but. And we’re not alone, Veer. We have Basanti.”
“Who’s Basanti?” he asked nonplussed.
Instead of replying, I bent and raised both our seats.
“Give me some light,” I ordered.
When he turned on the torch on his phone, I unlatched the lid to the secret compartment under the seats and pulled out my best friend and protector - the Sig Sauer MCX Rattler, a compact, full-powered automatic assault rifle.
“Say hello to Basanti,” I announced, grabbing some ammo and loading her in a smooth move.
“Is that even legal?” gasped Veer.
“Don’t be stupid,” I snapped. “Nothing about this situation is remotely legal. Not those men creeping up to the border. Or the fact that they are using our land as a landing stage for smuggling drugs and arms into the country. And definitely not the trail of blood that follows my family around like a shadow.”
“So what’s your big plan here? Are you going to pick those men off like a sniper?”
“Don’t tempt me,” I muttered darkly. “Basanti is our insurance against trouble.”
“And you see nothing disturbing about having such a close relationship with your gun that you refer to it as a person?”
“Hey, it is a she! And you don’t want to piss her off,” I retorted, slinging her over my shoulder by the strap. “Follow me and don’t make a sound.”
I tightened my scarf around my face and gestured to Veer to do the same before I fell to the ground and began to commando crawl my way in the direction the smugglers had taken. Veer groaned as he dropped down and followed my lead. Within minutes, we were both coated with sand.
“I’ve got sand in my butt crack,” grumbled Veer when we stopped to catch our breaths.
“It’ll wash off, Laajwanti,” I said absently, as I trained my binoculars on the trespassers. “We need to get close enough to get clear pictures. But we can’t get too close.”
“How close is too close?” he asked drily.
I turned around to scowl at him.
“Just stop when I say stop. And stay behind me,” I snapped when he tried to crawl ahead.
“No. I’m going to take point,” he declared, crawling past me.
“For fuck’s sake, enough with the macho act. You have no idea what you’re dealing with!”
“Use your BFF if they catch me,” he quipped.
Then he turned around and shot me a questioning look.
“You do know how to use it, right?”
I was tempted to blow his stupid head off just to show him what I could do.
“Do you want a demo?” I asked sweetly.
He rolled his eyes in reply and turned back to stare at the little flashes of light in the distance.
When we came up by the slope of a dune, I got up and broke into a low run. Veer grumbled under his breath as he followed me.
“If they turn out to be tourists on a night safari, you’re going to be so embarrassed,” he muttered.
“Why would tourists crawl across the desert like that?” I demanded, and Veer shrugged.
“Maybe they paid extra for the sand-in-butt crack experience.”
I wondered if I could just knock him out with the butt of my rifle. It would be much less trouble than having to put up with his grumpy ass. I could bury him in the sand. To keep him safe, that’s all.
“I don’t like the look on your face,” he said suspiciously. “You’re plotting something nasty.”
“Yes, well… I don’t like you,” I snapped before I strode off up the dune.
I should have been paying more attention to our surroundings because I almost walked into a whole lot of trouble.