Chapter Thirty-Three
Shock flashes through my system. Everything slows down. My thoughts freeze into frames. One part of my brain wants to duck, another wants to run, another wants to fight. It wants to charge at our attackers, yank the hockey sticks from their hands, and beat them back.
Krish throws himself in front of me. That snaps terror to the top of everything I’m feeling. One of the men pulls him off me and slams his face into a wall. I scream.
“Shut up!” the other guy says in Marathi and holds the hockey stick up. “Shut up or I’ll bash his head in.”
“Whatever he’s saying, listen to him,” Krish says, utterly calm.
There’s only two of them, and they’re both shorter and smaller than Krish, but they have those sticks.
“What do you want?” I say. Suddenly I feel utterly calm too.
“Shut up,” the man shouts again. He has the thickest mustache I’ve ever seen. It covers his entire upper lip. “What we want is for you to shut up so we don’t have to break your face.”
They duct tape our mouths shut, then bind our hands behind our backs with it. Krish steadies me with his gaze. He’s not struggling. I take my cue from that and stop struggling. They drag us inside the room. It isn’t until we’re inside that I realize it’s a public restroom. An unfinished one. The walls are unplastered, the floor is half rubble, and a urinal hangs crookedly on the wall. Obviously that hasn’t stopped someone from using it because the smell is so caustic it’s like being bashed in the head with a hockey stick.
The men push us to the floor and tape our feet. Fantastic. We’re on the floor of a public toilet that smells like rotting feces soaked in ammonia.
When they’re done, the man with the mustache grabs Krish’s hair and looks at me. “Tell him he’s lucky we’re not breaking his bones. If we find out he’s poking his foreign nose into things again, there will be no more warnings.”
I narrow my eyes and make as loud a sound as I can with a taped mouth.
“She’s right,” the other guy says. “We can’t deliver the message we were paid to deliver if he doesn’t understand what we’re saying.” He reaches out and yanks the tape off my face. It feels like he’s ripped my skin with it. “Tell him what we just said.”
I do. Krish nods.
“If I hear you screaming, I’ll come back and bash his head in.”
I squeeze my lips together and give them my most terrified look. They buy it and leave.
“A-holes!” I say the moment they’re gone.
Krish’s eyes smile.
I notice for the first time that they aren’t just one shade of brown. They’re filled with flecks of every shade, and every fleck is filled with relief as he looks at me.
“The first thing I need to do is take the tape off your mouth.” I try to stand, but it isn’t easy with my feet and arms bound.
He scoots closer to me, and I use his body to prop mine, and finally I’m up. I turn away from him and hop closer. “Can you get your face close to my hands?”
He moves around behind me and finds my hands with his face. I wiggle my fingers and feel for the tape and find the edge.
“This might hurt.” My face still stings, so I’m gentle, and it takes me a minute to get the thick tape off.
“Jesus!” he says and blows out a breath. “Shit. Thank you.”
I bunny hop to face him.
He stands up with substantially more grace than I did.
“Are you okay?” we both say together and smile.
I look around the filthy room. There’s just one door and one window all the way near the roof that light is streaming in through. I hop toward the door, and he follows.
Moving around with bound legs is much harder than it appears to be. The door is locked but rickety.
Krish turns and tries to pull at the handle. It rattles but stays shut. “If we could grab that handle properly, we could break it open.”
“Okay, I’m going to scream for help.”
“What if those ass ... a-holes are still out there?”
“Well, we can’t do nothing,” I say. Apparently near-death experiences make me reckless. “Help!” I say tentatively at first, because even when I’m reckless I’m careful.
“Help,” Krish says, also tentatively.
Then we’re both shouting at the top of our lungs. “ Help! Anybody Out There ?” Over and over and slamming our bodies into the door.
I scream it in Marathi. Then in the little broken Hindi I know. Nothing.
“Now what?” I say.
“We have to get out of here,” Krish says.
“Really? Why didn’t I think of that?” Evidently near-death experiences make me snarky too.
“Funny, Mirabai.”
“Thank you, Krishna.”
“You have to untie me.”
“Oh, okay. Easy peasy.”
He lets out a laugh. He hops around this time until we’re back to back. “Let’s see if we can get each other’s tape off. The way you did for my face.”
I move until our hands touch. He struggles to rip the tape off me, but he can’t seem to do it. Then I try him, but the tape is too thick and too tight, and with neither of us able to see what we’re doing, it doesn’t work.
“Can you use your nails?”
My nails aren’t really long, but I give it another try.
No luck. Wiggling my fingers around so much with my wrists taped is making me lose sensation in them.
“We need something sharp to cut through the tape.” As soon as he says it, both of us twist our necks to look at each other.
The ring.
“Where is it?” he asks. He left it with me for safekeeping when he went to Yevla.
I told him earlier that I’d put it in a safe place. Our backpacks are gone and so are our phones. The goons took them.
“Is it back in the hotel?”
Nope. I shake my head.
“Please tell me it’s on your person.”
“Yes. It is.” Embarrassment blooms inside me, and I squeeze my eyes shut.
He hops to face me. “Mira?” He has a way of using my name to say entire sentences.
My cheeks burn. I know this is not the time for my dorkiness. We have to hurry. Who knows if our captors will return. This smell has to be taking years off our lives.
The impatience in his eyes turns helpless.
“Just tell me. It’s okay,” he whispers.
“It’s ... it’s in ...” My eyes drop to my breasts. It’s 2024. I work with human bodies day in and day out. How can I be embarrassed by such a basic word? It’s not just embarrassment, though. I’m painfully self-conscious of how my body suddenly feels around him and mortified by it.
I conjure up a picture of Druv in my mind. Think about Druv. Think about the fact that we’re trapped here. Think about the fact that we could end up dead if we don’t free ourselves.
“In my bra,” I say, forcing myself to be an adult.
He meets my eyes. “That was actually really smart. To hide it there.”
He sounds genuinely impressed, and now I want to laugh. Men. “My mother grew up in Mumbai. Before we landed here she trained me”—with several physical demonstrations, I don’t add—“to tuck all valuables in there. I also have ten thousand rupees and a credit card tucked away with the ring.”
He laughs. I laugh. But that doesn’t help anyone.
“So,” he says, “how do we get it out of there with our hands tied behind our backs?”
I can feel the ring dig into the side of my breast. I wiggle my shoulders and suck in my breath, but it’s ridiculous to think I can magically pop it out of my bra by sheer force of will.
“You’re going to have to do it,” I say finally.
“Do what?”
“Get the ring out.”
“Oh that? Easy peasy.” His tone is teasing, but he swallows. Then he lowers his voice and leans toward me. “I hate to break it to you, but my hands are tied behind my back.”
Well, I’m tired of that metaphor being the story of my life.
“You can move your fingers,” I say with all the rage that’s rushing back inside me. I shuffle until my front is facing his back.
There’s a moment of silence, but I can hear him thinking the word Mira?
“Focus,” I say to the both of us. “This has to work. Reach back.” I lean over, working hard not to think about the fact that I’m trying to get my boobs into his hands. How is this happening right now? a voice screams inside me. I tell it to shut up. We are not dying here in this filthy room.
It takes him a second, but Krish figures out what I’m trying to do. Without a word, he stretches back his arms and pokes around until his fingers make contact with my chest. I ignore every single thing except the fact that someone chased us down and tied us up because we’re trying to find Vasu. We’re going to find her no matter what.
I stretch and twist until I literally cup myself into his searching hands.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and it’s such a kind, such a humane thing to do, my embarrassment eases. In everything he’s ever done, he’s considered my feelings. Even when we didn’t get along, he considered me. No one has ever done that for me before.
Everyone should be making you feel special, Mira. Because ... well, because everyone deserves that. His words in Central Park feel eons away but also like he’s saying them now.
“It’s okay,” I say. God, how I wish I was cool enough to make funny quips in a situation like this. “You’re ... umm ...” I swallow. “You’re going to have to poke around to find it.” I can’t believe I just said that.
He laughs. “I get that a lot.”
I can’t help it, I start laughing too. It’s weird to laugh when I’m in a half-forward-fold yoga pose with someone’s hands on my breasts. “I’d draw you a map, but I’m tied up at the moment.”
We’re both laughing now. “Just tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you.” He hams up a sexy voice.
I bump his back with my head. “Shut up.” But I do tell him what to do.
Between adjusting myself under his hands and a few “a little higher, a little to the left” instructions, his hands find the bump of the ring, which, dear lord, is all the way on the outer underside of my right breast.
For a second the awkward silence returns as we both realize what has to happen next.
“Just do it,” I say.
“Like ripping off a Band-Aid,” he says.
“Yes.” I try not to be weird, but the word catches in my throat.
“I’m taking no pleasure in this. I swear, Mira.” His voice is sincere now.
“I know,” I say. “I know.”
“I’m going in. Brace yourself,” he says, and I laugh again.
Despite my best effort, my laugh hitches when his hand brushes my nipple. To my horror, it puckers. He doesn’t linger, not even for a breath. I can feel him working hard to be as clinical as possible as he pokes around blind and finds the metal and tugs it out.
I pull back. He pulls back.
We catch our breath.
“Done,” he says before things get any more awkward. “You okay?” He doesn’t turn around, giving me the time I need.
It’s a moment I know I will remember for as long as I live. A moment when Krish Hale showed me exactly the man he was, exactly what every man can be if he chooses. I’ve been violated without my consent, and I’ve been blamed for it my whole life. It stole the person I was from myself and turned me into someone else entirely. It made it impossible for me to ever trust anyone again, to trust myself again.
A little piece of my ability to trust snaps back into place. A little piece of me snaps back into place. And I know that little piece of me will always belong with Krish Hale, here in this filthy room.