Chapter Eight
Krish had suspected Sejal would be incorporating her precious cards into her plan to make money, but he hadn’t realized it
would be in quite such a wholesome manner. Apparently “I’ll keep my clothes on” was shorthand for a magic show in the park.
He leaned against a bench and watched her work. She’d navigated them to the bus station, and then she’d somehow charmed a
small folding table out of a nearby food truck. Her hair, sticking up in places, was giving punk. She still wore his oversize
sweats, and she should have been looking a mess, but the matching baggy sweatsuit was casually stylish on her. The rolled-up
pants hung low on her hips, revealing her taut belly. Every time she moved, those muscles contracted and relaxed. Four-pack?
Six-? He didn’t much care for working out with weights, but he’d hit any gym with her. Mostly to watch her, with sweat glistening
on her—
He forced his attention back to Sejal’s hands forming a bridge of cards between them as she shuffled and engaged her audience.
The gaggle of people surrounding her had grown in the last hour that she’d been set up.
She’d already run through her routine twice, and a couple of people had stuck around, probably to catch any errors they could point to later as proof that magic didn’t exist.
Good luck with that. Krish’s eyes were dry from not blinking, but damned if he could tell what sleight of hand she was using
to manage these tricks.
Yes, think about that instead of slamming your car into someone else’s.
So far he’d managed to keep it all stuffed down, but it was bubbling under the surface of his otherwise collected demeanor.
Must be your elite training.
In reality, the most exciting thing that usually happened to him at work was a paper cut or a coworker coming in late. But
she didn’t know that his elite training was a master’s program, and not Quantico. Or that the reason he’d stayed calm in the
car could be attributed to his family’s lessons in repressing feelings, and not to being a field agent.
When he’d come out of the bathroom at the diner and seen the empty booth and her belongings on the table, he’d been annoyed,
certain that Sejal was either fucking with him or had wandered off to seduce the cook or something. But then he’d spotted
her outside, walking stiffly in front of some guy.
He wasn’t quite sure what had come over him. He was accustomed to thinking things through, but he’d been guided by rage, adrenaline,
and determination.
Now he needed to think about whether that rage was directed at Viktor for daring to interfere with his own agenda or for trying
to harm Sejal. Krish had never been a territorial man, not even with the women he dated. So where had that quiet “Mine” come from when she’d been marched away from him?
It had led him to straight up ram his car into the other man’s. Without a thought as to the consequences, beyond him and Sejal staying alive.
For the first time, he realized how much he’d strayed from his mental snapshot of himself. He wasn’t this person, rescuing
damsels in distress. Krish was boring and staid, as his brother and mother would tell anyone.
Absentmindedly, he rubbed the scar on his face. He’d picked his profession precisely because it was as far as he could get
from his parents’ and brother’s careers without being a priest or something. As far as he was concerned, boring and predictable
were underrated.
“Would anyone like to see one last trick?” Sejal asked, and the kids closest to her jumped up and down. She smiled at the
little girl at her elbow and crouched to meet her gaze. “Want to be my assistant?”
The girl had a big bow in her frizzy red hair. It bobbed when she nodded furiously.
“What’s your name?”
“Ramona.”
Sejal fanned her cards out on the table. “Ramona, pick a card, but don’t look at it and don’t show it to me.”
The little girl solemnly selected a card and kept it face down.
“Now we’re going to see if you can do magic, okay?”
“Okay.”
“If the card you picked could be any card, what would you want it to be?”
“Ten of hearts, because I’m ten.”
“Oh, I thought you were at least twenty-five. Okay, close your eyes. Think ten of hearts real hard.”
The child screwed her eyes up tight. Krish noted that most of the adults did, too, but he was watching Sejal. She didn’t pull any bait and switch that he could see, but stood there, patient and still. “Ramona, open your eyes, and let’s see what card you’re holding.”
Ramona flipped it over. Krish smiled at her excited shriek when she found the ten of hearts in her hand. “Now let’s see if
your grown-up is as psychic as you are. Do you have someone here with you?”
“My uncle.” She gestured to the man behind her.
Krish narrowed his gaze at the uncle. The man wasn’t looking at Sejal’s hands so much as her low-slung sweatpants.
“Hi, yeah.” The guy waved.
“Let’s get these other cards out of here.” With a flourish, she swept the rest of the deck up. “Ramona, put that card down
on the table and put your hand over it. Now, Ramona’s uncle, what card are you thinking of?”
His smile was flirtatious. Krish resisted the urge to slap it off his face. “Queen.”
“Queen of what?” Sejal asked, without inflection.
“Uh, diamonds.”
“Close your eyes. Let’s all think queen of diamonds really hard.” She paused a beat, then nodded at Ramona. “Turn it over, Ramona.”
The crowd clapped louder when the girl turned the card over to reveal the queen of diamonds.
Krish’s neck itched, and he looked behind him, but no one was there. He was growing paranoid; perhaps they’d lingered too
long. They were barely a couple of hours out from where they’d left Viktor. Time to get out of here.
He walked toward Sejal as the crowd dispersed, most of them dropping money in the upside-down hat on the table. She nodded
at Krish when he tapped his watch. “That’s all for me today, folks.”
Ramona’s uncle, who had been lingering, pouted and allowed his niece to drag him away.
“Was that guy wearing a wedding ring?” Krish couldn’t resist asking as he came to stand next to her.
“He was indeed.”
“You do seem to attract a type.”
“Yes, unfortunately, I’m irresistible to the worst people.”
Krish tapped the table. “Those were some cool tricks.”
She raised a shoulder and his sweatshirt slipped off of it. “Patter and misdirection.”
“You two make a cute couple.” A scratchy voice came from his elbow, and he looked down to find an old woman with bluish silver
hair.
“Oh, we’re not—”
“We don’t—”
They spoke over each other, but both stopped without finishing. The woman nodded knowingly. “Still just friends, I suppose?
I predict that’ll change.”
They weren’t friends who would fall in love, though. He wasn’t sure what the trajectory of their relationship was. Pretend
lovers to enemies to . . . question mark.
But in any case, things wouldn’t end the way this old romantic thought they would.
“You should be onstage, young woman.”
“I was about to tell her the same thing,” Krish said. Sejal wrinkled her nose and shook her head.
“Nah. There are people who are much better than me.”
The old woman reached into her handbag, pulled out some cash, and stuffed it into Sejal’s hat. “Good luck, you two.”
Sejal waited until she walked away, then picked up the hat and took out the chunk of cash. She raised an eyebrow at Krish. “Not enough for a car, but maybe enough for bus tickets?”
He took the money from her. “Yeah, this is more than enough. You rescued us this time, Sejal.”
Her chest seemed to expand, her shoulders going back. “I didn’t do much,” she demurred, but he could see the sparkle in her
eyes.
Do not be charmed by the way she likes positive validation. “Let’s get a move on.”
“Do we need to go back to the car?” Sejal asked as she broke down her table. Krish walked it back over to the taco truck,
where the men waved away his thanks and offer of cash.
Returning, he patted his bag. “I have everything we need.” Out of an abundance of caution, they’d parked the shot-up car in
the corner of the parking lot of the train station a mile or two away and walked over to the park. Mentally, Krish had bid
farewell to his low insurance rates. “I’ll call the rental car company and report the car as stolen once this is all over.
Good thing I got the extra insurance on it.”
Yes. Think about the insurance and not the sound of metal hitting metal and glass shattering. Or the little dings of bullets
ricocheting off the car.
He shoved his hands in his pants pockets. He was fine. Everything was fine. Yes, he’d been in a traumatic car accident once
before in his life, but it had been so long ago, he’d only heard of it, didn’t remember it. He was an FBI agent, and he was
used to things like freeing a hostage and fleeing while being shot at. Sejal had been cool as a cucumber, and so was he.
“Usually it’s only the suckers who take the optional insurance,” Sejal remarked.
“Happy to be a sucker this time.” They walked into the bus station.
He checked the screen at the front for departure times first. Then he paused at the newsstand right inside the station and pulled out a ten.
“We don’t have much extra cash, but why don’t you get us some food while I get our tickets?
We have about twenty minutes.” Eventually, she’d know where they were going, but his mother had drummed into him the need for secrecy around their various properties so well that the habit was hard to break.
“Sure.” She took the money from him.
He pointed to a waiting room full of hard-backed chairs. “I’ll be over there.”
Buying the tickets was quick and painless, and then he was just sitting. Waiting. Ah, fuck. Thinking. No. He really didn’t
want to think, damn it.
When he realized he was drumming his fingers on his knee, he forced himself to stop. Sejal would be coming back soon, and
he couldn’t have her thinking that he was at all affected by what had happened a couple of hours prior.