A Change of Heart (8 page)

Tiffany held out a board of color swatches. “What looks good?”

“Just a basic dark brown.” She just wanted her natural color back.

She wanted her life back.

One step at a time. That's what her mother had taught her. The only way to get through life was to look at the ground beneath your feet and take one step, then another. Looking too far down the path was what made you stumble.

9

 

—Dr. Jen Joshi

 

 

A
sif Khan had never been inside a beauty parlor. But true leaders did what needed to be done. If saving his empire—Mumbai's most feared gang—meant walking into this flowery-smelling hole where women had hair ripped off their soft parts, he'd do it.

He had to hand it to the bitches. The things they went through to be attractive to men, whom they didn't even seem to like that much. It was hilarious. Then again, life was about doing things you hated for
chutiyas
you hated even more.

He thought he had the fucker by the balls, but the last time he had spoken to him he seemed to be up to something, and Asif hadn't become the biggest bhai in the Mumbai underworld by not staying ten steps ahead of smug
chutiyas
.

This beauty parlor was where that nosy doctor bitch had last been seen before her stubborn neck had been snapped in half so her brain would die but her heart would keep beating. All the ceramic tile–covered walls were lined with pictures of foreign bitches with glossy pouty lips and fluffy hair. Some of them were even showing cleavage. Totally fuckable.

Asif liked foreign
maal,
so spotless and so shameless. He stroked the boobs on the poster and felt his dick thicken in his pants. Not that it took the bastard much to come to life.

He turned to the fat old cow who was cowering behind her counter. Naturally, his dick shriveled.

“Are you the madam of this place?” he asked around the tobacco juicing up his cheek.

She nodded.

“Do you have someone less hideous I can talk to?”

His men guffawed.

“Bhai, look at this!” One of his men had grabbed two pretty young sluts by their arms and dragged them out of a room in the back.

The girls were shaking and sobbing in their tight dresses.

Ah, there was that thickening in his pants again. He licked his lips.

“How can I help you, Bhai?” The fat bitch interrupted his study.

He snapped his fingers in her direction without looking at her and his men moved at her. She squeaked.

“Can't you see Bhai is busy?” He had the best-trained men in the business. Not to mention the most loyal. They would all die for him in a heartbeat. A man didn't rule Dharavi without an army like that.

Which reminded him why he was here. When you sat at the top, ten people waited to topple you over. He turned to the sniveling madam.

“You knew that foreign doctor?”

She looked blank.

“The chinky one.” He pulled his eyes into slits and his men guffawed again.

She didn't answer. Asif raised an eyebrow, and Laloo, his right-hand man, grabbed her hair and gave it a hard yank, squeezing another satisfying squeak out of her.

“Jen madam,” one of the girls said behind him.

He turned around and waited for his man to drag her closer, then patted her cheek. She was all stacked and tight. He was going to have to pat more than just her cheek. It took one sideways glance at Laloo to get a nod of acknowledgment. Oh yes, his men were well trained indeed. No words were needed.

“Smart girl. Yes, Jen
madam
. How well did you know her?”

“What ‘know,' Bhai?” the fat one said behind him. “She was a fancy doctor. She just came in here to help the girls with checkups and all.”

“Yes, yes. All these charitable foreign fuckers who show up to clean up our shit and wipe our arses. Did you know her family?”

“She was by herself, Bhai. Husband was somewhere abroad.”

Asif was on her in a moment. He slammed her face into the counter. The girls screamed. The fatso sobbed. “Do you know who I am? I didn't become the king of Dharavi by letting dried-up old bitches fuck me.”

He pulled her up by her hair and stared into her face. He knew what he looked like. Terror lit up her eyes. “You used to send her husband food when he was here and crying into his sari.”

She tried to nod. Her cheek was bleeding. He pressed a finger into the gash and dragged blood up her cheek to her eyelid.

“One more lie and you won't be able to see out of this eye. Who else came here looking for information? The police?”

She nodded.

“Who else?” He must have shouted because the terror in her eyes swelled. His tobacco spittle splattered across her bloodstained face, red mixing with red.

“No one else, Bhai,” the hot stuff he was going to fuck later said behind him. He was about to slice one across her face for interrupting him when she said, “But there was a girl who came asking for the same color hair dye we used on Jen madam's hair.”

He smiled. Forget waiting for later. This one was turning him on so much he wasn't going to wait.

“Good girl!” he said and swaggered out of Beauty's Beauty Parlor like the king he was. Behind him, his men followed, dragging the screaming bitch with them.

10

 

—Dr. Jen Joshi

 

 

“A
re you absolutely certain you cannot find me one single flight from Miami to Chicago? Or from any of the surrounding airports?”

“Yes, sir, I believe that is what I've been trying to tell you for the past twenty minutes.” The lady at the airline counter threw another long-suffering glance over her glasses at the line snaking behind Nikhil.

Other airline employees at other counters had been telling him that for the past few hours as well, but she didn't need to know that.

“Sir, this has been the worst blizzard in history to hit the Great Lakes, and no flights are making it into Chicago or into any of the airports within four hours of it. The closest I can get you is Atlanta. But not until tomorrow night. I'm sorry.”

He thanked her and she almost collapsed in relief when he finally walked away. She'd suffered enough for the fact that he hadn't watched the news or read the papers recently, and looking out at the sky through the wall of windows, it seemed like all the earth was bathed in sunshine.

He found Jess leaning against a metallic column, the handles of both their bags clutched tightly in her fist. It reminded him of his mother holding on to their bags at a Mumbai railway station on one of his childhood visits to India.

“No one is going to run off with our bags,” he said more sharply than he'd intended.

“How do you know that?” she said as if he hadn't just snapped her head off. Her newly colored hair framed her face, which was giving away nothing today. She was in full Goddess of Darkness mode.

He took the bags from her and tossed them on the black leather seats bolted to the floor. This wasn't fucking India. He sank into the empty chair next to the bags and waited for her to join him. “There are no flights into Chicago until the day after tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?”

“No. Just a hunch.”

She looked away, her blasted stillness untouched. But that chin of hers jutted forward a few millimeters. Yay! A reaction.

“When I asked the travel agent on the cruise ship, she said there were five flights to Chicago from Miami every day.”

He sank back in his chair and stretched his legs out as if he were lounging on a beach. Except for the beach ball–sized knots in his belly. “Actually, there are twelve. They're all canceled because Chicago is snowed in.” What were the odds of an April snowstorm? But the one thing you could always count on about his hometown was not being able to count on the weather.

She stared out the wall of windows at the spotless sky. “Is there another airline we could try?”

“Oh, I should have thought of that. Wait. I did.” Okay, maybe he needed to dial back the snark a little bit. But when he'd braced himself to get off the ship and onto dry land for the first time in two years, being stranded at an airport was the last thing he'd expected.

She looked away in that annoyingly serene way of hers without another word, but the skepticism on her face was as clear as the Miami sky.

“What?” He leaned forward.

She raised an eyebrow and said nothing.

“If there is something you want to say, say it.”

He got another supercilious raise of the brow and another whole lot of silence.

“Jess, I asked you a question.”

“I'm sorry I didn't hear it.”

“If you're accusing me of something, I should at least know what it is.”

She lifted her hand and almost patted his hand as if he were a puppy dog who needed to be calmed. But then she put those slender-fingered hands back in her lap, dainty as a fucking ballerina.

“When was the last time you went home?” She might as well have kicked him, right in the center of his chest, with metal spikes.

He felt ten years old again . . . when he'd loved to ask questions but had hated the answers he was given. Why did Hitler hate the Jews? Why did the British divide India? Why did Idi Amin slaughter his people? There were tomes filled with answers—as though just because someone listed reasons, things were supposed to make sense—and he hated every single one of them.

He leaned back in his chair and tried the beach pose again. But the pain in his chest made it impossible. If she said anything about understanding how hard this was, he was leaving her here and going back to the ship. Even if he had to swim to it, given that it had set sail by now.

She said nothing. Just held her body as still as ever.

“Are you suggesting I somehow orchestrated the largest snowstorm in recent history just because I'm a coward?”

She flinched. “You're not a coward.”

“Right, I'm an angel with a halo, I forgot.”

“It doesn't matter what you are, Nikhil. What matters is—”

“Finding the evidence. I know. Bringing those bastards to justice. I know.” She was right, too. He should be burning for redemption. He should be like those action heroes with automatic firearms shooting from both hands, ready to take the world down for justice. Instead, he felt like a slug someone had stepped on.

Her fingers twitched and lifted again. But he was glad she didn't try to comfort him. “Is there a train or a bus we can take?” she asked instead.

He clamped down on all the sarcastic responses that jumped up his throat at once. “I checked. The Greyhound and Amtrak schedule is backed up a few days. That's the bus and train service,” he added when she looked confused.

“There has to be something we can do.”

His preference would be to swim to
The Oasis
. But that would reinforce her coward theory. “We can wait two days in Miami until a flight becomes available.”

She stood, picked up her bag, and slung it over her shoulder.

“You planning to walk there?”

Again no reaction other than the slightest stiffening of that already-ramrod-straight spine. The woman had absolutely no sense of humor.

“I don't know much about America, but I don't think that's possible.” Well, he couldn't argue with that. “I'll be back in a few minutes.” With that she walked away, her huge black sweatshirt floating around her spear-straight body as it weaved through the milling crowd.

He yanked his duffel off the seat, slung it over his shoulder, and fell in step next to her. They walked past the lines snaking in front of airline counters, dodged wailing babies, running kids, and exhausted people sitting cross-legged on the floor.

He had stepped in throw-up with his favorite sneakers at the Mumbai railway station once when he was ten. Aie had taken them to the bathroom and scrubbed them with her travel-sized Bath & Body Works's soap for so long they'd almost missed their train, but the shoes had continued to stink so bad he'd had to throw them away. Somehow this chaos reminded him of that day. It had to be midwinter break or spring break or something because everyone looked all set to go somewhere, to do something, to somehow make life matter.

Jess walked up to a booth marked I
NFORMATION.
“We need to get to Chicago today and there are no flights available for two days. What can we do?”

The woman behind the counter gave her an entirely blank look. How could you work at an airport and never get that question?

“Have you tried to get a rental?” she asked, speaking very slowly and loudly. The way some assholes spoke to children with disabilities.

Jess had an accent, but her English was remarkably good. Even a little Colonial British, the way his
aie
sounded. Only Aie had an attitude honed from thirty years of being a college professor, so God help anyone who dared to talk to her that way.

Jess didn't seem to notice. “Rental?” She turned to Nikhil and gave the enunciating woman her back and it made him want to high-five her.

“What is she talking about?” she asked when Nikhil didn't answer.

“We could rent a car and drive there.” How had he missed that? Oh right. Because he hadn't driven in two years. Didn't know if he even remembered how. And because there was that whole coward thing.

He turned away from her, choosing not to interpret her expression, and forced himself to the rental counter, turning around only once to make sure she was with him.

* * *

Miraculously enough, the rental company had one car available. This was explained by the fact that it was a soft-top Jeep. The woman at the rental counter had repeated only about fifteen times how lucky they were to get the one available car. Yes, so lucky that they would have a good ten hours before they started to freeze their asses off in earnest.

At least the car wasn't hard to find in the empty rental lot. It wasn't until he pulled open the door that he realized that Jess had stopped all the way across the lot.

She had gone utterly still.

Not her usual calm-as-a-lily-pond stillness, but an unable-to-breathe, white-as-a-ghost stillness.

He walked back to her. “Jess? What's the matter?”

Her fingers clutched the strap over her shoulder so tightly her knuckles looked like they were going to pop out of their sockets.

“Is that, is that the, is that the car?” She wrapped her arms around the bottom of the bag and hugged it to her chest, then moved it to her hip. He had never seen her fidget before. “How long would we have to be . . .” It took her a few tries, but she managed to swallow. “How long is the drive?”

“Some twenty hours.”

Whatever was left of the Mask of Calm shattered. For one long moment her terror flashed before him like a bolt of lightning illuminating the darkest storm.

“Twenty hours in . . . in th . . . that car?” she stuttered and swiped her hand across the sheen of sweat that dotted her lip.

Without meaning to, his voice switched to physician-in-emergency mode. “We'll take breaks. Stop for the night at a motel or something. It won't be twenty hours at a stretch.”

“You were right—let's wait and fly out the day after tomorrow.”

Her terrified eyes met his, and suddenly, he didn't want to be stuck here with her for two days.

“That'll just delay everything. Don't you want to get back to Joy?”

A cheap shot.

She wrapped her arms around the bag again and struggled to regain the Mask of Calm. Until five minutes ago, he could never have imagined her in a panic. But she was definitely in a full-blown panic now. A live volcano under a snowcapped mountain with all that barely contained smoke hissing out.

He tried to slide the bag off her shoulder, but she didn't let go. He waited for her breathing to even out, then he pulled his own bag over his shoulder and walked back to the car.

She ran to fall in step next to him, her shoulders squared. One mention of Joy and she was going to do this. He felt like the worst kind of shit. This was the last time he'd ever use her son like that.

When he yanked the car door open, she stumbled back as though flames had shot out of the car.

He almost wrapped his arm around her, but she found her balance on her own, set that jaw again, set those shoulders. And even then she couldn't make herself climb in.

The strength of his reaction to her helplessness, to her terror almost knocked him off his feet. He backed away from her. He didn't want to know. He was no longer in the business of fixing people's problems. But he couldn't walk away from what he saw in her eyes.

“Why don't you take a moment? We'll be on the road a long time. Let's use the restroom, pick up some water.”

She turned around and disappeared into the rental office so fast, it left him spinning.

* * *

She knew she had to leave the bathroom and get into that car with Nikhil, but she couldn't. Leaning her back against the wall, she clutched her tote to her chest. Her hand traced the rectangular outline she could feel through the fabric bottom of the bag and tried to draw strength from Jen's voice.

Jen would never have understood the abject fear that gripped Jess's belly. Jen always sounded so sure of herself. So strong. Except maybe at the very end. She had to have felt fear then. The kind of fear that was pushing up Jess's throat now—a sense memory so strong it was like reliving the horror. It was horrible to be jealous of the dead, but not having to feel this over and over again would be nice.

“I'm so sorry, Jen,” she said into the empty bathroom.

It was her millionth apology and yet it felt like it wasn't enough.

She walked to the sink, hugging her trembling arms around herself, squeezing the sweatshirt that was three sizes too large close to her body. The usual security of her bulky clothing did nothing to comfort her. But it wasn't the clothes. The armor she generally wore under her clothes, over them, seemed to have disintegrated when she saw that car. She felt naked.

How had she let herself lose control so completely in front of Nikhil? How on earth had she let him see her like that? And he'd seen it. He'd seen all the way to the heart of her terror.

“Jess?” he called from outside the door, and followed it up with a quick knock. Bloody hell.

She held her hand in front of her face. It was still shaking.

She leaned into the sink and splashed her face.

“Jess, come on, open the door.”

She couldn't answer him, not with her insides still churning like an ocean gone mad. She tried another splash across her face. A hand pressed against her mouth. It's not real. Not real. Hands ripped at her. This was not happening. Another splash. She scrubbed at her lips. All over her, hands and breaths collected and fogged. Sticky cobwebs of memories. She pushed at them, but they only clung tighter and coated her skin.