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Now Indy was totally turned around, and being pressed up against this man wasn’t helping get her head straight. It was only when she felt Ice move and saw that he was looking at a map on his phone that she was dragged back to reality.
A reality where she was not a joyrider with a hunk but instead the prisoner of a beast who was clearly capable of doing anything to anyone and never looking back.
Now the harshness of the real world hit Indy like a punch to the gut. That fleeting moment of euphoria was gone. That sickening sense of arousal was now just sickness without the arousal. The fear came back like it was hunting her. The dread kept building like it was eating her.
“Who were those men?” she asked, pulling her face away from his back and speaking loud and clear next to his ear. “And why do you know John Benson’s name?”
Ice didn’t respond. She tried to see what he was looking at on the map. But he was too tall and broad for Indy to see over his shoulder, so she just scanned their surroundings, stayed alert for landmarks she recognized.
The safe-house was in a distant suburb of Mumbai, but after almost a year in the country Indy was familiar enough with the city that she knew they were headed to South Mumbai, the main part of the city, the old part of the city, with centuries-old British-era stone buildings amongst the shining steel-and-glass modern towers rising from neighborhoods boasting some of the world’s highest real estate prices.
“I have the same questions as you,” he said, glancing up from his phone, then gunning the bike’s engine and weaving between two red double-decker buses caked with dust, heavy with passengers, lopsided from their loads. “We’ll figure it out when we get there.”
The wordwesent a flash of hope through Indy, a ripple of relief that maybe he believed her now, that maybe they were on the same side now, that maybe—
Indy cut off that glimmer of hope when Ice took a hard turn and she felt the stiff plastic ties cut into her wrists. Don’t get ahead of yourself, you silly goose, she warned herself angrily. He’s the problem right now, not the solution. The only reason he hasn’t already broken your neck and tossed you in the Mumbai sewers is because he thinks you know something.
So what happens if you do in fact convince Ice that you know nothing at all, Indy wondered as paranoia and panic rose up in her like a two-headed dragon ripping through her insides, churning them into chaos and confusion.
Does he just let you go then? A shrug and a half-assed apology before sending you on your merry way?
Or does he get the order to “clean up this mess” anyway, get rid of Indy just in case she makes an indignant fuss, files complaints and reports, maybe even goes to the press so the world knows how a woman is treated in the CIA?
Now Indy wasreallyturned around, not sure whom to trust, certain she couldn’t trust the totally irrational feeling of safety that she’d gotten from Ice, was still getting from being this close to his big warm body, burrowed into his back like a rabbit on the run.
Then Indy’s anxiety ratcheted up again when Ice turned off the busy main road, rumbled down a side street, pulled into an empty slot in a row of scooters and motorcycles parked haphazardly outside a dumpy three-story office building.
Ice planted his big boots on the uneven ground on either side of the bike to stabilize it, then killed the engine.
“Why . . . why have we stopped here?” Indy asked, glancing up at the ugly office building with blue-glass windows set into beige plaster streaked black from mold. “Is this another safe-house or something?”
Ice said nothing. He looked down along his body, towards where her hands were tied around his abdomen.
He grabbed her wrists and pulled them apart, snapping the thick plastic tie like it was a ribbon. The plastic cut into her wrists, but Ice had placed his hands around them in a way that absorbed most of the force.
Indy pulled her arms back into her body, rubbed her sore wrists. There were dark red marks on her light brown skin, but the skin wasn’t broken. Once again, just enough to make it sting without causing any real damage.
He was still setting his frame.
Still establishing his dominance.
Still playing his game.
A game that was getting to Indy.
Getting to her in a way she didn’t completely understand.
Or maybe she just didn’t want to admit it.
Admit that it was working.
“Get off the bike,” Ice ordered, half-turning his head, hands still on the handlebars. “Don’t get cute. You try to run, I’ll break all the fingers of your left hand.”
Indy leaned to her left so she could reach the ground with one foot. Then she swung her other leg off the bike and stepped away. She patted down her windbreaker, dusted her ass off with her palms. Clouds of white concrete mist came off as she slapped her butt.
“I’m actually a leftie,” Indy said as she watched Ice push the heavy bike onto its stand, wipe his fingerprints off the metal handlebars with his sleeve, then dismount and grab his duffel from the metal-framed saddlebag. “It would besomuch more convenient if you broke all the fingers in myrighthand.”
Ice turned to her, squaring himself like Indy needed a reminder that he was about eleven times her size in every dimension.