Читать книгу Kingdom Come - Aarti Raman V - Страница 13

One of Wood’s earliest memories, were of catching stray chickens at the farm and eating the eggs raw, after stealing them from underneath the big fat mama hens. Foster care had not been much help in Wood’s case, with that monster of a father playing the cops when they showed up and beating the shit out of Wood’s older brother when he got drunk and mean. Mama had split after the brother’s birth and Dad had taken it out on Wood and his brother’s hide.

Wood had learned early on to stay out of the big man’s way and not make any noise. It was the reason why Wood had not said a word till age four.

One night, when the father was whaling on the brother, who never woke up from that beating, Wood called the cops and watched, hiding in the barn with just a one-eyed cat for company, as the cop cars came and took the entire family away. Wood ran into the woods that night terrified that the father would come back and beat the life out of Wood too.

But, Wood had not gotten far. Another man had followed Wood into the woods surrounding the pretty farmhouse in Chesapeake, Maryland. That man had been gentle and spoken in a calm voice and had the kindest eyes Wood had ever seen. That man had given Wood a Snickers bar and a tissue to wrap it in when Wood had only eaten half of it, sitting under the oak tree where Wood had fallen and was crying inconsolably when the man turned up.

That man had taken Wood to a nice clean bed in a strange motel and asked Wood seriously, whether this family, Wood’s family was what Wood wanted. Wood had answered instantaneously, no. The man had asked if Wood wanted a different family, with only, say a dad and no one else. But an exciting fun life, filled with adventure and faraway places, with trips and no school if that was what Wood wanted.

And Wood had answered as instantaneously. Yes.

The man had offered his hand to be shaken by a small, malnourished five-year-old. And had called himself Tom Jones. Wood had called him Dad since that day.

The Woodpecker smiled and bent the thumb of the blindfolded man sitting in front, back all the way. The man screamed; a high-pitched, keening wail. He clutched his ruined thumb and whimpered; snot and tears running unchecked down his face.

The man wept openly.

“Please, please,” he whispered, shrinking into himself. Hunching his shoulders, trying to occupy as little space as possible. “Please, I am sorry. I won’t mess up the order again. I won’t.”

Wood came forward with a cigar trimmer. An unlit cigar was clamped to the terrorist’s lips. The room in which the man, the pizza boy, was tied in was large. Airy. It had plenty of natural light and white curtains. There was a huge white bed on a raised dais with fluffy curtains on the four posts shielding it. A dream cloud of a bed. The sheets were made with military corners because Wood didn’t allow anyone to touch them. The Woodpecker was odd like that.

The pizza boy, Hank was his name, was still dully crying, holding his broken hand to his heart, his thin shoulders moving with the force of his sobs. There was blood on the lower part of his face, pouring down in a thick trickle and a gap where Hank’s nose had been. The Woodpecker moved forward and yanked the thin blond head back in a sharp, painful movement, “If you don’t stop crying, I will reach down and yank your voice box out. You understand?”

Hank cried harder, beyond mere fear now.

“I wanted pizza, you know,” Wood ruminated. “An American specialty, even though it originated in Italy in the nineteenth century. I even specified very clearly, when they asked me, that I wanted half and half. Chicken and pineapple on one side for the carbs, and olives and sundried tomatoes on the other. No peppers, because they mess up my sleep. I stated it, Hank. So clearly.”

“I … I’m sorry for delivering the wrong pizza. I really am. I really am.” Hank started sobbing louder now, his wails echoing off the white walls of the sunny bedroom with the white bed.

“Please don’t kill me. Please don’t.”

The Woodpecker smiled and leaned forward on the table. The blade of the cigar trimmer flashed unholy silver as the terrorist clipped off the butt and it fell down on the carpeted floor in a rush of leaf and tobacco. The acrid scent of nicotine permeated the air around them.

Hank’s already fearful, hysterical, ruined face took on epic proportions of roundness as he heard the methodic way with which The Woodpecker handled the knife.

“Why would I kill you, Hank?” Wood smiled. “I am not an unreasonable person. I just want a little respect. People should respect each other, don’t you think?”

Hank nodded, desperately, like a bobblehead. “Yes, yes. Yes!”

“Good. So you agree that we should be respectful towards one another.”

“Yes. Hell, yes!”

“Then why did you not show me any respect, Hank?” Wood asked, sorrowfully. “Why did you call me all those awful, awful names and said that I could take the pizza if I wanted or I could just eat dirt and die.”

Hank’s eyes, never clear, started streaming again.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I won’t ever do it again. I won’t say anything to anyone. Just let me go. Please, let me go. PLEASE!” He screamed in the end.

The Woodpecker frowned. “Don’t shout; it’s not polite. I can’t let you—”

The door to the massive bedroom opened and a tall man with piercing silver eyes and graying hair strode in. He was dressed in a conservative three-piece suit and he had a classically handsome face. A face that people would remember if only because of those remote eyes.

The man was Tom Jones. The Woodpecker’s father, for all intents and purposes. He looked with mild distaste at Hank’s wasted form and then with censure at The Woodpecker who was chewing on the butt of the cigar instead of lighting it. Something like defiance gleamed in those cold, dead eyes.

“You’ve made a mess over dinner,” he observed mildly.

“He brought me the wrong pizza,” Wood said indignantly. “He gave my order to somebody else.”

Tom untied Hank’s legs, wrinkling his nose at the distinct smell of urine emanating from the boy’s pants. They all wet themselves in Wood’s presence. After he was done, he straightened and looked coldly at his kid.

“This is a seven star hotel. You cannot stuff a body down the trash chute here.”

The Woodpecker smiled sweetly. “I was going to burn him and then flush his remains down the toilet.”

Hank screamed again, terrified beyond anything. An inhuman sound. Tom Jones reached behind and clipped him once on the jaw. A hard punch. Hank’s head lolled onto his shoulder, his lower lip bleeding slightly, as he finally, mercifully fainted.

“Send the boy back, Woodie. Please.”

The terrorist nodded and came to stand next to Tom. Tom put a comforting arm around Wood’s shoulder; who leaned into the embrace with an ease that was natural. Tom Jones was the only person in the whole world The Woodpecker trusted. Tom squeezed Wood’s shoulder. A fatherly gesture.

Wood sighed. An incongruous sound, given the bloodied boy tied at their feet.

“I want pizza, Dad,” the terrorist said, sounding so alarmingly like a teenager. Another incongruity.

“Let Hank go. I’ll get you your favorite,” Tom promised.

Wood smiled and nodded.

“OK, Dad. If you say so.”

And with that, Wood went to dispose of his handiwork in a more conventional fashion.

“And then, Krivi just picked Zee up and put her back down about two feet away without breaking a sweat, Da,” Noor narrated. “Ziya was spitting mad, I could practically see the steam coming out of her ears, but you know how she is?”

Noor paused, only to shove a bite of crisp naan, wheat bread that went well with most Indian curries before picking up her story again.

“All ice-queen and icy eyes. So, she pulled that routine with K here.” She grinned at the silent, hulking man who was calmly eating the food on the table as if not just forty-eight hours ago he hadn’t defused a dangerous piece of explosive.

They had all, Sam included, decided to brave the night and come back home to Goonj rather than hang around Pehelgam and wait for morning light. So, Noor had slept on Sam’s shoulder in the back while Ziya had scrunched herself against the passenger window and Krivi had driven them back. Not even fazed by the prospect of a hard ride after the day he’d had.

Ziya had concluded then and there that the man was not just superhuman, which he undoubtedly was, but that there wasvery little human in him. Rest, food, sleep, these things didn’t matter to him at all. He wasn’t even any different these two days than he’d been for the last six months. He looked the same, remote and with a hard face that could break granite. He dressed the same, jeans and sweaters to ward off the mild chill that signified the end of spring.

Yet, for the life of her, Ziya couldn’t understand why she suddenly found everything about him distractingly appealing. Even his usual morose taciturn behavior couldn’t make her stop watching him covertly, through the corner of her eye. At the way those long, tanned fingers used the fork to shred some chicken before chewing it slowly. Those same hands had touched an unexploded ordnance and come off the victor.

Those same hands had touched her too. With such unbelievable strength she still had finger marks on her arm that she’d covered with a long-sleeved shirt. But it wasn’t the pain she remembered or even her own justifiable anger at his high-handedness in ordering her about. It was just the sensation of his fingers touching her flesh. Hot, searing on impact. As if there was a current running between them that had shorted a few circuits in her brain.

Made her aware of a very unpleasant fact about Krivi Iyer. Namely, that she was aware of Krivi Iyer. More than she’d wanted, more than she thought possible and now, more than was comfortable for her. Because he was still the same, silent assistant manager who refused to look her in the eye for the eight hours that they shared office space.

Ziya turned back to her own food, determined to not join in Noor’s delighted ribbing of her. Determined to not let anything get to her. Most of all, the way Krivi was plowing through his food, as if he couldn’t eat and get away from the dinner table fast enough. Such an unsociable animal he was. And yet, he’d smiled at her with something close to sexiness. And promised her he wouldn’t blow them all to kingdom come. Heroes, Ziya decided, were a strange breed. And she wanted nothing to do with them. She ate some of the field greens on her plate and looked up to see Sam grinning wryly at her.

She quirked a brow and mouthed, “What’s up?”

Sam shook his head and addressed his next comment to Dada Akhtar who’d stopped eating while the saga was being unfolded for him. In full, Technicolor detail. And certain embellishments on the part of one Noor Saiyed.

“I wasn’t there to see Krivi tackle on my Amazonia.” Sam smiled fondly at Ziya who rolled her eyes at the nickname. “But I did see how he did the linebacker routine to stop Ziya and Noor from breaking into the perimeter. And still lives to see daybreak. Strong man, you are, K. And very lucky too.”

Since the last comment was addressed directly to him, Krivi looked up and saw Dada Akhtar’s avid, grateful face. He did the decent thing and smiled modestly.

“It’s nothing, Major. Always glad to help out in an emergency.”

“But this wasn’t an emergency. This was a bomb threat, Krivi. A whole different world from the word emergency, son.”

Noor hugged Krivi’s side who was sitting to her left and announced, “Superheroes are extremely modest, Da. Don’t you know?”

“And what else do you know about superheroes, Kid?” Krivi asked her, his eyes indulgent.

Sam caught Ziya looking at him again and grinned.

“Maybe Ziya has some thoughts on superheroes, huh, Zee?”

Ziya gave him a bland look. “The only superheroes I know are extremely flawed because they feel the need to hide their humanity under tights and outside underwear, which is an extremely tacky fashion choice,” she ended judiciously.

Sam looked a little nonplussed but Krivi’s lips twitched and there was a look of interest sharpening the remoteness in his black eyes.

“Touché, Zee,” Noor said. “But you have to admit, K would look extremely hot in tights and outside underwear.”

Krivi put his fork down and looked interestedly at Ziya, who wrinkled her button nose and said, “I wouldn’t know. My imagination is not that vivid.” And she carefully did not look at the man in question.

Dada Akhtar reached over and squeezed Krivi’s shoulder in a gesture of support and affection.

“Whatever the reason, whatever the circumstance, I am just glad that you were there today to look out for my two girls. I can’t begin to thank you for this debt, beta.” Son. His beetle-black eyes gleamed with emotion under bushy white brows, surprising Krivi. Moving him a little, enough that he covered the wrinkled, still-strong hand with his own and returned the squeeze.

“It’s not a debt, Salman,” Krivi said, formally. Uncomfortable by the sudden somber tone of the conversation. Uncomfortable even more to find that every eye around the small table was finally on him.

“And I don’t think—”

“Krivi?”

Ziya’s low voice made him stop. Mostly because she never called him by his name. Just like he never did hers. Ziya. A small, short name for a very complicated, hard-to-figure-out woman.

“Yeah?”

“Shut up and accept the compliment for what it is. Yeah? Da doesn’t shower praise on just anyone. You need to swallow that chip on your shoulder that’s obstructing your throat and say thank you graciously. Yes?”

She smiled pleasantly, although her eyes were roiling like storm clouds. He again had the insane urge to grin at her, the way he had when she had told him off for considering smoking in the car, but wisely kept the impulse and its consequence to himself.

“Yes, ma’am, Miss Maarten,” he murmured.

And, turning back to Dada Akhtar, said in perfect Urdu, “Thank you, for being so kind as to call me a hero. I don’t deserve it but I will try and live up to it, anyway.”

“You’re welcome, beta,” Dada Akhtar managed.

“I think we can safely say that between Sam and K, we are not going to have a problem if aliens invade Goonj, Da,” Noor said, confidently.

And after a second of disbelieving silence, the whole table burst out laughing. Dada Akhtar laughing so hard, his little pot belly shaking with his mirth. Noor and Sam put down their forks and held onto their stomachs, tears running down their faces. And even Ziya was smiling and chuckling as if the joke had been funnier than it was supposed to.

Krivi smiled because it would have been rude otherwise. But he knew aliens were scary beings because you didn’t know the first damn thing about them. Least of all, how to beat them. Ziya’s silver eyes lit up with laughter and humor as she gave him a passing glance. Yeah, he thought morosely. He didn’t know the first thing about beating this alien woman.

Noor prowled into the kitchen where Ziya was busy scooping out vanilla ice cream into bowls which held gulab jamuns, scrumptious round balls made from flour, saffron and floated in sugar syrup, her favorite.

“I am going to bloat,” she wailed, even as she took a golden jamun out and stuffed it whole in her mouth. An expression of utter bliss crossed her face before she opened her dreamy, satisfied eyes and nailed her best friend with an intuitive expression.

“K is hot.”

“Hmm?”

Ziya didn’t really hear the statement, because she herself was contemplating popping one jamun in herself. As penance for being attracted to someone who was so obviously not good for her.

“I said, K is hot,” Noor said patiently. “Like, hero hot. And that’s a lot of hotness, babe.”

Ziya shook her head in disbelief.

“Stop talking and eat dessert, honey. Your brains are obviously scrambled.”

Noor poked her in the shoulder. Hard enough that Ziya stopped ladling the ice cream and shot her an annoyed look.

“What?”

“You like him. You want to jump his bones because he hauled you around like a sack of potatoes and then, like five seconds later, went and saved the world. All without breaking a sweat. Or even being unduly concerned about you or the world. It’s hot. All that implacable indifference.”

Ziya chuckled.

“Yep. Brains. Scrambled. Definately.”

Noor shook her head.

“You can lie all you want to me, baby. But the truth is there in your eyes when you think no one is looking at you.”

“And what truth would that be?” Ziya’s face was rich with amusement.

“You look at him,” she answered promptly. “You don’t want to, but you look at him.”

All the amusement faded from her eyes and she said, “Shut up, Noor. You have no idea what you’re saying.”

“I do. And it scares you, because he really is who he is. And you are intrigued by the indifference and the hero complex.” Noor was so confident in her assessment that Ziya was sure she must have slipped up and said something to her after all.

But, then common sense reasserted itself and she said, “I am not intrigued by a man who has all the manners of a retarded mute and what you call hero complex, I call macho arrogance. And yes, he is indifferent to everything, but mostly to me and I return the favor,” she ended sharply. Sharper than she had intended because it was all so close to what she herself was feeling. She just wasn’t ready to admit it out loud yet. If she ever would be.

Noor’s eyes were rounded in dismay. And Ziya asked her, “What? Now what?”

There was a loud cough from behind her and Ziya whirled around, ladle at the ready. To see the object of her derision standing at the kitchen entrance. Thundercloud face and impassive eyes.

The ice cream dripped onto the floor as he told her with a straight face, “I am not indifferent to your gulab jamuns. If that counts for anything.” Then he nodded at Noor and said, “I’m taking off now, Kid. The … fulsome praise has more than satisfied my appetite.”

Then he turned and left without acknowledging Ziya at all.

Ziya took a deep breath as she struggled to handle her anger and embarrassment at having been caught bad-mouthing him. An employee, no less. Which was inexcusable in her book, even though it was all his fault, no doubt.

Noor watched as a host of emotions flitted across her friend’s usually calm face and she said, casually, “He does pack a punch when he opens his mouth.”

Ziya flicked a distracted glance at Noor who was enjoying her second gulab jamun. She came to a decision that had been simmering at the back of her head for a long time, and she placed the ladle on the table carefully. And she wiped her hands on the small dishcloth she wore around the waist of her jeans.

“I have to end this,” she said, mostly to herself.

“Go, Zee.”

But Noor’s encouragement fell on deaf ears as Ziya half-walked, half-ran out the kitchen and down the passage that led to the living room and then out the door, without pausing to grab a jacket against the chilly night. Srinagar had cold nights in spring and tonight was no exception.

Ziya had to run downhill, and it was a mostly easy path but even then she was winded, her breath coming out in gasps that made little white puffs of air as they escaped her lungs. She could see Krivi’s dark form moving ahead, almost at the edge of the fence where the gamekeeper’s cottage began.

She put on a sprint and reached the wooden gate just as he was going to unlatch it. Ziya tapped him on the shoulder; having to reach up to do it since she was not in heels but practical Nikes. Krivi whirled around with dizzying speed, something feral leaping into his eyes that she instantly shrank away from.

“Don’t do that again. Ever,” he ordered her. “I could have punched your lights out.”

Her small chin went up haughtily, the gray eyes flashing stormy. “You could try, boy-o. Who the hell do you think you are?”

He inclined his head and stepped a discreet inch back as her anger and seductive, female scent swirled in a thick condensation around them. Tightening the bubble around them.

“I am the Assistant Manager of Goonj Enterprises. The other stuff’s not important.”

She shoved him back with one hand, and he was so surprised at the gesture that he actually stumbled. She came forward and did it again. But this time, he was prepared so he caught her wrist in one loose hand. When her other wrist came up with a swing, he caught that one too.

All without taking his dark eyes off her furious, beautiful face.

“What are you spitting at me for?”

“Ziya,” she said coldly.

“I beg your pardon?” He restrained her with a simple hold, while she struggled, trying to escape his fingers, his touch and the stupid, insidious heat filling her at her proximity with this insufferable maniac!

“Ziya!” She practically shouted. “My name is Ziya. Learn it, live it. I don’t care what you do outside of the office, or here in Da’s home, but I am damned if I am going to have you talk to me like I am some small child that needs to be pacified, or worse a woman who doesn’t know what she is doing.”

Her chest was heaving, and because of the way he held her, almost in his embrace, he could feel each movement against his own, suddenly rioting body. He tried to step back again.

“Look—”

“Look, Ziya!” She yelled. “Are you deaf? Or just that cruel? Let go of my hands, you arrogant baboon. I don’t need this from you.”

“Stop moving, please,” he said, in a low voice. His patience strained, his own emotions running up to take the place of the patience.

“I won’t! I am your boss! I am good at what I do and I have lived twenty-nine years without some Neanderthal telling me what to do every five minutes, goddammit. You take your orders from me, Krivi, not the other way. Now let me the hell go.”

Ziya blew a gold-streaked bang off her forehead and glared at him, so mad, so very mad at the casual ease with which he could subdue her and the indifference with which he held her. She was even madder at herself for wanting to talk to him at all, and cursed her wayward hormones to hell and back.

“Ziya—”

“Good.” She smiled, and it was blade-sharp. “Now say it a million times and we won’t have a problem.”

Something snapped. It could have been a twig, could have been the air, or it could be his control which broke free from the restraint of four long years and he dragged her closer and ravaged her mouth.

Ziya was so surprised, shocked out of her wits, that for a single, trembling second she just hung in mid-air, gravity having no pull on her muscles. It was Krivi, his mouth that held her anchored. Then his hands dug into her wrists and she grabbed his hands in return and kissed him back.

Hard.

Using her teeth to bite at his lower lip, hard enough to draw blood. And he groaned as he staggered back, taking her with him. They hit the fence and he released her hands to run restless, rough hands over her shoulders, into the short mop of her hair as he ruthlessly kissed her. And she opened her mouth and let him in to do exactly what she’d ordered him not to. Take over.

But being taken over was a glorious melding of tongues and breath and a scent that could only come from a man who’d faced down death. Taken over meant running her hands over the hard planes of his shoulders, and into his hair. Clutching it hard, desperately as she tried to take the kiss deeper. He bent her back, holding her still by the head, taking a single kiss into depths she hadn’t known existed until she groaned. And only half in pain. They both sprang apart in the same instant.