The Deadly Match

by Kishan Paul

  From the sounds of the men on either side of her, they were having a similar reaction. The man to her left, whose nails dug in her skin, coughed and gagged until he wretched the contents of his stomach, the warmth of it hitting her ankle in the process.

  “Told you this place was a shithole,” Adil mused. “And if you think this is bad, wait until you get to the second floor. Just keep a handkerchief to your face until you get used to it.”

  The floor beneath her feet felt different when she entered the new space. Instead of gravelly cement, it was smooth, like marble. The warm scent of sandalwood and jasmine mingled with the other odors, making the stench of raw sewage bearable enough for her to remove her hand from her face.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place. It smells almost nice in here,” the man who gripped her right arm announced.

  His comment was met with laughter by the others. “Bhai hasn’t come here in a long time,” a man responded. “We wanted to make it nice for him.”

  “I was told you and Vic would be bringing the woman. Who’s this guy?” a deep baritone voice uttered.

  “He’s with me, not your concern,” Adil snapped. “Did you make room for her?”

  “It’s not five-star accommodations,” a woman replied, “but we have space.”

  “Take her to the third floor.” Vic shoved her.

  A new pair of hands grabbed her when she fell into them.

  “Any news on when he’ll arrive?” Adil’s question was the last thing she heard as she was escorted out of the room. A door shut before she could hear the answer.

  Neither the person handling her or the one walking behind them spoke the entire journey. Her shoes echoed against the metal stairs, and when she leaned toward either side, her elbows scraped against the wall. The more they ascended, the more overwhelmed her sinuses became by the pungent scent of sewage; she covered her nose and continued forward. Two flights of stairs and hundreds of steps later, a door groaned open. In the distance, a woman sobbed. The sobs grew louder the farther they walked.

  The one who gripped her arm released her. When she took a step back, it was into the body of the person behind her. “Where do you think you’re going?” the woman behind her asked.

  Instead of replying, she inched out of her grip. Keys jingled. A door unlocked.

  She was shoved forward, the force of the push made her lose her balance. Pain shot through her elbows and knees when they collided with the cold cement floor.

  “Notify me if she gives you any trouble,” the woman demanded.

  “Yes, madam,” he replied.

  Ally grit her teeth and remained still until the door behind her slammed shut. Metal scraped against metal when it locked.

  Their footsteps grew distant until she couldn’t hear them, only the crying of a woman.

  She sat on her haunches, tucked her thumbs under the hem of the bag covering her face, and worked the fabric off her head. Cool air chilled her overheated cheeks, and as soothing as it felt, it also intensified the scent of sewage.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  THE LEAK

  Eddie rubbed the back of his hand against the tattered vinyl sofa they moved past and wiped the dust off on his jeans. Ari met them at the entrance of the vacant business complex and led them through the unfurnished second level. The electricity had been shut down to the building, but there were enough tinted windows to let in light from the late afternoon sun.

  Sheets of paper printed with the old tenant’s letterhead lay scattered across the ground. He tilted his head to read the words on the floor. The previous residents, apparently a mortgage company, must have been in a rush to get out of there before they were evicted, and the thick layer of dust indicated the eviction occurred a while ago.

  Heavy black bars secured outside the doors and all the exterior windows on the bottom level, probably in an attempt to dissuade vagrants from turning the space into temporary housing. As effective as it may have been at keeping out most, it didn’t do much to prevent his team from accessing the building.

  “How are Sai and Om?”

  “Not good,” Ari said over his shoulder. “Sai’s pretty beat-up and got a bad concussion. He doesn’t remember the attack. The most recent thing he remembers was from five days ago. He can’t walk straight, and his eyes are going in two different directions.” Ari took a sharp right and headed down a narrow hallway, with Eddie and Raz on his tail. “Om’s not doing well either. He keeps checking on Sai and blaming himself for not keeping him safe.”

  Like the foyer, the offices lining both sides were deserted and empty. He had to hand it to his team, they’d found the perfect spot to set up shop. The proximity of the vacant building was less than a mile from Palaza. On one side of them was a quiet apartment complex, and the rest of the street was lined with electronic shops. Pedestrians flooded the sidewalks and parked their vehicles in the building parking lot, making it easy to cover their own comings and goings.

  He followed Ari into one of the bigger offices on the floor. Eddie stood at the doorway taking in the setup. Stacked boxes and steel cabinets as well as a handful of desks and folding chairs were positioned to create a workstation. On them were computer equipment, several of which were being unpackaged by Tay and Om. Tay nodded at them, but Om avoided his gaze. Which was fine, they would be having a chat very soon. But first, there was another conversation he needed to have.

  Eddie grabbed a chair from the room and headed to the darkened office a few spaces down. Sai lay stretched out on a pleather couch in the far corner of the space, a towel covering his face, his right arm bound to his chest with white cotton bandage.

  He positioned his seat in front of the kid and sat his ass in it before removing the towel from his face. “How are you holding up?”

  Two swollen purple eyes greeted him, one remained shut while the other puffed lid lifted partially, displaying deep red in an eyeball that was once white. Eddie cringed.

  The entire right side of his face was various shades of reds and blues. His lips had plumped to double in size complete with stitches running up along the right edge. “Aside from it hurting to breathe, hating lights, not being able to walk straight, and feeling like I need a month-long nap, I’m great.” He flashed Eddie a grin complete with gaps from where teeth once took root.

  The sight of him only furthered Eddie’s conclusion that the day had been a total and complete fuck-up. “Do you remember anything?”

  “No. One minute I’m on a dinner cruise floating by the Gateway of India enjoying some biryani and beer and chatting it up with a beautiful woman, and the next, I’m waking up in the hospital.” Sai absentmindedly rubbed the shoulder to his broken arm. “Too bad too. She was about to give me her number…”

  Eddie rubbed the back of his head as Sai rambled. The information was of no help to their current situation.

  “I’m guessing the cruise was a few days ago?”

  He slammed his eyes shut and rested the back of his head on the armrest of the couch and yawned. “I’m sorry I’ve tried to remember the rest, but I’ve got nothing. They said my memory will come back once the swelling goes down.” He put a hand over his swollen eyes. “The lights are killing me.”

  Eddie returned the towel over his face. “Don’t apologize. This shouldn’t have happened to you.” He planted his elbows on his thighs and leaned forward watching him. Sai sat in a van in the parking lot, among a sea of other vehicles. They knew his location, got in there, beat the shit out of him, and destroyed his equipment. He had a good idea on who the attackers were. What he didn’t understand was how they found him.

  The bandaged arm secured to his chest rose when Sai took a breath, and from the soft snores escaping his lips, their chat was over. Eddie returned to the control room in search of the only other person who might have answers to the questions flooding his brain. He followed the chain of technology to the center where Om, Raz, Tay, and Ari sat on folding chairs working on the technology they’d purchased. Their face
s emotionless, tension oozed from all four of them.

  “I need a moment alone with Om.”

  He waited for the other three to leave and shut the door behind them before turning his attention to the person in question. He planted himself behind the kid and leaned over his shoulder, taking in the information on the screen. “You doing okay?”

  “I just hacked into their server. It’s taking me longer than it would have Sai.” His attention stayed glued at the monitor, his voice tense.

  “Not the question I asked.”

  His ears heated to a deep red. “This was my fault.”

  Eddie pulled up a chair and positioned it so he had a better view of his face while they chatted. “Getting stabbed with a syringe full of Fentanyl wasn’t your fault.”

  Om leaned forward, planting his elbows on the table. “I should have never let her do this.”

  The hair on Eddie’s neck stood to attention. “What did you let her do?”

  He rested his head in his hands but didn’t respond.

  “If you have information, you need to share it. Now. Otherwise, she’ll die.”

  He nodded and returned to typing on the keyboard. Om logged on to an email address, scrolling through messages, until finally clicking on one. An image of a naked woman from the waist up filled the screen.

  Eddie leaned forward taking her in. She was young, her long black hair covering her breasts. “Who is this?”

  “My sister.”

  Om’s answer had him scrutinizing the woman further. Her eyes appeared vacant. There was no fear in her stance. What he saw instead was another emotion: defeat.

  Several of the brothers had been searching for their biological family. In Om’s case, a younger sister relinquished at the same time as him. “Adil sent me the picture a few weeks ago.”

  A shiver ran up the length of his spine. “Do you have any proof this woman is your sister?”

  “It’s her. Adil sent videos of her sharing stories about our childhood only she and I would know.” Om stared at the screen. “She has a scar on her right elbow.”

  Dots connected and Eddie hated the picture it created. He swallowed the irritation and kept his voice steady. “We’ve all heard those same stories. As far as the scar, it’s easy to create one.”

  “It’s her. Adil said he’d kill her and mail me parts of her if I didn’t give up information about our team.” His face remained emotionless, perusing the image in front of him. “The piece of shit sent me her toe to prove his point.” Om fixed his gaze on Eddie. “I had to help him but didn’t give him anything important. Just enough to keep him happy while I tried to find her myself. I was careful. I made sure they couldn’t track me back to you.”

  The image of Alisha climbing in the van popped into his head.

  My son needs me.

  Words she’d uttered last night. Words he thought were about Jayden. “You told your mother.”

  He dropped his head and nodded. “Last night Adil contacted me. He said if Sara didn’t show up at the drive, he’d kill my sister.”

  The admission made fury roll through him, pounding against his chest, pulsing an erratic beat behind his ears. Eddie grabbed a fistful of Om’s shirt and rose to his feet, pulling the kid up with him. “You didn’t think to tell me or anyone else on the team, but you thought it was fine to share information about a woman who might or might not be your sister with your mother?”

  He pulled him close. “Sharing this information with her not only guaranteed her being at the drive today, it’s why she offered herself up to Adil.” Eddie shoved him back in his seat and paced the room. “You handed your mother over as ransom.”

  “No. I didn’t know she was going to go off with them, and I didn’t tell her anything.” Om was on his feet and in his face. “All I did was confirm what she knew and that I refused his offer. She is my mother. I would have never allowed her to be hurt. The plan was for her to be seen at the drive, snag Wassim, and then I’d get her out. The rest of what happened… Hell, I didn’t even know the rest of it.”

  Eddie observed him, looking for signs of deception. “What do you mean you didn’t tell her? And what exactly is the rest?”

  “The burner you sent us. The contact called, but he asked to speak to her. He filled her in about your plans to send her out of town last night. He told her I was the leak and the information Adil had over me.”

  Fury scorched a path through Eddie, burning his skin at the level of the betrayal. There was only one man who’d have made that phone call. One man who would have been privy to the information Om shared. “What was his name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Eddie’s focus dropped to the tiny red mark on Om’s neck. “Did you shoot yourself up with Fentanyl?”

  He rubbed the dot. “No. Vic, one of the guards in the room, stuck me from behind. I would have never let them take her.”

  “But you did.” Eddie shoved him away and paced the small strip of a walkway behind the desk. From Om, to Interpol’s guard, to Rafi’s phone call, so many people had deceived them.

  “I figured as long as we were there by her side, she’d be okay.”

  “We. Were. There.” Eddie shoved him again, but this time against the wall. “She isn’t fucking okay because we couldn’t protect her. We couldn’t protect her because we didn’t have all the information. Information you had.” He jabbed his finger at the kid’s chest. “Adil knew Sai was in the parking lot. How?”

  Om slammed his eyes shut. “I told Adil we would be watching for him both inside and outside. He must have searched the lots.”

  Eddie ground his teeth, trying to contain his rage. “Your brother’s and mother’s blood are on your hands. I don’t want to see your face.” He stepped back, pointing at the door. “You’ve compromised everyone on this team. Go tell the rest of them what you’ve done.”

  “Let me help bring her back.”

  Eddie laughed off Om’s request. “As far as I am concerned, you are working with Adil and cannot be trusted. Your ass will be locked in one of these rooms until we come and get you. Is that clear?”

  He turned his focus out the window across the room, not able to look at Om. “Get the fuck out of here. Now.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  KHALIN

  A ceiling light flickered and hummed in the otherwise dim space. Ally blinked as her eyes adjusted to the view. A foot or two from her sat a metal cot. Filthy, stained with things she couldn’t quite make out, there was one item positioned on it that captured her full attention.

  A man.

  The hallowed dark contours of his cheekbones and under his eyes were in dramatic contrast to the pale brown skin of his face. His eyes, a soft brown, tracked her for a moment. As if he was satisfied with his new roommate, he gave her a slight nod, closed his eyes, and rested the back of his head on the brick wall he leaned against.

  Somewhat well-groomed, he seemed a contradiction to the living quarters. His thick dark brown hair trimmed and the stubble on his face appeared no more than a day old. Aside from the sweat-stained armpits, even the deep blue unbuttoned dress shirt he wore with its sleeves rolled and brown slacks appeared relatively clean.

  A woman still wept, and mixed into her distress were whispered voices of others, a rhythmic thudding she couldn’t place. Ally stayed on her haunches; questions buzzed through her while she slipped one of her hands out through the extra slack in her rope.

  “Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, English?” His eyes were still closed.

  “Hindi or Urdu, but English is my native tongue,” she said in English.

  Her response was greeted with a chuckle. “Ahh, you’re American.”

  “And you’re educated.”

  He shrugged. “I have been told I’m quite proficient with my tongue, but I’m pretty sure they’re referring to my talents below their belt.”

  She shifted from her spot on the floor.

  “I will not hurt you, and before you ask, I can’t help you either
. Not because I’m an ass, but because it’s not worth getting a beating over.”

  “I can help myself.”

  His lazy grin widened. “Such an American response.”

  “I’m not ready to give up yet.” She surveyed her prison. The size of a small walk-in closet, a short skinny cot the man sat on took up most of the space leaving about a foot or two of walking room from the bed to the door. In one corner, she identified a squat toilet. Aside from the bed, the only other item it contained was a rusty metal pail in the corner. Three of the four partitions surrounding her were made of brick and mortar, while the fourth, outside wall was smooth cement. From the uneven and haphazard way the bricks were laid and the thick globs of dried mortar between them, untrained individuals probably created the three sections after the building was erected. The brick partitions did not reach all the way to the top, instead leaving uneven gaps between it and the ceiling.

  His expression sobered. “You will.”

  Ally eyed the thick gap on the brick barrier the bed pressed against. She slipped off her shoes and climbed on to the mattress.

  “Don’t do that.”

  She ignored him and continued. Even on tiptoes, the ledge was hard to see over. She gripped the top of the wall, lifted herself up on her hands, leveraging her toes against the uneven layers of brick and mortar to climb until she could see over. It contained a room like their own and on the other side of the wall sat a bed, much like the one she dangled over.

  Huddled on the floor, in the far corner, she discovered the source of the moans. A woman, hugging her knees to her chest, her eyes closed, mumbled a word on repeat as she slammed the back of her head against the wall.

  “Tanu.”

  The act automatic, thoughtless, the kind of behavior apparent in someone experiencing shock or trauma. Ally hitched herself higher for a better view when one of the bricks she gripped came loose, sending chunks of grout falling onto the bed on the other side. The eyes of the upset woman on the floor shot open.