Kitabı oku: «Kingdom Come», sayfa 2
The lock opened with an audible snick and the pressure mechanism moved. Alina breathed deeply, her shoulders shaking and Krivi snapped the lock back, but not all the way back to lock it.
Recon one breathed easy and shared a grim look with Krivi.
“Alina?” Krivi said.
“Yes, Krivi?”
“I am going to remove the lock now, all the way out and I want you to leap into John’s strong arms and just hold on, OK? He’s going to run really, really fast and take you out of here. Can you do that?”
“Yeah.”
“John, you ready to take my girl out?”
John’s lips tightened but he said easily, “Alina’s my girl, Krivi. Don’t poach.”
“We’ll see, Johnny Boy. We’ll let Alina decide. Right, Alina?”
She giggled, but didn’t nod her head. She was aware of the lock on the back of her head.
“On the count of three,” he said quietly, looking at recon one. Recon one nodded slightly, because he got it. There was a growing chance that Krivi was not going to make it out in time, but there was not a damn thing he could do about it right now.
“Boss,” was all he said.
“One.” Krivi’s steady hand went to the lock. “Two.” He flicked it open, sliding it out and pushing Alina away in one motion.
“Three.”
John snatched the girl and ran straight and true, without a backward glance.
Krivi didn’t spare them a glance either, he held the pressure mechanism gingerly as a timer started counting down the seconds. He had twenty seconds before he cut the wrong wire and blew himself to kingdom come.
“Five,” he murmured, measuring the position of the wires from the detonator. All three yellow wires ended in a tangle, so he wasn’t sure anyway that he wasn’t going to be blown up.
“Eight.”
He picked one out and held his pliers over it.
“Twelve.” He picked the next one out and his fingers trembled in a fine reaction. He steadied his hand and cut the wire. The timer stopped its deathly countdown. And he placed the pressure mechanism detonator down as carefully as if it was still alive.
He pushed the earbud on once.
“Hot load is cold. I repeat, hot load is cold. Coming out now. How’s the girl? She all right?”
There was no answer from the other end for a minute. And he waited, while sweat poured off his face in rivulets, even though the temperature inside the cave was close to five degrees. The black paint he’d worn had run off, washed by his perspiration and his hand was steady again as he pushed the pliers back into his Army knife kit and shoved it into his pocket.
“Boss?”
“Yeah?”
“Get the fuck out of there. Now.”
Krivi chuckled, a strange ghostly sound in a tomb.
“Yeah. Roger that.”
Then he slung his weapon on again and walked out, as calmly as he had come in. In the five minutes that he had told his teammates he would.
The team was lodged in Holiday Inn, paid for by a very grateful Mr. Gujjar who was probably placing an armored tank around his kid round about now. The whiskey was flowing freely in John’s room, which was Party Central. And the sounds of raucous male laughter could be heard two floors down. John walked out of his room and rapped on a door two doors down. The door opened a crack. Krivi still in his fatigues, with the shirt off, stood at the entrance.
“Come on out to the land of the living,” he invited.
“No,” Krivi said. “Thank you.”
“You did a good thing there today, Boss.”
Krivi’s face remained impassive. “We all did our jobs, John. Now go. Have some fun.” His lips twitched but his eyes remained the same. Black and flat, with not much to read in them. In fact, nothing at all to read in them. “Go on out to the land of the living.”
John smiled and tipping his head once, went back the way he’d come. It was a futile hope to think the boss would come and join in the revelry when he hadn’t done so once in all the years that John had known him. John understood death, the awful pressure of it and the horror of it. But every time he saw Krivi Iyer, he was reminded of something worse than seeing death firsthand. He was reminded of war victims who couldn’t understand life or death because neither made sense to them. Then, he stopped thinking about his boss and tossed a shot back and partied because he’d escaped his fate again.
Back in his room, Krivi stripped down to his skivvies and roamed the hotel room like a caged animal. He gave a fleeting thought to joining his men, but dismissed the thought immediately. He didn’t know how to laugh and horse around and pretend that everything was A-OK just because they had cheated death tonight. This time. This party would go on for hours, because they were all getting a hefty bonus for getting the girl out and recovering the money too.
All in a day’s work for K&R experts.
But he wasn’t a kidnapping and ransom specialist. He wasn’t even team leader because he wanted to lead a bunch of decent, strong men down dark tunnels or into dangerous situations, being responsible for their lives. Most of these men had families, wives and children: the whole enchilada. They carried around pictures in their wallets and had emails and scheduled phone calls when they were in rotation for missions. He didn’t know how to relate to them. He had no one. No pictures in wallets or emails from loved ones or scheduled phone calls.
He only had an awful, empty blackness that sometimes got filled when he stared sure death in the eye and understood today was the day he would die. Today was the day he would die. When Gemma had died along with Joe and the unborn baby, he might as well have died with them.
He didn’t know how to live anymore, because he literally had nothing to live for. His family, the ones still surviving, had long since lost hope on the brooding, dark man he had become. And it had been months since he had even spoken to his parents. For all intents and purposes, he was all alone. Just the way he liked it.
He was here in India, his birthplace, and he knew there were relatives scattered in various cities who would love for him to visit. Aunts, uncles and second cousins who his parents were regularly in touch with through the wonders of modern technology, back in their little farm in Surrey. But he didn’t feel the need to reconnect with family or his birthplace, even though he was home. He was alone and that was best.
Alone meant safety.
He stopped at the window and looked out over the white-tipped mountain ranges which were particularly beautiful in twilight. At that moment before day changed into night and everything was just slightly out of focus. Krivi smiled. It was weird. He was noticing the sunset and the beauty. Maybe coming home had not been the worst idea of all. And India, no matter how long ago he’d left it, was still home. His motherland, even though his passport was British.
He placed his hands on the sill and leaned out, deeply breathing in the unadulterated, mountainous air. Breathed in life. Sometimes, it was the only thing that mattered.
Life.
And tonight, there was a little girl who was sleeping safe in her own bed with her parents around her, standing guard over her dreams. Safe from all the monsters who roamed this world, looking for easy, pluckable prey. She probably had years of therapy ahead of her to recover from this ordeal, but she was alive and she was unharmed and that was the only thing that mattered.
He closed his eyes and reached for the cigarette he’d placed in his shirt pocket. He used a match and lit it, blowing smoke deep in his lungs and letting it out into the pure mountain air. Watched the gray smoke pass on, ethereal and wispy, getting lost in the little flurry of snow that began to fall on the Holiday Inn. He’d smoked half his cigarette when there was a peculiar beeping from his bag.
Krivi straightened instantly, on animal alert. He crossed to the bag he’d placed on the dressing table and extracted a bulky instrument that vaguely resembled a cellular phone. A satellite phone with the latest scrambler codes that bounced between at least three satellites, if he wasn’t wrong. This phone was the only way he could call his family and be completely untraceable.
He pressed a button and said, very quietly, “Iyer.”
“Hello, Krivi, my boy. You’ve been a hard man to track.”
Krivi sat down on the bed abruptly.
“Harold,” he said, shortly. “How did you find me?”
Harold Wozniacki, Assistant Director of Operations, MI5, laughed gregariously, a jarring sound that echoed in the hotel room. Krivi winced and listened to his blast from the past laugh as if he hadn’t laughed in years. All his pleasure in the moment, the evening, was gone.
The cigarette in his hand had burned down to more than three-quarters and he flicked it out the window with an accurate throw. It wasn’t the decent thing to do but he couldn’t care about butt disposal right now.
“What do you want, Harold?” he asked, when there was a break in the laughter.
“Should I answer the first question, my boy?”
Krivi shook his head. “No. What do you want, Harold? Whatever it is, the answer’s no. You know that.”
“Hey, maybe my kid has been kidnapped and I need you to rescue her. Defuse a bomb or two along the way,” Harold rejoined, full of joie de vivre.
“You have a son, Harold. And he is in the Army. If someone has taken him, they would have already lost a limb or two. Or their head.”
Harold must have spread his tentacles wide to get this much current intel on him. Probably even called in a few favors.
“I thought you would have forgotten all about me by now, Krivi.”
“I never forget, Harold. You know that.”
There was a beat of silence and then Harold exhaled. “What do you know about The Woodpecker?”
“The bird? Not much.” But he sat up straighter. “Why do you ask, Harold?”
“A series of bombings in Benghazi,” Harold answered instantly. “Car bombs. IEDs, with circuitry fucked up so badly it would have taken a rat to clear it. Remote detonation on start-up. Semtex and plastique as primary explosives, with marble shrapnel. Recognize it?”
Krivi felt cold, colder than he’d felt in four years. His vision sharpened, his breath slowed, his heart slowed. He gripped the phone so tight, his knuckles showed veins.
“What are you saying, Harold?”
“You know what I am saying, Krivi. Come back, and you can find the son of a bitch who took out Joe and Gemma.”
“No.”
The word was short and cold.
“Come back, Krivi. The Woodpecker is a dangerous entity. No fear, no consequences. But no one can catch him because there are rumors about identity, no one can confirm. Gun for hire type and with no moral compass to guide him, from the looks of things. People are getting hurt, Krivi. You can help stop that.”
His other hand clenched in a fist. His short nails dug into the skin of his palms.
“No, Harold. Goodbye.”
“Krivi, there’s a face and features match, eyes, skin color, mom’s date of death and DOB with a civilian. Ninety percent chance of siblings. That’s a huge chance for someone we haven’t ever seen. We need confirmation and you can get it for us. The female is in India, in Kashmir. Transport wouldn’t be a problem for you. You can nail The Woodpecker.”
“It’s a fucking awful codename for a terrorist.”
Harold chuckled weakly. The sound seemed wrong in the conversation they were having.
Krivi loosened his grip on the phone. Looked at the blinking red light that indicated call active on the satellite phone. He thought about the last four years and the six months before that. He thought about all those days and nights when he had sat and thought about nothing else but finding the person responsible for killing his soul.
“I pull the trigger,” he said.
“Now, Krivi—”
“I come back, I do your ID, I catch the bastard and I pull the trigger and watch the life bleed out of him. Do we have a deal?”
“Krivi, I don’t think—”
“Goodbye, Harold.” He made to press the end call button.
“Goddammit. Wait.”
Krivi waited.
“Fine. You come back, run the op and we will see where we end up. Deal?”
“I come back, run the op, ID the female, find out her connection to him and when we get the bastard; I put a bullet between his eyes. Deal.”
Harold Wozniacki was a smart man. He knew when to weigh his options and he knew when to hedge his bets. He also knew that Krivi Iyer was the best man for the job because there was no one else with his unique skill set. And that skill set included, cold, purposeful, lethal vengeance.
Harold sighed.
“You always were a stubborn bull, my boy. Fine. Come back and we have a deal.”
Krivi smiled. And it was a terrible thing to see. “Good. Send me the details at the—”
“Holiday Inn, Ladakh. Yeah, I know.”
Krivi shook his head, the call ended. And every muscle in his body loosened just as his brain sharpened.
The Woodpecker. It was an awful name for a cold-blooded murderer. But there was no name suitable enough for a monster like that. And he was going to kill this monster and pay his blood debt once and for all. Maybe, he could even die in the process. Maybe, God would be that kind.
If ever there was a God.
Krivi took out his cellphone, the one provided by his employers and punched in speed dial two.
When his boss picked up he said, very briefly, very clearly, “Jim. Krivi Iyer. Yeah, everything went down OK. The girl’s OK. I am calling to let you know I am done. I quit.”
Jim asked something and Krivi answered, “Why? Just something I have to take care of. No, not a woman. I quit, Jim. You can wire the rest of my funds to Ladakh. Thanks.”
two
Srinagar
India
May 2012
Ziya Maarten had never looked forward to early mornings, till she came to Srinagar, the heartland of some of the most beautiful country she had ever seen. She’d done the Euro backpacking trip, fresh out of school, saving up for her grand adventure when other girls her age had been trying out graduation day dresses and making out with their boyfriends in shady corners.
Ziya had worked two jobs, as a library helper and a waitress at a trendy Soho café, in order to see the Eiffel Tower, Pisa, the Coliseum and the sandy beaches of Corfu. Kids who bounced from foster home to foster home, learnt the value of being grounded to places rather than people early on in life. Places that you had been to, places that you dreamed about, were something else altogether. They were permanent. They were forever.
People, on the other hand were so much more inconvenient to love. People came and went. More often than not, they left you. And she’d experienced more loss in her twenty-nine years than she’d wanted. Ergo, she’d traveled extensively and wide, as a troubleshooter for an organic chemical fertilizer company that operated out of England and had ties in China.
Ziya had worked hard after high school too, getting into Trinity, which was no mean feat and then getting her business admin degree from the London School of Economics. All on scholarship. Because foster kids were really on their own after age eighteen. And, it had been a stroke of luck that she had become roommates with the most interesting creature in Trinity, who was waiting for the love of her life to finish his Army training.
Noor Saiyed, a Kashmiri princess who had only spent the summers in India till her twenty-seventh birthday which fell this year, had simply refused to let Ziya be alone. She had cajoled and laughed and giggled and drunk her way into Ziya’s life, until they really were Best Friends Forever. Last year she’d given those goofy, tacky, matching BFF bracelets to Ziya as a gag gift. And this, from a woman with an IQ in the triple digits, and who had made the Dean’s List all four years of her undergrad as a literature major at Trinity. Ziya couldn’t hold out against someone with so much love and sunniness and eternal optimism, even though Noor was as impulsive as Ziya was methodical and pragmatic.
And, when Noor, had told Ziya that one of her distant relatives had an interesting job opening back in Kashmir, managing a fairly large estate and the various business concerns that made up Goonj Enterprises, one of which was manufacturing cricket bats, the most popular sport in the sub-continent, Ziya had been hard-pressed to not at least give the interview a fair shot. And she had flown into Srinagar Airport, after a connecting journey filled with innumerable delays.
Ziya had been fully prepared to turn down the job, because she didn’t think she was suited to just settle down in one place, no matter how interesting and challenging the running of it was.
She had not counted on Kashmir. Her first view of the mountains that ringed the hilly terrain of Srinagar had made her catch her breath. Her second view of the Dal Lake, totally frozen in winter, with the houseboats moored in for the duration like soldiers hunkering down for the long haul, had clutched at her heart. And she’d wanted this job, the managing of an estate she knew almost nothing about, with a desperation that still worried her.
Kashmir was a place, you could love a place.
But, she loved Goonj too. The house of wood and stone, set high up in the hills, overlooking the lake, which flickered like a bright jewel on a clear spring night that she could see down her bedroom window. The challenging job of overseeing the different business interests of the Akhtar family, all of whom were settled in other parts of the world and wanted nothing to do with the house and the business.
And Dada Akhtar.
Grandpa.
Ziya sighed as she looked out her bedroom window and saw Dada Akhtar puttering around with his beloved rose bushes, his tiny gardening scissors going snip-snip on the bad leaves. His beady eyes large behind the gigantic glasses he wore with obvious pride. He was nearing eighty, a retired military man, who was now content with looking after his roses and holding court over his family when they deigned to visit him.
He was the grandfather she’d never had.
Ziya pressed a hand against the chilled glass of her window and called out, “Good morning, Dadaji.”
Dada Akhtar, still spry and having all of his senses whipped his head up and smiled a wrinkled smile at the woman he already considered his newest granddaughter. Mostly because she loved Goonj almost as much as he did. It was home. When he died, it would his resting place. Laid to rest next to his beloved wife Saira, underneath an apple tree in the very first orchard that his grandfather had planted with his own hands.
“Good morning, Ziya. It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?”
Ziya smiled, pushed a swathe of tousled hair away from her face and answered, “Absolutely, Da. Still in love with your roses?”
He held the pair of scissors in a kind of salute and touched one vivid, blood-red bloom with something close to reverence. “As much as I love you, baby girl.”
She laughed, shook her head and was about to close the window when he called out her name.
“Yes?”
Dada Akhtar smiled, a crafty glint in his still-sharp eyes. “Krivi’s coming over for breakfast. I think he has the figures for the new venture you were talking about.”
Ziya caught herself before her smile slipped and irritation took its place. There was no reason to be irritated, therefore she wasn’t. The logic always worked for her. She nodded and said, “I’ll set an extra place for him then.”
She shut the window on Dada Akhtar’s boom of knowing laughter, as if watching Ziya squirm was a source of particular amusement for him. She tied her blond highlighted hair back in a tiny stub, because it barely brushed her shoulders as it is. Less maintenance, less hassle she’d always claimed. But secretly, she was vain enough to know that short hair went particularly well with her face and accentuated her best features while minimizing her flaws.
Now, padding into the bathroom just off her bedroom, she examined that same face while brushing her teeth diligently. It was an average kind of face, with great cheekbones, pale gray eyes, a too-wide mouth and a stub of a nose that looked a little out of place with the rest of the features. She had a nose ring, a tiny clip-on that she wore sometimes and Noor claimed it gave her a fey quality that attracted men in droves. She didn’t know about the fey thing or the droves, because she rarely had time for either of them.
The rest of her wasn’t that bad either, she conceded as she showered rapidly. Nice legs, thank God, and a figure that was curved but with a tendency to go to fat if she didn’t watch out. So she watched out and ate sparingly when she could and binged when she couldn’t resist the temptation anymore.
Besides, work at Goonj meant a lot of walking, even sprinting in some cases. Spring was the best time to get a lot of traveling and work done, because it ended so quickly. And she had several inspections scheduled over the next few weeks over the fields and the cricket bat manufacturing plant and the lumber lot too. The lumber union was demanding a renegotiation of their contract and that was one particular headache she was eager to solve.
Her plate was full, and breakfast had to be made for five people. So, why was she wondering about her decidedly unsexy body in the middle of her shower?
Him, the answer came to her mind immediately.
Krivi Iyer, the new manager who Bashir Akhtar Salman had hired to help her with the management of the estate. She hadn’t been present at his interview. All she knew was that he’d shown up one day in a battered Jeep with a duffel bag full of clothes and unreadable black eyes. He’d arrived six months ago, and they’d barely spoken ever since.
She got on well with people as a rule, it had been drummed into her in B-School, and before that in her various foster homes, the early ones … when she’d tried so hard to be the kid, the one kid they would keep and not send back after six months or a year or two weeks. Agreeability was a learned nature for her.
Yet, she couldn’t make herself look Krivi Iyer in the eyes long enough to make herself agreeable to him. And he, strangely enough, kept to himself too. They never spoke unless there was a business matter to attend to. Sometimes she’d even wondered if he was all there in the head, then she would look into those pitch-dark eyes and know. He was all there in the head all right. He just looked through her. So she made an effort to ignore him as thoroughly and effortlessly as he ignored her, and the plan was working splendidly.
Ziya dressed in jeans and a pullover, ran a brush through her now-free hair and without a trace of makeup, walked downstairs to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Her Google Nexus smartphone, which had been Dada Akhtar’s welcome to Goonj present for her, was already in her hand and she was running through her schedule for the day.
She again blessed Da, as she did every time she punched in keys on her cute-yet-edgy cell phone and smiled fondly as she ticked off making breakfast on her to-do list.
Goonj was laid out in a typical Indian manor house fashion. There was the huge living room which also served as the dining room when the occasion warranted it and the kitchen next to it, with the mudroom just off the back of it. A simple wooden staircase led to the two upper floors, where all the bedrooms and Dada Akhtar’s study and office were.
Ziya’s own rooms were on the second floor because Dada Akhtar had insisted a single girl like her was not staying by herself in the gamekeeper’s cottage, just at the edge of the gardens that surrounded Goonj.
The cottage had been unoccupied till six months ago, when Krivi Iyer had arrived and parked his second-hand Jeep and duffel bag there. Till date, Ziya had found reasons to never visit him at his own place.
Any off-hours business that had to be conducted was done either over the phone or in Dada Akhtar’s home office.
Ziya shook her head and muttered, “Stop acting like a sixteen-year-old ninny.” And entered the kitchen.
“Well, honey, talking to yourself is considered an evolved form of ninny-ness,” a sexy female voice drawled from the inside.
Ziya chuckled and reached for the coffee pot before addressing the comment and its maker.
Noor, dressed only in shorts and a tank top, sexy, sleepy attire with an opened hot pink hoodie thrown on for fashion as much as modesty, raised her coffee mug in a toast. She had the kind of face that stopped traffic. Heart-shaped, with sharp, green eyes that could turn sultry or throw daggers, and a mouth that was made for sex. That with a killer body that she dressed to maximum effect. She could have been a supermodel but she had chosen academia as her calling.
“Just because you are an Oxford scholar doesn’t mean you can make words up, my dear.”
She fired up the gas and placed the iron skillet on it, dropping in a healthy pat of butter while she scrounged the refrigerator for eggs. Scrambled eggs were a morning staple around here. She glanced over her shoulder at Noor who cradled her mug for warmth. “You want?”
Noor shuddered, and the sweatshirt slipped a little to show one tanned shoulder. “No way. That much carbs in the morning will make me a beached whale and then I won’t look hot at my wedding. And, hey, ninny-ness is too a word. I can prove it to you.” Noor took the English language more seriously as the season’s latest fashion.
Ziya broke open the eggs and mixed in the milk, salt and pepper, and the chopped tomatoes and onions which were already frozen in a Tupperware box. She added them and sliced a green chili open right down the middle and added that too. Whisked everything together and poured it over the skillet.
“Don’t just sit there, my beached whale,” she said mildly. “Pop the bread in the toaster, would you? Make extra. Krivi’s coming over for a breakfast consult.”
Noor laughed; a husky sound and whistled. “Ooh! Krivi’s coming over for a breakfast consult, is he?”
Ziya didn’t bother to answer her best friend. So Noor singsonged, “Ziya and Krivi sitting on a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
Ziya removed a toasted bread slice from the pile Noor was adding to, and stuffed it in her opened mouth. Noor’s lovely green eyes rounded in indignation and she munched on the slice before she removed it with a sputter.
“That was low, Zee.”
“Really? It looked pretty justified to me.”
Noor’s toast dropped out of her hands as she squealed and turned around to the man who’d just spoken.
Ziya watched indulgently, affectionately as her best friend launched herself on the military-uniform-clad man who’d come in through the mudroom. He topped at about six feet, and was leanly muscled as befit an officer of the Indian Army, and he had drop-dead good looks and hazel eyes that complemented Noor’s own beauty.
She was kissing him quite enthusiastically, winding her long legs around his lean waist. And he kissed her back, pressing her closer to him for just a second, a second too long before he slid her off his body.
Noor grinned back at Ziya.
“Look what the cat dragged in, Zee.”
“I thought it was your irresistible lure that brought me here, baby,” Major Sameth Qureshi murmured, as he brushed a tender hand over his beloved’s tumbled hair. He made himself move away from her, even though it was becoming increasingly difficult to move away, to stay away, when all he wanted was forever with her. But, the life of an Army man’s wife was not for Noor Saiyed, impending PhD from Oxford. And he didn’t know how he could let her go either.
Right now, that beauty queen face softened into pure beauty that shone from her untarnished soul, through those eyes he saw in his dreams. Noor, who had never known true loss or unhappiness for a single minute of her sheltered life. And, if he had his way, she never would.
“I didn’t want to give myself that much credit. Zee would accuse me of having a bloated head,” she stage-whispered.
“Zee doesn’t have to accuse,” Ziya pointed out dryly. “She already knows about your bloated head, honey. Morning, Sam. You staying for breakfast too, I suppose?”
Sam nodded and stepped fully back from Noor. He dragged his eyes away from her face and smiled at Ziya. A big brother smile. Ziya Maarten was the best friend a girl could have, and she was the closest thing he had to a sister. He worried about her, as much as he admired her for her drive and grit to simply forge ahead and get things done.
“Morning, Ziya. Yes, I came here for your breakfast actually. Not Noor’s supposed lures,” he added with a wink.
Noor rolled her eyes and punched him in the arm before strolling away to pour him coffee. Ziya followed Sam’s eyes as they watched his girlfriend with a kind of helpless fascination she’d always found vaguely pathetic.
“You two are a riot, aren’t you?” Noor sulked as she dumped the mug in Sam’s surprised hands.
Ziya leaned down and picked up the fallen bread slice and gave her a wry look. “You make it so easy, honey. How can we resist? Right, Sam?”
Sam dropped a kiss on top of Noor’s head and slid into a chair next to her. “If I answer that, she will skin me alive.”
Noor brightened and leaned into Sam and said, “Nope. If you answer that, I will make you marry me.”
Sam’s dark eyes shuttered and his face hardened into the soldier that he was. “We have discussed this already, Noor and—”
“We didn’t discuss anything,” she cut in icily, while Ziya fanned the gas flame higher in an effort to drown out the conversation. “You just nixed the idea before we could ever discuss it, Sam.”
“Noor, I told you already, the Army is my career. And it’s a dangerous one, a terrible one. I can’t stand to have you waiting for me when I go to war.”
Noor’s face took on a pugnacious look. Even though they’d had this same argument, practically every day since she’d come back three months ago in order to claim him. Thirty-one, in the Rulebook of Noor, was the right time for a bachelor to settle down. And she was damn well not going to celebrate another birthday as a single woman.
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