Out in the street Veena hailed one of the yellow-and-green auto rickshaws, which were nothing more than three-wheeled covered scooters with bench backseats and open sides. Veena gave the bungalow’s address in the swank Chanakyapuri section of the city and climbed in. With a sudden jerk the driver took off as if he were joining a race, sounding his horn intermittently, despite the lack of need. Since the traffic had now lessened considerably, they made good time, especially when they reached the residential area of Chanakyapuri. Staring straight ahead during the journey, Veena tried not to think, yet she couldn’t get the violent contortions of Mrs. Hernandez’s face out of her mind’s eye.
At the mansion, Veena was unable to convince the driver to enter the driveway to take her to the porte cochere. He argued that he didn’t believe she lived there and didn’t want to get in trouble with the police. Since a similar episode with an auto rickshaw driver had happened twice before in the little less than a month she’d lived there, Veena didn’t try to argue. She paid the man and hustled through the gate into the walled and fenced property. Reaching the front door, she didn’t go immediately to the room she shared with Samira, but rather went directly to the library in the hope of finding Cal still there. When she didn’t find him there, she looked for him in the formal living room, where Nurses International had added a large flat-screen TV. She found Cal and Durell absorbed in a rebroadcast of one of the previous day’s American football games. Both were draped across respective formal sofas with bottles of Kingfisher beer in their hands.
“Ah!” Cal exclaimed, catching sight of Veena. He let his legs fall from the sofa’s arms. “That was fast! Is it done?”
Veena didn’t talk. With a somber expression, she merely waved for Cal to follow her and started back toward his library office.
When Cal walked into the library, Veena was standing just inside the door. She closed it behind him, which he found curious. “What’s going on?” he asked. For the first time he sensed something was decidedly wrong. He looked at her more closely. From his perspective and most everyone else’s, Veena was an extraordinarily beautiful combination of both angular Aryan and rounded Hindu features, with exotically shaped, strikingly blue-green eyes, blacker-than-night hair, and golden bronze skin. Normally, she appeared quite peaceful. But not now. Her usually full, dark lips were pressed together and pale. Cal couldn’t tell if it reflected anger, determination, or some combination. “Is it done?” he questioned again.
“It’s done,” Veena said handing him a keychain with a USB storage device containing Maria Hernandez’s medical record. “But there was a problem.”
“Oh?” Cal questioned, eyeing the storage device, wondering if it was the problem. “Was there trouble getting the data?”
“No! Getting the woman’s medical record was easy.”
“Okay,” Cal said, extending the word. “So, what’s the problem?”
“Hernandez woke up and spoke to me.”
“So?” Cal questioned. He could tell Veena was highly upset but didn’t think the fact that the woman spoke with her was so unusual. “What did she say?”
“She thanked me,” Veena said, as tears welled up in her eyes. She took a deep breath and looked off, trying to keep her emotions in check.
“Well, that was nice,” Cal said in an attempt to lighten the conversation.
“She thanked me just before I injected her,” Veena added angrily. Her eyes blazed as she turned back to Cal.
“Calm down!” he half urged and half ordered.
“It’s easy for you to say. You didn’t have to look into her eyes or watch her face contort. You didn’t tell me she was going to twitch grotesquely and turn purple as she suffocated in front of my eyes.”
“I didn’t know.”
Veena glared at Cal and shook her head in apparent disgust.
“The people who told me how to do it implied the patient would just die peacefully because they would be completely paralyzed.”
“Well, they lied.”
“I’m sorry,” Cal said with a shrug. “I’m proud of you anyway. And like I promised, I heard just a few minutes ago that the conversation my colleagues had with your father went very well. They are very, very confident he will follow their advice to the letter. So from now on, you don’t have to worry about him misbehaving with you, your sisters, or your mom. The men I sent are utterly convinced, but they’re still going to check in every month or so to remind him he’d best behave. You’re free.”
For several beats Cal returned Veena’s glare. He had expected some positive reaction from her, but it wasn’t forthcoming. Just when he was about to question why she wasn’t more pleased to be free, she shocked him by hurling herself at him. Before he knew what was happening, she grabbed his shirt at the collar with both hands and proceeded to tear it open. Buttons popped off with explosive force.
Reflexively, Cal grasped her forearms but not before she’d peeled his shirt back from his shoulders and yanked it down. At that point, in utter confusion, Cal let her pull his shirt completely off, ball it up in a tight bundle, and toss it to the side. He tried to catch her eyes in hope of some explanation, but she was too preoccupied. Without a second’s hesitation, she put both her palms on his bare chest and pushed him stumbling backward until his heels slammed up against the foot of the couch. At that point his knees buckled, and he ended up in a sitting position. Still without hesitation or any explanation, she grabbed one foot, lifted it, and pulled off his shoe, tossing it in the direction of the abandoned shirt. Next came the second shoe. Once the shoes were history, she attacked his belt and zipper, and after grabbing both cuffs, the pants went in the direction of the shoes and shirt.
“What the hell?” Cal questioned as she unabashedly slipped her thumbs inside the waistband of his briefs. Cal’s athletic body in all its glory was in full view. This was beyond even his most lascivious fantasy. It was true that Cal Morgan had been attracted to Veena Chandra from the moment he’d interviewed her nine weeks earlier and had pursued her sexually but with no luck. Cal had been perplexed. Having been voted sexiest man in his Beverly Hills high school graduating class as well as valedictorian, and with similar accolades at UCLA, Cal had never lacked for female companionship and sex, which he thought of as a sport. But he’d never made any headway with Veena, which was confusing, since she always acted as if she truly cared for him, with small favors and special consideration.
“Why are you doing this?” Cal questioned with uncamouflaged bewilderment, although he wasn’t about to tell her to stop. At the moment, Veena was rapidly unbuttoning her nurse’s uniform. She had now locked eyes with Cal, and her expression was one of angry determination. For the first time since he’d met her, the thought went through Cal’s mind that she might be truly emotionally unbalanced. The fact that he’d learned just that day that she’d been victimized by her father for sixteen years was not lost on him.
Veena did not speak as she stepped out of her uniform. Nor did she take her eyes from Cal’s as she undid her bra and set her shapely breasts free. In contrast, Cal let his eyes drop to take in the full glory of Veena’s nakedness. Cal had known she had a knockout body from seeing her in a modest bikini when they’d brought the nurses to California for their month of computer and cultural training, but this was infinitely more captivating.
Still, Veena did not speak, nor did she slow down. The second she was out of her clothes, she advanced on Cal, straddled him, and directed him inside. She then proceeded to put her hands on his shoulders and to rock rhythmically.