“Coffee,” Naveen added. “And do you have french fries?”
“Yes.”
“Are they good?”
“Eh.”
Honest lady.
“I want a plate of them. No, two plates of them. Cover one of them with the fakest cheese you have. Also, I’d like a strawberry milkshake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.”
Mira waited until Gladys left before murmuring, “We probably shouldn’t use the credit cards. They can track us.”
“Don’t worry, there’s cash in here. Enough to cover our tab, at least.”
He faced her. His lip was cut, and the redness on his cheek foreshadowed a blooming bruise. There was a nick on his throat from when the man had held a knife there, along with some dried blood. His hair was tousled all over the place. His white shirt was streaked with dirt and grime.
Mere hours ago, he’d been comfortable and polished in his worn office with its terrible filing system and single assistant. She’d done this. This was all her fault.
She pulled out a napkin from the dispenser and began rolling it tight. “Do you have any thoughts?”
“Do I have any . . .” He ran his hand down his face, tugging the skin of his cheeks down.
“What?”
“Nothing, you’re running this like it’s a morning meeting.” He folded his arms. “I have many thoughts, none of them very polite. But I suppose, first I’d like an explanation as to what the hell is going on here?”
Mira pressed her hands against the table. She opened her mouth. Paused while the waitress came back with their drinks. Opened her mouth again. “Don’t worry about anything. This is an elaborate prank I put all my exes through. You win! Now we’re going to go back to the hotel, go to the spa, and you’re going to have your first ever pedicure.”
That was what she wished she could say. What came out was, “I’m not entirely sure.”
“Those guys seemed pretty sure about you.”
Those guys. One of whom she’d shot. She swallowed the nausea that had threatened to engulf her. Don’t think about the sound of the shot, or the blood. Not now. “I don’t know why. I’m not a part of this.”
“What is this, exactly?”
“It’s . . . complicated.” And she was extremely out of practice in talking about it.
He clasped his hands over his lower face and rested his elbows on the table. They were silent for a few long moments.
The waitress sidled up with heaping plates of limp fries and the rest of Naveen’s order, as well as cheap pink plastic flip-flops for Mira. She accepted them and put them on her feet, grateful to have something separating her skin and the floor.
“Can I get you two anything else?” She looked between them and their still-full mugs.
Naveen reached for his abandoned, now undoubtedly cold coffee. “No, thank you.”
Gladys gave them a suspicious look, but she popped her gum aggressively and left them alone.
Alone with a thick, pregnant silence. “Mira,” Naveen finally said, and his tone was hoarse and raspy. “Please. We both have family at risk here.”
Naveen had a wonderful family. She’d met them, liked them, yearned for them.
Mira curled her hands around the barely warm mug. At least it was warmer than her.
The lie had become real to her, words she’d recited so many times that they became her existence. Two parents who were gone, no siblings, distant aunt.
That wasn’t reality, though. The reality was that her criminal father had run amok until recently and she had a sister who was currently being held captive and might die unless Mira could come up with some kind of daring rescue. Doing daring things was a personality trait she’d happily abandoned.
His chest expanded. “You look like you’re about to faint. Here,” he said, and pushed the plain fries toward her. “You eat the ones without cheese on them.”
Her lip gave a dangerous wobble before she caught it. He’d remembered.
Did he remember how he used to carry Lactaid for her? He’d surprised her with a packet on their third date, so she could try the cheesecake at the restaurant he’d taken her to. She’d found it more thoughtful than any bouquet of flowers. So thoughtful she’d nearly undressed him in the car heading to his place after.
She wasn’t exactly the fainting type, but she picked up a fry and grimaced as soon as it hit her tongue. Gladys had been right, it was gross.
But it was also a fried potato, so she grabbed another. “My mom died when I was two, that part was true. My dad didn’t, as you’ve learned. He was a conman.”
Naveen didn’t clutch his collar and gasp, but she supposed he’d already gleaned some of this information over the course of the night. “What kind of conman?”
“He always had different schemes going. When I was young, it was convincing older people to hand over their money with promises of doubling their investment.”
“Ponzi schemes.”
“Yes. He was good at grifting.” When she was little and bored, her dad would hide a quarter under a cup and then move it around rapidly amid other cups. His hands had been fast, and she’d never been able to find that quarter. Had he been of a different time, he probably would have set up shop on a sidewalk. “When I got into my teens, he started targeting casinos.”
“Card counting?”
She took another french fry, only to distract from her disquiet. “Sometimes.” Did she need to tell him everything?
She mentally pleaded the fifth. “It got to a point where I could no longer sanction what he was doing.” It hadn’t been a slow realization that her father was wrong. She’d known he was wrong from the time she was young, but he was her only parent, and she’d craved his love and approval no matter how he treated her.
The breaking point had been a slap in the face. Her face. “I didn’t speak to him after I left for college and then he died a year ago.”
“Was that your choice or his?”
Ouch. Because it hadn’t been purely her choice. Her father had probably been as mad at her as she’d been with him. “Mutual.”
“So your father was a criminal, and he stole something valuable from another criminal, and now all of our lives are in danger.”
“That seems to be the case.” Easier to explain than she’d thought.
“You talked about casinos. Could this be Mafia related?”
She shook her head. “No. My dad wouldn’t have targeted someone with connections.” Though . . . when she was young she’d never really thought he’d put her in physical danger either, and he’d done just that.
His lip curled. “Your sister also became a thief, I’m guessing?”
The way he said it, with a faint hint of disgust, pricked her temper, though that wasn’t fair. She felt that same disgust every time she thought of her family and the pain they inflicted on others. The pain she’d once inflicted on others. “I know less about my sister’s business. She travels a lot. My aunt would give me updates on where she was. That’s how I knew she was alive all this time.”
I was trying to go straight.
Mira’s guilt skyrocketed. Sejal hadn’t sounded like she was lying. Had she tried to break out of the mold her father had put her in, too? Sejal hadn’t had her affinity for numbers, but her dad had used his elder daughter as a prop more than once for his schemes. Sejal’s got brawn, Mira’s got brains, her father would say proudly to his buddies. Like instead of raising daughters he was creating the perfect team to run a heist, which he probably low-key was.