Emily Kimelman - Sydney Rye 04 - Strings of Glass by Emily Kimelman Page B

there.”
    “So
what are you doing in Goa?” I asked.
    She
returned her intelligent eyes to me; they
looked tired now, sad, but not defeated. A spark glowed in them that I admired.
Kalpesh Shah was going to have to kill Anita if he wanted to stop her. “He
has a house here. I heard that a shipment was coming, children from Nepal, new
ones. He planned on staying at his estate a week, then returning for the kite
festival but he was delayed in Gujarat. I was sneaking onto his property trying
to get proof of the children. Take pictures, maybe talk to some of them. I got
caught. You saw what happened next.” She closed her eyes again and swayed
slightly. “Thank god you were there.”
    “Then
what?” I asked. “Once you talked to the children, got the pictures,
what was next?”
    “He
has an open house every year for the Kite Festival. It’s a family tradition
that reaches back 500 years. He can’t refuse any guests. I planned on going
there, getting pictures of his home, and speaking
with him;
that would be the final piece of the puzzle.” She became animated now.
“I already have a police source who’s
admitted on the record that they’ve ignored numerous accusations against him.
And someone inside his household has been feeding me information. I’m so
close.” She sat back again, looking exhausted.
    I
fiddled with my glass of whisky. “So what you need,” I said,
“is
to get him on a plane to France.”
    “What?”
she asked.
    “If
he landed in France he’d be arrested, right?” I asked, taking a sip of
whisky, feeling the fire in my belly.
    “Yes,”
she said. “But… I’m a reporter. My plan is to expose him for what he
is.”
    “In
the French press?” I asked. “What will that accomplish exactly?”
    Her
eyebrows pulled together in conference over her elegant though swollen nose.
    I leaned
forward, feeling my heart beat in my chest. “I have a plane.”
    “You
what?”
    “I
have a plane and I can get that murderous, child-abusing
piece of shit on it.”
    Anita
stared at me, speechless.

CHEMICALS
    I laid
under the mosquito net staring at the textured shadow it cast on Anita’s
sleeping form. She was breathing slowly, evenly, like someone who needed it. I
knew I should rest, too, that my body deserved time
to recover, but it felt like a live wire. Dan had offered Anita his side of the
bed. Anita’s exhaustion caught up with her soon after my declaration that I
would grab Kalpesh Shah and drag his ass to France.
    Why did
I say I would go and get him? Because I could? It wasn’t that simple. I wanted
him stopped. The thought of those children being sold to him…
I felt bile rising in my throat and sat up.
    Anita
rolled, stirred, but quickly settled back into her deep slumber. I slipped out
from under the white gauze and tiptoed out of the room. Blue, of course, woke
and followed me, his ears perked. I checked around the corner and saw Dan
passed out in the hammock, his arms thrown wide, one foot hanging over the
edge.
    Taking a
moment I watched his chest rise and fall. He was so sweet looking. His hair,
always in need of a cut flopped across his forehead. A thin sheet covered his
body but I knew that it was sinewy, strong. And he was so damn smart, knew so
much. So many nights I’d slept next to that man, laughed with him over coffee
in the morning, played with him in the surf, yet I
felt no ownership. Dan was not mine.
    Quietly
I headed through the trees to the pool. The lights were off and I slipped off
my pajama pants, pulled my T-shirt over my
head and,
naked, dove in, making hardly a splash. Blue followed along the edge, watching
me as I back- stroked from one end to the other. I
switched to crawl and then finally to breast stroke.
    Sober
now, the cool water and exercise clearing my mind, I thought about Anita’s
story. She was brave, and no fool. I wanted to help and not just because it was
the right thing to do but because I itched for something bigger than paperbacks
and