Tara Mehta

Maybe it was the strangeness of the girl in the other room, but Tara felt uneasy as she awaited Iyam.

A feeling that didn't dissipate, even when he finally arrived. At least he was here, though his presence made her feel no safer.

Safer? Where had that come from?

It didn't matter in the end. Iyam had tp leave on 'business' almost as suddenly as he had arrived. A brief kiss and he was gone.

Strange that a man so big and broad could disappear so easily.

Tara barely heard her bodyguard when he spoke and he had had to repeat himself before she noticed.

"Where to Memsahib?"

"...home."

Maybe at home, the feeling of forboding would go away.

---

It took nearly forty minutes of driving at a slow crawl for Tara to realise that they had not yet reached her apartment. Her driver turned briefly to explain it was some kind of holy procession.

"Can't you ask them to make way or something?"

One minute the driver was calling out the window to one of the solemn-faced monks and then suddenly he was limp in his seat and the other bodyguard was being pulled out of the window near him. Even worse, the doors either side of her had been wrench open and hands, grasping and clutching, reached for her.

No amount of struggling or kicking, ineffectual as it was in her tight skirt and high heels, could help her escape the arm that dragged her back and the cloth clamped tightly over her face...

...trying not to breathe in...

...the cool relief in her lungs when she finally faltered

...then nothingness.