Eyes fixed on the road, Ruban grit his teeth and pressed down harder on the accelerator even as fields and villages flew past them on both sides of the highway. He was probably breaking every traffic law in the country and then some, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He would happily spend the rest of his life in jail for traffic violation if it would only get him there on time, before it was too late.
“It could be a coincidence. We still have no concrete proof that Reivaa was there to begin with,” Ashwin said beside him, navigating the GPS on his phone as Ruban drove. Despite his words, however, his voice sounded tense, brittle. His tone told Ruban that Ashwin didn’t really believe what he was saying.
The Hunter kept his eyes trained on the road. With every minute that passed, his heart beat a little faster, his vision blurred with some combination of the wind, dust and a sheer, blood-curdling fear that he hadn’t known he was capable of feeling. Not again - his mind kept repeating with an almost rhythmic consistency. Not ever again.
“Where now?” Ruban asked, his tone clipped, as they approached a crossroads a few miles into Ragah. He knew the city like the back of his hand. Under normal circumstances, he would have died before asking a foreigner for directions in what he had come to think of as his own city over the past eight years. But he wasn’t thinking straight – he was still coherent enough to realise that. It was all he could do to keep his hands steady on the steering wheel, and he wouldn’t be any use to Hiya if he drove them off the road before they found her.
“Left,” Ashwin said, voice oddly decisive. “We’ll go to the mansion first, check if she’s there. If she is, you can inform the IAW and put the place on lockdown, get a security detail around her until we figure out why her photo was in the warehouse.”
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And if not? A traitorous, mocking voice screamed in Ruban’s head. What if she’s not at the mansion? What if they’ve taken her? What if she’s already dead? Dead, like everyone else that ever came near you, ever touched you. Dead and lost forever, all of them.
Ruban bit viciously down on his tongue, drawing blood, even as his knuckles tightened spasmodically around the steering wheel. He forced himself to focus. This was not the time. He had to find Hiya, no matter what the cost. She was the closest thing to a little sister he had ever had and he would not lose her; he refused to even consider the possibility. Turning the wheel with far more force than was strictly necessary, he pressed down hard on the accelerator. He would burn the world to the ground before he let those monstrous creatures touch a hair on her head.
“Did you call the office?” he asked Ashwin, trying to take his mind off his own thoughts.
“I did. Simani’s out on a Hunt but I told Faiz to inform the taskforce and send a team over to Rawaria as soon as possible, to properly search the warehouse for anything we might have missed. On your orders, of course. I called the IAW too but Ms. Saya said your uncle’s not in. He’s in a meeting with the director or something; neither of them is taking calls. You can try calling them later if you have to, but first we should try and get to Hiya. We need to get off the main road. Take the next right.”
Ruban swerved into a relatively empty alley and redoubled his assault on the accelerator. The Zainian was right; it wouldn’t do to stay on the main road too far into the city. The farther they got from the suburbs, the better the traffic laws were enforced and the more congested the main thoroughfares became. Even this early in the morning, they could be stuck in traffic for hours before they reached their destination. Keeping his eyes trained on the narrow road ahead, Ruban shifted gears with a barely contained snarl of frustration.
“We’ll find her, Ruban,” Ashwin said, over the protesting screech of the old sedan’s overworked tires, his voice unusually calm as he directed the vehicle into another bumpy backstreet followed by a lane hemmed in on both sides by barbed fences. “You’ll find her. She’ll be safe. Have faith.”