Into You

Chapter 69

"My goodness, is it always this hot here?"

It was their first day in New Dehli and Sinu Cabello clearly wasn't impressed with the conditions, or the room they were waiting in to see yet one more politician's aide in the frustrating search for someone who was prepared to help them. She couldn't say she blamed her. It was as hot as hell today, almost as hot as it had been in the summers she'd suffered through in Afghanistan and Iraq; and the air conditioning unit that labored away in the corner of the office was barely raising a breeze.

There was one bonus, however. The clothes they were wearing, though less than casual, were a lot more comfortable than the fatigues and body armor she had to wear over there; and was planning to wear again.

"Just wait until the middle of the afternoon, Mrs. C," she said with a smile she honestly didn't feel, "you'll wish it was this cool then."

"If it gets hotter than it is now, Lauren, then I will be back at the hotel, either in a pool...or cheating on poor old Colin with an air conditioning unit!"

She nearly sneezed her coffee out through her nose at that comment, coughing and spluttering as the drink went 'down the wrong way'.

"Are you all right there, Lauren, mija?" Sinu said smirking at her discomfort as she choked her way back to good health. She was amazed as ever at how Sinu managed to remain 'herself' in public, despite the circumstances that had dragged them to this sweatbox on the other side of the world; she was still managing to crack a joke in the darkest of hours.

"A brave face for a cruel world, dear," she'd told her on the flight over here, "you never know who may be watching or why. It was something Alejandro used to say; never let your opponent get an advantage from how you appear."

She approved of that; keep the enemy on their toes, make them think that you know something that they don't. It was a good tactic, if a hard one to keep up; it shouldn't matter, though. Hiding her feelings from the outside world was something she had always been good at.

o+o+o

It had been a rough trip to get to New Delhi and their hotel. Continuing with her theme of shitty traveling, their flight over was delayed; problems with a passenger who had not boarded the plane causing a small security scare as they found and offloaded their bags. By the time that was dealt with, they were nearly an hour behind schedule, and with a long flight and the time difference to take into account, it was going to end up being a long day.

Even though it was relatively early, Sinu was yawning loudly even before they'd reached the taxi-point at the end of the runway; the plane readying itself for take-off at the end of the black strip, engines idling away as the pilot waited for clearance. She wasn't quite so relaxed, seizing the armrest with her usual white knuckled grip as the engines screamed somewhere behind her. She could feel the pulse pounding in her head as they accelerated and, not for the first time, she wished it was Camila who was sat next to her; her habitual hand holding one of the things that had got her through the week of globetrotting.

By the time they'd leveled off and the seat belt sign had been switched off, the girl was away with the fairies; head lolling onto the comfortable headrest of their first class seats as she slept.

Fortunately for Lauren, her trip to Camila's flat had allowed her to grab some of her magic sleeping pills; and somewhere over Eastern Europe, tired of the feelings and the strain of the trip, she'd buzzed the cabin crew for a glass of water and taken half of one, eventually falling asleep between one heartbeat and another. By the time her subconscious had tortured her back to consciousness with yet more images of her dead friends, including a bleeding Camila, this time with her throat sliced wide open, she found Sinu awake and watching a film on the tiny screen in front of her.