SAFE HAVEN
JOE took a breath of relief as he stepped into the hotel room, their shelter for the night. It had two cots separated by a side stand. They decided to keep a low profile and ordered the food to be delivered to their room. Both of them were exhausted, so they went to bed without further ado.
But Joe couldn’t sleep. He feared that the people who chased them today would show up .He didn’t want Lisa to panic even more, so he didn’t tell her anything.
“You awake, Joe?” Lisa’s voice broke him out of his thought world,
“Yeah, didn’t you go to sleep yet?”
“Tell me something, Joe. Have you lost someone close?”
“Yeah, my grandparents. It was so sad. I can’t imagine what you are going through”
“You know, I didn’t cry that day. I was so numb. I didn’t cry until I gave them the final kiss. When I felt the cold on the face I just couldn’t hold anymore. I felt so lonely. I don’t know how I lived through those days”
Joe stretched out his hand to feel her hand. “You are not alone anymore. I’m with you. Together we will figure out all this. Get some sleep. I have a feeling that it is going to be sleepless nights ahead. Ah! Where am I going? Leave all that .Get some sleep”
Although Joe tried to talk Lisa into going asleep, he knew that he had to be vigilant. The people who chased them are still out there in the hunt for them. But he was determined to protect Lisa from any harm’s way.
Next morning, once again Joe found himself in his car with Lisa on his side. But this time she was the one at the wheel. Joe had felt that Lisa needs to take her mind of all the worries for a while. He thought putting her behind the wheel might take her mind off things. It did take him a while to convince her to take the wheel. Lisa was afraid something like last day might happen. He knew if something like what happened yesterday happens today, it was not going to end like yesterday. The almost vacant highways gave her the confidence to go faster than her, self-set speed limit. From the time he learned to drive he had never been in the passenger seat until a couple of days ago. But there he was sitting beside the love of his life as she drove to the place which he believed to be a safe haven.
“Take the next left. We are here. ”Joe gave Lisa the direction of their last turn. The road led them to the beautiful contemporary villa, as they approached the gate, Joe asked Lisa to honk twice. Without keeping waiting for long, a man came running and opened the gate. He was in his forties. He had a thick moustache and a shabby beard. It seemed like he was working in the garden. There was dirt on his lungi.
“At least tell me now. What is this place?” Asked Lisa as she stopped the car in the porch. Her eyes spoke out her curiosity. She had such expressive eyes. Taking a moment to enjoy the look on her face, Joe answered “This is one of my family’s rest houses”. Just as he said it, his eyes caught the silver bracelet on her right hand with a cross on it.
“Hey, you still have this?” Asked Joe reaching for her hand.
“Yeah, it was a gift from my parents”.
Lisa wanted to talk more about it, but then she noticed the man from the man who opened the gate was waiting for them. When they got out of the car, the man greeted Joe
“Welcome Joe sir”.
“Hello Mohan. This is Lisa and Lisa this is Mohan. He and his wife Lakshmi takes care of this place”. Both of them exchanged smiles.
“Lisa, come on. Let’s go to inside”. Lakshmi was at the front door by then.
“Lisa, Lakshmi.” Joe turned to Lakshmi and said “Take her to her room.” He turned to Lisa again “Get fresh. We’ll talk after that. I also desperately need a shower. Lisa followed Lakshmi to the room upstairs. Joe had asked Mohan the night before to get a room ready for guests. This villa was one of his special places.
After almost half an hour, Lisa came down all refreshed to find in front of his laptop.
“Busy Joe?” She asked as she came down.
“Hey, nothing I was just checking upon the delivery of the portable floppy drive that we ordered.” Joe closed his laptop and walked towards a shelf. “It will be here today. Hey, would you like some wine? There is some French wine here.”
“Wine? Don’t you have anything steamy?”
Joe didn’t expect that. Coming from Lisa, that question seemed like a major twist in a movie. His face clearly reflected his thoughts.
Trying to hide it, he said “Sure. What would you like?” And he opened the shelf to showcase some Liquor bottles.
“You should have seen how your face changed. I’ll have that French wine,”
“What?”
“I just wanted to see the look on your face when I said that.” Saying this she laughed. Joe saw her laughing from her heart for the first time in the past few days.
“Well, you can’t blame me for that. Coming from you it seemed like a twist in the movie”. He sat down again and poured the wine into two glasses.
“So you were telling me about this place”. Lisa changed the topic of discussion.
“Yeah, about this place. Huh, we, that is my family owns villas like this in places which we quite often visit and great places like these”.
“You are telling you have more places like this! That sounds crazy. How do you take care of these places?”
“We have caretakers at each villa like Mohan and Lakshmi”. “Madness of rich people!”
“Ha ha, I thought you might say that. The way I see it, we made the previous owners of this house rich. Created a flow of money.” Said Joe taking another sip of the wine.
“Maybe I won’t understand, like you never understood why I used to be sad, even when I got marks that you thought were good. And you used to tease me all the time”
“Since you mentioned that, fill me in.”
She put down the wine glass and made herself comfortable in the chair.
“Tell me this. Have you felt that the outcome of something on which you put a lot of effort wasn’t as good as it should have been because you made a careless silly mistake?”
“Yeah, it feels so bad”
“By the way, I never came to know what family business is.” Lisa popped question completely out of the blue.
“You know, you just sounded like a father interrogating his daughter’s boyfriend.”
“You can’t blame me. I don’t have anyone to do it for me” Realizing that he should not have made that comment, Joe tried to shift her focus by answering her question.
“Well, we do a lot of things. Real estate, construction, seafood exporting and my personal favourite car distribution companies. Ever heard of KMK motors?”
“That is yours?” Lisa had another sip of the wine.
“Yep”
Interrupting their little conversation, the calling bell rang twice.
“Mohan get the door”. Joe called out
Mohan came running almost immediately. He opened the door. After exchanging few words with the person at the door, he cried out.
“It is a delivery guy, sir. He says you ordered something online.” Joe and Lisa looked at each other. It was the floppy drive they were expecting. “I’ll get the laptop, you deal with him. “Said Lisa getting off her chair.
Joe took the parcel and paid him. Unwrapped the cover and skimmed through the instructions. By that time Lisa came with the laptop.
“What took you so long? Joe asked without looking at her. Before she could reply, he looked at her only to be surprised. She was wearing glasses.
“Wait a minute. When did you start using glasses”.
“Very recently. I just use it when I using laptops or when spend long hours with the phone.”
Joe looked at the glasses in detail. The frame was rectangular in shape and was mostly white.
“Anyways, it suits you”
“Flattering me will do you little help. Why don’t you focus on the task at hand”. Lisa frowned.
“As you wish, my lady”
Joe plugged in the drive to the laptop, installed the necessary software. Finally, it was all ready for unveiling the secrets in the floppy.
“Here we go”, said Joe inserting the floppy into the drive. Both of them anxiously waited to see what new knowledge were they going to get from the floppy they found at Jolly villa.
Joe double clicked the floppy icon. It opened up. What they found was nothing like what they were anticipating. They stared at each other astonished.