WANTED: for the greater good

Truth is stranger than fiction

The officers led them out of the dingy hollow of stone into the open, where daylight was fading.

Ash and Rohit remained inside, crouched beside Jaddu and Virat. 

It was pretty much impossible to hide that they were the ones who'd crossed into the high-security zone, now. There were two options visible to Rohit: resign themselves to their criminal fate, or try to slither out of the fix.

For that, they'd need an excuse.

"How exactly did you find your son?" the lead officer--Bailey, his nametag said--asked Shikhar in an interrogative tone.

"His godfathers had kept him safe, it turns out." Shikhar waved an arm to indicate them. "My teammates--who happened to be in Australia during the kidnapping."

Officer Bailey nodded grimly. "Your teammates, it also turns out, have also been on the run with your son for a while now..."

"Yes, I assume--I assume they rescued him from the kidnappers?" Jinks, his eyes and face swollen with crying, gave Rohit a brief but significant glance.

"Yeah, we did..." 

An excuse, Rohit discovered, was a lot more difficult to think up without Virat and Jaddu lying conveniently without a blink of their eyes.

"Today morning..." He had to fight not to clench his fists as he wanted to--he was pretty sure that was a sign of nervousness and he couldn't show he was nervous. "Ash and I were strolling today morning on the streets, and we spotted Zoravar outside a--a casino--with a bunch of strangers. We knew he'd been kidnapped, it was all over the news--and Zoravar is practically like our own son, so we--"

"They came and informed us all," Rahul broke in. "Then we went out to see if we could rescue Zoravar and..."

"Which casino was this?" Officer Bailey asked.

A brief pause.

"Near that, um, that big white building..." Rahul was speaking with admirable calm.

Maxwell took a step in front.

"The Royal Exhibition building?" he prompted softly. "Then that must be the Crown Casino they passed by."

"Yes--yes, that's it." Jassi said. "We caught them unawares, took Zoravar and ran."

"You appear to have rescued the boy in the vicinity of the bomb blast," commented another officer. "You all were spotted by the traffic police on Sixth Cross street..."

"Oh yes," said Shubman quickly. "We were running with Zoravar--and that bomb they set off! Oh my god, that sound! We were so scared!"

Rohit got an absurd and untimely desire to laugh. He curbed it sternly and spoke.

"We realize now we should have looked for the nearest police station, but honestly...we'd gone blank because--Zoravar is so close to us and all we could think was taking him to safety at that point. I mean, the kidnappers who possessed bombs might've possessed any number of other weapons, too..."

"The bomb was scary, Daddy," Zoravar told Shikhar, in all innocence.

That lit a bulb in Rohit's head.

"And Zora kept saying he wants to go to his dad," he said. "We thought--at the back of our minds, I suppose we thought, if we took him to the police, he'd be given over to his mother, his legal guardian."

"As he would indeed be," Officer Bailey said.

"No!" said Zoravar. "I want to stay with Dad! I want to go to India with Dad!"