The two weeks were dense. He was in the corridor for her working hours, in the coffee place in the mornings, in the vicinity for her social engagements. He brought his own chair. He used the time to pull company records, cross-reference financial inspection timelines, build the evidentiary structure that would make what he knew provable rather than just known.
He saw Rohit Kapoor four more times. Each time, he watched carefully — looking for the scanning, the checking — and found it, consistently, every time Rohit left a space that Priya was in. Not paranoia. Surveillance. The habitual monitoring of someone who needed to know where a threat was in relation to themselves.
He was also, in those two weeks, inside Priya's life in the way that close proximity to someone inevitably produced. He saw her work — not just the water project but her other contracts, the way she managed her small team, the way she handled difficult clients with a combination of patience and precision. He saw her tired — at the end of a twelve-hour day, coming out of the office with her shoulders carrying the weight of it. He saw her happy — two moments entirely unrelated to work, a phone call with someone she clearly loved (her college friend, he gathered from the fragments he couldn't help overhearing), a conversation with Kapil that descended into laughter over something he couldn't hear.
He was learning her the way you learned a thing you were going to have to protect at close range — completely, without gaps, every aspect relevant. He told himself this was the correct professional framing. He was mostly successful in this telling.
On the twelfth day, she came out of the office at nine PM and found him in his chair with the case file on his lap and said: "You've been here since noon."
"Yes."
"Have you eaten?"
"Not since lunch."
She looked at him. Then she went back into the office and came out five minutes later with a container of dal and rice — her dinner — and placed it on the floor beside his chair. "Kapil's mother sends enough for three people. I'll never finish it." She went back inside before he could object.
He ate Kapil's mother's dal, which was very good, and went back to his file, and did not let himself think about the quality of the gesture for more time than was professionally appropriate.
