The gate was padlocked. Aarav climbed the wall — stone, rough, about six feet high. The compound was clean — swept recently, no debris. A garden of sorts — not decorative but functional. Herbs, he realized. Tulsi, neem, ashwagandha. Medicinal plants, arranged in nine rows.
Nine rows.
The farmhouse itself was a single-storey structure with a corrugated roof and whitewashed walls. The front door was locked — modern, electronic, incongruent with the rural architecture. Through the windows, he could see nothing — blackout curtains, heavy and deliberate.
He circled to the back. A smaller door, wooden, bolted from outside. Not locked — bolted. As if something inside needed to be kept in rather than something outside kept out.
He slid the bolt. The door opened into darkness. The smell hit him first — clinical, antiseptic, like a hospital ward. Beneath it, something else — incense. Camphor. The smell of prayer.
He turned on his phone's flashlight and stepped inside.
The room was large — the entire back half of the farmhouse, converted into a single space. The walls were painted white. The floor was concrete, scrubbed clean. Nine hospital-style cots were arranged in a circle, their heads pointing inward like the petals of a flower. Each cot had clean white sheets, a pillow, and a small table with a glass of water and a plate of fruit.
Four of the cots were occupied.
Four women. Sleeping — or sedated. Eyes closed, breathing steady, dressed in identical white cotton garments. Megha Arora. Saloni Bhat. Priti Verma. Neha Rastogi. Alive.
They were alive.
Aarav's hands were shaking. He checked the nearest woman — Neha Rastogi, recognizable from her missing person photograph. Pulse: steady. Breathing: regular. No visible injuries. But her pupils, when he lifted her eyelid, were constricted. Opioid sedation, probably. Enough to keep them docile without killing them.
He pulled out his phone to call Kavita — and stopped.
On the wall at the far end of the room, illuminated by his flashlight, was a painting. Large, detailed, done in the style of a traditional Hindu mural. It showed a goddess — multi-armed, serene, surrounded by nine figures in white. The nine figures were offering something to the goddess. Not flowers, not fruit.
Themselves.
Nine women. Nine offerings. A ritual of completion.
And beneath the painting, on a small wooden shelf, nine photographs. Four of the victims — Megha, Saloni, Priti, Neha. And five more. Five women he didn't recognize. Five women who hadn't been taken yet.
Future victims. Pre-selected. Already part of the ritual in the killer's mind.
Aarav photographed everything — the room, the cots, the painting, the nine photographs. Then he backed out through the rear door, slid the bolt, climbed the wall, and ran to his car.
He was halfway down the dirt path when he saw headlights approaching from the road. A car — black SUV, high beams — turning onto the path. Coming toward the farmhouse.
Coming toward him.
He killed his own headlights, reversed into a gap between the neem trees, and waited. The SUV passed within ten metres. Through the tinted windows, in the brief wash of moonlight, Aarav saw the driver.
It wasn't Raghav.
It was a woman. A woman he knew. A woman whose face was as familiar to him as his own reflection, because he'd seen it across a desk, in briefing rooms, and at the head of every meeting he'd attended for the last four years.
DSP Kavita Sinha.
His mentor. His superior. The woman he'd called first when he'd found the pattern.
Driving to the farmhouse at 1 AM.
Aarav sat in the dark between the neem trees and felt the case crack open beneath him like ice on a frozen lake — and underneath, something so cold and so deep that he couldn't see the bottom.
