The fifth call came that night. 3:17 AM. Aarav was awake — he'd stopped pretending he could sleep.
Unknown Caller. Nine taps. Then the voice:
"The father built the temple. The son maintains it. The daughter is the priestess. But who is the god, Inspector?"
"Who are you?" Aarav demanded. "Why are you helping me?"
A pause. The first pause the caller had ever taken. Then:
"Because I'm number sixteen. And I don't want to disappear."
The line went dead.
Number sixteen. The next victim. The caller was a woman — the voice distortion had hidden it, but Aarav replayed the recordings in his mind and listened past the artifice. The cadence, the breath patterns, the slight upturn at the end of statements.
A woman. On the list. Already receiving her nine calls from the Saxena system. And fighting back the only way she could — by feeding information to the one detective who was looking.
Aarav was no longer just hunting the predator. He was in a race against the predator's timeline, with a victim as his guide.
Five calls down. Four to go.
And somewhere, in a farmhouse or a garden or a room he hadn't found yet, the ninth cot was waiting to be filled.
