Priya drove at 160 kilometres per hour through the Lonavala Ghat section of the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, her phone clamped between her shoulder and ear, the world outside reduced to a blur of concrete barriers and tunnel lights.
Rajan was fifteen minutes behind her in a Crime Branch vehicle with sirens. The Pune police had been alerted. Her father, trembling but coherent, had given them a description of the man who'd arrived at the door with a Mumbai Police ID card — young, clean-shaven, polite. The man Ananya would have recognized. The man who'd been part of her protection detail. Vikram.
The pieces were assembling themselves with the sickening clarity of a puzzle you wish you couldn't solve.
Vikram Patil, twenty-nine, joined the Crime Branch four years ago. Bright, diligent, ambitious. He'd been assigned to Priya's team two years ago and had quickly become indispensable — the officer who was always early, always prepared, always willing to work late. She'd trusted him without question. She'd left him alone in her office. She'd discussed her theories, her doubts, her personal frustrations with cases while he sat across from her, nodding, learning, memorizing.
But why? What was Vikram's motive?
She thought about it as the expressway unspooled beneath her wheels, the ghat section giving way to the flatter Pune approach. Vikram had no connection to Ajay's brother. No visible grievance against the department. No personal history with any of the seven cases.
Unless.
She called the Crime Branch records section. "Pull Sub-Inspector Vikram Patil's full personnel file. Everything — academy records, previous postings, family details."
The callback came as she was passing Khandala. The records clerk's voice was shaky. "Ma'am, there's something in his file. His home address. It's listed as Churchgate."
"So?"
"His mother's name is Nirmala Patil. Maiden name: Nirmala Kapoor."
Kapoor. Priya's hands tightened on the wheel. Rhea Kapoor — Case 7, the disappeared girl — was Vikram's cousin.
Rhea had vanished from Churchgate station three years ago. Vikram had joined Priya's team one year later. He'd spent two years inside her investigation, feeding information to Ajay, guiding the copycat's precision, all while wearing the uniform of the institution that had failed to find his cousin.
His patience was staggering. His discipline was terrifying. He'd sat next to Priya for two years, watched her struggle with the copycat cases that he himself was orchestrating, and never once let the mask slip.
Until now. Because now the endgame required him to step out from behind the curtain and take what he'd come for.
Not revenge through murder. Revenge through mirror. He was going to make Priya's daughter disappear the same way Rhea had disappeared — without a trace, without a body, without closure. He was going to make Priya live with the same unending, unanswerable agony that Rhea's family had lived with for three years.
The Pune city limits appeared. Priya called her father again.
"Beta, the police are here. They're looking. But nobody has seen her."
