Priya's hand was on her weapon. Her heart was doing something that no training manual covered — beating with the dual rhythm of a mother's terror and a detective's focus.
She could wait for backup. The tactical choice. The safe choice. But Vikram was inside with her daughter, and every minute was a minute he could decide that the plan had changed, that disappearance wasn't enough, that the final act required a different ending.
She unbolted the back door. It swung open silently — the hinges had been oiled recently. Inside was a corridor, dark, leading to a lit room at the front.
She moved through the darkness the way she'd been trained — weapon up, back to the wall, each step deliberate. The farmhouse was bare: stone floors, whitewashed walls, the smell of dust and kerosene.
The lit room. She could see into it from the corridor. Ananya was sitting on a wooden chair, not tied but clearly not free — Vikram stood between her and the only exit, his service weapon holstered but within reach.
He was talking to her. Not threatening. Explaining. Telling her about Rhea — about the cousin who'd gone to Churchgate station one Friday evening to buy a birthday card and never came home. About the aunts who'd stopped sleeping. About his mother who'd aged ten years in one. About the system that had assigned Senior Inspector Priya Sharma to find Rhea and hadn't found her.
"Your mother is a good officer," Vikram was saying. "I've seen her work. She's thorough, intelligent, dedicated. But she failed my family. And now she'll understand what that failure feels like."
"She already understands," Ananya said. Her voice was steady — shaking, but steady. She was her mother's daughter. "She carries every case she can't solve. Every single one. You think she doesn't feel it? She doesn't sleep. She doesn't eat. She blames herself every day."
"That's not enough."
"Then what is?"
