Chapter 7 — Dubai

"He said I was the third," Naina said."You're not a journalist," Leila said."I know. He said my job was the chain of evidence. The legal verification.""Which is the most important piece," Leila said. "A story without legal standing can be published and ignored. A story with documented chain of evidence, with a law enforcement officer as the verifying source—" She paused. "That's a case. That can go to courts. To international tribunals. That's something they can't just suppress with a phone call."She looked at Naina."He needed you specifically," she said. "Your profession. Your position. He was waiting for you to be in a position to be the third piece." She paused. "Which means he may have planned the crash."The words landed with significant weight."Planned it," Naina said."Used the threat against him as the trigger. Let them think they'd succeeded. Disappeared with enough of the story that his system could complete itself." She looked at her coffee. "It's the most dangerous thing I've ever heard of anyone doing. But it's also the cleverest, if it works." She met Naina's eyes. "Because once you're dead, they stop watching. And a dead man can move very freely."Naina sat with this.She thought about the message at two thirty-four AM. Don't come home yet.She thought about Don't trust the London office.She thought about eight years of marriage to a man who had, apparently, been running an intelligence operation inside his own life without telling his wife.She thought about whether she was angry. She checked. She was. She set it aside."I need to find him," she said."He'll find you," Leila said. "When the time is right. That's how he's designed this." She paused. "The question is whether the time is right before whoever killed Preethi Anand realises the death didn't take."