Raghav looked at her with the expression of a police officer who's just been asked to approve something spectacularly unwise.
"You want to use yourself as bait."
"I want to use myself as the thing I am — a target. The difference between bait and a target is whether the target knows it's being hunted. I know. And I'll have backup."
Dev — the ex-military security man — was in. He'd be within thirty metres at all times, dressed as a civilian, carrying nothing that looked like a weapon or a radio. Raghav would have a plainclothes team at each location — two officers, rotating, positioned to observe anyone fitting the physical profile.
"And if they don't show?" Raghav asked.
"Then I've spent a few afternoons walking through Delhi's nicest neighborhoods. Worse fates."
"And if they do show, and we miss them?"
"Then I'm Subject #035, and you have three to five days to find me before my rating drops to 3."
---
Day one: Hauz Khas Village. 4 PM to 7 PM. Isha walked the lanes — past the galleries, the cafes, the vintage stores that sold the cultural detritus of Old Delhi at New Delhi prices. She walked slowly, naturally, performing the one role she'd been assigned: herself. A woman in her late twenties, alone, looking at her phone, occasionally pausing to photograph street art or duck into a shop.
Dev was twenty metres behind, pretending to browse leather wallets. Raghav's team was at the entrance and the exit. Three hours. Nothing happened. The Watcher didn't come, or came and wasn't seen.
Day two: Khan Market. Same window. Same protocol. Isha browsed books at Bahrisons, drank coffee at a café, sat on a bench and read. Dev was across the road, eating a sandwich with the meticulous dedication of a man who was actually scanning every pedestrian within a hundred-metre radius. Still nothing.
Day three: Connaught Place. The inner circle, the corridor shops, the open-air seating areas where the afternoon light was golden and perfect for photography. Isha walked for two hours.
At 5:47 PM, Dev called her. "Red cap. Your ten o'clock. Twenty metres. Standing by the pillar."
She didn't look. She kept walking. But her peripheral vision — trained by three days of hyperawareness — caught the figure. Male, early thirties, wearing a red baseball cap and a grey hoodie. He was standing at the exact distance — twenty metres. He was to her left. And he was holding a phone at an angle that wasn't casual scrolling. That was photography.
"I see him," she said into her earpiece.
"Don't approach. Let Raghav's team take it."
But the man in the red cap did something unexpected. He lowered his phone, pocketed it, and walked directly toward Isha. Not quickly, not threateningly. The casual pace of someone who's decided to close the distance between observation and contact.
He stopped three metres away. He was young — late twenties, thin face, glasses, the kind of person who could stand in any crowd in Delhi and be invisible. Average height, average build, average everything. The anonymity of the ordinary.
"Isha Verma," he said. Not a question.
Her heart was hammering. Dev was moving toward them. Raghav's team was converging. But the man made no threatening gesture. He just stood there, hands in his hoodie pockets, and said:
