CHAPTER NINE

Sanika was the first one to wake up on Wednesday morning. Her glance fell on Samar who was asleep on the rolled-up bed in the hall. She could call out his name or shake him awake, she supposed. But there was no fun in that. What was fun was tip-toeing into the kitchen to fetch a steel plate and spoon and banging them together near his face.

He woke up alright. But she didn't get a chance to relish his startled exclamation for more than a fraction of a second. That was all it took for him to topple her and pin her to the ground. Both her hands imprisoned in one of his and his torso holding her immobile. Then her identity registered.

"That was a damn stupid thing to do, Sanika Joshi," he gritted, releasing her just enough to allow her to breathe.

"Do you react the same way to whoever dares to wake you up?" She was breathless and startled but not scared. She knew he would rather cut off his arm than hurt her. Or rather, the cop in him would cut off his hand than hurt her.

"No. I reserve it for women stupid enough to startle me when I'm trying to protect them from a psycho maniac."

Some of the light in her eyes dimmed and flickered on the brink of extinguishing, making him instantly regret reminding her of that. But this was his Sanika. A woman with more guts than some of the cops he'd met. She stiffened her spine and her chin rose. "Can we not talk about that?"

"Sure," he readily agreed, making no attempt to let her go. They were both breathing hard, with her looking up at him and him looking down at her, their noses only inches apart. Contrary to his big, tough body, his eyelashes were long, making her wonder if they touched his cheeks when he closed his eyes. Cursing herself inwardly, she forced herself to look away from the deep, dark pools of his eyes. They were sucking her in and she had no intention of getting sucked into anything or anyone.

He was a cop. A good cop. And her neighbour who was just being kind and helping her in a tense situation. Nothing more. Nothing less. They were two very different people whose lifestyles didn't match.

Still, for a dizzying moment she thought of how life with him would be like. She enjoyed being with him even when he annoyed the hell out of her. He challenged her, just by being himself. She was hurt and grieving over the loss of her friend but she could feel life coursing through her veins in a way it hadn't done ever before. Had he done that or was it the prospect of the looming danger that was sending her hormones haywire?

"What are you thinking, Sanika Joshi?" he asked, even though he could read her thoughts on her face. Well, maybe not all, but he could decipher the general direction.

"Am I under arrest?"

He grinned. "Tempting thought, but no." With that he slowly released her and got to his feet, extending his hand to her. She took it and pulled herself up.

"I don't want to run today," Sanika stated with her arms folded in a gesture of resolute stubbornness. "It took you less than a second to have me helpless under you. I want you to teach me how to defend myself."

"You did alright with those thugs a few days back," he said softly.

"Still..." she shook her head. "So will you? Teach me, that is."

"Have you had any formal self-defence training before?"

"Nothing formal, but dada taught me some stuff after that Nirbhaya case."

Samar's nod was brief. "Rape prevention mechanisms. Your fauji dada?" She nodded. "OK. Any in-depth training will take time. You can't just get it in a day or two but I'll teach you a few things. You're in good shape already. That helps."

"You don't think I'm average?" The question popped out of her mouth. "That's how most people describe me. Average height, average build, average looking..."

Most people or one of the three idiots, he thought but didn't ask. Instead he answered her question. "There is nothing average about you. Now, are we going to start this thing or stand here discussing your sexiness all day?"

You think I'm sexy? The question hovered on the tip of her tongue but she bit it back. Quite literally. "You take the bathroom downstairs and I'll take the one upstairs."

When she came back downstairs after freshening up and changing from her pyjamas into a pair of shorts and t-shirt, she found the hall's furniture pushed to the walls and the centre occupied by a three-inch-thick mat that her elder brother had bought for their father. It was foldable and made a good base for yoga. Samar, in his sleeveless white vest and tracks, was on it, already doing push-ups.

"That isn't thick enough," she pronounced even as her greedy eyes absorbed the bulging, flexing muscles of his arms.

"It's thick enough. I'm not going to be dropping you on your head," he said, pulling himself to a vertical position with the ease of a ballet dancer.

"It's my butt I'm worried about," she muttered, toeing off her slippers.

"I promise to take good care of that too," he winked.

He was as good as his word. The workout didn't involve getting tossed around or twisted into a pretzel. "First, don't try to take anyone down. You aren't good enough. The best you can hope to do is get away, so that's what you need to focus on. You have the advantage of surprise on your side because men like this bastard don't expect a woman to fight back, and you are small--"

"I'm not. You just said I'm not average," she glared. "I'm most definitely not--"

He cast his eyes towards the ceiling. "You're smaller than most men," he amended.

"But I'm..." she thought for a moment. "I'm sinewy."

"Theek hai." OK. He laughed. "Where, I don't know, but I'll take your word for it. As I was saying," he continued when she got ready to argue further, "he probably expects you to cry and plead for your life."

"And you're going to teach me how to make him cry and beg for his life."

He moved until he was standing in front of her, his eyes direct as they met hers. "Always remember, Sanika Joshi. Try to escape. If you feel that you can't, then fight." She nodded. "And no matter what you do, don't give up. Never give up. You give up and you lose before you start."

She lifted her head proudly. "It's not in me to give up, Rane."

"Good. Let's get started."

Courtesy of her brothers, she already knew some of the basic stuff. Samar refreshed her on how to break the hold of someone who grabbed you from the front -- bring your arms up hard and fast inside the assailant's. A quick, stiff-arm jab of the palm up and into someone's nose, if done hard enough, would cause enough pain to put him down on his knees. So would slapping cupped palms over his ears, a move designated to rupture the eardrums. A jab of stiffened fingers into the eyes or throat was disabling. He showed her how to grab the throat for crushing the trachea. Even if she couldn't manage crushing power, the blow done properly would disable the opponent.

She needed to remember why they were doing this. A friend was dead. A killer was loose. This was survival training, not--

They moved around on the mat, into different positions and scenarios. By necessity, the drill was close contact, and close contact with Samar Rane was a particular kind of torture that no self-defense manual had prepared her for.

He grabbed her from behind -- a simulation of an attacker's hold -- and his forearms locked across her chest, pinning her arms. She was supposed to drop her weight, stomp his instep, elbow his ribs. Instead, for three stuttering heartbeats, all she registered was the iron band of his arms across her breasts, the hard wall of his body pressed flush against her back, the heat of his breath on her neck, and the sheer size of him surrounding her. His chest was damp with sweat and it soaked through her thin t-shirt, making the fabric cling to her skin. She could smell him -- clean sweat and sandalwood soap and something darker, something male and warm that made her stomach clench.

"Sanika. Stomp." His voice was low, controlled, right against her ear. She stomped. Elbowed. Twisted free. Her face was burning and it had nothing to do with exertion.

They grappled on the mat, and her body catalogued every point of contact with mortifying precision. When he pinned her face-down and straddled her hips to demonstrate a ground hold, the weight of him on top of her sent a bolt of heat straight between her legs. When she twisted underneath him, trying to buck him off, his thigh pressed between hers and the pressure against her core made her bite the inside of her cheek to keep from gasping. When they rolled and she ended up on top, straddling him, his hands gripping her hips to show her how to resist being thrown -- she looked down at his face and saw his jaw tighten, saw his eyes darken, saw the rapid pulse at the base of his throat, and she knew with absolute certainty that she wasn't the only one affected.

His hands on her hips. Her thighs bracketing his waist. The thin layers of workout clothes between them doing absolutely nothing to disguise the fact that both of their bodies were responding to this proximity in ways that had nothing to do with combat training. She could feel him hardening beneath her and the knowledge sent a flush of wet heat through her that she was powerless to control. Their eyes locked. Neither of them moved. The air between them was thick enough to choke on.

Then he lifted her off him in one smooth motion, set her on her feet, and stepped back. "Again," he said, his voice rougher than before. "From the top."

They trained for another twenty minutes and it was the most exquisite agony she had ever experienced. Every hold, every grapple, every time his body pressed against hers was a reminder of what she wanted and couldn't have. Her breasts ached where his forearms had pressed against them. The skin of her neck tingled where his breath had landed. Between her thighs she was slick and swollen and throbbing, and she prayed to every deity she could name that he couldn't tell.

He could tell. She was almost certain he could tell. But Samar Rane was a man of discipline, and he didn't cross the line. Not by a millimetre. Every touch was instructional. Every hold was clinical. And that, somehow, made it worse -- because the restraint was its own kind of seduction. A man who could have you and chooses to wait is infinitely more dangerous than a man who simply takes.

"Enough," she moved away from him, distancing herself emotionally as well as physically, her legs unsteady, her underwear embarrassingly damp. "Let's continue this tomorrow. I need to get to work." And, weather be damned, have a cold shower. A very long, very cold shower.

He nodded and stepped back, giving her the space that she seemed to so desperately need. "One of my guys is right outside so I'll go and get ready. We'll leave together."

"Bike ride." She grimaced.

"You don't like?"

"What's not to like?" Her eyes turned dreamy with sarcasm. "Dust, smoke, not to mention inability to wear skirts or saris, sitting on that narrow seat with no room to move for an indeterminate amount of time in the rush-hour traffic..." She clapped her hands. "Oh, I can't wait, DCP saab!"

Samar ambled towards her, eyes alight with laughter, his forefinger running over his moustache. "So you're saying you didn't like riding with me the other night? Was that why you seemed put out last night when I came in the Scorpio?" He didn't wait for her answer. Instead, cupped her cheek.

He had touched her before. Of course he had. She had hugged him while crying for Mira's loss, hugged him from behind while riding his bike, not to mention the morning's training. But this small, simple gesture caught her off-guard. It seemed... intimate. It felt intimate.

"Go and have your cold shower while I have mine. You're not the only one, you know." He winked, turned, and left before his statement completely registered in her befuddled brain.

---

"Sanika back to work?" Salim asked when he saw his friend enter the den.

"Yes. Murder still on the news?" Sanika had been avoiding the TV and newspaper, so he couldn't get a chance to catch up on the front.

"Yup. I'll need to give them the ME report ASAP. Speculations and discussions are going on as to whether the victim was raped or not."

Samar swore. It was nothing new but since he knew the victim... "Has the body been released to the family?"

"Yes. Her father and a couple of others collected it. Cremation is this evening, I suppose. I'm not sure."

Sanika will want to go there, he thought, and quickly messaged her the information. She would coordinate and let him know, and he would take her there.

"So, what's the report?"

"COD is strangulation. Knife wounds were postmortem, probably done with a carving knife or something similar. Head injury anti-mortem. No sperm. No sexual assault at all."

"Just like we thought. So the knife wound was to make sure." Though it was not a question, Salim nodded. "It was overkill. He needed to stab only once or twice to get his confirmation. All those lacerations on the chest... her abdomen was sliced open."

"He did it once, liked it, and kept doing it?"

"He has chosen his weapon to kill then."

"You're sure this is going to turn into a serial? I know we've seen weird things, nasty things, but boss, killing over that funny video goes beyond that."

"The bastard has made a song out of it, Salim. One down, two to go. He called them both and taunted them with it. Another number. I sent our guys again. They turned up empty. Another PCO kind of a thing with no cameras of any kind. He is a warped guy so his logic would be warped too. All or few or one of the points have got him all twisted." He ran a rough hand through his crew-cut hair. "Any prints at the scene?"

Salim picked up another file. "One fingerprint on the inside doorknob. It's partial but clear enough. We're running it now. If the guy has had any priors, he'll be in our system, but otherwise..."

"Why didn't he rape her and kill her? Why not prolong the torture?"

His thought process would probably shock others, but Salim knew what he was asking. They had to think like a criminal to catch him. It was the best weapon. Criminals dehumanised their victims, and he humanised the killers. Get into their head, get ahead of them, and catch them. Or kill them.

But something about this murder was bothering him. He couldn't say what. It would come to him sooner or later but until then he wouldn't stop thinking about it. And once it came to him, he got tunnel vision until he had the guy behind bars or on the mortuary slab, depending on the situation.

"Maybe he can't get it up. He's impotent. Did you watch that video? The things they said about what men should be capable of -- even I can't manage half of that," Salim said, looking pained at the admission. "And you're in love with one of the girls who said all that in the first place. Ya Khuda! Good luck, Rane!"

"Thanks," he said with a grin, thinking of her stubborn, sexy eyes on that slightly triangular face with that cropped hair and that determined tilt of her chin and those sinfully tempting lips.

He had fallen for her the day he saw her punching the guy who'd tried to manhandle her, and he had no hope or desire to get up. Ever. She attacked life with guts. He had never met anyone so annoying, funny, and sharp. As much as he enjoyed that morning, she drove him crazy. Touching her during her self-defence lessons -- he had to have lost his mind to subject himself to such torture. But she delighted him with her grit; he couldn't bring himself to stop.

She was aware of him. Oh yeah, he had seen the way she looked at him while he was doing his push-ups, seen the effort she made not to stare. She trusted him with her life. Not her heart, courtesy of the three idiots. Their different backgrounds weren't helping matters either. But damned if he'd let anything happen to her, even if that meant he had to become her shadow.

"You know what bugs me?" Samar leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. "The no-rape thing. Every case I've studied where a male offender targets women -- especially when the motive is rage or perceived humiliation -- there's almost always a sexual component. Control. Domination. Power expressed through violation." He tapped his pen against the desk. "But this guy didn't touch her. Didn't even try."

"Maybe he panicked. First kill, remember. Things don't go as planned."

"Maybe." But his instinct was nudging him somewhere else, somewhere he hadn't quite articulated yet. The absence of sexual assault was a data point, and data points formed patterns, and patterns told stories. He just hadn't figured out which story this one was telling him. Not yet.

Salim pulled out a stack of printouts. "I've compiled the list of male employees at Prisma who work in the same building as our three women. Two hundred and thirteen people. I've cross-referenced against anyone with a prior record -- came up with four. Two minor traffic violations, one drunk and disorderly, and one domestic complaint that was withdrawn."

"The domestic complaint. Who?"

"Arnab Das. Senior VP. His wife filed and then withdrew it six months later. They're still married."

Samar made a note. "And the rest?"

"Clean. But clean on paper doesn't mean clean in the head. I've started pulling social media profiles. Most of these tech guys have everything online. Their whole lives, there for anyone to see." He shook his head in wonder. "I mean, I'm from the old school, boss. I don't even post my lunch."

"You don't eat lunch, Salim. You inhale it."

"Point taken. But what I'm saying is -- this guy, if he works at Prisma, he's probably smart enough not to leave a digital trail."

"Or he's not on social media at all," Samar said slowly. "Think about it. Someone who hates women this much, who's this socially dysfunctional -- would he be posting selfies and sharing memes? I doubt it."

Salim caught on immediately. "So we look for the absence instead of the presence. The guys who don't have profiles. The ones who keep to themselves."

"Exactly. Start there."

"Have you told her yet?"

"Gappa band kar!" Shut up! Samar looked peeved. "She just lost her friend. Her own life is in danger. Proposal is not high on the list of my priorities right now." He sighed. "Back to the case. It is someone who works in that company. Attack was too personal and he knew too much of their personal information."

"But this kind of insanity wouldn't go unnoticed, right? And it couldn't have developed overnight either. And we've seen worse stuff than this video."

Another point clicked and fell into place. "This guy is socially incompetent. I doubt he would have things like an Instagram account or X account. And no, this kind of behaviour can't go unnoticed. He hates women and that would've come out somewhere. Complaints lodged by co-workers, warnings from management..."

"If he is not active on social media..."

Samar slapped his palm flat on the table. "The video made it to the Prisma mailing list. That's how he saw it, watched it, and knew the identities."

"And he flipped?" Salim asked doubtfully.

"Probably, or maybe there has been some recent stressor. His colleagues and team members would not be comfortable working with him and it's sure to have made the management consider an intervention of some kind. Either through a warning or a suspension."

Salim nodded slowly. "I'll ask the admin at Prisma for records of any complaints, warnings, or disciplinary actions in the last six months. Anyone who's been flagged for behavioural issues."

"Good. Also, check if any employee has a history of violence. Previous employers, police records, anything."

"That's a lot of people, boss."

"I know. But we narrow it down. Start with the department where the three women work. HR knew about the video, right? It circulated on the company mailing list. Who has access to employee personal details? Phone numbers, addresses?"

"HR, obviously. Admin. Maybe IT."

"Start there. And Salim?" His friend looked up. "He'll try again. Soon. The calls have stopped, which means he's either given up -- unlikely -- or he's planning."

---

End of Chapter Nine.

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