For a long moment, the only sound in the apartment was the soft hum of the ceiling fan. Neel Verma looked at the old photograph, then back at Anjali. In his years at the CBI, he had seen criminals of every stripe. He had seen greed, jealousy, and rage. He had seen men and women who would burn the world for profit or power. He had rarely, if ever, seen justice as a motive.
The law was clear. Anjali Sharma had committed a crime. She had broken into a man's home and stolen an object with a staggering monetary value. The system would label her a thief, her brother an accomplice, and send them both to prison. It was a neat, simple, and profoundly unsatisfying answer.
Neel's entire career, and his subsequent exile, had been a rebellion against simple answers. He saw the world not in black and white, but as an intricate clockwork of cause and effect, of history and consequence. What Anjali had done was not a disruption of the system; it was a correction. An illegal, elegant, and, to his mind, entirely logical correction.
"Where is it?" he asked, his voice even. "The Nad-Brahma."
"It is safe," Anjali replied, her gaze steady. "It is where it belongs."
"With Vikramaditya Narayan?" Neel countered.
A flicker of contempt crossed her face. "Never. He was a means to an end. A key to open a locked door. He thinks the sitar will be delivered to him tomorrow. He will be disappointed."
Neel gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod. This changed things. The game was still in play.
He walked toward the door, his decision made. He was not a policeman. He was not a judge. He was a private investigator, hired to find a lost object. The morality of its ownership was not in his contract.
"The police will eventually connect the dots," he said, turning to face her one last time. "Your brother's employment, your background. They are slow, but not altogether stupid. They will be here within a day or two."
Fear, for the first time, touched her eyes. "What should I do?"
"Nothing," Neel said. "You will stay here. You will go about your day. When the police come to question you, you will express surprise and deny everything. You are a dancer, not a thief. They will have no proof."
"But the sitar..." she began.
"The sitar will be returned to Pandit Uday Mahesh," Neel stated calmly.
Anjali flinched as if struck. "No! I won't..."
"I was hired to find the Nad-Brahma, Ms. Sharma," Neel interrupted, his voice cutting through her panic. "And I will. But a story must be told. A performance must have a final act." He paused, letting his words sink in. "Vikramaditya Narayan hired you to humiliate his rival. Pandit Mahesh hired me to find his property. Both men believe they are in control. Both are wrong."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, plain visiting card with only his name and a phone number on it.
"Tomorrow morning, a delivery boy will come to your door with a package," Neel instructed, placing the card on a small table. "It will be a large, empty instrument case. Put the sitar inside it. Then call the number on this card. A courier will be sent to this address to pick it up. The drop-off location will be of my choosing."
"And then what?" Anjali whispered, her mind racing to catch up with his.
"Then," Neel said, a ghost of a smile touching his lips, "you get to watch the show."
He opened the door and stepped out into the quiet hallway. He had found his third option. He would not turn her in, and he would not let her keep the sitar. He would navigate between the two, creating a new outcome that served his own unique sense of justice.
He was no longer just solving a case. He was hijacking it.