Chapter 14

The apartment was quiet as Vikram sat at his desk. His fingers traced the smooth oak grain as he thought back about what had happened that fateful night when Inna had been to his apartment drunk. Now that Inna and he had completed the decryption of the data, the monitors were dark. The esoteric code and decrypted files were gone. The frantic energy in the apartment as they worked on Elara’s work was now replaced by the steady hum of the refrigerator. It was almost ... peaceful inside.

Outside, the city was unraveling. Headlines blared a new name every morning. Deputy Mayor Indicted. Chronos CEO in Custody. The splintering files - as the media was calling them - had burned through layers of corruption, exposing the rot had permeated into the city’s administration over years.

Yet, for Vikram, the victory felt like nothing. His work was complete. The storm had passed and now there was nothing left for him but to wait, stranded in the wreckage. His mind however, was constantly on the love of his life - Elara. Was she safe? Was she moving around so that no one would find her? He wished that she could seen him work on putting together with Inna.

Thinking about Inna, he automatically looked at the high shelf in the living room. The empty space where the wooden crown had featured seemed to shout at him. It had been gone for three weeks. He sighed deeply. He missed her desperately and then immediately felt a pang of guilt for thinking about another woman.

Inna had vanished the morning after her confession. He’d woken that morning with the bed still warm from her presence. He sat up wondering if she had a bad hangover. She would need some breakfast and some aspirin to recover. When he got to the kitchen to make them some breakfast, he noticed the crown missing from the shelf.

After that, she’d become a ghost. His texts went unanswered. His calls went to a voicemail that was all detective. Not the Inna he had become familiar with over the past month. He understood. To her, he was a man chained to a missing woman. She’d given him everything. Her skill. Her safety. Her heart. Then stepped back to let the law finish the job.

He missed her. The sharp edge of her voice. The way she frowned at a puzzle. The woman who didn’t do pathetic.

Most days he sat before Elara’s photo from the botanical gardens. He tried to summon the old burning devotion and told himself he was waiting for a call that she’d been found in a safehouse. Or that her body had been recovered.

But the investigators had hit a wall. The politicians knew about the money. They didn’t know about the woman. Elara had been a ghost in the machine and stayed a ghost. Even the Chronos CEO claimed ignorance. Said he’d assumed his people had handled “the situation”.

The phone on the desk vibrated. Sharp in the stillness.

Vikram snatched it up. “Hello?”