- What if the world told you 'men never change'. Would you still believe in redemption?
- What if your whole life is shrouded in secrecy. Would you shed your mask for one person anyway?
- What if an avatar intrigued you. Could you fall in love with...
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Zain
"Her brother is alive," I told Fiza
She immediately corrected me. "She has a brother alive. We can't rule out any possibility."
The two of us were meeting early in the morning after a threatening note had been tossed into my car. Holding an extra-large mug of chai, Fiza was at her desk promptly at 7 am, her eyes still heavy with sleep. I hadn't been able to get much sleep after I texted her last night either, but for me this wasn't just an investigation of an ordinary threat. This was an intrusion into a realm I pretended didn't exist- a space shared between myself and a woman with gray, stormy eyes.
Fiza, however, was just a professional doing her job.
She was setting up a large white board next to her desk when I felt it necessary to say out loud, "I am sorry you have to be up so early."
"That's alright," she smiled in return. "I'll use any excuse I can to get out of my house these days."
"Everything ok?"
She sighed, and arranged some files on her desk. "My family has been after me to get married, and someone from my extended family is interested in me, while I am absolutely not."
"You're not interested in the guy or marriage?"
"Marriage," she pursed her lips. "Every man I have come across so far wants me to retire from the police. I refuse, my parents get upset, we give each other the silent treatment, then they start lecturing - and on and on it goes. I am just sick of the whole thing."
"So," she took a long sip of her chai and smirked. "I'd rather look for your lady love's stalker any day."
"Please don't call her that." I cringed.
"Your sweetie pie," she laughed.
"No."
"Dil ka tukra."
"Stop, please."
"Khoobsurat shehzaadi."
"Quit it."
Needless to say she was wide awake now at the expense of my crumbling composure and embarrassed self.
*******
By now I had worked with Fiza long enough to know that the white board she loved pulling up to her desk functioned as half her brain. Within minutes she had listed all the names we had investigated so far and what we knew about them. Some of that was not new information for me, but there were other discoveries she had made that I was not privy to.
Armed with her array of red, black and blue markers she stood in front of the board deep in thought. "Who is Ameerah's brother?" she spoke out loud while listing out the names that had come up so far in our investigation.
