City of Sthapan, Present Day, 7:30 a.m.

The crime scene was horrible.

Until a second ago, even as Omkar had pulled up the car in front of the house, the cops in and around the place had been confused. And they all looked sick.

The five or so cops actually seemed relieved as soon as the two men came inside.

Outside, Mitran had whipped up his false ID from Special Crime Branch with some very important rank and a false name. Mitran had started with a story about how the dead man had been an inspector of the Crime Branch, and they had to check it out.

Omkar had not paid too much attention to that. The false ID or Mitran's proclaimation that Omkar as his junior officer, did not register in Omkar's mind, as he walked inside the house, pulling out his gloves. The thing was, everyone in TTI had all sorts of fake ID cards proclaiming all kinds of rich work inside and outside of the Police Department.

No, that was irrelevant.

Omkar's attention was taken up by the hall of the victim's house.

The front door had been broken into from outside and, logically, that had to be done by the cops.

The inside of the house looked rich and expensive and was built to the tastes of a single man. There was a beautiful painting of a sunrise on the wall. The hall was surrounded by expensive gizmos, and Omkar realized that the dead man was obviously good with money. The fact that he had no one else to maintain, could be the reason that he pampered himself. And yes, Omkar was sure that the man was Intelligence. Omkar could not identify all the agents of TTI by name, but Omkar vaguely remembered seeing this man at TTI, Sthapan. More importantly, Omkar could almost instantly detect the cleverly hidden camera at the front hall, inside the clock there. A subsequent check without the cops being aware of it made Omkar realize that the camera had been disabled — there was a mechanism for that too.

Grunting, Omkar turned his attention to the hall again. The dining table was at the back of the hall, with three chairs around it. The dining table had a coffee cup, and the cup was half filled; now the coffee was cold. The sofa in the hall had an open bag with dirty clothes, and Omkar immediately saw the walls and saw no personal photographs anywhere. So the dead man was an orphan, and he had never married. Not even in a relationship.

Omkar went back to the beautiful painting on the wall and saw the yellow shade of the sunrise in the painting. There was a faint trace of a paint smell, and Omkar was entirely sure whether it was real or whether he had imagined it. He turned, and in the base of the tray he found many tubes of paint. He saw they were not screwed properly. Which could be the reason for Omkar's olfactory nerves acting up.

A second later, Omkar was awestruck because he felt his attention go back to the painting on the wall. This seemed like the original painting from the previous century of the erstwhile royals. The original painting was way too expensive. But given everything else, the man could afford that. It seemed so. And the dead man had only one painting.

Then Omkar realized something else. Cell phone. That was missing. The dead man's cell phone was missing from the hall. If it had been taken by the killer, most probably the killer would have destroyed it.

"Was the door closed when you came here?" Omkar muttered to a random cop who had been looking to walk out of the place.

That happened to be Constable Sivarama Krishnan, and he stopped for a few seconds.

Patiently, Omkar repeated his question after he made sure that the forty-something cop, with his grayish hair, round jowled face, and wrinkled uniform, had his undivided attention.

The constable looked a little worried, and Omkar realized almost immediately that the man was not used to being in charge and he was afraid of being chosen to answer Omkar's question.

Yes, Omkar still waited for the man to answer.

"We came at five fifty, must be close to six. The control tower said that they had an anonymous call about a murder here some five minutes back. When we came here, the door... was closed." The constable said slowly after thinking for some time. "The door was closed from the inside. The sub-inspector knocked on the door. When no one opened after two minutes, we broke it down." The constable shook his head. "We found no one inside the house. Just this dead body in the inner room." The constable pointed at the back door. "That back door was open when we checked. Someone..." the constable vaguely thumbed towards the dead body. "...killed that man and went out through the back door before we could come."

"Thank you." Omkar told the man.

The man probably felt a little empowered with Omkar's non-belligerent attitude. "One of the other constables – Veerendran – checked the back door and found no one there. But he said that there was a faint paint smell which he felt from the back door."

Omkar studied the man and slowly nodded his head. "Thank you so much!" Omkar waved at the coffee cup on the dining table. "Anyone of you touched this."

The man vociferously shook his head, and yes, that led Omkar to believe that the man was afraid that the drink was poisoned, or something equally dangerous.

The constable walked away.

That was when Omkar turned his attention to the dead body in the middle of the inner room, which was on the right of the hall.

The dead man was bound behind his hands on the chair. The chair had been pulled from the dining table and the man had been placed there. The dead man had bullets to his knees, and his gruesome face suggested that he had met his end because he had been unable to push through his pain. There were no other markings on the body.

Omkar abruptly stopped, because for a second, Omkar was terrified.

Mitran entered the room, after sending the cops out of the home, and Mitran stopped stock-still eyeing the body.

"Om, call Vidyut. Now."

Omkar pulled out his cell phone with absolutely no questions as Mitran murmured to him. "This is Ramesh. Ramesh Mehra. Our agent. He belongs to the B7 team. I sent this man with Vidyut to pick up Shreya from Citran. Check up on Vidyut. I will talk to Mrs. Lalitha and get rid of these cops from the place."

No, Omkar did not even hear the last part of the sentence.

He pulled out his cell phone and cursed himself almost continuously through the seven rings when Vidyut did not pick it up.

After the eighth ring, a thick voice spoke from the other end. "Dude, let a tired man sleep! I came home at six in the morning."

Omkar had calmed himself reasonably because now he knew that Vidyut was safe.

If anything happened to Vidyut, that was it. Teammate or not, Omkar was dead.

Vidyut was Kriti's best friend, and Omkar was very close to Veena, Vidyut's twin sister.

Agreed, Veena, like the rest of Vidyut's family, had been given the same backstory — both Vidyut and Omkar worked in a Government organization, file pushers, blah blah blah. But Omkar had a faint suspicion that Veena had not completely bought that story, and it was irrelevant now. Even if Veena knew what they did for a living, Omkar was more worried about how knowing that would affect Veena's work—he had no fear of Veena ratting out their secrets to the world. She was too sensible and... too sweet for that.

All those were details.

"You freaking stupid ass!" Omkar yelled angrily, telling himself to breathe properly. "Why the fuck is it important for you to sleep? I thought you were dead!"

Predictably, there was silence for a second.

"Are you drunk." Yup, Vidyut was still trying to get his bearings right. "Does Kriti know you are drunk? Because I can't do this. Get Aadi to pick you up from the bar. I am barely awake. Veena has gone to some seminar in Citran, and she will be back tomorrow. I have the whole house to myself, and I just finished the work that Mitran asked me to do. I am going to sleep."

Yes, Omkar hated doing this to a sleepy man. But Omkar knew that he had no choice. "Ramesh is dead. He was killed an hour ago. He was tortured and killed at his home."

There was a predictable silence for the whole minute.

"I will be there in twenty-five minutes." Vidyut said sharply, and no, now the man did not sound sleepy at all.

*********

The cops had left the place, six minutes after Omkar had called Vidyut.

But then the cops did not have a say in that. The inspector of the police station had called the cops back with no further explanation. No, that was not easy, in normal circumstances. The fact that Mitran and the Commissioner of Police of the city of Sthapan were very good friends was the reason that the entire matter had been removed from the jurisdiction of the cops and TTI was allowed to handle it.

Omkar had been staring at the dead body. "Chief, how did Mrs. Lalitha know that he was a TTI agent?"

Mitran cut the call, as he had called the ambulance here. "When the anonymous call came, Mrs. Lalitha found that she was having difficulty tracing the actual background of the man living at this address. That was when she became suspicious." Mitran shrugged. But that was a thing. The personal details and the background of all the agents were a little difficult to trace by normal methods of looking around. "When the cops told her there was a dead body, she called me immediately."

Omkar nodded.

"What?" Mitran asked almost immediately. But then Mitran could identify that impish look in Omkar's features when he had an idea. However, the man looked sober and serious all the time during the investigation.

"Chief, this man was tortured, but he died almost immediately." Omkar's voice was sharp. "Which brings three questions. One, what information could this man give anyone? Two, did he give them the information or was he dead before that? Three, if this man had given the information, what does the killer hope to do with it? As a corollary, if he had not given any information before dying, what would the killer do now?"

Mitran nodded slowly. "I will check into what case the B7 team was working on."

"You do not know?" Omkar asked.

Mitran shook his head. "Not the details. They were dealing with some cases in the city of Citran. Some smuggling ring. The whole team was there. A week back, they arrested three men there. The stories of the three men are being checked. Lakshman and his team came to Sthapan the day before yesterday."

Omkar seemed to be thinking that over, but he said nothing.

Ten minutes later, TTI's ambulance took the dead body away.

It was at that time that Vidyut walked towards the house. Yes, he had seen the dead body even as it was being loaded into the ambulance.

He said nothing and just found Omkar and Mitran talking.

"I have just called Lakshman Seth. He is the leader of the B7 team. It must be a shock for him." Mitran told Omkar, taking a deep breath. "Yesterday, I assigned Ramesh to a job and the next day... this happened."

"Chief, call up Kriti and ask her to send me the dead man's bank balance." Omkar muttered, walking towards the kitchen of the place.

Then the two older men spotted Vidyut.

At twenty-six years old, with his ripping muscles, Vidyut preferred semi formal shirts and pants for his work. He did not look sleepy or tired, and his dark blue shirt was pretty handsome, too, and Vidyut looked like he always did—perfect and swoon-worthy.

Omkar had long ago realized that Vidyut functioned best if he was left to his own devices. So Omkar didn't interfere too much with the other man's work. But the big problem was that Vidyut had a hothead and his temper sometimes got the better of him. During those times, Omkar made sure that Vidyut operated on a tight leash, and yes, Omkar was very particular about that. Omkar had seen firsthand how nasty Vidyut could get. All of Vidyut's nastiness was partially masked by Vidyut's charm and fashion sense. At least none of the girls whom Vidyut had gone out with had ever had any complaints about him, nor could they guess how ruthless Vidyut could get.

There were some days that Omkar felt a little less fashionable in front of Vidyut, and no, today was not that day.

The last of such days in Omkar's life had occurred six months back—and that was the day that Omkar had gotten married.

Yes, that was annoying, because Omkar had realized on his wedding day that Vidyut and Omkar's wife were best friends. They had been so for a long time before that, and going the way things went, there was a high chance that Vidyut and Kriti would always be best friends.

Yes, that totally boggled Omkar's mind, so he tried his best never to think about that facet of Vidyut's relationship.

"Vidyut, did you drop Ramesh home? Or did you both go your separate ways after dropping Shreya at IB-12." Omkar asked, rapidly turning his attention back to his cell phone, wondering whether Kriti had sent him the information.

For a second, Vidyut looked suspicious, and Omkar rolled his eyes. At least Omkar could be happy that Vidyut was paying attention to details. Because Omkar was technically not supposed to know about Vidyut's trip to Citran.

Mitran nodded at Vidyut, so Vidyut continued. "I dropped Ramesh at his home. We brought Shreya to IB-12." Yes, Omkar saw that tinge of regret in Vidyut's eyes, and no, Omkar did not comment on it. "I had taken a TTI vehicle for the whole thing. I dropped Ramesh here and then left for my home."

"Time?" This came from Mitran.

Vidyut was quiet for a few seconds. "5:30 in the morning. Give or take a few minutes."

"You left the Citran prison at midnight?" Omkar was the one with this question.

Vidyut nodded. "There were many formalities. It helped that the chief called up that place. Even with that, we had to fill out a lot of paperwork."

"It is supposed to be that way." Mitran muttered to no one in particular.

Both the EZ1 members rolled their eyes at that one.

"Did you have any problems with the toll booth while crossing the city?" Omkar took up the next question.

Vidyut shook his head. "Straight drive to IB-12. Then to his home and mine."

But then, Omkar now understood the purpose of the whole trip.

That was something of a not-so-talked about thing about EZ1.

Until three months ago, Omkar's EZ1 team had another member – Shreya Nataraj.

Shreya was around the same age as Omkar and was slightly shorter than average for her height. But she was a very strong and attractive woman. She was also expeditious and a powerhouse of information. Shreya was extremely good at TTI.

Omkar and the rest of the EZ1 team had trusted her.

Only to have Shreya betray them all.