When she received back a message with far too many exclamation points, Dimple knew her suspicions had been confirmed. This woman—the one who’d approached Priyal claiming to be Dimple’s friend—was a private investigator. Irene’s case had turned into a murder investigation and Dimple, somehow, was a suspect.
Instead of an uptick in the dread already coursing through her veins, she instead felt an inexplicable rush of an emotion she couldn’t describe. One that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand upright. She had the sudden and desperate urge to meet this woman. To see who exactly she thought she was, issuing such a direct challenge.
There were some answers online, but Dimple knew better than anyone the skewed nature of public perception. Saffi’s persona, however, was odd in and of itself. Usually when one looked into the children of major political figures, there were no shortage of embarrassments to sift through. Saffi, though, had only heaps of praise. From community service initiatives she’d founded to the fact that she’d gotten into Harvard and gave it up in favor of staying closer to family (thus earning her the nicknameArizona’s sweetheart). It didn’t matter that in every published photo of her she wore a scowl.Saffi clearly knew how to play the game—how to be remembered. Her interviews were as practiced as any scripted line Dimple had delivered. A fellow performer, a fellow artist, and in the investigative field, of all spaces.
That wasn’t to say that Dimple couldn’t read between the lines.
She eventually ran out of archives of local Arizona publications to sift through, switching to the international ones instead. Saffi Mirai Iyer was, according to several credible sources, one of the best private investigators in the world. Dimple could only imagine how tired she grew of playing the same old archetypal daughter at home. She wondered what Saffi’s life had been like behind closed doors. Whether Governor Iyer ever raised his voice—or his fist. Whether he or his wife had a drinking problem. Like a true performer, though, Saffi never slippedup.
Or maybe she had, and that was why she’d left the country. The show must goon.
Knowing who her pursuer was strangely calmed Dimple. Because that meant the best private investigator in the world still had yet to gather enough evidence to bring her in. The best private investigator in the world, at the end of the day, was as human as she was.
Dimple scanned her bookshelf. The text she extracted from the lowest shelf was heavy and stiff, having been untouched for several years. She brushed her fingertips across the top, sneezing as a cloud of dust erupted.
Advanced College Physics,the title page read. Dimple flipped the paper with her timeline over to its blank side and opened the textbook to the chapter she was looking for.
It had been a long while since she’d had to use this part of her brain, but the knowledge there had never deserted her. It was simply locked away. Finding the key was the difficult part. It lay in the margins of the annotated pages she flipped between, in the relevant formulas she marked down. Soon enough, Dimple’s muscle memory took over and the textbook began collecting dust again on her coffee table.
Only once she was satisfied with the scrawl of numbers, equations, and Greek characters scattered across the page did she pause.With her other hand, she ignited her lighter and watched, fascinated, as fire caught and began to consume, eating the paper alive. Ash gathered at Dimple’s feet, the knowledge forever burned into her mind.
It was Dimple’s turn to make a move, and she would be doing so on her own terms.
Act II
Encounter
Chapter Fifteen
March 13, 2026
Saffi sprang violentlyupright from her desk at the burst of light. Taylor, the source of her disorientation, gave her a tight-lipped smile from the open doorway, looking more frantic than apologetic.
“Sorry,” he said. “I know you don’t sleep enough as it is.”
“What’s going on?” she asked, already shoving her arms through the sleeves of her suit jacket and jumping to her feet. She pinched her thigh when the brain fog took longer than usual to dissipate.
“I know I’m not technically supposed to be investigating—”
“Get to the point, Taylor.” The fact that he couldn’t help himself was as unsurprising as it was uninteresting. Saffi fell into step beside him and they hurried out of the office together.
“Something happened two days ago, and I think it’s related to the case,” he explained. At her expression of disbelief, he added, “It wasn’t public knowledge until a couple hours ago.”
Saffi was suddenly more awake than she’d been in days. She forced her feet to move faster. “There’s been another murder?” she guessed.
“Something like that,” Taylor said vaguely, huffing as they crossed the hallway.
The perpetrator must’ve taken notice of Saffi’s challenge and panicked. It had been quiet since she first issued her challenge almost two weeks ago, which had been worrying. But clearly it had paid off.
Saffi was so caught up in her excitement that the hollownesscreeping into her chest shocked her enough to stumble. Taylor steadied her by the arm and gave her an odd look, to which she couldn’t respond. Usually, the familiar heart-pounding, full-body excitement of a mystery close to its end was her favorite part of the process. But all she could think about now was how soon it would all be over. How soon she’d be on the other side of the world again with no more peace than she’d started with.
Taylor held the door for her, leaving Saffi with no choice but to swallow her hesitations and hurry after him. The late-night chill sent tingles across her cheeks, the moon bearing the greatest witness to the world’s latest atrocities. Andino was already waiting for them behind the wheel, his car’s engine rumbling to life quicker than they could buckle their seatbelts.
“Will one of you explain to me what’s going on?” Saffi asked as the car peeled out of the parking lot.
Andino and Taylor exchanged a look, almost freakishly in sync. Saffi wondered how she’d never noticed the mirroring or the wordless, easy communication before. Maybe because, back then, it had been the three of them moving as one.
“I have reason to believe the killer struck again two days ago in Beverly Hills,” Taylor explained.
