Chapter 1
Meera
Thethingaboutwatchingyour fiancé murder someone is that it really puts the relationship into perspective. The original plan had been to get in, install a few mini cameras, and get out. I wanted to find proof that Karim had been cheating on me with his secretary, because things just hadn’t been adding up lately.
But it hadn’t gone as planned, and I’d been hiding in the broom closet of his office for the past half an hour, praying that he wouldn’t find me.
Karim was supposed to be out with his secretary right now. And while I was pretty sure Michelle was indeed at the café spot down the street, I found Karim very muchnotout and made a split-second choice between confrontation and concealment. I’d chosen the closet. It seemed reasonable at the time. It was much less reasonable now I was standing stock-still between a stick vacuum and a tower of cardboard boxes, listening to the very specific sounds of a man I’d agreed to marry doing something I couldn’t unhear.
The worst part was that I wasn’t even surprised. Horrified, yes. Nauseous, absolutely. But surprised? Not really. And that told me everything I needed to know about the last three years of my life.
Currently, Karim was on a call with someone. I couldn’t actually hear what he was saying though, because of the blood rushing in my ears. Ididhear him say something about meeting up at the other person’s place, pronto. And that was my cue to get the hell out of Dodge.
I waited until I heard the front door close, then counted to a hundred before I moved. Not wanting to see anything I’d need eye bleach to unsee, I kept my eyes deliberately up and forward. I was still hyperaware that there was a dead body on the floor just feet from me, and it was everything I could do not to hyperventilate, especially when I saw the pair of brand-spanking-new sneakers on his feet.
At least there was no blood. Blunt force trauma followed by strangling had ensured that. Karim had always been a clean freak. So this tracked.
Keep it together, Meera.
I totally wasn’t keeping it together. Grabbing my gym bag from beside the desk where I’d dropped it when I’d first come in—it was a miracle Karim hadn’t noticed it the whole time he was here—I hurried out of the suffocating office. The hallway was empty, and so was the stairwell. The hollow stomp of my feet as I flew down four flights of stairs sounded like thunder chasing me down.
How the fuck did I get myself into this? And whyme?
I started out eager to prove that Karim was an asshole, and I did, just not the way I’d thought he was. Either way, I was leaving him for good. The relationship had been dying in slow motion for the better part of a year anyway; the body in the office had just given it a hard and very immediate deadline. No pun intended.
And I couldn’t even go to the police because Karim’s best friend was on the force. Not all cops were crooked, but Owen was one of them. I bet he was in on it too. And even if he wasn’t, he hated my guts and would probably do everything in his power to make me the guilty party. I was also certain that Karim would have no trouble blaming me for everything.
I was relying on autopilot so much that I hadn’t realized I’d called a ride until I was stepping into a vehicle and on my way back home. I hadn’t been happy when Karim had insisted wekeep our respective apartments until we were officially married. But now I was glad I had my own space, even though the lock wouldn’t be much protection if he really wanted to get to me. Still.
The ride up to the sixteenth floor felt like an eternity, and my gym bag grew heavier and heavier with each passing second. I locked the door with the deadbolt the second I got in, then slumped onto the kitchen floor, my back against the cupboard door with the duffel hugged to my chest.
It was only now that I noticed the bag was wrong. My gym bag was a beat-up pink duffel with a broken zipper pull, the faded print logo having survived no fewer than six wash cycles. This bag was black.
There was no change of clothes, no sneakers, no deodorant. What it had, when I unzipped it, hands shaking, was a single object wrapped carefully in cloth, roughly the size of a cantaloupe, and faintly, unmistakably warm.
Was this the artifact that Karim and the mysterious man, who now lay dead in his office, had been arguing over?
I’d heard the whole thing while I’d hid in the closet. I’d even recorded part of it. At first I’d thought it was Karim and Michelle, and I thought maybe I’d get some honest-to-goodness evidence of his infidelity. But I’d never been more wrong.
At least that meant my phone was in my pocket and not stuck in my gym bag in his office. And I didn’t bring my wallet to the gym, preferring to rely on the payment methods I had on my phone.
They’d called the artifact an “egg.” But what the hell kind of egg was the size of a melon? Maybe it was a code word?
I didn’t know what it was, but the guy wanted a shit ton of money for it. Way more than I made in a year. And while Karim’s accounting firm—which consisted of only him, his secretary, and one other accountant who conveniently was never in—outearned my real-estate gig by quite a lot, it was still a fair chunk of change for him.
He’d just killed a man over it. And now it was in my freaking kitchen. What the fuck was I supposed to do now? I zipped the bag back up, panic and bile rising simultaneously in my chest.
I looked down at the bag. Maybe I’d imagined it and there was no egg at all. Yeah, that must be it. I’d witnessed a murder, and in my shock, I’d imagined an egg because that was what they’d been fighting over right before the deed.
My blood rushed in my ears as I unzipped the bag again, hoping I’d see Karim’s dirty gym clothes. What was inside was, without question, an egg. There was no other word for it.
It was heavier than it looked. Ovoid, slightly larger than a cantaloupe, with a softly pebbled surface. The color shifted when I tilted it under my kitchen light: a deep, rich forest green, then a shimmering gorgeous bronze, and at certain angles a brilliant gold, before shifting right back to green again. It was beautiful, mesmerizing. And even if I hadn’t already heard the high-six-figure price, I would’ve guessed just by looking at it that it would cost a pretty penny.
And it was warm too. Not room-temperature warm either, but warm like a living thing. It generated its own heat, radiating like pavement that had spent a full afternoon holding onto the sun. I grabbed a medium-sized pot, lined it with several thick layers of dish towels, and set it carefully inside.
Wasn’t it bad to rotate eggs when they were incubating? Or was it the opposite, and youhadto turn it? I was pretty sure I’d read somewhere that certain animals drowned if turned upside down, and others had to be turned to prevent sticking. Which type of animal was this?
And there was, without a doubt, something alive in there. I could feel it.
