ZOYA WATCHED WARILY as Asad, aka CBI Special Agent Khan, looked over at Officer Man-Boy.
"Thank you, Officer, I can take it from here," he said.
The police officer made a hasty retreat, leaving her alone in the hotel room with Asad. His gaze was stone cold.
"This is quite a mess you've gotten yourself involved in."
Zoya straightened up. Three years had passed, and he still managed to put her immediately on the defensive. "I wouldn't know. Thanks to you, I have no clue what I'm involved in." She paused, hating being out of the loop on whatever was going on. "What happened to the woman next door?"
"She's dead."
Zoya nodded. The presence of CPD detectives had pretty much given that away, but the confirmation of the woman's death shocked her nevertheless. She suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to get out of that hotel room. But she forced herself not to show any reaction in front of Asad.
"I'm sorry to hear that," she said simply.
He gestured to the chair in front of the desk. "Why don't you take a seat? I need to ask you some questions."
"Do you intend to interrogate me, Agent Khan?"
"Do you intend to be uncooperative, Ms. Farooqui?"
She laughed hollowly. "Why? Are you going to get rough with me?"
His eyes remained steely and dark. Zoya swallowed and made a mental note to be careful when taunting a man who carried a gun and blamed her for nearly wrecking his career.
She remembered the day three years ago when they'd first met to discuss the Akbar Huda (Huda) case. She'd never worked with Asad before; at that point she'd only been a prosecutor for a year and he had been working undercover that entire time. She had been surprised--but eagerly so--when her boss assigned her the Huda investigation, one of the most high-profile cases in the district. A. K (aka Akbar Huda) was widely known by both the Bureau and the INDIA attorney's office to be the head of one of the largest crime syndicates in Mumbai. The problem had always been getting enough evidence to prove this.
Which is precisely where Special Agent Asad Ahmed Khan came in. Prior to their meeting, Zoya learned from her boss that Asad had worked undercover for two years to infiltrate Martino's organization, until the CBI had been forced to pull him out when his cover was blown. Her boss had not told her much about the extraction other than that Asad had been cornered in a warehouse by ten of Martino's men, had fought his way out, and had been shot in the process. She'd learned one other thing--by the time CBI backup arrived, Asad had already managed to kill eight of Huda's men.
He made quite an impression on her the first time he and his partner walked into her office. Zoya suspected nearly everyone who met Asad Ahmed Khan had the same reaction: with predatory brown eyes, nearly black hair, and dark facial scruff, he looked like the kind of guy that women--and men--should avoid in dark alleys. He had a cast on his right forearm, presumably an injury inflicted by Huda's men, and he wore a navy T-shirt and jeans instead of the standard-issue suit and tie most agents were expected to wear. From the look of him, she was not at all surprised the CBI had chosen him for undercover work.
And three years later--as he stood across from her in that hotel room that suddenly seemed far too small, with his eyes glittering with a low-simmering anger, and, yes, even despite the standard-issue suit and tie he wore this time--he looked not one bit less dangerous.
"I want to talk to a lawyer," Zoya said.
"You are a lawyer," he said. "And you're not considered a suspect, so you're not entitled to one, anyway."
"What am I considered, then?"
"A person of interest."
This was bullshit. "Here's the deal: I'm tired and not in the mood to play games. So if you don't start telling me what's going on, I'm walking,"
Zoya said.
Asad eyed her yoga sweats and Delhi T-shirt, looking unconcerned with her threats. Thank God she wasn't still hanging out in her underpants.
"You're not going anywhere." He pulled the chair out and gestured.
"Take a seat."
"Thanks, but no. I think I'll just stick with the plan where I walk out."
Before he could call her bluff, Zoya grabbed her purse and headed for the door. The hell with her stuff, she'd get it later. "It was nice catching up with you, Agent Khan. I'm glad to see those three years in Nebraska didn't make you any less of an asshole."
She threw open the door and nearly ran into a man standing in the doorway. He wore a well-cut gray suit and tie, appeared younger than Asad, and was cute.
He flashed Zoya a knock-out smile while precariously balancing three Starbucks cups in his hands. "Thanks for getting the door. What'd I miss?"
"I'm storming out. And I just called Agent Khan an asshole."
"Sounds like good times. Coffee?" He held the Starbucks out to her.
"I'm Agent Haider Shaik."
Zoya threw a knowing glance over her shoulder. "Good cop, bad cop? Is that the best you're capable of, Asad?"
He stalked across the room and stopped in the doorway, towering over her. "You have no idea what I'm capable of," he said darkly.
As he reached over and took one of the coffee cups from Haider , Zoya made a mental note to be careful when taunting a man who carried a gun, blamed her for nearly wrecking his career, and who was over a head taller than she was. She internally said a few profanities for her earlier decision to put on gym shoes; she needed at least three-inch heels to face off against Asad Ahmed Khan. Although that still would have only put her at his chin level. Not to mention that she would've looked like a major jackass wearing Manolos and yoga pants.
Haider gestured with the coffee cups. "Do you two know each other?"
"Ms. Farooqui and I almost had the pleasure of working on a case together," Asad said.
"Almost? What does that mean?"Haider turned to Zoya with a look of realization. "Wait a second-- Zoya Farooqui? I knew that name sounded familiar. Of course, from the INDIA attorney's office." His light brown eyes lit up as he laughed. "You're the one that Asad said had-"
"I think we all recall just fine what Agent Khan said," Zoya interrupted. Three years ago, his words infamously had been broadcast all over the national news for nearly a week. She didn't need to hear them again, particularly not with him standing right beside her. The experience had been embarrassing enough the first time around.
Haider nodded. "Sure, no problem." He looked between her and Jack.
"So . . . this is awkward."
Changing the subject, Zoya pointed to the coffee. "Is that regular or decaf?"
"Regular. I heard you had a long night."
She took one of the cups from him. She'd been up for twenty-three hours and adrenaline wasn't cutting it anymore. She took a sip, sighing gratefully. "Thank you."
Haider took a sip of his coffee. "See, that's all we are, just three people having coffee and talking. So what do you say--think you might want to stay and chat with us about what happened last night?"
That almost got a smile out of Zoya. Haider , at least, appeared to be a pleasant, reasonable man. Too bad he'd drawn the short stick in his partner assignment.
"That's not half-bad," she told him. Haider grinned. "The coffee or the good-cop routine?"
"Both. If you would like to ask me some questions, Agent Shaik , I'd be happy to cooperate." Zoya brushed past Asad as she turned and headed back into the room. He and Haider followed her as she took a seat in front of the desk. She crossed her legs and faced the two CBI agents head-on.
"All right. Let's talk."
IF IT HAD been anyone other than Zoya Farooqui, Asad probably would've found her attitude amusing.
But since it was Zoya Farooqui, he wasn't laughing. In fact, there wasn't anything about the situation that he found even remotely funny.
He decided to let Haider take the lead in questioning her about the events of the night before. Not because she very clearly wanted nothing to do with him--he could care less about Zoya Farooqui's wishes--but rather because, not surprising given their history, she responded better to his partner than to him. The investigation was his focus, and he was not about to let personal issues get in the way.
When he and Haider had first arrived at the Oberoi and Detective Singh told them the name of the witness in room 1307, for a split second Asad had thought the whole thing was a setup, some sort of welcome-back prank for his return to Mumbai. And he still had considered this a possibility when they entered the crime scene. There was no body, after all--Singh said the paramedics had taken the victim to Gandhi Memorial in an attempt to revive her.
Then he saw the videotape.
After that, it was pretty clear to Asad that the call he had received at 5:00 A.M. from his boss, asking him to check out CPD's claims of what they thought they might have stumbled into, was indeed not part of some elaborate joke. And his first priority at this point was to determine whether the CBI had jurisdiction over the matter.
Zoya Farooqui was the key to answering that question. If Asad believed her story, the CBI would have no choice but to conduct its own investigation. For that reason, as much as he might've wanted nothing more than to pawn her off onto Haider , as the senior agent on the scene he knew that wasn't an option.
From his post in the corner of the room, Asad studied her. Not surprisingly, she looked exhausted. And for some reason, she seemed shorter than he remembered. Probably because all the times he'd seen her three years ago had been during work hours and she'd been wearing heels.
Yes, he remembered Zoya Farooqui and her high heels . . . In fact, despite the fact that it had been three years since he'd last seen her, Asad was surprised at how accurate--and detailed--his memory of her had been: the long chestnut hair, the crystalline blue-green eyes, the attitude that he'd once--very briefly--found admirable.
Then again, he shouldn't be surprised he'd remembered those things.
After all, he was an CBI agent and it was his job to remember details.
And, he supposed, it didn't hurt that Zoya Farooqui was--some men other than him might say-- gorgeous.
Which, to Asad, only made it that much more annoying that she also happened to be a total bitch.
Thankfully, the long brown hair currently was pulled back into a ponytail, and the brown eyes had dulled a little given her lack of sleep.
The yoga pants and Delhi T-shirt she wore were actually kind of cute, but because of the aforementioned bitch factor, he ignored this.
"So when they woke me up the second time," Zoya was saying,
"that's when I decided to call Guest Services."
"I want to step back for a moment." Asad's interruption from the corner of the room startled Zoya; it was the first time he'd spoken since she'd begun giving her statement.
"Tell me what you heard right before you fell asleep. Before the noises next door started up again," he said.
Zoya hesitated. He knew she didn't want to answer his questions--she probably didn't want to say anything to him at all, in fact--but now that she'd started cooperating, she didn't have much choice.
"I heard the door shut, as if someone was leaving the room," she said.
"Are you sure it was the exterior door you heard?" Asad asked.
"Yes."
"But you didn't check to see if anyone left at that time?"
Zoya shook her head. "No. Then the room went quiet for a while.
For about a half hour or so."
"Tell me about the noises that woke you up."
Zoya turned to face him now that he had taken over the questioning. "What would you like to know, Agent Khan?" she asked mock-politely.
"I just told you. I'd like to know what you heard."
"Pretty much the same things I heard coming from the room the first time," she said with an air of defiance.
Asad cocked his head. "Really? You said the first time around you heard the people next door having sex."
"Yes, I think the ass slapping and the screams of 'I'm coming' gave that away."
Asad stepped out from the corner to approach her. "So when you woke up the second time, did you hear any asses being slapped?"
"No."
From her expression, he could tell she didn't enjoy being on the receiving end of a cross-examination. "How about the 'I'm coming' screams?
Any more of those?"
"I heard squealing."
"But no proclamations of impending orgasms?"
She glared. "You made your point, Agent Khan."
He drew closer and stared down at her. "My point, Ms. Farooqui, is that I know you're tired, but that's no excuse for getting sloppy."
Zoya's eyes filled with anger. But then she paused for a moment, and nodded. "Fair enough."
She looked over at the wall she shared with room 1308. "When I woke up the second time, I heard the bed banging against the wall, louder than before. But only a couple of times. Then like I said, I heard squealing."
"A man or a woman's voice?" Asad asked.
"A woman. The sound was muffled, as if her face was covered by a blanket or pillow." Zoya turned back to him with a look of sudden realization. "She was suffocated, wasn't she?" she asked softly.
Asad debated whether to answer this but knew he eventually would have to fill her in anyway. "Yes."
Zoya bit her lip. "I just thought they were trying to be quieter about it. I didn't realize . . ." She took a deep, steadying breath.
"You couldn't have known," Haider assured her.
Asad threw him a look--enough-with-the-good-cop-already look. She was a big girl, she could handle it. "You told Detective Singh that you called security and the room went quiet again?"
"And then I heard the door open, so I ran and looked out the peephole,"
Zoya said.
"Just being nosy?"
The sarcasm seemed to reinvigorate her. "And thank goodness for that," she said. "Otherwise you wouldn't have whatever information I know that I don't yet realize I know." She smiled ever so sweetly. "Besides, if I hadn't been so nosy, Agent Khan, you and I never would've had this lovely chance to reconnect."
Haider coughed while taking a sip of his coffee. It sounded suspiciously like a chuckle.
Asad found her sarcasm laughable. Back when he was in Special Forces, before he'd joined the CBI, he'd interrogated foreign operatives, suspected terrorists, and members of various guerilla militias. He could certainly handle one cheeky assistant INDIA attorney. "I'm glad to see the coffee's put a little fire back in you," he said dryly. "Now why don't you tell me what you saw when you were doing your civic duty and spying though the peephole?"
Haider held up his hand. "Um, I'm thinking maybe I should pick back up with this."
Zoya and Asad answered simultaneously. "We're fine."
"I saw a man leave the room, which I'm sure you know," she told Jack.
"Describe him."
"I already described him to Detective Singh."
"Do it again."
Asad saw her eyes flash. She didn't like being told what to do. Too bad.
"Five foot eleven, maybe six feet tall," she said. "Medium build. He wore jeans, a black blazer, and a gray hooded T-shirt pulled over his head.
He had his back to me the entire time, so I never saw his face."
"Didn't you think the hooded T-shirt was a little odd?" Asad asked.
"I heard butt cheeks being slapped and walls that were banged so hard my teeth nearly rattled. Frankly, I've found this whole evening to be a little odd, Agent Khan."
Out of the corner of his eye, Asad could see Haider glance up at the ceiling while fighting off another smile.
"Are you certain about the man's height?" Asad continued.
Zoya paused, thinking. "Yes."
"How about his weight?"
She sighed. "I'm really bad at guessing that kind of thing."
"Make an effort. Pretend this is something important."
Another glare.
Zoya glanced over at Haider. "How much do you weigh?"
"Wait--how come Asad doesn't have to answer that?"
"The man I saw seems closer to your build."
"Oh, so he's a smaller guy, then?" Asad suggested helpfully.
Haider turned around. "A smaller guy? I'm an inch above the national average. Besides, I'm spry."
"Let's try to narrow this down," Asad regrouped. "I weigh one-eighty-five, Agent Shaik is about one-sixty. Given that, where would you say this guy falls?"
She looked between the two men, considering this. "About one-seventy."
Asad and Haider exchanged looks.
"What?" Zoya asked. "What does that tell you?"
"So just to make sure we're clear on this, the man you saw leave the room right before security arrived was about five-eleven or six feet tall, and around one hundred and seventy pounds. Is that what you're saying?"
"That's what I'm saying," she agreed. "And I see that you've gotten whatever information it is you wanted out of me. So I would like some information in return." She looked to Haider first, who looked to Asad.
After debating a moment, he leaned against the wall. "Okay. Here's what I can tell you."
"AND JUST SO we're clear: everything I'm about to tell you needs to be kept confidential," Asad told her. "In fact, if you weren't with the India's attorney's office, I wouldn't be telling you anything."
Zoya got the message: he didn't want to tell her jack-shit, but his boss had ordered him to share information as a professional courtesy.
"Crystal clear, Agent Khan," she said.
"You've obviously put a few things together, so I'll speed through the preliminaries," Asad began. "You called hotel security, they found the dead woman next door, so they called the paramedics and the police. CPD arrived at the scene, saw there were signs of a struggle, and began their investigation."
"What signs of a struggle?" Zoya asked.
"To save time, you should assume going forward that anything I don't tell you is a deliberate decision on my part."
Zoya looked up at the ceiling, biting her tongue. Of all the murder and
she-had-no-friggin'-clue-what-else-but-something-that-apparently-involved-t he-CBI crime scenes in all the hotels in all of Mumbai, Asad Ahmed Khan had to walk into this one.
"While CPD was conducting their sweep of the room, they stumbled onto something hidden behind the television across from the bed. A video camera."
"Do you have the murder on tape?" Zoya asked. If only all crimes came to prosecutors so neatly wrapped up.
Asad shook his head. "No. What's on the tape is the stuff that took place before the murder."
"Before the murder?" Zoya thought about the raucous sex noises she'd heard through the wall. "That must be quite a tape."
"It is," Asad agreed. "Especially since the man on the tape is a married Indian C.M. ."
Zoya's eyes widened. She had not expected that. She asked the obvious next question. "Which C.M?"
Agent Shaik pulled a photograph out of the inner pocket of his suit jacket and handed it to Zoya.
She glanced at the photograph, then back at Jack. "This is Chief Minister Jai Singhania ."
"So you recognize him?"
"Of course I recognize him," Zoya said. Jai Singhania had represented the state of Mumbai in the INDIA Parliament for over twenty-five years.
And lately she'd seen his face in the news more than usual--he had just been appointed the chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
Zoya thought back to the redheaded woman she had seen on the paramedics' gurney. "That wasn't the C.M.'s wife in room 1308, was it?"
"No, it wasn't," Asad said.
"Who was she?"
"Let's just say that C.M. Singhania was paying to have a lot more than his hardwood floors done last night."
Nice. "A prostitute?"
"I think women at her level generally prefer to call themselves 'escorts.'"
"How do you know this already?"
"We have the escort service's records. The senator had been seeing her regularly for almost a year now."
Zoya got up and paced before the bed, working the scenario like a new case she'd been handed. "So what's with the camera? Don't tell me the senator was stupid enough to think he could keep a sex tape secret." She stopped, thinking quickly. "No . . . of course. Blackmail. That's why CPD
called you guys."
"Having reviewed the tape, it's obvious that C.M. Singhania had no clue he was being filmed," Haider said.
"You're the one who got stuck reviewing the tape? Lucky you," Zoya said.
"Not exactly. But Asad was busy playing bad-cop with Singhania."
"And here I thought that was special for me."
Haider grinned. "Nah--he likes to break that out with everybody. It usually works, too, with that whole dark and glowering thing he's got going on."
Zoya peeked at Asad, who was back at his post in the corner of the room. "Glowering"--she liked that description. It was certainly more insightful than the generic "asshole" she'd been going with for the past three years.
She wondered if Asad Ahmed Khan ever smiled.
Then she remembered that she frankly didn't give a damn whether he did or not.
"Given the content of the tape, C.M. Singhania would normally be CPD's primary suspect," Asad said to her. "In fact, the police probably would've arrested him already, if it wasn't for you."
"Is that so?"
Asad pushed away from the wall and stormed over. He yanked the photo out of Zoya's hands and held it in front of her face.
"Let's cut through the crap. The guy you saw leave the room five minutes before hotel security found the girl dead--is there any possibility it's this man?"
Zoya hesitated, momentarily caught off guard by the suddenness with which Asad had gone into attack mode.
He shoved the photo even closer. "Come on, Zoya--is there any possibility it was this man?"
Zoya felt an odd flip in her stomach, hearing Asad say her first name. They'd once, very briefly, been on a first-name basis before. She brushed this off and focused on the photo he held before her. Really, she didn't even need to look. C.M. Singhania was not only a shorter man, but if she had to guess--and apparently she did--she'd say he weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds. She might not have gotten the best look through her peephole, but she knew enough to know one thing.
"It's not him," she said.
"You're sure?" Asad asked.
"I'm sure."
Asad stepped away from her. "Then C.M. Singhania owes you one hell of a thank you. Because your word is the only thing keeping him from being arrested for murder."
A silence fell over the room. "Doesn't he have some sort of alibi?"
Zoya asked.
Asad remained silent. That clearly fell into the I'm-not-answering-no-stinking-questions category.
"I'll take that as a no," Zoya said. "How about if instead of questions, I just see if I can fill in the blanks? So this escort who's been sleeping with C.M Singhania, the married senior Minister from Delhi--"
"Who just happened to be appointed the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee," Haider threw in. When he caught the look of death Asad shot him, he shrugged. "What? I don't have your issues with her. Besides, I heard what Davis said--we're supposed to share, remember?"
Much glowering ensued.
"So this escort decides to get the senator on tape and use it as blackmail," Zoya continued. "He meets her tonight, they do the deed--many times--I'm still going with the Viagra theory on that, by the way--and the senator leaves. Twenty minutes later, our mystery man shows up. There's a struggle, and he kills the woman. And since there's no sign of forced entry, we can assume the girl knew the murderer and let him into the room. How am I doing so far?"
Haider nodded, impressed. "Not bad."
"What I think," Asad told her, "is that you've had a long night, and we don't want to take up any more of your time. The CBI appreciates your cooperation, Ms. Farooqui. We'll be in touch if there's anything further we need."
Zoya watched as he turned and headed toward the door, apparently with the mistaken impression that there was nothing left for them to discuss.
"Actually, I do have another question, Agent Khan," she said.
He looked back at her. "What might that be?"
"Can I finally get out of this hotel room?"
Kabhi Neem Neem Kabhi Shahad Shahad
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