# CHAPTER 4 : No Way Back
For several seconds after starting the car, Aravind did not move.
His hands were still on the steering wheel, but he wasn’t driving yet.
He was only sitting there, locked inside the vehicle, trying and failing to understand how the world had rearranged itself so completely in the span of one evening.
Harish was dead.
Not missing.
Not attacked.
Not “something terrible might have happened.”
Dead.
And Aravind had just walked out of his flat carrying his phone, a pen drive, and a laptop bag like a man already halfway inside his own disappearance.
He looked once into the rear-view mirror.
The apartment building stood behind him exactly as before—dim balconies, laundry on one railing, a flickering tube light near the staircase landing, one parked scooter tilted slightly to one side.
Nothing about it looked like the site of a murder.
That was what made it obscene.
The world did not change shape to honor catastrophe. It simply absorbed it and kept going.
He forced himself to breathe.
Then he started driving.
---
The first ten minutes passed in fragments.
A signal he didn’t remember stopping at.
A bus brushing too close.
Two bikes cutting across the lane.
Someone honking repeatedly behind him.
He barely registered any of it.
His mind was no longer moving cleanly. It was jumping.
Harish on the floor.
The blood.
The open door.
The footsteps in the corridor.
The phone now sitting beside him.
The bag on the passenger seat.
The fact that if anyone had seen him enter or leave, he was already tied to a dead man.
That thought made his stomach turn.
He pulled the car to the side of a darker service road and switched off the headlights for a moment.
Only then did he allow himself to look properly at what he had taken.
Harish’s phone.
A small pen drive.
A laptop bag with the zip half-open.
For one second, he considered throwing all of it away.
Not because he didn’t understand its value.
Because he understood it too well.
Evidence could save a man.
Evidence could also bury him faster.
His own phone buzzed suddenly in the cup holder.
The sound hit him like a physical blow.
He grabbed it.
Naina calling.
For a second, he just stared.
Then answered.
“Hello?”
“Where are you?” Naina asked.
Her voice was irritated, but underneath it was something else.
Worry.
Ordinary worry.
The kind that belonged to a normal life.
He closed his eyes briefly.
“Still out.”
“At this hour?”
“I had to check something.”
“Harish?”
The name made his grip tighten.
“Yes.”
A pause.
“Is he okay?”
Aravind looked at the dark road ahead.
At the reflection of his own face in the windshield.
At the shape of the lie he was about to speak.
“I don’t know yet,” he said.
Naina was quiet for a second.
Then, “Maya kept asking for you.”
That hurt more than it should have.
Or maybe exactly as much as it should have.
“We have to make a run, there is something horrible at work, I cant come home.all our lives are at risk. Can you come quickly to the road behind the old hospital, bring whatever cash is at home, hire a taxi, both you and maya come over. See you in 30 minutes ” he said.
“Aravind, how bad is it?” she asked.
"We need to be on the run, all our lives are at risk. I'm turning the phone off now. meet you there".
But he ended the call before she could say anything else.
Then sat there with the phone still in his hand,near the old hospital, car parked so that no one else can watch him. feeling the first real edge of what had happened begin to cut through shock.
After waiting for 30 minutes, he saw a cab arrive. Before he could show himeslf, he saw few huge guys decend. probably body gaurd types,with guns in thier hands and definetley looking hor him.
He escaped from there before being spotted. He just couldnt understand how thier family's plan of running away was found out.
He could not fathom, who those guys are and how is it all connected.
He could not go home.
Not tonight.
Maybe not for a while.
The thought came without permission and stayed.
Not as panic.
As fact.
If Harish had been killed for what he knew, then anyone connected to him was already unsafe.
And if the fraud was designed to collapse around Aravind, then being found with Harish’s material after visiting him in secret would not make him look innocent.
It would make him convenient.
He opened the glove compartment and took out an old charger cable.
Then, with shaking fingers, he switched on Harish’s phone.
The battery was low.
No passcode.
That frightened him more than if there had been one.
The home screen lit up immediately.
Missed calls.
Unread messages.
Two unknown numbers.
One message from Harish to himself saved in drafts.
Aravind stared at that for a second, then opened it.
There were only three lines.
If you’re reading this, I was right.
Do not trust anyone from office.
Start with the board files.
He read it twice.
Then once more.
Nothing else.
No names.
No explanation.
No mercy.
He leaned back against the seat and shut his eyes.
This was no longer a problem that could be handled with calm conversations, internal review, or strategic silence.
Someone had already moved beyond fear.
Into elimination.
That meant the rules had changed.
And he was late in realizing it.
---
He opened the laptop bag next.
Inside was a thin company laptop, a folder of printouts, and another sealed envelope marked only with Harish’s handwriting:
Backup — not office
Aravind looked at it for a long moment before opening it.
Inside were photocopies.
Vendor records.
Approval logs.
Partial email chains.
And a few pages of handwritten notes in Harish’s cramped, hurried writing.
Some names were underlined.
Some entries circled.
One sentence appeared twice in two different places.
Check who moved first after internal alert.
Aravind sat still.
That line lodged itself somewhere deep.
Because it wasn’t just about fraud anymore.
It was about sequence.
Reaction.
Who knew early.
Who positioned themselves quickly.
Who benefited from chaos.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, Harish had died.
He placed everything back into the bag and looked at his own phone again.
He had twenty-three unread messages.
Three missed calls.
Two from office.
One from Naina.
One from Radhika.
One unknown number.
His first instinct was to call someone he trusted.
Then the uglier truth arrived:
he no longer knew if he trusted anyone correctly.
That was the loneliest part of fear.
Not danger itself.
The collapse of certainty around people.
---
He needed somewhere to go.
Not home.
Not office.
Not a hotel under his own name.
Not anywhere obvious.
His breathing had steadied now, but his thoughts were beginning to sharpen in a more dangerous way.
Practicality had returned.
And practicality, under enough pressure, could become almost cold.
He started the car again and pulled back onto the road.
He drove without deciding for nearly fifteen minutes.
The city had thinned into its late-night version of itself—fewer families, more trucks, men at tea stalls, dogs crossing roads with more confidence than pedestrians.
At one red light, he caught sight of himself again in the mirror.
Tired eyes.
Beard.
The face of a man who still looked like he belonged to his old life.
That was already becoming a problem.
He needed time.
Time to think.
Time to look through what Harish had left behind.
Time before anyone else decided his story for him.
His phone buzzed again.
This time it was Radhika.
He stared at the name and let it ring out.
Then another message came immediately.
Sir, please call me. Something is wrong in office.
He did not call back.
Not yet.
Not from his number.
Not while driving around with a dead man’s evidence beside him.
For the first time in his life, caution no longer felt like professionalism.
It felt like survival.
---
He finally parked near a shuttered medical store and sat there thinking until one name surfaced with unpleasant clarity.
Not because it was ideal.
Because it was the only possibility left.
A man he had not spoken to properly in years.
A friend from before corporate life had taught them all how to become edited versions of themselves.
Someone outside the company.
Outside the immediate blast radius.
Someone who might still open a door before asking the wrong questions.
The decision came with its own shame.
Because calling an old friend at this hour with no explanation was not dignity.
It was desperation.
But Harish had died.
Dignity no longer had operational value.
Aravind scrolled to the number.
Paused.
Then pressed call.
It rang longer than he expected.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then a sleepy, irritated voice answered.
“Who is this?”
Aravind swallowed.
“It’s me.”
A pause.
Then, more alert now: “Aravind?”
He shut his eyes briefly.
“Yes.”
The silence on the line changed shape.
Old familiarity recognizing crisis before words did.
“What happened?” the voice asked.
Aravind looked through the windshield into the empty road ahead.
And for the first time that night, he answered honestly enough to matter.
“I need somewhere to stay,” he said quietly. “Right now.”
There was a long silence on the other end.
Then only one question came back.
“Are you in trouble?”
Aravind looked down at Harish’s phone in his lap.
At the pen drive.
At the life he had already left behind without telling his wife or daughter goodbye.
“Yes,” he said.
This time, there was no hesitation.
The voice on the other end lowered immediately.
“Come.”
And that one word changed the night.
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