❝The only kind of love I want is one where even if it is just for a short moment, it feels like I have lived a lifetime in that moment with that person. ❞ - Jhanvi Raichand.
**You CANNOT read this as standalone. Read Dare to Be before reading this...
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2.19 Every Opportunity
I cannot believe I am sharing things with Annie - someone I barely know. I am not the person who would open up to just anyone. And yet, it feels like I know her. She reminds me of my little sister. She just has the brightness in her eyes that I would always see in Barkha. She has that personality that can get anyone comfortable enough to tell her things.
At first glance, she might come off as someone careless. I did not like that about her and the judgements I had jumped to at our first interaction that day at the hospital. But she is perceptive - something I doubt a lot of people give her credit for. If that isn't enough, she may be one of the most resilient person I have had the chance to meet in life.
The laptop makes a beeping sound and I glance away from her to see the decrypting process is completed. I have hacked into the servers. I can feel her eyes on me still and I can understand her speechless reaction. It's like she wants to say something, but words are failing her. It is not as if I actually expect her to say anything either.
Returning to task at hand, I ask, "Do you remember what time the accident happened?"
"Yeah, early morning. Roughly 6:30?"
I forward the recording to the estimate time and play it. We see the car approaching just as Annie is getting out of a cab. And then, the recording is disturbed with static and a black screen comes on.
"What happened?"
I fast forward it till it will play properly again and comment, "Looks like someone doesn't want to be spotted."
I hear the worry in her tone and from the corner of my eye, catch her body stiffening as she sits up properly, "What does that mean?"
"It means someone was definitely there and you didn't imagine it."
She rolls her eyes, "I never did doubt that, Aarush! You are not telling me anything new."
I look at her teasingly, "Don't underestimate my intelligence, alright?"
She bobs her head to the side with judgement clear on her face. "You are welcome to prove me wrong then."
"Give me a minute," I say and get working on putting together everything I have learned so far so I can explain it to her. Then, I turn the laptop in her direction after I have arranged minimized screens of the video clip as well as the photographs which I had pulled earlier. "Alright, see, this video clip tells us someone was definitely following you considering how they went to the trouble to erase the footage. Now, yes, it does not show that person's face, but if we look before and after, we see this..."
"License plate." She concludes, catching up on the similarity among all the pictures I'd displayed. There were all bits and pieces across the photos in the faint background, but put together, one could pull out the complete license plate number. She picks up the pen to write it in the correct order before pausing and looking up on connecting another piece, "Wait... that means whoever is following me has been doing so long before Milan."
