The color seeps out of his face, making him look ghostly.
“What more?” he asks.
“Find out what was being manufactured or stored at the India Lab. And why it was being destroyed. I need detail.”
Jingo gives a pained sigh. “I’ll find out what you need to know. But I have to be subtle. Give me a day or two.”
“No,” I reply. “You have till eleven a.m. tomorrow. At one minute past eleven, those pictures will hit the desk of the editor of the Times. And then they’ll be uploaded to the internet.”
He looks like the hope has drained out of him. But he nods in agreement, so I let him up and he reaches for his shirt. His hands are shaking so badly that he can’t get his buttons done up. Hala hands him a burner phone.
“We’ll be watching you,” she says.
We get out of there like we’re chasing a land speed record, just in case Jingo thinks to try to follow us or call for help. Even as we rev our car away, back into the heart of the city, Hala calls Jingo on his new burner phone. He picks up straightaway and she reminds him once more that he works for us now. He agrees, his voice heavy and hoarse. However, the word of a man like Jingo is probably worth less than a couple of rupees, so Caitlin heads over to watch his house. She’ll make sure he spends the rest of the night at home and keep tabs on anyone who might come in or out, in case he calls on Family First for help. Meanwhile, I check in with Amber.
“I’ve sent you Jingo’s list of contacts that he spilled.”
“Oh, lovely,” she says, genuinely excited. “I’ll get on it right away.”
“And I gave you access to Jingo’s regular phone,” I say.
“Yes, got it. Thomas is already watching every call, message, and email,” she confirms. “Right now, he’s texting his wife to say he’s done with his campaign meeting and heading home.”
“Campaign meeting, yeah right.” I sniff. But then I notice a message on my Indian phone. “Listen, Amber, I’ve got to go. Let me know what you find.”
The message is from Riya. Naturally, I had my sound alerts turned off while we were busy breaking into Jingo’s pleasure palace, so I didn’t notice it come in.
The message is weird, though. Just a location pin that opens up to a block right behind a hospital in Juhu. Nothing else. I try calling Riya but the phone just rings and rings before going through to her voice mail. I text her back, asking for more, but no reply comes. I show it to Hala.
“Is it a live tracker?” she asks. “Does it mean her phone is there?”
I shake my head. “No, it’s static. Like, she’s sent me this address.”
“If someone else has her phone this could be a trap,” Hala says.
“Or she could be in trouble.”
Hala considers. “Direct me,” she says. “We’ll go together.”
22
THE HOSPITAL SPRAWLS OVER A couple of city blocks. There’s definitely a lot of coming and going at the emergency room. But, for the most part, the place has quietened down for the night—presumably visiting hours are over.
While Hala parks the car off a side street nearby, I try calling Riya again. Still nothing. The location pin guides us away from the main entrance of the hospital to a road that runs down the left side of it. Bypassing the hospital itself, it leads us around the back, past massive waste bins, past a delivery bay, and into a back alley that ends in a fifteen-foot-high chain-link fence. Beyond the fence is a section of the hospital that is mostly unlit. And, wouldn’t you know it, somewhere in there is where the pin lands.
“What would you do without me?” Hala says, grabbing hold of the fence. Her feet seem to find tiny bits of traction on the small holes in the wire—but she moves so fast that even when I get to watch her, it’s hard to figure out how she manages it. Within ten seconds, she has scrambled to the top. She pulls a small coil of black rope from her pocket, drops the climbing line down to me, and helps me up. Getting down the other side is a lot easier because I can hang down by my arms till I’m only ten feet off the ground. Hala jumps first, landing with grace. I follow, stumble, and dust myself off as we tread our way carefully toward the pin location. Now that we are over the fence, the alleyway leads into a dilapidated building, streaked with grime, and sporting a number of broken windows. There’s a sign above the threshold. Hala flicks on a flashlight so we can read it:
Post Mortem Center
Hala looks unhappily at me. It doesn’t make me feel great either. But more than my vague dread of walking into some kind of hospital morgue, I’m filled with worry for Riya. What could have happened to her? A breeze picks up, rattling dry leaves on the trees that line one side of the alley. On the other side a nondescript car is parked; an old Honda. The engine is still ticking slightly as it cools down, leading me to the brilliant deduction that it was parked here very recently. I take a picture of the license plate before we creep inside the front door and past an entrance hall where the wall paint peels down in tired flakes. Beyond that is a gloomy corridor that leads into rooms that look like morgues and labs. Neither of us is eager to explore down there unless we really have to. We turn to scope out the opposite side of the corridor. That passageway leads to an exterior door, which in turn leads out into an open courtyard.
Hala switches off her flashlight—because the exterior door is propped ajar and someone is outside it, hanging
