The pleasant smell of caffeine filled the air as he placed the cup of coffee in front of me.

Riddick squeezed lightly on my shoulder and sat in front of me with a genuine smile on his face. His blue eyes were filled with concern as soon as he heard of Raziya's arrest and her not being Kaalan.

The situation simply confused him as well. He too expected Raziya to be Kaalan when she said that she was the one who killed Jalal but she admitted that she was not Kaalan. So who was Kaalan?

"Do you think Kaalan is someone who simply took the blames of random murders in the last fourteen years?" He took a sip from his cup.

"I don't think so, something is missing, I just wish if the murderer of Rose, the first victim too turned in." I massaged my forehead.

The weak rain had decided to stop itself by then. The atmosphere was pleasantly cool and the leaves of different variety of plants in Riddick's garden was still wet from it. Riddick insisted on sitting under the parasol in the garden. The moon hid behind a dark cloud and we knew that it was not over. A little rain and it stopped, perhaps to rain with full force when the time came.

"Yeah, and the fourteen murderers." He said and chuckled. His chuckle didn't feel like an irritating one this time, he was trying to lighten up the mood.

"Can we try again?" I looked at his phone.

He called again Chandni in the number she gave to him before leaving Kannur . We tried in it several times already but nobody attended the call, even if it rang. I wasn't still convinced by Raziya's story. Maybe I did not want to believe that they were gone forever.

He sighed again and kept the phone aside.

"Maybe Raziya said the truth and they are no more," I said.

Riddick was not confident enough to look at me. I think he was blaming himself partly for Chandni's and Fathima's departure. He wanted to save me and he did that but I was not sure if he made things easier for Raziya by setting them up for a long journey.

"What would you do if someone else you know turned out to be like Raziya, keeping secrets from you?"

"If that someone is you, I would never say a 'yes'" I looked daringly at him.

We sat there in absolute silence for a while. It was like we were having a staring contest. Neither of us was willing to give up until Riddick winked and smiled at me.

"I made pasta for tonight. Let's go inside" Riddick pointed his thumb towards the house.

I smiled and followed him for a while before he stopped to walk with me.

His house was gigantic with a large swimming pool in front of the house and a beautiful garden around it. The landscape lighting did an excellent job of making it extravagant. There were Cedar trees on either side of the path from where we sat to his house. The tree lights made the tree look angelic and I couldn't help but wish to touch those damp leaves.

Riddick held my hand.

I looked at him but he kept looking ahead.

His hand was warm and I liked the feeling of my small hand caged in his large ones. It wasn't a long walk but I wished it was.

Suddenly, Arjun's smiling face went across my mind and I was about to withdraw my hand when Riddick himself left it. He opened the door to his house and smiled at me. His blue eyes were filled with joy and his dimples made me feel special.

"Wait here," He smiled at me but the smile disappeared when he saw something behind me. I looked behind to see his bedroom. However, he was back to his usual self, once I faced him again.

"Yeah," I sat on the Chesterfield sofa and took my phone. I opened my facebook account until I made sure that he left to the kitchen through my side view.

I tiptoed into his room. There was nothing unusual about it. It was a neat room with a king-sized bed and a few shelves. I let my eyes scan anything unusual in the room but I couldn't point out anything.

On a wall, there was a wall sticker of a leafless tree. Each branch ended with a photo. There were photos of him and his cousins. There were photos of his parents and other relatives. One particular photo made me smile. It was taken when we went to Palakkayam Thattu for our first month anniversary. He was persistent about celebrating it. We were looking at each other and smiling like idiots in the photo.

I decided to leave the room when I felt that there was nothing wrong. The photo wasn't there even on the day previous to our break up and maybe he was uncomfortable about me seeing it.

There was an extra shelf from the last time I came to his house. It was a really large shelf and I felt an urge to see what was inside. I was about to open it when I withdrew it, feeling that I was doing something wrong but then I told myself that there would be nothing much hidden between us from that night since I decided to say yes.

I opened the door and my mouth fell wide open as I saw what was inside it.

There was a list of Kaalan's victims except for the fourteenth, Indran and Arjun and a map on which his attacks were marked. He circled the first letter of the victim's names but I could not find any pattern in that. The map was in between two lists. The other list contained the names of the escapees. This one too had their first letters encircled and this was an alphabetic pattern after the first two. The first two were Rose and Jalaluddin. After them, it was Amar, Bella, Chithra and so on till the thirteenth person, Kiran . The fourteenth was a question mark.

There were photos of the victim's arms pinned all over the board.

I opened the drawer below the board to see a lot of files. The first file I took was a report on Lilly, I kept it back and took another.  It was a file named 'L'. As I expected, it was the list of prisoners whose name started with the letter 'L'. I kept the file back and closed the drawer.

I looked at the board again, the list of victims. I could imagine my name as the sixteenth victim. I took a pen and wrote our names. Indran, Arjun and me, mine just below Arjun's.

I wasn't angry anymore that he was behind my case. I was actually almost emotionally drained due to the case. Arjun's and Indran's death, the mysterious person who stole a file on Lilly, Chandni and Fathima's departure... everything suffocated me. I wanted to get out of its hold.

I had almost closed the shelf when I noticed a small drawer. I opened it to see packets and packets of hair with names labelled on it. All of them were people whose names started with 'L'. My heart almost stopped when I read the name on the only packet that was opened.

Lilly Thomachan