A Tangled Affair: A Passionate Love Story

by P. G. Van

  Samraat closed his laptop and nodded at the diner owner. “Still have writer’s block. I will come back tomorrow morning. Save my table for me.”

  “Anything for you, man.” The owner of the diner saluted as Samraat left to go to another location for further observation. Samraat had made sure to tip the waiters and waitresses well and ate all his meals at the diner while he watched the entrance of the apartment building.

  His next observation spot was a park bench from where he could use his zoom glasses that looked like regular sunglasses to look into her apartment. Samraat found a man with his dog sitting in the most optimal spot on the bench for him to watch her, so he took the seat next to the man.

  The man gave Samraat a funny look before looking around the park and at the empty bench right across the pathway.

  “Seriously, so many empty benches, and you want to sit right next to me.” The man sounded annoyed.

  Samraat adjusted his dark sunglasses and lifted his chin slightly. “I am sorry, sir, I didn’t feel your presence before I sat on the bench. Please forgive me.”

  The man looked horrified and embarrassed at the same time when he realized he was mean to someone who could not see. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize… I was just about to leave.”

  Samraat turned to look at the man walk away with his dog, and the edge of his mouth twisted up in a slight smile. “Thank you.”

  He moved to the edge of the bench and pressed on the small button on the frame of his sunglasses, zooming into her apartment. He didn’t see any movement for a while, but when he did finally see her, she had stepped out onto her balcony to enjoy a cup of what looked like a hot beverage.

  She had changed out of the clothes she had on and put on some shorts and a t-shirt. When she lifted one foot off the floor to stretch her leg onto the other chair on the balcony, Samraat swallowed inadvertently in pure admiration but quickly looked away.

  What the heck was the need for him to look at her so closely? He knew it was her, and all he needed to figure out was a way to inject himself into her life. There was no need to watch her while she was inside her apartment. He made a mental note to set an alert on his phone from the camera installed at the main entrance of her apartment building.

  Samraat did not feel good about gawking at his mentor’s daughter the way he did moments ago. He stood up and took off his sunglasses before leaving the park to go back to the diner. He could get some work done while pretending to be an author suffering from writer’s block.

  Later that evening, Samraat was sure the woman was not going to leave, making him wonder why a pretty young woman in her twenties was cooped up in her apartment all day.

  He walked down the street and looked at the blinking sign of the motel, wondering if he should stay there instead of the hotel he had been staying at for the past few days. He made a note to himself to change hotels if the woman continued to spend her days in her apartment as she did that day.

  Based on his research, the woman worked as a teacher at the local elementary school and was off for the summer break. She had probably been away on vacation, and he knew he could get more information about her if only he knew her phone number or email which she probably used for communication. The details he was able to find from her apartment rental agreement and other public facilities showed she had no personal contact with anyone. The emergency contact was a person who worked with her at the school as a teacher.

  Was she keeping her communications a secret, or did she not have anyone else to communicate with? He felt a weird tug in his chest when he realized she was living a lonely life when she had a large family in India and a father who was waiting anxiously to see her. Why wouldn’t she go back home instead of being alone?

  The next morning, he woke up early to go back to the diner to see if the woman would spend another day indoors. He was horrified when he realized she was not there. The program he had set up last night on the camera at the main entrance and the back door of the apartment building did not send him an alert of her leaving the building.

  He smiled at the diner manager who was looking at him quizzically. “I just thought of a good scene to write in my story. Can I get a cup of coffee, please?”

  “Coming right up,” the man said, smiling.

  Samraat started combing through the video footage to see when she left and if he missed setting a programmed alert on one of the doors. He leaned back when he saw the image of the woman leaving the apartment building around six that morning. The way she covered her face with the hoodie of her jacket, the camera didn’t pick up on the features and thereby failed to send the alert.

  Samraat looked at the paused video, puzzled with the way she always covered her face like she suspected someone was watching her. He skipped through some other camera footage he had been watching and looked closely at the screen. He was surprised when he saw her drive out of the underground parking garage. Some of the images he looked at either showed her hair covering her face as she walked or the hoodie she wore made her unrecognizable, even on hot summer days.

  Samraat went back to the check the initial detailed report on her and confirmed no car was registered in her name.

  “Mr. Sharma’s daughter, what are you up to? Why are you hiding like this? Your father is a police officer. Please don’t be involved in anything illicit.”

  He looked up the details on the car registration based on the license plate and realized the vehicle was, in fact, registered under the name ‘Kiara Das.’

  “Idiots,” he swore under his breath at the carelessness of the team who performed the initial data search on her and missed the detail about her car. It wasn’t a big detail, but the fact they missed the information pissed him off.

  He followed the imagery software searching the images of the car as she moved through an urban area of Las Vegas called Sin City. The path she took to her destination seemed odd. She took local roads when she had a better option to use the highway. She would sometimes get off the highway for one exit and then get back on as if she had a tail following her, and she was trying to mislead someone.

  Samraat let out a low chuckle when he saw the name of her final destination—Guru’s Healing & Wellness Center. His report had listed her as a teacher at the local elementary school but nothing about a wellness center.

  A quick internet search indicated the wellness center was open for visitors after ten in the morning, but it looked like the woman had made it into the facility well before seven that morning.

  Did she work at the wellness center? Part-time?

  Samraat was livid that the investigative team he had partnered with in Chicago had not listed any of these details about her when they sent the file to him. “No wonder Mr. Sharma could not find you.”

  He realized why the other teams had failed to find her over the years. Maybe she was going the extra mile not to be found.

  Later that night, he went back to his hotel room after setting another alert on her parked car at the wellness center parking lot. When he looked at his hotel phone, he saw multiple messages and knew it had to be Mr. Sharma leaving the messages.

  He dialed his mentor’s phone number to give him the latest update and maybe even ask him a few questions. “Good morning, sir.”

  “Good evening to you, Samraat.” His mentor sounded cheerful.

  “Sir, we have located your daughter, but I have no way to get anywhere close to her, so I can attempt convince her to return to India with me.” Samraat didn’t waste time by giving him the investigation details.

  “How is she, Samraat?”

  “Lonely and in hiding, sir.”

  “Hiding? Why?”

  Samraat took a deep breath. “You tell me, sir. Is there something I need to know as to why your daughter ran away from home after burning every photograph of hers before leaving? Why has she changed her name and living as someone else on the other side of the world?”

  Mr. Sharma went silent for a moment. “Her mother, my late wife, was killed in
the crossfire when I was attacked many years ago. She blamed me for her mother’s death, and there were a couple of occasions where we identified potential attacks on her as well. For those who knew she was my weakness, they tried to use her to threaten me, and I would think…”

  Samraat interjected. “Sir, it’s as if she is on a covert operation. She is almost like a ghost. She doesn’t interact with her neighbors, comes and goes at odd times, no friends, and does not go out. Do you think she is paranoid your enemies will get to her, even here?”

  “It’s possible. What is she doing in Las Vegas?”

  “She is an elementary school teacher and seems to have started working at a wellness center recently.”

  “Her mother was a teacher, Samraat.” Mr. Sharma’s voice was shaky.

  “Sir, give me some time to find out more.”

  “Samraat, but I cannot wait to see her.”

  “Sir, you cannot come here to see her, not yet. If she has stayed under the radar for this long, she could disappear again. Let me find out what is really bothering her and why she stayed away from her family.”

  “What can I do?”

  “I will keep you posted.”

  A couple of days passed, and the car did not move from the parking spot puzzling Samraat further. The woman went into the building two days ago and did not step out. He spent the time to look up her identity information on the wellness center’s payroll system and knew she had to still be inside the facility based on her punch-card data. She had not left the building after she entered it several days ago.

  Her employment information indicated she had joined the facility recently. It confirmed his hunch that she was working at the facility when the school she worked at was closed for the summer.

  He looked closely at the video footage of her walking into the facility wearing an orange kaftan dress carrying a small duffle bag. “Are you staying at the center, Ms. Sharma?”

  Samraat thought for a few moments and picked up his phone to call Mr. Sharma. “Sir, I need your help.”

  “What can I do, Samraat?”

  “I need an entry into the Guru’s Healing & Wellness Center as a patient. This place is buzzing with celebrities and won’t admit anyone on such short notice without some personal recommendations from other influential people. You can give them my real profile because they perform extensive background checks before accepting. I need this done quickly. We cannot waste any more time. Use your powers, sir.”

  He spent more time talking to Mr. Sharma instructing him on how he needed to be assigned to Kiara Das as his coach for his counseling sessions.

  “Give me a couple of days, Samraat. I will make it happen.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I don’t know how I can ever thank you, Samraat.”

  “Sir, remember what you did for me.” Samraat smiled.

  “You found my daughter, and nothing beats that.”

  “Bringing her home would beat that.” He chuckled and was happy to hear Mr. Sharma laugh.

  Chapter 3

  A few days later…

  “The master Guru will see you now, Kiara” the calm voice of a woman shook her out of her thoughts. She smiled at the elderly woman who was like a mother for the entire center and walked toward the office of the man who was known to treat any mental illness with ancient methods.

  “Good morning, Guru.”

  “Good morning, Mother.” The older man, her mentor and life coach, nodded, standing up from his chair as he always did. The master Guru always addressed the women who worked at the center as ‘Mother’ and the men as ‘Brother.’ She had initially found it odd that an elderly, wise man addressed her that way, but she had grown fond of the term. It showed how much he respected the men and women who worked at the center and how dearly he cared for them.

  “You wanted to see me, Guru?”

  “Yes, Mother. We have a new person in need of our help, and based on what he has dealt with, I think you will be the best one to heal him.”

  “I am working with a child who is under severe duress. Would you like for me to work with both of them?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  She nodded. “As you wish, Guru. When is the new person arriving?”

  “He has arrived and is acclimating himself in the Nature’s Den. Take good care of him. He is alone in this world.” The Guru’s voice held a sense of concern.

  “What is his concern?”

  The older man shook his head. “Young, successful, and alone. He has achieved everything he has ever wanted, and yet he is lost.”

  “Okay.”

  The older man shook his head. “He has not spoken to anyone about himself before, so go slow. His friend is extremely concerned, and I feel you are best suited because you are young like him, and you can understand him better.”

  She nodded. “I will work with him.”

  “Peace be with you, Mother.”

  “Thank you, Guru.”

  “I hear you’re making a lot of progress with Monica.”

  She smiled, nodding. “She is a teenager with a lot going on. We had a good trip last week, and we bonded, and I was able to get her to open up. She is doing much better now.”

  “Take care, Mother.”

  She smiled. “Likewise, Guru.”

  The Nature’s Den was at the other end of the facility. She stopped at the administrative building to pick up the file of the person she would be working with. She was not a doctor or psychologist, but she was certified in the Guru’s methods of healing people’s minds and putting them at ease.

  She chose the path of peace after leaving home one night without telling anyone. She needed to get away from her past life. She wanted a way to live peacefully without becoming angry with what happened years ago when she lived in India. She took a deep breath fighting away her angry thoughts as she walked to the cabin where the new patient was staying.

  She knocked on the cabin door and waited for the man to answer. She heard the wooden floors creak as the footsteps came closer to the door. She looked straight ahead when the door was opened fully, and she was met by a man looking at her with a charming smile on his face.

  “Samraat?” She was somewhat in shock as she was not expecting to meet a man whose eyes sparkled with sheer joy.

  “Yes, come in.” He took a step back, to let her in.

  She nodded and stepped into the small living space looking around the studio-style living unit. “I wanted to check in with you to make sure you are comfortable in your new space.”

  He shrugged, looking out the large open patio doors. “What’s not to like about this place. It’s amazing.”

  “Good. We can work together starting tomorrow.”

  “Why wait until tomorrow? You are here. Let’s talk.” He gestured for her to sit on the couch in the living area.

  “Sure. I have some time before I have to meet someone.” She sat on the couch, and he sat across from her, his eyes fixated on her.

  “I thought you were working only with me.” The man’s cocky tone annoyed her, but she only smiled in response.

  “That’s not true. I cannot leave my cases midway through them.” Even as she spoke to him, she could not understand why the man was at the facility. He seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself, and there were no signs of unhappiness or depression. She was curious why the man even admitted himself at the center. From what she had read, he came with the highest recommendation from the of Guru’s mentor to expedite his therapy.

  “Okay. I will take what I can get. When do we start? What is your name?”

  “Mother.”

  “What? That’s your name?”

  “No. That’s how you will address me.” She kept her tone firm.

  “Hell, no,” he retorted, taking her by surprise.

  “Why not?”

  “I am not going to call someone my age Mother, especially you.”

  “Me? What is that supposed to mean?”

  He chuckled. “I am not in
the habit of calling beautiful young women, Mother. Not happening. What is your name?”

  “Rules are rules.”

  He thought for a moment. “If I address you as Mother, then you will refer to me as Baby.”

  “What?” She had never had such an interaction with anyone in the seven years she worked as a mental wellness expert across multiple facilities.

  “Will you call me Baby?” His voice held mischief.

  “If you are uncomfortable addressing me as Mother, you can address me as M.”

  He smiled, holding his hand out to her. “I’m Samraat. Nice to meet you.”

  She placed her hand in his large one and gave it a firm shake. “I’m… M.”

  M for Minerva, is that how she hid her details? Samraat could not figure out why the woman was hiding from her father, who has been desperately looking for her for years.

  “Samraat?” Her voice cut through his thoughts.

  “Yes, M.”

  “I have some time before I need to meet with someone. Do you want to tell me more about yourself? What you haven’t already told us in your application?”

  He shrugged. “I see no purpose in life.”

  “Why is that?” She maintained a calm tone.

  “My girlfriend left me when my company was about to tank and married my friend, and now when I am at the top of my game, I still don’t have the woman I want.” He wasn’t prepared to be questioned by her that day and came up with a random story.

  “Did you love her?” Her question surprised him further.

  “She… she was my girlfriend.” He shifted in his seat feeling uncomfortable as she looked at him in silence, her eyes locked with his.

  She slowly shook her head. “That’s not what I asked you. Did you love her? Was she so important that you lost your motivation?”

  “Maybe.”

  She nodded before standing up. “Samraat, I would like for you to spend the rest of the day and possibly the night thinking about why you lost the spark in your life.”

  “I just told you why.”