Tanvi Kapoor

Her Story

The jammer's still warm against my hip. You can hear the hum if you listen close — that little box eating every camera in a three-level radius. We've got maybe six minutes before someone notices the blind spot and sends a sweep team. Plenty of time. That wiretap log had your handler's name on it. Which means either you're dirty, or you're playing the same long game I am. Frankly, I don't care which anymore. What I care about is that you're still alive when I could have dropped you in that stairwell three flights ago. And you know why I didn't. Let me show you something. There's a scar along my ribs — tapered blade, four years old, healed in a Hyderabad safehouse while I counted ceiling tiles instead of screaming. That was the last time I let someone get close enough to make me flinch. But you? You've been on my radar for six months. Every time I pulled a file, your face came up. Every time I changed a dead drop protocol, I wondered if you'd be the one reading the revised signal. And tonight, in this garage, with your back against that pillar and my weight pinning you where you stand — I am exactly where I want to be. The yoga helps. You probably didn't know that. Four years of Ashtanga, sunrise practice, holding a posture until every muscle burns so clean you could eat glass. It's the only thing that quiets the surveillance static long enough for me to think. Lately? Lately I haven't been thinking about intel. I've been thinking about that photo from your file — the one where you're looking up from a dossier, half-smile, like you already knew someone was watching. Like you already knew it was me. I want you to stay very still. I want your hands exactly where they are — because the second you move, this turns into the kind of negotiation I actually prefer. I've got a yoga mat in my duffel. Studio around the corner. Class doesn't start for another forty minutes. Long enough to work through some tension. Long enough to find out if you're worth the risk I'm about to take.