"You guys can happily wait outside when I go talk with him," I said from passenger seat beside Vishal in my Ford as he drove us to Karthik's place with Sushi in the backseat. 

"I am coming with you inside." Sushi said from the backside and I couldn't see her expression.

Vishal added, "I am coming too."

"I thought you did not believe in anything I told you before." I said mockingly.

"Of course I do not believe in that shit even now. I want to come because my friend in there is already suffering from the loss of his girlfriend and I don't want you to hurt him more by your unreal imaginations and conclusions." He said without turning his gaze from the road.

"He is not at all sad about her." I whispered.

"I met him yesterday. He looked like a mess. His roommates said that he wasn't eating anything since he heard the news of Nikita's death. I made him eat after so much effort and asked him to go to his parent's home so that at least they would take care of him. But he denied. And here you are suspecting him as murderer." Vishal's voice trembled with grief and resentment.

I looked away from him towards the window. Flashes of Karthik flirting with Sneha in the shopping mall appeared in my view. The way he told her that blue color suited her skin and it would perfectly fit for the dinner they were going to have on that night with a smirk on his face and the way he avoided the topic of Nikita when I asked him about her. Either he was a good actor that he got Vishal's sympathy or I was too fast at drawing conclusions. 

The rest of the ride was silent until we reached his room. It was true that he looked like a mess. Vishal told that he looked better today than when he saw him the other day.

"Hey Vineetha, how are you? I've heard about the accident. Sorry I couldn't make it to the hospital." Karthik asked me wryly. But his every move appeared fake to me.

"I am fine. It's okay, I understand."

He laughed weakly, "That's a good thing to hear."

Sushi and Vishal talked with him for straight half & hour about random things while I just sat there watching them, checking my phone and surveying his room. How should I even start? It was like their idea to meet him when it was actually mine.

Finally Karthik looked at me, "Why are you silent?" He asked.

This was my time. Anymore delay and I might start doubting my own conclusions.

"Umm, Karthik, I want to ask you something very important." I said watching Sushi and Vishal. Their expressions changed into disappointment as if they were expecting me to forget about all these after coming this far.

Karthik followed my gaze towards them and nodded, "yeah sure. Why not!"

I started telling him from the beginning without bothering about the stares that my other two friends were giving me. I told him everything about the red paper, how it disappeared, how I felt angry watching him in the shopping mall with Sneha, how I got a missed call that was registered as red, how I got the complete information about that number's whereabouts and how it showed it's location in Karthik's guest house in the same week we stayed there. If he thought I was dumb or stupid listening to my words, he didn't show it in his face.

"I was with Sneha that evening because my parents wanted me to and I was trying to distract myself. I did not believe that Nikita could be dead when all the others thought her to be dead. I kept saying myself that she will make an appearance smiling widely telling that it was just a prank. It was only when I saw her body in the newspaper, I had to believe it's true." Karthik said looking straight into my eyes like he was trying to dig out and throw away all my suspicions on him and he was doing good job at that.

I looked at Sushi and Vishal. They just shrugged.

"And," Karthik continued, "about that phone number. Can you show me the number?"

I showed him once after digging out the paper from my bag. He examined the number and the details.

"No, this is not my number. I don't have any other sim cards. We use to have a telephone at my guest house but we removed it as we are not going to Ooty that often like we use to go there before. There's no way this number could've been in the guest house, unless it belongs to some one among you guys. Nikita did not have any other sims or phones either." He answered moving his head side to side.

"We checked and it belongs to no one in our group." Sushi told him.

"What about those three girls? Ayesha, Vrindha and someother girl?" Karthik questioned us.

"Ishwarya. But no, dude. They came to guest house only once, that too, in the middle of the week before which the phone number was already registered to be there in the guest house. I thought about Krishna too, our guide, remember? He too stayed one night and doesn't fit in the theory." Vishal said peeling oranges that we brought for Karthik.

I was surprised that Karthik considered my conclusions and gave a thought about it when I expected him to dismiss like Vishal did.

The discussion went on for sometime where we cleared Karthik's doubts about how the sim card was tracked from Hyderabad to his guest house where it stayed for few days and in between the signals were lost many times which meant multiple switch offs so we couldn't find the exact locations in between Hyderabad and his guest house. After that the signal was permanently lost. The last signal was recorded from a location which was somewhere in the forest in Ooty. We searched about the location and it didn't help much.

My suspicion on Karthik slowly started to fade and I let it because after all he was my best friend too. I use to have a little crush on him in our first year but I immediately erased it when I saw him showing interest on Nikita. It did not hurt much. It was gone as fastly as it'd came. After that we became good friends. He was sweet and kind person and now I feel horrible for even suspecting him of murdering someone he loved.

"This only means one thing," Karthik said finally with firm tone distracting me from my thoughts shifting everyone's attention towards him, including his roommate's who had been playing pubg all this time, "This only means that.....someone have stayed along with us secretly hiding somewhere in the guest house that week, with a mobile holding that sim card number."