The Number Under the Tape

Thirty-three hours to the final, and the mohalla team was falling apart.

"We can't play without Ahmed!" Salman hurled a ball at the ground's wall. "He's our best bowler!"

"And we ARE looking for him," said Waleed. His voice was tired — the tiredness of a night without sleep. "But we play the final too. Remember Ahmed's note? 'If you want to win, find me.' He didn't say abandon the final."

Coach Rana Iqbal blew his whistle. "Enough! Light practice today. A friendly against the Lane Six team — without Ahmed. Let's see what you're made of."

The friendly was a disaster.

Salman bowled three wides in anger. Guddu — who normally chirped at every ball — was silent today, and his silence was the scariest thing of all. Rizwan dropped two easy catches. Waleed made thirty-six alone, but the team collapsed for ninety. The Lane Six boys left laughing: "Star Academy will eat you alive in the final!"

"They're not wrong," Guddu said quietly.

While packing up, Rizwan picked up Ahmed's kit bag — the same bag found at dawn by the pitch. The police had returned it after a look: "Nothing in it, just clothes and balls."

Rizwan pulled the balls from the bag's pouch. One was an old tape-ball, its tape coming loose. He tugged the tape idly — and stopped.

Under the tape, scratched with a fingernail into the ball's white surface, was a number. Eleven digits. A mobile number.

"Waleed!" Rizwan yelled. "Look at this!"

All five crowded around the number. Guddu's eyes gleamed: "Ahmed hid it on purpose. Under the tape — so only someone who knows the ball well would see it. This is the first clue!"

"But whose number is it?" Salman asked.

"Only one way to find out," said Waleed. He took out his phone — then stopped. "No. If this belongs to some dangerous man, calling from my number tells him we're onto him."

"We'll use my cousin's phone," said Guddu. "Nobody knows his number."

Half an hour later the five stood behind Guddu's cousin's shop. Guddu dialled and put it on speaker. Hearts hammered.

First ring. Second. Third.

Then a heavy voice: "Hello? Who's this?"

Silence. The five looked at each other. Waleed gathered his courage: "Assalam-o-Alaikum… do… do you know Ahmed?"

A long pause on the other side. Then the voice came — low, careful:

"Ahmed… which Ahmed?"

And the call cut off.

"He recognised the name!" said Guddu. "There was panic in his voice! Did you hear it?"

"But the call dropped," said Rizwan, his voice shaking. "Now what?"

Waleed looked at the ball, then at the sky, where evening was falling. "Now we trace the number. Guddu — your gossip network. Which area is this number from, who carries numbers like these. Salman — tomorrow morning you go to the tea-stall on the railway road. Ahmed was last seen there."

"And me?" Rizwan asked.

Waleed put a hand on his shoulder. "You tell us what you're hiding." He said it gently. "Rizwan, I can see it in your eyes — you know something. About Ahmed. Tell the truth."

Rizwan's face went white. He opened his mouth — and at that moment Guddu's cousin's phone buzzed.

A message from an unknown number. Just four words:

"Don't dial again. Or you'll regret it."

The five stood frozen. From somewhere far came the sound of the azaan, and tears glinted in Rizwan's eyes.

Coach Rana Iqbal had seen the number too. He turned the ball over in his hands for a long moment, and a gravity came over his face that none of the five had ever seen before.

"This number…" he said slowly, then stopped. "Some numbers, beta, should be thought about a hundred times before you dial them." He handed the ball back and walked away — but as he went, he glanced back once, like a man who wanted to say something and couldn't.

Waleed noticed. Coach Rana — who said everything to your face — was hiding something today.

Guddu's cousin, a lanky eighteen-year-old named Fahad, had watched all of this with wide eyes. "Bhai, if someone sends threats like that… maybe you should tell the police. Or your coach."

"And tell them what?" Salman snapped. "That our friend left us a riddle and vanished? The police already yawned at us once." He kicked at the dirt. "No. Ahmed left that number for US. Not the police. Not the coach. Us. That means he trusts us to be smarter than whoever this is."

Waleed looked at his four friends — the joker gone quiet, the hothead thinking, the youngest trembling — and felt something settle in his chest. "Then we get smarter," he said. "Starting now. Nobody tells anyone about the number. Not our parents, not the team group chat. Until we know whose voice that was — this stays between us five."

"Waleed bhai…" he said in a trembling voice, "I… I have to tell you something. About Ahmed's father."