Heero was starting to doze before Trowa finally made it to Duo's. It was getting close to midnight, and he almost couldn't remember the last time he'd had a decent night's sleep. Or a shower. He'd be glad when he could drop the act and assume a less distasteful persona.
He really did look like a bum. His hair was long enough that it brushed his collar and fell into his eyes, and he was sporting about a week's worth of scruffy beard. His jeans and t-shirt had come from the gardener's shed; he was only grateful that they didn't smell too strongly of fertilizer. He'd rescued his old running shoes from Relena's trash pile. At least they were comfortable clothes, even if they were a little worn.
"Sorry I'm late," Trowa said, letting himself into the office. "I stayed behind to clean up the mess our friend left at the café."
"Oh?" Heero said. He'd hoped Trowa would find the scene before the police. From the evidence, it seemed that the acrobat's tactical skills were still as sharp as ever. "Find anything?"
"Not much." Trowa dropped a handful of things on Duo's desk: a semi-automatic pistol, some cash, a hotel room key, and a broken mobile phone. "He didn't have any ID. No credit cards, either. It looks like he fell on the phone when he went down; I don't know if it's possible to extract any call logs or data from it now."
"If there is, Dak can find it," Duo offered. "The kid's a genius with electronics."
"Don't bother," Heero said. "If this one's anything like the others, the phone is clean. The hotel room is probably empty. And there was only one round in that magazine. It's the same, time and time again. If they don't kill themselves, they're killed in jail before they can give testimony."
Trowa ejected the pistol's magazine—it was empty, and so was the chamber. Duo took the phone and stepped out into the living room; the music that was playing stopped for a moment, but Heero couldn't hear what Duo said to Dak. He pocketed the hotel room key. He'd stayed there on a previous visit and knew his way around the building.
Their agreement was silent, but unwavering. Even if there was only a slim chance of finding new evidence, they were going to take it.
"Thanks," Heero said when Duo returned and settled back into his chair.
"Don't mention it," Trowa replied. Duo nodded.
"What are you planning to do about Faith?" Duo asked. "She'll never forgive you if you vanish again. I kept my part of this deal—I never told her about the bombings or the death threats—but you can't keep her in the dark forever, Heero. If somebody doesn't tell her the truth, she'll find it on her own."
Duo's words sounded too much like one of the band's songs. We really can't be too careful anymore, Heero thought. We've been trying that for years, and it's not working.
"You know her better than I do," he said at last, a bit sadly. "Tell her whatever you think she can handle. I want her to understand what's going on, and I want her to be open to the possibility that she might not be safe here any longer."
"Oh, no," Duo protested. "You're not backing out of this. Faith is your kid, and this is your responsibility. You've been tracking these guys for years, and you're the one with all the intel."
"He's right," Trowa agreed. "Faith is smart, and she's usually a levelheaded kid. It's obvious that she still has some growing up to do, but I know she can comprehend anything you have to tell her. If you treat her like an adult, she'll probably act like one."
Heero nodded. There were no more easy outs. Duo and Trowa were good friends, and good allies, and they were right. It was time for him to face his daughter—and whatever grudges she might hold against him.
"I really screwed this up, didn't I?" he asked. Duo chuckled.
"Look on the bright side, buddy," he said. "Things could be a lot worse—those guys could have been spending this time planting bombs instead of just watching Faith walk back and forth to school."
"Hn." Heero couldn't argue with that. "Let's just hope that isn't their next course of action."
Faith stifled a yawn and stopped herself from looking at the clock again. It was probably a quarter til midnight; it had been 11:43 last time she'd checked. They were all sitting in the living room—except Dak, who'd gleefully holed himself up in the garage with some busted old gadget Duo had given him—waiting to see what was going to happen. The twins were almost asleep, though, and Chris had been steadily getting stonier and stonier. Faith sighed. It was her call—they were her family, her best friends—and they'd wait with her until she was ready to quit.
"This is crap," she said, as it was obvious that even Maggie's near-inexhaustible energy supply was running out. "I'm going to bed. If those guys have anything important to say, it can wait until morning."
"Thank God," Chris muttered. He stalked out, presumably to tell Dak not to wake him up at dark-thirty, since he headed for the garage door and not to their bedroom. The twins crept up the stairs, too tired to even pretend to race. Faith turned to Maggie.
"Couch or bed?" she asked. The couch was narrow and uncomfortable, but at least it was private. There was only one bed in the girls' room upstairs, and Lexi kicked and talked in her sleep.
"Couch," Maggie said. "Maybe I'll still be awake when they come out. I'll let you know if I hear anything juicy."
Faith grinned. "Thanks, Maggie." She shook Lexi awake. "C'mon, Lex. Bedtime. Get up—you're getting too heavy to carry anymore."
Alexa grunted and opened her eyes sleepily. "Don't wanna," she whined. "I'm not tired."
"Bull." Faith tried not to smile at her little sister, but it was hard. Four-year-old Lexi was hilarious, even when she was whiny. If Faith didn't watch it, she was going to end up spoiled rotten. "Get up, Lexi."
"Can I have my song?" Lexi asked. Faith sighed. Lexi only ever asked for the one song, and it was super awkward to sing it with her dad close enough that he might overhear.
"You really want that one?" she asked, trying to sound bored with it. "I don't like that one anymore. It makes Duo cry."
"I still like it," Lexi said. "It's my song. You play my song for me."
Lexi twirled her black hair around her index finger, a habit she'd picked up from Maggie, and shot Faith the puppy dog eyes. Laughing, Maggie joined in.
"Please, Fay, please! Pretty please with a cherry on top," they cajoled. Faith rolled her eyes.
"Fine," she grumbled, feeling like a pushover. "But you have to get in bed first. And no getting up and running around after it's over. You're staying put."
Lexi was off the couch and running upstairs before Faith finished talking. She sighed again and grabbed Duo's battered old guitar from its stand. Decent acoustic guitars were a rare find on their colony—probably because people snapped them up as soon as they went up for sale—but somehow Duo had managed to snag a real Martin for himself. Faith hoped she'd be able to get one of her own someday, but until then she'd borrow Duo's whenever the opportunity arose.
"G'night, Maggie," she said, giving her friend a mock salute as she followed her sister up to their room. "Don't forget, you're on gossip duty tonight."
"Gotcha, Fay," Maggie replied cheerfully. Somehow, even with all her problems, Maggie was always cheerful. "Night!"
Faith trudged up the stairs, ready to finish this one last chore so she could catch some sleep. It had been a long day—and now that her dad was back, she had no way of predicting what tomorrow might bring.
The frame of light surrounding the office door clicked off. The kids had apparently gotten tired of waiting and had gone to bed. Heero was almost relieved—it meant he could put off talking to Faith for one more day. He still wasn't sure what to tell her.
"They just left," Duo said, apparently picking up on the direction of his thoughts. "Now's a good time to talk to her if you want to get her up. Everybody else will stay out of your hair."
"It can wait until morning," Heero said. He showed Duo the hotel key he'd hidden in his pocket. "I want to check this out before somebody else comes along and destroys any possible evidence."
Duo nodded. "You're going there now?"
"Yeah."
"You sure?" he asked. "That's a pretty swanky place, and you're not exactly, uh, looking your best right now, buddy. They might not let you in."
"Duo," Trowa murmured warningly. "Don't start in on this. We've all fallen on hard times before."
Apparently, the disguise was better than Heero had thought. He glared at his friends. They, of all people, should have realized what was going on.
"Don't look at me like that," Heero grumbled. "I haven't fallen on hard times, and I don't need anybody's pity. I'm just trying to keep the paparazzi off my back. They've been hounding me ever since I left Earth, and demanding to know what's going on between Relena and me. It's distracting."
"So you're doing this on purpose?" Duo asked, incredulous. "Is it working?"
"As far as I can tell," Heero replied, eyeing the grime under his nails with disgust. "They're looking for a guy in a suit, somebody who's used to a certain standard of living. So far, nobody's thought to check the gutters."
Or the cheap hotel by the spaceport.
"Thank God," Duo muttered. "I didn't want to say anything, but I was starting to worry."
Heero stood up and stretched the creaks out of his back. Duo and Trowa were up, too; the meeting was adjourned. Duo stopped him when he reached for the door.
"Quiet," he said. "Maggie's probably sleeping on the couch. Poor kid."
Silently, Heero agreed with the assessment. When he was growing up, teenagers in Maggie's situation could join the military and get an education and job training in exchange for a few years of service. Now that there was no military, social services handled the situation, and their resources were spread pretty thin. A lot of kids slipped through the cracks. From what Heero could see, Maggie was one of the lucky ones.
He turned the doorknob slowly, but there was nothing he could do about the soft groan the hinges gave as the door swung open.
"Shh!" Maggie whispered, switching on a lamp so they could see. "The vent's open. Be quiet or she'll hear you!"
Heero could hear someone—undoubtedly Faith—tuning a guitar in another room. It sounded tinny and far-away through the vent.
"There," Faith said, strumming a chord. "Duo really ought to take better care of this. Okay, Lexi. This is it, I mean it—you're going to sleep after this. You've brushed your teeth and you've been to the bathroom, and there's a cup of water on the dresser. No more excuses, got it?"
"Got it, Fay," Lexi said. "I want my song."
"Ugh. Fine." Faith sounded like she just wanted to get it over with.
"Aw, crap," Duo whispered. "I hate when she plays this song. You want to come with me and check on Dak, Heero?"
Heero shook his head. He wanted to stay and listen, even if it was eavesdropping. At this point, he'd do anything for a chance to know Faith a little better.
"Your funeral, man," Duo muttered, walking out. Heero sat on the ottoman and listened to Faith play the opening chords.
When I was younger, I saw my daddy cry
and curse at the wind.
He broke his own heart and I watched
as he tried to reassemble it…
Heero shut his eyes tightly. Son of a bitch, he thought. She was two. How could she possibly remember all this?
"Remember," Trowa murmured, "Faith doesn't write music. This song was topping pop charts hundreds of years before she was born. I don't think it's a statement about you."
That didn't take the sting away, though. Even if Faith hadn't written the song, she had still chosen it. Heero sat silently until it ended and Maggie eased the vent shut.
"Go on without me, Trowa," he said. "I'm going to walk back."
"Want me to pick you up in the morning?" Trowa asked.
"No."
Trowa went out through the door Duo had used. Heero went back into the office to borrow some paper and a pen. The lights were out again when he was finished, but Heero felt Maggie's eyes on him as he crept up the stairs and slipped the paper under the door to the girls' room.
He left out the front door; he had nothing more to say to Duo, and he knew he'd be contacted if Dak found anything of interest on the cell phone.
It was child's play to disable the alarms at the Lionsgate Hotel and sneak in through one of the fire exits. No one was roaming the halls at midnight, and Heero had no problem slipping into the dead man's room.
A quick glance around the room told him that his suspect had been trained in the art of subterfuge at some point. But Heero's training had been better.
There was nothing beneath the mattress or under the bed. Nothing hidden on or under the desk. The bathroom was clean, and the closet was empty of all but a spare suit and a safe. Heero tried the safe. It was locked.
It's possible that the safe is just empty, he thought doubtfully. But he hadn't survived as long as he had without learning to listen to his gut. He started searching again, more carefully this time.
The vents, light fixtures, and electrical sockets were clean. He sighed and looked around the room one last time. The nightstand. How did I miss that?
It seemed ordinary at first. It was made of cheap, manufactured wood with a thin veneer over the top to make it look more expensive. The bedside lamp clicked on and off; Heero didn't bother taking it apart to search the inside. It didn't rattle when he shook it, and there were no telltale marks to indicate that the suspect had hidden anything in the lamp base. He opened the drawer next and found only a bible, a condom, and a bottle of painkillers. The drawer didn't have a hidden compartment, but he pulled it out anyway and checked the space behind it. There was nothing but cobwebs where the maids hadn't been cleaning.
Just to be thorough, Heero emptied the drawer and flipped it over. A scrap of paper was taped there—24-36-7—along with a small key.
Heero tried the combination on the closet safe. This is too easy. The key turned smoothly in the lock, and the safe came open. Here was the man's ID—identification was required for space travel, so he'd had to have one somewhere—credit cards, and a sheaf of papers.
Heero frowned. There was an agricultural license that gave the suspect, one Alan Novak, permission to start a hydroponic facility on the colony. It was attached to a permit allowing the purchase and use of ammonium nitrate, a common fertilizer. The other was the deed to a nearby resource satellite and a receipt for mining equipment.
On their own, the permits didn't seem suspicious. Hydroponic agriculture was a big business in the colonies, where importing high-quality food from Earth could be grossly expensive. And many colonists were resource miners. Quatre's family had made the better part of their fortune that way. But if Novak's business plans were so innocent, why keep everything locked up?
To Heero, the papers only meant one thing: Faith's stalkers had the intention and the means to cause serious trouble.
Nothing else in the room seemed suspicious. Heero used his phone camera to take photos of Novak's ID and papers, and returned everything to its proper place. When Novak's associates came to clean up, there'd be no sign that anyone had been snooping around. He left through the fire door and tossed the hotel key into the first trash can he passed.
In the morning, once the kids were in school, he'd meet with Duo and Trowa and make plans. Novak's death had probably bought them some time, but Heero wouldn't be able to relax until he was sure Novak's associates were in custody.
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. Song lyrics are from Paramore, and I don't own them either. (And yeah, I know, The Only Exception is getting to be a cliche. Sorry. It just-fit.)
Notes: I hope you enjoyed this! The next chapter is coming along; it starts out sappy, but I promise to end with a bang. :D Review or PM if you wish. If I have time, I'll read and review something of yours.
