I had to end this chapter earlier than I planned, and it's still longer than what I was aiming for. ;] Lucky for you guys, I guess.

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.

Blow Away

Chapter Three: no one knows just how deep it goes

He knew he was staring.

No matter how hard he tried—and he tried until his hands shook with the effort—Inuyasha could not tear his eyes away from the two men across the room. They were in Naraku's office, standing toe-to-toe and talking very seriously. Despite the fact that the chief's office was solid glass and viewable to everyone, no one else seemed to be paying them any attention. Seeing the two together, Inuyasha was struck by just how similar they looked; in fact, if he didn't know any better, he would think they were brothers. It had only recently dawned on him that he had never before seen Naraku and Byakuya speaking to one another. In fact, as he strained his memory to remember their past year together and the years beyond that he had been at the precinct, Inuyasha realized that it was almost as if Byakuya went out of his way to avoid Naraku. The pale-haired officer was always the one to hand in their reports or attend any meetings on behalf of the partners.

Byakuya had been on the force for several years before Inuyasha joined four years earlier, fresh from the academy at age twenty-two. The two weren't partnered until a year ago, just after Inuyasha turned twenty-five and just before he ran into Kagome again. Despite being the more senior officer, Byakuya let Inuyasha take the lead, which in most cases seemed to work out just fine. Now that the two were bumping heads, their dynamic was off.

There was no way around it—

Something was wrong.

Byakuya's sudden "illness," the late night paper-shredding in the evidence room, and now a meeting with the chief in broad daylight. Not to mention Hakudoshi's murder, Byakuya's unexplained black eye and sudden absences, and Naraku's sudden intense and constant scrutiny of Inuyasha. Everything had changed, practically overnight, and it made him feel unsteady.

Without warning, Naraku broke off the conversation with Byakuya and turned to look in Inuyasha's direction, their gazes meeting from across the room. Resolute, Inuyasha narrowed his eyes and stared back, wary but determined to not back down. Several heavy seconds passed before Naraku severed eye contact, glancing away to toss a comment at Byakuya, who grabbed his coat from a chair and stormed from the office. Without looking Inuyasha's way again, Naraku sat in his seat behind his desk and began typing at his computer.

Feeling goose-bumps rising along his arms and the back of his neck in warning, Inuyasha turned away.

"Inuyasha," a low voice said at his elbow. The younger officer didn't have to look up to know that it was Byakuya. "Naraku wants us out of here—he thinks Hakudoshi's death is getting to some of us, and he wants us to take it easy. He doesn't want anyone starting a manhunt for the killer or anything."

"Sounds good to me," Inuyasha said, careful to keep his voice light. "We were only on desk duty anyway. See you tomorrow?"

The pause that followed forced Inuyasha to finally look away from his computer and up at his partner's face; Byakuya was standing very still, the flickering florescent bulbs of the precinct throwing shadows across his face that highlighted just how much weight the older man had lost. His cheeks were hollow, and his eyes looked swollen and dark.

"Yeah, of course. Tomorrow," Byakuya agreed. He hesitated again, licking his dry lips and allowing his eyes to search the room distractedly. "You going to spend the night in with that pretty, little wife of yours?"

A chill raced down Inuyasha's back, staying there, and he felt his shoulders tense up. He suddenly didn't like Byakuya talking about Kagome—something that had never bothered him in the past. But now, with all the uncertainty, it put him on edge. Thinking quickly, his mind coming up with a lie more sluggishly than he would have liked, Inuyasha cleared his throat. "Uh, no; Kagome's taking the rest of the day off and heading back home to visit her mom for the weekend. It'll just be me at the house."

"Well, that sucks, man," Byakuya said with a chuckle, walking past Inuyasha and patting him on the shoulder in a friendly way that seemed entirely out of place. "Hope you don't get lonely in that big, empty house of yours."

"Yeah, yeah," Inuyasha muttered absently, already scooping his things into his drawer to lock them up and grabbing his wallet. "See you tomorrow." Rushing out and nearly knocking into some coworkers, who shot him strange looks, Inuyasha took off for the parking lot. As he walked across several empty spaces to get to his car, he noticed a dingy sedan idling on the opposite end of the lot, one with tinted windows. He didn't recognize it. For a precinct that large, it wasn't that unusual, but everything made him suspicious lately. As Inuyasha backed out and signaled to turn out into the street, he glanced up in his rearview mirror. Sure enough, he recognized the sedan following him not too far behind.

Keeping his eyes on the road, he removed one hand from the wheel and reached for his cell phone in his back pocket. His thumb smashed down on the first button and held there until a very faint dialing noise could be heard. He put the phone to his ear and waited while it dialed.

"Hello?" his wife answered, sounding distracted and more than a little confused.

"Can you take off work?" Inuyasha asked, his eyes flicking back up to his rearview mirror and seeing the car, still behind him. It was keeping its distance, allowing space and more cars to fall between them, but he'd kept with Inuyasha turn-for-turn.

"It's the middle of the day!" Kagome exclaimed. Inuyasha could picture her perfectly based on the surprise in her voice—her blue-gray eyes wide, her eyebrows lifted to her hairline, and one hand perched on her cocked hip.

"I think I'm losing my mind," Inuyasha admitted, lowering his voice and again locating the sedan behind him in the rearview mirror. He took a sudden, unexpected turn to try to throw the driver off, and the car behind him laid on the horn.

For a moment, Kagome was quiet, and Inuyasha could tell she was taking his plight seriously, weighing her words before she answered. "Okay," she said finally, her voice soft and measured. "I'll see if someone can cover my shift. What did you have in mind?"

"Can you meet me at the mayor's office downtown in thirty minutes?"

He could hear rustling over the phone, indicating she was already getting her things in order to take off. "Sure, I think so."

"I'm going to stop by the house to change into street clothes. I'll see you there," he informed her, switching lanes with a delayed turn signal, eliciting another honk. It paid off, however, since the sedan dropped further back, boxed in by a cement truck and a mini-van. Briefly, Inuyasha wondered if his paranoia was making him delusional, but he brushed the thought away impatiently. His instincts were what made him such a good cop, and he hadn't been wrong yet. If his gut was saying something was wrong, then something was wrong. It was just a matter of figuring out what.

Before he could hang up, his wife derailed his train of thought—which seemed to be getting wildly out of control—with a tentative, "Hey."

"Yeah?"

"I love you." Kagome's voice was much stronger, surer, with no underlying tone of uncertainty. It bolstered his resolve.

"Love you, too."

Kagome waited on the steps in front of the mayor's office, which was a bustling brownstone in the heart of downtown. There were all kinds of city officials and lawyers rushing past her, in a hurry whether they were coming or going. Privately, she was glad that she had come straight from work—it meant that she was already dressed for a meeting with the mayor, in a respectable skirt, blouse, and heels that she had been wearing under her white doctor's coat. Said coat was folded over one of her arms, and she smiled absent-mindedly at the dinosaurs stitched along the hem.

She loved her husband.

In fact, Kagome strongly believed that she loved him more at that moment, five months into their marriage, than she had for all the time she had known him before or after their reunion one year ago. Her mother, as much as the woman adored Inuyasha and had been ecstatic to hear the man had come back into her daughter's life, had been understandably concerned about their rush into marriage so soon after coming back together, but Kagome was pleased—and, if she were being completely honest, a little relieved—that she loved the man more with each passing day. Sometimes, she was afraid her heart would burst with it.

It was for that reason more than any other that she was willing to call in a favor with her superior, Dr. Kikyou Sato, and hightail it to the mayor's office at Inuyasha's request.

He needed her for support; there was no other reason for why he'd requested her presence.

During their separated years, Kagome had dated a few men, most casually and only one seriously. She broke up with her high school boyfriend during the summer before college after they learned they had been accepted to different universities, and Kagome realized she just didn't care enough about Kouga to try to keep up the relationship long-distance. There were plenty of handsome, intelligent men in medical school, but during each date, Kagome couldn't help but compare them to Inuyasha (or her memory of him, anyway). It turned out that the only man who could stack up to Inuyasha was Inuyasha, something she realized immediately when she saw him in that emergency room almost a year earlier. Bleeding, but looking so confident and courageous that if she didn't know any better, she would have thought it was only a flesh wound. They both worked long hours at stressful, difficult jobs, and yet she knew they could make it.

Because Kagome's heart still skipped a beat every time Inuyasha smiled at her.

Now, standing on the steps and searching the crowd for that familiar head of white hair, Kagome hardened her resolve to follow him, if not somewhat blindly. Then again, everyone knew love was blind.

When Inuyasha arrived, he was able to spot Kagome even from yards away. She stood out like a sore thumb, so calm, pretty, and fresh compared to the surging crowd of people in business suits surrounding her. If he wasn't so harried, he would have chuckled when she lifted her arm to wave at him over the heads of everyone else, as if he would need help identifying his wife.

"Hi," she greeted with an easygoing smile.

Just seeing her calmed his racing heart and made him feel more centered and in control. "How was work?"

"Short," she quipped. "So, what's the plan, then?"

Inuyasha turned to face the building, his warm, almost gold eyes sweeping the front as though looking for weaknesses. "The mayor knew my dad forever ago; I'm hoping she'll recognize my name and give us a break."

Kagome hesitated before saying anything, biting her bottom lip in thought. "Why are we seeing the mayor?"

A dark look passed over her husband's face, startling her. She'd seen him look determined, but never like this. "I don't trust the chief," he explained finally, waving his hands at the inaccuracy of his words. Words had never been his strength; he relied on actions to carry him through life. He struggled with finding the right way to make it clear to her the feeling he'd had earlier, the unsettling sense that something was not right—had never been right—with Police Chief Naraku Onigumo. "I have no evidence, nothing, but I don't know what else to do but go over Naraku's head on this one. I don't want to drag anyone else into this, at least no one at the precinct."

Kagome nodded slowly, realizing that Inuyasha was being rash and impulsive, acting on instinct without a clearly formulated plan. Unfortunately, she wasn't there to point out the flaws or override his crusade for justice, whatever that meant exactly. She hoped that by relaying his fears to the mayor and in return receiving a promise that someone would look into it would put her husband's mind to rest. If he hadn't been a police officer, she was willing to bet Inuyasha would have been a vigilante.

She reached out and grabbed his much larger hand, giving his fingers a reassuring squeeze. "Well, let's go see Mayor Kaede Ito." She bumped her shoulder into his, taking advantage of the fact that she was standing a few steps higher than he was and was for once level with him. With a lopsided smile, she joked, "I'm so excited; I've always wanted to meet the mayor!"

Appreciating her attempt to cheer him up, Inuyasha began ascending the rest of the stairs, keeping a firm hold on his wife's hand. Between his badge and Kagome's friendly, polite smile, the two managed to get past the main receptionist in the lobby and the second, sterner receptionist right outside the mayor's quarters. In the sitting room directly before Kaede's office, the couple ran into their first roadblock.

"How can I help you, today?" a pleasant man asked, standing up from his desk situated in the corner of the room. He was tall and lean, dressed in nice slacks and a button-up, long-sleeved shirt that only served to highlight his attractive features. He had a nice, welcoming smile and laughing eyes that were so dark brown that they were almost purple. As he approached them, he took off the reading glasses perched on the end of his nose and held out his other hand to shake Inuyasha's.

"Yeah, hi," Inuyasha started, pumping the man's hand firmly before releasing it. "We were hoping to have a quick meeting with the mayor?"

"Do you have an appointment?" the man questioned knowingly, but he remained smiling.

"Not exactly," Inuyasha responded, torn between being irritated and sheepish. He had forgotten that the mayor would have an assistant. Down at the precinct, he'd heard Naraku mention the mayor's aide, a man named Miroku, who acted like Kaede's guard dog, keeping the mayor's life on track with an iron fist that sometimes caused issues when Naraku had tried to have impromptu meetings. Naraku never forgot or forgave an instance when he had been denied something, and the other officers remembered the sour mood he had been in for the rest of the day afterwards.

"Either you do or you don't," Miroku pointed out with a chuckle.

Kagome stepped forward, away from her husband, to reinforce her plea of: "It's really very important."

"It often is." Miroku's voice was kind but stern. "You have to understand, reelection is coming up, and Mayor Ito is very busy. Shaking hands, kissing babies, that sort of thing." He paused, opening and closing his mouth, but then deflated a little; Inuyasha and Kagome both recognized the sudden look of resignation that overtook his features. "How about this—You tell me what's going on, and I'll relay the information to Kaede for you?"

Deciding it was their best (not to mention only) bet, Inuyasha nodded. As he opened his mouth to respond, however, his wife suddenly latched onto his arm, her fingers digging through his shirt and into his flesh.

"Inuyasha," she whispered in a bleak voice, her eyes trained on something through the open door behind them. Both Inuyasha and Miroku turned to look. Talking to the receptionist, his badge held up in front of him, was Byakuya.

Sensing the couple's uneasiness, Miroku stepped around them and to the door, very quietly and quickly shutting it. As it snapped closed, in the last second, Byakuya looked over and caught Miroku's gaze and started forward; the receptionist rose from her seat to block him. When Miroku turned back around, focusing on Kagome and Inuyasha who looked not unlike a pair of cornered animals, all the laughter in his violet eyes had been replaced with seriousness. "What exactly is going on, you two?"

Inuyasha didn't answer at first, his face contorting with rage. "I can't believe he followed me," he bit out, keeping his voice low. "Look," he continued a little louder, "we can't talk here. Something's weird, and I… I just—" He broke off with an aggravated huff and ran his hands through his hair, his eyes flitting around the room as though waiting for an escape route to pop out of the woodwork.

Miroku put a hand to his temple, thinking quickly. "God, I hope I don't regret this," he muttered very softly, but the couple still managed to overhear. Moving fast on his long legs, he crossed the room in only a few strides and produced a key from his pocket. Unlocking the door with one hand and gesturing them forward with the other, he tried to ignore the sudden rattling of the doorknob that led to the receptionist's area. "See that painting? It's hanging on a door disguised as a panel of the wall. Through it is a staircase that leads to the back alley. Kaede's not actually here, another reason why I couldn't let you see her. I'll meet you back there after I get rid of that officer, okay?"

The couple brushed past Miroku on their way into the room, and as they did so, Inuyasha reached out and clapped a hand on the mayor's aide's shoulder. "Thanks," he told him sincerely.

"Quickly," Miroku urged before shutting the door and locking it behind them. As Inuyasha and Kagome escaped through the hidden door, they could hear Miroku welcome Byakuya into the sitting area with an overly cheerful voice. Although Kagome paused, glancing worriedly behind her, Inuyasha's grabbed her hand and yanked her through.

"Not that I didn't believe you before," Kagome said quietly, keeping close to her husband as they descended the very dark, narrow staircase, "but I can definitely see now where you got the idea that something weird is going on."

With a dry chuckle, Inuyasha located the door that led to the alley behind the mayor's office. "Glad to see you're finally on my side."

"Always was and always will be," Kagome told him firmly, interlacing her fingers with his. "Except now I just understand that side a little better."

They waited for Miroku for ten minutes, but it felt like years. The couple leaned back against the side of the building, their eyes trained on opposite ends of the alley, and their hands remained clasped. When Miroku did appear, he looked more ruffled than he had when he'd first met them.

"I don't like that man," he announced as soon as he was in their company. His voice was irritated, and he tugged on the end of his small ponytail in annoyance.

"How'd you get rid of him?" Inuyasha asked gruffly; it was in his nature to be wary, and the current circumstances made him even more so.

The mayor's aide seemed to gather his thoughts, his eyes appraising the couple before him. For people he had never met before in his life, Miroku felt as much of an instant like for them as he had felt an instant dislike for Byakuya. They looked so determined, and the way they kept close to one another spoke to the romantic in him. It was also entirely possible that he was just a sucker for a good mystery. Having spent most of his life with his nose in a book, Miroku had always been drawn to adventure. Working in the mayor's office did not provide much of that.

"He knew you were here; he said he recognized your cars out front, and even if he didn't, the receptionists confirmed it when he described you two. I just said that you both had been here but had already left after I denied your request to meet with the mayor."

"Then what?"

"We argued for a bit. He wanted to see the mayor himself; he also insisted on searching her office to make sure you two weren't in there. Eventually, I talked him into leaving. I don't think I made a friend back there."

Kagome laughed lightly, appreciating his humor even in such a dark moment. "Oh, I'm sure that's a good thing," she promised. Miroku smiled easily back at her.

"So, are either of you going to explain anything now?"

It took Inuyasha almost fifteen minutes, but he explained everything from beginning to end, sparing no small detail. Kagome gasped when he mentioned Byakuya's comment from earlier that day, agreeing that him asking about her in that way seemed suspicious and made her feel uncomfortable, even hearing the comment indirectly. With each passing second, Miroku's expression darkened with the same suspicion and worry that had clouded her husband's face for the past couple of days.

"But you have no direct proof of anything," Miroku confirmed, sounding as though he was trying to be practical. "You only have their behavior to go off of."

"That's right," Inuyasha admitted.

"Then I guess we'll just have to find proof," Miroku said.

The men were interrupted when Kagome made a weird, strangled noise in the back of her throat. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news again," she said, her wide blue-gray eyes studying the mouth of the alleyway, "but I think we're in trouble."

"Byakuya?" Inuyasha asked, in the process of turning around to face the direction Kagome was looking. While he was doing so, he caught the horrified look that Miroku now had.

It was not Byakuya; instead, it was a group of five very large, burly-looking men. They were stalking down the alley, fanned out in a way that completely blocked off what was already a narrow pathway. Inuyasha and Miroku were not short, but each of the thugs approaching them was at least half a foot taller.

With a scoff, Inuyasha spat to the side in derision. "It's broad daylight, and we're standing behind the mayor's office. They can't do anything to us."

"You sure, Inuyasha?" Kagome asked in a quiet voice. "Because I think that looks like a gun."