Note: Sorry so late! Had to get real-world type stuff done. Back on track now. Thanks for waiting!

Just a note that I was asked if it was in character in the last chapter for Asami to have given Akihito a cutesy phone case. I refer you to Finder Volume 7, Chapter 45, where Asami and Akihito have a phone conversation. Akihito did have a teddy bear phone case and in this story, Asami was just trying to replace it.

Chapter 7

The name on his cellphone screen was one he had not seen in over a year. In fact, the last time she had called it had been to tell him to never contact her again. Nice thing to hear from your own mother. If she was calling now…He stifled a mingled feeling of irritation and fear and accepted the call.

"Yeah?"

"Jiro, you son-of-a-bitch, what are you trying to prove?"

He refrained from pointing out that if he was a son-of-a-bitch, that pretty much defined her and instead said "Hello, Mom. I love you too."

"Don't give me that shit. There was a goddamned detective sniffing around here today!"

"Police?"

"No. A private dick. How'd he find me? What did you tell him?"

"What makes you think I sent him?"

She wasn't exactly a stranger to police and private investigations.

"Because he was asking about Kenji," she snarled. "And the only one left on this earth who gives a damn about Kenji is you."

Sagawa nearly dropped his phone.

"What did he say?"

"I told you to let it go," his mother went on, ignoring him. "He's not worth it. He'll drag you down with him, like he always does."

"What did he ask you?"

"How much money are you paying this guy? Sure, you can throw away good money trying to track down your brother but you wouldn't dream of helping out the woman who—"

"Can you shut up for one second and answer my question?"

He wanted to crawl through the phone and strangle her.

"What else would he ask?" she shouted. "He wanted an address or a phone number. Said he was Kenji's parole officer, but I know a parole officer when I see one and he wasn't any parole officer. I slammed the door in his—"

Sagawa hung up and stood, staring at the screen of his phone, heart pounding. It had worked. It had actually worked. He had brought Asami Ryuichi to heel, all over that skinny, big-eyed kid. He had pulled in every favor owed him, sold secrets and trusts and made more new enemies than he cared to consider, but it had worked.

He sank back into the shadows of the bushes as the kid himself emerged from the parking garage across the street, riding a motor scooter and watched him pull out into traffic without a pang of remorse. He was only a tool to be used, and it's not like he was some naïve child. He was asking for it, fooling around with someone like Asami. There were no innocent bystanders in Asami's world.

The motor scooter disappeared down the street, followed shortly by a plain black car with tinted windows. Breathing shallowly to keep down his agitation, Sagawa waited for the second wave of security, two men in black suits who made a slow sweep of the entire perimeter of the building. Asami's guard was up, no mistake.

The trick now would be to keep the pressure on without getting caught. To be caught now would mean death. It was going to be death either way, but not until he got what he wanted.

###

"So that's what, now? Twice in how many months you've disappeared?"

Akihito stood in front of the editor's desk like a high school reprobate before the principal, a position he was a little too familiar with and had hoped he'd outgrown. The fact that this wasn't his fault but he couldn't say so burned in him.

"I like you, Takaba," the editor said, "but I need photographers I can count on."

"You can count on me to get the kinds of shots nobody else can get."

He'd prepared this argument ahead of time, but the editor only shook his head.

"I have all the photographers I need right now."

The editor turned back to his computer in a clear gesture of dismissal. Akihito chewed his lip and remembered his blithe claim that he would just keep talking until the editor gave in. Wearing people down verbally was a useful talent.

"Give me another chance," he said. "What if I bring in a big scoop, something nobody else has? You won't say no then, right? I mean, that's what you're looking for, big news and you know I can give you that."

The editor sighed and turned back around.

"I'm gonna do you a favor and be straight with you. Spoiled kids like you, you're used to always getting your own way, and you don't know how to handle it when you don't. So I'm going to give you a life lesson and say no. I can't use you. I'm sorry."

Akihito bit back an angry retort. Spoiled, him? Maybe—maybe a hundred years ago he was. The editor was way too late to try teach him a lesson he'd already learned by Asami's hand. But that, too, he could not admit.

"I know what you're doing," he said, bluffing it out. "You just want me to prove that I'm really serious, right? That no matter what anyone says, if I'm really passionate, I won't let that stop me."

The editor shook his head and took a drag from a stub of a cigar.

"You're going to force me to be blunt, aren't you?" he said. "Okay then. I took you on because of your old man, but to be honest, I don't think you have what it takes for this line of work. If you did, we wouldn't be having this conversation every few months."

"I told you—my mom was sick."

It sounded lame even to him, sticking in his throat like a dry crust.

"Yeah, so you said. Look, I don't want to kick you when you're down, but maybe I can save you years of frustration. If you can't commit yourself completely to the work, then you need to stop wasting my time and yours. Find something else."

Akihito stood dumbstruck, his agile tongue paralyzed.

"You're wrong," was all he could think to say.

"Maybe." The editor shrugged. "But I've been in this business a lot longer than you have, and I've seen a lot of photographers come and go, and I'm telling you: this isn't for you."

The editor's words landed like physical blows to Akihito's gut, and he had to take a long, shaky breath to steady himself, to stop himself from launching across the editor's desk, grabbing the other man by the shirtfront and returning real blows in answer to his words. He balled his hands into fists.

"You're wrong," he repeated, his voice rough.

The editor stubbed out his cigar and waved the smoke away, as if he'd like to do the same to Akihito.

"Yeah, okay. And I'll regret it some day when you're a famous member of Magnum. But for now, I've got work to do, so I'm going to ask you to leave."

Leave? He couldn't move. How could he just walk away from his lifelong dream? What kind of bastard would tell him to? The editor frowned, his brows coming together.

"Come on, kid. Make this easy on both of us. Don't make me call security."

For a second, Akihito wondered wildly why he should make anything easy for anyone when nothing was ever easy for him. He turned stiff-legged and stalked out into the newsroom. He stood there, eyes closed, swaying against the feeling that the room had begun to spin around him. Gods, he couldn't pass out here. He opened his eyes and saw a woman at the nearest desk staring at him with an infuriating combination of pity and distaste. Did he look like that much of a hopeless case? Probably. He could feel his eyes burning with it. Outside, he knew, one of Asami's men was waiting. If he went out now, like this, it would almost surely be reported back to Asami.

He made his way blindly down the hall to the men's room, the noise of the newsroom fading beyond the door. Bending over the sink, he turned on the cold water, filled his cupped hands and let his face sink into it, feeling the heat leach out of his skin but not the thorn in his chest.

"I can't talk now. Someone just came in."

He knew that voice. Mitarai was in one of the stalls behind him.

"I don't have a good signal anyway. Just text it to me. Yeah. Text it. Text it. The address. What the hell? Are you deaf? Text me the address!"

Akihito straightened, stared at his dripping face in the mirror. Mitarai was talking to a source. He had a tipoff. Would he share, like before? Not if he knew the boss had just dumped him. He made a quick decision.

Grabbing a handful of paper towels, he made a big show of rubbing his face dry, just as Mitarai came out of the stall. With carefully calculated carelessness, Akihito turned and slammed hard into the other man.

"What the hell?! Watch where you're going!"

The paper towels dropped in a flutter as Akihito stumbled and clutched at Mitarai to keep from falling.

"Sorry! Didn't see you."

"I should have known," Mitarai said, shoving him away. "You're a walking disaster, Takaba."

"Uh, you ran into me," Akihito said. "Good thing I don't expect anything like manners out of you."

Mitarai grunted. "What are you doing here, anyway? I thought we saw the last of you."

"In your dreams, maybe. See ya!"

Akihito bolted for the door, the familiar rush of adrenaline jetting through him. He waited until he was in the elevator and the doors closed before he reached into his pocket and pulled out the cellphone he had lifted from Mitarai and looked at the screen. One new message. He tapped it up, not recognizing the sender's name. The message itself seemed like it was in gibberish, but Akihito knew it was code. The same one Mitarai had used with him when they were collaborating. It only took four floors to work out the time and address of whatever it was that was going down. Midnight at a warehouse down by the docks. Not too far, actually, from where he'd been sent to spy on Asami that fatal night. A sign? Or a warning? He laughed quietly to himself.

Okay, he knew where and when but he didn't know who would be there or what it was all about. He hunted back through Mitarai's messages, looking for the same sender's name but nothing came up. The elevator doors opened, and he stepped quickly across the lobby and out into the late afternoon sun, still scrolling through contact lists as he ducked into the homeward bound crowds on the sidewalk, hoping to evade Mitarai if he came after him.

Nothing! He pulled up the browser and searched through the history. There it was. The name of a prominent Diet member came up in several searches in the last two days, as well as a quite a few searches on a foreign materials supplier that had just gotten a big government contract. Bribery? Blackmail? Whatever it was, it would be enough to get him back in. The adrenaline was surging for real now, his hands shaking with it. He shut off Mitarai's phone just as his own buzzed in his pocket.

He pulled it out and smiled to see Asami's name accompanied by a stern, official portrait in place of the old photo of him sleeping next to the stuffed animal head. So Asami had known. Of course he had known, just like he knew the meeting with the editor was over. But he would not know what happened in that meeting. Akihito made his voice deliberately upbeat.

"Hey, yeah, I was just going to call you."

"You promised to tell me how it went."

"You mean you didn't have a hidden camera recording the whole thing?"

"Should I have?" Akihito could practically see the smirk. "I've seen your office manners, first hand."

"I was drugged that time!" Akihito shouted, drawing a couple of stares from passers-by. "You're never going to let me forget that, are you? You suck."

"That is one of my specialties."

"You're disgusting. I'm hanging up," Akihito said. "But first, I've got a stakeout tonight. Can you call off your hounds?"

Silence.

"Tsuba is a professional. He won't get in your way."

Akihito frowned. How long would it take for Asami to relax his guard?

"Fine," he said. "I'll just shake him off."

"You can try."

Asami and his arrogant confidence that everything would go his way, but he had no intention of being tailed tonight, regardless of what Asami wanted.

"If that's a dare, you're on."

"Standard penalties apply."

"Go back to work!"

He hung up and walked thoughtfully to where he'd left his Vespa. There had been something a little over confident in Asami's tone. After all, Akihito had never had trouble losing the tails Asami had tried to place on him in the past. What was different about this guy? Was he some kind of specialist?

With plenty of time before he had to be in place for the stakeout, Akihito decided to take a test run. On the motor scooter, it wasn't even really a contest. He could dart in and out of traffic far more easily than the black sedan that was following him. Unless the guard switched to a bike himself or was part of a city-wide network, ditching him would be no problem. In rush hour traffic, it was a snap. Akihito lost him in less than ten minutes.

This was something he was good at. This was something he could still do. With a certain smug satisfaction, he pulled up to a ramen stand to get something to eat. For the first time since he'd been back, food actually tasted good. He was considering ordering a second bowl when the black sedan appeared on the other side of the street.

Shit.

Okay, so this guy wanted to play. Akihito hopped back on his scooter and darted off in the opposite direction than the sedan was pointed. Swooping in and out of traffic, he doubled back through Kyobashi before heading south and shooting across Shinbashi. He ducked into a park, where he could see the road but not be seen and waited. Within fifteen minutes, the sedan pulled up directly opposite his position.

Son of a bitch. He was being electronically tracked. Back on his Vespa, he wove through a maze of neighborhoods and side streets until even he wasn't sure where he was. He drifted into a quiet alley and got off his scooter and began to search. Where was it? He checked the Vespa all over, inside his helmet. He started patting down his clothes and felt the two cellphones in his pocket.

Of course. The new cellphone.

He dug it out and turned it over in his hand. Throw this one in the bay, Asami had said. He ought to do it right now. If there was a tracker in it, he had no idea how to disable it. Just turning it off or taking out the battery probably wouldn't do it. Asami was too smart for that.

He had to dump it somewhere. The bay was too close to where he eventually wanted to end up, so he headed north again and tossed it over the fence of the Ueno Zoo.

###

"Asami-sama?"

Asami looked up from the reports he had been reading. Kirishima stood in front of his desk, a look of mingled concern and irritation that could only be Akihito-related.

"What is it?" Asami asked. "No, let me guess. They've lost him."

"Tsuba reports that he tracked the signal from the phone but was unable to locate either Takaba or the phone at the final location. I've sent Inaba back out to help him search."

"Where was the final location?"

"The Ueno Zoo."

A corner of Asami's mouth tilted upward in spite of himself and he felt a strange little lilt of pleasure bubble through him. This was the Akihito that amused him the most: reckless, obstinate, hare-brained, underscoring everything he did with a signature that was indelibly his own.

"The zoo, I take it, is closed?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

He smothered a chuckle of converse delight. Maddening though he was, this was the Akihito he wanted.

However, the hard fact remained that Akihito was still at risk.

"Any word on Sagawa?" he asked, sobering.

"As a matter of fact…" Kirishima placed a photo on the desk. "I was just printing this out when Tsuba called. It's from security footage at the Grand Hills building, time stamp 2:58 this afternoon, shortly after Takaba left for his meeting."

A crease formed between Asami's brows as he looked at the photo of Sagawa, standing where Akihito had been only minutes before.

"What did he do? Did he go inside?"

"No, sir," Kirishima said. "Footage shows him walking along the front of the building and then crossing the street. That's where the cameras lost him."

Asami swore under his breath.

"Anything from Haneda?"

"Nothing yet."

"Contact them again." Asami turned the photo face down on his desk. "Tell them to broaden the search, throw whatever they have to at it. Find Sagawa Kenji."

Before his brother found Akihito again.

###

With an hour to go, Akihito had found a good, hidden vantage point and made himself as comfortable as possible to wait it out. His motor scooter was parked blocks away, just in case he had missed any tracking devices on it. He settled in.

The worst part of waiting around like this was the fact that more often than not, it was wasted. Nothing happened. Tips were wrong. People chickened out. But he had a feeling about this one. This was his, it was meant for him. It was going to be big, and just maybe he'd take it to a different magazine and then that editor could eat his mocking words and choke on them.

He was enjoying the thought of the editor turning blue with rage when he heard the sound of feet behind him and someone snarled.

"You little piece of shit!"

He was too tucked into his hiding place to move quickly enough to evade the fist that grabbed the back of his shirt. Another hand came down hard over his mouth and pure, mindless panic took over. He thrashed wildly as he was dragged across the pavement, a confused impression of multiple hands and legs around him and then a booted foot made contact with his ribcage and he doubled up, throwing his arms over his head as more blows fell.