Chapter 10
Damage control was not his specialty. Foresight, anticipating problems before they occurred, arranging events to produce the desired outcome, that's where he excelled. On the rare occasions things did not play out as planned, losses were accepted. He moved on. But when there was the potential for calamitous loss, you had to salvage what you could. And so he waited, mentally picking up the pieces of Akihito's fractured life and reassembling them into what he hoped was an explanation both believable and not as damaging as the truth.
By the time Akihito's parents emerged from his room, it was late morning. Asami had had enough time to make a number of calls and a few arrangements. The bodyguards had rotated out, Hidaka arriving to replace Goto by Akihito's door, dressed down in casual clothes so as not to attract attention. He drifted a few feet away when the door opened and Akihito's parents came out.
Asami watched them, a knife of jealousy slashing through him at the raw anguish on their faces. They loved Akihito. The knife turned and flashed and for a split second, he considered how quickly he could break them, break their trust in their son, turn the prepared lies into something darker, designed to destroy rather than conserve, send them away loving Akihito less. But the insanity of an instant passed and he stayed where he was, watching. He could not do that to Akihito.
He watched as they were approached by the police detective who—they did not know—was firmly in Asami's pocket, watched their faces as they listened to the script he himself had prepared, waited to see if they would accept the lies that would remove the burden of guilt and shame from Akihito while concealing his own involvement and their true connection.
Akihito, the detective told them, had been involved in a news investigation he was working on his own that had the potential to be a career-making scoop on the drug trade. As a result, he took great risks getting close to some dangerous characters. He had been found the night before, outside Club Arcadia. His cover had been blown and to prove himself, his target forced him to shoot up but something had gone wrong. The target dumped him outside the club. That much he had been able to tell them before he lost consciousness. Takaba-kun had been brought to the clinic because it was closer than the nearest trauma center. Everything else, the nature of the drug and its effects, the doctor would have explained. For the pièce de résistance, the detective presented a copy of the "official" police report.
"If he doesn't pull through," Nagato had said to Asami when he had sketched out the details for her, "they're going to expect a murder investigation. Oh, I see. You'll handle that as well. I don't really want to know more."
Neither did he—or rather, he preferred not to linger over the necessity. What, after all, would it matter then, whether they knew the truth or not?
Takaba Sr. took the police report, his eyes fixed on the detective's face, questioning, searching, like his son.
"Do you know who did this to him?"
The answer to that, Asami thought, was far too complex.
But the detective murmured official responses about ongoing investigations and promises to keep the Takabas informed. With a bow, he excused himself and walked down the hall. Akihito's mother leaned against her husband and sobbed.
"Not here, Miyumi," Takaba Sr. said, taking her by the shoulders and kissing her forehead.
When she had composed herself, Asami crossed to them, presenting his card.
"My apologies for disturbing you," he said. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Asami Ryuichi. Your son works for me."
Akihito's father frowned but accepted the card.
"Takaba Daichi," he said. "My wife, Takaba Miyumi."
Akihito's mother looked up at him through stricken eyes, Akihito's eyes, familiar and alien at once and so full of pain, it was a particular kind of torture to hold her gaze.
"You're his editor?" she asked tremulously.
"No. I own a number of nightclubs," Asami said. "Takaba-kun does freelance work for me, for the promotion of my clubs."
It wasn't a bad idea, actually. He checked a little smile at the thought of Akihito's explosive reaction to any such suggestion.
"Then you sent the car for us?" she asked.
Asami inclined his head.
"It was very kind of you."
"It was nothing. I hope you will allow me to assist you in any way that is in my power. I am, of course, very sorry for the circumstances."
He spoke with the formality of years of business dealings, purging his voice of any suggestion that he felt anything other than a remote sense of responsibility for the boy behind the door.
"My company maintains a suite for clients in a nearby hotel," he said. "You would honor me by making use of it. My driver can take you there now. You must be very tired."
"I couldn't leave Akihito," she said. "I'm too keyed up to sleep."
"Just to rest, then, or freshen up," Asami said. "It's only one street over. Dr. Nagato would contact you if anything changed and you would be back within minutes."
She turned to her husband, questioning.
"There are some calls I need to make," he said, folding the police report and tucking it into his pocket.
The number on the report would connect him with another detective who would, of course, back up the story. Asami smiled.
"Of course," he said. "My company will cover everything."
"That's not necessary," Takaba Sr. said. "It isn't your responsibility."
"Perhaps not," Asami said, "but I feel a sense of duty towards one of my employees. Please. Accept my offer."
When he had finally managed to convince them, he ushered them to the street outside the clinic, where he put them in the car and sent them on their way with a sense of liberation. But it was only a temporary reprieve. They would be back and he would be forced to step aside again. At least he had done his best to protect Akihito in the eyes of those he loved.
He turned back to the clinic, passing Hidaka, who had taken up a formal stance next to the trauma room door, back to the monotonous click and whirr of machine-driven life. He sat by the bed, his eyes tracing the lines of Akihito's pale face, pushing down the feeling of utter powerlessness. He was no stranger to waiting. He knew when to sit out a deal, when to hold back, how strategic delay could drive others to foolish mistakes and how simply being quiet could be a most powerful tool. But this was a different kind of wait, in which he had no active purpose, in which the key elements were beyond his command, in which this boy—who had never properly listened to him before—could not even hear him now. Nevertheless, he leaned in, his lips against Akihito's ear.
"You still owe me," he said. "I told you. You owe me lifetimes. Don't think I will let you off so easily."
###
"So you ran off the Takabas," Nagato asked. "How did you manage that?"
Asami sat up, looked at his watch. Just past three. Only thirteen hours since they'd brought Akihito here. It felt like a week.
"I sent them to a hotel," he said.
"At the bottom of the bay?"
He frowned at her, which she returned with a shrug.
"Make yourself useful," she said. "Help me lean him forward."
Asami rose and took Akihito's shoulders in his hands, leaning the limp body against his chest, Akihito's head against his shoulder and watched as Nagato untied Akihito's hospital gown, put her stethoscope in her ears, pressed the diaphragm to his back and listened, moved it and listened again, up and down both sides of his back.
"All right," she said. "Put him back gently."
With a hand under Akihito's head, Asami eased him back onto the bed. Nagato slipped the business end of the scope down the front of his hospital gown.
"Someone ought to send you to a hotel," she said. "Or home."
"I'm not leav—"
"Shh!" She held up her finger, taking a perverse pleasure in getting away with shushing this formidable man. Her face turned serious, though, as she listened again. After a moment, she straightened and smiled. "His breath sounds are good."
She removed the tips of the stethoscope from her ears, hung it around her neck and pressed the call button for the nurse.
"He's better?" Asami asked.
"Improving," she said.
He let out a breath he wasn't aware he had been holding. The door opened and the nurse stuck her head in.
"Bring me an intubation tray," Nagato said.
"What are you going to do?" Asami asked.
"I'm going to take him off the respirator," she said. "The intubation tray is a precaution in case I'm wrong and we have to put him back on. You are going to have to step out while we do this because you're going to think we're hurting him, and I won't have you pulling a gun on my nurses. Go on. I'll let you back in as soon as we're done."
She all but pushed him into the hall where he stood, resisting the urge to pace. He needed a cigarette badly but having no idea how long it took to take someone off a respirator, didn't want to risk going outside. He was considering the very real alternative of knocking the bland look off Hidaka's face to relieve his tension when Kirishima came down the hall.
"What do you have?"
"We found the dealer," Kirishima said. "He was a small-timer working under Fujimori. He gave up Sagawa immediately but all he was able to provide was a phone number. I've put a trace on it, but it appears to have been disabled. The last ping placed him in Yotsuya. Before that, he was outside the Grand Hills location. That was at 2:15 this morning."
Asami stared blankly for a moment. That would have been right around the time…
"He was watching," he said. "He knew."
"The dealer insisted the goal was not to kill Takaba," Kirishima said. "That he had been told to provide Takaba with a bundle but in fact only sold him three bags because Takaba didn't have enough money. He said the heroin was not supplied by Sagawa but was from his own inventory, a new shipment he had received the day before. He claimed he did not know it was laced with fentanyl."
Was it plausible? He supposed it was, but if so, what was the goal? Why continue to target Akihito if the intent was not to kill? He still did not understand Sagawa's motive. He had turned away from Kirishima and now looked back over his shoulder.
"Past tense?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. He's dead."
Cold satisfaction iced through him.
"Find out what Sagawa was doing in Yotsuya," he said. "He's staying close. If he's not in a hotel, he's staying with someone. Someone will know him by sight."
"Yes, sir."
"And bring me a change of clothes. And a razor."
"Yes, sir." Kirishima hesitated. "Excuse me, sir, but have you eaten today?"
"What? No. Don't fuss at me, Kirishima."
Kirishima was about to suggest adding a large breakfast to the list when both men's attention was drawn by the opening of the trauma room door. Dr. Nagato came out and crossed to them.
"He's off the respirator," she said, "and breathing well on his own. We're going to keep him on oxygen for a little while longer, but there doesn't appear to be any serious damage to the lungs."
"So he'll be all right?" Asami asked.
She frowned.
"He'll recover from this incident," she said. "But he still has a problem. He wasn't held down and forced this time. He's going to have to find some way of dealing with that."
But Asami still could not accept the idea of Akihito as addict. If what he had just learned was true, then it was clear that this had not entirely been Akihito's choice. They did not know if Akihito was so desperate, so dependent that he would have gone looking for a hit on his own. No, if he hadn't been forced this time, he had at least been pushed.
Nagato sighed.
"Go on," she said. "He's awake but groggy. Don't chase the nurse out. She is there to monitor his breathing."
Awake. Breathing. Alive. Everything else could wait. He stepped around her but she called after him.
"His parents, Asami-sama?"
Yes, there was that. As it turned out, it hadn't been necessary to bring them into this. Their presence now would be more of a stressor than a comfort to Akihito.
"Send a car for them," he said to Kirishima. "But give me half an hour first."
Kirishima nodded and Asami went to Akihito.
He was sitting up in the raised bed, his head tipped back, an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, eyes closed. A nurse stood on the other side of the bed, watching monitors that beeped with quiet regularity, a more hopeful cadence than the sound of the respirator. Oblivious to her, Asami brushed the backs of his fingers across Akihito's cheek. Heavy eyelids quivered and shifted, finally lifting slightly, as though it was a physical effort.
"Asami?"
Hoarse from the breathing tube and muffled by the oxygen mask, it was still Akihito's voice, and it curled around his name with the same disarming sweetness it always had. At the sound of it, Asami's own breath caught and sharpened and made itself a little spear, sending a sharp pain through his chest.
"Yes," he said quietly. "I'm here."
"I'm sorry," Akihito whispered, the words almost lost, closed off by the mask.
"It doesn't matter," Asami said. Everything that had to be asked could wait. It wouldn't change anything, not in that moment.
Akihito squeezed his eyes tight, and his head tossed fitfully from side to side.
"Everything went wrong."
There it was. Asami knew there was more to the situation than Sagawa and his plant. Something else had happened. But those details could also wait.
"You'll fix it," he said. "You'll find a way. No one is more determined than you."
Akihito shook his head again. He struggled to swallow, his face twisting in pain.
"Throat hurts," he breathed.
"It's from being intubated," the nurse said. "It will pass."
He reached a shaky hand to the oxygen mask and tried to lift it away.
"Don't take it off," the nurse said. "Leave it in place."
Asami caught his wrist and pressed his hand back onto the bed.
"There's something you need to know," he said. "Your parents are here."
Akihito's eyes flew wide at that.
"What?"
The pace of the heart monitor picked up speed.
"You were very ill. Dr. Nagato insisted they be contacted."
"Noooo," Akihito moaned. "No, no, no."
"Listen to me," Asami said. "They don't know what happened, not what really happened. We've laid out a scenario for them. You were working on an investigation—listen to me, Akihito!"
But Akihito's head turned again, back and forth, back and forth.
"I can't…I can't…"
"Yes you can. Look at me." Asami trapped Akihito's jaw in his broad hand, stopping his frantic movements. "Look at me."
"Sir," the nurse said. "It's not a good idea to upset him like this."
"He's going to be more upset if he doesn't hear me out before they get here," Asami said. "Akihito, you don't have to say anything. Let them talk. If they ask questions you can't answer, say you can't remember."
"My dad—" Akihito sucked in a breath, the oxygen mask turning white with condensation. "My dad was a journalist, Asami." He closed his eyes, took another breath. "He'll see through me. He always has."
"Not this time," Asami said. "They'll believe what they want to believe. Trust me on this. It's human nature."
Akihito opened his eyes and turned them on Asami, large, despairing, accusing.
"Why did you call them?"
Asami could not tell him the real reason, could not say we thought you were going to die. That wasn't something anyone heard lightly.
So instead, he said "I'm sorry."
Akihito jerked his chin out of Asami's fingers and turned away.
"Leave me alone."
"Not until you hear me." Asami reached for him again.
"I'll scream this place down if you don't."
"Akihito."
"Sir!" The nurse made a move as though she might throw herself between them.
The door opened and Kirishima entered. Asami spun around.
"What!?"
"Excuse me, Asami-sama, but the Takabas are here already. They took a taxi."
Shit.
On the bed, Akihito had begun to sob quietly, each little catch of breath cutting a burning slash through Asami's chest, the need to push everyone out, to lock the door and take Akihito into his arms and make him understand almost unbearable. Every part of him rebelled at the thought of walking out now, giving Akihito over to someone else to comfort and care for, but he had no choice.
Asami straightened, swept a hand through his hair, pulling together what control he could.
"Akihito," he said. "Let them believe what they've been told. Trust me."
"Asami-sama," Kirishima said, holding the door, "if they find you here, they're bound to question it."
"Akihito?"
But there was no return, no response to the aching question in his voice. With stony self-command, Asami turned and walked out.
.
Thank you so much for your patience! I know I left you at a terrible spot last chapter. Just had a little trouble with sequence of events here but I think I've got it rolling again. Thank you to everyone for reading and leaving lovely, helpful comments!