By the time Saguru got in touch with Aoko, the body on the news had been identified as Ichiyose Gen, a supposedly mild mannered accountant for a law firm just outside of Tokyo. Ichiyose had been much less inconspicuous once his apartment had been searched. While the apartment proper was clean to the point of barrenness, the police had found a hidden compartment in the closet with rifle shells, indicating that Kudo's hypothesis that the man was the mystery sniper were correct. Of course Aoko wasn't supposed to have shared any of this and the whole thing was being hushed up. As of yet, there were no clear connections to anyone or why Ichiyose had been left in Kid's costume.

The law firm wasn't connected to anything that Saguru could see in the greater picture they were building. Ichiyose had just been a man. A hired killer, most likely, but not anyone important, a contract killer with a front job to maintain, no clear motives, no trail of his history to lead back to other targets or anything. There had been no papers in the apartment of use, no mysterious bank statements with suspicious influxes of cash, no digital trail to mark how he kept in contact with potential clients. It was all a blank slate, like anything beyond the rifle shells had been removed. Even the gun wasn't there.

It added up to a frustrating amount of nothing and very little for the police to work off of except looking to the law firm as a possible shell company with whom Ichiyose could have met targets. Or, of course, the rifle shells could have been planted, the presence of the Kid costume left merely to confuse, and everyone could be devoting effort and resources to something that had nothing to do with Kid or the group they were after at all. Or it could be a distraction by them and Ichiyose an unfortunate victim. There were too many loose ends and uncertainties to say for sure, and Saguru didn't have the authority to look into it closer.

"I'll let you know if anything comes out of it," Aoko had said before she hung up his call.

And so Saguru was left grasping at air for leads again. It was terribly frustrating. The documents Kid gave had names and people and companies, but unless they were caught in the act on things, there wasn't much way to bring them down. And even then, it would be a matter of striking the right place; strike too low and you caught a handful of people who only knew the periphery of what was going on. Attempt to strike too high, and there could be positions of power to cover things up, shove aside your efforts or spirit people away. Timing would be everything, and that kind of timing required a good deal of effort made across the board to synch up everyone involved to hit as broadly and effectively as possible. It was the ones in the police and legal systems and those high up in corporations and politics that would be the hard ones to hit. The ones who had lawyers to stall and misdirect and drain resources. The ones in positions of power that could halt everything or call it all a hoax to ruin their name.

They would need people in high places to help. Unfortunately, it was hard to know who could be trusted.

Meanwhile, Aoko was stretched thin investigating the bomber, Kid's disappearance, the sniper, and now this latest body. Saguru made a mental note to check in with his father; despite being retired, he'd likely kept up with who was in charge, and could probably give a decent theory on who was more likely to be trusted. Add that to Kuroba's notes, and maybe they would finally get somewhere. What they needed most was an opening, catching someone in this massive group in the act. If they could manage to trace any actions that happened after, figure out who covered things up or find other links...

Easier said than done though. There were no leads on the bombs and the sniper was most likely dead.

Saguru rejoined the others in the kitchen and found Kudo heading out.

"I think it's time for me to do a bit of legwork," he said. "I'm going to get any information about Ichiyose that I can, and hopefully find some clues that lead somewhere. Then I figure I'll check out the buildings near the cosmetics company. Going to the building itself might tip them off, but maybe looking around the area would help."

"I'll go through more files." Bit by bit they were gaining a concept of the group's structure. It was only a matter of time and effort before it all began to pull together. When he could, Saguru was cross referencing things to information Aoko and Nakamori had given him, fitting cases to faces and tracking who had most likely redacted parts of the files, who would have had the influence to seal them away. This was vital evidence for cleaning up the poison in the police force. It was also the most tedious part of it all. He missed the days where legwork hadn't been too physically demanding for him to do much of.

*o*o*

Saguru woke with the mild confusion of someone finding themselves in a room they were unfamiliar with, with the hazy uncertainty for why he woke in the first place. Kudo's guest bedroom was more comfortable than the futon Saguru was currently used to sleeping on, but the walls had unfamiliar shadows and an unfamiliar ceiling. He stared at it blearily, no street light from outdoors radiating through the blinds to throw black against the white, just gray fading into darker gray.

Then a soft scuff against wooden floors jolted him awake; he wasn't alone. Saguru shot upright, hand grasping for something nearby to use as a weapon and only coming up with the book he'd been reading before bed.

The person in the deepest shadows of the room paused.

Saguru slumped in relief when they moved into the dim light coming through the window. "Chikage-san," he said. Kuroba Chikage, Kuroba's mother and someone he had only seen in photos and interacted briefly in phone conversations. His relief didn't last long as the strangeness of it all caught up with his tired brain. "What are you doing here?"

"Saguru-san," Chikage said. She didn't look much older than the photos of her at thirty-four had looked, a few more lines around her eyes and a streak of gray in her hair the only signs of age that Saguru could pick out in the dark.

"Kuroba's in the room down the hall," Saguru said as she leaned against the windowsill.

"I saw him already," she said. He had the unsettling feeling of being weighed by her stare. "You and Kudo-san are leading the search for the organization."

"...Yes?" She'd chosen a spot that put half her face in light, but it put the other half in shadow, much like Kid's face was forever shadowed, only vertically instead of horizontally. There was the same promise of motion that Kuroba had in how she held herself, ready to flee or dodge or attack the way someone was when they were forever targeted. It was clear that whatever Kuroba Chikage filled her time with abroad, it wasn't the safe, quiet sort of activities one would expect from a retiree. If he remembered correctly, there had been a rumor—or was it fact?—that Kid and the thief Phantom Lady were related. Phantom Lady had vanished from the public eye not long after Kid's first appearance, interestingly enough. In fact, the two of them had even met at the same heist if Hakuba was remembering the details correctly. In France, during one of Kuroba Toichi's world tours as a stage magician.

"You're going to need proof of what they're doing."

"...Kuroba has provided a good deal of that," Saguru said.

"For the companies in Japan," she agreed. "He never did much with Kid's reputation as an international thief."

Kuroba Chikage, if Saguru remembered correctly, had spent a good deal of time abroad in the United States and Europe while Kuroba was a teenager. There was nothing to say that she hadn't continued this, her absence when Kuroba was injured only adding to the assumption that these trips had continued. "Chikage-san, are you offering proof?"

Her smile in the dark wasn't Kid's smile that invited you to share in his mischief. It was a much darker smile that would be better fitting on a crocodile right before it snapped. "I'm sure as someone raised around police, you know how long it actually takes to get a proper arrest and sentencing sometimes. Finding proof when it's been purposefully obscured and destroyed, getting a confession when they don't want to confess... I think Kaito would be satisfied to take out their presence in just Japan at this point. But you can't just kill the pests in your home if they're all around waiting to fill in whatever you flush out. Power vacuums mean something fills it, right, Saguru-kun?"

The less switch in honorific made his tired brain pause. "What do you have?" He focused on the glint of her eyes and the silver curve of her smile in the dark.

"Financial records," Chikage said. "Voice recordings. Surveillance footage that was supposed to have been erased. Research notes confirming unauthorized and illegal human testing. Locations of bodies gone missing, details of backdoor transactions, evidence of weapon smuggling across country and continental lines." Saguru felt his eyes go wide as she listed things on her fingers. "Over two decades is a long time to put yourself in the right position and gather up allies."

If that was true, ever since Toichi's death, Chikage had been playing the long game, having a public and private persona and digging in deep to the criminal underworld. Saguru shivered. She'd let her son play target and lure and used his distraction to accomplish what he couldn't. "Even with all of that," he said finally, throat feeling tight with the enormity of it all, "to catch a group of this size..."

"They're big," Chikage acknowledged. "So when this breaks, it will have to be equally big, big enough that it can't be buried. Bigger than Kudo's takedown. You light up the world so there's nowhere left to hide and make all their dirty laundry visible."

"What are you planning?"

"The internet is a useful thing," Chikage said. "A wonderful resource that's only truly come into its own the last few decades. It's hard to cover up anything that's been leaked there..."

"An info dump," Saguru said, understanding. "You plan to leak everything you've compiled so that the people involved can't hide, air everything for the world to see."

Chikage's smile was predatory. "Of course it will work best if it's coordinated with a police effort at the same time the dump happens. We've always needed to have more help from the inside, but it's a bit hard when you're working with criminals to get them to trust the police and vice versa. I had hoped it would be Aoko, but that opportunity was lost a while ago."

Saguru looked at her. Her hair was neat, her face deceptively young, but she still looked like someone's mother. Unassuming. No one would ever guess what lurked beneath that exterior or the quick mind that had to exist behind her brown eyes. He hadn't realized in the messages they'd exchanged about Kuroba what lurked in her. He felt infinitely lucky that she seemed to have decided he was an ally instead of a threat. How close had he come to being under her watch as a teen? He surely would have been seen as much more of a threat. "It will still take a bit of time to organize things," Saguru said.

"What is a few months compared to years." She stepped forward, in shadow again and far too close to Saguru. He was uncomfortably aware of how sheets were still tangled around his legs and that there was nowhere to go to should she decide to turn that reigned in aggression on him. "You've insinuated yourself into my family's lives pretty deeply in the few months I've been gone," she said. Her face was entirely unreadable; Saguru didn't know her well enough to pick up little tells like he could with Kuroba. "The phone conversations we've had led me to believe you care about Kaito's wellbeing. Your actions so far have backed that up."

There was an intense weight of judgment in how she stood over him, but this wasn't the first time Saguru had been judged by someone's parent, and compared to the contempt Mel's parents had shown him for years after they'd been his in-laws, this wasn't quite as heavy. He'd never felt like he might have to worry about getting stabbed by Mel's parents though.

"He trusts you," Chikage said after a deeply unsettling silence. "I am not sure I understand it but so long as you keep putting his safety first, I'll trust you as well. Kaito is rarely wrong in where he places his trust."

A light knock on the doorframe broke the stifling intensity of the room. Both of their heads turned toward the sound.

Kuroba, dressed in one of the various yukata he'd been in since he was first brought to the Kudo home, leaned along the doorway. It was meant to look casual but it was a far cry from his usual poker face. He was too pale for one. "The air's so thick you could cut it," Kuroba said, voice light.

Saguru was half out of his bed a half second later as the surprise wore off. "Kuroba!" He brushed past Chikage, stumbling toward Kuroba. "You're not supposed to be up!"

"I am capable of walking to the bathroom," Kuroba said.

"This isn't the bathroom and no, you're supposed to be on bed rest!"

"That sharp tongued doctor is going to yell at you," Chikage sighed. She didn't sound surprised though, walking past Saguru to get to Kuroba first and offer a shoulder in support.

"I'm healing fine. Better than fine, ask her." Kuroba accepted his mother's help while Saguru could only stand and feel useless.

"Be that as it may," Saguru said, "please don't aggravate your wounds."

Kuroba rolled his eyes. "The world needs to stop treating me like glass." And yet he made no move to refuse a helping hand and his face was still too pale. Saguru itched to guide him to the nearest flat surface—even if that flat surface was Saguru's own bed. "And Kaa-san, you need to stop threatening people."

"I have to test the detectives in your life," Chikage said, "after all you can't do much to defend yourself right now."

"Well it's a good thing I don't need to defend myself then." Kuroba leaned against his mother with a tight smile. "Don't let her lead you into a plan you can't handle."

"Would I do that?" Chikage said. "If I remember correctly, you're the one who plans impossible things."

"We're magicians, we live to make the impossible a reality," Kuroba said with a judicious sniff. "Hakuba's not a magician, he just deals with regular old reality. No one is making any stupid, life threatening plans, okay?"

"Noted," Saguru said. "Not that I planned to risk any more than is already implicit in any of this. Now could you please return to your room and rest?"

"And I took the time to come and see you," Kuroba said, with a put upon and overly exaggerated sigh.

"I'm touched," Saguru said. It was slow going back down the hallway, slow enough that Saguru wondered how the hell Kuroba had managed on his own let alone silently enough to surprise them. Kuroba was right about always pulling the impossible. He shouldn't be able to walk at all yet. Chikage was terribly gentle with Kuroba as she helped him back into bed. Saguru held back sheets to let Kuroba get comfortable but Chikage was the one to pull them up. It was a reminder that Kuroba was someone's child, like Saguru was Mum's son, like all of them were all children for someone, and it gave him a glimpse at what Kuroba's early childhood might have been like. Chikage gentle but not taking any of Kuroba's complaints or protests that he could settle himself back into a bed just fine. Joking back that he could say that as soon as he was able to walk without hiding his pain. It wasn't the sort of exasperated doting that Mum would have done. Too efficient, but there was care there. Care that a younger Saguru had wondered about when he learned that Kuroba spent most of his time alone, and that Saguru had compared to his life in Japan with his father who always worked and a governess as his usual meal companion and had concluded that both of their lives could be lonely. Whether Kuroba Chikage cared about her son wasn't a question anymore.

Saguru met Chikage's eyes over her son and they had silent agreement; he'd work with her and her plan and they'd crush the organization as much as possible. For Kaito's sake.