Chapter Twenty-Nine:

For the first time Seto was happily awaiting the time when Takanawa would call him. He'd enjoyed sitting in his living room, drinking a gin and tonic and watching his clock tick past midnight on New Year's Eve. He threw back a shot of Scotch to celebrate both the New Year and the fact that he was now going to be free of that asshole.

He was woken up at three in the morning by his phone ringing. Rather than be angry, he grinned to himself and picked up the handset.

"Hello?"

"Did you forget something, Mr. Kaiba?"

"No...no, I can't think of anything."

There was a pause. "Was there a problem in getting the brooch?"

"No. No trouble. I have it here. Your mother had terrible taste."

Takanawa growled threateningly over the phone. "Oh, I see. Did you get drunk, Mr. Kaiba? Is that why you've suddenly got balls?"

Seto chuckled in amusement, rolling lazily onto his back and settling into the softness of his bed, still holding the phone to his ear.

"I'm not drunk. I'm done, Takanawa. See, you can only push me so far. By the way, how good a friends are you and Kato?"

"...why?"

"No reason." Seto grinned and pressed the end button on his phone.

He was just drifting off when his phone rang again. Now irritated, he picked it up. If this was going to be Takanawa's game, calling him again and again, he was going to just unplug his phone.

"Yeah?"

"Is this Seto Kaiba?"

It was a voice he'd never heard before, a man's voice with a slight lisp. He sat up in bed, frowning.

"Yes. Any reason you're calling me at four in the morning? Make it quick, before I hang up and forget you entirely."

The man chuckled. "I've heard from a lot of people that you've got spunk, kid. I'm glad to see that's true. You'd make quite a partner in my...business. But I've got to trust the people who work for me, and thieves are never very trustworthy."

Seto stared at the comforter over his legs. "Thief?"

"I wonder if you've still got that brooch you stole from me."

"Kato?"

"That's Mr. Kato. Show some respect to your elders, boy. Now answer my question."

"I...How did you know?"

"You're quite photo-genic. My security camera got a lovely shot of you sitting in your Silver 2003 Mercedes-Benz across the street from my hotel."

Seto dropped his head back, closing his eyes. Shit. He'd failed to notice if the outdoor security cameras were angled enough to see across the street. Most places didn't, but considering Kato's guaranteed paranoia, he would want a greater view of his surroundings than most people.

"I must admit, I'm quite surprised that you managed to ask Yugi Moto to help," Kato continued. "Him, I've heard to be quite a nice guy."

"That wasn't Yugi."

"Don't insult my intelligence, Kaiba. Who doesn't know what you, or Yugi, look like. You're the famous little card game players from yesterday. Your images were annoyingly plastered all over every television set and poster for four years. I know that ludicrous hair."

Seto groaned. Yami hadn't put his hood up until he'd already gotten out of the car. The camera would have gotten an even better look at him.

"Yugi's not in the country."

"Skipped already, did he? Then why did my boy insist he watched Yugi walk into an apartment on Lennox at six this evening?"

Lennox Ave. was definitely the right street. Kato already had someone sitting outside Yami's apartment. "Um..."

"I do love it when I strike so much fear into someone, they can't form a sentence. Here's the deal, Kaiba. You're going to give me back that brooch. Tomorrow morning, nine a.m. sharp, you and Yugi are going to be knocking on the door of 656 Ano Drive in Koufu. Don't show up and, well, let's just say you will wish you had. Goodnight, Mr. Kaiba."

The phone was hung up. Seto slowly pushed the end button, then threw the phone across the room. It hit the wall, shattered, and fell to the floor. He put his head in his hands, groaning. He'd tried to make things better and he'd made things worse. Now he had two mob bosses after him. And unlike Takanawa, this one seemed to be playing for real.

Because Seto knew where Koufu was. It was a tiny little city south of Tokyo. It was also where forty-six torn-apart bodies had been found over the course of three decades, all suspected of being the work of the Kato family and none of which had been connected. If he and Yami went there, they'd be numbers forty-seven and forty-eight. Kato was going to make an example of them, whether or not he got his brooch back.

And it was clear that ignoring him wasn't going to help either. He knew where they both lived and he wouldn't hesitate to storm in and shoot them dead in their homes.

The only chance was to get out, regroup, and find some other way out of this. Why was it, in this situation, when it seemed like he got one step ahead, something happened to shove him back to square one?

He glanced at the clock, seeing that it was a quarter to five. He climbed out of bed and grabbed a suitcase out of his closet, beginning to fill it with clothes, his mind going a mile a minute. There was a problem with skipping town. He was famous. There was no where to go that Kato couldn't find him with his connections. The press itself, or avid Duel Monsters fans, or even just the fact that everyone knew his face would make hiding impossible.

And he had his brother to think about. Mokuba and Marianne would be in Domino on the fifth to stay a couple of days before they headed to England. They were in Kyoto even now. It wouldn't take much for Kato to get to them. If he didn't have Seto to flay alive, he'd get to the family first.

An idea occurred to him, but he wouldn't be able to put it into motion until later in the morning.

Seto cleaned out the necessities in the bathroom, then set the suitcase, a small bag and his briefcase with his laptop and deck in it on the floor near the door. Then he unlocked the drawer by the door, pulling out his gun. Adding a couple boxes of extra catridges to his suitcase, he set the gun on top of the small table.

Now there was nothing left to do but sit and wait until he could get things into gear.

Seto made himself an early breakfast at seven-thirty, then got on his cell-phone and made a couple of calls. Roland promised he'd come through. And now the rest was up to him.

Seto grabbed up his bags, made sure the safety was on his gun before tucking it into his waistband, peeked through the curtains, and then crossed to the door leading to the underground, six-car garage. The Mercedes was still shot to hell, so he chose his Camaro and stuffed his bags into the back. Climbing into the driver's side, he pushed the automatic garage-door opener and pulled out.

There were no cars in sight at the bottom of the hill the mansion sat on, but he knew not to trust that. He would just make a bee-line for Kaiba Corp. and get to the Blue Eyes White Jet.

He was half-way there when something he thought he'd killed niggled at him: his conscience. Damn it, but Kato knew where Yami was living, and he'd be sure to pay him a visit.

Seto turned the car reluctantly and headed over to Lennox. He pulled over to the curb and climbed out of the car, his hand staying near the gun in his waistband. This was his life now--running from his own home with a gun on his person.

Looking everywhere, he walked up the ramp to the front door.

It was open.

Seto took the gun out of his waistband and held it ready at his side, using his other hand to push open the front door. He walked into the living room and saw that the whole apartment was trashed. The cushions had been yanked off the chairs and couch and thrown everywhere, the coffee table was upended, the curtains pulled half-off their rods. He could see into the kitchen and it was a minefield of broken dishes and glasses, food yanked out of the refrigerator, and utensils strewn about. The elevator near the stairs had its glass panels smashed in.

It certainly didn't look good for Yami, but Seto still went up the stairs. Like everything else, he had to be sure.

The upper floor was just as trashed as the lower. The doors had been kicked in rather than just opened, the contents of the bathroom and bedrooms scattered across the floors.

But there was no trace of Yami. Seto knew his bedroom was the one at the end of the upper hallway on the left, which he knew only because of the vast amount of leather pants and the fact that there were no rails drilled into the walls like in the bedroom across from the bathroom that would help Yugi get into his bed. The bedroom at the end of the hall was just as torn apart as the rest, but there was no blood to be seen.

So where was Yami? Had they managed to drag him off without making him bleed? He supposed that was possible, but his instincts said no. If they had come upon Yami while he was home, they would have either killed him outright or taken him back to Koufu to kill him slowly. The fact that the apartment was torn apart sounded more like Yami hadn't been home and Kato's men had taken their frustration out on his possessions. His own mansion was likely to suffer similarly now that he wasn't there.

There was only one other place to check. Seto grabbed a suitcase from the floor and grabbed a few handfuls of random clothes from the floor and stuffed them into it, finishing by grabbing some things from the floor of the bathroom. He couldn't risk another moment there and headed down the stairs to his car. No one seemed to be around, but he wasn't about to believe in good luck.

Throwing Yami's bag into the backseat with his own, he started the car and headed to the only other place he could think of that Yami was likely to be at. And if he wasn't, then the punk was on his own. There was only so long that Seto could stand letting his conscience rule over what was the smart thing to do.

The Fire Room was almost empty on a Sunday morning. Sure enough, Yami was on the stage, clearly at the very beginning of his dance, since he was still completely dressed. Not wasting any time, Seto walked right up and grabbed Yami's wrist, yanking him off the stage.

"Kaiba, what--?"

"Hey! Get your hands off him." This was what was obviously a bouncer, an enormous man who looked like he could play pro football.

"It's okay, Nobuyuki."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Thank you."

Nobuyuki gave Seto a glance, then turned and walked away. Yami turned and walked towards the same niche near the back entrance where he'd talked to Seto before, turning back towards him and folding his arms.

"Okay. What is it now?"

"Kato knows who we are."

"What? But I thought--"

"One of the cameras was trained on the parking lot where we were."

Yami started to say something else, but his eyes went past Seto's arm and his mouth closed. At that moment, a new voice spoke up.

"Okay, Kaiba. Thanks for making this so easy for us, going right to him."

The speaker was a tough-looking thug with a scar that looked like he'd been burned covering the left half of his face, the skin of his eyebrow hanging down over his eye, half-covering it. He smiled cruelly.

"Let's go, boys."