Leo looked up as the Fiat pulled into his garage and screeched to a halt next to Sei's sports car. It was the day after the … odd encounter with the cybot on the docks, and Sei had dropped her car off at Leo's and taken a cab into town without a word of explanation. When he'd gone to the trailer to modify Django for sustained flight, no one had heard from her all day, and the other girls were getting worried. The last thing on Leo's mind was dealing with another customer.
A young woman in a business suit about Sei's age got out of the Fiat.
Leo said, "Can I help you?"
"It's me, Leo."
"Sei!?" Now that she had spoken, he could see that it was her. But her clothes and her hair style, even the way she held herself for a moment were so different from normal he'd thought it was somebody else.
Sei got a suit carrier out of the trunk of her sports car and tossed Leo a flash drive a she walked past him. She said, "I want that transferred to your personal server. Highest priority, eyes only. Bury it so deep Amy couldn't find it."
"What's on it?"
"Need to know. I'll use your bathroom." The bathroom door shut.
'Need to know my ass,' he thought as he loaded the flash drive onto his desktop computer. The files were password protected, but Leo took a guess and opened them on the first try. His screen filled up with shot after shot of Kyohei - entering Love and Happy, leaving it for lunch with Hayao and Shiho, eating with them at an outdoor restaurant, returning to the school.
Leo's back stiffened. This had gone on long enough. "Sei!" he shouted. "We have to talk."
Her voice came through the closed door: "I told you not to look! How did you gain access, anyway?"
"'Master patissier' is kind of obvious for a password. What the hell are you doing?"
Sei came out of the bathroom in her normal white halter top, brown pants and blue coat. "Since you couldn't leave well enough alone," she said as she put her hair in its normal bun, "you might as well help." She leaned over the desktop monitor and began to go through the photos. "I'm going to want facial recognition done on everyone other than him and his friends. See if someone shows up more than once."
"Excuse me?"
"All this talk of how Subject Zero is stalking me made me wonder if Eriko could really be someone stalking Kyohei, and the special app is just a blind. So it would really be someone close by, watching him, pretending to be Eriko."
"So you think it takes a stalker to catch a stalker? That's a new one."
"Leo-"
"Sei, three nights ago you almost knocked my teeth out with your tongue at the very suggestion that you might be jealous of Kyohei. Then you go pull something like this-"
Sei spun towards him. "I am not jealous! Why can't anyone get that? I have no romantic feelings for Kyohei at all. I'm happy he…has a new girlfriend. As a friend, I want to be sure that's all it is." She turned back to the desktop.
"I see," Leo said. "And if he brought Eriko to the trailer, you wouldn't be bothered by that?"
Sei didn't look at him. "Of course."
"And if he told you they were moving in together, that he was going to take a pass on France, and he didn't need to work for you?"
Sei didn't answer, focusing on her work.
Leo prodded, "And if he said he was going to use the money he'd saved for France to buy her an engagement ring?"
Sei still wouldn't look at him. "He wouldn't go that far so fast."
"What makes you say that?"
No answer.
Leo sat on the edge of the desk and said quietly: "Sei, he's just an ordinary 16 year old kid. He's a good kid. Braver than most people give him credit. He tries to do the right thing. And I think we can agree he…likes you a lot. But he's not cut out for this. He doesn't end up in trouble nearly as much as Meg, but he can be a hassle. And he almost broke his back catching you at Tokyo fortune Island. And you intimidate him."
Now she looked at him. "I've never done anything to intimidate him, Leo!"
"Haven't you, Sei? Amy told me how the day you went to get him back after he quit, you had her track his cell phone and hack the building's security cameras so you would know exactly where he was. What did you do, call from across the street and tell him to look out the window?"
"As a matter of fact, I did."
"Wonderful. Now he thinks that if he quits again, you'll send Jo after him."
"I wouldn't! Kyo can leave any time he wants."
"Can he?"
"Of course."
Leo pointed at the monitor. "Then explain that. Because no one is going to buy your stalker theory."
Sei let go of the mouse, straightened, and stood there. "What do you want me to say, Leo?"
"Sei…are you in love with Kyohei?"
"No."
"Well?"
Sei sighed, closed the windows on the monitor, and handed Leo the flash drive. "Toss that in the incinerator. Then make sure there are no traces of the contents on your system."
"I know the drill. What are you going to tell the girls?"
"I'll tell them you and I had to talk a friend out of doing something stupid. Which isn't too far from the truth."
