The lock disengaged with a beep. Entryway lights flooded, the orange glow on the linoleum floor bright and sharp. The agent took off her jacket and hung it on the coat rack.
Hal Bullook. Twenty-eight years old. Single. Former CIA agent until late last year. Her keen intuition and strong sense of conviction caught Near's eye in early 2009.
She was one of the three remaining agents on board.
She hung her shoulder holster to the rack. Her gun stayed inside, docile. She sighed to herself softly and her car keys jingled as she threw them on the entryway table, the metal clanging against glass. She walked to the living room, her heels loud.
In the dark, Mello lounged in her velvet armchair and waited.
He'd been there since early morning. Scoured her small apartment for bugs and cameras, and in their absence, waited for her return. It was nighttime and the curtains were drawn. The apartment was cold, quiet, empty.
She moved into her kitchenette and turned the range hood light on.
A silver kettle on the stovetop sat waiting. She turned the dial of the stove, and fire roared beneath the grate. Crackling and filling her little living room. She pulled off her rings and set them on the countertop, turning on the faucet.
The water ran. Mello reached over and pulled on the lamp chain with a sharp click.
The sound travelled past the faucet's whoosh and the clock's ticks. He watched as Hal's shoulders tensed in anticipation, as she tried not to react.
She turned the faucet off and reached over to the washcloth, wiping her hands. "Who's there?" she called out.
"Hal Bullook." Mello leaned back and crossed his legs, lifting his chocolate bar to the side of his mouth. Snap. "I don't think we've met."
She turned around, their eyes meeting across the length of her apartment.
Her eyes darted. From the chocolate bar to his scar, to his hair, his boots, his jiggling foot. Her lips closed into a thin red line.
Cold and neutral, she said, "You're Mello."
Mello bowed his head. "The one and only."
She was nonplussed. She threw the washcloth back onto the counter, taking slow steps to the kitchen island in front of her, and leaned on it with her palms. "What are you doing here?"
"I think we have a lot of things in common." Mello tilted his head, watching her. "Don't you?"
She shrugged. "Not really."
Mello quirked a brow.
"You're anti-Kira," he said, hanging his chocolate bar from his lips. Staring her down, watching as she straightened her back. "I'm trying to catch him. See?"
"I'm working for Near," she responded coldly. "Your enemy."
Mello chuckled, shaking his head and looking away to her curtains. "And you've never worked for your enemy before?"
She replied, "No."
"I'm not sure I believe that," Mello said, swinging both feet onto the floor. His heels clacked against the wood.
Her gaze followed as he walked across her Persian rug, and onto her floorboards again. Slow enough that his headache didn't spill over the flimsy cover of his painkillers.
He reached the other side of the kitchen island across from her, neither one breaking eye contact. Up close, her face was wrinkled, caked with heavy makeup. Her eyelashes were thick and clumpy little spider legs.
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
"You're a rat," Mello said, tilting his head and leaning close to her. "Aren't you?"
She stepped away, frowning. "No," she responded.
"Then what about when you were in the CIA?"
She shook her head, leaning her back against the oven handle. Keeping a couple feet of distance between the two of them. She was unarmed and she knew he wasn't.
"I've never been a rat," she said, resolutely. Like she believed it too.
Mello lifted his chocolate to his mouth, licking the tip. Hal looked away first, crossing her arms.
"Then," Mello asked, licking his lips. "Would James Bullook say the same as you?"
She looked up like she'd been struck across the face. "James?"
Mello leaned forward, pushing his gloved hands over the counter. The leather squeaked as it dragged along the marble.
"Your little brother." He flashed a smile. "You knew he was Pavone's mole, didn't you?"
She shifted, her mouth reworking the words about to leave them. "Only after he passed."
"So you're saying," Mello said, propping his face up with his hand, the counter cutting up against his torso. "You didn't know he was trafficking girls from over the Mexico border for years."
Hal shook her head slowly, her ice blue eyes widening. "Not until afterwards," she said.
"That's funny. You were one of the five active investigators on the human trafficking cases in New York City. You must be a really shitty investigator, then." Mello pushed himself up by the elbows, his smile fading into nothing. "Or a liar."
Hal frowned, perplexity forming across her face. "What are you implying, Mello?"
"You knew." Mello stared at her sharply, unwavering. "You let him do it."
"What?" she spluttered, as if offended.
"Having him there meant you cemented at least twenty arrests of men under him," Mello continued, pulling himself upright, chilling his voice down. "Those arrests got you your little Secret Service job afterwards. Didn't it?"
She scoffed. "And?"
"And James still stayed in the FBI, even with all the evidence against him. You got your promotion after leaving him untouched. All was well." Mello paused, tilting his head. "Except for all those girls you let down, of course."
Hal stared at him evenly. Taking in his threat, drinking it in slowly. Assessing the damage.
For a moment, it looked like she'd buckle.
It passed.
She shook her head and turned away, moving towards her cupboards.
"Near was right," she grumbled, swinging open a door. Identical rows of white mugs lined up to the walls. She grabbed one and closed it, placing it onto the countertop. "You really are something."
She reached over to another cupboard and grabbed a green teapot off the shelf, leaving it on the stove.
"You have some nerve," she continued, shaking her head and pulling open a cabinet by her hip. "Some nerve to suggest what you're suggesting."
"Then you wouldn't care if I asked Near to open an investigation on you."
She stalled.
"He wouldn't listen to you," she shot back. She didn't sound sure.
"I think Near would," Mello replied, cracking another piece of his chocolate as he watched her. "He trusts me, after all. He knows I'm not a liar."
She exhaled, pushing the cabinet back slowly, her shoulders tensing, her hand clenching.
"Have you ever been to prison, Hal?" Mello asked, his eyes trained on her back.
Hal shook her head.
"Accessory to trafficking, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, treason. And you're a federal agent, Hal. You're looking at a life sentence."
Nothing. The clock ticked quietly. The fire sizzled, dancing against the grate.
"Are you sure you could survive that long without your..." Mello's eyes hovered over her box of tea leaves, "Ginseng granules?"
The drawer rolled closed, thudding against the shelf. She stayed still.
Mello knew that he'd been right.
It took a rat to know one. He could see James' cleverness inside of her, cunning and tactical. Pavone was picky, and he favored James almost as much as he liked Mello.
Hal was too smart to say anything else.
"How can you sleep at night, Hal?" Mello continued, "After you turned your back on so many girls?"
Silence for a moment. Hal looked over her shoulder, her eyes piercing past her heavy fringe.
The claws were out.
"How can you?" she spat. "When you killed the man who trusted you most?"
A sting lodged itself in Mello's chest. Shrapnel from a nearby explosion. "What do you know about that?"
"You're no fucking saint," she continued, her fist clenched. "So why don't you—"
A whistle burst through the air.
Hal started. Mello's eyes darted to the noise, steam billowing out of the kettle's spout to the range hood, screaming for attention in the silence. She turned back, grabbing the kettle's handle and moving it from the stovetop.
She turned off the dial and the fire fizzled out underneath the grate. She busied herself with making her tea. She filled up her teapot, her other hand held carefully at her hip.
Out of sight. She had a weapon.
The bitch was dangerous. She knew more than she was letting on. The lid of the teapot sang as she replaced it, setting a timer on her microwave clock. Mello wrapped his chocolate and put it away, glowering at her unflinchingly. Watching her every move.
She glanced back at him when she was finished. "What?"
"Why are you holding a knife?"
"Because you have a gun."
Mello didn't move, his arms tight at his sides. Waiting for her to fold. "Put it away."
Hal stared at him for a beat longer before she shook her head and opened the cupboard again, tossing her little kitchen knife inside to match an endless amount of the same silver cutlery.
"There." She turned around and jerked her head. "Now put your gun where I can see it."
Mello's glare stayed harsh as he reached behind his back to pull his gun from his waistband. It rustled against his coat as he took it out. The metallic clunk on the kitchen counter rang loudly.
They stared at each other. The seconds on her microwave clock counted backwards, flipping in the stillness of the kitchen. Hal looked at his scar openly, tracing over it with her eyes almost unconsciously.
Mello grit his teeth.
She sensed it and looked away swiftly, shooting her glance around her apartment. "What do you want?" she asked finally.
Mello shook his hair over his eye. "I want everything Near knows."
"You want me to be a spy."
Mello shrugged, crossing his arms. "You're used to it, aren't you?"
"Fine," Hal answered, her eyes still trained on her bowl of fake fruits. "What else?"
"Tell me what you know about me and Pavone."
Hal blinked, caught off-guard. She was thinking something, but she kept her face blank. "He died in 2008," she said gingerly. "You ran after that."
Mello frowned. James died before Pavone did. He and Mello only overlapped at the beginning of Mello's time as a soldier.
"How'd you learn that?" he asked carefully. "The SPK?"
"No. They don't know anything."
"Then how?"
Hal still avoided looking at him, her arms crossed across her chest, leaning against her counter. Her eyes were blank as she chewed her lower lip. Her heeled boot tapped against the porcelain as she thought.
"There's a half a million dollar hit over your head in New York," she said finally, pushing herself off the counter as she reached up to the microwave. She hit the stop button, a second away from 0. "At least, there was last year, when you left for LA."
"Everybody who used to work with Pavone is dead," Mello responded, narrowing his eyes.
Hal poured the tea from her teapot into her bland white mug. "The mob's expanded since you left," she replied blankly.
Of course. Crime never really died. Mello looked up. "Where are they now?"
"Brooklyn." She put down the teapot, the ceramic ringing emptily. "But they move around."
Mello glared at Hal's mug. With the LA mafia dead, the New York mob was eager to fill in the vacuum. The hit must be worth more now.
"I think you're better off staying here," Hal continued, blowing against the steaming tea, "If they find you, you're a dead man."
Mello sucked his teeth, inhaling sharply.
It wasn't like Los Angeles, where Kira needed a name and a face to kill. In New York, all anybody needed was an alibi before putting a bullet in his brain. Killing Mello would be swift. Easy.
Hal was never at her apartment. She slept in the SPK building in the quarters above the office. She had one day off in the week because Near didn't like to be alone. He was scared of the dark and needed the company.
The evening that Mello met her, she had taken the night off. Watering her plants was a weekly affair. Near was strict but he had a soft spot for animals and shrubbery. He let another agent feed his cat every evening; he only kept his commander in chief by his side.
It was clear that Near was a child on the battleground. His soldiers were nothing but babysitters.
Nothing had changed since the time Mello knew him best.
The apartment was a welcome change from the dusty squalor Matt had called a home. Mello could find clean plates in the cupboards and unexpired food in the freezer. Hal let him take her seldom used living room as long as he didn't bother her.
Hal asked him about his burns, but he didn't answer. She said, "Stay inside, don't move." She said, "Keep it bandaged, so you won't risk infection."
Mello didn't like to answer enemy requests, so he ignored her. He had his own way of doing things. He wasn't like Near.
She let him be after that and went to sleep. Mello took the couch and turned off all the lights.
Now it was morning.
Mello was awake as the sun's beams trickled in through red curtains, eating his morning chocolate bar. Hal lived on the seventh floor in lower Manhattan, but the windows were thick. Her apartment was always quiet.
Hal was in the kitchen, standing at her fridge. Her perfume carried into the living room.
Mello had taken a mixture of painkillers and he was waiting for it to kick in. He needed something stronger than Tylenol so Mario gave him a concoction. His burns had stopped itching as much with a thin layer of Silvadene.
He was staring at the laptop screen with his regular notebook opened in his lap, reading the events that had transpired during his five-day death.
He found out that Kira was working with the NPA.
The Japanese police admitted this to Near the night after the explosion. They told him that Kira had sent the task force his own notebook so that they could work together to get Mello's notebook back.
Plastic crinkled. The lever on Hal's toaster creaked. The television screen phased on, the quiet voice of the morning news mumbling monotonously.
Mello glanced up at Hal. Her back was turned, pulling out a plate from her cupboard.
Another stack of plates, all white. Half of them were probably unused, collecting dust in the back.
Mello sneered, taking another bite off the corner of his chocolate bar and looking down to his notebook.
The NPA returned the original notebook after the night they stole it back. In exchange, they got to keep the mafia's death note.
Kira didn't kill them. Kira let them be. No tricks, no smoke, no mirrors.
Why would Kira do that?
Mello shook his head as the cupboards kept opening and closing, her cabinets sliding and shutting, the television droning on. His meds weren't kicking in fast enough. Did it take that many fucking utensils to make breakfast?
The toaster dinged. Mello propped his forehead in his hand, and exhaled.
The NPA's excuse was a load of bullshit. Mello knew this, Near knew this, Hal knew this. And if the NPA didn't, they were as useless as Mello feared.
Kira and L were working together.
The scrape of jam over toast. A utensil tinking against another one of Hal's assembly line of identical white plates.
Mello scowled.
He had known L and Kira were working together since the last raid that moved them to Soto Street Junction. L was the reason Hoope killed himself last month. There were two explanations:
One, L was using the NPA as his smokeshield, and they believed him.
Two, the NPA was working with Kira.
The barstool screeched loudly over the linoleum tile.
Mello looked up again, irritated now. Hal had a piece of toast held carefully in her hand, strawberry jam spread messily over the top. She took a loud, ravenous bite.
Mello slid lower on the velvet armchair and propped his feet up over Hal's glass coffee table, his heels thudding.
Hal looked over and frowned.
Mello crossed his ankles, another thud on the glass, and watched as she narrowed her eyes before looking back down.
Kira and L worked together. There were two possibilities. The NPA knew, or they didn't.
Soichiro made a deal for the eyes. He'd spelled out Mello's birth name to his face, slow and steady, so that the rest of the NPA knew. He had the notebook in his hands, writing half of it down. He told him to surrender.
But he didn't finish. He let Mello live.
He had sabotaged Kira's plan at the base, and he died later that night.
Did he sabotage it willingly, in a show of justice? Or had he just not known that L wanted him dead?
Then—
The barstool scraped against the linoleum tile again, loud and heavy. Hal was glaring at him as they made eye contact, her little white plate of crumbs in her hands.
She looked away, tossing the plate into her sink, and walked back to the bathroom.
Mello shook his head and dangled the chocolate bar at his mouth, the corner pressed against his lips. He stared down at the notebook, at his handwriting.
Soichiro was a proud enough man to do what he thought was right at the eleventh hour. But the other NPA members hadn't shot him dead when they burst through the main door.
There had been five others. They killed Jose. They had Mello cornered.
Why didn't they kill him?
It was unlikely that all of the members had decided to go against Kira and stage a coup. If they did, then they would have all ended up dead by the 12th.
Only Soichiro's name was in the obituaries.
That must have meant that...
Mello paused his thought as Hal reappeared in the hallway, a fresh coat of red lipstick lining her lips. She stomped past the living room to the entryway hall. Before she reached the door, she stopped.
"Mello," she said, breaking their hours-long silence.
Mello looked up, rolling his head in annoyance. "Hm."
"Don't break anything," she said sternly. "I'll tell Near you were here if you do."
Mello rolled his eyes, looking away. A mother and a snitch. Maybe that was why Near liked her so goddamned much.
Mello looked back down at his notebook as Hal walked away. Her gun clanged against the coatrack as she took it off to put on her holster. Her coat rustled.
The door slammed shut.
Finally. Some peace and quiet.
The television droned on, but Mello let it be. He gripped his chocolate bar, hooking a corner of his teeth over it, and looked up at the computer screen.
It was loaded on the NPA's official page. Their crest stamped over the header at the top. Help stop crime. Help support the cause. Work for the NPA today!
Japan was largely pro-Kira, which was why the NPA members were rogues. They'd started their own investigation under the original L's lead.
They didn't know. They trusted the original L, and they trusted the current one, too.
Were they really such idiots? Why were they so confident in the current L's lead?
Mello crinkled his chocolate wrapper into a ball in his gloved fist, narrowing his eyes as he tossed it to the floor. L had taken the name of his hero and slaughtered it. He'd taken the confidence of the Japanese police and used it to help Kira's reign of terror.
So the NPA were nameless soldiers. L was the gatekeeper to Kira's identity. Game on.
In the afternoon, Mello made himself a piece of toast. Hal had chocolate spread in the fridge, along with a host of other jams, all for her morning breakfasts.
Her toaster was high quality. What came out was fine and crunchy. Mello didn't eat much bread, but he could appreciate her luxury goods.
There was a press conference from President Sairas in a few minutes. Mello busied himself as the reporters on NBC chattered incessantly, pacing around her apartment as he ate. His every bite showered crumbs over her floorboards.
Let her clean it. She had nothing else to do anyway.
Mello stopped at the bookshelf beside her television set, the only touch of her personality that she'd left in her dry box of a home. Most of the shelf was filled with books, organized in some unknown logic, untouched and dusty.
History books. Books about war. Books about guns. Books about psychology. FBI books, practice exams, books about interrogation and logic.
Mello crouched, taking another bite of his chocolate toast. Her bottom shelf held her fiction novels. Bukowski, Hemingway, Austen, Milton and Woolf. Books Mello had read in his childhood, with dog-eared pages under flashlights.
Memories he didn't remember.
Black picture frames had been tucked at the end of the shelf where her novels stopped. The small space only allowed for three picture frames, clustered in the corner like she had nowhere else to put them.
Hal's memories.
Mello leaned in, peering at the pictures, faded from the light of the sun.
The first picture was a family portrait, posed in front of the door of an antique house. Her parents and James stood beside her, a teenager then. He was shorter than Hal, smiling bright and wide.
The next picture had dozens of heads, smiling from a distance away. They were all dressed in suits. Most likely members of the CIA.
The last picture had a well-dressed group of graduates, standing in front of a vinyl banner. Mello picked it up with his gloves. The sign behind her said Welcome back, Ecolint!
Hal stood in the front row, her hair cropped short into a thin blonde bob.
Mello smirked. An international school in Geneva. He wasn't surprised. He leaned back to replace it when he saw another photograph cowering in the shadows.
It was in a wooden picture frame, bigger than the rest.
Mello reached in to pull it out of the cracks, careful not to disturb her meticulously stacked books. A loose puff of dust burst into the morning air as he unearthed it, scattering into her living room and dancing in the afternoon sun.
Hal and another woman. They were both wearing long dresses, a bouquet clasped in the other woman's arm. Smiling. Something was engraved in gold lettering on the wood, glittering in the light.
Forever In Love, Hal & Christina. 2003.
Mello raised a brow.
Behind him, the press conference began. The sound of camera shutters filled the room. Mello tucked the picture frame back into place, rearranging the photographs as he'd found them, and stood up.
He grabbed the remote from the coffee table and turned the volume up higher.
The president stood on the podium. His white hair was thin and wispy under the bright lights, his forehead shining. Mello finished his toast and dusted the crumbs off his gloves, crossing his arms as he watched Sairas fill the dead air with cordialities.
Messages of thanks. Messages of good-will. Fake messages.
Then the address began. "Six days ago, we saw the annihilation of the mafia on our shores."
Murmurs. Camera flashes.
"We saw the death of David Hoope late last month," he continued, his voice trembling and weak. "On October 27th. We will never forget."
Mello shifted his weight, watching.
"We gather you today to say this," Sairas said. "We, the United States of America, have decided to accept Kira, and will do nothing to stand in Kira's way. I repeat. We are not standing in Kira's way any longer."
The reporters reacted, cameras flashing with increasing speed. Mello narrowed his eyes, his arms falling to his sides.
"Owing to Kira's powers, war is now a thing of the past," Sairas stated. "Organized crime in the States, as well as other countries, is almost completely gone. We've also discovered that the President's death was on account of his attempt to capture Kira."
Mello stared at the television screen in disbelief.
"We are not accepting Kira as righteous," Sairas continued, his voice almost drowned by the sounds of flashing cameras that pulsed over the back walls. "We are only not taking any actions as a country to capture Kira."
Reporters clamored for attention, their microphones waving like drowning hands.
"Mr. President, with all due respect, isn't that essentially the same thing?" one asked. "Aren't you declaring America a pro-Kira country?"
Sairas waved his hand. "That's not the case—"
Mello tore his eyes away, running his hand through his hair. His fingers snagged over his burns. The pain flooded over his body and he bit his tongue, clenching his fists.
Pro-Kira America.
The SPK had no place.
Sairas would defund them, leaving them with nothing but their own resources.
It was over. Mello couldn't use them. New York was meaningless.
He shook his head clear and stomped toward the window as Sairas continued to drone on about Kira.
Flashing. Voices. Mumbles.
What was Mello going to do? He couldn't stop. He had to keep going. He had already suffered a huge loss during his five-day death. He couldn't wait any longer.
Mello gripped at the red curtains, tempted to tear them off the pole.
What could he do?
Hal was only as useful as Near was. Without power, without government protection, they were a rogue terrorist group. Pro-Kira zombies would take them out. With Sairas' approval, the tepid undercurrent of Kira support would slowly take over America.
Mello was in the eye of the storm. In the middle of the mafia, Kira, pro-Kira supporters, L, the NPA.
A hit over his head. A name over his head.
Mello pushed the curtains to the side, kicking her wall. Scuffing the perfect white paint with a track mark as he stormed back to the television screen.
"But Mr. President, American citizens look to the government for guidance. If you are demobilizing anti-Kira efforts, then that means that—"
"Can you openly defy Kira right here?" Sairas interrupted, his bony white hand pointing at him like a witch's claw. "Here, on television?"
"Jesus fucking Christ," Mello mumbled, throwing himself onto the velvet armchair again.
What the fuck could he do? What the fuck could he do?
Mello kicked the coffee table leg, burying his head in his hands. His migraine was flickering again, bobbing up over his meds, ravaging his brain.
He was stuck.
Stuck like he was all those years ago. That stormy night in Hampshire, sleeping in a car he'd broken into with only the clothes on his back.
He'd promised himself never to find himself back in a place like that again. An empty promise he'd made at fourteen. But he had no choice now.
All he could do was wait.