Thief in the Night

A Lupin the Third fan fiction by Lywinis

Chapter Seven: Borrowed Time

The snow was melting finally. Cara very nearly had cabin fever. The only thing keeping her sane was teaching Zenigata English. She noted before he was a remarkably quick study, and by the end of the two-week blizzard, he was speaking reasonably well. She still tortured him by making him speak in English at all times, which he endured admirably. He wasn't one to argue, especially if she were trying to help him.

Almost two weeks later, the airstrips at O'Hare were clear. Cara was sitting in the lobby when Zenigata came wandering down. Her bag was packed, sitting beside her as she sipped her coffee and paged through her paper.

"You are leaving now?" He asked, his accent only slightly noticeable. When she nodded, he looked a little disappointed. Then he surprised her by taking her hand and leading her to the buffet. Nandra was there, and she watched the older man with almost hungry eyes. While Cara thought it was rather cute, Zenigata having a girl with a crush on him, there was something about Nandra that disturbed her. The Inspector had avoided the breakfast buffet and the restaurant for the entire two weeks, resorting to bribing and wheedling breakfast out of Cara.

Zenigata led her all the way up to Nandra and gave a perfunctory bow. "Check my English, would you?" he muttered in Japanese. She nodded.

"Excuse me, miss, I wish to apologize for my rudeness earlier. I am not so good with English, and I was…" he pondered a moment, then found the word he was looking for. "…upset."

Cara grinned. "You did great!"

Nandra seemed disappointed. It seemed she was hoping for more from the Inspector, but he looked rather nervous. Cara figured the girl set him on edge. He's not the only one, she thought ungraciously.

"I'll accept your apology," Nandra said, her face breaking into one of her cheerful smiles, "on one condition."

"Yes?" Zenigata was wary, his eyes darting back and forth, looking for an outing.

"You have to promise to call me." Nandra pouted prettily, working her charm for what it was worth. Cara, looking at the girl's face, suddenly understood why Zenigata was nervous. The smile Nandra plastered on her slightly pudgy face never reached her eyes. Those green pinpoints in her face were cold, cruel and calculating. They reminded the retired thief of Fujiko, at least in their level of cunning.

Cara was half-inclined to give a shiver. Instead, she leveled her own icy gaze on the chipper girl, causing Nandra to flinch. "I think the Inspector, I mean, my uncle, would have called you even without your 'condition'. You're awfully rude to demand a customer call you. In fact, I ought to report you to the management for solicitation."

Nandra's smile was suddenly wiped from her face, and the fleshy visage hardened. "I was talking to the gentleman. Is there anything I can help you with, Miss?" Like throwing you off a high rise, her eyes said.

"Actually, no, my uncle and I were leaving." She took Zenigata's arm the way a younger relative would, and grabbed her suitcase. Whispering to him in Japanese, she noted, "Forget I said anything along the lines of dating her. She's creepy."

Zenigata nodded, thankful just to be out of there. Nandra watched them go. Her eyes had narrowed to the point that it seemed like she was asleep on the job.

There were other ways of catching a man, and she was quite familiar with all of them. Indeed.


Cara gave an involuntary shiver as they stepped into the elevator. When Zenigata looked at her, she hastily let go of his arm and smoothed her hair down. "I got a really bad vibe off of her. Brrr, I mean, she really looked like a psycho in training. Woman rule number one: 'Steer clear of creepy girls and scary exes'. At least, you know, it was rule number one in my book."

Zenigata nodded, letting her babble. "Well, you didn't stay away from Lupin."

She scowled. "I know, and it cost me two months of sleepless nights, the death of a lawyer possibly meant for me, and two weeks of being stuck in a hotel teaching a stubborn Inspector English. See where not following my own policies gets me?" When his face fell at her comment, she patted his arm awkwardly. "It's not that it wasn't fun, it's just that in all my years as a thief, I never thought I'd be the one to teach you English."

His lips quirked. "And I never thought that I'd actually like a thief." She made a face at him, and he laughed.

The door whooshed open on the third floor, and they made their way to his room. She never really thought about it, she had always wandered in when it was time for his lessons. As she stepped in behind him now, she saw his neatly packed suitcase on the bed. It was battered and worn; she wondered how many countries and how many quick escapes it had been through. Lupin did have a tendency to make things explode when he was making a flashy exit.

"You're leaving today, too?" she asked casually. He nodded, picking his hat up off the side table and plopping it onto his head. His hat, like his trench coat, was such a part of him that Cara was shocked to see he took them off. Actually, she was shocked whenever he did something completely human. Before, Zenigata had been a shadow. Pops was something to be avoided, or something to use to escape.

She shook her head as all the revelations came pounding into her skull. She hated when she got all philosophical about stuff like this; she was more like her father than she would care to admit, and she hated it.

She sighed. He looked up. "Nani?" Startled, she stared through him as if she hadn't seen him before, then her face cleared.

"I was thinking about the old days, when you weren't so complicated," she said. He looked confused. "You were always after Lupin, just another hurdle. Now…you're a normal guy, if a little stubborn and single-minded at times."

He shut the suitcase with an audible snap, his back to her for the moment. "I was normal once, before Lupin," he said wistfully. He stared at the wall, as if the scarred and slightly smudged wall of a cheap hotel could hold his memories back. He turned to her, and she noticed his eyes had gone flat. He stared at her, and she saw his pain. She knew she had been a part of that, and she was suddenly…remorseful? Yes, that and she was afraid she had done something that had screwed up his life. She had only known he existed for two years, but still, she felt guilt where Lupin would feel none.

She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. "Your wife, and your daughter…do you still keep in touch?"

He flinched and seemed to notice her. "I send in child support, they take it. I tried writing…all my letters got returned to me, unopened."

"I am sorry, Zenigata-sama," she replied, adding the honorific as an afterthought. She hung her head. "I am partly responsible—"

Suddenly, she was backed against the door, his arms around her, his lips on hers. Her eyes widened. What the hell? She struggled, but he tightened his grip on her shoulders, his kiss gentle but insistent. She put her hands on his chest and pushed him away. "No, Inspector," she said quietly.

He looked ashamed of himself. "I thought…" he cast his eyes downward. "I am sorry." He turned away. She grabbed his sleeve, her fingers like steel as she forced him to look at her.

"You know it would never work." She watched his face go from denial, to anger, and finally, acceptance. "You have your life, I have mine. Almost three months ago, you wanted both Lupin and I dead. You also are old enough to be my father." She ticked off these reasons on her fingers, her voice short and clipped. He opened his mouth to protest. She silenced him with a look. "Besides, what would it look like to your superiors? They might think a whole lot of you now, but what would happen if they knew you were dating an ex-thief?"

"But, you could say you had nothing to do with it…" he started lamely. She shook her head.

"You're like a father, Zenigata-sama. Try as I might, I couldn't think of you that way." She looked firm, even though she knew she must have been wounding his pride. "I don't want to hurt you, but that was…scary for me. You surprised me."

He looked genuinely sorry. He put his hand behind his head and rubbed at his neck, flustered. "I should have asked…"

She burst out laughing, and he scowled. "What?"

Tears were rolling down her face at his look of consternation. "Y-you have a daughter, and you still have to ask to kiss a girl?" She was holding her sides, giggling.

He turned his back, sulking. "It's courtesy!"

She laughed harder. He glared, his hat seeming to drop over his eyes. She was poignantly reminded of a certain gunman, and her mirth nearly turned to sobs.

Her laughter cut off, and she patted his arm. "I'm sorry…you have no idea how absurd this is." She thought he might actually, since he was looking as awkward as she felt, but she continued. "How about we agree to be friends?"

He nodded, hoping she wasn't upset about his indiscretion. She put out her hand, and he took it solemnly. They shook, and it sealed something that should have never started in the first place.

"What flight are you taking out of Chicago?" she asked.

"The first one I can get," he replied.

"Good, I'll come with you."


They did indeed take the very first flight out of Chicago. It happened to be heading for Rome, which Cara was all right with. She needed a vacation. She relaxed in her chair, glad for once that there were no handcuffs to impede her movements. Sipping at a soda, she watched the clouds go by, unaware that both she and the good Inspector were being watched.

Nandra sat about six rows behind, her green eyes glittering in malice. It was a good thing she had seen them leave, or she would never have caught the same flight. She patted her purse, where no less than two dozen credit cards rested. Gifts, from "admirers". She smirked. Keeping the cards open, never using them, had been a good idea. When it really mattered, she could get what she wanted. And she wanted Zenigata.

The stewardess passed by, smiling jovially. Nandra stuck out a foot to trip her. She tripped and fell, landing on her face right in front of the Inspector. He was up immediately, helping her up by the arm and asking in a concerned voice if she was all right. Nandra smirked. He'd be a pushover.

That Cara girl was another matter. Nandra didn't think she and Zeni were related. (She'd begun to think of him as "Zeni" when she searched through the records of the hotel and pulled his credit card file up.) The former hotel attendant watched the lovely girl interact with her Zeni, grinding her teeth every time Cara made him laugh. It should be her Zeni was taking on holiday, not that nasty woman.

She fingered her bag again, feeling the hard length of the pistol in her purse. In this day and age, getting a pistol onto an airplane was a near impossibility, but she had managed. It was actually more of an afterthought; she had lifted the gun from one of the security personnel after she waltzed through the metal detectors. She didn't look suspicious, so she figured she might actually get away with walking through the metal detectors on the other side.

She leaned back in her chair, her eyes closed to slits, watching Zeni and his awful girlfriend. Suddenly, a brilliant idea occurred to her. What if that was her in the chair next to Zeni? What if she looked like Cara? The thought was rather delicious in its simplicity. Nandra nearly cackled. Of course! All she had to do was contact the right people…and Nandra knew the right people.

All she had to do was make the original disappear.

Nandra wasn't the only one watching the unlikely duo. Two burly men, clad in black turtlenecks and jeans, sat across the aisle from them, about two rows behind. Their beady eyes were glued to their magazines, but more than once the unintelligent black orbs would shift to either Cara or Zenigata. The men were stereotypical henchmen, all muscle and no brains. They figured, somewhere in their ape-like noggins, that a girl couldn't be that much trouble.

The plane was on its way to Rome, and it was doubtful those two were intending on letting Cara get off to view the Piazza de Spagna. One cracked his knuckles idly, and the other one, the larger and cannier of the two, whacked him on his beefy shoulder.

"What?" his simian companion asked. "I ain't doin' nothin'."

"Yer crackin' yer knuckles, dummy," the other growled. "Why not just send her a card, so she'll know yer there?"

"Oh. Sorry, Carl."

"Shaddup."

Cara was hardly relaxed. Her flight from the courtroom, without having any questions answered, was unsettling, and her nerves were taut, even during her stay at the luxury hotel provided by the state of Illinois. She bit that last thought off with a sarcastic snort. Someone wanted her dead. She wasn't amused.

Her whole body was hot-wired to survival mode, and her ears picked up the whispered conversation of the goons across the aisle. Resisting the urge to whip around in her seat, she picked up her nearly empty can of soda. Pretending to examine the can, she picked a particularly shiny area and trained it on the goons.

Someone must have taken her for an amateur. She nearly smirked in hard-edged amusement. Prodding Zenigata, she said conversationally, "Hey, did you know this soda claims to have no caffeine? I don't believe it." Zenigata, prodded from his own thoughts, looked at her as if she'd gone completely mad. She leaned in and handed him the can, speaking in a whisper, "Take the can and aim a shiny spot two rows behind us across the aisle." She continued in her conversational tone, "See? It says on the front it has no caffeine, but when you turn to look at the ingredients, there's caffeine, right there."

He took the can and did as she said, his eyes widening. "Well, I never, it does say there's no caffeine." He picked up on it rather quickly, or so she thought. He leaned in and whispered, "Why do you care about the stewardess? She's pretty, but I didn't think she was your type."

Cara nearly groaned. "There are two goons in turtlenecks back there, talking about offing me," she hissed. "I don't give a damn about the stewardess!"

"OH!" His voice was unnaturally loud, and drew a few looks from several passengers.

"Why do I even bother?" Cara asked, mainly to herself.

Zenigata shrugged. "Because I can protect you?"

She rolled her eyes. "If you don't trip over your own feet or spy a bowl of ramen first."

"I happen to be a very good cop," he huffed.

Her response was another roll of the eyes. Sulking, he flagged down the stewardess. She came by with the drink cart, smiling at him. He had, after all, helped her up when she fell. "Can I get you something, Ispettore?"

He smiled, uncomfortable with the adoration. "Could I get a glass of water, please?"

Cara snorted. He glared at her. "What?"

"You gonna boil some ramen at sixty thousand feet?"

They bickered that way for a couple of minutes, much to the stewardess's confusion. She handed Zenigata his water and scuttled off down the aisle, wondering if maybe she'd made a mistake by being friendly with him. Maybe he'd gotten into a fight with his pretty girlfriend over it. She hoped not.

The plane landed soon enough, but not soon enough for the two. They had just begun to get on each other's nerves, although both knew they could stop harping on each other any time they wanted. They stepped off the plane, still mad at each other, with Zenigata explaining the dynamics of ramen, and arguing about the pros and cons of the red brand versus the blue brand. Finally she'd had enough.

She rounded on him, glaring like he was Lupin. He went pale, remembering the last time he had seen her this angry. He hadn't been able to walk for the next few weeks. He flinched. Satisfied she'd gotten her point across, she turned back around, only to bump into one of the black shirted thugs from the plane. A small groan of annoyance was all she had time for before he clamped a meaty hand down on her shoulder and steered her toward the exit.

Zenigata moved to intercept the man, but the smaller of the two pulled a knife and faced off with him. This happened within the space of a few seconds, all while they were still on the gateway. All of a sudden, the bumbling Pops became Detective Inspector Zenigata, man of the law. Out came his jutte, catching the knife and twisting it out of the thug's hands. Zenigata's mouth thinned to a grim line, and he brought the thick metal club down on his attacker's head. A woman screamed.

Zenigata looked up, but it wasn't Cara. A woman behind him had seen him overpower the man with the knife, and security was charging up the covered platform of the walkway, their submachine guns at the ready. He held up his hands, dropping his jutte on his attacker's head. "Inspector Zenigata, Interpol," he said lamely, fishing out his badge.

Cara was gone.


"You're going to pay for getting my partner arrested," said the burly thug. He looked Italian, so Cara figured he was homegrown. She smirked, causing the thick hand to squeeze her shoulder with surprising force, nearly making her yelp. "None of that," snarled the big man. "You're coming with me."

"Can I get some ice cream while we're at it?" she smirked. "You can't shut me up, because I'll make a scene, am I right?"

"I guess so." The thug looked about him warily. She had seen what Zenigata had done to his partner, and she had cheered him silently as she turned to go with the bigger man. She didn't know Pops had it in him. She concentrated on the matter at hand, though.

"Well, I'll make a deal with you. I go through customs, get my suitcase, all the regular jazz. I promise I won't give you any trouble till we're out of the airport, but then we're fair game, deal?"

He looked dumbfounded. "No way. I have you now, why should I let you go?"

"Because the guards at this airport have submachine guns. If I scream, and you kill me, you'll be mowed down."

"So what if I am? You'll be dead too, and that's what I was supposed to do."

"You're awfully loyal, for a thug."

"I'm paid well. And the side benefits ain't so bad, neither." He leered at her, and she suddenly wanted to lash backwards and kick him in the groin. He seemed to sense her sudden inspiration, however, and that meaty hand clamped again, harder. She nearly fell to her knees.

"Fine, we'll play it your way," she spat. "Just let up."

"That's a good girl." He put his hand in the small of her back and steered her through customs and baggage claim. "Now, we're gonna go see my employer."

"Whatever." The hand tightened in warning, and she hissed at him.

"You speak to my boss with respect, you hear?"

She heard, all right. She also heard that he was taking his lines straight from gangster clichéd movies. But she wasn't about to argue with a man that could break her in half, even at her 5'8" height, wiry strength, and gymnast's build. She walked swiftly, his palm propelling her along, and sooner than she would have liked, she reached the front gates of the airport.

A black sedan was waiting out front, and tall, dark, and ugly shoved her into the back. She bumped her head on the doorframe as she went in, and sat glaring at him as he squeezed his bulk in beside her.

"Don't look at me like that, your face'll get stuck that way, and I'm sure you don't want your obituary picture to look like that."

She scowled, scooting as far away from him as possible and trying not to look as frightened as she felt. No one had ever made her feel powerless before. This man could crush her head. She was annoyed at herself. She'd faced death countless times on raids with Lupin, hadn't she? People liked shooting at him for some reason. It had to be the bright red coat. She stifled a hysterical giggle.

The car drove for what seemed like hours, but what had to be only a few minutes. Stopping outside what she recognized, even in the gathering darkness, as the Palazzo Montecitorio, the lower house of the Italian parliament, she was ushered into a side door and led down a long dark hallway. She noticed it started sloping down, until they had to be going at least two stories underground. For an older Roman palazzo, it had been seriously renovated. She looked at the electric lights that lined the walls at odd intervals, and realized this must have been added around World War II. It fit, since it would have been one of Il Doce's private hiding spots.

She was impressed; everyone said that Mussolini had more than one hidey-hole. Someone must have either paid a pretty penny to use this, or they had found one that no one else had, and concealed it. Cara was inclined to believe the latter. She was broken from her musings, however, when the thug stopped before a vault-like door, sealed against the outside air. It reminded her slightly of a door in a submarine, with a center valve you turned to open and shut it.

The joke from the Godfather trilogy rapped on the metal door, his strikes making the metal echo ominously into the dark hallway. "That must be Carlo. Let him in."

With a squeaking of wheels and joints, the door swung open, and Cara was shoved through into an elegantly appointed suite of rooms. Carved wood, oiled and polished against the damp, was everywhere. Rugs of all types and all thick enough to sink into at the ankles lay on the floor. Her trained eyes took in everything and she noted everything was of the best quality. That was all she was able to assess before she was led into a side office. The oiled leather chair creaked as she came in, and she was forcibly seated in one of the chairs in front of the desk. Her goon stepped aside for the moment, but stayed within arm's reach.

"It's nice to see you again, Miss Brouligiere." The voice came from the chair in front of her; she couldn't tell who it was, as all she could see was the chair back, but she had a good idea of who had a score to settle.

"Yeah, Fujiko, long time no see."


Author's Note: Wow, what a chapter. This one was hard, because I kinda feel like I'm reaching with Nandra sometimes. She's hard to write, mainly because her personality fluctuates so much. She actually reminds me of Raven. XD

On a lighter note, ol' Pops seems to be developing a crush on Cara. I feel sorry for him. ;) And if you're wondering what exactly his jutte is, think a cross between Raphael's weapon on the Ninja Turtles, and a nightstick carried by police. It's a short, thick,heavy metal club with a branching arm used mainly for catching and disarming opponents armed with swords and the like. Another bit of useless trivia for you. XD

Till later,

Lywinis