Here's chapter 27
I'm a bit rusty but I hope you still enjoy this one :3

Natsume left Mikan digging through old pictures and yearbooks and found Ando on the small front porch of the cottage, a green-painted kitchen chair tilted back as he strummed on an acoustic guitar. It sounded as if he knew how to play.

"You want to tell me who you are?" Natsume asked.

"I'm the gardener." Tsubasa looked up from his guitar, an old one, nothing about him suggesting he gave a damn whether Natsume planned to cuff him on the spot. "Go ahead. Check me out."

He already had. "The Sakuras hired you in early April after they found you trespassing. What were you doing here?"

"Fishing." He tweaked a middle string on his guitar, making a twanging sound, and dropped his chair back down onto all four legs. "I didn't shoot you. I was here with Mikan when her brother called. I didn't hire anyone to shoot you. What other people did or didn't do, I can't speak for."'

"You were questioned in your wife's murder." Tsubasa kept his stony gaze on Natsume. "Well, good for you, Hyuuga. You've done your homework. I was questioned. French authorities still don't have a suspect in custody." The muscles in his arms tensed visibly, as if he wanted to snap the guitar in two. "It's been eight months. Nothing's going to happen."

"Your wife was an army based in Germany. She worked in intelligence." Natsume remained on the grass, still damp from overnight showers. "You're an army major yourself. Special Forces. Your missions are all classified, but you're supposed to be one of the best at what you do."

"You didn't use an alias."

"I have nothing to hide."

"You wife was killed in Paris. The Sakuras –"

"I know. Paris. They left town just before Misaki was killed. The rest is coincidence."

Natsume didn't believe him. Tsubasa was an adept actor and liar. "Why Nothern Woods?"

He shrugged. "I had reason to believe the Sakuras were among the last people to see my wife alive. I wanted to ask them how she was, what they talked about. I never did."

"Doing a little investigation of your own?"

"Trying to make peace with myself. Misaki and I – we didn't see much of each other the two years before she died. Twenty-one days total, to be exact. I wanted to find a way to connect with her after she'd died. The Sakuras took me for a down-and-out type. After meeting them, I realized they wouldn't know anything about Misaki, her murder. I don't know, I was a wreck. I just started in with the good ol' boy act, and here I am."

Natsume didn't know what of what Tsubasa said was true and what was bullshit. The man had his own agenda, but who could blame him? "Shiki Masachika?"

"I read the papers, that's all." Tsubasa opened the front door to the cottage, no sign he was veering out of control, ready to rip it off its hinges; but that could be his military training and experience. "Relax, Hyuuga, I'm on your side. Whatever's going on, Mikan's up to her eyeballs in it. Look after her. I'll look after myself."

He walked into the cottage and let the door bang shut behind him.

Natsume returned to the house, going around to the back where a half dozen fat bumblebees hovered in a sprawling rosebush thick with pale pink blossoms. He smelled frying onions, heard the sizzle of something Mikan had dumped into her frying pan. When he entered the kitchen, she smiled at him as if he'd just come in from working in the garden and all in her life was normal. A defense mechanism. Her hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail, her sleeves pushed up to her elbows as she broke up raw hamburger into her frying pan.

"I found some hamburger in the freezer, so I'm making a casserole," she said. "Egg noodles, hamburger, tomato sauce, cheese, green olives. It's another of my oba-chan's recipes."

Natsume said nothing. He could feel the weight of the bandage on his arm, a steady throb that reminded him he hadn't taken any Tylenol that morning and that nothing about this scene was ordinary.

"She lived well into her eighties," Mikan went on. "I guess her cooking didn't kill her. She worked hard all her life, right up to her last days. She endured so many tragedies."

The telephone rang, but Natsume picked up the extension before Mikan could get to it. "Sakura's residence."

"Natsume? Hell, you sound like a butler." It was Ruka, more alert than he had since the shooting. "You're the one I want to talk to, anyway. Hotaru's on her way down there. Getting snatched this morning threw her."

"What the hell does she want down here?"

"To talk to you. You might want to sit on her when she gets there."

No kidding. Natsume glanced at Mikan, who was now using a spatula to break up the hamburger in the frying pan. It was smoking, sizzling, but he had no illusions – she was listening to every word he said. He hadn't told her yet what he'd learned about their "gardener" from his own sources. He'd told Kokoro Yome, not that the Alice Agent had returned the favor and told him anything.

"Talk to me about Reo Mouri," Natsume said. He could see Mikan stiffen, but her brother didn't seem to be caught off guard.

"He checks out as a reporter from Shinjuku," Ruka said. "That's as far as I got. I was going to dig deeper after he tracked my folks down in Paris. Where is he now?"

"Last we saw, smoking cigarettes with an old fisherman."

"What else?" Ruka asked. "There's more, Natsume. I can tell."

"Mouri had a picture of Shiki Masachika with him. Name ring a bell with you?"

"Yeah, sure. Rich tax evader on the lam in Switzerland."

"He, your mother and Prime Minister Anju all spent their freshman year together at Tokyo University."

Ruka was silent. Mikan turned off the heat under her frying pan and shoved it aside, her attempt to distract herself obviously failing her. Her ponytail had nearly worked itself out of its covered rubber band.

"Mikan?" her brother asked.

"Hanging in there."

"My parents will be in Tokyo tonight. Maybe they can straighten this out."

Natsume went ahead and filled him in on what he'd learned about Tsubasa Ando.

"This all could be a coincidence," Ruka said quietly. "My parents have a way of attracting drama to them. A rich tax evader, a reporter looking for a bombshell, this character Ando maybe grasping at straws – what a mess. But they don't necessarily have anything to do with the attack on us. I get to sit here and blow into this air thing, and you get to hang out on the river and wait for Imai to show up. And the Alice Agents. They'll be knocking on your door soon.

"I imagine so. Yome has everything I have. It's up to him now."

Mikan ran out the back door. Natsume tried to smile into the phone, hoping its somehow take the edge off his words. "Take care of yourself. I'll be in touch."

Hi everyone, it's great to be back. Did you miss me? *giggle* I think most of you hate me for not updating

I'm very thankful to everyone who patiently waited for this update and for those who are still reading/supporting this fanfic. No word can express, how truly grateful I am.

What do you think of this chapter? Lousy? Good Enough? Love it? or Hate it? Please leave any comments, opinions, suggestions or violent reaction (Just in case you have *giggle*). Write it in the review section below, and let me know. If don't like it please leave a constructive criticism so I could improve my next chapters.

As a treat, here's a Sneak Peek:

He looked awful. Her stomach lurched and she threw up on him, noticing that he had on green camouflage pants and jacket as she heaved. She was dizzy, reeling from pain.

He sneered in disgust. "I can kill you with my bare hands." There was no lilt to the accent now, no charm, however incongruous, to his tone. "Do you understand? I don't need a fucking gun."

To all my beloved readers, followers, to those people who added both of my stories to their favorites list. I would like to say a massive thank you to all of you. Also, thank you for all the support. Till the next chapter.

Lots Of Love XOXO,

Claire-chan143