There was a reporter on his front doorstep. Saguru had almost tripped over her as his half asleep brain moved on autopilot, but she'd looked up and he'd connected the dots and slammed the door in her face. He'd become lax about his attentiveness in the last week with all the reporters focusing on the heist bombing and its after effects rather than one mostly retired detective who had happened to be at the heist. Clearly he had been premature in thinking that no one would care about him past the heist.

The bag of things to take back to Kudo's hung limply in one hand as he checked the peephole. She was still there, staring at the door handle like she was contemplating picking the lock. With the intensity of that look, Saguru was surprised she hadn't attempted to do so already or even tried knocking to pester him out. Kneejerk reaction to hide aside, he didn't plan to spend the whole day waiting her out.

Saguru opened the door.

The woman looked familiar… Short, with straight shoulder-length hair and heels to try and make up for her natural height. Ah, the one who had ambushed him outside of the school and started this whole mess. "I don't appreciate loiterers," he said. "I also don't appreciate stalkers, which you appear to be considering you've staked out both my work and my home now." He let out a tiny bit of his temper. "I really do not appreciate people who shove private information into the public sphere and out people to the whole country. Tell me, was the advancement of your career truly worth losing a friendship?"

It was a stab in the dark to conclude that Hiroto cut her out of his life after the incident, but it was a stab that hit home. Her lips pulled into a tight frown. "I'm here to ask about the heist fallout, not about Hiroto."

"Is he still comfortable with you calling him by his first name then? I find myself surprised."

"None of this has anything to do with him," she snapped. "This is about your career and how it interacts with Kid, not your romantic life. Hiroto isn't even affected!"

"Isn't he?" Saguru said, leaning against his doorway. He tapped his cane against his palm. "For one, you ruined any possible chance of a romantic relationship with me, which, while not serious in the long run, would be personally hurtful. For another…" He tapped the cane more meaningfully, a vague threat he would never act on but which kept the intimidation factor on his side. "You showed that you have no problem with potentially ruining someone's public and work life by outing them to the world. True, I never tried to hide it much, but I never broadcasted it either. You are aware of the social stigma homosexuality still holds in society or you wouldn't be so careful to keep Hiroto's preferences to yourself. But by outing me without remorse, you show a lack of care that is understandably alarming." He leaned forward. "Third, you are showing no remorse for any of the fallout. Not Hiroto's distress, not my defamation, and not for spreading my personal tragedy like some cheap novel sob story. If you did you would not be here."

"Fine," she said. She stood straighter, face closed off so professionally neutral it could have given Kuroba competition. "How is this; you agree to an interview and I write a glowing article on your effort for the community to make up for your claims of defamation."

The sad thing, Saguru thought, was that she actually believed he would consider this a good deal. That an about face in the media would smooth things over and life could go on like nothing had happened. But life didn't work that way and the consequences of her actions would still be there even if she did build him up again. "I would rather never see you again in my life," Saguru said.

There was not a flicker of emotion on her face. "I wondered once," she said abruptly, "what it would be like to meet you. Famous teen detective from halfway around the world and you show up practically in my back yard to chase an equally famous thief. I used to follow your cases in the paper. I would go to Kid heists and write up blog posts about anything I could get on your methods. It's how I ended up in journalism. It's how I've spent the last six years writing up petty crime articles."

"I don't see how confessing your past as a fan could possibly soften my opinion on your actions," Saguru said acerbically.

"I still write that damn Kid-detective blog," she continued like Saguru hadn't spoken at all. "I've been trying to get my foot in the door to write heist articles for years. You have to understand that I had to take the foothold that presented itself."

"And why the hell should that make a difference?"

"You're the one who goes around asking motives," she shot back, angry now. Her armor was cracked, all professionalism stripped away by raw emotion. "Or did you stop trying to understand people when you retired? I admired that once, still do, but I've spent the last decade struggling to make goddamn ends meet with the dregs of news stories and purse-napping callouts. I don't care how much I respected you, I wasn't going to sit back and lose a chance for better just because you decided you don't want to be a public figure anymore. You used to try to be the best detective, you should understand a drive for betterment, or did you lose that too when you tossed away your career? Hiroto sure as hell understood it before he got his cushy business job!"

Saguru's patience hit a wall. "Enough." Her mouth snapped shut, teeth clicking audibly. "I don't care what you had attached to some concept of me, or why you made your choices. The fact is that you made them, and maybe it wasn't legally a crime but it sure as hell wasn't good morals." He stared down at the woman who had upended his growing peace and felt cold inside, hard and angry in an unforgiving, entirely lucid way. "You got your way. I went to the damn heist and I did my part and I went home like all the other officers and detectives present. No more, no less. And now, you're going to bend to my will. In a day you'll be contacted by my lawyer. I am sure she will enjoy hearing all about your reasons why you invaded my privacy, extorted personal information, and tried to create a scandal." Saguru smiled, a smile he was once told made him look like he was about to bite someone's head off. "I'll be in touch. It won't be hard to do; your name's on every article you write. And if it's not your legal name, well, I am sure Hiroto wouldn't mind passing along that information."

He took immense satisfaction at how she paled slightly, and her jaw clenched. Saguru kept smiling and made aggressive eye contact as he took the chance to pick his bag up. He only broke it to lock the door.

"If you'll excuse me, I have places to be."

Saguru left her there, frozen with some emotion known only to her. From here on, Saguru was handing this sort of thing to his parents' lawyers. Not just this reporter, but anyone who tried something similar. He hoped that they would give this one hell. It was petty of him, perhaps, but he wasn't the only one she'd hurt with this and maybe other stories. Maybe this way he'd be the last.

*o*o*

There were voices coming from Kuroba's room. This wouldn't be that odd; there were three other adults in the home and Kuroba had his cell phone, but none of the voices Saguru heard sounded like Kuroba. Saguru crept toward the room, peeking around the corner before staring for a moment. Kuroba Kaito, Kaitou Kid, on Interpol's list of criminals, terror of the Japan's theft division for the last two decades, was reading a book. A children's book to be exact, with Kudo's daughters sitting on either side of him. Midori flipped a page for Kuroba before returning to staring at the illustrations. Kuroba's voice dipped down for one character before going light and trilling for another. He caught sight of Saguru watching and winked, not stopping his narration.

It was one thing seeing Kuroba interact with Takumi, it was another to see him interacting with much younger children. It wasn't hard to imagine a much younger Takumi in a similar position, equally enraptured as Kuroba brought stories to life.

Saguru stepped into the room as Kuroba finished the short story. Hanae looked up at him as Midori turned to a new story.

"Another!" Midori demanded.

"Are you supposed to be reading?" Saguru asked.

Kuroba smiled at him, entirely unrepentant. "It's a five minute story. I don't think that's really straining my brain."

Saguru snorted. Compared to Kuroba's usual? No, a children's story wasn't much. Still… "Do your parents know you're here?" he asked the girls.

Hanae fidgeted, tugging at Kuroba's bedsheets. "Tou-san and Kaa-san said we could visit if we're being good."

"He tells stories better than Ojii-chan does," Midori said reverently. "He's the best ever."

"Midori," Hanae hissed. She tugged at her sister's sleeve.

"He is!" Midori was extra careful as she patted an unbruised bit of Kuroba's cheek. "You should read us a bedtime story every night."

"I'm not sure I can manage every night," Kuroba said. He was laughing inside, Saguru could see it in the crinkle of his eyes.

"Just don't say that to Ojii-chan," Hanae said. "You'll make him sad." She glanced at Saguru and tugged her sister's sleeve again. "C'mon, Midori. We're supposed to get ready for bed."

"One more story?" Midori asked.

"We can come back tomorrow."

"I'll read you the one about the lucky cat tomorrow," Kuroba promised.

Midori pouted a few seconds longer, but nodded. She slid off the bed, book hugged to her chest. "G'night, Kid-jisan," she said.

Hanae followed a beat after her, dipping her head at Saguru before hurrying after her sister. "Night," she said in a rush. She was being wary of Saguru again, and Saguru wasn't sure what he'd done to make her nervous again. Keep too many odd hours? Spend too much time locked in the study poring over files with Kudo? He shook his head.

"It seems like you've made some friends."

Kuroba laughed. He looked the most relaxed Saguru had seen him since he was shot. "Children like me," he said.

"Well, you are the biggest child of them all," Saguru quipped.

"Did you just pun at me?" Kuroba asked, mock scandalized.

Saguru grinned. It felt nice to smile. It had been a while. "They haven't been bothering you, though?"

"No. It's nice actually. It's kind of boring in here and you know how bad I am at staying still." Kuroba didn't have the dexterity to fiddle with cards at the moment, or to do any of his usual things that kept his hands and mind active. Now that Kuroba was making headway toward being on the mend, he must be going stir crazy. "I like children. And Takumi outgrew bedtime stories."

"You do seem to be good at them." Saguru lowered himself into the nearby chair. Kuroba looked a world better than he had a week and a half ago. There was color to his face again that wasn't made of bruising, band the lighter of his scrapes had lost their scabs in favor of new pink skin. His arms still had limited mobility, but he could move them at least if he was careful. And yesterday he had been allowed to take a shower instead of sponging off. Healing was a slow process and Saguru didn't envy Kuroba a second of it.

"I had a lot of practice once upon a time." Kuroba's smile dimmed. "You were out yesterday."

"I had some things I needed from my apartment. I spent the night there since I hadn't been back in a while." He was starting to feel bad about imposing on the Kudos, though they didn't seem to mind. "I ran into another reporter today though."

"Oh?"

"Hopefully she won't be bothering me for a while." Saguru smiled thinly. "I am getting rather short tempered with media personnel in general."

"No shit." Kaito nodded his direction. "Now what's on your mind?"

"I wanted to let you know what's going on." He took a second to put his thoughts in order. "Aoko and Nakamori-san are both pulling together their cases. Kudo-san has contact with people he knows in the FBI and CIA to look into some of the international aspects. Outside of that, he has a surprisingly large net of police allies across Japan who, as he contacts them, are putting together their own inconsistencies and adding up into a larger picture. We're cross referencing what they find with your files and getting a much larger picture than even we thought there would be. Otou-san is reaching out to some of his contacts that he's kept up since retirement. We're keeping this as quiet as we can, but it is going to be in the open soon..." Both of them looked grim for a moment. The ramifications of that level of interdepartmental inquests across Japan wasn't lost on them. "This is going to be big. There isn't anything we can do about that with how far reaching this group seems to be. I plan on calling people I know from London tonight. I don't know if they'll work with me, but I have to use any resource I can..."

"Did you burn bridges that badly?" Kuroba asked.

Saguru snorted. Burning bridges was putting it mildly. "I was not mentally stable when I lost Mel. I can see that now, but then I couldn't accept being cut out of his case and broke several rules before lashing out at more or less everyone I knew. I'm surprised anyone called to warn me that reporters had called around asking about me. I ruined years of friendship in a very short period of time and we both know I'm not the best at making friends in the first place..." Saguru tapped fingers along the length of his cane. "They might help. They might not. But there was a connection found to a company in London and at the very least I can point them in that direction." He sighed. "Kuroba, we might not find all of them. We'll try, but you know the extent of them better than I do and there's only so many countries I have connections in. I have a few contacts in France I can call... But that's two countries in a large world. The best we can do is give the biggest pieces to large world powers like MI6 and America's FBI or CIA. They have the manpower and funds to chase them for years and maybe make a lasting impact. We can perhaps burn them out of Japan though. That might be enough to keep you safe."

"There's no guarantee with that." Kaito sighed too. "It's more than I thought could happen though. Do that... Do that and it might be safe to be me again."

"Do they know who you are?"

"That's the million yen question isn't it?"

Saguru tapped a bit more until the sound started to grate on his eardrums, less tapping and more like a timer counting down. He stilled his hand. Kuroba was still so abnormally quiet and unmoving in the bed. If they failed...if they didn't take out enough people, if the organization did know who Kuroba was, then the stillness might not be temporary. Kuroba would die and perhaps his family and anyone else near him. Failure was not an option.

"They knew who my father was," Kuroba said after a long silence. "One of their assassins thought I was him for years. But Snake is dead now, and the others don't assume. I don't know if Aoko's under watch because she's the head investigator or if it's because she was my wife. I don't know if my work is watched because of me or because it's somewhere Kid hits often. Kaa-chan hasn't said that she's watched, but she's barely ever home. Watchers have come and go over the years, but they've been back for the last half year at least and I don't know how much they've figured out in that time..."

"We'd best find out then, hmm?"

"Yeah." Kuroba's face twisted, openly frustrated. It made Saguru feel a bit too warm for the situation at hand to see the open display of emotion rather than Kuroba's masks. "I wish I wasn't useless."

"Who is useless?" Saguru said. "You've provided the majority of our information to date and are the catalyst of an international police effort. Injuries aside, your brain remains sharp as ever. You're far from useless."

"Fine, not useless. Helpless." He twitched an arm. "I hate holding still like this. I hate not being able to keep up with my contacts or go to work or even go to the bathroom on my own." Kuroba gripped his hand into a fist and released it, a slight twinge of pain in his face as it pulled injured muscles. "Every time I get hurt it puts me back a step, and this time is all the more frustrating because I did find what I was looking for and it doesn't change anything."

"You don't have to search anymore," Saguru pointed out.

"Yes, but ideally I still would to throw them off for a bit longer until I got rid of the stone."

"We can work something out."

"I can only hope..." Kuroba sighed. The air of melancholy around him settled into something a bit less negative as he seemed to forcibly set that train of thought aside. "I take it you're here for the night?"

"Yes." Tonight, and perhaps the next before tasks might send him elsewhere and make it more beneficial to stay at his own home. He also didn't want to overstay his welcome, however gracious of hosts the Kudos had been so far. "Kudo and I have more files to go through. As always, your attention to detail is astounding."

"Never know what might be important," Kuroba said.

Saguru nodded. For Kid and for detectives, details meant everything. Kuroba was looking drained again though. The topic, healing, or the ongoing stress of everything, he wasn't sure. "I should let you rest."

Kuroba groaned. "I'm sick of resting."

"A pity that there will be a lot more of it in your future."

Kuroba pouted. It looked ridiculous coming from a grown man and made Saguru's hand itch with the desire to pinch his cheek. "You could at least be sympathetic."

"Oh, believe me I am. Recovery is always the worst bit of injuries." He'd been terrible at sitting still for his own injured knee once upon a time. "You'll miss it once you start trying to do physical therapy."

"At least then I'll feel like I'm making progress."

Saguru hummed. The progress always felt unbearably slow.

"Stay a while?" Kuroba asked. "At least until I fall asleep?"

"Of course." It would be a long night for Saguru, but he didn't mind sitting here now.

"Talk to me?" Kuroba asked.

So Saguru talked, telling him things he had learned about his coworkers, student interactions in the hallways he hadn't mentioned before, some of his better and worse students in the past in London over the years, anything unrelated to their reason for being in this room now. Kuroba smiled and laughed at all the right parts, a bit softer each time until he was asleep in his bed and Saguru's voice trailed off into silence.

"This will work out," Saguru said, a hope and a promise.

*o*o*

Saguru had yet to have his first sip of caffeine for the day—coffee because tea wasn't strong enough to cut it at the moment—when Haibara showed up in the kitchen.

"The news is playing something you should see," she said. Her expression was as neutral as ever, but there was a tangible air of tension around her that broke through the sleep deprived haze in Saguru's mind. He gripped his coffee mug and followed Kudo and Ran to the living room where the television was playing the local news network.

The news displayed a body clearly dressed in full Kid regalia. "It is unclear at this point if the man is Kaitou Kid," the reporter was saying, "but as the police investigation gets underway, viewers will remember the clip from a few weeks ago—" The screen jumped to a shaky cell phone camera footage of Kid's glider going down, a familiar queasiness rising in Saguru's stomach as he watched it. "It is not outside the realm of possibility that Kid is, in fact, the body found. Now there are some theories as to..."

The volume cut off as Kudo turned it down, a pensive expression on his face. He and Saguru looked at the profile photo of the man found, still no name, his eyes closed in the image at least, taken from different angles to better show his facial features. Professional police photos. Leaked, most likely as they wouldn't have shared this so openly with so few details found unless they were forced to or someone broke protocol. Most of the world might not know that the body wasn't Kid, but to those of them who did know...

"The sniper, probably," Kudo said, solemn, nodding at the photo. "Failed too many times."

"A warning then?" Saguru murmured. To Kid? On screen the image was replaced by the newscaster and a self-proclaimed Kid 'expert.' Aoko likely had refused to show her face on television for this.

"Mm." Kudo blinked and met Saguru's eyes. "A warning to Kid, maybe, but also a distraction for the police. Let the public think Kid's really dead to lure out the real Kid from hiding."

"Do they really think Kid would come out for this?"

"He does tend to take offense to copycats. But it could be a warning to their own men too. Kid isn't allowed to live much longer one way or another. If they don't do the job, they'll be dead too."

They both digested that, feeling the weight of the threat and time closing in on them. "It would be too much to hope that the man's identity would give us a lead," Saguru said, sighing.

"He might not even be in the system," Kudo agreed.

"Do you think it means that they've noticed?" Saguru asked. "That we're starting to make a move?"

Kudo tilted his head to the side, a half shrug. "It's possible. I'd think they'd make a more direct threat if that was the case though."

"A police body rather than a sniper."

"Probably."

The heavy weight of reality hung between them. Lives would be lost doing this. People would die, on either side of the law. But people would die if they did nothing as well. Saguru took a long swallow of coffee, felt it burn down his throat and coat his tongue with unpleasant bitterness. It was the horribly strong sort of coffee that he tended to find at police offices rather than anything of good taste; Kudo likely had grown used to it and only liked it that way anymore. One swallow had him feeling more awake already though.

It was six in the morning here. It would be eleven at night in London, too late to call the police station like Saguru kept putting off. Not too late to call an old friend off the books though. Millard would probably be at home, drowsing off over terrible reality television and a bottle of stout.

"We might need to work a bit faster," Saguru said.

Kudo grimaced but didn't disagree. "We can't go too fast or we'll mess up and the whole group could get away."

Saguru nodded. "We'll need to step up removing them from Japan at least. I'll talk to Kuroba later... Right now I have a call to make."

"To London?" Kudo asked, sharp even this early in the morning.

"You've pulled in your American friends. It's about time I called on my British ones." He'd meant to do it already, but it kept being pushed back due to time differences... Saguru could only hope that he could still trust them. Ultimately, it was Millard's judgment he'd be trusting though. He did trust Millard. Saguru drained his coffee and grimaced at the aftertaste. The news changed over to report an ongoing construction project, no longer anything that concerned him.

*o*o*

The call rang through, echoing tinny over the cell reception. It looked, for a moment, like no one would answer, but then the call picked up, Millard's familiar Scottish voice coming through the speaker. "`ello?" He sounded half awake. "Who's calling?"

"Millard, it's Saguru."

"Saguru?" Saguru could all but see Millard wiping away the day's exhaustion, latching on to Saguru's voice like he had done many times before in their friendship. "Awful late to be calling. Or early for you, eh? And a call again so soon. How did things turn out with those reporters sniffing around?"

"Not the best," Saguru admitted. "Despite progress made over the last decade, it is still something of a scandal to be publicly outed, more so because of my public presence in the past. I'm afraid I am not calling to chat about that though. I assume you saw the news recently? I know that Kid's heist made international news."

"Ah, that. Bad luck, that. No one was killed, yeah? There were rumors going around that your thief bit it." Your thief. It hadn't just been Mel who called Kid Saguru's thief.

"There is no conclusive evidence that Kid is dead, but it does appear that he's been injured," Saguru said. Better not to confirm or deny anything on the Kid end of things. "I'm calling because I believe I have a lead in Mel's case."

"A lead from Japan?"

"I know. I was rather surprised as well as I wasn't even looking. There was a commonality among several cases including this last Kid heist that point back to a certain international company, a branch of which was involved in Mel's case." Saguru hesitated. "It was also involved with my knee injury, but that was a different branch years before." He almost held his breath, hoping his friend wouldn't accuse him of grasping for straws. "I know it's a stretch, but there are files... That company has had indirect deaths around them multiple other occasions and I truly believe I'm onto something with this."

"What's the company name?"

"Ambrosia Industries. They're in Japan, but they're affiliated with Progenetics, which was the theft case I was investigating when Mel died. Remember how I said that they were probably aiming for me and hit him by mistake? Elysium Company was involved with the case my knee was shot out on. They're subsidiaries of Ambrosia Industries. A...friend..." For what else could Kudo be considered at this point? "...has run into murder cases at several other subsidies of the company. When Kid was shot down, it was from a sniper on the Industry's roof. It could all be coincidence but..."

"But when that many coincidences line up, it's more likely to be a trend," Millard agreed. "You think whatever was stolen from your case is relevant?"

"Most likely. Another stretch, but Kid's target has been a gem linked to an immortality myth. Meanwhile we have a cosmetics and pharmaceutical conglomerate working on anti-aging serums and medicines." It made perfect sense if you bought into the mythos of the gem. "It could easily have been research related to that that was stolen—the details of what, exactly, was taken were never clear other than it was important research documents. Much like the case fifteen years ago actually, albeit the other way around instead of the company stealing an outside researcher's information." Saguru tapped fingers along the edge of the phone case. "I know that doesn't give you much to work with. At the time the company was dismissed as the missing employee was the most likely culprit, but looking at what we've learned, it's likely the employee was disappeared by the company rather than the one who shot at us. The motive was never clear on any of it though, and without the missing research showing up, there wasn't any tracking what was done to it let alone the person who took it..."

"What exactly are you asking me t'do?" Millard asked, all sleepiness long gone by now.

"Watch the company. If you can do it discreetly, check to see if any past cases were involved with it or one of the subsidiaries in a list I'll send you. But Millard..." Saguru hesitated again. It was a lot to ask of a friend, let alone one that he had dropped out of touch with. "Be careful. Whatever this is, it's big and it's international. They're in large brand name companies. They're in politics. They're on the police force. Don't involve anyone you wouldn't trust with your life. And watch your back because they will kill."

"Is that all then?" Millard said with familiar bravado. "I'll do my best. You wouldn't be asking if it wasn't important. For you and Mel. And I know you'll be neck deep in this shit yerself. Don't you get shot up too."

"I'll do my best," Saguru echoed.

"Good to hear from y'though." Millard sounded sincere despite the risks Saguru was inviting down upon him with his request.

"You as well." It made him miss the easy friendship they had had once upon a time. "Next time I'm in London, we'll have to catch up properly."

"You can buy me a drink and judge me for ruining my liver," Millard agreed. "Hopefully that won't be in another half a year."

"We'll see." He'd return to London at some point. There were still things unfinished there. Things he'd left unfinished when he ran. He didn't think he would return to London permanently though; he was building a new life in Japan that was filling the holes the ruins of his old life had left. "Get some sleep."

Millard laughed. "Catch some criminals for me."

"Goodnight." He disconnected the call. Somewhere halfway around the world, Millard was still laughing to himself as he got ready for bed. And Saguru had a full day ahead of him.