Fandom: Naruto
Pairing: SasuSaku
Summary: "So, we have your wife. You get her back for two billion yen. Cash." The caller's confident Sasuke will find a way to get the money. If he loves his wife enough. Sasuke does. He has sixty hours to prove it, and he'll pay a lot more than two billion yen.
Disclaimer: Naruto © Masashi Kishimoto. The Husband © Dean Koontz.
Courage is grace under pressure
– Ernest Hemmingway
Call #2: The Test
Congradulations, you passed
Sasuke stood paralysed.
The killer had terminated the call, but Sasuke still held the phone to his ear. He held on to that small hope that as long as he didn't move, the violence might be undone and time rewound, recalling the bullet to the barrel.
Reason and triumph won over superstition and magical thinking.
After a brief moment of hesitation, Sasuke ran across the street to the fallen man. If he were merely wounded, something might be done to save him.
However, just one glance at the victim dispelled any hope that first aid might sustain him until the paramedics arrived. A significant portion of his skull was blown out.
Having no familiarity with violence, except the edited-analysed-and-defanged variety provided by television news, and with the cartoon violence in movies, Sasuke was rendered impotent by this horror. Shock immobilised him.
Things like this didn't happen to him. He was just a normal man, struggling to make it in the world. He was just a mechanic. He wasn't some wealthy business tycoon, wasn't a member of a secret organisation that had access to limitless amounts of money and he wasn't some sort of ninja who could easily find his wife and save her with tricks and moves that defied all laws of physics and logic.
Sasuke surveyed the area around him but found no gunman, nor a trace of one. The rifle could have been fired from any house, from any rooftop or window, or from behind a parked car. However, the noise it made hadn't brought anyone out from any of the beautiful houses. By some stroke of luck, Naruto had managed to secure them a place for their garage in a well-off neighbourhood, typically quiet, with huge houses that had equally huge and well-kept lawns, the whole package. In this type of neighbourhood, Sasuke reasoned, a gunshot could be perceived as a slammed door, dismissed even as it echoed. No one would suspect of any violent gun crimes in such a wealthy suburb.
Across the road, Naruto had returned from his bathroom break and was looking at Sasuke and the fallen man with a puzzled expression.
Sixty hours. Time on fire, minutes burning. Sasuke couldn't afford to let time turn into ashes while he was tied up with a police investigation. But he couldn't just load the man into a car and dump him into a river, especially not now Naruto had seen him, and he really didn't want to involve the blonde in this.
If you go to the police, we'll cut her fingers off one by one…
The kidnappers wouldn't hurt Sakura if Sasuke called the police to inform them about the shooting. He would have to do it to seem inconspicuous. Forbidden, however, was any mention of Sakura's kidnapping, or of the fact that the jogger had been murdered as an example to Sasuke.
They might have even put him into this predicament specifically to test his ability to keep his mouth shut at the moment he was in the most severe state if shock; the moment he was most likely to lose his self-control.
He opened his phone. The screen brightened and, after a brief moment of hesitation, Sasuke keyed in the numbers one, one and zero, and held the phone to his ear.
When the police operator answered on the fourth ring, Sasuke couldn't speak. But suddenly, the words blew out of him.
"A man's been shot. I'm dead. I mean, he's dead. He's been shot and he's dead."
Squad cards, CSI vans, and a morgue wagon were scattered along the street with the insouciance of those to whom parking regulations do not apply.
In front of his garage, Sasuke sat with his back against a client's car.
Twice in two hours, he had been questioned. Two detectives in civilian clothing had interviewed him the first time, only one on the second occasion. Sasuke thought he had acquitted himself very well. Yet they had not told him that he was free to go home.
Thus far, Naruto had been interviewed only once. But he had no wife in jeopardy; he had nothing to hide. Besides, Naruto had less talent for deception than did the average six-year-old, which would be evident to experienced interrogators.
Sasuke banged his head backwards on the car door. Two of his sixty hours were already gone.
He had already made three phone calls, the first to his home number. An answering machine had picked up. The logical part of him didn't expect anything else; her abductors wouldn't be stupid enough to hold her hostage in her own home.
Still, he was in denial because the situation had no sense. Kidnappers don't target the wives of men who have to worry about the price of bread and butter.
Maybe they had a plan they hadn't revealed to him yet. Maybe they wanted him to rob a bank to get the money?
One problem. No bank had two billion yen in cash on hand, in tellers' drawers, and probably not even in the vault.
After, he had tried Sakura's handphone, which had elicited no response as well.
Finally, he had called St. Minato's, the hospital where Sakura did her medical training to become a doctor. The receptionist, Shizune, had told her that Sakura had called in sick. A summer flu, she had explained. She was so disappointed.
"I better call her at home," Sasuke had said, but of course, he had already tried that.
He had spoken to Shizune more than an hour and a half ago, between conversations with detectives.
One of the homicide detectives — Nara Shikamaru — wore sandals, chinos, and a red-and-white Hawaiian shirt. However, whenever he would say something to the police or the other detectives, they would instantly listen with the utmost attention and follow his lead, despite his laid-back appearance.
The other — Lieutenant Hyuuga Neji — wore dress shoes, black slacks, and a pale blue shirt. He was tall, solid, and all business. But it wasn't his physical appearance that threw Sasuke off. The fact that Hyuuga Neji had made the title of lieutenant at his age – he couldn't have been much older than Sasuke — made him look even more intimidating to Sasuke than Nara Shikamaru, who, Sasuke knew, only dressed so casually and adopted such a relaxed demeanour to mislead suspects unfortunate enough to come under his scrutiny.
They had first interviewed Sasuke together. Later, Neji had returned alone, and repeated every question he and Shikamaru had asked before, perhaps anticipating contradictions between Sasuke's statements.
Ostensibly, Sasuke was a witness. To a detective, however, when no killer had been identified, every witness was also counted as a suspect.
But Sasuke had no reason to kill a stranger doing his afternoon exercise. Even if they were crazy enough to believe he did that, he'd have to have had an accomplice, the only logical one being Naruto, who clearly didn't seem to interest them.
Most likely, though they knew he'd had no role in the shooting, their instinct told them that he was concealing something.
Now, here came Neji again.
Sasuke rose to his feet, weary and impatient.
"I'm sorry for all this inconvenience, Uchiha-san. But I just have a couple more questions, and then you're free to go."
Following an unfortunate hesitation long enough to suggest calculation on Sasuke's part, he said, "I'm not complaining, Lieutenant. It could have just as easily have been me who was shot. I'm thankful to be alive."
Neji's eyes looked like those of a predatory bird. "Why do you say that?"
"Well, if it was a random shooting—"
"We don't know that it was," said Neji. "In fact, the evidence points to cold calculation. One shot, perfectly placed."
"Can't a crazy man with a gun be a skilled shooter?"
"Absolutely. But crazies usually want to rack up as big a score as possible. A psychopath with a rifled would have tried to shoot you too. This guy knew exactly who he wanted to kill."
After a moment's silence, Neji asked, "Were you ever in the army, Uchiha-san?"
His question threw Sasuke off. "What? No. I'm just a mechanic."
"I see."
They stood for a minute in silence. Neji stood in quiet contemplation, whilst Sasuke yearned to return to his house to decide upon the best course of action. He could practically hear the non-existent watch on his hand ticking the seconds away.
"Uchiha-san?"
"Yes?"
"Why did you tell the operator that you were dead?" Neji asked, eyes carefully surveying and scrutinising Sasuke's reaction.
"What?"
Neji took a carefully folded piece of paper from his pocket. "You said, and I quote: 'A man's been shot. I'm dead. I mean, he's dead. He's been shot and he's dead.'"
"A slip of the tongue," Sasuke tried to reason. "In the confusion and the panic."
Neji continued to stare at him for a while, before saying, "Okay. Is there anything else you would like to tell me?"
For a moment, Sasuke wanted to tell him about Sakura and the kidnappers. Sure, they had threatened her, but if they didn't know about it, she'd be safe. It was his only option. If he didn't say anything he'd be alone and there was no way he could raise two billion yen on time by himself.
But what if Hyuuga Neji was working with Sakura's abductors? What if this private moment between them that couldn't be overheard by anyone else at the scene was the ultimate test of Sasuke's obedience?
It may have just been paranoia, but in light of recent events, Sasuke felt that it was well justified. He was half convinced that if he told Neji about Sakura's kidnapping, the other man would sigh and say, 'We're sorry, Uchiha-san. You disobeyed our instructions, so now we have to kill your wife.'
"No, Lieutenant," Sasuke said.
Neji folded the piece of paper and re-pocketed it. "I see. Well, I gave you my business card," he reminded Sasuke.
"I have it."
"Call me if you remember anything you'd like to say."
"Of course."
"You can breathe, Uchiha-san. Your wife is safe. You followed instructions."
"Let me speak to her."
"No."
"I said, let me—"
The kidnapper hung up.
A/N:
Well, it's 4 minutes past midnight where I am, so Happy New Years everyone! Just wanted to get this out before 2008.
It's also the one year anniversary of me joing FFnet and posting my first fanfiction (which I accidently deleted -bangs head-).
N.B: In Japan, one-one-zero, or 110, is the number you dial when you want to call the police. It's basically what 911 is to Americans and Canadians. I actually had to look this up on Google. -fails-
Up to this point, I've been following the book very religiously. All conversation between the kidnapper and Sasuke in the first chapter have been taken from the book. However, from here on out, the plotline may differ and veer off dramatically, so fans of the book, I'm sorry in advance for butchering it.
My New Year's Resolution is to stop procrastinating and hanging around FFnet so much and study for my final exams next year. And to stop writing really long notes that no one reads.
Lessthanthree.
