The construction site in the small subdivision outside the rural town was the newest addition, bringing a step-up in moderately pricey homes, the second stage of a three stage development the town housing board had implemented in hopes of bringing attracting more affluent sect.
Certainly not homes the construction workers themselves could ever hope to own, not with the seasonal work Wisconsin's weather allowed the industry.
Michael headed to his truck at noon for lunch, not anticipating the tepid leftovers of hamburger casserole he'd packed that day from Rukia's selfless preparations for her short leave of their home.
His thoughts hung around her, half of the time centering around any monetary gain to be had from York's death, half missing her small form beside him in bed on the balmy nights.
He ran a hand through his brown hair now minus the hardhat, looking up in surprise at the truck's cab.
Ambra smiled back from where she sat in the passenger side, raising her hand to wave a few fingers at him, gold tipped nails flashing in the hot sunlight.
He leaned his forearms arms on the open driver's side window, eyes falling over her fringe-trimmed jean cutoffs and tangerine tank top, a bottle of champagne in her hand.
"Thought you might like some company," she said with a playful smile, holding the bottle higher. "I brought a little bubbly."
He reached through the window, hand closing on the lunchbox she had her arm draped over. "Thanks, no."
"Oh, come on, Mikey," she said, fingers tapping on the lunchbox, arm anchored on the top when he attempted to inch the carrier away. "How long is your lunch break?"
"It doesn't matter." He retrieved his hand and opened the truck door. "Come on out."
She looked over the unfinished house, to the other workers milling about to trucks and cars for the break. "Where do you want to go?"
He watched her eyes as she said it, not missing the subtle flash that imparted more than her words. He glanced around the bare ground near the house and to the street where other houses were in stages of being built, finding her car parked a few lots away. "Take yourself home, Ambra."
"There's nothing scandalous about lunch, Mickey," she said, knees shifting so that he could see her long legs better. "You have to eat. Why not with me?"
His eyes skimmed her legs only briefly before he put a hand on the lunchbox and jerked it clear of her arm. He turned and left, striding back to the site without a look backward.
She watched him go, leaning her back into the seat, sighing as she rested the sweating champagne bottle on her thigh. Soon.
In the briefing room Scott was being prepped for his gemstone drop with Ichigo. He stood uneasily as Aizen circled him, nerves sharpening at every movement the man made. At the table Shoren sat with her laptop, alternately typing and reading from the screen. He looked to Esparo, who was dressed in well-worn camouflage fatigues and a black vest over a black t-shirt, arms laced with temporary tattoos with tackily designed skulls, roses, and inaccurate kanji.
Aizen stuck a tiny earpiece in Scott's ear canal and then handed him a small tan latex patch. "Put that on your arm, just above your elbow."
"A nicotine patch?" Scott peeled it off the clear plastic backing and stuck it to his arm below his dress shirt sleeve.
"That's what you tell him is, if he asks," Aizen said. "It's a microphone and transmitter so we can hear him, too." He looked to Shoren as she tapped at the keyboard. "Got him?"
She nodded, holding her own earphones closer to her head. "I've got you."
Aizen looked to the wall clock and back at Scott. "You've got forty-five minutes until the scheduled drop. Agent Grimmjow is taking you two streets up from the hot dog stand on Fifth and Main. You make your way back, meet him for the drop, and head back to Fourth Street where Grimmjow will collect you. We're watching your every move on this, Scott," he said lowly, tone void of any emotion. "You try to warn him and I'll personally see that you get every bit of a twenty year sentence."
Scott nodded quickly.
He looked to Shoren. "You observe from the cafe on Fifth until I clear you to leave. You," he said to Esparo, "are with me."
Shoren and Esparo both nodded as Aizen turned Scott to the door.
"Let's go."
Half an hour later Aizen and Esparo were in place at the black SUV parked two blocks away from the hot dog stand doing only moderate business in the afternoon's heat. Through a steady line of traffic they watched the stand tender work.
Esparo leaned back in the SUV's front seat as Aizen typed at the notebook beside him, unaware of what the senior agent was reading. "This temporary ink itches," he said, resisting the urge to wipe at the black tattoos crossing his forearms. He leaned an arm on the open window, accustomed to the smells radiating from the street.
Aizen only nodded, intent on the screen before him. He reread the file on Isshin Kurosaki -- his own private file he hadn't entirely shared with the Division. "See him yet?"
Esparo raised the binoculars to his eyes, searching the street ahead for sings of Grimmjow's vehicle or Scott. "No one yet."
Aizen nodded, eyes on the notebook screen. He reviewed the latest entries, made years before. The most recent of any interest was details on the automobile accident that had claimed Isshin's life. He made mistakes there, Aizen had. Although not planned by him, the accident had come at a nearly convenient time. He'd been part of the unit on its way to meet with Isshin at that very moment -- not a planned meeting, but a meeting nonetheless. When his car had passed the accident, an overturned truck impacted by a larger truck, he'd seen the two dead drivers and the footprints in the snow that led away from the scene.
If he and Paulson had been half an hour earlier that day they could have intercepted the Kurosakis before the accident and the case would have been handled then. Instead, with arrest warrant in hand and a sheriff's deputy in the car behind them, he and Paulson had found the bloody wreck and bodies, but no Ichigo Kurosaki.
He sighed and looked to the previous entry, which detailed the work order for the Kurosaki house fire that had taken the life of Masaki.
A work order Aizen himself had forged.
The tragedy still hadn't produced the results he wanted, namely Isshin's grief-stricken surrender of his client files.
Of course, the implications for such a forgery would not only evaporate any chance on a promotion to captain, he knew, but result in charges against him. If it were to be discovered.
"He's moving," Grimmjow's voice came over the vehicle radio.
Aizen picked up the radio's handset as Daniel Scott appeared two blocks away, a taller form in the sidewalk pedestrian traffic as he headed for the hot dog stand. "We've got him. You can head on over to the pick-up, Grimmjow."
Esparo lowered the binoculars when he could see Scott well enough on the sidewalk. He looked to where Shoren sat in the cafe, visible in her window seat booth. She didn't appear to be watching.
They watched Scott approach the hot dog vendor, his posture rigid, jacket over his arm. A moment later Ichigo made his way to the stand, a baseball cap over her hair, medium blue button-up shirt and casual pants like a hundred other men on the street.
"Hey," came Scott's voice over the radio. "You made it."
Aizen and Esparo exchanged a look before both turned their attention to the man standing with Scott a few feet away from the vendor at the streets corner.
"I've never heard of a red emerald," Scott said.
"Very rare," Ichigo's voice came over the radio, clouded slightly by the street noise. "Keep walking."
Aizen and Esparo watched their targets turn down the sidewalk, in their direction.
"I didn't think gemstones were worth this much," Scott said, shifting nervously, hands in his pockets.
"Few from a jeweler are," Ichigo said, a doubled plastic Styrofoam coffee cup in one hand. "Your most portable and private of investments. Recognized worldwide. Used to be undeclared, undetectable. You can carry the diamond equivalent in one handful what would weigh hundreds of pounds in gold."
"Very portable. Do you have them?"
Aizen and Esparo saw their targets' pace slow.
Ichigo handed the cups over to Scott. "Put the money in the top cup. The stones are in the bottom one."
Scott took the doubled cup and reached into his pants pocket for the roll of bills wrapped in a wadded napkin. "You going to count it here?"
"No."
Scott separated the cups and kept the bottom one, looking into it to see the small lumps at the bottom also wrapped in a napkin. "How do I know it's them?"
Ichigo looked at him, nearly stopping. "If you want to have them appraised, Scott, you've got the wrong dealer," he said, his voice holding an edge over Aizen's radio. "You got your money's worth the other times."
Scott nodded, handing back the top cup to Ichigo, who moved the napkin inside enough to see the roll of bills. "Are we set?"
Scott nodded.
"Keep in touch, Scott."
Aizen and Esparo watched as Ichigo's pace quickened until he reached an alley, where he turned down it and disappeared among the fire escapes and garbage bins. Aizen started the SUV and pulled onto the street, past a retreating Scott on his way to meet Grimmjow a few streets away.
He picked up the radio's handset as he turned the SUV abruptly into an alley farther down from the hotdog stand. "Scott's heading for collection, Grimmjow. Shoren, you remain put until Ryan and I finish."
"Will do," she confirmed.
He dodged a couple teens lounging near the next alley opening and slowed the vehicle to park behind a dumpy restaurant's rear entrance. Esparo retrieved two small black packs from the back seat.
"He'll either head out here or on the other side," Aizen said, nodding to the alley ahead of them. "The alley he took circles back." He took the black case containing the tag kit Esparo handed him. "You take this side."
Esparo looked eagerly down the alley cluttered with garbage cans, wooden pallets, and cardboard boxes. "We could take him right, Aizen."
The older agent's hand closed around the tag kit. "Ichimaru said tag only. I don't like it, either." He touched the earpiece stuck in his left ear. "B channel."
Esparo headed through the crowded back alley where smells of grime and garbage mingled with stale urine, intensified in the unmoving heat of the day, his handgun stuck in the back of his camouflage pants. He pulled a black ski mask over his head, adjusted the eye holes, and felt his senses stiffen as Ichigo turned the corner ahead of him twenty feet away.
Esparo pulled the gun from behind him, angling it sideways at the other man. "Your wallet! Now!"
Ichigo halted, posture tensing. He spread his arms out to his sides. "Easy, pal."
"Your wallet!"
Ichigo moved one hand slowly to his back pocket, fishing the wallet out. "How much you want, pal?"
"All of it! Throw it over here!" Esparo waved the gun at him.
Ichigo debated for a moment, and then tossed the wallet a few feet in front of him.
Esparo cursed, taking a few steps forward. "Pick it up!"
Ichigo watched the masked man, estimating his reflexes and age. He reached for the wallet, seeing Esparo's eyes on it, and rushed him.
Esparo's back hit the block wall to one side of the alley as Ichigo crashed into him, the lighter-haired man's hand around the wrist of the hand holding the gun, Ichigo's other arm braced against his throat,
"Not today, pal!" Ichigo bit out, smashing the hand with the gun against the wall.
Esparo pushed back, intent on retaining the gun he was forbidden to use on his attacker.
Neither man saw Aizen round the corner of the building, closing the distance between them, throwing a look down the narrow alley before holding the tines of a cartridge-free taser to Ichigo's side. "Afraid so, pal."
A jolt passed through his shirt, his flesh, making his muscles recoil, sending a secondary charge into Esparo against the wall. He dropped to Aizen's feet, where the agent stuck a second charge against the side of his neck.
Esparo howled in gut-wrenching shock and intense pain but remained on his feet, his gun trickling from his hand. His knees nearly buckled as he leaned to the wall for support, eyes narrowing on Aizen. "You son of a bitch!"
Aizen dropped to one knee beside Ichigo, turning his limp neck as Ichigo blinked in confusion, eyes unfocused on the wall. Aizen ripped off the baseball cap and turned Ichigo's head to face down. "You don't carry a weapon if you can't use it on your target, Esparo. Everyone in field knows that."
Esparo glared at him, trying to catch his breath, shucking off the ski mask as he recovered from the stun.
"Check the wallet," Aizen said as he opened the tag kit case and pulled out a small hypodermic needle and alcohol packet, watching residual twitches course through Ichigo, whose eyes were half closed against the alley pavement. Aizen tore open the alcohol package and swabbed behind Ichigo's right ear as he quieted, unmoving.
Esparo found the wallet and opened it, thumbing through it. "How much of this is he going to remember?"
"Vaguely nothing, if we do it right."
"Going by the name Robert Tyler," he said, studying the driver's license. He counted the money in the larger compartment. "Sixty-two thousand, cash."
Aizen took the tip off the hypodermic already loaded with the rice-sized tracking chip and inserted it behind Ichigo's ear below the skull, bringing no reaction from him. "I'd bet my balls this is Ichigo Kurosaki."
"Is that going to be enough for Ichimaru?" Esparo asked, removing the money from the wallet and tossed it into a heap of rubbish against one wall, watching Aizen as he held a small sweep device, eyes on the gray screen.
Aizen shrugged. "If it's not, we'll bet yours, too."
Esparo chuckled nervously. "How accurate it that unit?"
Aizen nodded as the small blue light on the screen grid turned red. "Very. Runs off GPS." He nodded at the red light. "He's warm." He raised Ichigo's head and slammed it against the wall.
"What're you doing?" Esparo watched his new partner warily, glancing around the alley for his gun.
Aizen set Ichigo's head down, seeing the faint red seep at his temple. He stood and looked from the tracking monitor to Esparo. "We want him to think he got mugged, not tasered and chipped. That should distract him from any irritation at the injection site."
They headed out of the alley, leaving the unconscious form behind them, and made their way back to the SUV down the next street. They got in and Aizen pulled back into the sparse traffic and parked farther down across from Fourth Street.
Aizen switched off the vehicle's radio as they watched the alley for ten minutes, neither speaking, feeling Esparo's occasional glances his way. "You all right, Ryan?"
"Yeah. Just surprised me."
A few minutes later they saw Ichigo walk slowly out of the alley, holding one hand to his bleeding temple, pushing his hair back to the side. With the other hand he stuffed his empty wallet into his back pants pocket and turned down the opposite side of the street.
Aizen sighed. "This isn't the type of target you chip and walk away from. He needs personal attention."
Esparo watched Ichigo join the other pedestrians on the sidewalk.
"But, we'll track for a while," Aizen said, glancing down at the tracking monitor's screen where a red dot was moving slowly along the grid. He looked back up at the sidewalk traffic.
"We'll pick up Shoren and make our report with Scott."
Esparo nodded, confidence in his partner adjusting a notch.