Emil felt violated. The enemy had hugged him. The enemy had been concerned about him. The enemy was so sappy.
Arthur had to go back to work, but first he dropped Emil and Peter off at a restaurant next to the local library and gave them some money. Peter and Emil sat at the booth and waited for their lunch to arrive. Peter was talking nonstop about something, Emil wasn't really paying attention. After Peter had finished crying, he had bounced back to his normal, bubbly, annoying self.
Emil stared out the window and glanced down to check his phone. He had texted Lukas to come pick him up, the North should be done by now. Then again, if Arthur was called in, it was very possible that the North had been found. Emil didn't want to think about that, but he hadn't heard from Lukas or any of the others yet and Arthur hadn't mentioned what he was called in for. It was unsettling.
Their food came and they began to eat. Amazingly, Peter continued to talk at full speed. Emil ate quickly, checking his phone every few seconds, and watching the parking lot entrance through the window. No news. They paid and walked over to the library. For the first time since Emil had arrived at Peter's house, Peter was quiet, the librarian seemed to know about Peter and his non-stop mouth and shot him evil looks every time he seemed to want to start talking.
They both sat down at computers and Emil logged into his email. There. An email from Mathias.
Yo! Emil! We just got back and I thought I'd email you since you probably wanted to hear from us. It took about two and a half hours, but we did good. Found the stuff without a problem. Lukas is still all weird and is pacing again, I'm tempted to put a chair in his way. Does he always pace in that exact same spot? He's going to were a hole in the carpet! Anyway, me and Berwald got a a game of poker going right now. Dinner's at Tino's tonight. Lukas says he will come get you at two.
Peace out! Mathias
Emil reread the email, marveling at the lack of grammar skills. It sounded upbeat and like everything went fine. He deleted the email then deleted his trash box, it was a weird habit of his to always have his trash empty and to remove all emails that would clutter up his inbox. Mathias would nerve be so stupid as to actually talk about the North in an email, so Emil never worried about the correspondence between any of them to be clear enough to lead someone to them. They were always vague and could be anything really.
The email was sent at one thirty. It was now one forty. Emil texted all four of the North, telling them he was at the library and wasn't sure how much more of Peter he could take.
Just before Emil was about to delete the browser's history, another email popped up in his box.
Hi again. Lukas is on his way. We got your text. It seems something has happened, I'm going to be checking up on it. Dinner was canceled.
Mathias.
Emil didn't need to know that Mathias meant something had happen with the police. Why were they only hearing about it now? Mathias sounded almost scared. Emil was scared. He finished removing his history and said good bye to Peter before walking out of the library and sitting on the curb to wait for Lukas.
Lukas refused to tell him anything on the drive home. At home, Mathias was drinking in the kitchen and Berwald was in the living room on his laptop. Tino sat beside him with a book, but wasn't reading.
"Will someone please tell me what's going on?" Emil said the moment the door closed behind him.
"The Vargas showed up at the storage unit an hour after we left, and they called the cops." Lukas said and walked over to his normal pacing spot, "A friend called Mathias and told him."
"What?" Emil said, feeling even more scared than he had on the drive over, "What do they know?"
Mathias looked up with a smile, he wasn't drunk yet and spoke with a bitter tone, "I don't know, Gil will call again when he gets off. It looks like they are dusting everything and they know pretty much everything there is to know about Berwald's van, except the license plate."
"If they are smart, they will have it soon." Berwald said, his voice low and emotionless. He didn't even look up from his computer. Lukas nodded in agreement and started to pace.
The temperature of the room seemed to drop and the five sat in silence for another half hour. All of them jumped when Mathias's phone rang and all looked at it.
"Hello?" Mathias said.
"Put it on speaker!" Lukas snapped and Mathias shook his head, standing to leave.
Berwald stood too, stepping forward to blocked Mathias's escape, Emil lunged for the phone.
"Seriously guys?" Mathias sighed, "Do we really have to do this now?" Mathias danced backwards with a surprising agility, right into Lukas. Lukas tried to get the phone, but Mathias held it up, and kept it out of reach. He held Lukas at bay and backed toward the back door.
"Sorry Gil, hang on a minute!" Mathias shouted at the mouth piece and turned for the back door. Lukas and Emil both surged after him and ended up pushing each other away. Tino jumped forward, making his way around Mathias with an unheard of speed, and plastered himself over the door. Mathias glowered at him and tried to pry the smaller man free with one arm while keeping the phone out of Lukas's reach with the other. Berwald walked over slowly and reached up, the taller man got the phone pretty easily. He turned on the speaker and placed it in the middle of the kitchen table.
"Guys! This is ridiculous!" Mathias complained.
They ignored him and all stood hunched over the table.
"Aren't we being a little immature about this?" Mathias said again and walked over. The phone was silent.
They all looked at Mathias. He had hung up.
"Call him back." Lukas said, pointing at the silent phone.
Mathias rolled his eyes and snatched the phone from the table. He spun and dashed for the door, only to be yanked back. Berwald had Mathias by the collar and dragged him back and up to be at eye level.
"Call back here." Berwald said. His tone left no room for negotiation, but still the two stood stark still glaring at each other.
The phone rang again.
It rang four times before Berwald released Mathias and Mathias hit the answer button.
"Hello?" Mathias turned the speaker up and placed the phone in the middle of the table.
"Yo, what happened there? It sounded like you got in a fight or something?"
Mathias glanced around at the four faces watching him intently, "Yeah, it was something like that. Anyway, what's up, Gil?"
"Listen, I really need your help right now." The voice on the other end of the phone sounded stressed and Mathias frowned, "If you do nothing else for me, now is when I need you?"
"I think I'm the one that needs you! What happened at the-" Mathias was cut short by a sharp bark of laughter.
"You need me? No, man! I need you to help me find Ludwig's dogs! I lost them!" The laugh was nervous and he sounded all but panicked, "He's going to kill me if he found out I lost them!" For a moment Gil paused then that bark of a laugh came again, "What? No! You don't even know what they look like Alfred! You'd be useless! Besides, you have a video game challenge you'd be missing with Kiku! Nah, it's okay. Anyway, Mathias, I need you!"
"What? Gilbert? Alfred's there? What?" Mathias snapped, "You lost his dogs? What about the Nor-"
"No! Dogs! I need your help finding those stupid dogs!" Gilbert snapped back, "If Ludwig kills me for loosing them, it's on your head!"
Mathias was silent for a moment then he chuckled, "Which one did you loose?"
"All three."
"You're kidding! How did you manage that?" Mathias laughed, a genuine laugh and he shook his head, smiling at the four concerned faces, "Where?"
"The park, I'll meet you there in ten minutes, okay?" Gilbert said, "NO! Alfred you can't come! Mathias, you're a life saver, you should bring that friend of yours who is good with dogs, maybe he can help too."
"Sure, see you in ten!" Mathias hung up and sighed with apparent releif.
"Dogs?" Tino said doubtfully.
"Dogs! Gil's a genius!" Mathias laughed again, "He couldn't talk were he was and didn't want to talk on the phone, so he arranged for a place to talk and he even invited me to bring you, Tino!"
"Me?" Tino smiled, "Really? I'm the dog guy?"
Mathias shrugged, "You have a dog, so I guess so. Hey, Emil should come too! I bet it was Gilbert who you saw talking to your informant at school. If so, we can totally use him!"
Emil sighed and slouched in his chair, while Tino beamed.
Who on earth was Gilbert? Why did Mathias seem to think it was a good thing if this Gilbert guy was the police officer from school? How was that good, again?
Arthur and Kiku sat back to back, surrounded by computer screens, all showing street views of traffic. So far, no luck. A black van had yet to enter or exit the area. Th video cameras were all pretty clear, but a few kept flickering in and out, still it wasn't enough time for a van to have slipped by. Arthur was unsurprised that no prints had been found so far in the storage unit, but maybe the North's black van had been caught on camera. That meant a license plate, that meant finding out who owned the car, that meant finding the North. Arthur was giddy. This was it! His big break! They just had to find the van.
He suspected that most of the cameras would be tampered with to never show the car, since cameras in the past always had some evidence of editing. However, there was a chance that since the North didn't expect this crime to be found out so quickly they would have left the cameras alone. If the police never knew when the crime took place, they could go through cameras all they wanted and looked for black vans it would be useless. Lots of people had black vans and drove around in them, not many of them were criminals; even fewer were even the same class of criminal as the North. The simple fact of knowing when the crime took place gave the police some assurance that any of the black vans caught on camera before and after the crime have a good chance of being related to the North.
Arthur mentally thanked the Vargas family for sending the twins to get that refrigerator. As great as the North's set up was, they didn't seem to factor in friends in need of refrigerators! Arthur chuckled to himself with glee. The theft might have been left unknown for months, just like the others, if dear Lovino and Feliciano Vargas hadn't showed up to be good Samaritans! They might have helped solve this case! But Arthur was getting ahead of himself again, first they had to actually find the van.
Six! Things still are looking pretty bad for the North, but I promise this story won't end that easily!
Special thanks to all of my reviewers! Thank you! I love you all! Please keep it up! I love the feed back!
