A/N: Hello, it's the plot. Also me, again, back from a short vacation and hopefully a bit more on top of things. To explain the last few weeks…because I've been having some non-serious but ongoing health issues, updates have been falling by the wayside. I'm hoping it won't happen again, but if it does I'm asking everyone to be a little patient with me, please.

I am adding my first frivolous AO3 tag this week and I would like you to know that yes, I am very pleased with myself. Related to that, miladyRanger is an awesome beta and was especially useful in advising me on some technical matters for this chapter.

Despite the plot, there are no real warnings except some discussion of mourning and bad coping mechanisms, which you should be expecting from the characters involved.

Chapter 16

A high-pitched beeping, like a security alarm, tore Kaito out of sleep and into hyper-awareness, until a few seconds of scanning his surroundings catalogued the moonlit outlines of his bedroom furniture and the lit screen of a ringing phone.

Which needed to be answered. Right.

"Hello," he said, not risking an introduction—no, this was the phone that he gave Kudou a number for, so definitely a good call.

"Oh, good, KID, I was afraid you wouldn't pick up, I know it must be late—" Eisuke's voice babbled.

"Spy-san?" Kaito asked, surprised.

"We've reversed positions," Eisuke said, all forced cheer. And then, "I'm sorry, I didn't know who else to call. My neighbor's missing."

"Missing?" Kaito asked, sitting bolt upright. "Have you called the police?"

"I don't know if I should?" Eisuke said. "It doesn't seem connected, but, with everything…what if she got in trouble because of me somehow?" His voice got progressively quieter as he spoke. "If that's the case, it would be dangerous to involve them without knowing whether they were trustworthy."

"Don't jump to conclusions," Kaito said, racking his brain for detective things. There weren't many. "Why didn't you call Tantei-kun or Tantei-han?"

"Kudou-san's…don't tell him I said this, but he's physically a kid, okay?" Eisuke said. "I can't wake him up in the middle of the night; he needs more sleep than an adult. Plus if Ran-chan caught him talking to me at this time, we'd both have a lot of explaining to do. And I don't have Hattori-san's number."

"Just…keep in mind that I'm no critic," Kaito said. "But, why do you think she's missing?"

"Her door's unlocked, she isn't here, and the place looks like a storm hit it," Eisuke said. "But…it's weird. I went and got my dishwashing gloves so I could touch things, and checked around the apartment…and all the perishable food is gone. Just the perishable food—everything that wouldn't go rotten is still there. I wouldn't know for certain if clothes are gone or not, but the way the drawers and closet are open, it looks like someone either robbed the place or was packing."

"This is the neighbor you visit all the time, right?" Kaito asked.

"Yeah," Eisuke said.

"Well, why don't you think it was a robbery?" Kaito asked.

"Like I said, the door was unlocked," Eisuke said. "I've heard that robbers in America are more likely to just damage the lock instead of pick it, and even if they had tried—she has a deadbolt, and she usually locks it. A robber would've had to damage the lock."

"Have you checked the windows?" Kaito asked. "Someone could've broken in, and left the door unlocked behind them."

"Oh!" Eisuke exclaimed. "Hang on, let me do that." Kaito waited, listening to the quiet "thumping" of Eisuke's footsteps as he went through the apartment.

"They're all—" Eisuke stopped short. "They're all locked and there are doves."

"Doves," Kaito repeated.

"In a cage," Eisuke said. "It's in the back corner of the living room, the cage was covered, I jostled it and there was a fluttering noise and I realized it was a cage and—there's a note." Eisuke was silent for a few moments. "It's instructions. Instructions and a list of training commands and—it ends with 'Take care of them, Eisuke-kun.'"

"So the doves are for you?" Kaito asked.

"Yeah," Eisuke said, voice breathy. "What if I'm wrong and she isn't missing and I ruined her surprise?"

"She'll understand," Kaito said soothingly, though he had no idea whether she would or not. "Do the doves have food?"

"Yeah, in the cage, in those bowls that attach to the side, and there's a box of it sitting right next to it," Eisuke said. "With another note about portion sizes taped to it. I had no idea she knew so much about birds."

"Are you allowed to have pets in your building?" Kaito asked.

"I don't know?" Eisuke said. "We'd better be. It looks like she already trained them. A lot. In Japanese. She doesn't even like Japanese that much, that was for me, oh gosh I hope she's okay…"

There were soft cooing noises on the other side of the line.

"You're worrying the doves," Kaito scolded. "Stop. Think. You tried calling her, right?"

"Y-yeah," Eisuke said.

"Try again," Kaito said. "Just in case."

If Kaito strained, he could hear the beep of a cell-phone keypad, and the tinny noise of a recorded ringtone. After a few seconds, Eiuske spoke.

"It's still ringing out."

"Not going straight to voicemail?" Kaito asked.

"No," Eisuke said. "That's another one of the worrying things. That means that it's on, but either she isn't hearing it ring or it isn't with her."

"There's still perfectly reasonable explanations for that, though," Kaito said. "Maybe she has it set to 'vibrate,' maybe it fell out of her purse—"

"This isn't her handwriting," Eisuke said suddenly.

"What?" Kaito asked, surprised enough to let it color his tone.

"No, it's her handwriting at the beginning, but…it changes. After the first two sentences…it's…cleaner, and straighter, and the kanji are way too messy; hers always look kinda like she copied them from textbooks…"

"Take a picture for me," Kaito said.

"Huh?"

"I'm a thief; I know how to forge handwriting. And to forge it, I need to be able to analyze it."

He could hear a hint of relief in Eisuke's tone. "So you might be able to figure something out about whoever else wrote this note." Kaito heard a camera-shutter sound effect. "I took the picture, and I'm sending it now."

Kaito pulled up the incoming message, and carefully looked at the photo. It was pretty clear, for a cell phone photo taken by a panicking teen, and he could make the characters out really well.

He stared at it for a few seconds, blinked, and then stared at it again.

There was no mistaking it.

The first two sentences were written in a looping, deliberate hand. The writer was likely female, and wrote kanji very carefully. But the rest of the note…

Kaito stared at his own handwriting, at what somehow must have been Saguru's handwriting, spelling out the exact same list of commands he'd used to train his own doves, and wondered how on Earth he was even going to begin explaining this to Eisuke.

"So, what do you think?" Eisuke asked, worried. "The handwriting definitely changed, right?"

Shakily, Kaito brought the phone back to his ear. "Y-yeah. Spy-san…"

"KID-san?" Eisuke prompted.

Kaito took a deep breath and got ready to make Eisuke's evening exactly as confusing as his own was turning out to be.

"Spy-san, I don't need to analyze the handwriting, I recognize it," he said, tone strained. "This was written by Hakuba-san."

"N-no way," Eisuke said quietly. "That's—that's too much of a coincidence."

"I know his handwriting." I know my own handwriting. "This is it."

"So, what, do you think he came here and—" Eisuke broke off. "No, of course you don't. He didn't come here. He was here. There never really was such a person as Kiyoshi Rogers, was there?"

"Not until Hakuba arrived," Kaito said carefully.

"…do you think he was targeting me?" Eisuke asked softly. "Was this some sort of trick he was playing on me or something?"

"He would've had to do a lot of work to find out that you were working out with us," Kaito said. "I don't think it's impossible…but I don't think it's likely. He didn't know anything about your relationship to Kudou and you never mentioned any of us to him by name, either, right?"

"I was careful not to," Eisuke said. "I didn't want her…him…oh gosh. I didn't want Kiyoshi in danger!"

Kaito tactfully refrained from pointing out how far that ship had already sailed.

"But…if it was him…and he left like this, either it's because he finished whatever he was doing with Them here…or because he found out something about who I was," Eisuke said.

"You didn't tell him," Kaito said.

"Of course not!" Eisuke said. "And I'm not sure how he would've found out. They don't know, and in order to hack the CIA for information, he'd have to know that it was the CIA he needed to hack." He was quiet for a few moments. "But, she was worried about how much sleep I was missing over working with you guys—"

"Wait, sleep?" Kaito asked, concerned.

"The early mornings mess with my sleep schedule, and my homework schedule, that's all," Eisuke said. "I can handle it. Honestly, I don't need two of you."

Neither of them could quite say anything for a few seconds after that, but for completely different reasons.

"…If it really is Hakuba, he might have decided to check my computer," Eisuke said.

"You need to go check that, then," Kaito said quietly.

Silence fell again for a few moments. Kaito heard Eisuke's footsteps, then a key turning in a lock, and then, a quiet, heartfelt curse.

"My computer isn't where it was," he said.

"So he did check it," Kaito said.

"We don't know for certain it was him," Eisuke said weakly.

"Spy-san…" Kaito ventured, not even sure what to say.

A few minutes passed in silence.

"Okay, yes, now we do," Eisuke said softly. "My computer's fine. Everything's in place. None of my passwords have been changed, nothing's been purchased on any of my accounts…but everything related to the case is gone. Completely. Maybe I could take the computer to an expert and retrieve it from the harddrive, but not without whoever it was seeing everything they're retrieving."

"And we can't risk that," Kaito said.

"No," Eisuke agreed.

"Are you…going to be okay?" Kaito asked.

"I don't know?" Eisuke said. "My neighbor's been lying to me for weeks, and is also the person we've been trying to chase, and I know I should be trying to figure out how to catch him, but I'm a little too busy being upset. I mean, the only real friend I've made since I got here and she turns out to be someone else in disguise?"

"The only friend?" Kaito asked. "You never mentioned…even when you were talking to me that one night…"

"Well, of course not!" Eisuke said hotly. "I wasn't going to complain about my problems while you were really upset about something."

"I wasn't that upset," Kaito lied.

Eisuke was quiet for a few seconds. "Please, be a little honest with me," he said. "How well do you and Hakuba know each other, like, outside heists?"

"Not very well at all, really," Kaito lied again.

"That's a lie, isn't it?" Eisuke asked, sounding genuinely distressed.

"Spy-san?" Kaito asked, somewhat confused.

"Ugh, never mind, just—ugh," Eisuke said, sounding frustrated. "Everything is terrible and you still need to go to school in the morning."

Kaito was almost tired enough to actually say, No, I'm skipping.

"I don't know where you got the idea that I attend school, but I believe that I will be taking a day off from my obligations," Kaito said. "This is as close as we've gotten to Hakuba in weeks. The others will have to be told."

"I'm going to have to explain this to Kudou-san," Eisuke said miserably.

"Tantei -kun's made his mistakes as far as recognizing Hakuba in disguise," Kaito said. "He isn't really in a position to judge you."

"I guess not," Eisuke said, not sounding particularly heartened.

Searching for a way to cheer Eisuke up, Kaito said, "Spy-san, do you have any idea how much effort is involved in training doves?"

"Well, I guess you would," Eisuke said quietly. "I saw some recordings of your tricks."

"That isn't the point," Kaito said, impatient. "It's a lot of work, even for someone who's skilled enough with birds to train a hawk. I doubt even someone as single-minded as Hakuba would do it in service of a simple deception."

"Then why?" Eisuke asked.

"Doves are good companions," Kaito said, letting fondness into his tone. "They need a lot of attention, and they're very affectionate. For someone who lives alone, they're ideal pets."

On the other end of the phone, Eisuke was quiet.

"I don't think he realized you were a detective, but I'm sure he was preparing to leave the area once he took care of whatever of Them he found in your area," Kaito said. "I think he was trying to make sure he didn't leave you all alone when that happened." Because that's what I would've done, and it seems we still have this much in common, at least.

"So it really wasn't all an act," Eisuke said quietly.

"No, and the doves are proof," Kaito said. "You detectives like that sort of thing, right?"

"What sort of thing?" Eisuke asked, a hint of humor to his tone.

"Proof," Kaito said carelessly. "Evidence. Forensic-y things."

Eisuke snickered.

I win, Kaito thought.

"Wait," Eisuke said suddenly. "If Hakuba's here—then there's a group of Them nearby too."

Kaito cursed. "Do you think you're in any danger?"

"They don't know about me, and I haven't done anything to attract their attention," Eisuke said dismissively. "But—I didn't even know."

"Since I've never heard a story about someone finding out that that They are somewhere that didn't involve the teller nearly dying, that's okay, I think," Kaito said absently. "Look, just…don't go after them until after all four of us talk, please?"

"I'm not Kudou-san," Eisuke said, insulted.

"And I'm grateful for that every day," Kaito replied. "One is bad enough. But, seriously. Work out a meeting time with Tantei-han and Tantei-kun, and text me about it. In the meantime, I'm going back to sleep, because I'm too tired to be of much more help to you."

"All right," Eisuke said quietly. "Thank you for your help, KID-san."

Kaito thought about the page of meticulously written training commands Eisuke had photographed for him.

I'm not the KID-san you should be thanking, he thought.

"You're welcome," he said aloud.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Eisuke curled up in a corner of his bedroom, phone balanced on the flat of his bent knee, as he waited for the others to call. One of the doves pecked at the phone's home screen curiously.

"No," Eisuke said softly, and the dove immediately stopped.

He still needed to name her, and the other dove, which Kiyoshi—no, Hakuba's—note said was male, but he had no idea where to start. He barely had any idea what he was going to tell Kudou and Hattori when they called in a few minutes.

Or how he was going to talk to KID. Ugh. Hakuba, as Kiyoshi, had mentioned knowing someone who always hid their feelings, and said it "really messed them up." Eisuke knew that Hakuba and KID knew each other—KID's denial had been unconvincing, and besides, the man was too invested in Hakuba's wellbeing, specifically, for this to be just a matter of an owed life or "No One Gets Hurt." Also, KID lied a lot, and had pretty much admitted that he didn't have anyone he could talk to about his problems honestly.

So, KID apparently had vast issues, Kiyoshi was in fact Hakuba, and Eisuke had pet doves now. Great, just great.

Kiyoshi—Hakuba—whoever the heck they were—wanted him to be honest about his feelings? He felt really, really overwhelmed.

But also kind of...cared about? Because he'd done a little research. The doves[1] were white and mottled peach, with a thin line of grey running across the napes of their necks to mark them as ring-necked doves—a type of dove particularly recommended for new dove owners. The cage was the exact size all the sites were saying it needed to be, and the food was the right kind too. KID hadn't been joking about how complicated training doves was, either. Hakuba had done a lot of work, to get him this present. To make up for the fact that he knew he would have to leave and he was worried about Eisuke being lonely when he did. He'd even bothered getting birds, and using his own expertise from training that hawk the others had mentioned, instead of just buying a kitten or something.

It was actually an incredibly kind gesture.

But it was also a little worrisome.

Eisuke would readily admit that they didn't know that much about Hakuba's true personality. But the one he'd shown before leaving Tokyo wasn't one that would do something like this as a matter of course, at least not according to the others. There was a chance that this was actually what he was like— that Hakuba's standoffishness had all been an act— but if it hadn't been, then this was a bit of a grand gesture for him, especially given that he was currently going after a large criminal organization with everything he was worth.

When did he find time to hand-train a pair of doves? Eisuke wondered. And why would it be important enough to him to do instead of investigating?

Maybe he was making something out of nothing, but he couldn't help being faintly alarmed by any change in Hakuba's behavior, just in case it was a prelude to a bigger shift.

The dove on his shoulder made a soft, warbling sort of coo and pecked at the phone's screen again, then fluttered backward slightly, hitting Eisuke in the face with its wing, as the phone started ringing.

Eisuke accepted the call, and was faced with both Edogawa Conan and Kudou Shinichi.

"I don't think I've seen you use that disguise before, KID-san," he managed.

"Hello to you too," Shinichi— the real one— huffed. "The impersonator refuses to tell me what happened, just that it's important."

"Didn't mean to startle you," KID said smoothly. "This is just an easy disguise."

"Also, is that a dove?" Shinichi asked.

"Uh, yeah," Eisuke said. "It's kind of relevant."

"How is it relevant?" Shinichi asked.

Eisuke's phone rang again. "Hang on, Hattori-san's calling." He accepted the call, and Heiji's face popped up on his screen.

"Hey, sorry, the schedule change's screwin' wit' me...why's there a dove?" Heiji asked.

"It's a relevant dove," Shinichi said, deadpan.

"Oh, well, that clears ev'rythin' up— except it don't at all," Heiji said, annoyed. "I'm skippin' class for this; what's goin' on?"

Ohgosh how do I phrase this, Eisuke wondered, a bit wildly. "You remember that neighbor I said I was spending a lot of time with?"

"What's that got ta do wit' anything?" Heiji asked, scowling. "I got math class."

"Uh, Kiyoshi, right?" Shinichi asked. "Is she in trouble?"

Eisuke let a slightly hysterical laugh escape him. "I thought so, but she's not," he said. He thought for a second. "Or, rather, she probably is, but no more than before. Because it turns out that somehow, while we've been searching the entire United States for Hakuba, he's been living next door to me disguised as a woman, and he figured me out before I figured him out."

"Uh, can you repeat that?" Shinichi said in a strangled tone.

"My next door neighbor was Hakuba in disguise, he had no idea I was one of the detectives chasing him until today, and now he's gone," Eisuke said.

There was a long stretch of silence, eventually broken by Heiji asking, a little too loudly, "Relevant dove?"

"Uh, yeah?" Eisuke said. "I think they were meant to be a going-away present, when he left after taking down the local group of Them. He left me instructions, but he wrote them in a rush and defaulted to his own handwriting instead of the writing he'd been using for Kiyoshi— KID-san recognized it."

"Hondou-san called me in a panic because his neighbor was missing," KID said quietly. "But there were some oddities about the way the apartment was left, and the care notes left with the doves….I wasn't expecting this, though."

"He also erased all the case files from my computer, so I'll need someone to encrypt their copies and resend them, after I run a few virus scans," Eisuke said.

"You don't think—" KID started.

"I don't think he'd hurt my other files, but there are ways to target specific information with a virus," Eisuke said. "I'd rather not take chances at this point."

"Given everything, that seems wise," Shinichi said, a little breathily.

"How did this even—" Hattori broke off, looking overwhelmed and more than a little disheveled.

"She seemed like a normal person, the kind you'd find anywhere," Eisuke said. "A Japanese-American college graduate working part-time with an employment agency until she found work. She was nice to me because she was lonely, I spent time with her because she reminded me of Hidemi-nee, a little bit."

He bit his lip. "I told her—him—things I haven't told anyone else. But KID doesn't think she was trying to trick me."

"The way he left suggests it wasn't when he planned to," KID said quietly. "The note is rushed; the change of handwriting looks accidental. More than that; the doves were a planned going-away present. He trained them, and that takes time. If this were some sort of head game, he at least should have stayed long enough to give them to Spy-san and watch his reaction."

Shinichi nodded. "That makes sense."

"We think he was planning to leave, but then he realized I was connected to you guys and left early," Eisuke said.

"Okay, all of this is comin' out in bits an' pieces," Hattori said. "No good tryin' ta organize clues when they're so scattered. Let's get it all straight."

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

A/N: Disclaimer—at no point did I actually say that Kiyoshi Rogers was an OC. I just said that I needed a character for Eisuke to talk to and mentioned in the same sentence that I wasn't going to allow any OCs to take over the plot.

Okay, it was a little bit bad of me. However, I did leave some clues in Kiyoshi's dialogue and if you go back and reread the chapter she appeared in, you'll be able to see them pretty easily.

I still don't have an exact chapter count for you but I can say for certain that things will start picking up from here on out; the next time Hakuba shows up will be the story's proper climax. I am sorry to anyone who wasn't expecting this to be such a long story but I hope at least some of you are enjoying the ride.

In case anyone is confused by the color of the doves, I picked them because white doves are actually pretty expensive compared to some other colorations, while the coloring of the ones in this chapter would make them a bit cheaper, but still very close to being white. The pink is not meant to be a comment on Eisuke's masculinity, thanks.

Please leave some feedback on your way out! As a writer, it's really good motivation to hear what you all think—and honestly, I probably deserve to be yelled at a bit for that twist.