I woke up to my bedroom door being opened and in the same yellow clothes, I wore the night before.
"Good morning, Miss. Petrillo."
Watari offered, walking into my room and pushing his trademark trolly along.
The cart held an arrangement of goodies like croissants, blueberry muffins, and lightly toasted bagels. A tiny teacup sat on a saucer, filled with a golden liquid. After a small taste test, I deduced it was spearmint tea with a little cream stirred in. I grabbed a croissant to go with the cup.
"What does Ryuzaki want?" I asked after sitting down on the edge of the bed with breakfast.
It was just now six in the morning, meaning I only got five hours of sleep when I was promised a full eight after last night's party at Misa's.
"Ryuzaki is requesting your aid with bugging Yotsuba meeting room with Wedy this morning."
Watari pulled a manilla folder from the second shelve of the trolly with information on security swift change and the blueprints for the first nineteen floors, with a guard station on every five floors. Something I thought was overkill.
The floors were easy enough, but the schedules were another thing.
According to the information in front of me, the guards worked twelve-hour shifts with an hour-long lunch break at their desks, security mostly stayed put other than shift changes and bathroom breaks. The elevators were sealed by card locks, each employee had to use their work ID to operate them.
"Let me guess, no fake employee passes?" I asked, dapping my mouth and searching for them to no avail.
"Ryuzaki thought you would have more fun that way."
I rubbed my temples, knowing it meant that Wedy couldn't get ahold of them in time or L was bored with just testing Light on his skills.
Looking up from the folder, I noticed Watari had set out on the bed beside me a complete outfit for the day, even digging up a pair of sneakers from deep inside the closet. I thanked him wholeheartedly as I thought about my plans.
An hour, a cold shower, and another cup of tea downed later I was waiting in the parking garage.
I spent the time waiting for Wedy thinking about which vehicle would be the best for this job, leaning towards the simple black Toyota.
I smelt the tobacco before I heard the alto in her greeting.
"Mmm, morning Agent Petrillo."
Not looking up from the thumbprint scanner to the locked case of car keys. Each set of keys is marked by a number plate above its hook, only opened by a high enough leveled person on the task force.
"Oh, please, don't start. Besides, the FBI pulled out of Japan."
Our history was thick and sticky, and at one point in my career, she became the Moby-Dick to my Ahab. I couldn't risk getting myself kicked off the task force was the only thing stopping me from reacting, Wedy had made a deal with L for her aid it made her untouchable in Japan.
The three quick beeps in sequence unlocked the glass container, feeling the stirred air behind me as I picked a keyring off a hook.
"Eight," I offered, using my head to point at the spot perpendicular to me. Sitting there was a black Toyota, a couple of years old but still running as it had just come off the assembly line. It would match well with the area we were heading to.
"Boring, try lucky number thirteen."
Wedy called out as she cased the lot. Without peeking I grabbed the keys hanging on the numbered spot, noticing right away it didn't belong to any of Watari's collections. It was a bumble bee yellow sports bike, leaning on its kickstand looking like a floor model.
"Looks stolen. Should I run the VINs?"
"Of course not, I would've taken something in black. It's the carrot the boss is waving in front of my face."
And here I thought keeping me at bay was the reward, I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I started to plan.
"Besides sticking out like a sore thumb, I'm not keen on snuggling you for the whole ride."
"That's fine, I hate cuddling anyway."
She took the keys out of my hand, and after locking everything back up I followed. The thing wasn't as loud as I'd imagined, humming to life as I ran over to enter the five-digit code to the outside exit. We'd have exactly ninety seconds to race up the ramp or the steel doors shut down and lock, I mentioned this tidbit to Wedy as I hopped onto the pillion seat that had just pulled up.
Wedy handed me the extra helmet that was sitting on the seat before me, and that unforgettable soft mic feedback rang between my ears.
"There's grab rails under your seat, hold on tightly."
I replied by slipping my fingers around a cool strip of metal, gripping hard since I wasn't sure just how fast we were going to go. The warmth of my palms cooked the rails to my body temperature as we left the underground garage behind. The ends of my hair uncovered by the helmet blew wildly as we sped down the highway, dancing in between cars to pass them.
"You are too reckless!" I hissed, as the rush of air from stupidly passing a semi-truck seemed to rock the pillion under me.
"Relax, Agent Petrillo. We'll be there soon and besides isn't fear beneath someone with your career such as yourself?"
"Slamming into the back of a vehicle is not part of my portfolio!"
Wedy chuckled to herself as I thought about just how much L would personally owe me for this.
Going from direct sunlight to the darkness of a hidden alleyway gave me a shiver down my spine from the quick change of temperature. The fictitious night made a perfect place to plan.
"We've got ten minutes till eight o'clock," Wedy broke the silence and my concentration.
"Shut up, I'm working on it."
I started chewing on the inside of my lip as the need for a distraction was an important one. Ideas flowed, like becoming childish and pulling the fire alarm, but based on the blueprints the closest one for the lobby was in the guard station and therefore not a workable design.
Click
Looking diagonally across from me, noticing the butane lighter struggling in Wedy's hands to incinerate the cig hanging out of her painted lips. An idea struck me like that lighter, ordering my female cohort to surrender the Zippo and a few of her sticks to my possession.
After giving Wedy her part of the task, intending to meet back up at the lobby floor elevator, I crossed the street to the Yotsuba office. There weren't as many people out this morning so it gave me a chance to slip on a disposable mask over my mouth and nose to aid in my blending in. Luckily, the bathrooms were closer to the lobby doors and hidden in plain sight by a poi fish pond in the middle of the place.
The women's restroom was shiny clean and purely white, my guess being the lights above helped. I took a deep breath and locked the door behind me, counting to sixty inside my head. The extra minute was to make sure Wedy had the chance to finish up with the three small mirror cameras for the next ten minutes. The stalls were cleared which made it easier to slip into the last one in the line, ripping the mask off my face to use as kindling.
A metal waste box was attached to the wall of the stall, meant to hold discarded items that would now hold wads of toilet paper and other flammable things. Even though I wanted to hesitate, I didn't have the time as I slid a cigarette in between my lips and lit the thing up.
The taste was god awful, favor of methol and tar filled my throat. I coughed out my lung as I carefully placed the burning cig into the box, adding air to feed the spark until it was strong enough to grow on its own.
It would look pretty dubious on my part if I was the one to run over to the station to report my crime, especially if they ended up checking security footage up until the blackout. So, with a quick nod and a stroll towards the koi pond, I saw Wedy out of the corner of my eye rush up to the guard on duty to inform him of "problems" in the lady's room. Once distracted and rushing into the washroom with a mini fire extinguisher at his side, I slipped inside the glassed cube to find something, anything for the elevator. Lucky enough, sitting on top of a desk was an unmarked guest pass for me to swipe.
"Took you long enough,"
I glared at the female beside me as I tried out my guest pass, sliding it through the reader like a credit card.
The sight of the doors parting and the sound of the ding as it came to life was enough to send my little heart aflutter with adrenaline, handing back the lighter and leftover cancer sticks to Wedy as we walked in and I pulled out my cell phone to quickly start working on the cameras on the nineteenth floor.
"What does he have on you?"
I didn't need to look away from my phone to speak since I had years of multitasking under my belt.
"Excuse me?"
"Oh, come on. I'll never tell. He's got something on me as well."
I stole a glance at Wedy, listening to the elevator hum past the seventh floor. I'd never realized that she would have no clue as to why I'm even in Japan with the world's great detective, that she wasn't a part of the painful history between us and what I'm working towards.
"Honesty, I'm just here to help him."
I put the phone back in my pocket, keeping my face plain of half-truths.
"Okay. Lie to me, I probably wouldn't be honest either in your shoes."
The conversation ended there as the door opened to the appropriate floor, peeking around the corners for any stragglers and giving a silent wave to move on out. The blueprints I'd burn into my memory showed that the double doors to the meeting room were down the hallway on the left. The place was still a graveyard, holding my breath as I turned the handle to the meeting room.
After a few seconds of wandering around for the light switch, we studied the room. In pristine condition, sat a large wooden octagon table with the middle fashioned out. Eight state-of-the-art leather office chairs were tucked closed, facing the built-in small computer screens in each of the table's vertices.
Feeling the excitement shocks buzzing my fingertips, I pulled the small case out of my purse hanging by my hip (figured it would look weird for a grown woman to be out without some sort of bag) caring about all the cameras and bugs we would need.
"Is bug 365 online for you? I'm not getting a reading." I asked, fiddling with a wiretap while standing on a stepladder.
"I'll check, say are you going to tell me what you did to get under Ryuzaki's watchful eye?"
"No, Wedy, I'm not because I've already told you. Why are you here?"
I could hear her smile behind me, knowing she loved to brag about herself.
"Ah, you know me, Agent Petrillo, I like to keep myself busy, I didn't know the President had Ryuzaki's number. Besides, I didn't succeed in skimming off the top of the federal budget."
I nodded my head, putting the bug back in place after getting the okay.
"You probably would've spent it better, if that helps."
We shared a laugh as I moved onto the next corner, and it felt weirdly nice.