I was cursing to myself at the long walk along the fifteen floor, my feet were barking from yesterday's bug retrieval from Yotsuba A sharp pain in my left shoulder brought me back from my train of thought.
"Sorry, Aiber."
He shook it off literary and figuratively, drawing my attention to the missing buttons on his dress shirt. That was when it hit that this floor wasn't even close to his own, the deduction I had come to was confirmed by Aiber's smirk.
"Is Wedy at least decent?"
My question got a heartily chuckle from Aiber, and before I could clear things he walked away from me as the woman in question came out of her apartment.
"Morning Wedy."
My eyebrow rose as she lit a cigarette before answering me. I snickered, noting that it explained why he smelled like her smoke lately.
"Ah, Agent Petrillo, is that jealousy I'm hearing?"
"No," I retorted, thinking about the one person I was ultimately affected by.
"Nonetheless, I'm a woman at heart and can enjoy the view every once in a while."
Wedy puffed a ring of smoke out of her ruby lips, agreeing with me about the view.
"By the way, why are you up here? Normally you're glued to Ryuzaki's side."
We stepped into the elevator, pushing the button for the garage. I explained the message sent via me from L about Higuchi's house and all of his cars.
"I've already told Ryuzaki that his house is locked up tight, hell even I'm having trouble finishing the job."
"Yeah, that's why I'm coming with you. I'm his answer to your problem." I smiled at her.
When we stepped off the elevator, Watari was waiting for us with two small cases for our trip. I didn't need to check what was inside as I had messed with these cases full of mics and cameras so much before that I could recognize them in my sleep.
The two of us thanked Watari before packing the bugs into my laptop bag and getting on the back of Wedy's motorbike.
A few of my freshly colored locks hung outside of my borrowed helmet and blew around like crazy. The feeling of wind blowing through my hair gave me a sense of humanity, a feeling I was surprised to be experiencing.
"Heh, you're enjoying yourself."
Wedy's voice rang inside my helmet, and I was glad my whole face was covered for a moment.
"Yeah, I guess I am,"
I had noticed that I was going through the days in a cloud of euphoria since my last alone time with L. It was probably foolish of me but I couldn't stop the words said and the skin touch replaying in my head. Even though I always knew he had some feelings for me, hearing him say he loved me softened my heart.
"Great, ready to tell me what Ryuzaki's got on you?"
I laughed as a retort, luckily Kyosuke Higuchi's house was just along the horizon in front of us. From the outside, it looked similar to the other residents surrounding the area. The most significant difference I could see from afar was the composite stone fencing aligning the house, the choice of fencing closed the yard off.
In my cloud of observation, I realized Wedy was driving right past it. As a reaction, I gripped the bars under my seat as she made a sharp turn into a driveway a few houses down from our target area.
I knew Wedy wasn't stupid enough to park randomly in someone's else place, but I asked whose place it was anyway.
"Ryuzaki's. He bought it when he sent me to case the house the first time."
Geez, L sure did love to throw money at a problem, didn't he?
We discussed our helmets and if we should keep them on for protection in case we got caught and both quickly came to the decision that it has been deducted by the others that this Kira did not share the same powers as the 2nd Kira and the coverage was unnecessary.
Wedy informed me that the only blind spot around the whole yard and house was a chuck in the backyard. I burnt the info inside my head as I followed her lead around the back. We were fortunate enough to have the cover of the falling sun cloak us in quickened darkness. None of this running was helping my already sore feet, and L was going to give me an extra hour of sleep after this because I wasn't asking.
A sleek arm flew out in front of me, stopping me quickly to listen.
"Okay, when I did the measurements last time, there was a three-foot wide blind spot directly behind the garage, I mean almost perfectly parallel to each other. The problem is that the fence is exactly seven feet and Higuchi is in there right now."
I let out a puff of air, knowing that I was five foot something and Wedy was only taller by an inch or two from the heels she adored. It wasn't something we had to talk about too much as it wasn't our first time jumping fences.
Normally, the heavier person would stay on the ground to push the other person up and over, but since Wedy and I weighed close to the same amount we played rock-paper-scissors to fill the role. Wedy put her flattened hand over my fist in victory as faith decided our parts. Overthinking is never the answer, so before any nerves could settle in I leaped into action, but first thing first I adjusted the bag full of bugs dangling off my shoulder around so the contents would be cushioned by the curvature of my lower back and hips.
The plan was simple, we rushed through the prosperity line with the idea that if Higuchi's cameras did pick up on he would assume wildlife was the cause for alarm. Arriving first, I cupped my hands together and pushed with all my might once her boots touched my skin. Wonder Woman I certainly wasn't, but, I had just the right amount of build on my body to send Wedy up. The hard clash of her mass landing on something metallic stole my breath, both of us holding still for just a few seconds just in case.
"We're good, give it a running start."
I nodded quickly, backing up and locking my eyes on Wedy's open offering hand. I ran towards my goal, trying my hardest to leap in just the right place to make contact. After being able to grab Wedy's hand, my torso bounced off the stone fencing causing the air to forcefully leave my lungs with a wack.
Wedy didn't look it, but, damn she was quite strong.
Before coming to Japan, I had on the advice of a colleague taken up rock climbing. It was one of the many fads going around the office at the time and with Steve Mason's pushing to act like a normal adult I followed suit. Unfortunately, I gave it up after quickly becoming bored.
The only reason I could imagine my brain was bringing this up now was that in the first class I took, the instructor went over the importance of foot and hand placement. There is a difference between a large angled plastic wall and a stacked stone composite, but it never hurts to try.
Except when it does.
I didn't feel the pain till I bent my left knee to give myself, no pun intended, a leg up. The friction had torn my slacks and slit open my knee. Once over the obstacle, I handed the bug bag to Wedy after pulling out an unlabeled spray bottle from a smaller pocket.
"What the hell are you doing…?"
But, I didn't answer her as I leaned over the edge to spray the fresh stain off the stone.
Even in small quantities, bleach had that pungent odor.
"I'll fix myself up once we get back." I offered up to the silence between us girls.
The warmth of the day's air had quickly changed to the bitterness of night and the cool winds that came with it for this season. Feeling comfortable with the cover of night and the calculated blindspot, the two of us sat down to figure out our next steps.
Already on my laptop, I pulled up the electric blueprints to the house and garage while listening to Wedy's past findings.
"Every door is locked by a thumbprint scan, much like the ones back at the tower, except Higuchi's isn't dual. His scans for only heat pattern, which as we both know is a lot harder to forge that the actual ridges of a human fingerprint."
"Hmm, well, I've got the cameras facing the garage frozen for a few, let's just take a look real quick."
We snuck to the entrance of the garage, facing the larger-than-normal door of the thing. I vaguely remember Wedy saying that the man had four cars in his name and none were of poor manufacturing. The first thing I noticed was the soft flashing light on the lock, and while I had never messed with this type of mechanism on others it meant something good.
I asked Wedy to aid me in trying something, slowly and carefully pushing up on the door as it went through the tracks with ease.
"Huh, it wasn't locked," I noted.
"I'm sure you know what that means,"
Walking in carefully through the darkness to make sure I didn't bump into one of the shiny cars and set off the alarm. I did know what Wedy was insinuating, a paranoid man like Higuchi wouldn't just leave anything unlocked by forgetfulness. We were playing on borrowed time.
After shutting ourselves in, but before the actual criminal act of bugging private prosperity I messed around with the camera in here but found it a lot more difficult to complete.
"I'm not going to lie to you, Wedy," I said keeping my voice low and tossing the lockout tool.
"This is not my best work, and I'm only guaranteeing twenty minutes."
"Plenty."
I wished her good luck as I prepared the bugs for monitoring. While I enjoyed the optimism and maybe even borderline cockiness, it wasn't enough time to plant bugs in the fashion L had requested.
"I want a system like this in my house," I noted, watching my screen for trouble.
"Like you have anything to protect."
She was right, before all this, I lived in a small house that I brought for myself with hard work and an inheritance from my parents' death I'd received at the ripe old age of twenty-one. Wedy was just messing with me like usual but it made me realize I had no roots to fall back on.
"True, but it'll keep you out."
The first three cars didn't take up too much time, and by the fourth, I had informed Wedy about the last five minutes left, but with a second glance, a flashing red light came from the wall supporting the garage door. I walked over to find it was coming from a control panel for the alarm system for this area. Once I opened the little door, a keyboard in Japanese Kanji, with the tiny screen starting to count down from sixty.
I informed Wedy, who rushed over.
"That's why I hate this system." She hissed.
"Violet, when it hits zero, the alarm doesn't just go off, the room that triggered it goes into lockdown mode and only the fourteen overwrite code punched in opens it back up."
At the forty-five mark, a line of dialogue popped up reading one out of three tries.
"Ah, dammit. Do you know the code for this damn thing?"
"No, that's why I hate this task."
I told Wedy to hurry up as I racked my brain for ideas. As a half-hearted attempt, I punched in the Kanji for Yotsuba and was met with failure. In the background, I could hear Wedy packing up and preparing for the worst.
"You have a gun in here?"
I didn't move my head, but confirmed the firearm Wedy must have just found in my bag is indeed mine.
"I always carry something on me."
The silence in the air became heavy as I tried typing something out and failed once more.
"We can't shoot him, Wedy, Ryuzaki would get so pissed at us," I said half joking but also just in case.
"Try Misa." She said suddenly.
"Why?" I placed my fingers on the appropriate keys.
"If it works, I'll tell you."
We were down to our last ten seconds, so I just went ahead and did as I was told. The screen cleared up and went blank again and I let out a sigh so heavy it jarred my injured chest again. I turned around and Wedy handed me a thin packet of typed-out papers.
"This was in the last car."
It took me a minute to recognize the information in my hands, as it seems like forever ago I saw Matsuda typing out this fake resume for Misa's interview at Yotsuba.
"I'm no world's greatest detective, but weren't there a few headshots in there?"
I confirmed, remembering Light suggesting it to help make everything look more legit.
"Put it back, we'll inform Ryuzaki back at the office."