Disclaimer: I do not own Detective Conan/Case Closed.
Pairing: KaitoxShinichi
Lure
Chapter 26 - Exposure
"Should we not be going about setting up the room?" the supposed lady of the house asked.
"We should," Shinichi agreed. "Nobu-san, would you accompany me?"
The man looked at his wife then stood. "O—of course."
His wife rose as well.
"It's all right if you wait here," Shinichi said to her, putting on his best concerned face. "Whoever's coming might be dangerous. It would be much safer for you if you stayed away. I'm sure your husband would feel more comfortable too, knowing that you're out of the line of fire."
Did he imagine the flash of irritation in the lady's eyes? No. He'd seen it.
"But I would feel safer if we stayed together," she said.
"Then let's go together," Shinichi relented. With both Nobu and his not-wife, they made their way back up to the upper chamber where the ring was to be kept. Shinichi absently checked over the arrangement of the furniture and the placement of the windows, cataloguing which ways the doors and windows opened and what types of locks were being used where. But mostly, he watched his two hosts.
He saw the steel in the woman's eyes and the shadow in her husband's. The way the man cowered every time his wife looked his way spoke volumes.
"Nobu-san," he said finally. "Do you think you could bring up a few drinks?"
"Oh, uh, I…I guess I could go get a few," the man said, wiping the sweat from his face with a handkerchief. He looked as though he was about to have a nervous breakdown. "I—if that's all right with you, Dear?"
"I suppose it wouldn't hurt," the lady said slowly, and Nobu looked both startled and relieved. "I have a few things I would like to discuss with our young detective friend."
"I…I see. I'll just, uh, get tea." Still mumbling half coherent sentences about getting beverages, the man hurried from the room.
Shinichi waited until they could no longer hear the man's anxious footsteps before turning to the lady.
"What do you want from me?" he asked simply.
The woman put on a puzzled look. "Whatever do you mean? A thief has targeted my ring. I only wish for you to protect it for me."
"That might be true if you were really Nobu-san's wife," he said. "Which we both know you're not."
The woman remained motionless for a moment before she shrugged and dropped her smile though not her confident stance. "I suppose I should have expected the great little detective to figure it out. But you know, I think I like it better this way."
Shinichi frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I mean this." The woman reached into her lacy purse and pulled out a small handgun. "My revenge would have been incomplete if you had gone down without figuring anything out. Not knowing what you did. Why you're about to be punished."
"If that's your goal, you might need to explain yourself a bit more," Shinichi told her, leaning back against the wall by the window and crossing his arms. "I've never met you before, and I honestly have no idea what I could have done to you."
The woman glowered and leveled her gun at his chest. "My name is Dachikumo Shizuran, and you're the reason I lost everything."
Shinichi blinked. "Dachikumo?" he echoed. "The man who murdered his sister to get her half of their inheritance because he'd squandered all of his own?"
"He was just taking back what should've been his," Shizuran snapped. "That little bimbo wasn't anything special. We were the ones who had to look after that old crone until she kicked it. We deserved to get whatever she had left, but no, the will said each sibling got half. Even if all they did was visit once in a while. We deserved the money. We were going to get out of here and finally have some fun in our lives, but then you come along and ruin it. But I'm glad you remember." The woman sounded truly pleased. "You'll have a good long time to think about it and regret being such a nosy little brat."
"Does that mean you're not planning on shooting me right away?" he asked, doing his best to sound unconcerned.
"Not unless you try to escape. But you should know, if you do try anything, Nobu's real wife will pay the price. Followed by the rest of their staff."
"You don't really think you can keep me locked up here, do you?"
The woman's smile was deranged. "Only for a time. Oh, and if you're thinking that that officer downstairs is going to help you, I wouldn't count on it. Even if he figures out what's going on, he won't be getting past my men. And frankly, he didn't look that bright."
Shinichi suppressed the urge to laugh. If an entire police task force dedicated to his capture couldn't stop him, this woman's henchmen didn't stand the ghost of a chance. But he needed to stall the woman here without aggravating her to the point of shooting him if he wanted to give Kaito enough time to save the hostages and for the police to arrive. It shouldn't be too hard, he reasoned, considering the woman had already said she had other plans, and she didn't seem to have any idea at all that Kaito too had figured out her ruse. He supposed he should congratulate the thief on choosing to come as an officer who didn't, as the woman put it, look very bright. He just hoped that she really had been keeping all the hostages sequestered out of sight inside the house like they believed. If she had had the foresight to lock one of them away elsewhere, this could get trickier.
"Why did you drag Nobu-san's family into this?" he asked.
Shizuran shrugged. "I needed some place out of the way, and they had a nice collection. Should fetch a nice price when I sell it."
So the woman was planning to rob the house on top of everything else she had already done to these poor people? It was appalling how little she clearly cared about anyone but herself. Shinichi knew he was frowning, but he couldn't help it. Though he dealt with murderers on a near daily basis, such blasé disregard for other people was not something he encountered often (thank heavens for that).
"What, you don't approve?" the woman drawled, smirking. "Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you stuck your nose into other people's family affairs."
Selfish was too weak a word to describe this woman. On the other hand, it was good that people like her enjoyed gloating. The more time she spent doing so, the better it was for them.
A buzzing sound filled the air. Shizuran let go of her gun with one hand to fish a phone from her pocket. She glanced at the screen before swiping her finger across it and bringing it to her ear.
"What is it?" she asked. "What do you mean what should you do? Just put them with the others, obviously." She paused a moment then rolled her eyes. "What does that matter? Oh fine. I'll be right there." She stuffed the phone back into her pocket, muttering about fools without brains who weren't worth the cost to hire them.
"Fun as this has been, I'll be seeing you later," she said to him, that now familiar sneer tugging at her lips. "Just sit tight and think about making better choices in your next life, hmmm?" Then she was gone, the door slamming shut behind her.
Shinichi waited until the sound of her footsteps had faded before moving to test the door. It was, of course, locked. He sighed and moved to pace around the room, bored.
He was relatively sure that the person who had called Shizuran was Kaito. He had called the woman away on purpose. Which left Shinichi to sit here and wait for the magician to finish up and come get him. It was a somewhat anticlimactic way for the day to end, but at least no one had died. Although, just in case he was wrong, he opened the window. If something went wrong, he trusted Kaito to send him some kind of signal.
That was around when he noticed the smell.
-0-
Everything had gone pretty much how Kaito had planned, he mused, looking down at the unconscious woman trussed up on the floor. The only thing that bothered him was that it had taken a lot longer for her to come downstairs than he had expected. Even if she was unfamiliar with the large house's layout, she had taken way too long. Well, it was over now. He just had to go up and get Shinichi.
He paused in the front hall as Nobu opened the door to make sure it was the police and not more goons. As expected, it was. What he wasn't expecting was the first words out of the officer's mouth.
"You have a landline, right? Have you called the fire department?"
Nobu froze. "What?"
Kaito didn't stop to hear the officer's answer. He hadn't noticed earlier because the scent was still so faint, but, now that the topic of fire had come up, he realized he could smell smoke.
Fear spiked inside his chest.
-0-
This was bad.
Sleeve held over his nose and mouth against the smoke, Shinichi tried to think. At first, he had tried to force the door, but the fire on the other side was growing much faster than he had expected. The door handle burned to the touch, and heat rolled through the door in waves. There were already bright tendrils leaking in around the frame, but the real problem was the thick smoke choking the air. It was seeping out the window, but one small, lone window wasn't drawing out nearly enough smoke. It burned at his eyes and lungs, and his head spun with lack of oxygen.
Stumbling across to the window, he leaned out, gasping for breath and blinking his eyes to clear them. He needed to get out, but the location of the window wasn't exactly conducive to climbing. He wished he had his Conan suspenders. If he got out of this, he was going to ask Agasa to try creating an extendable belt or something.
"Shinichi!"
He looked down at the sound of Kaito's voice to see 'Fukawa' waving urgently at him from a window below his current position. "Jump! I'll catch you."
Shinichi didn't stop to give himself time to think better of it. He climbed onto the windowsill and jumped.
He closed his eyes on reflex as the ground came rushing up towards him. For an instant, he was completely alone, surrounded only by the whistle of the wind past his ears. Then a familiar pair of arms caught him around the middle. He didn't stop falling, but his descent jerked and slowed.
They landed in the pool with an almighty splash.
-To Be Continued-