Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

1.

Shinichi scrambled over a chain-link fence and dropped to the ground, careful to avoid the chunks of broken glass and concrete on the other side. The cold metal of the fence cut into his fingers, but at least it was easy to cram his tiny shoes in the holes. The early December evening was coming on fast. It was only four o’clock, but already the sunlight was waning, the chill nipping at him as he picked his way through the shadows of the rundown buildings and warehouses that lined the waterfront along the docks.

Rei wouldn’t have approved of Shinichi ducking out in just a T-shirt and his sleek blue and white bomber jacket, not even a scarf wrapped around his neck, when he’d been sick only a few weeks ago. But Rei wouldn’t approve of a lot of things he was doing.

After almost three months of chasing leads in the White Rabbit case, Shinichi finally thought he was close. Solving the first riddle had led him to an envelope of $1,000 cash stashed in a coin locker and another code—and another, and another, each more complicated than the last. And with every code solved came an envelope of a thousand dollars, and a promise of ten times that if he solved them all. Shinichi had already collected $12,000 in worn, non-sequential bills, all of them faded and grease-stained like they’d passed through more than a few dirty hands. He’d used Subaru’s powder foundation to dust for fingerprints, but the envelopes came up suspiciously clean.

He was positive now that the White Rabbit linked to something criminal. There was too much money involved for it to be legit. But he still hadn’t figured out what type of crime he was looking at. Every puzzle felt like it was testing for a new kind of thinking, another level of codebreaking. What criminal enterprise required someone who could break all of those codes?

A hacking group, or a white-collar crime ring? A company recruiting dirty employees to decrypt patents and proprietary information? Maybe even someone going after bank encryptions, user data on a massive scale. Or worse, an anarchist group trying to break into government systems.

As soon as he knew what this was, he’d take it to the right person—the PSB, the FBI, the MPD’s cybercrimes unit. But he didn’t have all the facts yet. And he didn’t want to waste anyone’s time.

Only the first code had used the app portal. All the other codes he’d tracked down on foot, most of them hidden in plain sight: graffiti spraypainted on a subway tunnel, some letters scratched into the stall of a train station bathroom under a flickering fluorescent bulb. But this last code felt different.

He’d had to break onto the roof of a building scheduled for demolition to get it. (And seven-year-old body versus warped security door, that had been a fun ten minutes.) Plus, it was more complex than the others—an arrangement of chess pieces that, when taken to endgame, revealed a latitude and longitude along the river.

Shinichi had ridden his skateboard as far as he could. But he hadn’t realized until he got here exactly how deep the blinking map dot was in the abandoned dockyards. The whole place was deserted. All he could hear was the creak of old metal shingles and the crunch of his own footsteps, and the harsh croaks of the crows perched on the old telephone wires. He was pretty sure he’d seen that crumbling smokestack on the news, the last time the Organized Crime division made a major drug bust. Shinichi ducked into a narrow alley and inched past a sagging sheet of rusty tin, really glad all of a sudden that Rei had insisted he get his tetanus booster.

Was all of this really just hiding another puzzle? And what clue would it make sense to leave all the way out here?

When he first started chasing down the clues, Shinichi had a sense others were competing too. He found scuff marks and footprints around the subway graffiti, signs that someone had taken a pencil rubbing of the puzzle on the bathroom wall. But for the last few clues, he’d been all alone. No one else was following the White Rabbit anymore.

Rei and Akai had both asked him to loop them in if things started to get dangerous. And he would. As soon as he knew what this was. But he wasn’t going to take them away from their important jobs just to follow a lead that might turn out to be nothing. Shinichi had everything under control.

Besides, he was just going to sneak in, poke around, snap a few pictures, and get out. How dangerous could that possibly be?

His phone rang in his hand. Shinichi cursed, looking at the caller ID. How did Rei always know when he was somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be?

“Hey.” Rei didn’t say his name—he never started a phone call that way, just in case—but Shinichi could hear the smile in his voice, the growl of the Mazda’s engine and the rush of traffic in the background. Rei sounded like he was smiling a lot when he called Shinichi, though Shinichi hadn’t totally figured out why. “I just got off shift—want me to pick you up on the way to the restaurant?”

Shinichi winced. The restaurant. He’d forgotten they were supposed to have family dinner out every other weekend from now on, since Rei’d heard through the neighborhood grapevine that they were getting a reputation as antisocial shut-ins.

“I’m…actually not at the house right now,” Shinichi hedged, hopping over a knot of barbed wire and crossing his fingers Rei wouldn’t think to check his phone’s GPS.

Rei’s voice had turned exasperated. Shinichi got that a lot, too. “You’d better not stand me up again. I will not be known as the couple that does family restaurant dates.”

“I’m definitely on my way,” Shinichi promised, jogging toward the docks and in the complete opposite direction of the restaurant.

Rei clicked his tongue. “That’s what you said last week. Then you ditched us at that Indian restaurant, and a very mediocre date with Akai became the double date from hell when we were cornered by your teacher and that flop-headed detective she’s seeing. With whom I’ve now technically shared an indirect kiss, by the way, since he wouldn’t stop badgering me until I tried his wine. Akai nearly suffocated inhaling his saag paneer so we could get out of there.”

Shinichi snorted but managed to turn it into a cough. “Twenty minutes. I swear.”

It’d be thirty at best, but he couldn’t turn back now. He’d just do this fast and then beg forgiveness—Rei wasn’t immune to Conan’s big blue eyes yet. Still, Rei was pretty sharp—it was never a bad idea to distract him when Shinichi was trying to get away with something.

 “Besides,” he added, fake casual, “I thought you and Akai were kind of getting along lately.”

“It’s impossible to get along with that…” Rei cut himself off—some variety of asshole that he couldn’t bring himself to say to a seven-year-old.

“Right,” Shinichi muttered, ducking a ragged tarp. “Guess I just imagined that night we were watching a movie and you fell asleep on his shoulder…”

“That was entirely due to blood loss!”

His phone buzzed again, distracting him from the rest of Rei’s excuses. Someone was texting him too.

Hey, kid. What kind of pepper did he want?

Shinichi frowned, typing fast. No pepper. Peppercorn. Apparently Akai had blocked out Rei’s ten-minute rant the last time he brought home pre-ground pepper that, as Rei put it, a discount pizza joint in a dying strip mall would be embarrassed to serve.

Right. Thanks.

“Shinichi? You still there?”

“What? Uh, sorry—I’m here, just…” Just helping Akai avoid getting brained by a pepper shaker didn’t seem like the right excuse. “Nothing. What were you saying?”

He could just picture Rei shaking his head, that kids and their cellphones look he’d borrowed straight from a parenting magazine. “I said, are we still on for Christmas shopping tomorrow?”

Shinichi shook his head. “Shouldn’t you get a present for your own husband?”

Rei snorted. “If I get him something, it’s going to come with a body bag.”

“I don’t think they sell those at the mall,” Shinichi deadpanned. But he was sort of smiling as he zigzagged across the old train tracks, a strange warm feeling in his chest.

Shinichi couldn’t remember ever going family Christmas shopping before. It was still weird to think Rei even wanted to do those kinds of things with him. And it was definitely cheesy. But he didn’t really mind the idea of spending an hour wandering the open-air walking mall, watching Rei identify and then systematically shove to the back of the rack every shirt that would pop with jade green eyes. And Rei always let him get one of the massive java chip Frappuccinos, which seemed like a milkshake but was secretly harboring about as much caffeine as a double shot.

Besides, he was trying to say no to stuff less. Since Akai kept giving him those looks whenever he turned Rei down.

“Sure. Count me in,” Shinichi said. Then his phone was buzzing against his head—another text.

What do you think he wants for Christmas?

Shinichi smirked, texting back. Come to the mall with us tomorrow and find out.

There. Now it was really a family shopping trip.

Shinichi flicked away from the messages screen to pull up the map again. The coordinates were dead ahead of him. Whatever this clue was leading to, it had to be in the hulking warehouse he could see right up against the water, the broken windows staring at him like blacked-out eyes. The sun was setting fast.

Shinichi threw a glance at his watch.

“I gotta go. Order without me. Thirty minutes, I promise!”

“You said twen—”

He ended the call and slid the phone back into his pocket.

Now that he was close, Shinichi approached the warehouse slowly, his senses on high alert. This place had definitely seen better days. The gray river lapped at the crumbling concrete foundation, and grime and moss crawled over the pylons and up the walls, festering in the cracks between the bricks. Shinichi knelt in the pockmarked road, tracing a line of black rubber. A totally abandoned dockyard—and one building with fresh tire tracks. He was in the right place.

The door to the loading dock hung partway open, creaking on rusty hinges. Shinichi scrambled up the old broken steps and pressed his back to the wall, listening hard. Just the wind whistling through the cracked glass. The warehouse was stripped bare—there was nothing inside but some old crates and decaying machine parts. And a small metal lockbox, dead center of the floor. Shinichi had a feeling that was for him.

For one second, he considered turning back. Something about this place put his teeth on edge. Until now, the White Rabbit case had been like a chess game, trading moves with an unseen opponent, every riddle luring him deeper and deeper into the board. But he couldn’t understand this move.

He fidgeted with his phone. He could retreat to the road, call Rei and Akai for backup. But he was so close. What if he backed off now, and he lost this lead forever?

Silently, Shinichi pulled his hood up and slipped through the door. As he moved toward the center of the warehouse, he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. Rei again—a text this time. He brought a grocery bag into the restaurant! Where are you?

Almost there, Shinichi texted back. But the wheel just spun, the little icon blinking in the corner. No service. Because he was inside the building? Or too close to the water?

Distracted, he bent to pry open the box. Shinichi’s mouth went dry. A stack of ten thousand dollars cash, as promised. And on the underside of the lid, two words written in sharp red chalk.

WELCOME, ALICE

Suddenly, Shinichi knew exactly what this was. But it was far too late.

A dark figure lurched out from behind the broken machines. Shinichi caught a flash of bloodshot eyes and a vicious, meaty hand grabbing for him—then he was running, tripping over old gears scattered on the floor, sprinting as fast as he could for the door. Heavy footsteps thundered toward him before a second person leapt the crates and seized the back of his jacket, jerking him back so hard all the buttons popped open. Shinichi wrenched his arms out of the sleeves and threw himself under the skeleton of an ancient conveyor belt. He came up coughing and covered in dust and grime, his arms red and raw from scraping the concrete.

They didn’t want one more code solved. They wanted the codebreaker. And he’d walked right into an ambush.

“Cut him off!”

Shinichi cursed at his cell phone screen. Still no signal. It wasn’t the building. It was a cell phone jammer. Hopefully one of the cheap ones, with about a thirty-foot range.

Akai’s number was at the top, hidden under the A. Desperately, Shinichi typed out a message. Then he wrenched back and flung his cell phone out the broken window—just before the meaty hand closed around his wrist, yanking him up off the ground.

“You’re not going anywhere.”

Shinichi kicked as hard as he could. But his legs were too short to reach the man’s groin, and his shoulder was on fire, all his weight dangling from that unforgiving grip. He stared up into a leering face, feeling all the little bones in his wrist crushing in.

Behind him, a woman’s voice shouted, “Don’t hurt him. He’s just a kid!”

Then a stun gun jabbed into his ribs, electricity crackling, and everything went black.

His last thought was, Rei was going to be pissed.

Chapter Text

2.

Rei tapped his fingers against the table, scowling at his phone.

He knew it was useless to send another text. Shinichi hadn’t answered the last two. He just couldn’t believe that kid had ditched him again. Really, he should just call Detective Takagi and ask what crime his brilliant little detective was solving today. Since only the murderers of Tokyo seemed entitled to any of Shinichi’s time.

Across the table, Akai shot him that look—that look that said he was working himself up over nothing. But Rei wasn’t interested in the opinion of a man with a grocery bag stuffed under his chair, sitting there munching on a complimentary breadstick and not looking at all mortified that people thought the two of them were dining in this cheap Italian restaurant together. Voluntarily.

With Conan along, this would have been a perfectly normal family outing. Without, it was veering dangerously close to another cheap date. Even as a café waiter fake married to a perpetual graduate student, Rei expected better.

He stretched out his foot and kicked at the groceries, scowling. “You couldn’t have left those in the car?”

Akai shrugged. “Camel dropped me off. Since you said driving home separately is tacky.”

Rei rolled his eyes. “I didn’t say it was tacky. I said it screams impending divorce.” Akai crooked an eyebrow, and Rei shot him a withering look, resisting the urge to separate Akai’s metacarpals with his butter knife. “If only,” he mouthed, pasting his smile back on as the waitress approached.

It was never clearer to Rei that he’d made some serious wrong turns in his life than when he found himself staring across a candlelit table at Akai Shuichi. Especially when they were alone, Rei just found this man deeply irritating. The way those unreadable green eyes settled on him, cool and serious. The little twitch of a smirk on his lips, like he wasn’t counting the minutes until this was over. And definitely the looks Rei got from people passing by the table, as if congratulating him on such a great catch.

In or out of his disguise, Akai was obnoxiously handsome. It was just his height, Rei had decided, or his sharp jaw and muscular shoulders, or the fact that he drove a sports car and could take out a security camera with one bullet from a moving vehicle at 300 yards. Well, most people didn’t know that. But he sort of gave off that vibe.

Rei was good-looking, and he knew it. He’d had countless phone numbers slipped to him on cocktail napkins in smoky bars, and when he walked through a room dressed to the nines, plenty of people followed him with their eyes. But they didn’t crane their heads all the way around, like they did for Akai, to check for a wedding ring.

Which Akai wore. Which gave Rei a little thrill of satisfaction. Just to be cramping his style, obviously. Not because it was his or anything.

Personally, Rei preferred Akai’s looks to Subaru’s. Not that he’d spent any real time thinking about it.

The waitress hovered at the edge of the table. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything?” she asked, not for the first time.

Akai opened the menu, but Rei reached over and clapped it shut. “We’re fine for now,” he said with his best charming smile.

As the waitress scurried off again, Akai pushed his glasses up his nose, studying him through the wire-frame lenses. “Not hungry? You skipped lunch.”

How very annoying of him to have noticed that. Rei threw his water back like a shot. “We’re not ordering. Because if we order and he doesn’t show up, I’ll have to sit here choking it down with only you for company, and I’m not doing that again.”

Akai chuckled. “Just an appetizer, then. If he doesn’t show up, you’ll only be stuck with me for fifteen minutes.” He pried the menu out of Rei’s vise grip. “You both like the bruschetta, right?”

Smug bastard. But Rei’s stomach did feel like it was sort of grinding into a pebble. And Shinichi would be hungry, when he showed up. Which should be any second now.

Where was he?

The waitress looked overjoyed that they were finally ordering something. Rei wondered if she got a lot of breadsticks dine-and-dashers. He was turned away, asking if they could get the bruschetta without red peppers on it, when he heard the text alert on Akai’s phone.

“It’s from the boy,” Akai told him.

“He texts you?” Rei muttered, a little raw about that.

But Akai didn’t answer. He’d gone very still. Then he surged up in his chair, grabbing his wallet.

“We’re leaving.”

Rei slapped the menu down, ignoring the puzzled look on the waitress’s face. “He’s canceling, isn’t he? I can’t believe—”

Akai leaned over the table and caught Rei’s hand, a hint of green eyes sharp behind his lenses.

“Honey. We need to go. Now.”

Rei felt the words like a left hook. He pushed up from the table and slid into his tailored wool coat, barely registered Akai dropping a forty-dollar tip on their water and breadsticks.

Honey was a code word. Not draw your gun, exactly. But click the safety off, at least. He’d never had to use it before.

Something had happened to Shinichi. Something bad enough to rattle Akai.

Rei barely held himself back for the walk to the door. As soon as they were out of sight of the restaurant windows, he shoved Akai against the brick wall, one hand clenched in that ridiculous turtleneck.

“What is it, you bastard? What did he—”

But Akai was already holding up his phone, open to Shinichi’s message. Just a text—one word.

Zugzwang.

Rei stopped breathing.

Zugzwang. It was a chess term, one that described an endgame situation of massive disadvantage. A single move that changed the outcome of the game from a win to a loss.

Rei didn’t know what Shinichi meant by that. But it couldn’t be good.

His head was a blur of white noise. He couldn’t feel the icy brick of the wall anymore, the teeth of his car keys in his palm, the wind whipping up under the bloody red sky. All he felt was his heart lodged like a fist in his throat—and Akai’s hand on his arm, solid and steady, as he said, “Call the PSB. You’d better let me drive.”

3.

Shinichi jerked awake on the cold floor, gasping for breath.

Everything hurt. His whole body was one big ache, his muscles shaky, every inch throbbing like someone had scraped him raw with a cheese grater. But he’d gotten enough lectures from Rei about what a high-voltage shock could do to his tiny body that he knew he was lucky to be conscious at all.

“Nerve and blood vessel damage,” Rei recited, his voice clipped as he reached up to help Shinichi down onto the fire escape. “Disorientation. Loss of balance. Muscle constriction, involuntary spasms. And don’t forget diminished brain function for up to an hour—which should matter to you, even if the rest of this doesn’t.”

“I got it,” Shinichi assured him, trooping ahead of Rei down the fire stairs. “Not something you want to mess with.” He’d had a close call with the security guard on the roof of the hotel, and then made the much bigger mistake of trying to sidestep Rei’s lecture by explaining the guy only had a Taser.

Rei pinched his cheek. “That’s what it can do to an adult body. In extreme cases, there’ve been instances of respiratory distress, atrial fibrillation, shock, seizure…”

“Death?” Shinichi guessed, wincing.

Rei’s look said it all.

“I’ll be more careful,” Shinichi promised, as Rei dropped the last eight feet to the ground and stretched his arms up for Shinichi. But he didn’t put him down right away—just held him there for a second, so Shinichi couldn’t escape those eyes boring into his, half fond and half exasperated.

“I've gotten that promise before. When do I start seeing measurable results?”

Shinichi hadn’t known how to answer that. And he really wasn’t looking forward to the follow-up lecture, when Rei heard this story.

Groaning, he tried to lift his head far enough to stop his glasses frames from digging into his face. He was somewhere dark and cold. The concrete was like ice underneath him, and when he breathed in, he nearly gagged on the smells of the old warehouse—mold and gasoline, and machine grease, and the sharp smell of industrial disinfectant. He swallowed down the queasy feeling.

Where was he? A crawlspace? A basement? Shinichi blinked, trying to force his fuzzy head to focus. Boiler room, he realized, picking out the rusted water tank under a high, narrow window where the evening light spilled in. He could still see streaks of sunset clouds in the sky. So he hadn’t been out long.

Distantly, he caught the sound of raised voices—two people arguing in the next room over. Shinichi recognized the low growl of the man who’d grabbed him.

“—so fucking screwed. We didn’t go to all this trouble just to nab some kid.”

It was a woman who answered—the one who’d shouted don’t hurt him. Her voice was tight and urgent. And scared, Shinichi thought, though she was trying not to show it.

“He’s not just some kid, Kane. He solved every riddle. No one else made it that far. He’s the only chance we have.”

Shinichi pressed his aching temple to the cold floor. He’d been right. Whatever the White Rabbit criminals were doing, they needed a codebreaker. They’d put together a series of puzzles, testing for someone who could solve a wide swath of encryptions, and then laid a trap in the abandoned warehouse. And Shinichi had walked right into it.

If he got out of this alive, Rei was absolutely going to kill him.

No. Not if. He was getting out of here. Right now, while they were distracted. With a wince, he rolled up on his shoulder and catalogued his injuries. A few bruises and abrasions on his knees and elbows from scrambling under the conveyer belt. His arms were wrenched up and bound behind his back, a thin cord cutting into his bare wrists. And his toes were numb. Someone had taken his shoes, Shinichi realized. To make it harder to run.

Teeth clenched, he tried to push up onto his knees. His head spun like a Tilt-a-Whirl, and he gave up, collapsing onto his stomach.

For the first time, he felt a spike of fear. This was bad. Nothing was moving right. His limbs felt like rubber, heavy and useless, his tongue so thick in his mouth he could barely swallow. Could he scramble up the boiler and out the window like this? Could he even get the ropes off?

The man was still talking. “No kid could solve those codes, QB. He’s gotta be a plant sent in by the cops.” There was another sound then—the distinctive whir and click of a revolver cylinder spinning before he snapped it into place. “We should dump him in the river and get out of here before we’re blown.”

The woman’s voice was strained. “Touch him, Kay-en, and it’s going to be your corpse floating down the river.”

Shinichi’s eyes widened. He’d caught it that time—the little hitch between the syllables. She wasn’t saying Kane. She was saying KN. A codename. And since it was a chessboard that led him here, Shinichi knew exactly what it stood for.

King’s Knight. They were using chess pieces for codenames. The knight was a first-ranked piece, but low in value. Not a pawn. But not a rook either. And the woman, he’d called her QB—Queen’s Bishop. Valued about the same as a knight, or a little higher, if you used the Berliner system. But he doubted a criminal organization assigning codenames was that exact.

A bang echoed from the next room—the man’s fist hitting a table. “Fucking quack Brunswick leaving us up shit creek without a paddle.”

Brunswick. Something about that name niggled in the back of Shinichi’s mind. It was a case—but not his. One of Akai’s, maybe. Knight had called him a quack…maybe a doctor, or a scientist…?

A chemist. That was it. An American chemist who went missing six months ago, presumed abducted. But how did he fit in with people writing complex chess codes?

Shinichi shook his head. This wasn’t the time. He twisted his hand, trying to reach his watch. His usually tiny fingers felt thick as sausages, but he could just scrape his fingernails under the edge of the dial. He only had one dart. But if he managed to knock out one of them, maybe he could get past the other and escape…

Suddenly there was a new voice in the room—a man’s voice, low and smooth.

“Shut up, both of you. He’s awake.”

Shinichi froze. There’d been a third person in the room. The man who’d grabbed his jacket?

The concrete echoed with the scrape of a chair pushing back. Shinichi clicked the watch dial closed, hoping no one had noticed it. Then the fluorescent light flickered on over his head, and a pair of heavy tactical boots stepped into his field of vision. Men’s size twelve, ladder laced, the steel toes scuffed up like they’d kicked a few doors in.

“Look who’s decided to join us.” Shinichi felt fingers under his chin, twisting his head to look up at a man with sharp eyes and a lazy, brutal smile, tattoos crawling down his forearms. He waved a familiar red smartphone between two fingers. “Hello, Alice. Or should I say, Edogawa Conan?”

Shinichi swallowed. They knew who he was. Or who he was supposed to be, anyway. The screen was cracked in four places, the unmistakable tread of a dirty boot print in the middle. He wondered if his text had gotten through before they smashed it.

They didn’t care that he’d seen their faces. Never a good sign.

Someone inched into his field of vision. The woman—Queen’s Bishop—peered at him from behind a curtain of long brown hair. Shinichi could see she’d once had blond highlights, but they were frayed, growing out, and the chipped paint of an old manicure clung to her chewed fingernails. Her eyes were ringed in dark, sleepless circles. She offered him a tenuous smile.

“Are you okay? Not hurt too badly?”

Knight didn’t wait for his answer. The last man stepped close and rammed his toe into Shinichi’s shoulder, kicking him over onto his back. He was shorter than the rest, but strong and thick, half his head bald around a grisly burn scar. Shinichi’s crossed wrists dug into his spine as the man loomed over him clenching the revolver.

“Hey, brat. Someone gave you the answers to those codes, right? Spit it out.”

Shinichi coughed, weighing his options. He could try to play it off, pretend he’d been working with someone else. But if they’d been watching him, seen him collecting the codes one by one, all he’d accomplish by lying was prove they couldn’t trust him.

Rei and Akai would know something was wrong by now, but they wouldn’t know what, or where he was. Whatever had jammed his cellphone would jam the locator signal from the glasses, too. It could be hours before they found this place. If they found it at all.

He was on his own. And being useless was the fastest way to get himself killed.

Though his muscles still ached, Shinichi struggled up onto his knees, opening his eyes wide and shaking his head.

“No one gave them to me,” he said in his bright Conan voice. “I figured them out myself. I love puzzles.”

The three exchanged looks. The man in the steel-toed boots rubbed his chin, his eyes cold and calculating.

“So you could solve another one? Another puzzle like that?”

Stall, Shinichi thought. He scrunched up his nose. “I don’t know. My head’s so fuzzy. Why’d you shock me before, Mister? That really hurt.”

“Don’t fucking play games with me, kid,” Knight snapped, backhanding him across the face. The butt of the gun caught Shinichi’s cheek, and he choked as he slammed into the floor again, tasting blood in his mouth. A spray of red drops hit the concrete.

“Hey! Stop it,” Bishop snapped, shoving Knight away. “He’s a kid. He’s not going to think better at gunpoint.” Then she knelt down, her wide eyes fixed on Shinichi’s face as she laced her hands under her chin. “You’re really smart, aren’t you, Conan? I saw you’re in a program for talented and gifted kids. So I bet if you worked really hard, and I helped, you could figure out another puzzle like those ones. And if you can, I promise nothing bad is going to happen to you. Okay?”

He’d been right, Shinichi realized. She was scared—but not for herself. Scared for him. Of what they might do to him. In the right moment, he could use that.

He blinked fast enough to make his eyes tear up, nodding slowly. “I guess I can try.”

Knight made a disgusted sound in his throat. “I don’t like this. We should reset the game and find someone else.”

“We can’t,” the third man said smoothly. “We’re out of time. The deal goes down in thirty-six hours. And we don’t want to show up empty-handed.” He fixed Shinichi with a sharp look, sharp enough to make him wonder if his Conan act was working at all. Then he pushed out of his crouch and slipped the busted phone into his pocket. “Besides, it’s not up to you—either of you. It’s up to the boss. Get the car. We’re headed back to base.”

“Whatever you say, KR.”

Shinichi darted a look at the man in the boots as he passed. KR. King’s Rook. By rank, the rook was the most valuable piece next to the queen. So he could be number two or three. No wonder he was calling the shots.

He kept his head down as the men moved out into the warehouse, their footsteps echoing in the empty loading dock. Then he felt soft hands on his face. Bishop was kneeling next to him again, her worried eyes peeking out of uneven bangs.

“Hey. You’re okay.” She helped him sit up, and Shinichi winced as she touched the bruise he could already feel swelling on the left side of his mouth. He didn’t think his lip had actually split, but it wasn’t going to be pretty tomorrow. Bishop sucked in a breath. “That asshole. Don’t cry, sweetie. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Shinichi had studied all of the handbooks for hostage situations, from the police and the hostage’s side. He knew his next move. Pick an ally among his kidnappers—make himself human, vulnerable. At least that was one thing he could do even better as Conan.

He let his stinging lip wobble as he looked up at her with wide eyes. “Will you tell my dad I’m going with you? He gets really worried when I don’t come home.”

Shinichi didn’t miss her shudder. Bishop dredged up a strained smile. “Let’s make it a surprise, okay? Dads like surprises.”

Shinichi could just imagine how much Rei would like this one. But he’d gotten his confirmation. He didn’t know what Bishop was doing here, but kids were a soft spot for her. It didn’t exactly make her a friend. But it made her less likely to kill him at the first sign of trouble.

Maybe he could push his luck, just a little.

“I’m really cold. And I can’t feel my fingers anymore,” he said, wiggling his bound hands.

Bishop chewed at her ragged nails. Then she bent and untied his hands, throwing a scared look at the door. “Just for a little while.”

Shinichi rubbed at his raw wrists and pushed his glasses back up his nose. One of the lenses was cracked, and the frames were a little dented, but they were still intact. If he could get away from the cellphone jammer, they might still give off a location signal.

Bishop bent over him again, wrapping his jacket around his shoulders. Then she rummaged in her pockets and held out a squat yellow box.

“Here—why don’t you play with this, okay? We’ll be heading out soon.”

Shinichi blinked. It was chalk, the type Kobayashi used on the blackboard, a box of ten pastel colors. Not something she’d have on her just for the theatrics with the lockbox. This was the kind of thing someone picked up spontaneously, a small gift. He wondered who it was supposed to be for.

As she moved around him, gathering up the lockbox and her faded green coat, Shinichi stared at the chalk. He could feel his adrenaline fading, and in its place all the things he hadn’t let himself feel yet—the cold and the ache of his scraped elbows and the blood throbbing in his swollen cheek. But mostly the horrible, tight squeezing in his chest that was part dread and part helplessness and part bitterness.

Sometimes, when he was solving a case, or playing chess, or disappearing into a book he’d read a hundred times, Shinichi could forget about being Conan. For a few precious minutes, it was like nothing in his life had changed. He’d felt that more than ever since moving in with Rei and Akai. But then there were other moments, like this one, when he just crashed into the truth so hard.

Sitting here shivering in his tiny socks, he was acutely aware of all his limitations. There was no point in wondering what Rei would do in this situation, what Akai would do. He couldn’t overpower these people. He couldn’t outrun them. He couldn’t do anything except sit here in this freezing, rusted-out boiler room and think about all the mistakes he’d made, today and for the last three months, that led to this moment.

He hadn’t told Rei and Akai much about the White Rabbit case. He didn’t think he’d needed to—but it was more than that. He didn’t want to need help with his cases, the kind of thing he used to do alone. And it had been so long since he could ask for backup without risking that whatever he was investigating would be taken away from him. So he just hadn’t asked.

He squeezed the box in his fist. There was no White Rabbit case file at home. No backup coming on the police scanner. There were two people in the world he could try to get a message to. Assuming they could even get here.

Shinichi felt a lump rising in his throat. But he forced it down, leaning forward on his raw knees and dumping the box of chalk out onto the oil-stained floor. There’d be time for recriminations later. For now, all he had to think about was what he could do. And what he’d do after that, and after that.

For now, what he had was chalk.

Chapter Text

4.

Akai hadn’t spent much time driving the Mazda. Rei was territorial about his car—and a few other things—and since he was the better driver between them, Akai usually let him have it. But right now, Rei had more important things to do.

The white sports car reminded him of its owner: sharp, responsive, and a little short-tempered, leaping forward at each green light almost before his foot touched the gas. It felt like the Mazda was pushing to go faster. Or maybe it was just the tense, angry voice of the man in the passenger seat that had him on edge.

“Obviously, if his phone’s GPS were active, I could do that myself. I’m asking about absolute positioning from the satellite data.” Akai glanced over as Rei raked his bangs out of his face, scowling through the windshield at the pedestrians in the crosswalk. “I don’t care if only the Self-Defense Force is authorized to use that information. Get it done, Kazami.”

Akai had never gotten a straight answer on what position Rei held in the PSB. He had a lot of clout. Enough to scramble helicopters and mobile breach squads. But you couldn’t mobilize anyone if you didn’t know where to send them.

At the red lights, he texted James and Jodie—and Shinichi, in code just in case someone was listening in. Two zeroes—the chess nomenclature for castling. He hoped Shinichi would know what it meant: get to safety. But there was no answer, in code or otherwise.

In under fifteen, they were back at the house. Akai had mastered the best route through the neighborhood—best being the one with the lowest probability of being stopped by any of the Kudous’ overly friendly neighbors. He’d mapped it with emergencies in mind, or a post-mission scenario where he needed to avoid any awkward questions about bloodstains on the backseat. But so far, he’d mostly used it to steer clear of Mrs. Takahashi down the street, who always seemed to need something from her attic or her gutters or the roof of her garage. Akai had never spent so much time up a ladder.

He hooked a sharp left into the Kudous’ garage. Rei kicked the door open and was halfway up the stairs to the house before Akai had even parked.

By the time he stepped inside, Rei was bent over his laptop at the kitchen table, his fingers moving unnaturally fast. Akai assumed he was pulling cell records, credit card receipts, train station security footage—anything he could get his hands on. He left Rei to it and made for the second floor, taking the stairs three at a time.

He found the spare glasses right where he’d left them—tucked into the desk in the library, the second drawer down. The grid was empty, no blinking locator dot on the lens. Akai wasn’t surprised. But he did slam the drawer shut too hard, rattling Yusaku’s collection of antique quills.

At the mirror in the master bathroom, Akai quickly took apart his disguise. He hated wasting even a second on that, when Shinichi was missing. But Okiya Subaru was an unremarkable grad student. A cover that disintegrated fast if he started dropping in on shootouts and police raids.

He was unclipping the choker when Jodie called.

“Shuu. I just got your text. Any news?”

“Nothing yet,” Akai told her, cocking an ear toward the snatches of Rei’s conversation filtering up from downstairs. He couldn’t make out the words. But the frustration came through loud and clear.

“What do you want us to do?” Jodie asked, her voice tinny through the speakerphone as Akai stripped to his undershirt and pulled on his bulletproof vest. He slid into a dark button-down and strapped a jackknife to his ankle, stuffing Rei’s car keys in the pocket of his leather jacket.

“Make some inquiries around MPD. Quietly, Jodie—I can’t have police on this before I know what it is. And check for an unaccompanied minor that fits his description. Police stations, clinics, hospitals—”

Morgues. The last word stuck in his throat, sharp and brittle as his next breath in. To his relief, she didn’t make him say it.

“The usual places. We’re on it. Left at the light, Camel,” she snapped. Then, softer: “Try not to worry. He’s a smart kid. He can take care of himself.”

Akai had lost track of how many times he’d told Rei the exact same thing. But he felt it now, for the first time—how hollow those words came off from the other side.

He ended the call and bent over the sink to slick his hair back, wrapped his dark sunglasses in a black baseball cap. And then stared too long at Shinichi’s half-size toothbrush tucked in between his and Rei’s in the turquoise coffee cup beside his razor, lost in a memory of standing right there the night before—Shinichi perched on top of his stool, grinning around his foamy toothbrush as they tapped messages back and forth, debating the Detective Samonji season finale in Morse code for practice. And Rei leaning into the counter on his left side, forever rolling his eyes, their elbows lightly bumping because of their opposing dominant hands.

Rei liked to tap his answer back in Japanese Wabun code instead, just to be difficult. But since all he ever seemed to tap was idiot FBI, it wasn’t hard to translate.

Akai took a long, slow breath. Then he went to load up the car.

When they’d first moved in, he and Rei had gotten into it a few times over where to store two undercover agents’ worth of weaponry. Akai wanted things where he could get his hands on them fast; Rei insisted it would be more trouble than it was worth when some deliveryman went digging in the console drawer for a pen and came up with a semiautomatic. Shinichi’s opinion, tucked up on the couch reading with one finger in his ear, was that they were both way too prepared for a siege, and also the casserole was burning.

Rei had gotten his way by replacing most of the Kudous’ furniture with lookalike pieces modified to conceal secret compartments and bump drawers. Akai admired that instinct—but not his constant demands that Akai move the heavy coffee table three inches one direction or the other, until he was convinced Rei was just doing it to screw with him.

He worked fast, holstering his sidearm and then gathering up the rest: his shotgun and the long-range Remington, extra clips, magazines, fuses and flashlights and his utility kit. He felt Rei’s sharp eyes on him as he unhooked the false panel at the back of the armoire to get at the C-4 and grenades. Usually, Rei complained that Akai showed up to very normal operations armed for an invasion. He didn’t hear any complaints tonight.

He slammed the trunk down on the last load, the first-aid kit and a few changes of clothes. Overkill, maybe. But he already knew they weren’t coming back to this house unless they found Shinichi.

Akai steadied himself against the Mazda’s trunk. Until. Until they found Shinichi. No need to go there, not yet.

“No hit off the glasses,” he told Rei, stepping into the kitchen and throwing the blond his bulletproof vest.

Rei caught it with a scowl. “Kazami checked with the Major Crimes unit. There’s nothing serious right now—no bomb threats, no bank robberies, no high-profile kidnappings. Not so much as a suicide under suspicious circumstances.”

“So we have no leads,” Akai finished. The best bet with Shinichi was always to find whatever was on fire, since that kid liked to run right into it.

He caught a flash of tan skin as Rei shucked off his blue polo shirt. Akai was always impressed by his effortless transformations, Amuro Tohru vanishing as Rei traded the classy dinner outfit for jeans and a long V-neck, white with stripes of dark blue down the sleeves. Akai could just make out the bulge of the tac vest under his waist-length brown coat. Rei didn’t wear a disguise, but he didn’t need one. Everything about how he carried himself changed as he strapped his Beretta into the shoulder holster.

“Did you hear anything on the phone?” Akai asked, grasping at straws.

Rei’s expression said it wasn’t subtle. “No. I didn’t hear his skateboard, though I know he took it. So he was somewhere he couldn’t ride through.” His face twisted—then he slammed his hand against the wall, rattling the family pictures. “I told him to bring this to me before it got dangerous. I knew he was being squirrelly tonight, but I—”

Akai shook his head. “There was nothing you could do. Whatever happened, Shinichi made the decision to do this alone. He must have thought he could handle it.”

Rei shot him a scathing look. “Well, when we find his body stuffed into a duffle bag, I’ll be sure to remind him he made his own decisions.”

“Rei…” Akai reached out for him, trying to catch his shoulder. But the computer dinged, and Rei launched himself at it, bracing his hands on the back of the chair.

“That’s the location data on the last signal from his cell phone.”

Akai stepped up behind him to get a look. It wasn’t much—just a rough ping between two cell towers, a wide stretch of river along the docks. “Damn. That’s almost a kilometer, most of it abandoned buildings.”

Rei gritted his teeth. “So basically, he could be anywhere.”

Akai shot him a glance. He could see Rei’s pulse beating too fast in his neck, his nails digging hard into the back of the chair. He looked furious. But Akai had seen Rei furious before. This was something else.

This was him terrified.

Rei blew out a sharp breath, shoving his bangs back with the heel of his hand. “That chess game he was working on this morning—that has to be how he deciphered the location.” His hand flitted over his eyes—then he rounded on Akai, shoving him hard in the chest. “How can you not know this? You were sitting right here cleaning your gun.”

“And you were in the kitchen,” Akai reminded him.

“So this is my fault?” Rei demanded.

Akai sighed. “No, damn it. Don’t pick a fight with me right now.” Rei always went back to anger—because it was what he knew, because it kept him in control. But it wasn’t helping them right now, and it wasn’t helping Shinichi.

Akai dragged a rough hand through his hair. Then he reached out and gripped Rei by the back of the neck, holding him steady as those blue eyes flared in shock. 

“Rei, look at me,” he said, squeezing softly. “You have nearly perfect recall. Shinichi was on the floor with the chessboard—you brought him a slice of green tea roll cake while he was working on it. You had to see the arrangement of the pieces.”

Rei was still tense in his hold, every muscle tight enough to snap. But Akai could see his mind was working now—could practically watch the game unfolding in Rei’s eyes, the click and slide of pieces captured one by one and lifted off the board.

Akai pressed his lips together. “You were debating endgame strategy for a player with two rooks, and then he said checkmate. What did you think right then? A specific game? A winning gambit?”

“I…” Rei faltered. His eyes narrowed. “What about you? You were clearly sitting there spying on us like you had nothing better to do.”

Akai remembered the moment. But… “Nothing useful,” he admitted.

All he remembered was their laughter. Over the oiled barrel of the rifle, he’d looked up to find them lying on the living room floor in the warm spill of sunlight, Shinichi kneeling by the chessboard and Rei stretched out on his stomach next to him in one of his soft cable-knit sweaters, trying to surreptitiously stretch his lower back because he wasn’t meant to crouch twisted up like that for so long anymore. Akai knew that ache all too well. Shinichi had been gesturing with the bishop, while Rei just watched him with his chin propped in one hand and that crooked little smile, the one he didn’t fake, half hidden under his curled fingertips.

Akai had watched Rei bump his shoulder and Shinichi bump him right back, the two of them trading bites of green cake with strawberries in the middle—so easy with each other, relaxed in a way he hadn’t seen Rei in a long time.

It was a good look for him, Akai thought. They looked good there, together.

But he hadn’t looked at the board.

Rei took a slow breath. Then he lifted his chin, pinning Akai with sharp blue eyes.  “The suspension bridge. I thought…the rooks, they were positioned like the pylons.”

Akai relaxed his grip. “So his king would be—”

“The meeting point,” Rei agreed. He ducked under Akai’s arm, manipulating the cell phone map and zeroing in on lengths and distances. Akai had the urge to brush his cheek, to smooth those little flyaway strands of hair behind his ear. But he wasn’t naïve enough to think Rei would appreciate it.

Rei’s phone beeped. He held it up to show off the map, and the blinking dot right up against the river.

“This time, I’m driving,” he said.

Akai shook his head as he relinquished the keys. But he would take that determined look over terrified any day. Besides, it was easier to shoot from the passenger seat.

Jodie was right. Shinichi was a smart kid. And he could take care of himself. But he shouldn’t have to.

5.

Rei hated everything about the warehouse on sight. But not more than he hated the knowledge that Shinichi had waltzed right in here without so much as a backward glance.

The chill of the corrugated metal wall cut through his jacket. Rei squeezed his fist around the grip of his Beretta, narrowly resisting the instinct to bash it into the back of Akai’s head as the FBI agent crouched in front of him, jimmying the lock on the loading bay door. Rei had gotten them here in record time, crossing three districts and the freeway in less than twenty-five minutes. But it was meaningless if Akai took the better part of a decade to get the door open.

“Move,” he growled.

“I’ve almost—” Akai’s eyes widened, and he jerked back as Rei’s foot collided with the door, snapping the rusty handle clean off. The door hit the wall with a bang.

Rei surged into the dark opening, ready to shoot anything that breathed. But the loading bay was silent, not so much as a cockroach scuttling across the floor.

Akai got to his feet, throwing him a stern look. “That was stupid,” he said, in a sharp tone Rei didn’t get from him much.

Rei ignored him. “Work faster next time, or get out of my way.”

The second he stepped inside, he could tell they were too late. The warehouse was unnaturally still—Rei couldn’t hear anything but the breeze through the smashed windows and the crackle of his own footsteps on the broken glass, his pulse loud in his ears. Still he stuck to his training, moving fast and silently along the walls with his gun at eyeline. He was peripherally aware of Akai mirroring him on the far side of the loading bay—Rei only caught flashes of him, a soundless ghost between the hulking wrecks of machines gleaming in the last of the dusk.

As he’d guessed, the place was deserted. Only the boiler room showed any traces that someone had been there recently—scrape marks in the dust from the chairs pushing back, a .38 bullet cartridge carelessly dropped by someone loading a revolver too fast. A crushed red smartphone with a bootprint on the screen.

And blood. Only a little. The kind Rei’d expect from someone’s hand smashing across Shinichi’s cheek and cutting his lip to shut that smart mouth.

Rei ground his teeth. He really wanted to kick one of the decrepit old chairs into the wall, just for the satisfaction of breaking something. But the PSB techs would probably frown on that, when they came to dust for prints.

He picked up the cartridge with his handkerchief, the casing shining as he tipped it back and forth. .38 revolvers weren’t rare. But he’d spotted a few casings just like this—same size, same manufacturer, same distinctive little scratch on the rim—on an investigation a few weeks ago, looking into a new weapons trafficking operation making waves in the sixth district. Weapons trafficking and kidnapping? It was an odd criminal profile.

Rei flipped the cell phone over with his toe. The busted phone told him a lot of things, none of which he liked. That Shinichi had been completely overwhelmed. That there wasn’t going to be a ransom call. That whoever had him was hasty and brutal, the kind of criminal more concerned with snuffing out loose ends than whatever intelligence they might have gained from keeping that phone on hand. Worse, that whoever had taken Shinichi intended to keep him a while, and they weren’t interested in being tracked down.

Akai stepped back into the boiler room, slipping his phone into his pocket. “That was Shiho. No signal from the glasses yet, but she’ll keep the tracking app open in case that changes.”

“Then I guess this is all we have,” Rei muttered, crouching to study the chalk drawings on the floor.

Rei didn’t know where Shinichi had gotten chalk, but he’d clearly made the most of it. The picture sprawled across the floor was obviously Alice in Wonderland—not one scene, but a mashup of iconography Rei would have known anywhere. A caterpillar. A smiling flower. A cat with a wide, feral grin. And right in the middle, a girl in a blue dress, her blond curls framing her eyes almost like a pair of glasses.

If nothing else, all those extra months in elementary school had done a lot for Shinichi’s art skills.

Rei braced a hand next to the Cheshire Cat, careful not to smudge anything. Like any coded message, he assumed half of the picture was white noise. But the three cards in the upper corner—three kidnappers, maybe. Two were low-level cards, a six and a seven, but the last was a jack, his eyebrows drawn down like two angry vees. What did that mean? Shinichi had met one of the upper echelon?

Akai knelt beside him, leaning close to peer at the cards.

“What?” Rei wanted to know.

Akai frowned. “The boots on the jack. They’re ladder laced.” Rei rolled his hand, just in case Akai felt like elaborating. “It’s something I saw a lot with army vets. Military background, maybe. I’ll have Jodie look into it.”

By army, Rei assumed he meant the US army. Which was just perfect. Another American skulking around where he wasn’t wanted—and taking people’s kids.

Akai gestured to the top of the drawing. “What do you think he meant by that?”

Rei scowled at the figure of the Mad Hatter, the card on his hat marked with a zero. He was trying to bear in mind that Shinichi didn’t have a lot to work with. But he still didn’t see why it had been necessary to draw the Mad Hatter very clearly holding hands with the green-eyed March Hare. That had better just mean a joint investigation, or when Rei got him back, those chipmunk cheeks were getting pinched.

“At least he hasn’t lost his sense of humor,” Akai said, his lips twitching. Rei would have stomped on his fingers, but he couldn’t risk compromising the evidence.

“What’s the March Hare holding?” he asked instead. It looked like a small bird, all blue except for the distinctive black stripes on its tail. “A blue jay? And the Mad Hatter seems to have…test tubes, or an experiment or something.” Honestly, he was extrapolating; chalk wasn’t really a precision medium. Rei crossed his arms. “What’s he trying to say? Mad Hatter…mad scientist…”

Akai’s eyes suddenly narrowed. “The jay. Dr. Jay Brunswick. He’s an American scientist who went missing last summer, someone the Tokyo field office is looking for. Shinichi was riding with me when I got the call.”

“And what does the FBI care where this Dr. Brunswick is?” Rei snapped, a little short. Because if this was an FBI case, then all of this was at least 60% Akai’s fault.

Akai shrugged. “Officially, his wife reported him abducted. But the lead agent thinks he went to ground on his own. A couple different flights were booked in his name, one to Tokyo.” Akai rubbed a hand across his mouth. “It’s a high-profile case because of what Brunswick was working on. Molecular chemistry. Specifically, cyanogens.”

Rei clenched his hand around the bullet. There was only one thing weapons traffickers would need from a man with that knowledge base. “Chemical weapons. Fantastic.”

Akai gave him a long look with those serious green eyes. “I could be wrong.”

“But you just never are, are you?” Rei said bitterly. “Not about things like this.”

Of all the dangerous, amoral, unpredictable criminals crawling around the underbelly of Tokyo, Shinichi had gotten himself mixed up with weapons traffickers. Maybe the only people who dropped bodies faster than Gin.

Which only left one question.

“What do they want with him?” Rei asked, and hated how rough his voice sounded, like the words had scraped his throat raw.

Akai shook his head. “I don’t know. But if they need him for something, they have a reason to keep him alive for now.”

For now.

Rei’s laugh was so sharp he choked on it. Akai was patronizing him, giving him the best-case scenario, and that was the most he could manage. A ticking time bomb.

The anger hit him like a sledgehammer. Rei stood up fast and slammed his fist down on the rusty boiler, and the ragged bolts bit into the soft flesh of his palm. It hurt. But not the way his chest hurt, like someone had reached inside him and crunched his heart into a soggy, bloody lump.

“Damn it, Shinichi,” he hissed.

What was Rei supposed to do? How was he supposed to protect this stupid, reckless kid—who always had to be so difficult, who thought he knew everything, could handle everything, when he wasn’t tall enough to handle getting the mail?

Rei had been right there. He’d literally been on the other side of the phone. But Shinichi hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t trusted him. And now, this was all he had. No solid leads, no suspects, no tracking device. Just a single bullet and some chalk scribbles in a condemned warehouse, the air off the river so sour it made him want to hurl.

Rei closed his eyes. Honestly, what was the point of any of this—living together, and modifying his best recipes to take out the cayenne pepper, memorizing all the neighbors whose marriages were on the rocks in case he needed leverage with the HOA, and using every scrap of his anti-torture training to keep holding Akai’s hand through Kobayashi’s marathon parent-teacher conferences—if Shinichi wasn’t going to come to him when it mattered?

A warm hand touched his. Rei lifted his head as Akai caught his wrist and turned his palm up, ran his thumb over the angry red grooves.

Akai’s eyes locked on his. “You all right?”

Rei bristled, ripped his hand away. “I’m fine,” he snapped.

He could hear everything Akai wasn’t saying loud and clear—that a real agent would keep his feelings out of it, not work himself up imagining how all the bones in that tiny body might be rearticulated by the time Rei got to him. But Akai wasn’t his handler or his senior agent. Rei didn’t have to take his disapproval. And he’d rather be angry than whatever the hell Akai was, just standing there with that stony look on his face like this didn’t cut his heart out. It must be easier, when you didn’t have one.

Akai’s hand twitched. But he didn’t reach for Rei again. “I’ll call Camel and Jodie, get them looking for Brunswick. If we find him, we might find Shinichi.”

That was admittedly not a horrible plan. Rei pushed his anger down to a low simmer. “Tell them to coordinate with Kazami. He has access to national security databases the FBI can’t get into. At least, I assume you can’t get into those.”

Akai’s only answer was that infuriating smirk, neither a confirmation nor a denial.

“What about us?” he asked.

Us. Rei felt his shoulders easing at the implication, that Akai wasn’t going to split and investigate alone. Not because he needed that oaf’s help, obviously. But they were sort of co-parenting. If that covered parent-teacher conferences, it probably covered kidnapping and retrieval, too.

Besides, it was what Shinichi wanted.

Rei looked down. At the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. And the splatter of blood, half covered by the zero.

“The sixth district,” he said. Akai crooked an eyebrow. Rei threw him a lethal smile. “You brought an arsenal. We might as well use it.”

6.

They were slowing down.

Shinichi held his breath as the wheels shuddered, the brakes squeaking and gravel popping against the bottom of the car as they moved from blacktop to unpaved road.

He’d only caught a flash of the vehicle—an anonymous, dark-colored sedan with tinted windows and armored tires—before Knight shoved him into the trunk. (Shinichi made sure to cry and bang his fists on the backseat for a minute, just to play the part.) He couldn’t see where they were, but he’d done his best to map the drive in his head, lying flat on the itchy carpet and straining for every scrap of sound. The thud of the wheels passing over the suspension bridge. The drip and spatter of rain on the trunk, just a drizzle. The thump of music and heavy downbeats—the clubbing district?—and then the lurch of the sedan bouncing as they passed over railroad tracks, which told him they were headed for the outskirts of the city. Along the water, if he was right and that was a ship’s horn in the distance.

In the angry red glow of the taillights, he tipped his head back and counted the seconds. Best guess, they’d driven about forty-five minutes. And now they were here—wherever here was. He could hear the rattle and screech of a metal shutter rising, the engine roar twice as loud as they rolled into an enclosed space. And voices—not just from inside the car. From whoever was waiting for them.

Shinichi winced as the sedan jerked to a stop and he bumped his chin against the spare tire. His cheek still stung, his swollen lip achy, but the numbness from the stun gun was wearing off. Which made this his best chance to escape. Probably his last one. He had to make it out of the garage before they closed the metal shutter, or…

He didn’t have his shoes. There was no tire iron back here, nothing he could use as a weapon—Shinichi assumed because he wasn’t the first person to be stuffed into this trunk. All he had was himself. Shinichi closed his eyes, regretting for the first time that he hadn’t paid a little more attention to his self-defense lessons with Akai.

“Almost. Try again.”

Akai’s green eyes were steady as he twisted Shinichi’s hand, pushing it back gently to expose the carpal bones at the base of the wrist. He tapped the hard point.

“Strike with this. What you want is pinpoint targeting. Tuck your fingers back. Then drive the heel of your palm up into the nasal bone or the underside of the jaw.” He braced his free hand under his chin for a target. “Go ahead, try it.”

Shinichi tried it, grudgingly. But he couldn’t help looking longingly over Akai’s shoulder at his cell phone, confiscated and jailed on the weightlifting bench.

Akai sighed, dropping his hand. “Shinichi. We had a deal.”

Shinichi rolled his eyes. “I know, I know. One hour of self-defense training in exchange for getting me out of art day due to a family emergency.” The emergency in this case being that Shinichi couldn’t handle eight hours of making ugly clay dogs and drawing a self-portrait like Picasso. Or having any of those abominations end up on the refrigerator.

He’d never liked art class—partly because he wasn’t good at it, and partly because every piece he brought back to the Kudous had been ruthlessly evaluated and found extraordinarily lacking. He’d learned early that it was better to dump his mediocre pieces in the convenience store trash can on the way home than give Yukiko one more reason to look up all the famous and important artists she knew and try to wrangle him some private lessons. His parents knew everyone and everyone seemed to owe them a favor, and that wasn’t a great combination. At least not for Shinichi.

The basement gym was cool and quiet. Akai raised an eyebrow, as if to say he’d kept his end of the bargain. Shinichi crossed his arms over his loose red T-shirt—a cringey souvenir Hattori had sent him once that said Osaka Bound in big optimistic letters.

“I promised an hour,” Shinichi pointed out, trying not to sound petulant. “I never promised to be enthusiastic about it.”

Akai gave him a wry smile. “Make it enthusiastic, and I’ll settle for thirty minutes.”

Shinichi shared a flat look with his reflection in the wall of mirrors. But he put a little more force into the next strike, his hand smacking against the bottom of Akai’s palm.

Martial arts was one of those things Shinichi’d just never had any interest in, even before becoming Conan. A good detective cornered a suspect with his reasoning, not with a palm thrust to the face. Plus, nothing made him feel more like a kid than standing next to Akai while he was kneeling on the mats and still barely coming up to his shoulders.

As far as Shinichi was concerned, he knew all the self-defense he needed to. He had his shoes and his soccer ball. He could fake cry his way out of most things. And when crying didn’t work, he knew to go straight for the groin.

As a bonus, over the summer, he’d gotten a crash course in what he considered to be the most important skill—how to get out of a locked trunk—after he snuck into Rei’s car and got stuck there. Rei wasn’t thrilled that Shinichi had tagged along without permission, but he seemed considerably more pissed that he could’ve ended up with a tiny corpse in the back of his car.

Shinichi looked up at Akai, lanky and muscular in his sweats and dark blue workout T emblazoned with the letters FBI, which Rei scowled at every time he saw it. (“Are you trying to announce your secret identity to the entire neighborhood?” he’d asked, taking a break from folding the laundry to snap the T-shirt at Akai’s head.) He looked at home here, breathing easily, and Shinichi felt ridiculous watching himself in the mirror, Conan’s tiny body trying to imitate those fast, effortless strikes. What was the point, he wondered, when his arms were like toothpicks?

Most of the techniques Shinichi had seen before, if only at karate tournaments. It took him a while to figure out those were secondary to what Akai was really trying to teach him.

“They’re going to underestimate you. Use that,” Akai told him, holding Shinichi’s gaze as he positioned his fingers for an eye jab. “Make the first hit count. You may not get a second one.”

“I got it,” Shinichi said, jabbing and pulling back fast.

Akai caught his wrists. “I’m serious, Shinichi. If you get in trouble and you have to use this, don’t pull your punches.” He looked strangely solemn—like the single-minded FBI agent Shinichi had met all that time ago, not the man who snuck him a contraband chocolate sprinkle donut that morning even though Rei was making breakfast. Shinichi felt Akai’s thumbs pressing into his arteries, the blood pumping hard under his grip. “They’re going to be stronger than you. You have to be ruthless.”

Shinichi made a face. “What about just being smarter?”

Akai’s mouth quirked up. “Smart is never your problem.”

“So this is where you disappeared off to.” Shinichi turned to see Rei coming down the basement stairs. He leaned back against the stairwell, arms folded loose and easy over his cactus apron. “Fix your stance, Shinichi. You’re putting too much weight on your front foot.”

“And bend your knees,” Akai added, ruffling his hair.

“We can be done,” Shinichi volunteered, shaking off Akai’s hand and inching back toward the text alert light blinking on his phone.

Rei stripped off his apron and sweater and stepped onto the mats. “No need. This is a great opportunity. Here—did he show you how to break a choke hold yet?”

Rei was usually good for getting Shinichi out of anything he didn’t want to do. Unfortunately, self-defense class was the first thing Akai had done all week that Rei approved of. Shinichi even caught him smiling at the back of Akai’s head while Shinichi practiced stomping on his instep.

Still, it was Rei. Shinichi would have been downright concerned if he didn’t find something to criticize.

“Don’t bother with that one,” Rei broke in, when Akai started showing him how to pinch the pressure point between the thumb and forefinger. “A thumb lock is unnecessarily complicated.”

Akai let Shinichi go and stood up. “It’s useful,” he insisted.

Rei scoffed, jabbing a finger into Akai’s FBI shirt. “It’s outdated. And almost impossible to use in a real-time situation. I doubt even you—”

Akai cut him off by executing a perfect thumb bar and hurling Rei over his shoulder. They hit the mats with a slap—Rei flat on his back and Akai pinning him with his knees, his free hand cradling the back of Rei’s head.

Rei gaped at him. Shinichi could see the vein throbbing in his forehead—but he was pretty sure Rei’s cheeks were a little flushed too.

Akai smirked. “Guess it still works.”

Rei’s mouth twisted into a scowl. He shoved Akai’s chest. “Asshole. Get off me. What is that supposed to prove?”

Before Akai could answer, Rei flipped them and swiveled his legs to pin Akai to the floor, the arm bar across his throat a little too tight for a friendly sparring session. Akai coughed, tapping the mat.

Rei let him go and disentangled their legs, pushing his bangs out of his face. “There,” he said, throwing Shinichi a victorious smile. “That’s a technique you can actually use.”

Akai’s chuckle was a little winded. “Not until he grows a few feet.”

“My phone’s ringing,” Shinichi said loudly, snagging his silent phone off the bench press and hightailing it up the stairs before Akai could call him on the lie. It had been exactly thirty-one minutes—he’d paid his dues. And whatever bizarre form of bickering or sparring or flirting that was, Shinichi didn’t think they needed an audience.

A car door slamming snapped him out of it. Shinichi shook his head, forcing the memory away. His body still felt like sludge, but he focused on the important part, arranging his limbs in a slump and turning his bloody cheek up toward the hinge of the trunk.

They’re going to underestimate you. Use that.

Footsteps at the back of the car. He heard the trunk creak open—then Knight’s voice, low and menacing.

“Hey, brat. Get out.”

Shinichi didn’t move. He made his breathing too fast on purpose, hyperventilating a little with his eyes squeezed shut. Knight shoved his shoulder—then he backed up, cursing.

“Shit. There’s something wrong with him.”

Shinichi heard fast, small feet moving toward him—Bishop. Not her, he thought, hoped as hard as he could. But the arms that seized him were rough, carelessly jerking him up and almost bashing his head into the trunk latch.

Knight. Good. Shinichi owed him for that split lip anyway.

“I think he passed out or something. I told you he was useless!”

Shinichi waited until he felt Knight’s face hovering close over his. Then he surged up and smashed the heel of his palm into his nose.

There was a crunch. Knight’s head snapped back. Shinichi saw a spray of blood—then he was falling, tumbling out of Knight’s arms onto the concrete as the man clutched his broken nose. Shinichi landed hard on his knees. He scrambled up, running and skidding under the car, his wet socks slapping as he raced for the shutter.

Bishop was shouting somewhere behind him. “Conan, don’t! Don’t run!”

Rook lurched around the car. Shinichi dodged his outstretched arms and hammered his fist down right above the kneecap, onto the peroneal nerve, like Akai had shown him. The man dropped to the ground, clutching his numb leg.

Be ruthless.

He was almost to the shutter. Shinichi’s heart was pounding so loud in his ears he could barely see straight. The rain made the city lights a blur. All he had to do was get outside, get outside and then Akai—Rei—

Something plowed into his stomach. Shinichi choked—then he was hurtling backward, slamming into the tire of the sedan and crumpling in a heap. His glasses skidded across the floor. Shinichi coughed into his jacket sleeve, struggling to get a breath. He didn’t think anything was broken. Just a blow to the solar plexus—just his lungs stuttering inside of him like they were about to collapse. His throat was so tight he felt like he was breathing through a cocktail straw. He slumped onto his stomach and tried to blink away the black spots dancing in front of his eyes.

Boots on the concrete. Black lace-ups with inch-thick soles. The ones that had kicked him into the tire. He watched them crunch down on the fragile stems of his glasses, right through the transmitter.

“Can’t trust you to do anything, can I, Rosie?” a woman’s voice said.

Rosie? Shinichi struggled to lift his head. Then that heavy black boot smashed down in the center of his back, and pain ripped through him, slamming him to the floor. The rough concrete cut into his chin. Shinichi tried to wriggle away and cried out as the heel twisted against his spine. Through wet eyes he caught a glimpse of her in the fractured lenses of his glasses: a woman in a fitted wool coat the dark scarlet of a bloodstain.

Someone moved in front of him—Bishop, tugging the woman in the red coat away. The pressure vanished as that awful boot lifted off his back.

“Stop it, Reina. He’s just a kid. He got scared. KN shouldn’t have shoved him in the trunk. I can handle him—I promise.”

Her voice was tense and desperate. The woman tapped her foot. “And he can solve the code? Get us what we need?”

Bishop was nodding—too hard, too fast. “Yes. I’m positive. Just give him a chance.”

Though his head felt like a sloshing fishbowl, Shinichi tried to hold onto all the tiny pieces that threatened to slip away. The woman had called Bishop Rosie. Her real name? Maybe this was someone who knew her before the criminal operation—someone for whom that name came first, automatically. And the woman in red...

Reina.

That could be a name, too. But reina meant something else in Spanish. Shinichi had a feeling he’d just met the queen.

The shriek of grinding metal filled the garage. Shinichi twisted his head and watched through flickering eyelashes as the shutter creaked down, the night and the rain and the boats and the city lights erased by that tarnished metal door.

Akai’s voice in his head, muted. Make the first hit count. You may not get a second one.

His ribs felt like crackling glass. Every image came to him through long gaps of black. Rook staggering to his feet. Knight’s bloody face above him, rippling with hate. Bishop—Rosie—looking at him with wide, scared eyes. And those heavy black boots twisting on his broken glasses as Reina turned on heel, every footstep like a spike in his pounding head.

“Get him inside,” she said, stalking away. “No more screw-ups.”

Shinichi closed his eyes. And then listened to the bang of the shutter slamming closed, a sound he felt all the way down to his bones.

Chapter Text

7.

Rei leaned against the wall of the darkened check cashing joint, out of sight of the surveillance camera up the street. The rain had picked up—a miserable, icy drizzle that dripped off the awning above him and clung to the hood pulled up over his distinctive blond hair. He dropped his head back against the plate-glass window, cataloguing all the night’s sharp details. The glare of taillights on the wet road. The stench of exhaust fumes and fog from the sewer grate. The bark of ugly laughter from the group of three men lingering just a block up the road, the embers of their cigarettes gleaming out of the dark alcove they’d ducked into to light up.

Akai’s low voice crackled through his earpiece.

“Target at sixty meters. Wait for him to come to you.”

Rei tipped his chin to study the third level of the parking garage about a hundred meters to his left. In spite of the dark and the rain, he imagined he could just make out the nose of Akai’s rifle poking over the tailgate of a black pickup truck, Akai lying on his stomach in the truck bed with his scope fixed on Rei. It didn’t bother him as much as he’d expected. He had a lot of experience being in Akai’s crosshairs.

Before hitting the sixth district, they’d made a brief stop to change cars. The white Mazda was too conspicuous—Rei didn’t want to be recognized in this part of town, not when he wasn’t here on Organization business. He didn’t know whose F-150 Akai had commandeered, but it smelled suspiciously of long stakeouts. And barbeque potato chips.

Rei rolled his shoulders, itchy to move. “You snipers are far too comfortable just waiting around,” he muttered.

Akai’s breath huffed against the earpiece. A chuckle? Or was that supposed to be a reprimand? “I think you’ve kicked in enough doors for one night.”

Rei turned his head, not interested in meeting those green eyes even with so much space between them.

They’d spent the last four hours combing the sixth district for any leads on the White Rabbit criminals. They hadn’t gotten to use much of Akai’s arsenal—as tempted as Rei was to go right for the C-4, blowing things up was a good way to get a hostage killed, not to mention draw attention to himself. But his foot could get through most doors just as well as explosives, given the right incentive.

He couldn’t use Bourbon’s sources, but that didn’t stop him from knowing what he knew—which restaurants were legitimate and which had smoky gambling dens in the basement, which low-level grunts could be counted on to talk if he broke the right rib, which pawn shop sold illegal guns out of the back room and what pistol’s barrel could wedge through the mail slot. Since Akai was legally dead and none of Rei’s aliases had a good reason to be kicking the shit out of the sixth district lowlifes, they’d had to be careful not to make a cameo on anybody’s security tape. But Rei wasn’t in the mood to be careful.

For the most part, Akai had let him lead. But they’d gotten into it after the last place, when Rei slipped around a corner without checking it and right into the path of some hired muscle. In the car afterward, while he zipped into a hooded jacket not spattered with someone else’s blood, Akai accused him of being reckless. Rei snapped back that it only seemed reckless to him because he clearly didn’t care whether they found Shinichi or not.

They hadn’t talked much after that.

Rei blew out a short breath. Akai just didn’t get it. Every minute, their leads were getting colder. So far, they’d only come up with scraps. Everyone seemed to know that some high-intensity procurement operation had picked up and moved recently, vanished out of the sixth district. No one knew where they’d gone, though, and no one was really looking. No one except Rei.

He had one last lead—a black market dealer he’d crossed paths with a few times, a man named Okuda who didn’t seem to care where his merchandise came from, or what ugly things his next customer would do with it. He hadn’t been hard to find. Okuda always played a few rounds of baccarat under the dim sum shop before slouching into the hostess club where he drank for free. Four years undercover had taught Rei that most criminals were lazy and predictable. Except for the ones like Gin, who wasn’t above shooting someone because he didn’t like their haircut.

This interrogation was riskier, because Okuda had met Organization operative Bourbon face to face. But Rei could handle it. And he wasn’t interested in Akai’s opinion—on that or anything else.

The men were moving again. He could see their cigarettes coming toward him, just a whiff of acrid, high-end tobacco hitting his nose. Rei wiped a spray of raindrops off his cheek and stepped away from the wall—then pulled back as Akai’s voice broke over the radio.

“Hold up. Black and whites on your six.”

Rei turned his back to the wailing sirens, swallowing a bitter chuckle. Same irritating Americanisms. Same low, gravelly voice in his ear. This whole night had been so damn familiar, nostalgic to a time and place he never wanted to think about again. All those missions for the Organization: Bourbon taking point, Rye on tactical, and Scotch, their spotter, who should have been tucked up in one of the blacked-out hotel windows across the street, watching for a sting. But Hiro was in a darker place than this.

The police cars rushed by, blue and red lights flashing.

“Shit,” Akai cursed in his ear. Rei saw it at the same time. Okuda and his cohorts had ducked into an alley, out of sight of the patrol cars.

Should he wait for them to come out? But what if they took an alternate route and he lost them in the web of dark streets?

Rei clenched his fists. No. They had wasted too much time on this already. He wasn’t backing off now. He clocked the empty street behind him and watched the police cars veer out of sight. Then he jogged for the alleyway, the cold rain stinging his face.

Akai’s voice broke in, sharper this time. “Don’t. I can’t cover you in the alley.”

“I never needed you to cover me in the first place,” Rei growled. Then he surged around the corner, fists up.

He caught the first man in the throat. His body hit the dumpster with a bang. Okuda staggered away, fumbling with his Magnum—but Rei was already under his arm, locking the elbow and driving the blade of his foot into Okuda’s kneecap. The clean snap echoed off the cinderblock walls. Okuda dropped like an anchor, screaming and clutching at his leg. All the little bones in that joint that were only meant to bend one way.

“Fucker! What do you want?”

He’d lost one. Rei whipped around, but the man was already in his face, swinging wildly. Something glinted on his tattooed fist. Brass knuckles.

Rei blocked, not quite in time. The knuckles caught him above the eyebrow—a glancing blow, just close enough to kiss his orbital socket. Rei felt the skin split, pain singing through his head. His hood flew off as his back hit the wall.

The man’s eyes narrowed. Rei didn’t give him a second to think about it. He lunged in close and snapped his knuckles against the bastard’s temple, locked an arm around his thick neck and smashed his knee into the femoral nerve in his thigh. The leg crumpled, numb. The man hit the wet pavement and Rei went down with him, leaning all his weight into the choke hold with his eyes fixed on the stylized dragon claws tattooed around the man’s neck. He didn’t let go until the body slumped to the ground.

Rei got to his feet, steadying himself against the dumpster. His head was pounding like a drum, but he was fine, barely even bleeding. He flipped his hood up to hide his face again. It had only been off for a second. He wondered what the man had caught through the rain—a flash of blue eyes, maybe, hair that looked bleached. Hopefully waking up in a greasy puddle would be more memorable.

Okuda was still moving, trying to crawl away through the trash and sputtering cigarettes. Rei dropped and pressed one knee into the middle of his back, right over his kidney. He cocked the Beretta next to Okuda’s ear.

“Tell me what I want to know, and that’s as bad as it gets tonight,” he hissed.

Footsteps at his back. Rei glanced over his shoulder as Akai appeared in the mouth of the alley, breathing hard, his handgun gleaming from the rain. He must have run all the way from the garage. His gaze darted between the three bodies and then settled on Rei’s face, on the streak of blood he could feel slicking down his cheek.

Rei wiped it away with his sleeve. “Like I said, I don’t need you.”

The tight line of Akai’s mouth said he had an opinion about that, too.

Half an hour later, Rei leaned forward in the truck’s passenger seat, taping butterfly bandages across the cut on his forehead. The bleeding had stopped, but the skin was puffy and swollen in the visor mirror. He winced as he pressed the edges of the wound together and the bandage stuck to the soft hairs of his eyebrow. He’d be getting a complimentary eyebrow thinning with his brand-new shiner. He glanced at the convenience store across the parking lot, where Akai had disappeared, looking for something that would work as a makeshift ice pack.

Shadows moved along the sidewalk—people tucked into umbrellas with their heads down. The crackle of the police scanner filled the car with background static. A burglary. A carjacking. A fistfight outside a Haido City bar. Nothing important. Nothing that got him any closer to Shinichi.

Okuda’s intel had been a little more complete than the others, but it was just as useless. Facedown in the gutter, he’d confessed everything he knew: that the group Rei thought of as the White Rabbits had showed up about six months ago, recruiting from the local riffraff and making inquiries about components only people like Okuda could get their hands on. Components for gas-dispersal chemical weapons. It fit with the timeline of Brunswick’s disappearance, and also confirmed Rei’s theory that if the FBI could do their damn jobs and keep their molecular chemists in the country, none of this would be happening.

But Okuda couldn’t tell him what he really wanted to know. Who they were. Where they’d gone. What they wanted with a brilliant seven-year-old kid. Whether they wanted it badly enough to keep him alive.

Rei closed his eyes to shut out the blur of the dispatcher’s voice. He had a tension headache from too many hours in the car. Or maybe it was from the brass knuckles that had split his face open. It didn’t make much difference.

Shinichi was still out there. And Rei had nothing. Not one digit of a license plate. Not one vague physical description or slurred syllable of a name. He’d turned the sixth district upside down, and he had nothing to show for it but a black eye. He wanted to bang his skull against the headrest, but it already hurt too much.

The car door creaked open. Akai slid in and slammed it shut, brushing the rain off the sleeves of his leather coat.

Despite his throbbing eyebrow, Rei managed a scowl. “You’re not a dog. Don’t shake all over whoever’s car this is.”

Akai’s lips twitched. “It’s Camel’s. He’s not fussy.” Unlike you, Rei could practically hear him tacking on in his head. The next time there wasn’t a stick shift between them, Rei’s elbow would make it clear to Akai’s intestines exactly how he felt about that.

“It’s not being fussy. It’s common decency. None of which you have, obviously,” Rei shot back. But it came out sort of half-hearted. He was too exhausted to deal with Akai tonight—and honestly, he cared a lot less if this was Camel’s car.

He smoothed the last butterfly bandage down. A sharp sting of pain rolled through his head, the jagged half-inch cut staring back at him from the rearview mirror.

Akai studied his face. “Should put a few stitches in that,” he said, and though the suggestion was casual, Rei could hear the little thread of tension in his voice, that same emotion—whatever it was—that had kept him glancing over at Rei every thirty seconds as they hightailed it out of the sixth district. Rei assumed he was just sulking.

“It’ll heal,” he bit out.

“It’ll scar,” Akai corrected him.

Rei lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “What’s one more?” It was a little late for either of them to worry about that.

The rain was coming down in sheets, drumming on the top of the car. All the lights in the distance had turned to soft haloes, and he could hear more sirens, a distant wail speeding toward downtown. Rei wondered if any of those sirens were because of him.

Akai let out a soft breath. Then something cold touched Rei’s cheek—a can of black coffee, Akai’s preferred brand. Rei hadn’t seen one since their fight, when Akai tried to retreat to the attic and Rei had individually drained every can and dragged him back down. It had only been a few weeks, but it felt like a decade ago.

Akai pressed it gently to his swollen eye socket. “You could use a little sleep,” he said.

Rei refrained from eviscerating him for that idiotic suggestion, only because the iced coffee actually felt pretty decent against his throbbing head.

“Any word from Starling?” he asked instead, wrapping his fingers around the can.

Akai handed it over with a shake of his head. “Not yet. They’ll call us as soon as they have the autopsy reports.”

Pooling their leads, the PSB and the FBI field team had found Dr. Jay Brunswick exactly where most people turned up when they’d been missing this long: as a John Doe in a forgotten coroner’s file, pulled out of the river under the Ryogoku Bridge with his steering wheel through his forehead. About three months ago, his car had gone off a bridge and wasn’t found for four days. Rei doubted they’d find anything noteworthy in the reports—the body had already been cremated, which meant no fingerprints, no forensics, no way to know if it was an accident or a murder. But one thing was crystal clear. Brunswick had died less than a week before the White Rabbit recruitment posters started popping up all over Beika City. That wasn’t a coincidence.

Rei pressed the can harder against his puffy eye. Brunswick was dead. The White Rabbits needed something, and they thought they could get it from Shinichi. Which meant that as usual, this was half Shinichi’s fault for being so damn clever. The other half Rei was blaming on Akai, for general FBI incompetence.

Akai seemed oblivious to Rei’s glare on the back of his head. He dug in the plastic bag at his feet, holding out a container of mushy yakisoba.

“Hungry? We missed dinner.”

Rei snorted. “Pass,” he said, eyeing the orange discount sticker on the lid. He wasn’t a broke academy cadet anymore—he didn’t eat expired junk food off the last-chance rack. Of course, anything from a conbini would be a poor substitute for what he should have had for dinner: bruschetta and eggplant parmesan, and a few bites of Shinichi’s asiago tortellini, since he insisted on ordering an adult entrée even though he couldn’t finish it.

Still, he couldn’t help surreptitiously watching Akai in the rearview mirror as he cracked open the clamshell container, his lanky body silent and loose in the driver’s seat. Not looking at Rei. Not reassuring him or trying to cheer him up. But not leaving him, either.

It almost felt like Akai was trying to be there for him, in his own twisted, socially inept way. Which was impossible, obviously. Since every thoughtful bone in his body had been surgically removed to make room for his ego.

No one had ever aggravated Rei the way Akai did. Because he was a pompous American with no respect for jurisdiction, who liked to invite himself along on family outings and put the cheese grater back in the wrong cabinet every time like it was a holy crusade. But also because Rei honestly couldn’t figure him out. He kept expecting Akai to be this smug, judgmental ass, and half the time he just…wasn’t.

It left him off balance, flustered. Not a feeling Rei liked.

Akai took one bite of the yakisoba and grimaced. Rei smirked as he closed the package again and slid it onto the dashboard.

“Serves you right for trying to eat something like that,” he said. Or trying to eat at all, when Shinichi was missing.

Akai shook his head. “I used to eat this kind of thing all the time. Guess someone’s been spoiling me,” he added, throwing Rei a genuine little smile.

Rei hadn’t expected that. He coughed and cleared his throat, dodging eye contact behind the rim of the coffee can. “Well, don’t read into it. It’s not about you.”

Akai laughed. The sound startled Rei, because he heard it so rarely—not just a huff of breath, but a low, deep chuckle that rumbled in Akai’s chest, filling up the truck cab.

“What?” Rei asked sourly. “What’s so funny?”

Akai dug out a second can of black coffee and popped it open, still chuckling. “The idea that I could ever think it was about me.”

Well now he was just making Rei sound inconsiderate. He jabbed his finger into Akai’s shoulder. “I’m just setting the record straight. If we didn’t have Shinichi—”

Rei breathed in sharp. His heart crunched like an empty can.

If we didn’t have Shinichi, I’d happily let you drink yourself to death. That’s all he was going to say.

But they didn’t have Shinichi. There was no Shinichi tucked up in the backseat, texting at Mach 2 and shooting them flat looks over his bag of chocolate-covered coffee beans. For all he knew, there was no Shinichi anywhere.

What if they were already too late?

Rei ground his knuckles into his thigh. How could he be this useless? And how could he have let Shinichi get so wrapped up in some case without even really knowing the details? He stared out the windshield, sinking into the memory that had been torturing him since the rain kicked up—a stormy night tucked away in the Kudous’ library, Shinichi curled up on the couch beside him and soft footsteps lingering in the hall outside.

Akai was hovering. Or stalking. Or something. Rei caught a flash of sharp green eyes through the half-open door, the third or fourth time Akai had needed something out of his room and just happened to pause on that particular floorboard.

“Just come in already,” Rei said, the words gentler than Akai deserved because he was trying to be quiet. Shinichi’s eyes were closed, his hair rucked up and his glasses askew. Rei could feel him breathing soft and steady, his small body warm against the November chill.

Akai slipped into the library, leaned back against a towering bookshelf. “Are you going to sit there all night just because he fell asleep on your shoulder?” he asked, his voice amused.

“It’s more like my elbow,” Rei conceded. If Shinichi slid down any farther, it’d be his lap. But at least he could be sure Shinichi wouldn’t have a telltale triangular bruise on his face in the morning. Unlike the pile of books he usually slumped over, Rei didn’t have sharp corners.

With his free hand, he hooked his finger under the stem of Shinichi’s glasses and pulled them delicately off his face. Shinichi was a light sleeper, but luckily, Rei was highly trained for sensitive covert ops just like this one.

Somehow, with Akai staring at him, he felt strangely vulnerable, like he had to justify this. Rei pushed his hair out of his face. “He didn’t get much sleep last night. He was up until three looking at old maps of the subway tunnels.”

Akai’s eyes glittered. “You didn’t get much sleep, either, since you were checking on him every twenty minutes.”

Rei clicked his tongue. Stalking—as anticipated. But it was hard to stay angry when Shinichi was so adorable, his cheek smooshed against Rei’s sweater and his lips moving silently like he was solving murders even in his dreams.

He folded Conan’s small glasses in one hand and nudged them onto the cluttered coffee table, next to everything they’d needed for the last few hours. Rei’s phone, and two cups of lukewarm hot chocolate, each with a splash of espresso. A crumpled scrap of paper on which Shinichi had written Alice in the Underground and underlined it with a hard scribble. A blue porcelain plate with grape stems and a little less than half of a sweet curry salad sandwich—Shinichi had offered to split it with him, and Rei had done his best to get it down, but that sticky gluey molasses-sweet curry filling was a hard swallow.

Akai raised an eyebrow at Rei’s socked feet, wedged in between three editions of Alice Through the Looking Glass. Rei lifted his chin defiantly. If that asshole wanted to say anything about him propping his feet up on Yukiko’s antique coffee table, then he could just say it. Poirot had been packed for his entire eight-hour shift, and Rei’s feet hurt.

And there was the soft tick of the clock, and the patter of the rain, and the whisper of the heat clicking on deeper in the house. And there was Shinichi, leaning into him, looking utterly peaceful for the first time Rei could remember.

Rei breathed out, glancing up at Akai through his bangs. “He’s…he’s never done this before. Trusted me like this.” He braced himself for the mocking look on Akai’s face. But he didn’t look mocking. Actually, he looked almost…fond.

Akai bent down to snag Rei’s phone off the table and silence it. He snapped a picture of them before Rei could arrange his face—he didn’t know what expression he was making in that photo, why the curve of Akai’s mouth had gone soft looking at them. Akai draped one of the plush woven blankets over them and turned off all but the warm reading lamp. Then he leaned close, the tips of his fingers threading a lock of hair behind Rei’s ear. So carefully, like he was disengaging a mercury switch.

Rei looked down. Just to check on Shinichi. Not because he was dodging those warm green eyes.

“What do you think it is?” he asked. “The White Rabbit code he’s been working on?”

Akai shook his head. “I don’t know. But whatever it is, he can handle it.”

But he’d been wrong. They’d both been so wrong.

Rei had been trying to convince himself he was the right person for this. Trying twice as hard, ever since the neighbor two doors down and self-appointed head of the busybody housewives’ squad caught Shinichi limping home after another skateboard accident and accused them of being terrible parents. Rei hadn’t wanted to hear that from someone who spent most of her time mothering her Etsy channel. But she was right. This kind of thing, this didn’t happen to a kid whose guardians were actually looking out for him.

Bottom line, Rei hadn’t been paying enough attention to what Shinichi was doing. And Shinichi hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him.

Rei banged his fist against the window, hard enough that Akai’s head jerked around. Was Shinichi out here somewhere, in the cold and the dark, wondering why Rei hadn’t come for him? Or had he given up on them already?

And what was he supposed to make of Shinichi’s last text message? Sent to Akai. Not to him.

Zugzwang. At its simplest, it meant any move was a loss. Or to avoid a loss required a major concession.

“Rei?”

It hurt how soft Akai’s voice was. Rei uncurled his fist, scraped his hand back through his hair.

“What do you think he meant by that text?”

Akai rubbed his thumb across his pointer finger, like he did when he was craving a cigarette. “Two possibilities. They want something he can’t give them. Or coming for him is too big a risk.” He let out a long breath. “Knowing Shinichi…he’s probably saying save yourself.”

Rei clenched his jaw. That’s what he’d been thinking too. But that couldn’t be right, because that would mean after everything—everything they’d been through—that kid still didn’t trust them. To care enough. To figure it the fuck out and come get him. As his friends. As his guardians. As…whatever they were to each other.

He was out of his head, heart in pieces, and he didn’t even know what he was to this kid.

Every time Rei thought he was getting somewhere, Shinichi pulled back. Maybe Rei really was asking too much of him, trying to make this more than it was.

Rei’s mouth twisted. “I need some air,” he spat, wrenching himself out of the truck.

The rain went right through his thin jacket. He chucked Akai’s disgusting yakisoba into the convenience store trash can—then he spun around and kicked the whole thing over, the dented metal can hitting the pavement with a clang. Wrappers and receipts toppled out into a puddle. The yakisoba cracked open and splattered his shoes. Rei wondered if the people eating it knew how much it looked like brain matter. He pressed his back to the wet brick wall, turned his face up to the rain.

He had been here before. He had lost so many people. And he just couldn’t do it again.

He heard the car door snap closed. Rei looked out at the foggy city lights, at Akai’s silhouette slouching toward him with his hands in his pockets. The conbini cashier had stepped out under the awning—some kid in a Tohto University sweatshirt, watching Rei with a slack-faced mix of curiosity and boredom. Akai raised a hand and waved him off—the universal sign for This guy’s my problem. He wondered if the sniper ever regretted that. Rei closed his eyes as Akai stooped down, kicking the soggy wrappers together and righting the trash can.

Shrapnel. Sometimes Rei thought that’s all he was anymore. A cluster of bomb fragments lodged inside a body, just waiting to go off.

He could count on one hand all of the people he’d ever loved, and every single one of them was dead. And now he cared about someone again, in a way he’d sworn never to do. Someone he couldn’t lose. But he could. Rei could lose him so easily.

The rain vanished from his face. He opened his eyes to find Akai leaning into the wall, his arm braced against the bricks over Rei’s head. Rei couldn’t read his expression at all—the thin line of his lips, the sad, intense look in those jade green eyes. The rain pooled in the folds of his leather jacket. Akai pulled off his baseball cap and dropped it onto Rei’s head, tugged the brim down low to shield his face.

“Careful. You’ll start bleeding again,” he said.

Rei tried to laugh and choked on it. He’d never stopped bleeding. How was he supposed to start?

He just wanted to shake Shinichi sometimes—because life was long and hard and complicated, and you lost a lot of things you could never get back. But not at seventeen. At seventeen, you were still supposed to have everything.

Rei tipped his head back against the wall. “He’s a kid,” he said bitterly. “He should know he can trust people to come through for him. He doesn’t have to handle everything himself.”

Akai studied him, his body dark against the shining city lights. Then he fitted his hand around Rei’s neck and pulled him in, pressed his forehead down on his damp shoulder.

“Maybe if we’re lucky, he’ll realize that someday,” Akai murmured into his ear. “And that he’s not alone anymore.”

“Mm.” The sound caught in Rei’s throat, not a word, not even a thought really. He felt hollowed out, exhausted. But Akai was warm and steady against him, so steady, his coat under Rei’s cheek soft with the smell of worn leather and rain and coffee and tobacco and aftershave. Rei leaned into him and just didn’t think about it for a minute.

The cashier was still watching from the sidewalk when they separated and headed for the car. Akai dug in his pocket and held out a wad of crumpled bills. “This never happened,” he said sharply.

The kid pocketed the money, unimpressed. “He kicked over a trash can, dude. Not like it’s a felony.”

It was the first thing in hours that almost made Rei smile.

They sat for a long time in the parking lot with the engine off, just listening to the low drone of the police scanner, the dispatcher’s voice crackling over the line—all the bad things happening to other people tonight.

Rei sank into the headrest, swallowed hard. “If we…if we get him back, I’m never letting him out of the house again.”

He was exaggerating. He knew it, and Akai knew it. But he didn’t say it—just anchored his warm hand on Rei’s knee and squeezed.

“Sounds about right.”

8.

They’re in the rusted-out shell of a warehouse, black except for the broken skylights and the dying stars, the first time the man Akai will come to know as Furuya Rei falls asleep on his shoulder.

He’s just Bourbon then—a criminal fixer with a fast car and a razor-blade smile. Akai doesn’t really know much about him except that he can reload while he runs. They’ve been on mission for eighteen hours already, their first solo together, and everything went sideways at hour twelve when the local gangs who control the ports decided to cut them out of the deal with a 50-caliber machine gun.

He’s lost his phone, but he’s not out of bullets yet, so this is still just DEFCON 2 as far as Akai’s concerned. Not so bad that Gin’s ordered the old warehouse they’re crouching in firebombed by helicopter, erasing them in between sips of his martini. But not so good that it couldn’t still go that way.

They’re three floors up, sitting with their backs pressed together to watch the exits. The air smells like copper shavings, black oil, and blood. Akai’s got the muzzle of his gun trained on the blown-out window to the roof, his finger itchy on the trigger, counting bullets in his head. Then all at once there’s something heavy slumped into his shoulder, Bourbon’s body suddenly dead weight against his back.

Akai cranes his head around. He can’t see much from this position—just a slice of Bourbon’s sallow face, his eyelashes soft against his cheeks. His head is tipped back against Akai’s shoulder, heavy and still, his honey-blond hair rucked up against the ragged black coat. Akai’s sort of charmed to see he hasn’t let go of his gun.

It’s not like him. The man Akai knows as Bourbon is cautious—so cautious Akai thought he’d get a switchblade in the neck the first time he asked Bourbon’s drink order. It makes him wonder what Bourbon has to hide, though he’s in no position to go digging into other people’s secrets.

But exhaustion and blood loss have gotten the better of him. Bourbon caught a ricochet in the shoulder in the last shootout, thick blood clotted around the rip in his jacket’s torn sleeve. It missed the brachial artery, won’t kill him unless this place gives him an infection. Akai can feel his breath against his neck, shallow and uneven, the heat of his body too warm through their coats.

Akai’s had an eye on him since before he got his codename, when a firebrand with striking blond hair started making waves among the lower ranks, aiming for a come-up. They’ve never talked much, except the night of his initiation—and even then, there wasn’t really any talking. Just hunching in his car tweezing splinters of bamboo out from under Bourbon’s nails while the man dumped Akai’s flask of whiskey into his mouth and bitched at him to be gentler, and Akai pretended he couldn’t feel those brutalized fingers shaking.

He has the sense, already, that Bourbon hates him. He’s in worse shape than Akai realized, to let his guard down like this.

Akai should shake him awake. It’s what Organization dog Rye would do. It’s what Bourbon would do, if their positions were reversed. But in the fractured reflection in the dented air vent, the watery image rippling on polished aluminum, he looks so tired—his limbs boneless, his face gray with exhaustion and pain.

So, he just doesn’t. Akai braces his feet against a rusted conveyor belt and the wall, trains one gun on the window and the other on the door reflected in the vent, and then leans into Bourbon’s weight, until the balance is just right. Bourbon’s head lolls in the curve of his shoulder, his hot forehead slumped against Akai’s neck.

It’s only two hours until dawn, when the arrival of the dockworkers will have the gang rats scurrying back into their holes. Akai can hold them off until then.

He hears a groan, a knife of an inhale. Bourbon jerks like he’s trying to wrestle himself awake.

“Rye…”

His name’s cracked, half a whisper. Akai doubts he’s even aware enough to know where he is. He answers anyway, the words out before he even thinks them.

“You’re all right. Sleep. I’ve got you.”

Bourbon’s breath hitches. But he doesn’t say anything else, just relaxes against Akai’s shoulder and sinks back into unconsciousness.

Akai’s lips quirk in a dry smile. This man against his back is a criminal, a murderer for profit. Not someone he owes any favors. But right now, he’s just a body, shaky and raw. A partner. There are certain things Akai doesn’t let happen to his partners.

He can always kill him later, if he has to.

In all the time he’s undercover in the Organization, it never happens again. But Akai remembers it longer than he should, after Scotch dies and everything goes bad between them—the weight of Rei’s head sinking onto his shoulder, and the way it felt to hold him up like that.

The rain was dying off.

Akai leaned back in the driver’s seat and tipped the last dregs of his canned coffee into his mouth, flicking an unlit cigarette in his fingers. The cold was settling into the Ford—it seeped through the window and slid down the back of his neck, prickling his skin under his dark button-down. He’d slung his jacket over the backseat to dry, next to Rei’s soaked-through hoodie and the brown coat speckled with blood splatter. Apparently they’d needed more clothes.

He rolled the empty can in his palm. The weight felt wrong—Akai had gotten used to handing his canned coffee over before he hit the bottom, sharing the last few sips with Shinichi any time Rei couldn’t catch him at it. All night, he’d been turning his head, looking for someone who wasn’t there.

Even in Tokyo, the roads got quiet at three in the morning. They’d parked the truck half a mile from MPD headquarters, just in case someone came up with something for them to do. Akai wasn’t expecting much. The last time he’d checked in with Jodie, around midnight, she sounded dead tired, one long yawn away from falling asleep on top of the phone.

“There’s nothing else you can do tonight, Shuu. Go home—get some sleep. I’m sure you both need it.”

Akai hadn’t bothered answering that. And he hadn’t even mentioned it to Rei. He understood without asking. Going home felt too much like giving up.

Though he’d done a lot of it, Akai wasn’t really the right size to sleep in a car. He grimaced and stretched his long legs out as far as he could under the steering column, trying not to kick anything. His knees were sore, his neck stiff from too many hours pressed against the headrest. He should turn the key and let the heat run for a few minutes, like he’d been doing on and off all night. But he couldn’t move that far without waking the man beside him.

Rei had refused to lean his seat back and take a nap—so when the night got the better of him and he fell asleep, he fell asleep leaning into Akai’s shoulder, slumped over in his black turtleneck. He’d be pissed about it when he woke up, but Akai could have warned him head wounds always went that way. And he didn’t mind. Briefly, he wondered if he could ease Rei down into his lap, give his neck a break from that crooked angle.

Then again, it was probably safer that Rei not wake up that close to his femoral artery.

His lips twitched, remembering another night not long ago. Watching Rei and Shinichi drowse in the backseat of Subaru’s red hatchback, taking the corners slow because he had never seen Shinichi in an oversize tourist sweater and he liked the unguarded look on Rei’s face.

It had happened once before, too—a long time ago, on a bad night when he and Rei were just strangers undercover. Though he didn’t think Rei remembered that.

In the glow of the streetlight, Akai looked him over. Exhausted. Frayed. His face tight with worry and pain. And that ugly cut from the blow he’d taken to the head—a hit he shouldn’t have taken, because he was too good to screw up like that. But Rei had gone looking for a fight.

He knew he was watching Rei spin out, his fear and his anger eating away at him. But he didn’t know what to do about it. It was Shinichi who could make Rei smile even on the worst days. All Akai could do was try to steady him, in whatever small ways he’d allow.

He wondered if Shinichi even realized how much he meant to Rei, and what happened to Rei without him.

Akai blew out a long breath, worrying the cigarette. That man slumped against the wet brick wall—bristling and bruised, shattering knees for information and running on anger like it was gasoline. Rei wasn’t supposed to be that man anymore.

He was the man dropping into the chair across from Akai’s at the breakfast table, shooting him that little vixen smirk as he snaked the current events page of the newspaper right out of his hands. Lecturing him with a fistful of kumquats because Akai’d forgotten Shinichi’s sour cream and onion potato chips when he did the grocery shopping. Leaning playfully around the library door and beckoning because he’d made Shinichi’s favorite cinnamon coffee cake. That’s who Rei was always meant to be.

And the boy scrambling down from the bookcase ladder to watch a cooking competition show with Rei and stuff himself on coffee cake, his grin always a little surprised, a little shy—that was Shinichi. That was where they belonged: right together, shoulder to shoulder in that warm house, berating some amateur chef who should have known to blind bake his quiche crust and playfighting over the texts that kept dinging on Shinichi’s phone.

And Akai…he just wanted to live in their light for a little while longer. He wasn’t ready for it to be over.

It wasn’t like him to get so attached. But he couldn’t help it. He had known Rei a long time, but he was just meeting this new Rei, the one who’d looked up at him with such a tenuous, hopeful smile when Shinichi fell asleep against his shoulder.

And there was still so much he hadn’t learned about Shinichi—this kid who was damn sharp, and too good at getting out of trouble with those big blue eyes. And so gun shy, reluctant to trust even the smallest gestures.

With nothing else to distract him, he stared out at the rain and toyed with the fraying cigarette, remembering the suspicious look on Shinichi’s face when he found Akai waiting for him outside the elementary school with an umbrella barely a week ago.

It had been raining then, too—fat drops striking the puddles and turning the gutter to mud. Grade-school kids in raincoats streamed around them, heading for the waiting line of cars. Shinichi seemed surprised to see him. He blinked three times, like he was trying to reboot his brain’s operating system, and then looked Akai up and down, shooting him a flat look.

“Are we fleeing the country?” he asked.

The question was sarcastic, but how casually he said it made Akai wonder if the Kudous had ever collected him for just that reason. He gave the boy one of Subaru’s bland smiles. “You didn’t take an umbrella this morning. I thought I’d walk you home.”

Shinichi crossed his arms over his blue-and-white striped coat, the one Rei had bought him for Edogawa Conan’s birthday a month ago. “You know, I’m not actually seven. I am capable of walking home alone.”

Akai didn’t doubt it. He was less sure Shinichi was capable of walking home without getting distracted by the quantity of change in someone’s pocket and plunging into a puddle up to his knees. But he just smiled and said, “I know.”

They took the longer way back, through the shopping district, moving between the awnings and listening to the rush of cars on the wet road. Akai chuckled at the sight of those tiny red sneakers walking next to his, dodging the puddles, and at the satisfied little smirk on Shinichi’s face when he got around a tricky one without holding onto Akai’s outstretched hand.

Akai shook his head. Rei kept insisting, usually while armed with the spatula, that he needed to get it through his preternaturally thick skull that Shinichi was still a kid. But Rei forgot that sometimes Shinichi needed to be pointlessly obstinate and independent, too—like all teenagers were.

At the red lights, he caught Shinichi looking up at him over the tops of his glasses. He could see the boy turning this over in his head like a puzzle cube, trying to find a way it made sense for Akai to come pick him up for something as minor as a rainstorm. It was charming and a little sad to watch such a brilliant mind struggle to come to the simplest explanation: that Akai had come because he wanted to.

Akai didn’t know the Kudous that well, but well enough to guess where some of Shinichi’s reluctance came from. Though they’d been living together for three months now, Shinichi reminded him of someone testing a very high wire, hesitant to trust his weight to it. He wondered sometimes what it was going to take, to prove to the boy that they weren’t going anywhere.

It was after they’d stopped into the artisan bakery Rei liked so much, the boy carrying the paper bag of warm chocolate croissants and cinnamon twists (because Akai was carrying the umbrella), that Shinichi asked his question. The question Akai couldn’t get out of his head now, staring out the rainy windshield into a very dark night.

“Targeted abductions?” Akai repeated. The rain had gotten worse, and they took refuge under the awning of a little stationery shop, the display window bursting with birthday and anniversary cards. Akai folded the umbrella and leaned back against the wall. “I don’t know the exact recovery rates, but I could ask. Is this for a case?”

Shinichi shrugged, tucking the crinkly paper bag close to his chest. “Not exactly. I was thinking about it after that call you got yesterday—the Dr. Brunswick case.”

“Ah.” Akai frowned absently, slipping his hands into his pockets. “They’re a little better than random abductions, since most of those are crimes of opportunity. But the recovery rates are still pretty dismal. In any targeted abduction, the perpetrator has a motive to keep the hostage alive until they get what they want. After that…it tends to end badly.”

“Too much risk of being identified if they let the victim go,” Shinichi guessed, pressing his finger to his chin.

“Seems like a sound theory. And it doesn’t help that it’s usually personal.” Akai nudged the boy’s shoulder with his knee. “You should ask Rei about it. The PSB should have case lists and statistics.” At Shinichi’s squirrelly look, he added, “Something you don’t want him to know?”

Shinichi scrubbed his wet bangs out of his face. “No. Just—he’s busy. You’re both busy. I don’t want to bother him.”

“You’re never bothering him,” Akai promised. Unlike himself, who seemed to bother Rei just by inhabiting the same hemisphere. “There’s nothing he’d rather do than spend an hour with you.”

Shinichi didn’t reply. But Akai recognized that look—his body hunched into his coat, holding the pastries too tight and looking down and away. Getting ready to retreat again, from whatever had spooked him.

Akai sighed. Reached out and dragged his hand through the boy’s hair, tipped his head up until Shinichi was looking at him. “You’re just hurting him, pushing him away.”

“I’m not trying to push him away,” Shinichi protested. Then his voice got quiet, so quiet Akai could barely hear it over the rain. “I’m just…trying not to ask for too much.”

Akai crouched all the way down until he and Shinichi were eye to eye. It was a long way. He peered over the tops of Subaru’s wire frames.

“You can’t ask too much, Shinichi—not from us,” he said softly. “And it would mean a lot to him to know he had your trust. More than you can probably imagine.”

Shinichi’s eyes widened. Then there was a blaring horn behind them—a familiar white Mazda screeching up to the curb, splashing water all the way to their feet.

“It’s a literal monsoon out here,” Rei shouted, glaring at Akai through the open window. “Why wouldn’t you take your car?”

Akai glanced back at Shinichi, one eyebrow crooked. Then they ran for the car, Akai holding his jacket up over Shinichi and the pastries until he slipped into the backseat.

The boy was quiet on the ride home. Which wasn’t a problem, since Rei had enough to say for both of them. But as Akai was helping him get off his shoes in the entryway—the wet sneakers had vacuum-sucked to his feet—Shinichi looked up at him through his hair and said, “Thanks for coming to get me.”

Akai didn’t know the full dimensions of what those words meant to him. He kept it simple. “Anytime,” he said. “Though in the future, I guess I’ll drive.”

Shinichi smirked, rolled his eyes. “He doesn’t hate you as much as you think, you know.”

Akai was spared disagreeing with him, as Rei chose that moment to reappear in the doorway and peg him in the head with a damp towel.

Akai coughed. “He hides it well.”

A passing truck threw a spatter of water against the windows. Akai crumpled the cigarette in his fist. All his years of training, of undercover work—this was where it all got him? Hunched in a rainy car waiting on a phone call, knowing by the time somebody picked up the phone and notified the families it was always too late?

He was supposed to be better than this.

The sound had bothered Rei. He moaned low in his throat, turning his face into the seam of Akai’s shoulder. Akai dropped the shredded cigarette into his coffee can.

He couldn’t let anything happen to that kid. Not now—now that he’d seen them both as they were supposed to be. Shinichi wouldn’t be just another failed recovery in a PSB file. Akai had made a promise, when he moved into that house—to watch over them, to keep them safe. He’d broken a few promises in his life, but this wasn’t going to be one of them.

Rei jerked against him and breathed in sharply, struggling to open his eyes. “Akai? Damn. Did I…”

“You’re fine,” Akai told him. “Go back to sleep.”

Rei’s eyelids were so heavy, exhausted blue eyes unfocused as they roved over his face. His head rolled back against the seat. “I didn’t…mm, I meant to…”

Akai wrapped an arm around him, tucked Rei’s face against the hollow of his collar bone. “It’s fine, Rei. Put your head down. I’ve got you.”

Rei mumbled something into his shirt, something he couldn’t decipher but just assumed was an insult. Akai’s mouth quirked into a smile. He’d let Rei chew him out in the morning, for daring to pull him in like this. Right now, this was what he needed—and maybe what Rei needed, even if he couldn’t ask for it.

He turned his head to rest his cheek against Rei’s hair, closed his eyes to try for a little sleep himself. They’d both need it, for whatever came next.

Chapter Text

9.

Shinichi forced down another bite of soggy Cup Ramen, wincing as the broth hit the back of his throat. He wasn’t usually that picky about what he ate, but even among instant ramens, this one was pretty nauseating—too salty, and the water barely lukewarm, so the hard little flecks of freeze-dried corn and carrots were tasteless as cardboard and stuck in his teeth.

It had been a long time since he’d eaten something like this. When they’d first moved into the Kudou house, Rei had gone on a crusade, throwing out all the expired food and putting the cheap, easy stuff like instant noodles on a high pantry shelf where Shinichi couldn’t reach it without a lot more effort than he was willing to put in. It was annoying at first. But he’d gotten used to it—perching on a high stool swinging his feet, sharing stories from his old cases while Rei handed him the tasting spoon and tried to guess which estranged sibling had killed the rest for the inheritance.

Rei liked all his stories except the close calls. No matter how complicated the recipe was, somehow he always had a hand free to pinch Shinichi’s cheek if he told one of the ones where he went off a bridge on his skateboard or almost got crushed by a semi-truck. Shinichi didn’t see what the big deal was. Obviously, it had all worked out, or he wouldn’t be sitting there choking on croquette while Rei threatened to snap his skateboard in half.

Shinichi’s chest squeezed as he stared down at the Styrofoam cup half full of rubbery noodles. He missed ramen the way Rei made it, with thick, rich broth and fried tofu and just the right ratio of soy sauce to miso paste. Or maybe he just missed Rei.

Still he made himself swallow another bite. He couldn’t be sure when they’d feed him again. He had to keep his strength up—just in case.

Shinichi didn’t really know where he was. But he’d caught a few identifying details as Bishop carried him out of the garage, holding him a little too tight. Bare metal rafters and crumbling sheetrock. Assembly belts, like in an old factory. A vast open space stripped to the studs. He breathed in the tang of copper and sawdust, and a slick, queasy smell he thought was gun oil. Bodies moved quickly under fluorescent lights, packing something into wooden crates. Probably assault rifles.

Whoever the White Rabbits were, they had a lot of heavy firepower.

Through the dim light, Shinichi looked around at the little room that housed his cell. Well, not a cell exactly. A Faraday cage—four walls and a ceiling of metal screening, the gaps in the fence so narrow he could barely wiggle his tiny arm through. The soft hum of a generator told him there was electrical current moving through it. He didn’t have a cell phone, or a tracker or anything, but if he did, it’d be useless in here. Someone knew what they were doing.

They hadn’t left him much. The cup ramen and a foil packet of cold strawberry Pop Tarts, stuff they could have grabbed at any gas station. A lumpy futon gray with sweat stains. A dented plastic water bottle that tasted like it’d been filled from a moldy tap. And a computer with just one thing on it—the new code they had brought him here to solve.

It hadn’t taken long. Unscrambled, the code became a formula. Shinichi didn’t understand how all the elements formed compounds, but he recognized the periodic nomenclature of the one in the middle: BrCN, cyanogen bromide. A pseudohalogen used in chemical weapons. He remembered it from an entry from his dad’s old case files: a mass casualty event at an office afterparty, the guests sprayed with hydrogen cyanide gas. Twenty-one people killed in under two minutes.

Shinichi had solved Akai’s case for him. Dr. Jay Brunswick definitely hadn’t been abducted, because someone formulating chemical weapons at gunpoint didn’t give his creation an affectionate nickname. But there was no mistaking that’s what was written in the first line of the code, when he deciphered it: my little blue boa.

Boa. As in boa constrictor. Probably for the way the veins of the neck constricted and bulged under the effects of cyanide gas, before all the rest of it. Convulsions. Pulmonary edema. Hemorrhage. Death.

Brunswick had been working with the White Rabbits, developing a lethal formula for sale or manufacture—until something went wrong, and he either fled or was killed. But he’d left all of his work in code, so they’d put out the White Rabbit puzzles to find someone who could break it.

Well, Shinichi had done that. And he knew what he had to do next.

He couldn’t give them the formula. There’d be no reason to keep him alive after that, and the harm they could do with it outweighed any tiny sliver of a chance he could save his own life. But without knowing which part of the formula was critical, he couldn’t risk parceling out little pieces of it. He couldn’t even stall very long.

The deal’s in thirty-six hours. That’s what Rook had said. And through the thin drywall, Shinichi thought he’d heard Reina’s strained voice barking: Set up a meeting. Take them what we have, tell them we’re working on the rest. The White Rabbits were desperate to get that formula and give it to whoever they’d made a deal with—probably a criminal syndicate as bad or worse than themselves.

Shinichi had no illusions about what would happen to him. If they got too close to the thirty-six-hour deadline, things were going to get bad. Maybe really bad. He didn’t think he’d break under torture, but he couldn’t really know for sure. And even if he died without giving up the formula, they’d find someone to decode it eventually. Or find another Brunswick and start from scratch.

Shinichi had to do better than that. He had to stop them—for good.

He didn’t have much, but he had Conan. That was a role he could play. When they came to check on him in the morning, he’d throw a fit worthy of a real seven-year-old. He was cold—he was hungry—he was scared—he couldn’t be locked up in here one second longer. He’d drop the name of the project, convince them he could decipher the rest of the code if they just put up with him a little longer.

Whatever it took, he’d get them to take him out one more time. And then he’d find a way to get a message to Rei and Akai. Not to save him. But to do something so much more important—track down the White Rabbits and stop a lot of people from dying.

Shinichi swallowed one last bite and pushed the cup aside. That was all he could do. It would have to be enough.

The night had gotten quiet. He could hear the distant squeak of shoes on the bare concrete floor, someone walking the watch, the cough of a heavy smoker, a soft, distant beeping like fingers on a security keypad. A seven-digit code. Shinichi braced his chin on his knees, staring out through the narrow gaps in the bars. His ribs were still creaky from slamming into the tire, and he was pretty sure he had a bruise on his back in the shape of Reina’s boot tread. Rei would love that. Not that Rei was ever going to see it.

There was a stain on the wall, about halfway up. Through the glint of the Faraday cage, if he squinted just right, he could almost pretend it was a patch of stars through a cracked window. The way he usually left his bedroom window cracked at the Kudou house, just enough to feel the night breeze on his face.

Rei hadn’t asked about the window. Shinichi had caught him looking at it with a faint, thoughtful frown—it was winter, after all—but when Shinichi opened it, he didn’t shut it. Rei was good like that. Sometimes he seemed to understand everything without even having to ask.

Shinichi rested his swollen cheek against the rough fabric of his jeans, inhaling the smell of soil and grease and dust—and underneath it all, the faint scent of lavender laundry detergent. Akai had bought gallons of it, after Rei dumped all the cheap powdered stuff into the garbage disposal because he refused to live in a multimillion-dollar mansion but go to work smelling like mothballs.

Shinichi’s lips curved into a tiny smile, remembering them like that—framed against the kitchen window, Rei’s finger jabbing relentlessly into Akai’s sweatshirt like he’d carve the grocery list right into his chest. And Akai glancing over at Shinichi, like he was seeking tactical support—but Shinichi was kind of on Rei’s side with this one.

It wasn’t like he’d honestly expected to be rescued. He knew how bad his odds were. It was just, some tiny part of him had been hoping that maybe, in spite of all the ways he’d screwed this up, there was the smallest chance Rei and Akai would come for him. But that chance disintegrated once he passed his message.

Of course they’d do everything they could. But as agents, their top priority had to be preventing a greater loss of life. Rei and Akai would chase the White Rabbits, and somebody else would be sent after Shinichi. Probably not in time.

It was fine. It was…how it had to be. Shinichi had always known someday they’d have to choose between him and their important jobs, and what choice they would make. They’d both sacrificed so many things to do what was right, what had to be done. Shinichi was just going to be one more of those things.

So why was his heart aching, squeezing so tight he thought it might pop?

It was too cold to sleep. But he crawled onto the lumpy futon anyway, curling up on his side to be careful of his bruises and dreaming of where he could have been right now—in his own bed, listening to Akai’s slow and steady footsteps as he walked the hallway one more time before settling in for the night, pausing for a few seconds at Shinichi’s door as if listening to him breathe.

And in the morning, Christmas shopping—choking on the mountains of fake pine-scented candles and trying on ridiculous corny sweaters as long as Rei would too, though he was drawing the line at matching pajamas. Hiding behind Akai’s leg when Santa’s elves tried to lure him in for a picture. Watching Rei wind himself up at the holiday display outside the food court, even though no one not faking it for a cover felt the need to kiss under the mistletoe at the mall. Drinking his contraband espresso Frappuccino while Rei shoved all the bags at Akai, and Akai took them without complaint because he and Rei were in some sort of wordless tug-of-war about whether carrying the bags made him like the family butler or just a gentleman. Which Shinichi wasn’t wading into.

And then his favorite part of every shopping trip: stopping at the bookstore, the big one downtown with two-story shelves, the one he could live in if they’d just install a coffee shop. Wandering every shelf of the mystery section and completely losing track of time, until a warm hand landed on his head, and he looked up over his stack of books and watched that crooked little smile break over Rei’s face, the one that meant—well, Shinichi wasn’t sure, wasn’t trying to assume anything, but sometimes he thought it meant Rei was…happy. That Shinichi was there. That they were there together.

Shinichi had never really thought of himself as a lonely person. There was a difference between being lonely and being alone, and he didn’t have any problem with the second one. Or that was what he’d thought, until he started life as Conan.

So few people knew who he really was. Even the ones who did, like Hattori, he kept a lot from. His Shinichi friends wouldn’t understand who he was anymore, and his Conan friends didn’t know him either. He was two people, and they were both so alone.

As much as he missed being in his real body, there weren’t that many people he really missed—no soccer friends or classmates who left a gaping hole in his life. And Shinichi started to wonder if maybe he’d been wrong, thinking the fact that he didn’t really miss anyone meant he wasn’t lonely. Maybe it meant he was lonelier than he’d ever imagined.

But that was before Rei. Before Akai. Before his life started over again—but better this time.

At least if he died now, he wouldn’t have to die as Conan. There would be two people who remembered him the way he really was, the way he wanted to be.

He did regret a few things—the things he’d said no to. He wished he’d made cookies, when Rei asked him a few weeks ago. Whatever he’d been working on had seemed so important. But now he just wanted it back: the time, and the memory, and Rei’s playful expression as he leaned over the couch, beckoning with an alligator oven mitt. Not disappointed yet.

Shinichi closed his eyes and lost himself in little memories. Like the day he came home from school to find Rei standing over Akai’s motionless body on the couch with the most terrifying look on his face. That was definitely Organization operative Bourbon standing in the living room, looking like he was about to murder Akai, or maybe already had—until he plucked the remote delicately from between Akai’s hip and the arm of the couch, flipping his hair and turning to Shinichi with a victorious little smirk.

“Perfect FBI agent, my ass.”

Or the afternoon they’d spent up to their elbows in the storage closet looking for Shinichi’s vaccination records, which were of course in the one box on the very top shelf that even Akai couldn’t reach without a ladder. Akai had shot Shinichi a look that told him they were thinking the same thing. They waited until the moment Rei turned his back, railing about irresponsible filing systems that didn’t account for medical emergencies—then Akai hoisted Shinichi up, balanced on one hand on his tiptoes, and caught him and the box before Rei spun around.

Rei had scowled at all three of them, box included. But house rules were you couldn’t prosecute what you couldn’t prove.

Or the first Saturday after they’d moved in, when Rei corralled them all in the kitchen armed with an oversize family calendar and two markers: one normal, one with invisible UV ink. “I need two birthdays from everyone, your real one and your fake one,” he announced. Rei flipped Akai’s wallet open and pulled out Okiya Subaru’s license, then made a disgusted sound in his throat. “Next week. Fantastic.”

Shinichi had caught Rei writing other dates on there in invisible ink, too, dates he didn’t mention. Shinichi had a feeling they were anniversaries. Not like the anniversary marked by a bloody heart that looked like it’d been ripped out of someone’s chest: Amuro and Subaru’s wedding in July. These were real anniversaries—dates he carried like scars. And had marked on the calendar, because maybe he was hoping Akai would get out the blacklight and see them, and know something without him having to say it. Akai felt like a precipice Rei kept pushing himself up to the edge of, but couldn’t bring himself to step off.

What would happen to them, if Shinichi didn’t make it back? Would they be okay? Or would they just fracture again?

Shinichi’s breath felt shaky. Probably from the kick to the ribs. He tucked his face into the elbow of his jacket and didn’t think about whether his cheeks were a little wet.

At least he got to have them for a little while.

Akai, who lifted Shinichi up to lay a blanket over Rei when the blond fell asleep on the breakfast bar, and let Shinichi ride on his shoulders at the park, answering his questions about what caliber weapon it’d take to hit the flowerpots on the surrounding balconies.

Who looked downright pained any time Shinichi begged Don’t tell Rei, but always kept his secrets anyway.

Who dropped down next to him on the couch and seamlessly stretched out his newspaper to hide Shinichi’s second cup of coffee after he stole the last swallow out of the pot, and then gave him a long, sly wink as Rei sailed out of the room again none the wiser.

And Rei—who must have rearranged the pots and reflective kitchen appliances in some way Shinichi couldn’t figure out, because he always knew when Shinichi was trying to sneak past him to grab a snack too close to dinner.

Who was maybe a little short-tempered for someone so heavily armed, but could be so patient sometimes. Like when Shinichi realized he’d completely zoned out in the middle of a conversation and looked up to find Rei just watching him with a fond, exasperated smile—not offended, or annoyed, or any of the things he was used to.

Who let Shinichi fall asleep next to him in the library and then just stayed, all the way until he woke up the next morning, groggy and with his mouth tasting like curry paste. Rei who smiled at him and ruffled his bedhead, and pretended all day that he didn’t have an awful crick in his neck from sleeping upright.

He missed them. Which meant it was real. And that was something to hold onto, even if this was how it had to end.

“’Night, Rei, Akai,” he whispered into his coat.

He tried to tell himself that three months with them was more than he’d ever hoped for. But he couldn’t fight the bitter thought that he’d just had so little time.

10.

They were finishing cheap, greasy breakfast sandwiches on a park bench, the first thing Akai had convinced Rei to choke down in fourteen hours, when his phone finally rang. It was Jodie, her voice a little breathless.

“You’d better get over here, Shuu. We may have had a sighting.”

“Send me the address. We’ll be there in…” Akai had to break off to jog for the car, because Rei was already sliding into the driver’s seat, more than ready to leave him behind. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

Rei took the drive fast, even for him. Akai was surprised they got across the city without a convoy of mini patrol cars on their bumper—Shukichi’s girl must not be on shift yet. He could feel Rei practically vibrating in the driver’s seat, glaring at the red lights like he was debating tossing the rest of the traffic laws out the window along with the speed limit.

“Rei. He’s alive,” he said over the thrum of the idling engine. Reached out to rest a hand on Rei’s, white-knuckled on the wheel, but Rei jerked away, slammed the gas pedal down as the light changed.

“He was alive an hour ago,” he ground out. “That’s not the same thing.”

It felt strange to slip into his Subaru disguise still wearing his own clothes. Akai borrowed Rei’s scarf to hide the choker, barely finished with his hair before they lurched up to the curb outside a small café with a faded bluebird on the peeling sign. The neighborhood was on the rougher side. The liquor store across the street was dark with graffiti tags, and car glass shimmered in the gutter, proof of a tire iron going through somebody’s window. The kind of place a couple strangers with a kidnapped kid wouldn’t draw attention.

Jodie was waiting for them, her long tan coat buttoned to her chin against the wind. She offered a strained smile as Akai stepped out of the truck.

“Well, you look like death warmed over.”

“Thought I always looked like that,” Akai said, sliding on the wire-frame glasses. He wondered if she could tell the closest he’d come to a shower was shaving in a gas station sink.

“Not as much lately,” Jodie replied. Her eyes narrowed as Rei stepped up onto the sidewalk to join them. His mocha-lens sunglasses and Akai’s black baseball cap barely took the edge off his whopping black eye. “Whoa. What happened there?”

“Nothing worth talking about,” Rei replied, every word polished and sharp as a razor blade. “Shinichi was here?”

Jodie shot Akai a quick, wary look. “Seems like it. Come on—we’ve got the surveillance footage cued up in my car.”

The morning chill cut through Akai’s jacket, still damp from last night’s rain. As they crossed the lot, he glanced through the half-drawn blinds on the café windows. Just a few families having breakfast, a hostess drinking off a hangover, a man at the counter slowly shredding a pile of lottery tickets. No smashed cash register or bullet holes, or anything else that explained why someone had gone combing through the security footage.

“How’d you find this place?” he asked. “A robbery or something?”

Jodie gave a wry smile. “Funny story. A police officer passed out while having breakfast here this morning. No injuries or anaphylaxis, but he went out like a light—just dropped in the middle of his pancakes like he was fast asleep. Sound familiar?”

Rei swallowed. “His watch dart.”

Akai’s lips quirked up. “Smart kid.” A medical emergency with an officer down under suspicious circumstances would be enough to ensure someone looked through the security cam footage, without the risk of tipping off his kidnappers.

Glass shards crackled under Rei’s heel as he stalked toward Jodie’s silver coupe. Akai could see he was wound tight, already bracing himself for whatever they’d see in the footage. He trusted Jodie to have given them a heads up, if it was bad. But he didn’t trust Rei not to take the little things hard right now.

Jodie opened the door and ushered them into the cramped backseat. “Tight squeeze—get cozy,” she said, throwing Akai a wink as she shut the door behind them. He swallowed a dry laugh. She knew him well enough, after all this time, to know he didn’t want sympathy or theatrics.

Camel was newer.

“Akai—and Furuya—listen, I’m so sorry about—” He froze at Akai’s sharp look—or maybe it was Rei’s glare, hot enough to melt right through the windshield. Camel clamped his mouth shut, half twisted around in the front seat. “That is…I mean…I brought the Mazda with me. It’s parked half a mile from here, in a public garage.”

Rei’s face said if Camel had dared to touch his car in any other circumstances, he’d be figuring out which organ to take in retribution. Today he had bigger problems. “If you put a single scratch on it, I’ll throw you off the pier,” he bit out as Jodie slid into the backseat on his other side.

“Play nice, everyone. Here we go.” She reached across Rei and woke the laptop balanced on the center console, clicked around to pull up a grainy video clip. “The camera’s framed to hit the door and the cash register, so we don’t have much. But when MPD showed up to take statements, there were three people who’d refused to stay for questioning—a woman and two men with a kid.” She hit play and leaned back, arms crossed. “Recognize anybody?”

Akai bent close. He could feel Rei’s pulse pounding too fast, his fist clenched against his thigh as four figures stepped into the frame. A woman with brown hair and darting, nervous eyes. A man with a bad burn scar across his bare scalp and a nose that looked freshly broken. Another with ropes of tattoos down his forearms, who never lifted his right hand from his jacket pocket. He held a child’s arm too tight—a child with his hood pulled up, nothing on his feet but dirty socks. Rei’s breath hitched as the kid turned toward the camera.

Shinichi looked all right. Well, not all right—Akai could see the ugly purple bruise around his swollen lip, the sleepless circles under his eyes. His shoes were gone, his jacket streaked with grime and his jeans torn over his skinned-up knees. But he was breathing. Walking. None of his fingers snapped or severed. It was better than Akai had imagined, in the darkest moments last night.

Rei’s fingernails digging into his arm told him it wasn’t good enough.

Shinichi’s face was shadowed by the hood, his eyes locked on the man holding tight to his shoulder. Akai had never seen the boy with an expression like that, wary and alert, his face gray and his eyes too wide. He looked like a lot of kids Akai had seen on grainy security videos. A lot of them for the last time.

“Here’s where the cop goes down,” Jodie said.

A ripple of movement went through the diner crowd, all heads turning toward the policeman collapsing off screen. The man’s grip turned vise tight on Shinichi’s arm. Shinichi winced—then he turned his chin and looked right at the camera, one hand furtively pointing at the man above him and the other pressed tight against the fabric of his coat. Akai swallowed, staring back into those bloodshot blue eyes.

Suddenly Shinichi jerked, went still. A startle of fear crossed his face. It took Akai a second to clock the gun muzzle pressed to the fabric of the man’s coat, digging into the boy’s ribs.

“Asshole,” Rei hissed. Akai could feel those nails cutting grooves into his skin.

He squinted at the man who had Shinichi at gunpoint. Sunburned with blond stubble; tan bomber jacket; thick-soled tactical boots, ladder laced. This was Shinichi’s jack from the chalk drawing. An American vet, as he’d suspected.

“Running him down?” he asked, cutting a look at Jodie.

She nodded. “We’re checking facial recognition in the FBI, PSB, and military databases…it might take a while, but the tattoos will help. We’re also working on a vehicle profile from surveillance cameras on the road and reflections in the windows.”

People on the video were in a panic, the staff rushing for the downed officer, the hostess dialing 119. The White Rabbit criminals bent close, muttering urgently to each other. Like too many security cameras, this one had no sound, so Akai could only guess what they were disagreeing about. Then the woman hauled Shinichi up into her arms, and they slipped out the door.

The video stopped. Akai glanced down at the runtime.  Barely forty-five seconds—that was all they had to work with. But Shinichi must have thought it’d be enough, because he’d used up his only tranq dart to get them this.

He rubbed his forehead, wishing he could scrape a hand through his hair without screwing up his wig. “Run it again, Jodie. Half speed.”

It was easier to watch clinically the second time. The relief that Shinichi was still roughly in one piece, the twinge of seeing him scared and scratched up, the slow roiling anger for his bruised face and the hand clenched around his tiny shoulder—those things were still in him, but they felt dulled down, a background buzz of static he could ignore. Akai knew from experience he’d feel it all later—every scrap of worry and fear, and pain, if there was any of that to feel. But for now, he could keep his head clear. Focused. All of those distractions at a critical distance.

Not Rei. Rei was feeling it all right now, wearing it all on his face. Gripping Akai’s wrist with bruising force and flinching as the gun pressed into Shinichi’s coat again. Akai could see his eyes flickering, staring at the video like he was memorizing every frame.

He wished he could tell Rei to skip this part. He had the urge to drop an arm over his shoulders, soothe a hand down the back of his neck. But he already knew Rei wouldn’t tolerate that, not now.

He forced himself to focus on the footage. The woman had no tattoos or unusual piercings, nothing identifiable. The bald man’s broken nose didn’t look like it’d been professionally set, so there wouldn’t be a clinic record to track down. Were the knees of Shinichi’s jeans damp? Hard to tell with the low resolution.

A flicker of movement caught his eye. Akai leaned in, squinting at Shinichi’s left hand, the one pressed to his stomach. Rei saw it at the same time.

“What’s he doing with his other hand?” Rei asked. “Sign language?”

Shinichi flattened his palm against his coat, his thumb pointed up and his fingers tucked under to make a right angle. Then he flipped his hand over, palm up, and then back again, rigidly holding his fingers in the same shape. On any other kid, Akai might have thought it was just a fidget, a nervous tic. But Shinichi wasn’t just any kid, and he didn’t do anything by accident.

Shinichi flipped his hand over again. Akai blinked. He recognized this. It was something they’d discussed on a long stakeout, almost a month ago. The memory hit him like a hollow point—jotting down license plates in the Mustang, digging in the center console for change for the vending machine and deconstructing Rei’s barbecue sandwiches to get the pickles out. Shinichi’s tiny feet propped up on the armrest as he swiveled his hand into different L shapes.

“It’s the Chappe system,” Akai said softly.

Rei jerked around, his eyebrows pinched. “The what?”

Akai shook his head. “It’s an optical telegraph code based on semaphores—rotating arms, like clock hands, that can be manipulated to send messages. Developed during the French Revolution.” He couldn’t help a small smirk at the incredulous look on Jodie’s face. Camel just looked like he was still deciphering a few of those words.

“How do you know about it?” Jodie demanded.

Akai shrugged. “Shinichi,” he said simply. “We discussed it as an alternative to Morse code, or in a scenario where security’s critical. It’s not as well-known as Morse code, so it’s less likely to be intercepted. Problem is, the Chappe alphabet is complex. Most of the shapes are too complicated to make with one hand, or too easy to misinterpret. But the numbers are simple.” He tilted the laptop toward him, his thumb hovering next to the grainy image of Shinichi’s face. “That was his solution—use the numbers as a stopgap, to point to the location of a more detailed message.”

He caught a flicker of hurt across Rei’s face, the look he got any time Akai and Shinichi had shared something he missed. Akai watched him swallow it down. “So?” Rei asked tersely. “What’s he saying?”

He hadn’t brushed up on the Chappe alphabet in a few weeks, but it was still in his head. Akai frowned at the video. “Just two numbers over and over, eight and zero. Not sure what that points to.”

“It’s too short to be a first responder code,” Jodie confirmed. “And if he left a message, it has to be in the restaurant.”

“They both have circles,” Camel offered, sounding unimpressed by his own idea. “Maybe he’s trying to lead you to something round?”

“It’s not the shape,” Rei said suddenly, his eyes sharp and certain as he twisted to look at Akai. “It’s the symmetry. On either axis, eight and zero are symmetrical.”

“He’s pointing to the mirror,” Akai realized, shoving himself out of the car.

The café smelled like fried eggs and cheap maple syrup, loud with clanging pans. Akai wasn’t thrilled about the burnt drip coffee the waitress poured him in a Styrofoam cup, but that and Subaru’s charming smile was a cheap price to pay for the bathroom key. He slid inside and locked the door. The mirror over the sink was tarnished, every inch of it scarred by graffiti carved in with people’s keys. Akai braced his hands on the sink, working down the graffiti line by line.

Then he spotted it, about midway up: sharp Chappe telegraph symbols, the grooves newer and shallower than anything else on the mirror. He wondered what Shinichi had used to scratch them in—a bottlecap, or a soda can tab maybe. Akai traced his thumb over the crooked zigzags. Numbers and letters mixed together—a license plate. Then a street name, a dead-end alley by the industrial dockyard. Four letters it took him a second to parse—BrCN, cyanogen bromide. Confirming Rei’s chemical weapons theory. And next to that, a word he recognized too well, because Shinichi had leaned forward and drawn it into the lint on the dashboard as an example.

Guns.

Akai exhaled slowly. With so little context, it was hard to tell if Shinichi was just warning them about the White Rabbits being weapons traffickers or trying to point at something specific. Either way, that wasn’t a good word to need.

The license plate, though. That would get them a vehicle—something to track, to search for on traffic cams. And maybe, if they got lucky, multiple sightings in one place. Somewhere the suspects kept coming back to; somewhere they could stash a kid out of sight. It wasn’t much. But it was more than they’d had all night.

Akai stared at himself through the scarred-up mirror. Imagined Shinichi kneeling in the damp sink, his elbow braced against the glass, and how hard he would have had to push to carve those marks, the grizzled edge of the bottlecap cutting into his small fingers. Probably wondering, as he did it, if Akai would even get his message, or if he’d forgotten that whole afternoon—comparing the Chappe system and the Dancing Men code, answering Shinichi’s hundred questions about the Sherlock Holmes Museum in London, and then throwing out that they should go there sometime, together, and watching the boy choke on a green M&M.

“Not interested?” Akai asked, when Shinichi finally washed down the little chunks of peanut with the last swallow of flat Coke.

“It’s not that.” Shinichi’s voice was a little hoarse, his eyes watery as they darted up at Akai. “It’s just…international travel. Isn’t that something you have to plan, like…pretty far out?”

Akai shrugged. “Next year, probably. Around New Year’s is the best time to go. Plenty of soccer games—fewer tourists.”

Shinichi looked down, fiddled with the crumpled-up receipt where they’d been recording all the silver convertibles. “I just…figured you’d both be on to other assignments by then. So there’d be no point anymore. For the cover.”

This kid and the cover. If Rei heard that, he’d pinch him again. But Akai just leaned back into the seat, lips curved in a slow smile. “Guess we’ll just have to go as friends, then,” he said, and crooked an eyebrow, silently challenging Shinichi to find fault with that.

Shinichi looked at his sneakers. Akai could see his mouth working, teeth sinking into his bottom lip as he bit down on a smile. Then he wrinkled his nose, his expression turning impish. “There’s only one problem. How are we going to get Rei on the plane? He hates soccer—and he’ll hate the food.”

Akai wondered if Shinichi knew Rei was always the first person he reached for, when he imagined the future. Or that Rei would follow him anywhere, no matter how bad the food was. It wasn’t important now. Akai smirked and sank into the headrest.

“Well, there’s always chloroform.”

The memory hit him a little harder than he was ready for. Akai pressed his palm flat against the jagged letters.

“We’re coming,” he said to the air.

Rei was waiting for him in the parking lot, leaned back against the wall staring at something on his phone. He shot Akai a withering look. “You better not have come back empty-handed, after showing off like that.”

Akai wasn’t sure when deciphering clues became showing off. Didn’t feel like an argument worth having. “License plate and a street down by the wharf,” he said, holding up the scrap of paper he’d translated Shinichi’s message onto. “I think he’s pointing us at a deal.”

Rei’s mouth twisted bitterly. “So he’s not telling us how to find him.”

His eyes dropped to his phone again, to a grainy video playing on the screen. The surveillance video, Akai realized. He was standing out here in the cold, watching those forty-five seconds over and over.

He understood it now, the look on Rei’s face. The same one he had worn in the warehouse, smashing his hand against the old boiler—terrified of what he could lose, and that he was the only one feeling that loss deep enough to bleed out from it.

Maybe Shinichi didn’t know where he was being kept. Or maybe Rei was right, and this was another zugzwang, his own rescue not Shinichi’s top priority. Right now, it didn’t matter. It didn’t change their next move.

“So we intercept the deal. Track them back to him. Or get someone to talk.” Akai sighed. “He gave us what he could, Rei. I’ve worked from a hell of a lot less.”

Rei stubbornly didn’t reply. Akai rubbed a hand across his forehead, tracked Jodie pacing at the far end of the lot and speaking quickly into her phone.

“The FBI’s pretty good with license plates. As soon as Jodie’s done, I’ll get her to—”

“I’ve got it,” Rei ground out, snatching the scrap of paper. “It’s not eighteenth-century French cryptography. I think I can handle a license plate.”

“Rei—” Akai started. But he was already gone, shouldering past Akai and stalking toward the white RX-7 pulling up to the curb with Camel behind the wheel.

Akai pinched the bridge of his nose. His no-sleep, no-coffee headache was only getting sharper. And so was Rei. When he got like this, desperate and angry, everyone became an enemy. Akai watched him walk away, still bruised from the last thing his anger bought him.

He had a bad feeling Shinichi’s time wasn’t the only thing running out fast.

Chapter Text

11.

This was taking too long.

Rei drummed his fingers against the Mazda’s steering wheel, staring out across the dark wharf. The icy December wind creaked in the boats anchored off the quay, lines snapping and the winter air churning with the smells of salt and exhaust. If he looked right, all he could see were warehouses and the hulking shapes of boats hauled out for maintenance. But to the left, he got a view of the city lights across the black water, the long curve of the E51 highway glistening under the stars.

It was nice. Romantic, almost. If he weren’t sitting next to Akai with a cold .45 pressed to his knee, every passing set of headlights making his trigger finger twitch.

A location and a license plate was all Shinichi had been able to get them. But a license plate was plenty, if you knew what to do with it. Which Rei did, actually, though Akai didn’t seem to know that. Hours of combing through traffic cam footage had given him a headache and a throb behind his swollen black eye—and a lot of shots of a dark gray Suzuki sedan with Shinjuku plates and a dent in the back fender casing this wharf in the last few days. Always at dusk. Always two men in the front, their faces a pale smear in the grainy footage.

He could see why the White Rabbits had scouted this place. It was the kind of place Rei might have scouted himself, with the Organization in mind. The quay was dead this time of night, the boathouse silent, the few streetlights either dark or shot out. The ideal spot for a clandestine drop.

So where the hell were they?

Dusk was ninety-six minutes ago. And so far, there was no gray sedan. No sign of whoever they were meeting. No little detective in a grit-streaked hoodie, waiting for a rescue.

Rei wasn’t actually expecting Shinichi to show up. But after sitting here for three hours, he expected something.

Akai didn’t seem concerned, slouched back in the passenger seat drinking what was left of Rei’s cold takeout coffee. But Akai could watch a surveillance video of someone shoving a gun up against his kid’s ribs without flinching, so Rei wasn’t interested in his take. He needed to get Shinichi back—for so many reasons—but also because he would kill to spend ten minutes with someone he didn’t want to stab with the plastic fork in the glove box.

Well. Actually. Akai had been surprisingly…tolerable last night, dealing with that trash can thing and not mocking Rei for falling asleep on his shoulder. But he was Akai. So he was sure to do something intolerable again any minute now.

Something glinted in the watery light. Akai’s silver wedding ring, still around his finger. Rei had taken his off hours ago—he usually ditched it when he wasn’t playing the lovestruck newlywed. Akai didn’t seem to. Rei wasn’t sure how to read that. Or why he’d been noticing it more often lately.

God, he needed out of this car. Rei dragged his nails through his hair, wincing as he caught the bandages over his eyebrow.  “This is useless. We can’t tail them back to Shinichi if they never show up.”

Akai shot him a look, one he’d gotten so many times in the last twenty-four hours Akai’s face should have stuck that way. But he tapped the wireless mic in his ear. “Jodie. Any sign of Snyder?”

Rei peered out at the wharf, hazy with shadows and fog rolling off the water. Starling and Camel were stationed about eight hundred meters away, outside of the dockyard but with clear sightlines of the possible escape routes.

“Not since you asked me five minutes ago. We’re not asleep over here.” Even through the tinny earpiece, Starling sounded exasperated. Rei assumed it’d been a long three hours for her too, with only Agent Camel for company.

Akai’s green eyes flicked back to Rei. “Thanks.” He clicked the earpiece off, took another sip of coffee. “They’ll be here. Shinichi wouldn’t waste his chance passing bad intel.”

Not bad intel. But not the intel Rei wanted, either. He scowled at the Styrofoam cup in Akai’s hand.

“Is this going to be your new thing? Stealing my coffee?” Not that he’d managed more than a few mouthfuls himself. Ever since Shinichi went missing, everything just tasted so bitter.

“You don’t like it when gets cold,” Akai said mildly.

“That doesn’t mean I want you to have it,” Rei grumbled. Which was a little petulant, maybe. But he’d been stuck with this asshole for twenty-four hours straight, and he’d only had four hours of sleep. His patience was ancient history.

Akai’s lips quirked up at the corners. “Not into an indirect kiss?” he asked.

Rei considered how many fingers he could break before Akai was useless as a sniper. He’d had to execute a less-indirect kiss two hours ago to chase off the nosy security guard. But that ruse was so common on stakeouts that it was practically standard operating procedure, so Akai had no grounds to look so smug about it.

“Not into how comfortable you’re getting stealing my coffee without worrying you’ll be shot,” Rei corrected. But the words came out a little tight, strained by a memory: Akai reaching over to snag Rei’s cappuccino while Shinichi stumbled to the breakfast table in flawless Saturday morning form, plaid pajamas and adorable bedhead, tripping over the pants that were just a little long for him and too out of it to realize he’d started cutting up Rei’s half-eaten blueberry waffles. And then his sheepish little smile when he almost toppled off his chair reaching for the London Times and put his elbow right in the fruit salad.

It was just yesterday morning. But it felt so brittle already. So far away.

Some of that must have shown on his face. Akai dropped his hand over Rei’s on the Glock, traced his thumb down his clenched fingers. “Rei. We’ll find him.”

“That’s what you keep telling me,” Rei muttered. But he didn’t shake Akai off. Because his fingers were cold from gripping the icy metal of the gun. Not for any other reason.

For once, the FBI hadn’t been totally useless. In less than two hours, James Black’s military contacts came up with a name for the man with tattoos: Arthur Snyder, an American ex-pat and former noncommissioned officer who’d been MIA, as far as the military was concerned, since he finished his last posting at Fort Buckner Army Base in Okinawa. Which was probably what gave him the idea to come crawling back to Japan and make trouble. Rei was looking forward to making him regret that.

They were still miserably short on leads for where the White Rabbits were keeping Shinichi. But Snyder’s name got them a lot of other things—military records, fingerprints, travel receipts, bank statements, known associates in Tokyo, Osaka, Chicago, Chang’an. The kinds of things an investigator salivated over. Kazami had certainly sounded ecstatic when he called to fill Rei in on how many kilos of C-4 they’d seized from a rented storage locker outside the train station. He had even dared to suggest the PSB could put somebody else on tailing the sedan—just a simple retrieval from here—while Rei took over the important part of the investigation.

The important part. As if this wasn’t the most important thing Rei could be doing. As if he’d ever trust it to anyone else.

He ground the pistol grip into his thigh. Shinichi had been alive, definitively alive, for forty-five seconds nine hours ago. Everything after that was a question mark. How badly did the White Rabbits need him? And how long before their patience ran out?

Rei’s nerves were shot, every muscle tight with the need to do something. But there was nothing to do except sit here and count down in his head.

Thirty-four hours since Shinichi’s pajama shirt met a bad end in the fruit salad, some sort of murder-suicide with a very juicy blackberry.

Thirty-one hours since Shinichi braced his small finger on the white king and pushed him over, checkmate. Since Rei snagged the last bite of green tea and strawberry roll cake and pushed himself off the living room floor to get ready for his shift, and mussed a hand through Shinichi’s hair just to make him grumble.

Twenty-five hours since Shinichi picked up the phone outside the abandoned warehouse, teased him about Christmas shopping, lied to him, hung up on him.

Twenty-four and a half hours since Shinichi’s last text, since Akai grabbed his hand across the restaurant table and the world twisted off its axis.

Nine hours since the last confirmation Shinichi was alive.

With his free hand, Rei dug his phone out of his pocket. Shinichi’s face stared back at him from the glowing screen—a clip from the surveillance footage, his cheek puffy and bruised. Wary. Scared. And something else. Something Rei didn’t like.

Akai’s hand tensed on his knee as he hit play.

He’d already watched it twenty-eight times. Rei wasn’t keeping track; the phone was, the view counter in the corner ticking up by one. Somehow it still socked him in the pit of his stomach every time: the moment Shinichi turned and looked right at the camera.

No. Not at the camera. At Rei. Because Shinichi had known Rei would be on the other side, watching this.

He didn’t look scared, or hopeful. He looked…desperate. Resigned. Rei couldn’t even read everything in his face. But the last expression he knew too well. Shinichi looking at him, at them, like it might be the last time.

It shouldn’t get to him like this. He’d seen people shot, tortured, their fingers broken one at a time before it ended with Gin’s Beretta. But this was just different. Worse. This wasn’t a dirty CEO with a briefcase of embezzled funds, an ex-con who’d thrown in with the local drug outfit for easy money, a witness begging not to be silenced.

This was Shinichi.

Who could be such a little scamp sometimes, ditching Rei at the end of the driveway if he got stuck talking to the neighbors, or getting that smug little grin on his face when Rei put Akai’s favorite brand of whiskey in the cart—but only under protest and because he had no particular preference.

Who was so stubborn about his cases Rei’d had to drive him all the way back to the movie theater once to confirm whether the popcorn attendant was scalping tickets on the side. (He was, but Rei didn’t find a crime of that magnitude worth being late for dinner.)

Who got distracted so easily that Rei had caught him lifting an empty spoon in and out of his cereal bowl one morning when he was utterly absorbed in the last pages of a Scythe Raker novel, and who walked into the laundry basket like he was magnetized to it no matter where Rei was folding.

Who sometimes snuck a look up at Rei like he was just checking, making sure he was still there. Who trusted him enough to fall asleep on his shoulder.

Shinichi giving up, saying goodbye to him through the shit unfocused lens of a cheap security camera.

Rei could feel Akai’s sharp eyes on his face. But Akai didn’t get it. He wasn’t obsessing. He was looking for something in Shinichi’s expression that he just couldn’t find. Something to prove Shinichi was still waiting for a rescue.

He gave us what he could. That’s what Akai had said. But every time he got to that look on Shinichi’s face, Rei couldn’t stop himself from thinking it was a look you only got when you’d already given up on getting out alive. And that was when you started making really stupid decisions.

Whatever they want, just give it to them, Rei thought. And wished he could convince himself that Shinichi ever would.

Headlights across the water. Akai tensed.

“We’ve got company.”

Rei shoved his phone in his pocket, tracking the high beams as they sliced over chain-link and rebar, hunks of concrete where the road was torn up. The car rolled to a stop in front of the gaping mouth of the boathouse. A dark gray Suzuki with Shinjuku plates, the taillights gleaming like red eyes before they cut out. Rei’s hand tightened around his Glock.

Akai lowered a pair of heavy tactical binoculars. “License plate checks out. It’s them.”

 “Well, it’s about time,” Rei said, thumbing the safety off.

The door of the Suzuki swung open. Snyder unfolded from the driver’s seat, a glowing cigarette clamped between his teeth. Rei had a strong urge to put a bullet through his shoulder, about the same spot where he’d vise-gripped Shinichi’s collar bone. But he was only a jack. In chess or in Wonderland, you were only ever after the queen.

Another man climbed out of the passenger seat—reedy and sallow-faced, no one he recognized from the tape. Must be one of the White Rabbit grunts. The wind blew a swirl of smoke around Snyder as he moved to the back of the car and cracked open the trunk. Behind the shadow of his body, Rei caught a glimpse of wooden crates.

He scanned the tinted windows. No sign of Shinichi’s tiny head in the backseat—but that was probably better. There were only bad reasons to bring a hostage out here.

The earpiece beeped, Starling’s voice loud in the silent car. “Shuu, another one coming your way. Red Toyota Land Cruiser.”

“Got it,” Akai answered, then wrenched his arm around to drag his rifle case out of the backseat, dropping it onto the floorboard between his knees. He snapped the pieces together until the long-range rifle lay across his lap, sleek and gleaming.

Rei shot him a look. “Isn’t that a little overkill for a tail?”

“Depends what’s in those crates,” Akai said grimly, as a red SUV crunched over the gravel and pulled up in the shadow of the boathouse.

Rei watched the four new arrivals slide out of the Land Cruiser. He recognized the insignia on their jackets from PSB security briefings: members of the 15-45 Boys, known on the street as the West Fivers. One of the larger drug and gun-running outfits in Tokyo, and the one that always seemed the fastest to pull their guns, even on police. Not his first choice for a surprise meeting on a dark wharf.

The White Rabbits were punching above their weight class, selling to the Fivers. But then, there weren’t many local outfits going in for something as hot as chemical weapons.

One of the new arrivals, a man with bleached blond hair that looked like it’d been cut by a lawnmower, bent to inspect the sedan’s trunk. Rei cracked the window and strained to catch their voices over the wind. He felt Akai lean in close behind him, one arm braced on his headrest and the other half-wrapped around Rei to hold the binoculars. His breath flushed Rei’s neck.

“This isn’t we agreed to,” the Fiver said. Rei could see his eyes were bloodshot, from alcohol or something harder. They must be low-ranking members to be sent on a pickup like this—which only made them more dangerous.

Snyder waved with the cigarette. “Relax. You’ll have the rest of it soon.”

“Better be real soon,” the man returned, patting Snyder’s chest with the blunt nose of an H&K. “Moving the deal up and only bringing half the merch? That’s disrespectful. By my count, you’ve only got twelve hours left.”

Snyder’s eyes burned in the cigarette light. He flicked open a jackknife and leaned down to pry at the edge of one crate. “You’ll get the formula. In the meantime, why don’t you consider this a down payment?”

The lid jerked free. Rei knew what to expect, but that didn’t stop the gut punch at the sight of a black submachine gun with a long snout nestled into the straw.

“Damn,” Akai said, just a puff of breath on his ear. “That’s an M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle, military grade.”

Rei breathed out slowly. “We knew to expect guns.”

Akai shook his head. “Guns. Not select-fire IARs. They could do a lot of damage with those.”

Rei’s chest felt tight. Maybe because Akai was pressed too close, suffocating him as usual. But probably because he was imagining what a gang known for their ruthlessness might do with one M27, let alone four crates of them. He shot a glance at the lights across the bay. Kazami and a few cars of PSB officers were waiting out of sight of the wharf, ready to intercept the White Rabbits’ business partners once the meet was over. But a gun like that could shred a police line.

Akai’s eyes locked on Rei’s, dark and serious. “Rei. We can’t let them drive off with those.”

Rei bristled. “You think I don’t know that? We can’t exactly arrest them, either.”

And they couldn’t lose the White Rabbits. If Snyder wasn’t bluffing and they almost had Dr. Brunswick’s formula, then whatever they’d needed Shinichi for, they wouldn’t need him much longer. Rei had to get to him back. Now. Tonight. Before anybody decided he was disposable.

He wasn’t here as a PSB agent, or a member of the 15-45 taskforce. This wasn’t his problem.

But what was he supposed to tell Shinichi, if he let them go and then bodies started dropping?

Akai seemed to read all that on his face. He exhaled slow, scraped a hand back through his hair.

“All right. Let me out. You stay on the tail. I’ll deal with this.”

“What?” Rei twisted around to stare at him. “You’ll deal with it? You and one rifle against an SUV full of machine guns? So I save Shinichi, and we come back to find you smeared all over the pavement?” Somehow, the image wasn’t as satisfying as he’d expected.

Akai pulled the rifle strap onto his shoulder. “I’ll handle it. Shinichi’s more important.”

Rei’s chest lurched. Shinichi was more important. But what Akai was talking about—taking them on without a vehicle, without backup—that was suicide.

Not that he cared. He just couldn’t stand to let Akai go down in a hail of bullets and have it immortalized in another award-winning screenplay.

Rei squeezed the Glock so hard the grip bit into his palm. The Fivers were loading up the crates, the White Rabbits clambering back into their car. They were running out of time. He didn’t like it. But there was only one option.

“This may come as a shock to you, but your titanium ego doesn’t actually make you bulletproof,” Rei grumbled, dragging Akai back by the shoulder and leaning up to speak into his earpiece. “Change of plans. Camel, Starling—you’re taking over the tail. As soon as you’re clear, we’ll intercept the SUV.”

“We’re on it,” Starling said, sounding surprised. Probably because Rei had spent the last three hours insisting he wouldn’t entrust that job to anyone else. He didn’t feel like explaining.

Akai settled back into the seat. The light was bad, but Rei could have sworn that bastard was smiling at him. “Thanks.”

Rei scoffed in his throat. “Don’t flatter yourself. This isn’t about you. And put your seatbelt on.”

Akai chuckled. “I always do, when you’re driving.”

The Suzuki’s engine started with a purr. Rei clenched his hands around the wheel as the gray sedan he’d spent nine hours waiting for sped away into the night. The Fivers were on the last crate, wedging it securely into the SUV’s trunk. It’d be easier to stop them before they drove off. But he wouldn’t risk spooking the White Rabbits before the FBI picked them up. How many seconds would it take them to get out of the wharf? Twenty? More than that?

The Fivers slammed the trunk shut and climbed into the Land Cruiser. The engine growled, exhaust pouring into the frigid air as it creaked into reverse.

Akai shot him a look. “Rei—”

“Not yet,” Rei ground out. His fingers twitched on the key, already in the ignition. Any second—as soon as they were clear—

The SUV screeched past the boathouse and disappeared between the warehouses. Rei’s guts twisted in the sudden silence. Then Starling’s excited voice burst over the headset.

“We’ve got ’em. They’re out of the wharf, heading south on the frontage road—it looks like they’re making for the highway—”

Rei didn’t hear the rest. He wrenched the key in the ignition and smashed his foot down on the gas pedal, and the Mazda roared to life, headlights blinding as he peeled out with a scream of rubber. The acceleration punched him back against the seat. Akai nearly clocked himself with the rifle barrel.

“Shortcut. Hang on,” Rei said through his teeth. Then he plowed through a flimsy chain-link fence and burst onto the main road, right behind the SUV.

The Land Cruiser veered out of his way. Rei caught a glimpse of shocked faces through the window. In a second he was right up against the front tire, swerving wildly, forcing them left into the guardrail. Sparks burst across the rearview mirror. Akai lowered the window and the freezing wind hit Rei with the smell of oil and smoking rubber—then Akai’s back thumped against his shoulder, and the only smell was gunpowder, Akai emptying the Glock’s clip dead center of the driver-side window. It didn’t leave so much as a scratch.

“All that and you screwed up?” Rei shouted over the wind. He almost bit his tongue off as the SUV roared back into the center lane and smashed into his fender. The left headlight went dead. The force yanked Rei’s insides like a fishhook as the SUV banged into them again, snapping the side mirror and shearing along the door panel with a high metal shriek. That was going to leave a mark.

His sputtering headlights caught something up ahead. Rei cursed and slammed the brake, reversing out of the pin before the truck rammed him into a cinderblock wall. He felt the torque all the way up his spine. Loud thunks echoed through the car as he peeled away—someone leaning out the SUV’s back window, spraying his trunk with an AR-15.

“The car’s armored,” Akai shouted into his ear as they hurtled down a back alley. “Can you get in front of them?”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t ask me that,” Rei snapped. They had a lot more car than he did—but his was faster. He shrieked into a U-turn and fishtailed back the other way, toward the dead end of the wharf.

The speedometer surged toward one hundred. Rei craned his ear to the window, listening to the screech of tires one street over. They were coming after him—as he’d expected. The ones with something to prove were so predictable.

“Intercept?” Akai asked, shouldering his rifle.

The grid of the surrounding streets flashed through Rei’s head. “Forty seconds.”

“Got it.” Then suddenly Akai was rising, opening the sunroof and pushing himself up into the wind, his right foot on the seat and his left knee braced on Rei’s shoulder.

“What the hell are you—” Rei started. He had to break off or miss his turn, which in this case meant crashing right through a shuttered warehouse door. He wrenched the wheel to the left, grabbing Akai’s legs and fisting a hand in his belt so he didn’t go flying out.

“A little warning next time!” he shouted, risking a glance up at Akai. All he caught was his leather jacket flapping and the rifle gleaming—and those jade green eyes, electric in the dark. Rei’s heart stuttered, but that was probably the curb he’d jumped.

“Time?” Akai asked again, smirking.

Rei gave up telling off the jackass hanging out of his sunroof. “Fifteen seconds,” he shouted. But he couldn’t fight down his wild grin as he locked his fingers through Akai’s belt loops, holding on tight as he squealed into the last turn.

For everything he despised about Akai, this was the one thing he couldn’t hate: how much they loved the rush. Akai didn’t just understand this part of him. He liked it. Maybe the only person who ever really had.

Rei breathed in and held it all in his chest—gasoline and adrenaline and gunpowder, and the heat of Akai’s knee against his shoulder, heavy and sure. And then the centrifugal force on his body as the Mazda skidded back onto the main road, in front of the SUV’s headlights.

Rei heard the crackle of gunfire at his back. He pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor, racing for the end of the wharf. Akai’s body jerked—one shot. In the rearview, Rei watched the heavy-caliber bullet punch through the SUV’s grille, right into the engine.

The Toyota veered across the road. Rei skidded out of the way. Akai dropped back into his seat, just in time to watch the SUV smash hood-first into the concrete breaker that blocked off the pier. A train crash might have been a little subtler. The horn blared, on and on into the night.

Rei’s hair was all over his face. He swept it back to find Akai looking at him, windblown with his shirt tugged open at the collar, and that obnoxious little half-smile that was dangerously infectious. Rei looked away before it got to him.

“Not a horrible shot,” he conceded. He scowled at the shoe print on his custom leather seat. “You’re getting my car detailed.”

Akai chuckled. “You’ll have to find a body shop that can patch bullet holes.” He pushed the door open and stepped out, and Rei did the same, his body thrumming. Because he’d just orchestrated a car chase at a hundred miles per hour, obviously. Not because Akai’s thumb had dragged down his knuckles as he handed back the Glock.

He moved around the front of the car, inspecting the damage. The headlight was toast, the fender loose but not low enough to drag. The icy wind cut into Rei as he dropped onto his stomach on the road, peering under the engine compartment. No sign of oil or transmission fluid. The long scratch along the door panels looked like someone had tried to carve them open. Still, the RX-7 was perfectly drivable. Which was more than he could say for the other car.

Rei got to his feet. Curls of smoke spiraled up from the SUV’s hood. Everyone inside looked unconscious, or something more permanent. Over the horn, he could hear sirens wailing across the water. They’d gotten someone’s attention.

Akai wrenched the trunk open with a tire iron and hauled the crates out, tossing them one after another into the dark water of the bay. Rei would send Kazami out to get them later, just to make sure they were properly destroyed. Still, he couldn’t help a tiny curl of satisfaction as Akai threw the last crate in and wiped a hand across his forehead, pushing back his little straggles of dark hair. Maybe they weren’t the kind of people who would make it to every cultural day festival at Teitan Elementary. But they could run down drug traffickers with a trunk full of illegal assault rifles, and Rei knew which of those things Shinichi needed more.

Shinichi. Rei’s breath hitched. He turned to find Akai already digging his phone out of his back pocket.

“I’m checking with Jodie right now,” he promised, dialing. “I lost the earpiece at some point.”

“Probably while you were showing off on top of the car,” Rei shot back. But it came out a little warmer than he meant it to. Some infinitesimally tiny part of him was sort of impressed. He could just imagine the flat look Shinichi would give them both when he heard this story—

Starling’s agitated voice burst over the line.

“Shuu, where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling this whole time—”

Rei wrenched his head up. Akai’s gaze riveted to his. “What happened?”

“I don’t know!” Starling yelled. “We were on Snyder’s tail, when he suddenly shot a U-turn across six lanes of traffic and hightailed it back toward the wharf. Somebody in the Fivers must have tipped him off. He’s headed right for you—”

Suddenly Rei realized what he was hearing, under the blaring horn—the roar of an engine revved to its limit. Headlights burst over Akai’s startled face. Then the gray Suzuki was on top of them, gunning for them, and Rei threw himself out of the road, taking cover behind the totaled SUV. Bullets pinged off the armored tires. Akai hunched next to him, yanking his jacket up to shield his head from the shower of windows bursting in. The sedan wheeled around for one more pass and then sped back up the road, away from the wharf.

Rei’s heart plunged into his stomach. This couldn’t happen. He couldn’t lose them. Whether they thought it was a police sting or an ambush by a rival gang, the White Rabbits knew something was up now. If Snyder got away, they would disappear—and Shinichi would disappear with them.

He sprinted for the car. The engine was still running, the headlights flashing across his legs as he slid in. Akai was right behind him. The sniper barely threw himself into the passenger seat before Rei jerked the stick shift and peeled out, tires squealing.

“This shouldn’t have happened!” he shouted. He wasn’t sure if he was shouting at Akai or at himself. He crushed the pedal to the floor, rocketing down the dark road until he was right on the Suzuki’s bumper. “We can’t lose them. If they go to ground, Shinichi—”

“Rei!” Akai yelled.

Then a black F-150 erupted from a side street, missing the Mazda’s hood by millimeters. Rei swore and jerked the wheel. The gray sedan swerved around it and leapt a curb, smashed into a concrete pylon, and suddenly the car was airborne, flipping over and over like Rei’s stomach as it seemed to hang against the dark. It hit the road in a spray of safety glass. Rei stopped breathing. The sedan rolled over twice and then crunched against the seawall, rocking on its roof with the wheels spinning. Smoke poured out of the engine. The taillights gleamed on the road where it was wet with an ugly red smear.

For a second, all Rei could do was stare. At the F-150. At the White Rabbits’ car, crunched like a tin can. At the bodies thrown out the busted windshield and crumpled in the headlights, Snyder’s ladder-laced boots studded with broken glass.

His only lead on Shinichi, splattered on the asphalt.

Rei kicked his door open and ran. He was breathing too hard, his head fuzzy as he knelt next to Snyder, checking for a pulse. But he already knew it was too late. His fingers came away smeared with blood.

Snyder was dead. The driver was dead. Whatever information he could have wrung out of them, it was just chunks of skull and brain matter. All of this had been for nothing.

Fumes and greasy smoke poured off the burning wreck. Rei’s stomach twisted until he thought he’d hurl. He closed his eyes, just trying to breathe. But it was always the same thing waiting for him in the dark behind his eyelids: a roof and a body and a gunshot that went on and on, bright eyes dull and lifeless in a slack face. And another memory, newer, sharp as a razor. A tiny body in his arms, barely breathing, Shinichi’s voice breaking as he begged to be buried under his own name. Rei staggered up, one hand over his mouth.

The F-150 screeched to a stop behind him. Agent Camel leapt down from the driver’s seat.

“Furuya, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you behind them. Are you—”

Rei whipped around and seized him by the collar, slamming the larger man against the truck. “What the hell did you do?” he shouted, shoving Camel back so hard his head banged the window.

“Whoa, hey!” Starling called, alarmed.

Camel’s eyes flashed over his face. “I…they got away from me when they reached the wharf. I didn’t want to lose them—”

“This is so much worse than losing them!” Rei spat. He felt blistered inside, so furious he could barely get the words out. “I knew you were incompetent, but I had no idea you couldn’t even handle a tail. First-year cadets can do that!”

Footsteps on the broken glass. Akai gripped his shoulder. “Rei—”

Rei swung around and punched him square in the jaw.

Akai’s head snapped back. Rei felt a blood vessel pop, his knuckles stinging with the force of the blow. Akai hit the truck and caught himself against the side, one arm hooked over the rail as Rei wrenched back, shoulders heaving.

“Your people only had to do one thing: keep eyes on that car. Now they’re dead, and we have no idea where to start looking. We have nothing.”

He could feel Camel and Starling’s eyes on him. Akai straightened and shook off the blow, wiping a hand across his jaw. “Keep it together,” he said. So calm and serious—like his heart hadn’t been ripped out and flung across the pavement.

Rei’s laugh was bitter. “Oh, that must be so easy for you. He’s never been anything but an asset to you. As long as the mission’s a success, do you even care what happens to him?”

“Hey, take it easy—” Starling began, but Akai lifted a hand, cut her off.

“You’re acting like a child, and you’re going to get him killed,” Akai said. Rei felt the words like a slap. Akai’s piercing eyes locked on his, the cold wind howling as Akai stepped into his space. “Snyder’s dead. We can’t change that. So we work from what we have. Scrape their cell phones. Dig into the other leads—”

Rei yanked him forward by his jacket. “Don’t you fucking patronize me. After something like this, they panic. Whatever time we had, we’ve got half that now. Assuming they don’t just torch the operation and kill everyone.” The words left him scraped out and raw.

Akai caught his shoulders. “I won’t let that happen,” he insisted.

Rei choked on a hard laugh. “You? You are the last person I want that promise from. Everyone you try to protect ends up dead.”

For the first time he could remember, Rei saw real pain on Akai’s face. The guilt came hot and fast. But he didn’t have time for that. He didn’t have time for any of this. He’d wasted so much time Shinichi didn’t have.

The sirens were closing in. Rei shoved Akai away from him, turning on his heel. “Forget it. I’ll find him myself.”

“Rei, don’t—”

But Rei didn’t wait to hear it. Just slammed into his car and tore out, leaving everything he didn’t need in the rearview mirror.

Chapter Text

12.

Shinichi pressed his cheek to the cold concrete, concentrating all his attention on the thin crack under the door. Something had happened—he couldn’t tell exactly what, but he could hear raised voices, worried and angry. Knight’s low rumble cut through the thin sheetrock. Shinichi caught the words deal, and ambush, and then something about those West Fiver bastards, who weren’t going to get away with a double cross.

It was just clips and fragments. But it sounded like something had torched the White Rabbits’ deal, the one he’d overheard them discussing that morning as he was hustled into the sedan. Shinichi was willing to bet that something was Rei and Akai.

For the first time since he’d been taken, Shinichi felt some tension inside him uncurling. He let his head thunk down on the floor in relief, ignoring the smell of mold rising from the cement. He hadn’t been sure, when he scratched those symbols into the mirror in the café, if the tiny scraps he was leaving would be enough. But they’d gotten his message. And more importantly, they’d understood it. Rei and Akai would focus on the weapons shipments. They’d do whatever it took to bring down the White Rabbits and stop anything horrible from happening.

Well, not to Shinichi. But to anybody else.

He flinched as sharp footsteps stopped right outside the room. Black lace-ups, just the thick treads visible under the door. The bruises on his back ached with the memory of Reina’s heavy boot crushing his spine.

Maybe his time was up.

“Reina, wait.”

It was Rosie’s voice, Rosie’s shoes stepping into the frame—faded sneakers, torn up in the laces where Shinichi could tell she’d been fidgeting with the fraying ends. Her voice was soft and pleading, but all Shinichi could really make out was the word please over and over. It wasn’t hard to guess what she was begging for.

Something banged against the wall. Reina’s fist, maybe.

“Fine. But get it out of him, Rosie. Or I will.”

Shinichi rolled up off the floor and wrapped his arms around his knees as Rosie slipped into the room, shutting the door tight. He tried to look small and lonely and pathetic. Which wasn’t hard, as a seven-year-old in a cage.

Rosie’s eyes were wide and fearful. But she did her best to hide it, waving a silver foil packet at him. “Hey. Look what I’ve got.”

“I’m not really that hungry,” Shinichi admitted. His stomach felt like a knot of worms, still twisting from Reina’s boots stopping outside the door.

Rosie worried a strand of hair. “You didn’t have much of your funny face pancake this morning, either. At least try? They’re strawberry Pop Tarts.”

Shinichi dredged up a smile, trying to fake enthusiasm for having Pop Tarts for dinner. As much as he couldn’t handle spicy food, he didn’t like super sweet stuff either. Just one more reason everybody always said he was complicated.

Well, not Rei. But everybody else.

Rosie unlocked the Faraday cage and ducked inside, huddling up next to him on the cold floor. Shinichi ripped the foil packet open and forced himself to take a bite, and tried to pretend the sickly sweet strawberry Pop Tart was a tiramisu trifle cup, the kind Rei made just for him, with extra hazelnuts and a deliciously bitter coffee flavor, topped off by a tiny bear face made of whipped cream and cornflakes so it still looked cute enough for a second-grader’s lunch box. It didn’t taste anything like that. But the memory made it easier to get down.

Rosie wrapped her arm around him, pressing him against her thick coat. Not for the first time, Shinichi wondered who he was taking the place of for her. He leaned into her warmth, imagining the fabric under his cheek smelled like cinnamon and lavender laundry detergent and Rei’s coconut shampoo.

Rosie offered him an anxious smile, her teeth sunk into her ragged lip.

“Hey,” she murmured. “Are you sure you haven’t figured out any more of the puzzle? Even something little.”

Shinichi hunched into his coat, staring grimly at the computer at the other end of the cage. He’d spent all day turning the formula over in his head, recombining the elements, trying to come up with something he could give her, to hold out a little longer, to protect her. But he couldn’t even protect himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said into his crossed arms. She’d never know what he was sorry for. But he hoped she could at least tell he meant it.

“Oh, hey.” Rosie cupped the side of his head and pulled him close, rocking him a little on the cold concrete floor. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. You never should have been here. Maybe neither of us should have.” The last part she whispered into his hair, as if afraid to let herself hear it. Shinichi wrapped his small hand into her coat and pretended he couldn’t feel her shaking.

Through his bangs, he looked up at her—her hair muted by grown-out highlights, her nails chipped and ragged around the last specks of pink nail polish. A woman who had clearly taken care of herself, taken pride in her appearance until recently. She didn’t seem like the other White Rabbits. But she wasn’t a hostage, either.

In one way or another, Shinichi had spent most of his life solving crimes. What he’d learned was that there were a lot of people who committed crimes because it was easy—easier than getting a job, easier than divorce or buying out a rotten business partner, easier than forgiving an old wrong that had festered like a wound deep inside. But there were a lot of other people, too, who committed crimes because they just needed the money, or because in some other way they’d backed themselves into a corner. And when you got that desperate, there was always someone waiting to offer you a way out, if you’d just do a few ugly things first.

Rosie squeezed him one more time and then pulled back, ruffling his hair. “Hey. Do you want to draw another picture?” She dug the box of chalk out of her pocket. “Maybe that’ll help—clear your mind a little.”

Nothing was going to help him decipher a formula he couldn’t give her. But Shinichi took the chalk anyway, inspecting it more closely this time as he dumped the colorful sticks out next to the lumpy futon. The little yellow box was crumpled at the edges, as if it’d been in her pocket a long time, but before he drew his Alice in Wonderland mural in the warehouse, only the red stick had been used.

He picked up the green chalk and bent forward onto his elbows, absently scratching something over the pockmarks and cracks in the concrete. “Do you have a kid?” he asked.

Rosie tensed beside him. “What makes you say that?”

Shinichi shrugged, keeping his eyes on his picture. “You have chalk in your coat. So I thought maybe you have a kid too. My dad always ends up with weird stuff from me.”

Admittedly, most of the weird stuff he handed off to Rei and Akai was actually evidence that needed to be passed along to the proper authorities. It was hard to fit anything in his tiny kid pockets. But sometimes it was just stuff—like extra handkerchiefs for handling evidence, or a keychain he won from the neighborhood lottery game, or the You’re a Superstar! sticker that he got from the lady in the corner shop for being such a good helper while Rei was bagging the groceries, which he stuck to the back of Rei’s jeans because Rei was laughing at him and that’s what a real seven-year-old would do with it. He did sort of forget to pull it off before those jeans went through the wash. But in his defense, as he’d explained to Rei holding up his gummy jeans, he’d just assumed Akai would see it because it was right on his ass.

The memory left him sort of creaky, his chest hollow. Shinichi put down the green chalk and picked up the red, drawing a big curve for a mouth.

Soft nails scraped through the hair at the back of his neck. Shinichi looked up to find Rosie watching him, her face twisted with a rueful smile.

“I did have a kid,” she admitted. “But she…she lives with her dad now. Just until I get some things figured out. This was supposed to be a present for her.” Rosie let out a shaky breath, picking at her ragged fingernails. “The lady in the red coat, the one who…she’s an old friend of mine. I just have to repay a favor she did me a long time ago. Then we’re all going to be together again—my daughter, and her daddy and me.”

Shinichi watched her blink the tears back, wondering if even she believed that anymore.

He looked down at his picture, big eyes on a long green snout and a toothy grin. An alligator, kind of. An alligator oven mitt, anyway. He rested his chin on his knees.

“My dad’s probably pretty worried about me,” he said quietly. Rosie turned to him, and Shinichi tipped his head down, tracing little nothing shapes onto his jeans with chalk dust. “If they decide to get rid of me, will you get him a message from me? Tell him…”

Shinichi hesitated. The message didn’t matter. That there was a message—that was the sympathy play here, his last chance to remind her that he had people waiting for him too. But…if it did happen, if she could get a message out, in that one-in-a-million chance, what would he want to say? What would he want Rei to know?

Shinichi took a deep breath. Then he looked up at her with his own smile, not Conan’s, soft and just a little sad because he was old enough to know what he was losing. “Tell him I was okay. Tell him it didn’t hurt. And tell him there was nothing he could do.”

Rei was going to be so angry. He’d be a lot of other things, too. But maybe the anger would dull those other things, so they wouldn’t hurt him too much.

And he’d have Akai. Akai would help him through it—if Rei let him.

Rosie bit her lip. “I’ll try,” she promised. Shinichi let her pull him into her arms again, tuck his face into the scratchy fabric of her coat. They were probably both going to die. At least he could give her this—someone warm to hold onto, the closest either of them was going to get to home.

It was late when Rosie finally let him go and peeled away, creeping to the door. Shinichi feigned sleep until he heard her soft footsteps disappearing down the hall. Then he crawled to the back of the Faraday cage. The bars were tight, but if he stretched, he could squeeze his arm through just far enough to get his fingers inside the old faceplate on the wall, the one set with a telephone jack. Just far enough to slip a bottlecap into the hole and send a signal through the old lines.

Shinichi pinched the bottlecap in his fingertips and touched the wires together, counting out five long beats. Morse code for zero.

He didn’t know if it was working. He didn’t even know if these old phone lines were active anymore, or if anyone was listening. But it was all he could do. One last message in a bottle. One last goodbye—even if Rei would never hear it.

13.

“My, Bourbon. Who did that to your pretty face?”

Vermouth’s hair slid off her shoulder as she leaned her elbow on the polished bar, a glass of Pinot noir dangling carelessly in one hand. Rei forced himself not to flinch as her fingers traced the swelling around his eyebrow, her sharp nails digging into the tender skin.

“Just a personal matter,” he said smoothly. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

“Sounds dangerously extracurricular.” Her voice was dry, a warning. Rei ignored it. He knew Vermouth well enough to know she was willing to give him a little rope—and certainly wouldn’t lose any sleep if he hung himself with it.

Jazz and cigarette smoke floated through the upscale bar. Vermouth was dressed to kill, as usual, long and sinuous as a viper in her slinky black dress, the silver clutch purse just large enough to conceal her subcompact Sig Sauer. He could trace the outline of the switchblade strapped under her knee-high boots. In the artfully tarnished mirror behind the bar, they looked like they belonged together: two blondes with blue eyes and sharp, flawless smiles. Or maybe it was all the blood on their hands—a subconscious, sickly copper smell that kept the vinyl barstools on either side of them empty.

Usually, they met in his car. He’d had to come to her tonight, which already put him at a disadvantage. But he didn’t want to answer any questions about the bullet holes in his trunk.

Vermouth stroked his thigh, the way she liked to do just to make people look away. Too good, always, at getting people to do what she wanted. Her gaze moved from his black eye to his empty ring finger, cool and calculating.

“I don’t usually hear from you on your days off. Not playing the happy family tonight?” she asked, a flash of incisors in her lethal smile.

Vermouth knew. Of course Vermouth knew. Exactly how much Vermouth knew wasn’t something Rei was eager to find out. For the most part, he tried to keep their three-part cover—and Shinichi in particular—as far from her as possible. But tonight, he needed something only she could give him.

Of course, if he mentioned Conan’s name, she’d probably give him anything he asked for. But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t owe her a favor Shinichi would have to pay back.

“I had a few things to take care of,” Rei said lightly. He braced his chin on his interlocked hands, leaning in to a conspiratorial distance. “I’m looking for some people. Used to work sales and procurement for sensitive merchandise out in the sixth district, but they moved on suddenly. Any chance you know where they ended up?”

Vermouth gave him a strange look. Not what she’d been expecting, maybe. Rei wasn’t usually so direct about what he wanted.

“It’s rare for you to get your hands dirty,” she said, looking pointedly at the bruises on his knuckles.

Something bitter rose in Rei’s throat. His lips twisted as he swallowed it down. “For some people, I make an exception.”

The skin around his top two knuckles had turned black and purple, ugly in the bar lights. It was an amateur’s injury. Rei knew how to throw a punch without hurting himself. But he’d been too worked up down at the wharf, moving without thinking. It hurt more than he’d expected, a flinch and throb every time he curled his hand. But it felt good, too, in some messed-up way. Just a little reminder what happened when he trusted the FBI, and Akai Shuichi. Not a mistake he’d be making again.

Akai had called twice. Then he gave up. Rei hadn’t expected him to quit so easily. But it was a relief, honestly—to be done with their nauseating charade. Once he got his kid back, Amuro Tohru was filing for divorce and sole custody.

He pressed his aching fingers against his cold glass of Glenfiddich. When he was out with the Organization, he made sure to vary his drink order—gin martini, vodka sour, dry white Zinfandel, rum and coke—so that he never got too comfortable, or too predictable. But tonight, all he wanted was Scotch.

Vermouth’s sharp eyes raked over his face. She hummed thoughtfully, studying the stain of red wine as she tipped her glass. “I might have heard rumors about some rats skittering around,” she said, a shrug rolling through her shoulders. “Still, it’s not like you to ask a favor.”

Rei heard what she was really saying: It’s not like you to give me leverage. Any other night, he would have said owing Vermouth a blank-check favor crossed a line. But there were no lines. Not when it came to Shinichi.

“Just getting a jump on the competition,” he insisted, his voice bland and cheerful. He must not be pulling it off as well as he hoped, though, because Vermouth clicked her tongue, pursing her lips in disappointment.

“I know that look. You let somebody in.” Rei’s heart clenched as she cocked her sharp fingernail under his chin, swiveled his head to look at her. “Be careful, Bourbon,” she said silkily. “I’d hate to be scraping pretty blond pieces of you off the floor of the old train depot south of the city.”

She slid off the barstool, throwing her hair off her shoulder. But she paused there, just a second too long, her eyes locked on his in the mirror. “It’s always the one you let in who breaks you,” she murmured close to his ear. Then she vanished into the smoke, leaving him with his roiling thoughts and his half-empty glass.

All night, there’d been a tiny voice in his head—a voice that sounded like his old instructor at the academy, the man who’d picked him out for undercover work. A voice that said, Don’t get attached. It was the first rule for NOCs who planned on coming back alive.

Rei knew he was supposed to keep a little emotional distance. But it was far too late for that.

Rei rested his forehead against the rim of his glass, icing his black eye. It couldn’t be over already. The rush when Shinichi scrambled up his shoulder to slip into the air ducts of a shady import-export business. The utter satisfaction of opening Shinichi’s lunch box to find nothing left over but a few scraps of pickled ginger. The little prickle of surprise when Shinichi followed him into the kitchen and clambered up onto a stool at the sink, washing the mung bean sprouts for fried rice while he filled Rei in on all the dirt he’d overheard at the last neighborhood block party.

The flush of warmth, standing outside Teitan Elementary waiting on a pickup, when one of the moms turned to Rei with a smile and asked Which one’s yours? And Rei’s heart gave a funny little kick, at the thought that any of this might be his.

There was another person in some of those memories—a low voice laughing in his headset, a body at Rei’s elbow while he stir-fried the rice, handing him the sesame oil and cumin at precisely the right moments. But Rei wasn’t thinking about him right now.

It’s always the one you let in who breaks you. Vermouth’s whisper played in his ear, insidious as smoke.

Maybe Vermouth was right. Maybe Shinichi had broken him. Or unbroken him—put something back together that had been in pieces a long time. The part of him that remembered what it meant to care about someone. And to lose them.

But Rei wasn’t going to. Lose him. Not him, too.

He pulled out his phone. The screen was still black and glassy. No new calls, no texts. Akai must not have found any intel worth sharing—assuming they were still doing that. Rei threw back the last swallow of Scotch and let it burn in the back of his throat. Then he shouldered his way out of the bar and into the night, heading for the scraped-up Mazda parked in the alley.

He’d made his deal with the devil. Might as well go get what he’d paid for.

14.

Akai leaned into the steel railing and lifted his cigarette, holding the familiar taste of ash and nicotine in his mouth as he stared out over the roof of Jodie’s apartment building to the dark city below.

It was almost two in the morning. The streets were dead except for sirens, the far-off thump of party music and drunk voices howling like wild dogs. The cold wind was a knife in his lungs. Akai grimaced around his cigarette. He didn’t smoke as much anymore. The taste of his Lucky Strikes was acrid in a way he didn’t remember. Or maybe it was something else turning his mouth sour as he scanned the grid of the city, subconsciously searching for a banged-up RX-7 with one working headlight.

Coming here was a risk. But Jodie hadn’t been under surveillance for months. And they needed stronger processing power than her laptop could get plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter.

Three floors below him, Camel and two other analysts were bent over the computer bank in Jodie’s spare bedroom, cross-referencing the GPS data from the White Rabbits’ phones. Akai had fished them out of the wrecked sedan, crawling through the busted windshield careful not to rip his shoulder open on the sheared metal frame. There were no saved addresses; nothing to make it easy. But if they got lucky, there’d be points of commonality—a few places both phones had pinged more than once.

It was thin. But it was more than Rei had, taking off with his anger riding shotgun. Akai flicked the ash off his cigarette.

Rei hated when he smoked. But Rei hated a lot of things. Akai was starting to wonder why he was trying so hard not to be one of them.

Rei always made everything so personal. They owed Shinichi better than this. That kid was still out there somewhere, and that was all Akai should be thinking about. But instead, he was up here scanning for headlights, reliving the split second before Rei slugged him. Blue eyes frenzied, every inch of him torn open by rage and pain.

He hadn’t seen that look on Rei’s face in a long time. Just the one time, really. The night Scotch died.

He didn’t think much about their time undercover. They’d been nothing to each other then. Just Bourbon and Rye, loyal dogs following orders, too careful to be anything else. But there had been a spark, Akai thought—something they recognized in each other, something that meant he watched Bourbon a little longer through the rifle scope, made sure he was clear before squeezing the trigger. Something that made him linger in the doorway while Scotch extracted a ricochet from Bourbon’s upper shoulder, inexplicably wanting those to be his hands on the razor and the pliers. Something that made him slide into the spot next to Bourbon during mission briefings, look over at him just in time to see those sharp blue eyes flicker away.

But then Scotch died. And it didn’t matter anymore what they were, what they might have been. Whatever it was, it died on that rooftop too.

Akai assumed that was it, DOA. And then Shinichi came into his life, into Rei’s life, and sutured them together in a way Akai never could have expected. Allies. Or partners, almost. A chance to repair a little of the damage he’d done, to find out which things he’d known about Bourbon were true about Rei too.

That he hated lukewarm coffee. That he wasn’t above going petty, or using Shinichi as the tiebreaker to get his way, ordering Chinese food with his eyebrows arched as if daring Akai to do something about it. That the only thing he felt as deep as anger was loyalty. That when he smiled and meant it, it came out a little crooked, his lips twisted up at one corner like he was out of practice.

The way he smiled at Shinichi. At Scotch. And at Akai, just every once in a while.

Probably not anymore, after tonight.

Akai crushed the cigarette. The icy wind stung the exposed skin at the back of his neck as he lit another one, checked his phone, touched the discolored mark on his jaw.

The bruise hurt. But not as much as the screech of Rei’s tires peeling out, the image of that white Mazda catapulting into the dark. If Rei had stayed, even pissed, that would mean he still trusted Akai to fix it, to make it right. This was Rei giving up on him.

“So this is where you ran off to.”

Akai turned around. Jodie stepped out of the stairwell, silhouetted against the square of light. She moved to join him at the railing, arms crossed over her flapping brown coat.

“Good spot for brooding,” she said. Her voice was light, teasing, but he could see the tension around her eyes, the marks her glasses left when she pulled them off to pinch the bridge of her nose. They must be coming up empty.

Akai blew out a haze of smoke. “You kicked me out, remember?” Apparently he’d been making the analysts jumpy, leaning against the back wall staring at them like he was lining up a kill shot.

“I also seem to remember suggesting a nap or a shower. Both of which you could use, by the way.” Jodie wrinkled her nose, waving the smoke away. “I thought you were trying to quit.”

“I am trying,” Akai said.

“Uh-huh,” she muttered, side-eyeing the bundle of dead cigarettes stuffed in his empty coffee can. But she didn’t call him on it. “Hey. Borrow your phone?”

Akai unlocked it and handed it over, no questions asked. Jodie swiped her thumb across the screen, pushing her windblown hair out of her eyes to throw him a measuring look.

“You know, you don’t have to be here. We’ll call you when we have something.”

“Somewhere else I should be?” Akai asked.

Jodie snorted. “Yeah. And you shouldn’t need me to tell you that.”

He didn’t really. Akai dropped his head back, the cigarette flaring as he breathed in. He should be chasing Rei down. Pulling him back from the brink, before he did something really stupid. But—

But Rei could be so stubborn. He was thinking with his fists tonight. And Akai needed to put Shinichi first for a change.

“This is more important,” he said, jaw tight. “I don’t have time to deal with his temper right now.”

“Or maybe he touched a nerve?” Jodie suggested.

Akai shot her that look that made everyone else back off. It’d never really worked on her. He ground his cigarette out against the railing and pulled the last one out of his crumpled pack. He could barely get it lit, the flame of his silver lighter guttering in the wind.

Everyone you try to protect ends up dead.

Akai closed his eyes. He was supposed to be the better shot. But it was Rei who always went right for the throat.

Scotch was dead. Akemi was dead. And Shiho, and Rei, they’d both had more close calls than he was comfortable with. And Shinichi…Akai turned away, watching the city lights go dark one by one.

“He’s not wrong,” he admitted.

Jodie rolled her eyes. “Well, he’s not right either,” she said, nudging his elbow with a smile. “Cut him some slack. His kid’s missing.”

Akai’s chest got uncomfortably tight.

That’s your kid. Rei had told him that so many times, every time he was screwing up. But honestly, Shinichi was Rei’s kid. First, and completely, punched into his heart like shrapnel.

Sometimes he thought Rei wasn’t ready to know how much Shinichi meant to him. But Akai knew. He’d watched all of Rei’s walls coming down. His unconscious little smile the first time Shinichi reached across the dinner table for seconds. Or the way he laughed when they wagered loading the dishwasher on a cutthroat game of baccarat, and stuck his tongue out at Akai while the boy’s back was turned. The soft lines of his body when he slumped into the couch next to Shinichi, one foot thrown up on the edge of the coffee table, utterly at ease. The ache and jealousy all over his face when Shinichi didn’t call him home for a sick day.

Shinichi was the first person in years who made Rei playful. And hurt. And happy. And alive.

He wasn’t Bourbon right now, or deep cover operative Zero. He was Rei—this man who had lost so much, who was terrified of going through it again. Who’d slumped against the convenience store wall and looked up at Akai through the freezing rain, asking without asking why everything he loved ended up in someone’s crosshairs.

And what was Akai’s excuse, for letting his ghosts get the better of him?

Akai leaned into the railing and carved a hand through his hair. “So you came up here to tell me to get my head out of my ass?” he asked wryly.

Jodie chuckled. “Well, not in those words, since unlike you, I have tact. But that’s the general idea.” Her expression softened as she squeezed his shoulder. “Get it together, Shuu. He’s not thinking straight right now. So you have to.” Then she handed back his phone and turned for the stairs, leaving him staring at the soft-focus photograph shining on his screen.

Akai wondered how she’d known which one he looked at all the time. But she wasn’t a top intelligence agent for nothing.

It was the picture of them in the library: Shinichi fast asleep, his hair rucked up against the weave of Rei’s sweater, and Rei leaning back into the curve of the couch, looking up at Akai with a tiny smear of curry sauce along his bottom lip. His smile tentative, hopeful, asking if this was something he got to keep. Akai’s hand tightened around the phone.

He’d given up on any idea of a family a long time ago. It didn’t even feel like giving anything up. Akai honestly didn’t think he was suited for it—something Rei would probably back him up on. And he had more important things, things he was prepared to die for. A family meant complications, split loyalties. He’d already left one family behind because he didn’t need those attachments getting in his way.

But this picture didn’t feel like a complication. It felt like…something to protect. As fiercely as anything else he’d fought for.

He had a hundred pictures like that on his phone. Some for the cover. Some because he couldn’t help it, when Rei was looking at him that way.

There was a memory in his head—a warm afternoon in late September, the wind rustling in the red leaves. But it wasn’t the wind that had kicked him out of the garage and slammed the door, because it was always in a foul mood when the Mazda needed repairs.

These were early days in the house. Early enough that this wasn’t a mood so much as Rei operating within normal parameters, every inch of him sharp and bristling. Over the hood of Rei’s battered RX-7, they’d had another spat, a little too tense to pass for a normal domestic dispute. Akai retreated to the house wiping a smear of oil off his cheek, looked up to find the boy at the dining room table with scattered sheets of paper and a very flat expression.

“Homework?” he asked, bracing a hand on Shinichi’s chair.

Shinichi propped his chin on his hand. “More like a new form of institutionalized torture. Kobayashi’s class took a field trip to the natural history museum last week. I’m trying to draw Stegosaurus like a seven-year-old…it’s hard to hit seven and not four.”

Akai smirked. It looked like Shinichi had hit seventeen sometimes too, half of the discarded dinosaurs annotated like an encyclopedia entry and the other half cartoonish with big smiles. He still got a kick out of it, watching this kid who was perfectly comfortable disarming a bomb grappling with a set of colored pencils.

Shinichi didn’t seem to get the joke. “Stegosaurus has four spikes on the tail, right?”

Akai ruffled his hair with the hand not streaked with engine grease. “Probably more convincing if you get that wrong.”

“You’re overestimating Kobayashi pretty hard, thinking she’d know the difference,” Shinichi muttered. He gave up on accuracy, sketching a disembodied T-rex head clamped onto the grinning Stegosaurus’s tail. “Whatever. Hopefully I won’t have to do this much longer.”

Akai almost made the mistake of assuring Shinichi that he wouldn’t—Rei was already at work on his long-term plan, to move Edogawa Conan entirely over to the talented and gifted program, just in case Shiho’s research hit a wall and he couldn’t get his original body back. But that wasn’t what Shinichi meant. And for as logical as he was about everything else, the possibility that he might be stuck as Conan was something Shinichi just couldn’t hear. So Akai didn’t say it.

He dropped into the seat next to the boy’s, eyeing the well-read copy of Alice in Wonderland bookmarked with tiny scraps of paper. Shinichi never seemed to be without it these days. He snagged a cherry off the fruit plate that looked too professional, a little overkill for an afternoon snack. The sliced apples were even cut into rabbits, bare except for their tiny red ears. Maybe Rei just felt like skinning something.

There was an angry clank from the garage. Shinichi’s pencil jerked on the paper, and he winced. “Is his car okay?” They’d been in the front yard kicking the soccer ball around when the Mazda limped into the driveway, coughing smoke.

Akai shrugged. “Guarded prognosis. He’ll probably have to replace the timing belt and the water pump. And he’s lucky that’s all it is.” Rei drove that little white sports car like it was the Batmobile.

Another muffled curse. Shinichi’s eyes shot to the garage door. “Does he need help?”

Akai rubbed his forehead. “Not from me.”

He’d add it to the list of things Rei didn’t need his help with. Like jacking up the Mazda to get underneath it, even though he was nursing a bad forearm burn from whatever mission had nearly totaled his car. Or picking shards of glass out of the wounds on his back from going through a plate-glass window. Or packing Shinichi’s lunch, even though all week he’d looked dead on his feet, and Akai was fully capable of cutting a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in half if Rei would just go lie down instead of falling asleep over his case files on the breakfast bar again.

Or other things, things that mattered. Like working through whatever hell had gotten him up at three for the second day in a row, shaking Akai out of his doze when he heard the shower turn on in the farthest corner of the house. He’d tried to catch Rei in the hall after, but Rei just shoved past him, his eyes dark and his mouth in a bitter twist.

Turned out Rei didn’t need help with anything. Or maybe he just didn’t need anything Akai could give him.

There was just too much history here, Akai decided. Too many things he couldn’t erase. Even spending most nights up in the attic, he was just too close for comfort.

Shinichi’s pencil had stopped moving. He glanced up with a look Akai knew too well—the one he got sometimes when Akai had missed something obvious at a crime scene, usually because it was below knee height. Shinichi braced his chin in his palms, his sweater’s too-long sleeves pulled up over his tiny hands.

“Hey, Akai. Do you ever run backup for missions where somebody else takes point? Tactical support. That’s what you guys call it, right?”

He was clever, but he didn’t always bother to be subtle. Akai sighed and pushed his hair back, forgetting until too late that he had oil on his fingers. “That’s not what this is, Shinichi.”

Shinichi shrugged. “I’m just saying. I think maybe Rei needs that sometimes. And not from five hundred meters away.” Shinichi slumped forward to rest on his folded arms, rolling the green colored pencil with the tip of his finger. “He doesn’t have anyone else. I think he just needs to know he can count on you…that somebody’s got his back.”

“Trust me, he doesn’t want my help,” Akai said.

Shinichi rested his cheek on his elbow. “Yeah, but…when he doesn’t want it, that’s probably when he needs it the most, right?”

Akai crushed his last cigarette into the coffee can, crunching the thin metal in his fist.

What the hell was he doing, standing here licking his wounds? He’d let enough people die already. He didn’t need two more names on that list. He shoved the can into his pocket and jogged for the door, taking the stairs two at a time.

He should know he can trust people to come through for him. He doesn’t have to handle everything himself.

That was what Rei had said, pressed to his shoulder in the rain. But it was Rei that Akai had been thinking about when he answered: Maybe someday he’ll realize he’s not alone anymore.

Rei didn’t want him. But that didn’t matter. He needed someone. And Akai was going to be that person, in whatever ways Rei’d let him.

He paused in Jodie’s apartment to tell her he was heading out. He’d barely stuck his head in the door before she grabbed his arm and hauled him to the computers.

“We’ve got something.” Her eyes were bright again, the exhaustion vanished. “On four separate instances, the White Rabbits’ phones pinged the same cell towers seconds before they went dark. I think they shut off their phones to dodge GPS records near HQ.”

“Where?” Akai asked, pushing forward until he could see the city grid on Camel’s screen.

Camel shook his head. “We’re still narrowing that down. But it’s on the outskirts of the industrial district, near the bay where the ships come in. Plenty of abandoned factories and warehouses out that way.”

Akai’s gaze flicked to the screen, the area of overlap incrementally tightening as the program chewed through the data. Shinichi was there, closer than he’d been all night. And Rei should be right next to Akai, reloading his Glock, ready to kick in whatever door Shinichi was on the wrong side of. Not out there somewhere in the dark, making bad decisions alone.

His fists clenched in his pockets. “Start checking them. Every building in the search grid. Energy usage spikes, traffic cams, phone line use—you know the drill. And call me as soon as you have something.”

“Where are you going?” Jodie asked as he brushed past her.

“To get Rei. Before he gets himself killed.”

Chapter Text

15.

Rei vaulted off the emergency stairs and landed right behind the lookout, kissing distance from his AR-15. The man grabbed for his gun, but Rei already had him by the collar, smashing his heel into the fleshy part of the man’s knee. He’d been breaking a lot of knees tonight. The icy wind snapped the black baseball cap off Rei’s head as he shoved the man’s face against the metal fire door, bending his index finger back from the trigger. Maybe a little farther than it was meant to bend.

“Where is he?” Rei hissed. The man bucked, and Rei twisted his hand, felt the joint pop out of the socket. “Where’s the kid?” he demanded. But the lookout’s eyes were already going blank, his body suddenly dead weight. Rei cursed and let him crumple, snatching up his hat from a puddle of grimy rainwater.

Akai’s hat, technically. But he’d left it in Rei’s car, so Rei was pretty sure he got it in the divorce.

Vermouth’s intel was as good as ever. The old train station was crawling with White Rabbits, prowling through the dead lobby or loading up gear from the rusted hulls of decommissioned rail cars. Rei had only caught a glimpse of the old platform when he dropped in through a broken skylight, but it was enough to spot wires and detonators, extra cartridges for M27s, tanks of hydrogen and methane and a few chemicals that could kill you if you opened them the wrong way. This much contraband, they had to be paying off somebody in the shipyards, getting their equipment rubber-stamped through customs. He’d tell Kazami to look into that, when he got around to returning his twelve missed calls.

He slipped back up the fire escape to the second-floor observation deck, listening for voices at his back. He hadn’t expected the White Rabbits to have quite this much manpower. But Rei had been undercover with practically no backup for years. He could handle one little infiltration.

Rei had been all over the station—checked every back closet and boiler room, every chewed-up, rat-infested cabinet, every broken-hinged locker someone could shove a kid into if they didn’t mind dislocating his shoulders first. There was no sign of Shinichi. But somebody knew where he was. And Rei was going to keep breaking trigger fingers until he got what he came for.

Footsteps on the floor below him. Rei matched his breathing to their tread, darting between columns as whoever it was moved the other way. He crouched on the catwalk and wiped a line of sweat off his face.

A man was stalking up and down the old tracks under the floodlights, barking orders—squat and broad-shouldered, a bruiser with a bad burn scar and a recently broken nose. Rei recognized his face from the surveillance video. Nakamura Kenjo. One of Snyder’s known associates.

Nakamura’s rap sheet was extensive, even for a serial offender. He’d been charged with everything from assault and battery to forging bad checks—until six months ago, when he abruptly stopped showing up in the system. Someone was making him toe the line. Rei’s eyes flicked to the flash of metal in his right hand—a revolver, his blunt thumb nervously spinning the cylinder.

This was the second man from the diner. The man who’d left a .38 cartridge in the warehouse. Probably the man who’d split Shinichi’s lip, left that spray of blood on the cold cement floor. Rei had a strong urge to introduce Nakamura’s nasal bone to his brain cavity.

Nakamura would know where Shinichi was being kept. So Rei would get it out of him. He’d been working with Vermouth a long time, after all; he knew a lot of unpleasant ways to make someone talk, and right now, he wasn’t feeling picky about which one worked.

Floodlights glared down on the platform. Two of the White Rabbits were under the awning, packing machine gun parts and extra cartridges into wooden crates. Nakamura shoved one in the back.

“Move it. Reina wants all this stuff packed up and back to the factory. Then we blow this place.”

The factory. Probably another White Rabbit base. And if Reina could make a man like Nakamura jump, she was probably the type who kept her thumb on brilliant little captives, too. That’s where Rei needed to be.

He recognized the tightness on Nakamura’s face, the nervous twitch of his fingers spinning the revolver. This was an organization getting ready to clean house. After the disaster at the wharf, the deal with the 15-45ers was probably shot. The White Rabbits were scraping merchandise, torching their hideouts, getting ready to disappear. The last thing on the checklist would be executing witnesses.

He had to get to Shinichi. Now.

Rei’s pulse thudded as Nakamura jogged up the platform steps, heading for the stairs to the roof. Cigarette break, maybe, under the guise of a perimeter sweep. Probably the best shot Rei was going to get.

There was a voice in his head trying to pull him back—a voice that sounded too much like Akai’s, warning him this was a stupid risk. He wasn’t set up for an extraction. And he’d be dangerously exposed, going after Nakamura without backup. The smart play was probably to lay low, call Akai. But…

No. He didn’t need Akai. He didn’t need anyone. And he was done wasting time.

Rei slipped back out the fire door and up the emergency stairs, the wind whipping his hair into his eyes. The roof was a wreck of steel girders and crushed glass, the bare concrete streaked with dead cigarettes and grimy puddles from last night’s rain. He could hear Nakamura below him, his boots clanging on the metal stairs.

Rei flattened his back against the support pillar and pulled his Glock from his shoulder holster, his heart knocking like an engine with a bad cylinder.

He waited until the door banged shut behind Nakamura, all the man’s attention fixed on a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Then he lunged out from behind the pillar and crunched his heel into Nakamura’s ribs.

Nakamura hit the steel girder with a clang. Rei felt the bulge of a flak vest under his foot—no broken ribs, then, or not that easy. Rei ducked his dazed, uncoordinated right hook and slugged him across the mouth with the grip of his handgun. It was intensely satisfying to watch Nakamura stagger back, clutching his split lip.

“Where the hell is he?” Rei hissed, shoving him into the pillar with his arm against his throat. “Where’s the factory?”

“Fuck you,” Nakamura growled, flecks of blood and spit hitting Rei’s face. He swung the revolver like a club. Rei caught it at the cylinder and snapped his grip, the gun clattering to the ground as he yanked Nakamura into a thumb bar and hurled him over his shoulder.

Maybe Akai’s move wasn’t completely useless. Not that Rei would be telling him that.

Nakamura hit the ground wheezing. Rei was right on top of him, the knees of his jeans soaking in the gritty rainwater, his wrists crushing Nakamura’s throat in a cross choke. “Answer my question. Now.”

Nakamura snatched the tac knife off his belt. Rei caught it an inch short of his ribs. It would have been so easy to twist it, drive the blade right into the bastard’s neck. But Rei needed him alive for a few more minutes. He wrestled his arm down and stabbed the knife into the Nakamura’s hip instead. Not in the femoral. Nothing he’d bleed out from. Just enough to get his point across.

Nakamura howled. Rei slapped a hand over his mouth. Too late. He could hear someone shouting up from below, the crackle of static on Nakamura’s radio. That was going to mean company.

Damn it, he didn’t have time for this! Rei gritted his teeth, yanked Nakamura up by the collar of his jacket.

“Tell me where he is!” he shouted. “Where are you keeping—”

Then a gun stock crunched into the base of his skull, and everything went black.

The first sound Rei heard when he jolted back into consciousness was the buzz of his phone vibrating. The second was the wet thud of a fist colliding with his face.

Pain burst through his nerves. Rei gasped in, wrenched his head back blinking black spots out of his eyes.

He had a lot of experience waking up bruised and tied to a chair. Somehow, it never got any easier. The lights blared like a siren in his pounding head. He was under the floodlights on the old platform, he realized, with his hands zip-tied behind his back, just tight enough to leave his fingers tingling. The cold air stung on his bare chest. His shirt was slit open down the middle—to check for a wire, maybe, or just to get the bulletproof vest off. It wasn’t as much fun to beat the shit out of someone when they were wearing Kevlar.

Slowly, his vision stopped swimming. One of the White Rabbits stood over him—a man with rough-shaven stubble and a greasy ponytail. There were five more men on the platform, and four on the upper balconies, one resting the barrel of his AR-15 lazily on the rail. Just here to watch the show.

Nakamura sat on a crate a meter away, his hip bandaged, his right hand slowly spinning the cylinder of the revolver. Rei could guess what he wanted to do with it.

The asshole with the ponytail grabbed Rei’s hair, yanked his head back. “Who the hell are you? What are you doing in our territory?”

“Just got turned around,” Rei coughed. Not at all surprised when the man took another shot at his zygomatic bone. But that was the point. When they got angry, they asked stupid questions, threw out names of enemies and allies and gave their objectives away. Half of all anti-interrogation techniques essentially boiled down to getting somebody pissed enough to punch you in the face. Rei had always been good at that.

His cheek throbbed like the skin and bone might peel apart. The man pulled back, seething.

“Don’t fuck with me. You’re with the Fivers, aren’t you? You killed Snyder and Sanada at the wharf.” He didn’t wait for an answer before driving his fist into Rei’s solar plexus.

Rei clenched his teeth. It was just pain. Pain, he could handle. The Organization didn’t have much use for operatives who’d break under some light torture. Things had been done to make him talk that made this seem like a gentle massage.

His phone buzzed again. He saw it this time, on the floor next to his right foot, half hidden by the warped metal chair. Must have fallen out while they were savaging his T-shirt. There was no name on the screen—just a letter, A. Akai.

Now he called. When Rei couldn’t answer even if he wanted to. Akai probably wouldn’t even assume anything was wrong. Rei was usually perfectly happy to let Akai talk to his voicemail until he gave up and called Shinichi instead. And that was on days when he hadn’t punched him in the face.

The phone went dark. Rei huffed out a laugh. Maybe it was better that way. Even if he ended up an anonymous corpse washing up on a shore somewhere, at least hadn’t given Akai the satisfaction of answering a hostage call.

“What the hell’s so funny?” the man with the ponytail demanded.

Rei shook his head. “I don’t think you’d get the joke.”

“Enough.” Nakamura struggled to his feet, shouldered the other man away to loom over Rei’s chair. The sour vodka on his breath was strong enough to choke on.

“You’re not a Fiver,” Nakamura rasped.

He shoved the revolver’s barrel into Rei’s face—right up against his swollen eyebrow, the sharp little snout grinding into the butterfly bandages over his black eye. Rei couldn’t stop a groan from punching out through his gritted teeth. That was low, even for a man with his reputation. Nakamura must be taking that split lip personally.

“You can keep talking. But I know why you’re here.” Nakamura leaned on the arms of the chair, his voice thick and menacing. “Where is he. That’s what you said on the roof.”

Shit.

Rei’s heart turned to ice. Where is he. That was all he’d said—but that was enough. He’d given them a weakness. If they thought they could use Shinichi to make him talk—

He wasn’t fast enough to keep the fear off his face.

Nakamura smirked. “There it is.” He dragged the revolver down Rei’s stinging cheek, the stench of gunpowder tickling his nose. “I had a feeling someone like you would turn up. Took you longer than I expected.”

“I didn’t have much to go on,” Rei ground out. He braced his feet flat on the floor. Like amateurs, they hadn’t bound his ankles to the chair legs. It was hard to win a fight strapped to a chair—but if they dragged Shinichi in here, he would sure as hell die trying.

Nakamura chuckled. “And here I thought Brunswick would have left you everything you needed.”

Brunswick? The molecular chemist? The American scientist who’d started all this? Rei’s brain felt swollen and useless, struggling to put the pieces together. Nakamura thought he was here looking for a corpse?

The revolver slid under his chin, the cold barrel digging into the soft tissue and forcing his head up. “You were working with him, weren’t you? Reina said we could trust him, but Snyder had a feeling that traitor was selling us out to a higher bidder. Going for the big money overseas and cutting us out of the deal.”

In a flash, Rei understood what had happened to Jay Brunswick. In an organization like this one, it was a short trip from suspicion to killed and dumped off a bridge. They must have spent months waiting for the fallout, for Brunswick’s partners to come looking for the formula. And here was Rei, blond and blue-eyed, exactly the person they’d been expecting.

He could run with that. He could be anyone. Anything that kept Shinichi out of it.

“I’m impressed,” Rei said, throwing on his sharp Bourbon smile. “You’re not the brainless sycophant Jay made you out to be.”

Nakamura’s fist slammed into his cheek. Rei felt a sickening pop as his jaw wrenched out of the joint on one side. Pain bloomed in his skull like white fire. His lip split, and the hot, sick taste of blood filled up his mouth, slicking down his chin onto his ragged jeans. The second punch sank into his stomach, right over the spleen.

Rei sagged against his bound wrists. His head throbbed like a jackhammer, the pain radiating from below his left ear. A partial dislocation, he decided hazily. It made it hard to think, hard to breathe. All his body wanted to do was get horizontal, crumple onto the floor and press his aching cheek to the cold tiles.

His lungs burned with the acrid taste of chemicals—the bleach and sulfuric acid and sodium hydride stacked precariously against the platform wall. It was basically a time bomb in steel canisters, all those flammable and inter-reactive chemicals piled on top of live ammunition. All it needed was a spark.

He’d dislocated his jaw once, years ago—before he got his codename, when he was still just Amuro Tohru, scrapping to stand out among the Organization’s new recruits. It was a stupid, rookie mistake. Trying too hard to make an impression, he’d taken a shot with a rifle he’d never used before and caught the kickback right on the chin. Spent the rest of the mission half sick and woozy, trying not to miss his target or to vomit on Vodka’s shoes.

But that one was easier to laugh off. Back then, he had Hiro. And now, he had no one.

Rei spit out a mouthful of blood, his lips twitching. It was almost laughable, how screwed he was. He’d ditched Akai, left Kazami in the dark. No one knew where he was. No one except Vermouth, and she wasn’t going to be mounting a rescue.

He knew better than to get in this deep, this isolated. But he hadn’t been thinking about that. Hadn’t been thinking anything, except that he just couldn’t lose Shinichi too.

Nakamura’s eyes were embers in the floodlights. He leveled the revolver at Rei’s head. “That stubborn old quack died without giving me what I want. So I’ll get it from you. Tell me the formula.”

Rei didn’t answer. Nakamura yanked the gun to the right and fired two warning shots into the floor, close enough that Rei felt the powder burns on his thigh.

“Now! Or I do to you what I did to him.”

Through the haze, the pieces snapped into place. Suddenly Rei knew what he could say to save his neck, get a first-class trip straight to the boss and cut the head off this fledgling syndicate before they got their own taskforce. He knew enough about chemical weapons to fake it, at least in front of amateurs. Claim he knew the formula, offer to help them synthesize it for an obscene amount of money, and he would be untouchable. But—

But they wouldn’t need that kid anymore.

With a cooperating adult hostage, Shinichi would be killed—instantly.

Rei’s eyes slipped closed.

Zugzwang. Wasn’t that what Shinichi had been trying to tell him? A position of overwhelming disadvantage. A loss that could only be avoided through a concession.

Save himself, and let Shinichi die. Or take his bullet, and probably let Shinichi die anyway.

It hit him for the first time, all of a sudden—the enormity of what he was risking. His cover as Amuro Tohru, as Bourbon—leads he’d sacrificed years of his life for. He was the last PSB mole under with the Black Organization; if he died, the PSB’s investigation died with him. Rei had given everything to this mission. Hiro had died for it—Hiro had died and Rei had clenched his teeth and thrown a $300 bottle of Scotch against the wall and gone on with a bulletproof smile.

How could he give all of that up for some kid?

But the answer was right there in his head, in Hiro’s voice, soft with a little laugh in it. The way he always said the things that mattered.

You don’t let more people die just to keep the dead company.

Rei knew he’d been burning out. Losing Hiro—and Matsuda and Hagiwara and Date, and Akemi and Elena, and everyone else who’d brushed past his life in even the smallest way—it left him hollow, all his old convictions withered down to embers. People didn’t matter. Methods didn’t matter. All that mattered were results. All Rei wanted was revenge for Hiro, and all the right bodies in the ground, Akai’s included. And a perfectly sighted .45-caliber bullet to punch through his skull the second he closed the investigation, so Rei never had to figure out what to do with himself when it was over.

Then he met Shinichi. This brilliant, stubborn, impossible kid, who was so secretive he required top-level clearance just to share what he liked on his sandwich, and so slow to trust that sometimes Rei felt like he was looking in a mirror. And suddenly Rei wanted other things.

To earn his trust. To prove him wrong. And mostly, to be better than this. To slough off all the scars and scabs and ugly decisions that had darkened him until they felt like all he was, try to figure out what was left underneath.

He’d never expected to find this again. Someone who put a little color back into a life that had bled out to shades of gray. But living with Shinichi, with Akai…that was life in Technicolor.

Like the colors of a laundry basket full of ridiculously tiny socks, most of them with holes in the toes. Rei always found a few staticked to the pineapple-print bath towels, couldn’t resist tossing them at Shinichi when he sat tucked up on the couch next to Rei with his hair still spiky from the shower, supposedly helping fold the laundry but mostly glued to the new Detective Samonji and mismatching all of Rei and Akai’s socks.

Like the little red smartphone on the coffee table, the one Shinichi guarded like it was loaded with missile launch codes—just a side effect of living so long under a secret identity, Rei assumed, until he realized Shinichi was three times as dodgy about it when his text alert had been dinging all morning and he had this particular expression on his face: mouth scrunched up, trying for bored but texting at warp speed, and just a little pink in his cheeks. Shinichi insisted he was just texting Hattori, but Rei knew for a fact that no one in Osaka could get Shinichi to text back that fast.

Like the navy-blue button-down of Akai’s that Shinichi came home absolutely swimming in after an unfortunate dye pack incident during a bank heist, so adorable that Rei was surprised he hadn’t been kidnapped on the way home. He couldn’t resist snapping a few pictures, but he did promise not to send any to Yukiko. (And who would, when Akai was lurking in the background of the shot, shirtless under his leather jacket like a 1950s motorcycle pinup, and at a certain point he had to be doing these things intentionally.)

Like the white all-purpose flour all over the Kudous’ kitchen the first time they tried to bake together and the bag of flour exploded like a Claymore, Shinichi’s face so stunned that Rei just burst out laughing, like he hadn’t since the academy, until he was doubled over against the cabinet holding his aching stomach, while Akai knelt on the floor toweling streaks of flour out of Shinichi’s hair with a fond little smile.

Like the jade-green eyes that flickered to him sometimes when they stood shoulder to shoulder at the sink, Rei washing and Akai drying the pans and casserole dishes that were too heavy for Shinichi’s scrawny arms. The air warm with the smell of caramelized tomatoes and Shinichi’s favorite yellow curry, and Akai practically crushing him against the counter as he leaned around Rei to grab the wok, because he was inconsiderate like that and had no concept of personal space. Akai smirking while he complained about the judgy parents at Shinichi’s school soccer day, and Rei slapping his chest with the soapy spatula, before he looked up into those green eyes and remembered.

Like little yellow rainboots, and the purple-striped hoodie forgotten in the backseat of his car, and the mustard-brown encyclopedias he kept stubbing his toe on in the library, but couldn’t bring himself to pick up because the sight of Shinichi asleep over that stack of books was worth a few bruises. Like the midnight blue of the kitchen as he clicked off the lights and Shinichi called goodnight to him from the top of the stairs—the best way anyone had said his name in a long time.

He wasn’t ready for it to be over. But if it had to be over, then he knew how he wanted it to end.

“Last chance,” Nakamura told him.

Rei breathed out, wiped a smear of blood across the shoulder of his torn shirt. “You might as well kill me. Because I’m not giving you that formula.” His jaw ached, but he forced the words out anyway, dropping his head back against the chair and relishing the fury on Nakamura’s face. “Shoot me, torture me, take me apart one bone at a time. But you’re not getting it out of me. I will never betray him.”

Akai would save Shinichi, somehow. He’d be okay. And Rei…he’d be okay, too. Far away from here, where all the pain was just a blur.

It felt good to have someone worth dying for again.

Nakamura’s lip curled. “Wrong answer.”

The world narrowed to the dark barrel of the gun. Rei winced at the heat of the muzzle against his forehead, the sound of the hammer cocking back. He closed his eyes and took refuge in a memory: Shinichi warm against his arm and Akai leaning over him, tucking his hair out of his face, and he’d thought—for one second he’d thought—

Nakamura’s finger tightened on the trigger. Rei breathed in. Then something exploded right next to his head, a horrible splintering, and the .38 jerked and clipped his shoulder instead, the gunshot drowned out by Nakamura’s scream.

Rei’s ears were ringing. It took him a woozy second to decipher the bullet groove gouged into his arm, the blood splatter on his face, Nakamura on the floor clutching his mangled wrist and the White Rabbits firing—not at Rei, but at the figure vaulting off the stairs. At the piercing green eyes that flashed to his as Akai lifted his shotgun, taking out the grunt with the AR-15 on the upper deck.

Akai. Of course it was Akai. Because no matter what Rei did, he just couldn’t shake him. The first person in a long time who refused to disappear, no matter how many times Rei shoved him away.

It was—infuriating. Or something like that. Something that made his chest ache like it might split open.

Akai swung his shotgun across the platform, dropping the two closest White Rabbits as he sprinted for Rei’s chair. Nakamura was crawling, searching for the revolver. Akai smashed his knee into Nakamura’s face and put him down.

“Hold on,” Akai shouted. He was all around Rei a second later, pressed close as he slit the zip tie with his jackknife. Live fire pinged off the floor. Akai wrapped an arm around Rei’s head, and Rei felt his body jerk with the force of a shot, the breath punched out of him by a bullet center mass.

Rei prayed the vest caught it. Slid his hand under Akai’s coat and grabbed the Colt out of his shoulder holster, and fired half blind over his shoulder, one hand fisted in Akai’s jacket to hold him up.

The floodlight went down in a burst of sparks. Rei felt Akai’s breath on his ear, the groan as he shook it off. And then a little jolt as Akai hooked an arm around his neck and pressed Rei flush to his chest, both of them firing at the dark balcony.

Recoil, probably. Rei was going with that.

A ricochet hit one of the chemical tanks. Suddenly the platform was thick with acrid black smoke, and Akai was hauling him up, dragging him toward the door. Rei barely managed to grab his phone. The tile walls echoed with the pop and whistle of the magazines exploding, .45-millimeter live rounds shattering the glass in the old train display. Rei blinked the smoke out of his eyes and saw a flash of red and chrome through the splintered window ahead—Akai’s Mustang, parked for a getaway.

Explosions rocked the platform at their backs. Rei staggered. Akai caught him around the waist.

“Hey. Stay with me,” he said, his voice strained and breathless against Rei’s ear. “It’s all right. I’ve got you.”

It was unbearable, sharing this melodramatic moment with Akai Shuichi. Worse because Akai was somehow perfectly suited to this, obnoxiously handsome even streaked with sweat and gunpowder, his shoulder just the right height for Rei’s aching head. His grip was strong and steady, the wisps of dark hair soft around his face. Rei was badly tempted to shove him down the stairs.

But as they hurtled out the door and into the Mustang, Akai flooring it until the train depot was just a blaze of fire in the rearview mirror, Rei had to admit it wasn’t all bad—having someone to lean on for a change.

16.

Akai knelt next to the Mustang’s open passenger door, his thumbs braced on either side of Rei’s jaw. At his back, dark waves smashed against the pylons of an old service pier, all torn up except for a rotating light that warned fishing boats away from the shore. The little white Mazda was parked in the shadow of the dock house. Rei had left his car a few miles from the depot, too far away for a tactical retreat—but Akai didn’t think this was the time to get into it.

The first-aid kit lay open on the pavement next to his knee. The revolving beam swept over the pier, for one moment illuminating every cut and bruise on Rei’s battered face.

Rei looked like someone had come at him with a meat tenderizer. His lip was split and ragged, his cheek puffy with darkening bruises. Akai had only caught the end of the interrogation, but it was clear Rei hadn’t done much talking. He sat slumped against the seatback, his eyes a little dazed, wiping blood off his chin with a takeout napkin while Akai tried to figure out what was serious and what was just hard to look at. The dislocated jaw seemed like the worst of it, but it’d be easy to miss a fracture under all that swelling. And Rei wasn’t helping, yanking back every time Akai’s fingers brushed his orbital socket.

“Would you stop pawing at me?” Rei snapped. “You’re rougher than they were.”

“It wouldn’t hurt if you weren’t moving,” Akai said, not for the first time. “Not to mention talking with a dislocated jaw.”

“So fix it already,” Rei ground out, crushing the bloody napkin into a coffee cup. “I told you I’m fine.”

Akai had been fine like that a few times. But he let it go, for now, since Rei’s pride was a little banged up, too.

He knew this Rei too well. Had seen him too many times in moments just like this one, curled around himself like a feral animal, trying to claw back the control that fear and pain had stripped from him. He wasn’t always good at letting someone help him. Or not Akai, anyway.

Rei’s skin was fever-hot, his pulse thrumming against Akai’s palm. As gentle as he tried to be, Rei gave a full-body flinch as the mandibular joint popped back into the socket, jerking out of Akai’s hold and pressing into the leather seatback.

“Shit,” he hissed, drawing the word out between his teeth.

“Better?” Akai asked.

Rei’s glare said that word had no place in this conversation. But with Rei, a little temper was a good sign. Akai squeezed his leg and bent over the kit, retrieving the acetaminophen and the instant ice pack.

“Doesn’t seem broken. It’ll be sore for a few days, though.”

“Not my first dislocation,” Rei said, pressing the ice pack to his cheek. But the way he tossed the painkillers back, it must hurt more than he was willing to admit.

The cold breeze off the water teased the back of Akai’s neck, whistling around the open car door. Rei shivered and hunched into the bloodstained jacket hanging off his right shoulder. They’d had to strip off the rest of his T-shirt so Akai could get at the bullet wound below his left shoulder. Just a graze—a line of tender, pink skin cutting over the bicep, stippled at the edges like a burn. There were bruises along Rei’s ribs and abdomen, too, dark above his pale scars, and his wrists were raw and red from the restraints. But he’d gotten off light, considering.

Akai skimmed the backs of his fingers down Rei’s bruised stomach, feeling his shiver. “Anything serious here?”

Rei grimaced. “No. They mostly went for the face shots. Flashy, but hard to do any real damage.”

“I doubt the neighbors will see it that way.” Rei would have to lay low for a few days, unless he wanted a lot of awkward questions.

Akai’s fingertips drifted up to rest below the graze mark. One inch to the right, and the bullet would have hit the bone. Lots of tendons and nerves there, critical muscle, the risk of diminished functionality even after surgery. Unless it hit the brachial, and then Rei wouldn’t have to worry about any of that.

Akai traced the wound with a wet square of gauze, wiping away the last flecks of blood and gunpowder. “I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes flicking up to Rei’s. “I didn’t have the right gun for a clean headshot.”

“I’ve had worse,” Rei said, unimpressed. His bare skin glowed against the seat, a tiny flush of red in his ears as he scraped his disheveled hair out of his face. “Besides, I…maybe got in a little over my head.”

“I noticed,” Akai said drily.

Rei thumped his fist into Akai’s chest. “Smug bastard.” But the blow was softer than usual, his fingertips uncurling to trace a line down Akai’s shirt. Imagining the bruise between his shoulder blades, maybe.

“The shot you took, covering me.” Rei fidgeted with Akai’s second button, shooting for belligerent but falling a little short. “Obviously it didn’t kill you. Tell me you’re not just bleeding out under your vest because you’re uselessly stubborn.”

Stubborn. As if Rei didn’t have the market cornered on that. Akai’s lips twitched. “Nothing to worry about,” he promised. A 9mm into the vest at that range barely knocked the wind out of him.

“I don’t remember anyone saying they were worried about you,” Rei grumbled. But he had a strange look on his face, his eyes hazy with the first streaks of blue and green in the eastern sky.

He smelled like blood, and grit, and smoke. Akai braced a hand on his warm shoulder, smoothed down the gauze and medical tape with his thumb.

Hunched on the stairs above the train platform, watching Nakamura’s twisted face over the shotgun sights, Akai had lined up the headshot and then changed his mind. Couldn’t take the risk that he’d miss the brain stem and hit the sensorimotor complex, cause the involuntary jerk that pulled the trigger and put a bullet through Rei’s skull.

It wasn’t like him to hesitate over shots he knew he could make. And the donkey kick in his chest at the sight of Rei bleeding, sagging against the chair with his shirt cut open—that was probably not supposed to happen. That was something he couldn’t afford. Not when he needed his hand steady, his mind utterly clear.

When he was the reason Rei was in that chair.

Akai was supposed to be watching over him. Both of them. If he’d gone after Rei at the wharf—if he hadn’t spent so long brooding—if he’d just blown that last red light on his way across town, listening to his phone ring and ring until the line went dead—maybe he would have been in position to take that shot before Nakamura pressed his revolver into Rei’s temple. Before he had to find out how Rei closed his eyes, when he thought it was the last time.

Someone was supposed to get to Rei before it got that bad. Not just someone—him. Rei was never supposed to get that close to the edge—but if he did, then Akai wanted to be the one he was waiting for, searching for just outside the circle of floodlights. The shoulder he leaned into, when it was over.

It was probably more than he was going to get, in this lifetime.

“You didn’t have to come for me.”

Akai looked up. Rei ran his tongue over his swollen lip. “I got myself into that. You could have just written me off. So…why didn’t you?”

Rei’s shoulders were tense, his blue eyes narrowed over a tiny frown. Angry? No, Akai decided. Just gun shy—still searching for solid ground, for something he could trust his weight to. Asking questions he should know the answers to by now.

Akai reached up and caught his chin, tipped it until they locked eyes.

“When I agreed to this, Shinichi wasn’t the only one I made a promise to.” Akai chased a wisp of sweat-dark hair behind Rei’s ear, his wedding ring gleaming against the soft bruised skin. “I will always come for you, Rei. You’re not alone anymore.”

Rei blinked too fast. He looked down, fighting a tiny smile. “Isn’t that just another way of saying I’m stuck with you?”

Akai chuckled under his breath. “For better or for worse.”

The phone buzzed in his jacket pocket. Akai dug it out and answered it on speaker, resting it on Rei’s knee to keep it out of the wind.

“Hey,” Jodie said. “Everybody in one piece?”

Rei scowled, not thrilled to be a subject of public discussion. But that was on him, for running off solo with a dramatic squeal of his tires. Akai wasn’t the only one Kazami had been badgering all night.

“We’re fine, Jodie. Tell me you have something,” he said, tossing Rei a faded blue sweatshirt out of the backseat. Rei made a face at the yellow FBI stamped on the back.

He could hear Jodie’s exasperation through the phone. “Something. Maybe not enough. We’ve done all we can with the GPS data and traffic cams, but we’re still looking at a pretty sizeable chunk of the old industrial district. Must be at least a hundred abandoned buildings in there.”

Rei paused in shucking off his bloody coat. “You’re looking for a factory,” he told her. “Nakamura mentioned a factory, and someone he called Reina. Sounded like the person calling the shots.”

The name would take too long. But Akai could hear the clicking of a keyboard, Jodie and Camel checking the city zoning listings. “Three decommissioned factories in the search area,” she reported. “I’m not getting power spikes from any of them, though. Must be using generators to stay off the grid.”

Three was better than a hundred. Akai set the phone down to help Rei work the sweatshirt over his bandaged shoulder. “Send me the addresses, Jodie. We’ll raid them all.”

Jodie sighed. “You said that way too casually. We are on foreign soil, you know.”

“You have official PSB approval for whatever tactics are necessary,” Rei said, his voice a little muffled as he negotiated the sweatshirt over his head. He bristled at Akai’s smirk. “What?”

“It suits you,” Akai told him. He liked Rei in his sweatshirt—and abusing his power for a good cause.

Rei threw his hair out of his face. “As soon as this is over, I’m burning it. It smells like antifreeze.”

“Nice to hear you two getting along again,” Jodie chuckled. “But I’m pretty sure that approval isn’t going to cover my ass when you start blowing things up. Just give me two seconds, okay? We’re running through all the readings again, looking for any—”

She went quiet. Akai felt Rei tense, their eyes locked. Then Jodie sucked in a sharp breath.

“Holy shit, I think I’ve got him. There’s a weak signal coming through the phone line of the old glass factory. It could just be noise on the line, but—I think it’s a message.”

“Tap it out,” Akai said, his chest tight.

The car filled with the click of her fingernail on the microphone. Rei’s breath hitched.

Five long taps. Akai would know that signal anywhere. It was the signal Shinichi gave him just two days ago at the bathroom sink, a warning that Rei was coming up the stairs and it was radio silence on any further discussion of Christmas presents. Zero in Morse code.

Rei’s heart was all over his face. Akai pressed the phone into his palm.

“He’s calling for you,” he said.

Rei took a shaky breath. Then his mouth crooked up into a smile—and suddenly he was himself again, fierce and relentless, someone who would walk through hell with a razor blade if something he loved was on the other side. He snatched his Glock out of the cupholder and slipped under Akai’s arm, eyes blazing in the new light as he headed for the Mazda.

“Good,” he said. “Because I’m driving.”

Chapter Text

17.

Shinichi tripped over a chunk of rebar, fighting to keep up as Rosie pulled him through the decrepit factory. In the half-light, the floor was a minefield of broken glass and splinters and rusty tacks sticking up where the flooring had been ripped out, snagging his dirty socks as he ran. Shinichi was really glad he’d gotten that tetanus booster. The concrete was like ice under his feet, his legs stiff and shivery from hours kneeling on the hard floor. But he forced himself to keep going, focused on Rosie’s warm hand and the security door one level up.

Shinichi was pretty sure his heart had literally stopped when the door to his cell burst open. He’d spent all night crouched against the Faraday cage, scraping up his arm to send the zero code through the phone line and dreading the moment Reina came back to make good on her threat. Get it out of him, or I will. Shinichi knew generally what that meant, but he really wasn’t looking forward to the specifics.

But it wasn’t Reina in the doorway, silhouetted against the false dawn. It was Rosie, fumbling to get the lock off the Faraday cage and pulling him out by the wrist, his socked feet smearing the chalk alligator on the floor.

“Hurry, Conan. We don’t have much time.” Her face was still tight with fear, but she managed a smile as she grabbed his hand. “Let’s get you home to your dad,” she whispered. And even though the whole dad thing was a massive oversimplification, Shinichi’s heart squeezed all the way up into his throat at the word home.

His pulse thudded as they fled across the factory floor. A glass factory, Shinichi recognized absently. He could see old cutting tables and edging machines, an entire laminate production belt left to rust in the shadow of swinging pulleys and chains. The aluminum walls rang with noise—voices shouting, car engines growling, the distant creak of the metal shutter rising over the garage. The White Rabbits were getting ready to bolt. Something else must have happened—some safehouse hit, someone scooped up by the cops. Or maybe someone just got on Rei’s bad side. Shinichi was banking on that one.

A thick, chemical smell pounded in his head. Gasoline. A lot of it. Like someone had been dousing the whole factory in it, ready to torch it right down to the studs.

Rosie suddenly dropped to her knees, pulled him down behind a rusted assembly belt. Shinichi could feel her terrified heartbeat in the hand on his shoulder, the thud of heavy footsteps through the floor. He peeked through the belt legs. Two men had stopped next to one of the factory’s metal struts, dragging an oblong toolbox into place. He caught the ping of the metal clasp snapping open, the rustle of wires, a sharp electronic beep. He hadn’t worked it out yet before they moved away.

Rosie urged him up, her fingers tight around his dirty sleeve.

“Come on, honey. Hurry.”

Sawdust and metal shavings clung to his feet as they ran for the stairs. His jacket flapped against his back, streaked with dust and grime. There was a big oil stain on the pocket that was never coming out, but Shinichi didn’t care. If he actually made it out of this, he’d let Rei take him shopping and buy ten new ones—even the slightly too-cute ones that made Rei’s mouth twist up, trying not to laugh at him in his second-grade chic.

Distracted, craning his head back toward the White Rabbits, he missed the big piece of glass until he stepped right on it, driving it deep through his dirty sock. Shinichi lurched into the railing. It only hurt for a second—one hot spike of pain all the way up his leg. Then adrenaline took over, and he couldn’t feel it at all, just the warm stickiness pooling inside his sock as he dragged himself to the top of the stairs.

Rosie bent close to the security door. “Almost there. As soon as this opens, we run, okay? Just run, and don’t look back. Can you do that?”

“Yeah,” Shinichi promised, not looking down. He could feel his wet sock bunching between his toes—but it was fine. It probably wasn’t even that bad. And if it meant getting back to Rei and Akai—getting home—he would run until it was shredded.

The door buzzed. Rosie flinched, throwing a fearful glance over her shoulder. “Come on. Please.” She entered it again. The indicator light blinked an angry red. Rosie pressed a hand over her mouth. “Damn it, she must have changed this.”

The sound tugged at Shinichi’s memory. Not the buzz. The soft beep of the keys. He’d heard that before—a dual-tone multi-frequency keypad, like the buttons on an old phone. That was the sound he’d been hearing from his cell for the last two nights: the White Rabbit sentries punching in the code, stepping out onto the walkway overlooking the water.

He hadn’t really been listening. But the sounds were in his head somewhere. Shinichi scrubbed his fingers through his dirty hair, trying to remember.

He’d done this so many times. For cases. For the mail address he’d deciphered from Vermouth. For a hundred different rough drafts, when his dad was into audio ciphers and Shinichi was the official Night Baron guinea pig. He always solved them, but never fast enough to avoid the dreaded smirk as Yusaku leaned back in his desk chair with a look that screamed I expected better.

Shinichi pinched his temples. “Try 7-4-4-7-8-3-6.”

Rosie bit her lip. “Honey, I don’t think guessing is—”

“It’s not a guess,” Shinichi insisted. “I could hear it from my cell. It’s a DTMF touchpad—two different tones for every key, so the numbers are identifiably distinct. I just…couldn’t hear that well through the wall.” He could see the confusion all over her face, but he didn’t have time to explain. “Just try it. And if that’s not right, shift the fours by one digit—low frequencies penetrate walls better, so the sevens are probably right.”

She was giving him that look—that look he got a lot as Conan. But she did as he said, the door buzzing with one wrong entry after another.

Loud voices from the far side of the factory. Shinichi ducked down to crouch at the edge of the walkway. He couldn’t see anyone yet, but he could hear Reina’s voice, sharp and angry.

“Somebody hit the depot. Get everything in the cars and split. We don’t have much time.”

Not much time—before they expected another raid? Or before they torched the place? He didn’t like the sound of it either way.

Something caught his eye. There was another toolbox up here, tucked behind an H-beam column that stretched up to the ceiling. Shinichi thumbed it open. His guts lurched like someone had reached in and grabbed them.

It was a bomb. The mechanism looked pretty basic, but not basic enough for Shinichi to disarm it without at least a pocketknife. The jumble of wires and dead switches sat on three blocks of C-4, enough to take out the pillar, if not this whole side of the building. The timer was already clicking down: twenty-three minutes and thirty seconds.

Shinichi lurched up and grabbed onto the rail, scanning the factory floor. At least four more bombs, all near load-bearing walls. The White Rabbits weren’t just going to burn this place—they were going to blow it apart, tying up all the loose ends and making sure nothing was left behind. Shinichi included.

He glanced at the red digits on the counter. Twenty-three minutes and eleven seconds. That wasn’t long, but it was plenty of time to get clear, if he could just get this door open.

He pressed his forehead to the cold metal rail. The Night Baron codes were easy once he figured out the trick: that transposed, the codes always had a second meaning, either notes on the musical scale or digits on an alphanumeric keypad. It wasn’t a satisfying mystery otherwise. Even the Black Organization used a folksong so the mail address was easy to remember. Consciously or unconsciously, people picked numbers that meant something to them. But with the White Rabbits, he had no frame of reference…

Or did he?

Shinichi stared at the chalk smear on his jeans. The chalk Rosie had given him—the chalk that had been scratched inside the lockbox of cash. Welcome, Alice. Suddenly all the pieces clicked.

Shinichi wrenched back toward the door. “It’s an eight-digit code. 7-3-3-7-8-3-3-6. Hurry!”

7-3-3-7-8-3-3-6. RED QUEEN. In chess or in Wonderland, it was always about the queen.

His breath hitched as Rosie punched the last number. The door beeped, the handle popping open. A blast of cold air hit his face, sharp with the smell of salt off the water, the horizon blazing bright where the sun was about to rise. Shinichi’s heart rocketed into his throat. He’d done it. This wasn’t over—

The thought died in the bang of a gunshot.

Pain tore through Shinichi’s leg. It felt like a hot poker stabbing into his thigh. His feet slipped off the rail and he landed hard on the walkway, clutching at the hot, slippery fabric of his jeans. His fingers came away wet with blood.

“Conan!” Rosie screamed.

Shinichi stared at his leg, dazed. A dark stain was spreading across his thigh. Too late, like an aftershock, he heard the crackle of the gunpowder, the ping of the bullet off the metal wall. The voice shouting at them from across the factory, where the woman in a blood-red coat was stalking toward the stairs with three men on her heels.

“Don’t even think about it, Rosie.” Reina raised her gun again. “Fucking traitor.”

Bullets thudded off the underside of the walkway. Shinichi threw an arm over his head. Through the gap, he saw it all in flashes—the White Rabbits coming at them, the bomb’s ticking timer, Rosie reaching for him and the silhouette of his own bloody hand reaching back for her, for everything outside that shining door.

It was just too far. So much farther than his arm could reach.

Shinichi clutched the wound on his thigh. “Go!” he shouted through clenched teeth. “They’re coming.”

Rosie’s fingers were white-knuckled on the handle. “But—”

Shinichi shook his head. “Bishop. No—Rosie. You have to go. I’ll only slow you down.” His breath was hot and ragged in his throat, a shiver of pain rolling down his leg. “Please. Your daughter deserves to have her family back.”

Rosie’s eyes flashed over his face, as if seeing him for the first time. “Who are you, really?” she whispered.

Shinichi dredged up a smile at the familiar question. “Just a detective.” For a little while longer, anyway.

The White Rabbits were almost at the stairs. Rosie backed out the door, her face worried and grateful and ashamed and a hundred other things. “I’ll send the cops,” she promised.

Shinichi nodded. “I know you will.” Just like he knew it wouldn’t be in time. He sank back against the railing and watched that tiny sliver of sunlight go dark as the door slammed shut.

He’d gotten her out. So at least it hadn’t been for nothing.

His heart was beating too fast. Shinichi could feel it pounding in his chest and in his leg, the pain a low, dull throb. He peered through his fingers. The wound was shallow, not even as long as his pinky—just a graze from a small-caliber bullet. But it felt like it’d carved a trench into him.

The first White Rabbit burst onto the walkway. Shinichi lurched forward and threw his arms around the man’s leg. He couldn’t do much, but he would buy Rosie every second that he could. He held on tight as the man kicked at him, trying to shake him off. Then someone grabbed him by the collar and wrenched him up off the ground.

Reina’s eyes were narrowed to slits. Shinichi struggled, kicking at her arms. But she was too far away, and it was too hard to breathe, the fabric of his collar pulled suffocatingly tight against his throat. His eyes flashed over the faded gang mark on her neck, the scars on her knuckles. The rusty spray of back spatter on her thick-soled boots.

Reina clicked her tongue. “Stupid, soft Rosie. Couldn’t handle you after all, could she? I should have gotten rid of you right from the start.”

For one gut-wrenching second, Shinichi thought she was going to hurl him over the railing, onto the concrete. But she just threw him down on the walkway, so hard his head cracked against the sharp metal corner of the toolbox. Which maybe didn’t hurt much less.

“Tie him up next to the bomb. We’ve wasted too much time on him already.”

“What about Bishop?” one of the men asked.

Reina’s double-laced black boots thudded down the metal walkway. “Let her go. As soon as we’re done here, I’ll kill her myself.”

Shinichi tried to struggle as they dragged him back to the pillar and wrapped duct tape around and around his chest. But it was useless. It was always useless, in this tiny body. He couldn’t do anything but twist his head as they slapped duct tape over his mouth—and then watch the White Rabbits retreating, jogging down the stairs after Reina in her bloodstained coat. From up here, he could see all the way to the metal shutter across the factory, where the rest of the White Rabbits were loading equipment and lumpy duffel bags of cash into two black SUVs. Ready to make a run for it. Shinichi only hoped they wouldn’t get far.

He’d gotten Rei and Akai the message. They would take down the weapons trafficking cell. That was enough. That had to be enough.

His head felt sloshy and thick. The bullet wound had mostly stopped bleeding, just a sluggish trickle soaking into his ripped jeans. It must not have hit anything really important. The glass jutting out of his bloody sock sort of made him queasy to look at. At least it was all on the same side, so his right leg was totally fine. For the seventeen minutes and fifty-nine seconds that he still had a right leg.

Shinichi grimaced, craning his knee the wrong way so he could pull the grimy sock off his uninjured foot. The tape was hot and sticky against his mouth. With his fingertips, he managed to sort of half-tie, half-drape the sock around his thigh like a sad tourniquet. Rei would be appalled. But Rei was never going to see it.

A tiny part of his brain was trying to calculate rate of blood loss versus pints of blood in his small body, how long it would take him to lose consciousness. But what was the point? Bleeding out would take so much longer than he had left. He wouldn’t even be comfortably numb by the time the bomb went off.

The factory was suddenly too quiet. All he could hear was his heart thumping, the seconds of his life ticking down on the bomb counter. Shinichi leaned back and closed his eyes.

All night, half dozing as he tapped Rei’s nickname into the void in Morse code, he’d been thinking about borrowed time. Whether Kudou Shinichi had died—or should have died—on that long-ago day in the amusement park, and everything that came after, his whole life as Conan, was just borrowed time.

Sometimes Shinichi had felt like a ghost drifting through his own life. Not quite part of the world around him, but not quite separate either, somehow at an awkward distance from everyone he knew. It made him think of chemistry, electrons orbiting a far-off nucleus, how all of the matter in the universe was packed with so much empty space. And then he’d found something solid and real, and it was like crashing into existence for the first time—the nuclei of atoms smashing together, instead of all that dead air.

But just because you found something didn’t mean you got to keep it.

At least he could imagine Rei and Akai out there somewhere, doing the jobs they’d sworn their lives to, tearing down every last scrap of the White Rabbits’ network. And if that meant they couldn’t waste time trying to save him, well…Shinichi could never, ever blame them for that.

This was endgame, after all. You sacrificed whatever piece it took to get to checkmate.

Shinichi thunked his head back against the pillar. He knew it was a childish thought. But he just—wasn’t done. He was just starting to believe them, that he was more than just a cover assignment, that maybe they weren’t just doing this for a job. That maybe Rei meant it, when he ran his hand through Shinichi’s hair and smiled at him like he wasn’t going anywhere.

He would miss that smile. But maybe Rei would keep smiling at Akai. Even if Akai had to sort of wring it out of him. Maybe they’d keep fighting or flirting or whatever they were doing down in the basement gym. And maybe Rei would remember his promise, though they’d never talked about it—not once since that night Rei drove him to the hospital, all the lights going blurry out the car window and Rei’s coat crushed against his ribs. The promise to bury him under his own name.

He didn’t want to make Rei do it, bury him. But he didn’t have anyone else to ask.

It wasn’t his leg that hurt anymore. It was his chest, a knife-sharp ache like something deep inside was broken. Shinichi pressed his wet cheek into the shoulder of his coat. It didn’t smell like lavender laundry detergent anymore. Just blood and dust and gasoline and gunpowder—all the things that were taking him away from them.

Akai thought he was used up, just looking for the right bullet to take. Rei thought his soul was blackened by all the compromises he’d made, too little left of him to be a good person anymore. But they were wrong. They were the best people Shinichi knew.

Just for a second, he let himself imagine what might have happened if he’d gone to the restaurant instead of the warehouse two nights ago. Showing up late and giving Rei his cheeky forgive-me-’cause-I’m-cute grin, and Rei retaliating with an aggressive hair mussing. Rei berating Akai with a breadstick because they were trying for perfectly, forgettably normal, and ordering the massive lasagna made it seem like no one had fed him in two weeks—while Shinichi stole the last square of bruschetta and didn’t point out that Rei chewing his husband out with a breadstick was way more memorable than what anybody ordered.

The waitress’s skeptical look when Shinichi refused to order off the kids’ menu, because he’d had all the mac ‘n’ cheese he could take in this lifetime. Reaching for the salt and accidentally putting his elbow down on his fork, catapulting a splat of marinara sauce onto Rei’s fancy blue satin shirt—and then an impromptu discussion of how to get certain kinds of splatter out of clothing, redacted to wine and paint so no one had a reason to call the cops.

He wanted that night back. Rei’s little smirk when Shinichi admitted he liked his bruschetta better. The big stack of take-home boxes that always disappeared on FBI stakeouts, though Rei complained that if they had to mooch off other agencies they should just go home already. The slice of tiramisu cut into thirds—but somehow Shinichi’s third always seemed a little bigger, Akai carving it with precision to sneak him the most coffee-flavored sponge. And then in the car, leaning his head against the window and listening to Rei and Akai’s familiar bickering in the front seat with a sleepy smile, the low back and forth of their voices filling him with a heaviness that made it so easy to close his eyes. The feeling that for the first time in years, he was actually going home.

Shinichi let himself have one long, sweet, blissful, foolish moment to wish he had a whole lifetime with them. But he was too practical for that. And even without looking at the bomb, he’d never stopped counting the seconds in his head, calculating the blast radius, the possibilities for survival that all came down to zero.

“Sorry, Rei,” Shinichi whispered, letting his eyes slip shut.

The sun was coming up, the red light spilling over his face. Somewhere, he could hear a car motor revving. It almost sounded like Rei’s car. Shinichi’s lips curled into a wistful smile.

The blood loss must be getting to him. Or maybe he was still dreaming.

No one was coming. No one had been coming for a long time.

But…it was getting louder. Shinichi blinked. What car was that? And why did it sound like it was speeding up?

Then a white Mazda smashed through the factory doors with a high metal scream, crashing right through the shutter and bursting onto the factory floor. It was so loud for a second he thought the whole building had been sheared in half. White Rabbits threw themselves out of the way, scrambling for their guns. Shinichi wrenched up against the pole in disbelief.

He wasn’t dreaming. That was definitely Rei behind the cracked windshield, his bumper hanging by one screw as he whipped in a circle and rammed an SUV into the wall. And that was Akai leaning out the passenger window, brass casings flying as three bodies hit the floor. Shinichi felt like someone had kicked his chest in, startled tears rolling down his cheeks.

They were here. How could they be here? They had more important things to do—so many more important people to worry about—but they came anyway. Shinichi’s heart soared, and then plummeted through the floor as Akai’s bullets pinged off an assembly belt with a toolbox underneath it.

They’d just come to die. There was only nine and a half minutes left on the bombs—barely enough time for them to turn around and run. And if they wasted any time trying to get to him—

His heart was a hurricane, all the fear and relief and happiness and terror swirled up inside him. They couldn’t die because of him. It was too awful, too unfair. He couldn’t live with that. Not even for less than ten minutes.

Shinichi yanked against the duct tape. But it didn’t budge, too tight for him to even jerk one hand free. Rei threw his door open and slammed one of the men to the ground—not even in the car anymore, no protection at all from the bomb barely six feet away. Shinichi scraped his cheek against his shoulder until the edge of the duct tape peeled up, taking a little skin with it.

He had to warn them. He had to stop this. They couldn’t die, not like this—not for him—

The duct tape came off with a searing rip. Shinichi sucked in a huge breath, his pulse pounding like the seconds counting down as he squeezed his eyes shut and screamed.

“Rei!”

18.

For the rest of his life, Rei knew he would hear that scream echoing in his dreams.

“Rei, there’s a bomb! The toolboxes are bombs!”

Rei slugged the White Rabbit grunt in the teeth and left him unconscious on the concrete, wrenching up onto his knees. Shinichi. There he was—on the second level, covered in blood and duct taped to a pole. Somebody was getting a bullet in the head for that.

Rei’s heart slammed into his ribs like it was trying to get out of his body, to get to Shinichi. But he was going to have to solve a few little problems first.

“Just hang on!” Rei shouted back, not sure Shinichi could even hear him. The gunfire ringing off the metal walls was cacophony—it was hard to tell who was shooting, and at what. He snatched his Glock out of the holster and put two in the windshield of the second SUV, the driver slumping under the splintered glass.

The side mirror to the left of his head exploded. Akai was suddenly right beside him, dragging him back behind the Mazda like being Rei’s bulletproof vest was his new full-time job.

“How many?” Rei asked through his teeth, as bullets thunked into the tires.

“Twelve,” Akai told him, before leaning over the hood and firing once. “Eleven,” he amended, dropping his head back against the scratched passenger door.

Rei rolled his eyes. “Showoff.” But maybe that was who you wanted, when your kid was duct-taped to a bomb. At least their shock and awe breach tactics had worked—the White Rabbits were in disarray, holed up behind the wrecked SUV taking potshots through the broken windows. None of them seemed to be going for the M27s in their trunk—which was good, because Rei hadn’t come wearing titanium.

Akai ditched the spent clip. His green eyes cut to Rei as he reloaded. “I’ll take care of them. Get to Shinichi—and then get him out of here.”

With or without me, he meant. Which was just Akai all over—forever trying to pull the dramatic sacrifices that would be set to swelling orchestral music in the Hollywood adaptation. Rei would have slapped him with the dishtowel for his theatrics, but he only had a gun.

And anyway, he wasn’t wrong. Shinichi was more important than either of them.

“Fine,” he agreed, flicking the sweaty hair out of his face. “But only because if these amateurs kill you, then honestly you deserved it.”

Akai smirked, pushing off the side of the car. “Give me a four-second lead.” Then he vaulted over the hood, backlit for one moment against the red light before he vanished, the Colt’s muzzle flashing.

The air tasted like salt and sulfur. Rei counted seconds by the drips hitting the ground under the Mazda—transmission fluid, probably. Something had sheared through the engine; they weren’t going to be driving out of here. But he could get another car. That kid calling his name on the second level—he was irreplaceable.

The last working headlight shattered. Rei launched himself up and ran. The stairs were halfway across the factory, through a zigzag of shadows and old manufacturing equipment. His shoe splashed through a slick of gasoline. He could hear the White Rabbits going down, counting kills by gunshots because Akai didn’t miss when it mattered. Nine, eight, seven…

“Rei! Behind you!”

Rei saw it at the same moment Shinichi shouted. Someone was dodging through the decaying machines, running parallel to him, heading for the exit. A woman in a red coat.

If Snyder was the jack, then this must be the queen. Reina.

Rei banked left and scrambled up the feeder belt for an ancient laminator, the metal frame creaking under his weight. Rusty chains swung past his black eye. He leapt down in the next row to cut her off, his gun leveled at her forehead.

“Don’t move.”

Reina jerked to a stop, a cellphone clenched in her fist. No—not a cellphone. A detonator, Rei realized as she held it up, her thumb hovering over the red button.

“Drop it, FBI.”

It took him a second to remember he was wearing Akai’s sweatshirt. How aggravating to be addressed by his three least favorite letters.

Rei scowled. “I’m actually just borrowing this.”

“Are you borrowing that kid, too?” Reina snarled, shoving her hair away from her face. Rei stiffened. She waved the phone, the red light winking off the screen. “I don’t care who you are. Let me go, or I hit this and splatter us all over the walls. Starting with that sweet little kid up there.”

Rei’s eyes flicked to the detonator. The second she got outside, she’d hit that button anyway. But if she hit it now, Shinichi had no chance.

A grim smile tugged at his lips. He really was wearing his heart on his sleeve, wasn’t he? Not a great move, in this line of work.

He raised his hands and let the gun clatter to the floor.

Reina smirked. “Thanks for being so accommodating.”

Rei didn’t move. Didn’t even breathe until she was two steps past him, her eyes fixed on the emergency door. Then he ducked and slammed his shoulder into her ribs, tackling her to the floor.

They hit the concrete hard, thrashing. Rei seized her wrist and peeled her thumb away from the detonator. Her elbow caught him in the mouth—he felt the scab split, tasted blood again on his stinging lip. That was going to be ugly tomorrow. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except getting to Shinichi.

The phone was slick in his hand. Rei dug his knuckle into the ball joint of her thumb. Reina shrieked. Her free hand scrabbled for something—his gun, he realized too late. He caught her wrist and twisted and her finger stuttered on the trigger—and then everything was a bang of white noise, blood soaking into his shirt as the bullet slid into Reina’s shoulder.

She slumped boneless to the floor. Rei ripped the battery out of the phone and tossed the dead pieces aside, breathing hard.

His mouth felt about as smashed up as his car. He leaned on his elbows, pressing his forehead to the cold floor. The gunfire had died off, which meant—something. He didn’t have time to wonder what. He scrambled up and took the steps two at a time.

Rei didn’t think he’d ever seen an expression quite like the one on Shinichi’s face as he hit the top of the stairs. His blue eyes were impossibly wide, staring up at Rei like he half expected him to evaporate. His cheek was puffy and purple, and there was a red contact burn across his mouth from the duct tape, the left leg of his jeans soaked with dark blood. Just looking at him made Rei want to leap off the stairs and kill Reina again.

Shinichi blinked in astonishment as Rei dropped to his knees, tear tracks shining on his dirty cheeks. “Rei.” He shook his head, his breath shaky. “You…you’re…your car.”

Rei scoffed. “My car? You’ve been missing for thirty-six hours, and that’s the first thing you want to say to me?” But he couldn’t fight down his smile, his busted lip stinging as it stretched too wide. Shinichi wasn’t a grainy image on a surveillance tape, a chalk scribble on the floor. He was alive—alive, and breathing, and so close Rei could have crushed him against his sweatshirt if there wasn’t a damn pole in the way.

Shinichi was still gaping at him. “But—your face. It’s awful.”

Well, that was just rude. Rei flicked his forehead. “I don’t want to hear that from you.” Though it wasn’t Shinichi’s face so much as his leg that made Rei’s chest feel like it was crunched in a trash compactor.

He recognized the ragged slit across the thigh of Shinichi’s jeans. That was a bullet wound, way too close to the femoral and sciatic arteries for comfort. Shinichi had sort of wrapped a filthy sock around it, but that was a half-hearted, I’m-going-to-die-anyway tourniquet if Rei had ever seen one, and they were going to have a serious conversation about that as soon as he was sure they’d both live through it.

Shinichi’s face was gray with worry. “The bombs—”

“It’s okay. I got the detonator,” Rei told him.

But Shinichi shook his head. “They’re on a timer! Less than three minutes left.”

Of course they were. Why had he expected any part of this to go down easy? Rei gritted his teeth as he yanked at the duct tape, the adhesive stuck tight to Shinichi’s soot-stained coat. That was going to be a knife situation. Rei dug his switchblade out of his sock.

“Hang on. I’ll get you out.”

Someone was pounding up the metal stairs at his back. But it was just Akai, his face streaked with grime and dark spatter, his long legs covering the distance fast. Rei’s stomach gave a little flicker at the sight of him still in one piece. Annoyance, probably.

“Guess you didn’t get to die in a blaze of glory after all,” Rei threw out, sawing through the duct tape as fast as he could.

Akai’s lips twitched into that unbearable smirk. “Worried about me?”

“I thought we covered that earlier tonight,” Rei snapped. But most of his irritation died as Akai dropped down next to him, ruffling his fingers through Shinichi’s hair.

“Hey, kid,” he said fondly. He pulled out his pocketknife and pried open the bomb canister, bending low over the toolbox.

The sticky tape threads kept catching on the knife. Rei could feel the seconds ticking down like an itch on his skin. Shinichi’s fingers caught his sleeve, his voice choked and breathless. “The bomb—you have to get out…”

“It’s fine,” Rei said. “He’s got it, and we’re not leaving you.” He could hear Akai snipping through wires, working fast to disconnect the detonator. It wouldn’t stop the factory from going up, but it might buy them a few extra seconds.

Shinichi shook his head, frantic. “Seriously, there’s no time—”

Rei really needed to focus on the duct tape. But he stopped long enough to catch Shinichi’s face, force him to look up and meet his eyes. “Shinichi. It’s never going to happen,” Rei said, offering him a crooked smile. “We came all this way to get you. We’re not leaving you now.”

You didn’t leave family behind. And Rei was done losing people. The next time someone had to die, he was dying with them.

Akai snipped the last wire and kicked the toolbox down the walkway. “Bomb’s defused.”

“Time?” Rei asked.

“Sixty-one seconds,” Shinichi and Akai answered simultaneously. And then had the gall to share that knowing little smirk—which was not going to be the last thing Rei saw before he was blasted all over the walls.

Akai crouched next to him, his long fingers ripping at the severed chunks of duct tape. Rei clenched his aching jaw. They were so close—so close, if he could just—

The last strips came loose. Rei dropped the knife and hauled Shinichi up into his arms. He could feel his tiny body shaking, slippery with blood and grease and sticky from the tape still clinging to his coat. But Rei would take that any day, if it came with the feeling of Shinichi throwing his arms around his neck, squeezing him so tight Rei could barely swallow.

The human heart was supposed to weigh ten ounces. Somehow, Rei’s felt heavier than that.

“You’re okay,” Rei whispered into his hair. “You’re okay, Shinichi. We’ve got you.” And decided not to ask himself why that was first person plural.

“The door code—it’s red queen,” Shinichi gasped.

“That’ll help,” Akai said.

Everything after that was a blur. Rei felt the slap of the cold air on his face and the judder of his feet pounding down the emergency stairs, the ache of his exhausted legs as he sprinted down the torn-up service road beside the choppy black water, counting seconds in his head. They’d never make it outside the blast radius. But he’d take every meter he could get. Shinichi’s weight bounced against his shoulder, those tiny fingers clenched into his coat.

He heard the first bomb detonate, the joists going and the roar of sound rushing at him. Akai grabbed his elbow. Then he was airborne, his arms locked around Shinichi as they threw themselves into the water.

The icy waves closed over his head. Far away, he sensed the concussive force of the explosion, the thud and echo of the bombs going off. But he couldn’t feel that. All he felt was Akai’s hand, holding him close, and Shinichi tucked into his coat, warmer and brighter than the rising sun.

Even eight degrees above zero, it was a damn good feeling.

19.

Shinichi had never really minded the cold. Compared to heat, he would take cold any day. There were a few times when he’d pushed it—like once when his parents were out of town and he’d tagged along with Inspector Megure, and been too stubborn to stop searching for clues around the snowy onsen until his hands were beet red and he’d lost feeling in his fingers. (He did get a minor case of frostbite, and Megure threatened to bar him from all future crime scenes, but since he also caught the murderer before the blood-streaked icicle melted, Shinichi knew it was an empty threat.) Or when he couldn’t reach the lockbox and was stuck outside a PSB safehouse in the snow for, like, maybe five minutes—something in that range. But for the most part, cold was no big deal.

Jumping into Tokyo Bay in December with no shoes on, though—that was cold at a whole new level.

The water stabbed into his bare skin, sharp as glass. Shinichi felt like he was in shock, every muscle contracting, every nerve oversensitive as he clung to Rei’s neck. It was a really good thing he wasn’t swimming on his own, because he was pretty sure he would have just sunk, an instant icicle. He could feel Rei kicking, maneuvering them through the water, before finally breaking the surface farther down the channel, in the shadow of an empty warehouse. A faded logo glared out of the rust.

Instantly, Shinichi wanted to be back under the water. That was nothing, compared to the frigid wind whistling over his wet skin. He knew the water wasn’t actually freezing—he’d had a case once that turned on a time-of-death alibi for a corpse thrown into Tokyo Bay, so he knew that this time of year, he should be able to stay in the water for an hour before he even got hypothermia. But it sure didn’t feel like it.

He twisted to look back at what was left of the factory. Just rubble and a few snapped support posts, chunks of smoking brick and melted glass strewn across the asphalt. Debris rained down onto the dark water. He wondered if Reina or any of the White Rabbits had escaped before the bomb went off.

Rei pushed his hair out of his eyes, treading water. Shinichi could feel him shivering. “You okay?”

Shinichi wanted to say yes, but his teeth chattering made that complicated. He settled for a nod.

Akai surfaced next to them. He jerked his chin at a service ladder bolted into the concrete wall. “Rei, I’ll take him. Get out of the water—I’ll hand him up to you.”

Rei’s eyebrow twitched, like he could read right through all that subtlety to Akai saying he was the stronger swimmer. But he let Akai scoop Shinichi up before he made for the ladder, his first kick splashing Akai in the face in a way that may not have been totally accidental.

Akai didn’t seem to care. His serious expression softened as he braced Shinichi on his hip, side-stroking through the water. “Close call,” he said.

“Maybe too close,” Shinichi admitted. He sort of had a knack for escaping exploding buildings at the last second. But as Rei kept reminding him every time he had a tiny little skateboard crash on the freeway, one of these days, his luck was going to run out.

Akai’s lips twitched. “You seem to have a lot of those.” His voice was mild, but Shinichi didn’t think he was imagining the little worry lines around his eyes. “Hold on, all right?”

Shinichi was trying. It was hard when his fingers were numb and thick like sausages, the joints too stiff to bend. All his cuts and scrapes stung in the gritty water, especially the arch of his foot, where the glass had gone in; he really didn’t want to think about what that was marinating in right now. But Akai had it covered, pulling them toward the ladder with strong, steady strokes. Shinichi closed his eyes, trusting Akai to hold on for both of them.

Then Akai was lifting him up, into Rei’s arms. And suddenly everything was okay.

Rei seized him in a tight hug. “You are in so much trouble,” he whispered fiercely.

But it didn’t feel like it to Shinichi, crushed against Rei’s soaking wet sweatshirt with his face tucked into the blond’s neck. He almost thought he saw tears at the corner of Rei’s eyes, but he had to be imagining that. Over Rei’s shoulder, he could see Akai leaning against the top of the ladder, his green eyes soft in the red light.

Shinichi felt like his brain couldn’t quite catch up to what was happening. Every prediction, every odd he ran in his head said he should be dead right now. But he wasn’t—and neither were they.

He looked up through his drenched, spiky bangs. Rei’s face was all scrapes and bruises, a wicked black eye and a split lip worse than Shinichi’s. Akai had a bruise too, right on his jaw. Even without knowing the details, Shinichi knew they’d gotten those bruises for him. Put themselves in danger, smashed up cars and defused bombs and almost died for him. And now they were standing here, wet to the bone, smiling at him like he was worth it.

He knew he shouldn’t push it. He should just be grateful to be alive. But he just—had to know.

“Rei, you…” Shinichi tried, the words sort of cut up by his teeth chattering. “Why would you risk dying like that? For me?”

Rei rolled his eyes, adjusting his grip so he could pinch Shinichi’s nose. “Because it’s you,” he said, like it was the easiest thing in the world. “Honestly, Shinichi.”

Shinichi’s heart felt too big for his chest. His eyes were a little wet, his lashes sticking to his cheeks as he blinked fast. But hopefully he was too drenched for anyone to notice.

Akai moved close, ushering them back from the water. “Let’s get out of sight.”

Shinichi could hear sirens headed their way—fire trucks and police cars screeching up on the other side of the channel, surrounding the factory. Rosie had kept her promise. Much closer, a black van screeched around the corner of the warehouse, and Kazami dropped out of the driver’s seat, looking frazzled and worried—though it was hard to tell, since as long as Shinichi’d known the man, he always looked like that. Probably a side effect of being Rei’s handler.

“Furuya. You…you got him.” Kazami looked flabbergasted, like he’d expected this operation to end very differently. He shook it off as the van door slid open. “We’ll take it from here.”

A handful of people hopped out of the back—men and women with earpieces and the telltale bulge of shoulder holsters under their blazers. One of them looked young enough to still be in the academy. He was nursing a fresh bruise on his cheek. They were stand-ins, Shinichi realized, here to play the grateful captive and the brave law enforcement agents who’d taken down the weapons trafficking ring. They wouldn’t fool anyone who’d actually been in the warehouse. But somebody needed to be on scene to sell the official story to the MPD.

Jodie slid out of the passenger seat with a stack of navy jackets and silver thermal blankets. She smiled as she met Shinichi’s eyes. “Well, look who it is. Glad I made it in time for the big rescue.”

Shinichi shivered, feeling suddenly like a drowned rat.

“Over here, Jodie. Set him down, Rei,” Akai said. Rei did—reluctantly—and Akai knelt next to Shinichi, unceremoniously stripping him out of his jacket and grimy T-shirt. It was a little embarrassing, but at least he stopped there—Shinichi didn’t really want to be pantsless in front of half the PSB. His sopping clothes hit the ground with a wet smack.

“That’s your kid, not a bag of dirty gym clothes,” Rei groused. “Take it easy. He has a gunshot wound, you know.”

“Not his first one, I’m sure,” Akai said. But his hands were gentle, his green eyes bright as he wrapped an FBI jacket around Shinichi’s shoulders. Rei’s eyebrow throbbed again, but Rei was in no position to talk—Shinichi hadn’t missed the little FBI logo stitched into the shoulder of his too-big sweatshirt.

As Rei and Akai stripped off their own soaking coats, Jodie bent and wrapped a silver blanket around Shinichi’s shoulders. “Good to see you, Cool Kid.” Her eyes twinkled behind her glasses. “You had a lot of people worried, you know that?”

Shinichi gave her a sheepish grin. “Sorry.”

Jodie chuckled. “I don’t think I’m the person you need to say that to.”

He turned to look at them—Rei grinding his drenched shirt into Akai’s bare chest, while Akai handed off their sidearms to one of the PSB agents, so they’d match when the cops ran ballistics. He didn’t know how he’d ever say all his sorrys and thank yous, or if they’d ever understand how much it meant that they’d come after him, when they had every reason not to. His heart was this big soggy lump stuck in his throat, and he didn’t think he could get any words out around it. But they were both detectives, sort of. Maybe they’d get it, even if he didn’t spell it out.

Something glinted on Rei’s finger as he handed Kazami the Mazda’s keys. His wedding ring, Shinichi realized. He didn’t usually wear it on missions. Maybe he hadn’t had time to take it off.

The thump of helicopter blades echoed above them. Akai pulled a dry sweatshirt over his head and caught Rei’s shoulder.

“Time to go. You can’t be here when the news cameras show up.”

“Aren’t you officially deceased?” Rei shot back. But he scooped Shinichi up anyway, tucking his bloody foot carefully over his elbow as they ducked into the van.

Shinichi found himself squished between them in the backseat, Rei’s arm around his shoulders and his achy left leg slung across Akai’s thigh. They were all still wet from the waist down, and there was no denying the kind of sludgy, industrial runoff smell they’d brought in from the channel. He wouldn’t have blamed them if they wanted a little breathing room. But they didn’t seem to.

A few PSB agents clambered in after them. From the passenger seat, Jodie handed back a few Styrofoam cups of hot water, along with some crinkly teabags from the center console that looked about as old as Shinichi was supposed to be. They didn’t smell like mint—maybe something mint adjacent that had died in this van a decade ago. The heat felt nice on his red, chapped fingers, but he definitely wasn’t going to drink it.

“Head for Aomori first,” Jodie told the driver, twisting and bracing her arms on the headrest to look at them. “I called Dr. Araide. He’s opening the midnight clinic for you. And I sent Camel to get Subaru’s car—since I had a feeling you might need a new ride.”

“Good guess,” Akai said. Rei just scowled, a little sore on the car subject right now.

Even fake families needed family physicians. Dr. Araide had agreed to be theirs, though admittedly that was before he got to find out first-hand that Rei could be a little…Shinichi decided to go with intense…in medical situations. The midnight clinic was the codeword that meant he’d unlock the back door and see them in a closed wing with minimal staff—just in case anybody had a broken rib or a bullet wound that’d be hard to explain.

Shinichi’s head felt hazy. Maybe it was the blood loss, or the shock of the cold water, or the fact that he hadn’t really slept in two days. All he wanted to do was lean his head into Rei’s shoulder and pass out. But as the van rumbled toward the frontage road, Rei spun him around, lifting his battered leg into his lap.

“Let’s see that foot,” he said, tugging gingerly at the sock.

A twinge shot up Shinichi’s leg. He flinched so hard he almost spilled his muggy tea all over Akai. “It’s fine,” he protested. “Like, so fine we probably don’t even have to look at it.” He had a sudden horrible feeling the bottom of his foot resembled grated hamburger meat.

Rei shot him that look. The one that said, I’m a trained intelligence operative, don’t test me. “This does not say fine,” he countered, waving the bloody sock. “And don’t get me started on that tourniquet. That is abysmal first aid for someone who gets shot at as often as you do.”

“I was duct taped to a pole,” Shinichi pointed out.

“Use the duct tape next time,” Akai suggested. “It’s great for bullet wounds.”

Rei’s glare could have punched through the panel van. “Let’s focus on not having a next time.” He bent down, fussing with Shinichi’s foot, but jerked back when Akai took the opportunity to catch Rei’s cheek, inspecting his bruises. “Ow,” Rei hissed. “Get off, Akai.”

“You split your lip open again,” Akai observed, testing the swelling with his thumb.

Rei huffed. “Obviously I didn’t do that. And why don’t you deal with yourself before you start accosting other people,” he added, wiping a smear of dark blood off Akai’s forehead with his sleeve.

Shinichi wondered if he was the only one who remembered they were in a car full of witnesses. He could see Jodie silently laughing at them in the front seat, and the guy in the middle was hunched over his phone, like he could disappear into the black screen and block this out. Shinichi wanted to do the same—or at least cover his face, so no one could identify him later. They probably looked like apes grooming each other back here.

It was humiliating. But it was sort of mind-blowing, too, thinking about how far they’d come since their first night all together in the Kudou house.

They’d put on a good moving-in show for the neighbors, Shinichi running the small boxes inside while Akai stole a kiss in the driveway and Rei visibly restrained himself from ripping out a kidney. But when all the boxes were stashed and all the rooms swept for bugs and all the leftover takeout shoved in the fridge, it was just the three of them—Shinichi on the couch between Rei and Akai, watching Detective Samonji reruns in dead silence, like they were a little stunned by the enormity of what they’d gotten themselves into.

Shinichi felt too nervous to twitch or scratch his nose. He overcompensated by babbling out every Detective Samonji fun fact he could dredge up from his paralyzed lizard brain, and every one of them landed like a lead ball, plummeting into the excruciating silence. Rei kept glaring at Akai’s shoe resting against the edge of the coffee table; Shinichi was positive that if he hadn’t been in the middle, Rei would have stabbed Akai in the ankle with the fire poker for his bad American manners. He’d never understood so clearly that he was a buffer between these two people, like the strip that kept ammonium and iodine separate so they didn’t explode.

When he tucked his knees underneath him, Shinichi’s foot brushed against Akai’s leg, and the way Akai stiffened made Shinichi want to crab-crawl under the couch and just live there until he got his body back. He knew apologizing would be too awkward. So he just sat with his arms wrapped around his knees, trying to crunch up to subatomic size. Why had he shifted his foot? Why did he even have a foot? And what the hell was he doing here, sitting on the couch between two secret agents watching a stupid TV show?

He didn’t think he was the only one wondering that.

When he announced that he was heading up to bed—and was that an announcement kind of thing? He wasn’t sure—Akai reached out to ruffle his hair and then pulled back, awkwardly waving at him, even though he wasn’t really a waving kind of guy. Shinichi had hightailed it up the stairs so fast he’d slipped and cracked his knee on the banister. And then he just lay there staring up at the dark ceiling in his room, listening to Rei ordering Akai to get it together before the school picnic that weekend, and cursing his mom for roping them into something they were obviously forcing themselves to do. For him. Because he’d screwed up—recently and historically and in every other dimension.

Those first seventy-two hours, Shinichi wasn’t sure they were going to make it. But then Rei caught him sneaking out of the library with his stomach all rubbery from half of a cup ramen, and Akai scooped him up and dropped him on a stool at the breakfast bar. And over leftover gyoza and burnt omelet, something clicked.

Shinichi had always hoped this would be more than a cover—that they could be close colleagues, or maybe even real friends. He never imagined they’d become a family. But that’s what this felt like: his cheek squished against Rei’s chest, and Rei looping a strip of gauze around his foot, those sharp blue eyes glaring at Akai as he threw the nasty tea back like a shot of whiskey and reached across them to drop it in the cupholder.

Rei dug a heel into his calf. “Get off. You’re crushing him.”

“Sorry,” Akai said. But he just turned his shoulder and stretched his arm along the seat, hooking Rei’s neck to pull them all under the crinkling silver blanket.

Shinichi closed his eyes. He didn’t know how long he’d get to keep this—how long he’d be Conan, how long they’d be able to stay, before their covers changed and their important jobs took them elsewhere. But he knew where he’d be tomorrow, and the day after that.

However it ended, in this moment, it felt good to be warm again.

Chapter Text

20.

“Do you have any idea what a pain in the ass you’ve been today?” Jodie asked. “Next time I get the cute kid, and you get all the paperwork.”

Akai leaned against the counter in the Kudous’ kitchen, smirking against the phone. Jodie sounded annoyed, but he could hear an undercurrent of amusement, too.

“I’ve had my own problems,” he said, staring down at Rei’s mocha walnut muffin recipe. Rei swore it was simple, but Akai had learned nothing simple took two pages to explain. Or involved the word prove.

The afternoon sunlight spilled through the window. Akai closed his eyes against it, breathing in the scent of cloves and the strong hit of coffee from the mixing bowl. It felt surreal to be back in this house, attempting to follow one of Rei’s convoluted recipes, when two days ago, he wondered if he was locking the door for the last time.

From somewhere on the first floor, he could hear Rei and Shinichi’s voices over the rush of water in the laundry room sink. Still trying to get the machine oil out of Shinichi’s hoodie, probably. Shinichi insisted he didn’t care, but Rei had been a little wound up since the clinic.

He’d spent most of the visit terrorizing the staff, asking brutal worst-case-scenario follow-up questions and snapping at Akai when he prodded his bruises. Which Akai wouldn’t be doing, if Rei would sit still and stop turning his head.

Except for the few lacerations of Shinichi’s that needed stitches and a microfracture on Rei’s supraorbital bone, they’d gotten off light. Lighter than they deserved to. Araide had sent them home with painkillers and instructions to take it easy for a few days. Which Akai was sure Rei and Shinichi would be trying to violate any minute now.

Jodie had gone on. “I would rather have been dodging bullets and defusing bombs than getting grilled by the section chief in Washington for the last two hours. Though they did seem a little mollified to be closing the Jay Brunswick case.”

“If there’s a commendation coming, it’s all yours,” Akai said. He’d been off book so long, he sometimes forgot other people had to run things through official channels. Or deal with the fallout.

After his cover as Rye was blown, the FBI had briefly tried to drag him back stateside. When he made it clear he would be staying in Japan and on the case, as an FBI agent or otherwise, James Black had flown in to unclip his leash. It’s not a blank check, James had insisted, while a cold drizzle poured over the concrete rim of the dingy parking garage, the air thick with exhaust. But if it’s between having you and not having you, the Bureau thinks you’re worth a little latitude. Just don’t make any headlines.

Akai glanced at the news playing on the muted living room TV. More shots of the blown-out factory; a cutaway to the old train depot, the connection between the two incidents not yet confirmed. Technically, he wasn’t in those headlines. But he was still probably pushing it.

Rei’s phone buzzed on the counter. Another update from Kazami. Tracking down the White Rabbits’ network would keep the PSB busy for a while, especially since the ticker along the bottom of the screen announced the MPD had a cooperating witness in protective custody. That must be Rosie—the woman Shinichi said had tried to get him out. The boy would be glad to hear she was in one piece.

“Sorry to stick you with the red tape,” he said into the phone, turning back to the muffin project. He flipped the recipe over and back again, frowning at the instruction about curdling buttermilk. Screw it. He was making muffins from a box.

Jodie gave a theatrical sigh. “Not like it’s the first time.” But he could hear the smile in her voice. Though she enjoyed busting his chops, he knew she was fond of Shinichi—had liked him first, if they were going to get really specific about it. And Rei…well, Akai wasn’t sure anyone was fond of Rei, except for him. But there was some respect there, anyway. “Just…next time, try to keep it to one explosion, huh?” she joked.

Akai chuckled. “No promises.”

Something landed outside the kitchen window, wings fluttering. A white pigeon—or maybe it was a dove, Akai decided, watching its beak dart toward the glass as if trying to peer in. They didn’t get a lot of doves in the neighborhood. It flapped off before he could get a good look at it.

He could hear voices coming down the hall. Akai clicked the TV off as Rei stepped into the living room with Shinichi in his arms, his bandaged left foot swinging over the crook of Rei’s elbow. The long laceration and its accompanying eight stitches were the only thing Rei didn’t seem all that broken up about. Probably because it gave him an excuse to carry Shinichi around. Rei had barely put him down since they came out of the river, which didn’t seem to bother Shinichi yet—but it was day one.

Akai looked them over as Rei plopped Shinichi onto the couch. Rei’s hair was still wet from his shower, and the bruises stood out even darker on his flushed, damp skin. But all Akai could see was his smile, Rei practically glowing as he and Shinichi bickered about whose face was going to make the neighbors call the cops. Shinichi yanked on the cords of Rei’s sweatshirt to make his point and Rei threw his head back laughing, and something in Akai’s chest eased, listening to that sound. He hadn’t been sure, for a little while, that he’d ever hear Rei laugh again.

The fifteen feet from the kitchen to the couch suddenly felt like a long way. Akai abandoned the half-filled mixing bowl in the sink. “I should go.”

Jodie’s chair creaked like she was waving him off. “Yeah, I’m done with you. Go take care of your prickly husband and your adorable kid.”

“Fake husband and fake kid,” he reminded her. The prickly and adorable, he couldn’t dispute.

Jodie chuckled. “Whatever you say.”

He could hear her smiling—the same way she’d been smiling at him in the van’s rearview mirror, as Shinichi dozed against his chest and Rei tried his damnedest not to lean into his shoulder. Akai wasn’t exactly sure what that smile meant. But he was all too aware that without her, there might not be much to smile about right now.

“Thanks, Jodie,” he said. “For everything.”

Jodie laughed against the receiver. “Merry Christmas, Shuu. Now seriously, get out of here. No one wants to hear from you until after the holiday.”

Akai couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t worked through Christmas. Somehow, a little time off didn’t sound so bad this year.

He slipped the phone into his pocket and gathered up a stack of holiday blankets he’d found stuffed in the top of the linen closet and headed for Rei and Shinichi. If the blankets were a precursor to the Kudous’ Christmas decorations, there were going to be too many of them, and every one would be tacky.

Shinichi perched on the edge of the couch while Rei knelt in front of him, adjusting the compression bandage on his thigh. He seemed even smaller than usual in his kid pajamas and red-striped soccer shorts, his face and arms littered with cartoon superhero band-aids courtesy of Dr. Araide’s nurse. One socked foot rested on the edge of the coffee table, which Rei had piled with snack food and the entire contents of the medicine cabinet.

Shinichi seemed a little out of it. His eyes were hazy, from the blood loss or the pain meds, Akai wasn’t sure. The boy leaned forward on his hands, inspecting the butterfly bandages taped across Rei’s swollen eyebrow.

“I’ve never had a bruise from brass knuckles,” Shinichi said. His tiny fingers traced the curve of Rei’s eye socket. “Mine are all boring. The hand print’s from a hand. The boot print’s from a boot.”

“You have a boot print?” Rei demanded, yanking up the back of his shirt to get a look. He scowled at the finely delineated bruise pressed into Shinichi’s back, clear enough to pull a shoe tread.

“They’re all dead or in custody already,” Akai reminded him, dropping the pile of blankets on the couch. Rei looked ready to saddle up and ride again, scowling as he rose and pushed his hair out of his face.

“Well, there are still a few corpses I could mutilate,” he muttered. Akai assumed he was joking, but only because he’d have to leave the house to do it. Right now, he didn’t think anyone could pry Rei away from Shinichi with a crowbar.

“It doesn’t hurt. Actually, I feel totally fine,” Shinichi amended, flopping back on the couch pillows and giving his bandaged foot an experimental wiggle. “I think they’re not that serious.”

Rei tweaked his nose. “That’s the hydrocodone talking.”

Akai chuckled. Rei’s eyes flitted up to his face—Akai wasn’t sure what he was looking at until Rei lifted a hand, pressing the cool skin of his palm against the bruise on his jaw.

“Somebody got you pretty good with a right hook,” he said. The words were careless, but his eyes gave it away, tracing the tender bruise with some emotion Akai couldn’t read.

Akai shook his head. “Mm. He took it easy on me.” He knew Rei could have broken his jaw, if he was trying.

Rei rolled his eyes, fighting down a smile. “Just come here. At least put something on it.”

Akai didn’t protest as Rei pressed a lumpy bag of frozen peas to his cheek. He didn’t know if this was forgiveness or an apology. Either way, he’d take it.

It took him a second to remember they had an audience. Shinichi was squinting at them, blinking long and slow, his eyebrows furrowed in thought. Even dulled by the drugs, Akai knew better than to underestimate that intellect. It wouldn’t take much to realize the mark on Akai’s jaw was a perfect match to the bruise on Rei’s knuckles.

Rei pulled away like he was thinking the same thing. He flicked some nonexistent fluff off his sweatshirt. “I’ll get some drinks going. Hot chocolate?”

“Coffee?” Shinichi said hopefully, peering up at him with those enormous blue eyes.

Rei chuckled. “Contraindicated, unless you’re after a heart attack.”

“No cooking, Rei,” Akai reminded him.

The fond look on Rei’s face evaporated. Obviously, he’d been trying to block out that particular doctor’s order. “Hot chocolate isn’t cooking,” he insisted.

Akai crossed his arms. “It is if you use a double boiler.”

“Report me, I dare you,” Rei said, socking him in the chest with the peas. Then he breezed into the kitchen, banging the pans like he was just begging for a splitting headache. Akai pinched the bridge of his nose. Rei was going to be a terrific patient.

He turned back to find Shinichi looking up at him with an impish little grin, his cheek pressed against his knee.

“I missed your bickering,” he whispered.

Akai chuckled. “Well, there’s probably going to be a lot of that, the next few days.” He bent down, unfolding a reindeer blanket and tucking it over the boy’s legs. His hand hesitated over the bandage on Shinichi’s thigh. “Feeling this at all?”

Shinichi grimaced. “Not exactly. It doesn’t hurt. It just feels a little…tight.”

Akai knew that feeling. He had a lot of experience with the particular way the skin pulled around the stitches, and the bone-deep itch that always came with gunshot wounds, like a few particles of lead and powder were trapped under the skin. And how hard it was to eat without splitting a swollen lip, everything soured by a faint copper taste. He knew all of those things. But it didn’t seem like Shinichi should. The boy’s skin was hot—a mild fever, from the river or the blood loss or the glass punching into his foot. Or something else Akai didn’t know about.

All the things he’d put off feeling during the case slammed into him like an F-150. Akai had to reach back and steady himself on the coffee table.

This was a kid. Rei’s kid—his kid. With an ugly black and purple bruise where someone had cold cocked him. With red, ragged scrapes on his knees from being thrown down on a hard floor. With eight stitches in the bottom of his foot. Akai could fit that entire foot in the palm of his hand.

Nothing like this was supposed to happen to him. Akai was supposed to be here to make sure it didn’t happen.

Maybe Rei had a point, about mutilating those corpses.

“Akai?” Shinichi’s voice was puzzled. “What’s wrong?”

Akai shook his thoughts away. “All good.” He stood up. “Want me to make up a bed on the couch?” Shinichi had been warned not to walk on that foot for three days, and he was under strict orders not to even attempt the stairs.

Shinichi shook his head. “Let’s drag the futons in here,” he said, blinking those big blurry eyes. Akai blinked back at him, a strange weightless feeling in his chest.

It was a small thing—but Shinichi had never asked for a sleepover before. Had never wanted that kind of closeness with them before. He had a sense, somehow, that one of those walls Shinichi kept up so carefully had finally come down. Or lost a few inches off the top, anyway.

“Sure.” Akai patted his good leg. Then he headed up the stairs, listening with one ear to the voices below as Rei returned to the living room, mugs of hot chocolate in one hand.

“Hey, Rei. Next week…let’s make Christmas cookies.”

Rei’s voice sounded a little thick. “I’d like that.”

Akai glanced back. Shinichi had slumped over against the armrest, looking up at Rei with a dozy smile that meant the painkillers were kicking in. “And then…maybe later…we could we go New Year’s shopping.”

“Don’t you mean Christmas shopping?” Rei asked, his lips quirked up.

Shinichi winced. “Gonna have to be New Year’s shopping. Because your face is going to be messed up at least that long.”

“Cheeky brat,” Rei growled playfully. But Akai could see the smile tugging at his cheeks as he threw the corner of the blanket over Shinichi’s head.

Akai smiled. There he was—the man Akai had been missing. The man Rei was supposed to be. Shinichi laughed, peeking at Rei over the top of the blanket. Akai turned away and left them to it.

After dinner, they moved the coffee table and laid out the futons with Shinichi in the middle. The boy was out like a light, practically falling asleep in between mouthfuls of spaghetti and cold marinara sauce. Rei lay down next to him, curled close enough to throw an arm over him. Akai leaned back against the couch, careful of the bruise between his shoulder blades, so he could watch Shinichi breathe for a while.

There was a memory in his head—the soft hush of rain on the umbrella, Shinichi looking up at him over a bag of chocolate croissants and asking about recovery rates for targeted abductions. Akai hadn’t known, when he combed through the FBI files that night to get that number, that it would torture him for thirty-six straight hours, imagining Shinichi as the body in one of those crime scene stills. A tiny, pale hand peeking out from under a tarp, sickeningly still.

But he was alive. Home. And okay, for the most part. The ugly bruise, and the gunshot, and the stitches—that was Shinichi beating the odds. If that was the only way he came out of it, Akai would take it every time.

He could feel the exhaustion catching up with him, his limbs turning to lead. But Rei just couldn’t settle—kept drifting off and then jerking himself awake, his eyes wild until they landed on the boy next to him.

Akai reached down to press a hand against his shoulder. “Rei. Relax. He’s right here.”

And you’re right here, he thought. But that part, he kept to himself.

Rei’s eyes were so heavy. He turned his cheek into the pillow and wrapped his hand around Shinichi’s wrist. Feeling for his heartbeat, Akai realized, the radial pulse a whisper under his fingers.

“You got him?” Rei asked, the words so soft Akai wondered if he even knew he’d said them.

Akai traced his hand up Rei’s neck to the slope of his cheek, cool fingers soothing all that bruised, mottled skin. “I’ve got you,” he promised. “Both of you.”

Rei’s eyes slipped closed. Akai tipped his head back, resting his neck against the curve of the armrest. Eventually, he’d have to sleep too. But right now, he had everything he needed just within reach.

Chapter Text

21.

He’d dreamt of them being dead. That was the only reason Shinichi could come up with for why he’d done something so monumentally stupid. He didn’t really know how to explain that, though—how to put into words the desperate need to do something—anything—to erase that feeling. Akai sighed heavily, kneeling in front of him. Shinichi’s feet dangled where he perched on the stool.

“What really happened, kid?” Akai asked. The normally put-together FBI agent was in a pair of sweats and a haphazardly grabbed T-shirt sporting the logo for Conan’s talented and gifted school.

Probably the first shirt that had come to hand—there were a lot of those lying around. Rei always bought every piece of proud parent clothing they sold.

Rei. Shinichi felt his heart speed up a little, and for a moment even the throbbing of his foot seemed to fade under it. “Do we have to tell Rei?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

Akai’s face softened, but before he’d even opened his mouth, Rei was skidding around the kitchen doorway.

“Was that Dr. Araide I saw leaving?” he demanded.

Shinichi winced. Caught.

“We had a little accident,” Akai said, standing up.

“An accident?” Rei’s voice took on a frantic edge. “What happened?”

He was already halfway across the room, kneeling down in front of the new bandage on Shinichi’s foot. He looked awful; the swelling was even worse around his eye, and he was clearly moving stiffly from all the bruises and cuts littering his body. Shinichi felt that same icy shiver of dread as when he’d woken up that morning.

He’d dreamt that the bomb had gone off, and that Rei had died covering him from the blast, his corpse cut up and burnt beyond recognition. He’d dreamt about Akai with a bullet in his brain in a burning car for the first time in a long time. And then he’d been alone with blood leaking out of his leg until he was so cold he must be dead himself.

That was when Rei had shaken him awake, and he’d realized he wasn’t cold, but hot. Way too hot. The way he got when he was sick. Rei’s cool hand on his forehead and the small tsking sound he made confirmed it. Even though he’d managed to avoid many of the indignities of being a child again, Shinichi still got fevers like a seven-year-old.

The godawful medicine Rei had given him helped, but it left him feeling groggy all morning. He’d found himself dozing fitfully while changing his mind about the blanket configuration every ten minutes. Rei had put some ancient season of the baking show on that he felt vaguely like he’d seen before. And Shinichi had been content to lie there, listening to Rei, who had been running a bit of his own baking show with Akai while the FBI agent tried to make breakfast.

Even though they’d been in the kitchen, Shinichi had heard the most of it from the couch—well, Rei’s half, anyway.

Scrambled eggs and avocado toast, huh...that’s pretty plain. You’re at least planning to put some diced tomatoes and onion powder on, right? What do you mean on what...on the avocado toast, of course! Why would you put them in the scrambled egg—it’s far too late to do anything but serve it and hope it looks better than it tastes. You know, that crust is looking a little dark, are you sure you have the setting right on the toaster oven?

The next time he’d woken up, it had been to a plate of perfectly serviceable avocado toast and scrambled eggs that he ate while the listening to the judges bring down the hammer on some guy whose flavors weren’t coming through. Rei shot pointed glances at clueless Akai through the whole thing, which made Shinichi laugh so hard he almost choked on a somewhat flavorless bite of egg.

“Tomorrow we’re having waffles,” Rei promised, while Shinichi caught his breath.

It was perfect. It was everything he wanted. And Rei looked so happy, but also so tired and so hurt and for some reason Shinichi’s thoughts flashed back to that dream. He’d almost gotten them killed. Almost gotten Rei killed. A hundred ways that everything could have gone wrong looped through his head like a tape stuck on repeat. If Rei and Akai had arrived even one minute later. If Shinichi hadn’t known the door code. If a stray bullet had hit one of the bombs. Shinichi had ended up in that warehouse because he was following a case, but Rei and Akai were only there because of him.

Rei misunderstood his ashen expression, pressing his hand to Shinichi’s forehead again and humming thoughtfully. “You’re not as warm anymore.”

“Just tired,” Shinichi said. Impossibly, he wanted to both turn away and lean into Rei’s hand at the same time.

Akai gathered the dishes and Rei sat back, rubbing at his injured shoulder. “I’m pretty tired myself,” he admitted.

“Perfect,” Shinichi said, waving at the paused TV show when Rei’s eyebrows rose. “There’s a bread challenge next, lots and lots of proving and long bake times.”

“Those do make for the best naps,” Rei agreed, a smile tugging at his bruised face.

Shinichi wasn’t sure if Rei actually slept at all or not, but Shinichi must have, because when he woke up again he felt much clearer. The TV had stopped itself and was displaying the are you really still watching this or are you dead prompt. Unfortunately, now that he was more aware, Shinichi was starting to feel some of his own aches and pains, especially the gunshot wound and the glass cuts on the bottom of his foot.

The deep gash in his thigh throbbed painfully, while the stitches on his foot stung like fire. He was sorely tempted to take more pain meds, even if it meant being out of it for the rest of the day. But where had Rei and Akai gone? Shinichi sat up slowly, pushing the Christmas blanket aside.

There was a note stuck to one of the spare burner phones on the table from Akai that read: Taking a quick soak, call if you need anything.

The corner of Shinichi’s mouth quirked up at the notion of a quick soak. Only Akai Shuichi, he supposed.

The Kudou mansion had a giant Jacuzzi tub absolutely perfect for soaking sore and damaged muscles. It was also in the shape of shell, and looked like it belonged in a ritzy hotel that hired mermaids to swim in the pool. Shinichi was one hundred percent positive that in all the months Akai had lived here alone he’d never used it. Rei had bullied him into it once, after a mission where’s he’d come back creaking like an old man and limping around on strained joints.

Now the two of them needled each other on about who needed it more. Shinichi was waiting for his chance one day to point out it was big enough for two. That would get a reaction—especially from Rei.

Shinichi heard Rei’s voice in the hallway. He was about to call out when a second voice spoke up, sharp and somewhat harried. Shinichi’s mouth snapped shut and he ducked back down on the couch. It was Kazami, Rei’s handler.

“Look, we’ve managed to take down a big enough weapons trafficking operation that the higher-ups don’t really care about the unorthodox methodology on this one. But there are still questions. I need to at least get your official statement, Furuya, and it wouldn’t hurt if there was a little more evidence to work with.”

Shinichi’s heart crunched in his chest. Rei had gone off book to save him—of course he had. And now he could be in trouble.

“Fine,” Shinichi heard Rei say. His voice had an irritated edge. Shinichi imagined his head was probably hurting. “There’s a place in the basement where I can give a statement.”

Shinichi knew the room he was talking about. It was a small room just off the gym that Akai had converted from a storage closet. It was soundproofed, with padded walls and no furniture. Akai had said it was a clean room where he could take critical briefings and calls with no fear of bugs, but Shinichi thought it was pretty clear that the FBI agent had built it so he’d have somewhere to stash any Black Organization members he captured alive.

“And as for your evidence,” Rei continued as he and Kazami headed passed the doorway, “most of its probably gone—even Conan’s phone was destroyed.” Shinichi’s hands curled into fists. He’d almost forgotten about that.

“Then maybe the boy could—”

“No!” He heard Rei snap. “He’s not ready. You can have my statement and then...” The rest was lost as they closed the door, disappearing down the stairs.

Shinichi didn’t like the thought of Rei being questioned in the padded cell in the basement, even if it was by his own handler. He didn’t like the thought of Rei gritting his teeth and trying to hold back his headache to take care of Shinichi. He especially didn’t like the way it was all his fault.

Because it was. He was the reason Rei was in trouble. He was the reason Rei was injured. He was the reason they had almost died. And now he was alone, remembering it again, and how the shift of any tiny variable could have meant Rei and Akai’s corpses being retrieved. Could have meant Rei’s handler was here scrubbing away all signs of his existence instead of just asking some questions and spinning a story.

Shinichi’s fists tightened until he could feel his nails digging into his palms. He had messed up so bad, and Rei had still come for him. There had to be something he could do for Rei.

Kazami had said something about evidence, right? It was true Shinichi’s phone was pulverized, but there was still something else. He had the manila envelopes with the fat stacks of cash from the initial steps of the White Rabbit game. They were evidence, so he’d never touched them—used his handkerchief to pick them up, and carefully dated everything before he tucked them away in his closet. Maybe they had prints or trace evidence, or tracking the serial numbers could lead somewhere.

Resolved, Shinichi scooted to the edge of the couch and then looked down at his bandaged leg and foot. His thigh clenched, sending a jolt of pain through him as though it sensed what he was thinking. He wasn’t supposed to walk too far, but he had a crutch to help him keep his weight off of the injuries, and it was just a quick trip upstairs...

Shinichi eyed the burner phone. But Akai had been taking care of him and Rei nonstop, and even if he wasn’t as badly injured, he had to be in some pain. Shinichi ignored the phone, grabbing the crutch and hobbling up to retrieve the money. The stairs were difficult to maneuver with the crutch, and he clung to the railing, crawling up the last few steps.

The evidence was right where he left it—the envelopes already tucked into a clear plastic evidence bag. And Shinichi was being so, so careful. But then on the way down the stairs, a crack echoed through the neighborhood. And even though Shinichi knew—knew with every fiber of his being—that it was just a car backfiring, he still found himself reeling like it was gunshot. Imagining Rei and Akai’s bodies hitting the dirty floor of the warehouse.

His crutch slipped. His injured foot came down hard on the edge of the step and then slid out from under him, sending him down the last couple steps on his back.

Rei was in the soundproofed room being debriefed, but Akai came running immediately. He wore nothing but a towel around his waist, but his gun was cocked as he came skidding around the corner. Shinichi might have found it funny if he hadn’t been in so much pain. Worse, a red stain had begun to spread across the bandages on his foot. He’d broken his stitches open.

That was how Akai had ended up wearing whatever was nearby that he could put on with one hand while calling Dr. Araide with the other. The doctor had luckily been nearby. And Shinichi had watched his blood drip, drip, dripping from the soaked bandage onto a towel, wishing he could fix it somehow.

He knew better than to defy the doctor’s orders, and he wasn’t usually the type to be easily rattled by a loud noise. But, but, but…the word had pattered in his head like the blood droplets hitting the towel.

But Shinichi had come so close to losing the people he cared about the most, and he just felt like there must be something he should be doing.

Dr. Araide had not felt the same, though he had been able to patch Shinichi up with just his medical kit. Akai’s worried expression said he did not feel the same either. And Rei…

Rei looked more frantic and worried than before, and causing Rei more trouble had been the last thing Shinichi wanted.

“An accident?” Rei repeated, hurrying to Shinichi’s side. “What happened?”

“His stitches tore,” Akai filled in. “Luckily Dr. Araide was able to fix them here.” Shinichi winced. The guest room looked a little like a wartime hospital, covered in bloody thread and stained bandages. Hopefully Rei wouldn’t poke his head in there before it got cleaned up.

“How did it happen,” Rei wanted to know, eyeing the fresh bandages.

Exactly the part he had been dreading. “I slipped a little on the…” Shinichi swallowed. “I just slipped.”

Rei’s eyebrows crinkled. He clearly hadn’t missed that little slip. “Slipped on the…on the…?” he prompted, waving his hand in irritation.

“Stairs,” Shinichi admitted, voice quiet.

Rei squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “I must have misheard that,” he said, “because it sounded like you said you were on the stairs, but that would be impossible.”

“I just had to get something really quick,” Shinichi began.

Rei looked like he was trying to hold himself back, though Shinichi wasn’t sure if it was from strangling him or hugging him. “What could you possibly think you needed—”

“Rei,” Akai said, putting a calming hand on his arm.

Rei shot him a glare over his shoulder. “And where were you when this happened?” he demanded.

“I was in the bath,” Akai began, “but—”

Rei him cut off. “You were in the bath. Of course you were.” Rei’s eyes were snapping with some frantic emotion that Shinichi couldn’t read, and Akai didn’t look like he was going to defend himself at all. “How am I supposed to trust you with anything important when you just run off and…”

“It wasn’t his fault, it was mine!” Shinichi broke in. “He left me a message and a phone to call him if I needed anything, and I didn’t—I didn’t call him, because I was just trying to fix one thing by myself. For you, Rei.”

“What?” Rei’s voice was breathy as he turned back to Shinichi, kneeling in front of the stool again.

“I heard Kazami saying more evidence would help your story,” Shinichi explained. He gestured to the clear bag with the envelopes on the table, watching Rei’s mouth fall open in surprise, before he mouthed his handler’s name in a less-than-friendly way. “I still had the White Rabbit money stashed away upstairs. I just wanted to get it for you, but…”

“You slipped,” Rei murmured. “On the stairs.”

He pushed his hair away from his eyes. The bruises on his face were especially gruesome in the harsh kitchen light, but Rei’s expression around them was somehow soft.

“Oh Shinichi,” he said, shaking his head. “What am I going to do with you.” He leaned forward, wrapping Shinichi in a tight hug. All that tenseness, all that franticness was gone, and Rei was suddenly boneless, like he was exhausted.

“I’m sorry, Rei,” Shinichi whispered, tightening his arms around Rei’s neck, and he wasn’t just talking about being careless on the stairs.

“I know,” Rei whispered back. “But I’m still not going to let you walk anywhere for at least three days. Your crutch privileges have been revoked.”

Shinichi chuckled a little wetly. “Okay, but at least the bathroom,” he reasoned.

Rei leaned back to fix Shinichi with a knowing look. “So it’s a negotiation now, huh?”

“I did get that evidence for Kazami,” Shinichi pointed out.

“Cheeky.” Rei mussed his hair and then scooped him up all at once, heading back for the mound of blankets on the couch and the waiting bake-off. “Fine,” he agreed. “But I’m barricading the stairs, just to be safe.”

Rei paused in the doorway, looking back over his shoulder at Akai. Shinichi was close enough to see the little bit of pink on his ears.

“You coming?” he asked. There was just a hint of a plea in his voice, that made it sound a little like an apology.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Akai said, moving to join them in the doorway. Once he was close enough, Shinichi reached up both hands to muss his hair, which had dried in a haphazard mess.

“What are you wearing anyway?” Rei said, looking him up and down as they settled on the couch.

Shinichi’s foot still hurt—more than before, if he was being honest. And Rei still looked terrible, and Akai hadn’t been able to soak properly, and he still hadn’t done nearly enough for these two people who had risked their lives for him.

But they were all still here, which meant it wasn’t too late. And really, there were worse things than being carried around by Rei.

22.

Akai had wondered which of them would crash first. He’d had his money on Rei, after the stress of Kazami’s interrogation and Shinichi’s accident on the stairs, until the headache Rei had been nursing all day metastasized into a full-blown migraine and he had to take another round of codeine. Akai had settled him on the couch with a hot water bottle pressed to his shiner and let Rei walk him through the exact timings for baking his vegetable frittata without the mushrooms getting rubbery, the balance between oven and sauté pan, until the pain meds finally knocked him out. Then he made SpaghettiOs from a can.

He’d gotten a little distracted, with Rei—lost track of Shinichi until after dinner. But the kid had been quiet. Too quiet, Akai realized now. Shinichi was a night owl, probably half brain chemistry and half a minor act of rebellion against an entire year of being sent to bed at nine o’clock. But tonight, the boy finished reading some old TV Guide he’d dug out from under the couch and crawled into his futon next to Rei’s, and then just lay there, his breath too regular to be dozing off. Akai wondered if his pain was getting worse, or if Shinichi had something on his mind.

Coming down the stairs at one in the morning to find the kid tucked up at the dining room table, sawing at a jumble of old wires with a nail file, Akai felt like he had his answer.

He braced an arm against the doorframe, watching him. Shinichi sat wrapped in a too-big sweater—Rei’s sweater, the dusk-blue one he’d left slung over the back of the couch—and one fuzzy snowflake-print sock. The other had gone missing somewhere between the futon and the chair. Except for the glowing screen of his phone, he’d left the lights off—trying not to wake Rei, probably. There was a line of dust and lint down the right leg of his sweatpants. No crutch; he must have crawled.

Akai shook his head. Breaking the rules already.

It took a beat to understand what he was doing. Shinichi had pulled the wires from an old VCR, one of countless dead electronics shoved back in the Kudous’ storage closet, and clipped them to an overturned shoebox. He gripped the nail file in one white-knuckled hand, carving into the black wire as if that tiny, blunt strip of metal might snap it.

Akai recognized that configuration of wires. It was a bomb—the same basic model as the bomb the White Rabbits had strapped him to.

Shinichi looked exhausted. Wrung out in a way no seventeen-year-old should, let alone a seven-year-old. Dark circles sank under his eyes, and his perpetual cowlick was worse than usual, his hair disheveled from dragging his hands through it.

Akai hesitated. Normally, he would have left this kind of thing to Rei. But Rei had gone down hard tonight. He’d barely even stirred when Akai lifted him from the couch into his futon—just a soft, unconscious murmur in the back of his throat, Rei’s head lolling against his shoulder. It was hard to put him down, after that. Akai had soothed the little crinkle between Rei’s eyebrows with the pad of his thumb and tucked that sound away somewhere inside of him, since he’d probably never hear it again. But the point was, they were on their own.

Shinichi had preternaturally good senses for when he was being watched. He had to know Akai was there. That he hadn’t turned around meant he didn’t want to talk about it. But a kid that smart, in his head that much, what he wanted and what he needed weren’t always the same thing.

“I’m fine, you know.” Akai blinked, surprised to find Shinichi watching him over his shoulder. “You don’t have to come in.”

Akai kicked himself for hesitating so long. “That’s…not what I was thinking about,” he said, slipping into the room. Couldn’t tell, from Shinichi’s look, if the boy believed him.

He stepped up to the table, bending low to inspect the wires.

“Bomb defusing practice?”

Shinichi shrugged, refusing to meet his eyes. “Just figuring out what I could use to sever the wires, if I don’t have a knife. For next time.”

There was a lot packed into that next time. Akai could hear the tension in his voice, his face tight and guarded as he yanked at the wire. He glanced at the microwave clock. “Something you need to figure out at one thirty in the morning?”

Even deep in his own existential crisis, Shinichi managed a flat look. “You’re up,” he pointed out.

Akai couldn’t deny that.

The insomnia wasn’t new. But it had been a few months since it hit him this hard. It was more acute tonight because he couldn’t cope with it the way he usually did—working himself to exhaustion with a hard run or a few hours alternating the weights and the heavy bag, until every muscle was loose and he felt grounded again in his skin. The bruise between his shoulder blades wouldn’t tolerate the workout yet. Without that release, he kept going over the last few days, reliving all the ways he almost lost them.

It looked like he wasn’t the only one.

Akai’s gaze moved to the pile of things at Shinichi’s elbow. Fingernail scissors, a soda can tab, a bottle opener, a broken razor blade—the one that had been collecting mildew in the guest shower downstairs. The kinds of things he might be able to get his hands on, in a bad situation.

In the daylight, in the right frame of mind, it would be a great exercise. But that wasn’t what was happening tonight. Shinichi’s movements were jerky, a sharp red pressure mark around his finger from gripping the wires too tight. Akai didn’t miss the way he was staring at the hole in the chewed-up box, right where the C-4 would have been.

This wasn’t practice. This was hyperfixation—a side effect of post-trauma anxiety. Shinichi’s mind kept returning to the moment of the bomb, seeking control, trying to fix it.

Akai knew that impulse too well. It had been ten years, but he could still remember one of his worst nights, after his first time as the lead sniper on an FBI takedown. From the roof of the adjacent apartment building, he’d missed his shot by half an inch and screwed up the breach—no fatalities, but the senior agent got a bullet through the clavicle, a career-ending injury. Akai had spent a long night jerking awake, pulling the trigger on the same shot over and over until his roommate kicked him out. He passed the hours before dawn smoking in the stairwell next to the vending machines, cleaning his gun until his hands were raw and watching the streetlights go dark across the city like someone was snuffing them out.

Shinichi didn’t deserve a night like that.

Akai eased himself into the chair beside Shinichi’s. “What’s on your mind?” he asked, reaching out to ruffle his hair. And then hesitating, when Shinichi sort of ducked his hand.

“It’s nothing, seriously.” The boy still wouldn’t look up, hunched forward trying to force the nail scissors’ tiny silver jaws around a thick wire stem. Might be easier, if his fingers weren’t shaking. “I don’t want to keep you up. You should just—take care of Rei. He needs you more than I do.”

Akai rested his hand awkwardly on the back of Shinichi’s chair, not sure what to do with it anymore. “I think the codeine’s got him tonight,” he said. Even unconscious in the other room, he could feel Rei prickling at the idea that he needed Akai, ever, in any context. Not to mention clubbing his head in with the frying pan, if he left Shinichi to wrestle his demons alone.

Shinichi tried to wrench the fingernail scissors closed, and they slipped, the dull point stabbing into the tender pad of his thumb. Shinichi dropped them with a little clatter. The boy flinched, throwing a worried look back at Rei.

“Shinichi,” Akai started. “Are you—”

“I’m fine,” Shinichi insisted. He snatched the miniature scissors before Akai could grab them. “I’ll go to bed soon. I just need to figure this out, so that next time I’m not…useless.”

Was that what this was about? Suddenly Akai was remembering the boy at the bottom of the stairs, bleeding from his broken stitches. He’d been in pain—but more than that, as Akai lifted him onto his stepstool and stanched the bleeding with an old dishtowel, Shinichi had looked so frustrated. Like it was killing him, not to be able to fix one small thing.

Akai leaned back in his chair, remembering the way Shinichi had been looking at Rei all night. Wary, relieved, a little heartbroken. And guilty. Like he was the one who’d shackled Rei to that chair.

Akai leaned down, trying to catch the boy’s eye.

“You weren’t useless. I saw that broken nose on Nakamura. Knight,” he filled in, at Shinichi’s look. “You hit that palm strike perfectly.” His lips quirked, remembering the sullen kid practicing self-defense in his red Osaka shirt.

Shinichi hunched forward over his arms. “Not that it mattered.”

“It all mattered,” Akai insisted, his voice low and steady. “We were following your clues every step of the way. We only found you in time because you sent that zero code. But in any hostage situation, there’s a limit to what you can do alone. That’s why we’re here. Tactical support, remember?”

Shinichi’s expression said that was a pathetic consolation prize. Akai wrapped his hand over the boy’s fist, those tiny fingers so cold against his palm.

“There was nothing you could do about that bomb in the factory. And there’s nothing you can do tonight, obsessing over it. You’re alive, Shinichi—he’s alive. Sometimes, you just have to take the win.”

But he could tell Shinichi wasn’t hearing him. The boy sighed, scrubbing a hand through his hair.

“Look, you don’t…have to do this.” His expression was painfully honest, his teeth sunk into his bruised bottom lip. “I know this isn’t your thing. So just…go back to Rei. Or your reports. Or whatever. I promise I’ll be fine by the time he wakes up. That’s all that matters, right?”

For the first time, Akai understood why sometimes Rei looked like this kid had plunged a stiletto in between his fourth and fifth ribs. Shinichi’s expression was soft, but it cut Akai open as he turned back to the wires, writing him off.

Akai’s lips twitched into a grim smile. How badly must he be screwing this up, that a kid so small he regularly got bowled over by the neighbor’s golden retriever was trying to let him off the hook?

Akai knew, though Rei didn’t seem to, that he had almost nothing in common with the protagonist from Kudou Yusaku’s Oscar-winning screenplay, who could shoot a 700-meter bullseye one-handed while rappelling out of a helicopter—the scene that sent Rei into conniptions, every time Shinichi put that movie on as some bizarre form of revenge. Still, Akai had thought there wasn’t much he couldn’t excel at—until he moved in with Shinichi.

That was…humbling.

He wasn’t a natural, like Rei. They’d been living together for three months, and half the time, Akai still couldn’t read this kid. Shinichi was painfully tense tonight, wound in a way Akai hadn’t seen him since they first met. He kept stealing glances up through his bangs, as if watching for the moment Akai’d give up and walk away.

Did he honestly want to be left alone? Or did he want help, and just not know how to ask for it, after a lifetime of not getting much?

Or maybe it wasn’t that complicated. Maybe he just wished it was Rei sitting here. Making him hot chocolate, not from a packet. Teasing him until he got a smile out of Shinichi, even if it came with a little eyeroll. Or just giving him an aggressive hair mussing, the kind that seemed to shake Shinichi out of whatever was eating at him.

Akai had never been good at this part. Not in relationships. And not with fellow agents. He knew how to hold someone through a nightmare, how to cover the dead spot on a windblown roof when another sniper took a bullet, how to drive like hell with a body bleeding in the backseat. But what came after—the damage control—he’d never really done that.

Not even for Rei—not for all the long years they’d known each other. It hadn’t been safe, undercover; the Organization frowned on personal connections between operatives, anything that stank of divided loyalties. And NOCs had twice as many reasons to keep to themselves. A few times, he’d given Bourbon a hand with a dislocated shoulder or a flat tire—professionally, when it aligned with the Organization’s interests. And that was it.

That was what he’d envisioned, when he agreed to marry Rei’s alias and adopt this brilliant kid—watching over them from a distance, like he always had. But they needed more than that. Or maybe it wasn’t on them. Maybe Akai wanted more than that. He wanted to do this right—to be the one who stayed and fixed it. The one they wanted to stay.

Well, not Rei. Rei hated him. But maybe Shinichi.

Akai had never been a kid person. But how could he not get attached—to this kid, who was so smart, and fearless, and downright brazen even though he had to jump to hit the elevator buttons. Who could break down a murder from alibi to corpse disposal in flawless detail, and then turn around and blink those big blue eyes to get out of trouble for ducking the crime scene tape. Who reminded Akai of all the best parts of Rei, and all the worst parts of himself. Old enough to let Rei wrap his arms around him, when he needed it. And still young and stubborn and sensitive enough to sit here in the dark, battered and bruised, thinking he needed to deal with this alone.

Akai hadn’t gone looking for something like this. But somehow, it had found him anyway.

Slowly, so he wouldn’t tip over, Akai tugged Shinichi’s chair around to face him. “Shinichi,” he said softly, bending to catch those wide, uncertain eyes. “I’m right here. Whatever it is—whatever you’re dealing with—you can talk to me.”

Shinichi bit his lip, fisting his hands in the sweater’s too-long sleeves. “It’s not what you think. It’s…” He took a shaky breath. When he looked up, his eyes were bright and wet. “I just…didn’t think you’d come for me.”

Akai felt like someone had kicked his chest in. He closed his eyes, thankful Rei was still asleep.

“Don’t tell him that,” he said seriously. “It would break his heart.”

The look on Shinichi’s face said that was impossible. Akai sighed, and then cocked his knuckles under Shinichi’s chin, so the boy had to look at him.

“Shinichi. How do you think he got those bruises?”

Akai could see his mind putting the pieces together—contusions to the face and stomach, no blows below the waist, no defensive wounds on his forearms. Any little detective could run that equation and come up with the right answer: being interrogated handcuffed to a chair.

Akai nodded. “He tore the city apart looking for you. Lost his cool a little.” Shinichi gave him a knowing look and tapped his jaw, over Akai’s bruise. Akai’s mouth quirked up. Figured he was too sharp not to put that together. “There’s nothing Rei wouldn’t have done to get you back in one piece. He was ready to die for you.” More so than Shinichi knew. But Akai would keep that to himself.

“But I don’t want that!” Shinichi blurted out, too loud. He threw another glance at Rei and swallowed hard. “You don’t get it. I don’t matter. I barely even exist anymore. You and Rei, and the things you’re trying to do—”

Akai gripped his small shoulders and squeezed. “You are the only thing that matters, Shinichi,” he said, surprised at how easy those words were. “You and Rei—you’re all I care about. Nothing will ever come before you for me. Or for him. We’re not going anywhere, okay?”

A tear slid down Shinichi’s cheek. Akai’s chest crunched. But as Shinichi hunched into the sweater, squeezing his eyes shut, Akai wondered if these were the other kind of tears. The kind that only came when you were safe, and it was over.

“Sorry,” Shinichi choked out, scrubbing his cheeks with the heel of his hand. “I’m just tired and…sorry. You didn’t sign up for this.”

Akai pulled Shinichi in and tucked the boy’s head against his shirt, loose so he didn’t have a reason to pull away. “I signed up for you,” he murmured into Shinichi’s hair. “All of it. Whatever you need.” And then let him be for a second, while his breath was fast and shaky.

Rei was right. He had to do better by this kid. He had to become someone Shinichi could count on—someone who never gave him a reason to sit alone in the dark, trying to keep all the hurt inside.

It took a few minutes for Shinichi to steady. Eventually he tipped his head back, looking up at Akai through his disheveled bangs. “Don’t tell Rei?” he said with a grimace.

Akai was pretty sure he wouldn’t get through that conversation with all his limbs attached anyway. “I won’t if you won’t,” he promised, holding out his pinky.

That made Shinichi laugh—a sort of ragged laugh that hitched in his throat. But Akai would take it. Especially as Shinichi hooked their pinkies together, rolling his eyes.

“You know, I don’t even do this with Rei,” he said, giving Akai one of those looks that screamed I’m seventeen and I’m humoring you.

Akai smirked. “Guess it’ll have to be our thing, then.”

As he carried Shinichi back to his futon, Akai glanced at the jumble of bomb components on the table. “It’s a good idea—unconventional ways to defuse a bomb,” he said. “We should practice that sometime. Together.”

Maybe he was imagining it. But it felt like Shinichi relaxed into him, the last tension easing as his lips twitched up in a little smile. “I’d like that,” he said. Then his smile turned impish as he added, “And I don’t mind waiting until Rei’s back on his feet. Since we’re, you know, all you care about.”

Rei was right. This kid was entirely too smug.

23.

Rei loved puppies a lot more than Shinichi had realized. Sure, Rei was friendly with all the neighborhood dogs, and he’d occasionally stop to give a quick pet to the puppies that ran up to him at the park. But he’d never seemed particularly taken with any specific dog.

Maybe he liked golden retrievers. Or maybe it was just that this fluffy golden puppy was particularly adorable—Shinichi couldn’t deny that.

Sunny jumped up on Shinichi excitedly, trying to lick his chin. Her tail thwapped through the thin layer of powered snow, making it spray out in all directions. Shinichi laughed, reaching up a hand to protect his chin, only to have Sunny tug the glove off his fingers and start chewing on it.

“Little scamp,” Rei said when Sunny proudly brought him the stolen glove. The bruising on Rei’s face was looking better, which meant that conversely it stood out even more with a rainbow of colors across his eye and cheek. It really brought out the blues of his snow gear.

The second Rei reached out to take the glove, Sunny darted away, running back to Shinichi in a clumsy puppy tumble. Shinichi reached out to catch the wriggling creature in his arms and Sunny went belly up in his lap, making Shinichi laugh.

When he glanced up, Rei had that expression on his face again. His eyes were soft and his smile glowed with warmth. If he’d had his phone out here, Shinichi was sure he’d be taking more pictures.

Azusa’s friend was fostering Sunny after the pup had been rejected from the litter. Apparently the friend was out of town for a few days, and Azusa had thought the puppy would have more fun with them then stuck at her apartment while she was at work. Her version of a get-well present, Shinichi supposed.

The second the puppy had hit the floor of the blocked-off living room, it had run straight for Shinichi, practically bowling him over with excitement. It was so small its whole body wiggled along with its tail, and its voice was more squeak than bark.

And Rei had clearly been taken. He must have snapped a hundred pictures of the puppy while she and Shinichi played tug-of-shirtsleeve, what can puppy get stuck under, licks for everyone, and even a rousing game of puppy jailbreak. Since Shinichi was still barred from walking after his previous stunt on the stairs, it had been up to Akai to run around and catch the little troublemaker.

Rei had teased Akai that he’d better fix his scowl before he scared the puppy. And as though in agreement, the moment Akai picked the little creature up, he immediately got peed on. Rei doubled over with peals of laughter so strong they were clearly causing him pain in his bruised ribs.

“I think it was just excited pee,” Shinichi offered as Akai handed the puppy back, before heading up to change.

They’d decided they’d better run some of that puppy energy out in the snow. It was a beautiful crisp day, and even though Shinichi felt a little like he’d been bundled up like a real seven-year-old, right down to the snow pants and hat, it was worth it.

The puppy had clearly never seen snow before and was soon chasing snowballs and rolling around. Shinichi even flopped back and made a snow angel—though that had maybe been a miscalculation on his part. Sunny thought it was a game and immediately rolled around herself, chewing at the sleeve of his coat. In the end it was more of a mutated snow monster.

Akai was sitting on the edge of the porch beside Rei. Out of the corner of his eye, Shinichi saw Rei surreptitiously lift a little packed snow to his face. There was a tiny twinge in his stomach, but it was swept away almost immediately—and not just because Sunny was trying to fit her whole wiggly self on his tiny lap.

Akai had noticed too, and reached out, pushing Rei’s hand away to look at the bruising around his eye. He carefully tugged off his glove, tracing the orbital socket with a gentle finger.

“It’s looking better than this morning,”

“If you can tell that, you’re spending way too much time staring at my face,” Rei snapped back. His cheeks were a little pink from the cold and the snow, but Shinichi could swear they got brighter.

Akai’s lips twitched, and then suddenly Rei had scooped up a handful of snow and was shoving it down the back of Akai’s coat. Akai grunted in surprise, shooting up, and the glove he’d taken off fell out of his lap.

“Ah!” Shinichi didn’t have time to say anything else. Sunny shot out of his arms, excited to fetch the glove and join Rei and Akai’s game. Rei stumbled as Sunny shot between his legs and Akai tried to steady him, only for both of them to go tumbling over.

They missed the lawn and went right into the garden box by the porch—which, on the one hand, was a much softer landing. On the other hand, it was only softer because it was full of mulch and mud and soil with snow melting into it all day until it was a puddle.

Akai’s backside was completely soaked, while Rei’s knees and one arm up to the elbow had gone into the water. They both looked stunned, Rei on top of Akai and both of them absolutely caked in mud.

Sunny proudly brought Shinichi the glove she had retrieved, dropping it on his lap and squeak-barking happily. Shinichi couldn’t help it, he laughed. Hard.

“Good girl,” he told Sunny, rubbing her ears.

A second later, Rei was laughing too, at the absurdity of the situation. He pushed helplessly at Akai. “I guess we’ll just have to shower before hot cocoa.”

“You could probably do with another soak,” Akai suggested.

“Speak for yourself.” Rei flicked muddy water at the FBI agent before reaching down to help him up. “Didn’t you miss your chance to get a real soak in the other day?”

And right then, Shinichi knew the perfect thing to say. A grin spread across his face.

“You know, that tub is big enough for two.”

24.

Rei had a lot of experience making hard decisions. Split-second decisions; world-ending decisions where not just his life but his entire mission was on the line, one clipped wire between defusing and detonation, the future of Tokyo hinging on whether he hit the right button. He’d never been the type to hesitate. But for the first time in his memory, Rei was utterly paralyzed.

Are you sure you want to delete? the pop-up on his phone screen asked. Rei’s thumb hovered over the trash can icon, his eyes locked on the picture in the background: Shinichi with his arms wrapped all the way around the puppy’s belly, laughing as its floppy ear almost went up his nose.

Even knowing there were three other pictures exactly like it next in line, Rei just couldn’t do it.

He hit no. He’d been hitting no a lot. The pop-up disappeared, taking him back to the wall of pictures—an absolute phalanx of thumbnails from that afternoon. He meant to be cutting them down. But so far, the only pictures he’d actually managed to delete were blurry—and he’d already changed his mind and fished two of them back out of the trash because Shinichi’s expression was just too perfect. Rei slumped back into the couch, defeated.

He’d been taking too many pictures that afternoon. That was what Akai’s left eyebrow said, creeping up toward his hairline whenever Rei snagged his phone off the coffee table. But what was he supposed to do when the puppy rolled over on its back, and then Shinichi rolled over too, his nose crinkling as that little paw pushed into his cheek. Not take that picture?

How many pictures were you supposed to have of your kid and a golden retriever puppy, anyway? Fifty? Three hundred? He couldn’t exactly look these things up in the PSB handbook. And he didn’t want to hear it from the not particularly subtle FBI agent who’d been taking a few pictures on his phone, too—worse pictures, because Rei was also in the frame. As usual, that guy had no taste.

The clock chimed from the study. It was snowing again, soft flakes brushing against the dark window. Over Rei’s shoulder, he could hear Akai in the kitchen putting the dinner dishes away, or something else that involved a lot of clanking.

Rei glanced over at Shinichi. The boy sat tucked up in the middle of the couch, his hair still mussed from his bath. He’d been watching a program on poisonous tree frogs, but now he’d been sucked into the black hole of his new phone, the text alert buzzing constantly. Shinichi had said the texts were from Hattori—and that was probably true for the most part, judging by his bored expression and the tiny pinched crinkle between his eyebrows. But every once in a while, Shinichi tensed a little—shifted ever so slightly, holding the phone at a more acute angle so Rei had no chance of seeing the screen. He must be talking to someone else, too. Someone he didn’t want them to know about.

Rei smirked. That was crush behavior. But he’d let Shinichi keep his secrets—for now.

The house was warm tonight. Rei felt drowsy, content in a way he hadn’t in a long time. Maybe it was the memory of standing behind Shinichi on his stepstool as they made waffles that morning—crisp, fluffy waffles, not the continental breakfast rejects Akai had come up with when he subbed in bread flour. (Akai had pled not guilty by reason of incompetence.)

Or the little bruise on his back from colliding with the coffee table, when the puppy jumped at Shinichi and Shinichi toppled back into Rei, and then looked up at him with a sheepish, adorable smile.

Or the heaviness of the Thai food in his stomach. He hadn’t minded takeout for dinner, for once—especially when Shinichi reached over and scooped up some of his basil fried rice without asking, kicking his surgical boot up into Akai’s lap as he talked through some case he’d worked where the killer used toxins from a poison dart frog. Like he was right where he belonged.

Except for going ass up in the garden box, it was as close to a perfect day as Rei’d had in a long time.

He’d caught Shinichi and Akai trading little smirks, the two of them suddenly thick as thieves. Something had happened last night, not that anyone would tell him what. Rei was trying to be annoyed about it. But it was hard when Shinichi seemed a little better, no longer haunted by everything that had happened. Which could only mean Akai had done something right for a once. So Rei would let it go—as long as Akai didn’t get an even bigger head about it.

A little icon blinked in the upper left corner of his phone. Rei thumbed it open.

Warning: low storage.

He’d never gotten that warning before. He’d never really kept anything on his phone, except encrypted files and a few decoy photos staged in Amuro Tohru’s former apartment.

The puppies had clearly pushed his SD card over the edge. But it wasn’t just today. He had dozens of days like that—grid after grid of pictures, all the ones he hadn’t been able to delete. Of Shinichi sleeping over a stack of books, his glasses crushed into his nose. Of Shinichi up on Akai’s shoulders, looking out over the lake in Beika Park—supposed to be a covert surveillance photo of the red convertible with stolen plates just to the left of them, but somehow Rei had found himself taking a closeup too, Shinichi’s elbow braced on Akai’s head and green eyes glinting behind Subaru’s glasses. Of Shinichi reluctantly offering Rei the last sip of his thermos-sized Frappuccino—but only because Takagi cracked under questioning and admitted it was his second one of the day.

Looking at all of those pictures made his throat a little tight.

It was the same feeling he got when he stepped into the living room to find Shinichi waiting on him, holding out a cup of coffee after Rei’s long conference call, or when Akai handed him a cold water bottle as he came through the door after his perimeter run. He had seen it on other agents before. But it was weird to recognize it on himself. He was…getting comfortable. Predictable.

Predictable got people killed. But even knowing that, he couldn’t really imagine giving it up.

The space issue, though—that he had to fix. There was always a chance Kazami might send him photographs embedded with encrypted metadata. Or Shinichi might do something else adorable. Rei tapped his fingernails against the back of the phone case, weighing his options.

Well, whatever. For now, he’d just delete all the pictures with Akai in them.

Where was Akai, anyway? Rei blinked over Shinichi’s head at the other end of the couch. How long could it take to wash three plates and a couple of serving spoons? He craned his head toward the kitchen, parsing out the gurgle of the dishwasher and the distant rustle of Akai doing something near the walk-in pantry.

Rei narrowed his eyes. “He’s taking forever in there,” he muttered. Maybe this was some bizarre form of protest for eating off of plates instead of straight out of the to-go container like agents on stakeout in a trunk. Which seemed to be Akai’s most natural state.

“Oh, he finished like ten minutes ago,” Shinichi said, never looking up from his phone. “Whatever he’s doing, it’s definitely a pretense at this point.”

“What?” Rei blinked, a little miffed that Shinichi had noticed that and he hadn’t. That kid was annoyingly observant for someone glued to his phone. He twisted his head again, trying to catch a glimpse of Akai. The kitchen was mostly open plan, but naturally Akai was out of sight behind the one wall. “What’s his problem?”

“Maybe he’s waiting for you to come talk to him,” Shinichi suggested, far too casually.

Rei crossed his arms over his cable-knit sweater. “About what, exactly?”

Shinichi shrugged. “I don’t know. Whatever you guys’ve been weird about for four days.”

Rei grimaced. It had probably been too much to hope Shinichi was going to miss that.

Rei hadn’t noticed the first few days—hadn’t noticed much of anything, on painkillers that strong. Hadn’t really been sure something was going on until breakfast this morning. He’d been berating Akai for his poor showing at the waffle maker two days ago, gesticulating with a chunk of waffle and expecting Akai to lean into him, catch his wrist and steal a bite right off the fork, like he always did—but Akai had stepped around him instead, and cut off a piece with his own fork. And left Rei standing there dripping maple syrup on the counter, utterly stunned.

Akai wasn’t avoiding him. They weren’t fighting, or at least not any more than was mandated by law. And Akai still felt free to paw all over his face, obviously, obsessed with checking the bruising around his orbital bone. But somehow, Rei just got the sense Akai was…giving him a few extra inches. Lounging against the counter while he cooked instead of leaning over his shoulder, getting in the way of his spatula. Picking up Rei’s coffee cup with one last sip of lukewarm Americano, the kind of thing he usually slugged back, and just setting it in the sink instead.

Rei hated himself for even noticing, because Akai not stealing his food and giving him a little personal space for once ought to be a relief.

But it was just—throwing him off. For Akai to be…polite like that.

It was like Akai saying it wasn’t over. What had happened to Shinichi. And what had happened between them.

Rei had been trying to signal the all clear. Had even gone to the trouble of digging out the artisan blueberry syrup he’d bought at the pricey organic grocery store and heating it up, and then practically shoving it down Akai’s throat, when that asshole got needlessly stubborn about what he was putting on his waffles. He’d have thought a man who could interpret ancient French semaphores and sweatshirts folded into a flag cipher could figure out what blueberry syrup meant. But apparently only Shinichi was getting the message.

Rei threw the kid a sideways glance. He couldn’t know the details. Whatever he and Akai had talked about, Rei was sure—as much as it pained him to admit it—that Akai hadn’t been recounting his dramatic train station rescue, bullet by bullet. He just wasn’t that type. But Shinichi was a sharp kid. Almost too sharp. And they probably weren’t as subtle as Rei wanted to believe.

Shinichi wrapped his arms around one of the square couch pillows and rested his cheek against the gray corduroy, looking up at Rei with a knowing expression. “You said something you didn’t mean again, huh?” he guessed.

“What makes you think it’s my fault?” Rei grumbled. Akai was capable of screwing up too.

Shinichi rolled his eyes. “About eleven different things. But mostly, it’s all over your face.”

Rei hoped his face was annoyed. The White Rabbit case had been an emotional situation—Akai ought to understand that well enough to just let it go, not ruin a perfect night by making a big deal out of it. But…it was possible Rei had said one or two things he should take back.

And it did sort of bother him. That empty cushion on the other side of the couch.

Rei huffed, raking his hair out of his face. “He’s very needy for a man who spent the last six months living in an attic,” he muttered, getting to his feet.

“I’m thinking they’re not unrelated,” Shinichi said—so deadpan Rei almost forgave him for that crack about the bathtub.

He found Akai in the farthest corner of the kitchen, messing with the Tupperware. Not the good Tupperware Rei used for leftovers. The junk drawer of mismatched Tupperware they’d inherited from the Kudous, most of which Rei assumed had been deliberately abandoned at Christmas potlucks when Shinichi was in footie pajamas. Akai looked up at Rei’s approach, lowering the orphaned plastic lid and casserole dish he’d been trying to force together.

He looked irritatingly good like that—backlit by the window, barefoot in slacks and a dark blue button-down, with the top button undone because he was apparently incapable of wearing it any other way. The little crinkles of dark hair around his eyes were soft from his shower. A fifth of bourbon and a lowball glass sat next to him on the counter, the cut facets glittering with the falling snow.

Rei leaned back against the pantry door, arms crossed. “This is why you ditched us? To drink alone with the Tupperware?”

Akai’s eyebrows pulled together, like the question was in some language he didn’t speak fluently. “You said you didn’t want me to drink in front of Shinichi anymore.”

Rei huffed. “No. I said you should stop having whiskey for dinner, or you’ll end up like that hack detective Shinichi used to live with, relying on a seven-year-old to pour you into a cab.”

Akai chuckled. “I’m sure you’ll get rid of me long before that happens.”

His voice was light and easy, his eyes amused—but the words just bothered Rei. Or maybe it was the way Akai was lounging against the counter, hands tucked into his pockets, clearly in no hurry to go anywhere.

Rei scowled. “Okay. What is this?” he demanded, waving a hand to indicate the spotless kitchen and the single shot of bourbon and the drawer where old Tupperware went to die.

Akai gave him a measuring look. “I thought I’d give you some space. You and Shinichi.” The words were tenuous, as if he was being careful where he stepped.

So it was that, after all. Rei could sort of see how he might get there, with the punching and the running off and whatever. But—

“We don’t need it,” Rei told him, a little sharply.

The we felt justified. It was bothering Shinichi too, presumably. He’d noticed, anyway.

“All right,” Akai replied. But he didn’t move—just leaned into the counter and lifted his glass, watching Rei with those inscrutable green eyes.

He just refused to read between the lines, didn’t he? He was actually going to make Rei say this. He would have assumed Akai was right at the top of the list of people who thought a deep conversation was an exchange of gunfire or a meaningful nod over the top of a burning car. But here he was, swirling his whiskey and refusing to take a hint. Sometimes, it felt like everything about this man had been designed to irritate him.

Rei stole the glass out of his hand and knocked back the last sip of bourbon, banging the tumbler down on the counter next to Akai’s elbow. The whiskey burned on his cut-up lip.

“Look,” he started. Then he hesitated, raking his hair back from his face. Rei cleared his throat. “If I…if I’d been alone, I probably wouldn’t have made it to Shinichi. Not in time.” Or not at all, with a .38-millimeter hole in his forehead.

Akai’s eyes moved over his face. Those damn perceptive eyes that always felt like they could see right through him. His hand settled on the counter next to Rei’s, their fingertips just brushing around the cold glass.

“Well, like I said. You’re not alone anymore.”

Damn him, saying something like that in the outer range of Shinichi’s bat ears. Luckily, Shinichi seemed to be totally engrossed in the frog program—he’d even abandoned his phone, the little time suck buzzing sadly on the couch while Shinichi shuffled forward to stand three inches from the TV, like anybody’s else seven-year-old. He had to be pondering lethal dosages and black-market imports, but from back here, he could’ve been shooting a Christmas flatscreen commercial.

Rei turned back. Akai was still just watching him, calm and steady. So steady. Like he always seemed to be, for Rei. Even before Hiro, before everything that happened, Rei didn’t think he’d ever been steady like that.

It wasn’t…an awful feeling. Having someone to steady him.

Rei lifted a hand to Akai’s chest and pressed his fingertips to the spot where his bruise would be. Over his heart, sort of. But that was Akai’s fault for getting shot there.

“You got him out of it alive. Both of us, technically.” His throat felt a little raw. Rei curled his hand into a fist, his knuckles bumping softly against Akai’s shirt. “So, I guess I was wrong. About what happens to people you’re looking out for.”

Akai’s breath stuttered. A look passed over his face, haunted and relieved and cut open, all those things Rei knew too deeply. Then something eased—his shoulders falling, the line of his mouth quirking up. It killed Rei, how well he could read that rueful little smile.

Akai lifted his hand, his fingertips just ghosting over the darkened skin, and Rei turned into the touch, so Akai’s thumb caught the curve of his cheek. He didn’t know what it was about, that touch. But they were already having this embarrassing moment; he might as well get what he needed.

Call it payback for the right hook.

“Thanks,” Akai said, almost too soft to hear.

There was too much sincerity in that. Rei had to get it off of him. He backed up a step and turned away, pushing the Tupperware carelessly into the drawer to be forgotten for another decade and a half. “Don’t read into it,” he said, his cheeks a little warm. “Just come back to the couch already. The next episode is patisserie week.”

Akai shook his head slowly, though his eyes were bright. “I don’t really understand that show.”

“And yet, you so desperately need all the help you can get,” Rei shot back, waving his hand at the batch of poppyseed muffins Akai had somehow baked lopsided. And out of a box, no less.

Akai chuckled low in his throat. He reached past Rei to slide the bourbon into the cabinet, and the heat of his body brushed against Rei’s, reminding him suddenly of straddling Akai in the muddy garden box. The main sensations had been wet and cold. But there was a little physical awareness there, too, that Rei hadn’t necessarily needed about the guy whose bedroom was two doors over.

Shinichi was waiting for them on the couch. His smile was far too smug as Rei dropped down next to him.

“Did you make up?” he teased—and then “Ow!” as Rei’s fingers found his ear. If he could be so snarky, obviously he was healthy enough for a little light pinching. Rei hooked an arm around Shinichi’s neck and dragged him in close against his shoulder.

“Put the baking show on,” Rei told him. “Akai’s going to learn something.”

“From the quarterfinals?” Shinichi muttered. But he did as he was told, relaxing into Rei’s hold and resting his cheek against the thick wool of his sweater.

As the familiar music of the opening filled the house, Rei found himself wondering what they looked like from the outside—Shinichi tucked up next to him, and Akai sprawled out with his arm stretched over the back of the couch, those long fingers just tingling on the back of Rei’s neck. He wondered if they looked anything like the family in the picture frames on the wall.

He had real pictures now, things he didn’t have to fake. Things he wanted to keep. Rei rested his chin on the top of Shinichi’s head. Attachment was dangerous. But he liked being here, with Shinichi—and even with Akai, maybe, a little bit. He liked being in a place that felt like a home.

So he’d just stay, as long as they’d let him.