Over the past couple of hours, Oroshi’s apartments had been turned into a crisis center, filled with computers and security personnel. No matter what, his team had to find Kaori first—she could not be allowed to survive. He was dancing on a tightrope, for while the police chief and a handful of officials would obey his orders, most police officers were honest, hardworking men who would put their lives on the line to find and rescue Kaori. They had to be kept from finding his prey. To that end, he had been forced to lie about the precise timing of the events, and had even avoided telling them that they had left with Kaori’s own car.

  It was a real shame—had he been able to tell this crucial detail to the police, they would probably have been caught by now… but they would be alive and safe in the custody of a local police station and there would be no way to stop Kaori from talking. And once she did, it was game over.

  He needed THEM dead, or HE would be. He had to find Kaori, sure, but more importantly, he could not allow her to be found by anyone else.

  A man called out for his attention.

  “Sir, Abe hasn’t reported and he isn’t responding.”

  Oroshi rushed to the technician’s side: “Where was he posted?”

  “Near Suidobashi intersection. Sir!”

  That close? Oroshi wondered. “Send a team over there now! You, call our police liaison and get me the footage for all the intersections surrounding Suidobashi. Do not talk to anyone else, is that clear?”

  Turning to one of the nerds, he ordered: “Get me a map of the area.” The map popped into view on one of the screens and Oroshi leaned in. Where is that bitch going? Think. She should have been nearly out of town by now.

  “You, pull up the list of every place she’s ever stayed at. Is there any near Tokyo dome? Does she have any friends in that area? Move, people!”

  Unless… perhaps the foreigner staying around there. A hotel maybe? Not likely. They would have to be dumb to stay that close, but then again, perhaps they’d think we wouldn’t look nearby. Kaori was almost naked, where could she go in that condition?

  He scanned the list on the screen. There were no promising leads.

  The phone rang, and he picked it up personally. “Yes?”

  “Sir, we found Abe, he’s dead. He and his bike were just a few miles from Suidobashi, and they were heading toward Asakusa. Someone ran him over, and there are small traces of pink paint on his back wheel. It has to be them!”

  “Good job. Remove his gun and check for other weapons. It has to look like a regular accident. Get a man to find the cameras which might have caught the vehicle. I want a picture of that fucker! With the rest of the squad, go and comb the streets toward Asakusa.”

  “Sir, we have the police footage from the intersections near Suidobashi,” one of the techs said.

  Oroshi turned his attention to the screen. They played the footage at 10x speed. There was almost no traffic, so they only needed to slow down when a car came by. Finding the pink Lexus took no time at all.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “There!” exclaimed a jubilant Oroshi. “Freeze.” The picture showed the sports car coming into the intersection. “Zoom here, on the windshield.” The night shot was blurry, a weird angle, but two shapes were visible through the windshield: a woman curled on the front seat, most likely Kaori, and a man in the driver’s seat. His features were impossible to make out.

  “Yes! Enhance!”

  The mousy technician gulped and fiddled with the control, moving around frame by frame, hoping against hope he would find a clearer frame. There wasn’t any.

  “I told you to enhance, you moron, what are you doing?”

  “Sir, it doesn’t work like that, we can’t enhance a picture. What you see here is what we have and that’s all we have. We can’t create pixels that were never captured in the first place, you know.”

  The technician zoomed the picture until a series of blocks of colors covered the screen. It made it no easier to identify the man. “See? It’s all we get,” he explained in an ever-so-slightly condescending tone.

  Most would have missed it. Oroshi didn’t.

  He walked behind the man and placed his hands gently on his shoulders. His face was next to the technician’s. “Are you telling me that we spend billions of yen in surveillance technology and this is the best you can give me?” Oroshi asked. He didn’t sound upset, merely disappointed.

  The diminutive man relaxed slightly: “I’m sorry, sir; we can’t do it.”

  “Well, if we are blind, why should you be able to see?” Oroshi asked with a vicious grin. With a swift motion, he jammed a pencil into the right eye of the technician while covering his mouth to muffle his screams. He twisted the pencil into the man’s eye socket. His victim writhed in agony, his limbs thrashing about and his hands impotently clawing at his. Oroshi held the man easily, and gave one last twist to the pencil before pulling it out and cleaning his hand with an alcohol wipe. The technician slumped to the floor into a sobbing mess, clutching his face where his eye had been.

  He smiled at the petrified men around and quipped: “Eyes on the prize, people. I want to see what that kidnapper looks like.”

  Every technician in the room scrambled to scan all the available footage.

  These smug bastards can always use a bit of extra motivation, Oroshi thought, but he had to be careful to keep enough nerds to do the job if he didn’t want to find himself needing to operate the computers alone.

  Unfortunately, none of the other cameras turned up anything more useful than the first one, but much to their relief, Oroshi did not react. He looked intently at the screens, deep in thought and no one was foolish enough to call himself to his attention.

  Where are you going, Kaori? he murmured to himself, tracing mentally the path from the hotel to Suidobashi’s intersection, and then to the place where they had found Abe’s corpse. It made no sense. The main police station was not far from Suidobashi, but in the other direction, barely a mile south and anyway, if they had wanted to go there, they would have gone directly—it would have taken them 15 minutes at most. It was the obvious place to go if Kaori wanted to be safe and report the events of the night. But she hadn’t. Why? Think. What could be her reasons for not reporting to the police? Was it just a matter of her being naked and wanting to avoid being publicly humiliated? Could be. If this happened, the media would go on frenzy, and the internet would be full of naked pictures of her, mostly fake of course, but he could understand her wanting to avoid that.

  Still, her life was on the line and after a month of dating her, he knew her to be bold and practical. It would take more than the fear of public humiliation to avoid the police, unless… did she think he controlled the whole police force? That had to be it! He grinned widely. She had no one to turn to.

  No one, except this man, he thought glaring at the blocky shape on the screen. That one he couldn’t fathom. It was the one purely random factor of this whole situation and that made him utterly unpredictable.

  He returned his gaze to the nerds at the computer.

  “I’m waiting. One hundred million yen to the first man who gets me a clear ID on him.”

  Fear alone only went so far, but combined with greed…

  He would get that man, he was sure of it.