Leap of Faith
The elevator's arrival chime rang out, and a few seconds later the doors slid open. Cointreau straightened up and stepped out, crossed the corridor to the rooftop access door, pushed it open, and walked out onto the roof.
Akai Shuichi followed soundlessly at his back, watching his every move while his mind chewed over the same puzzle. Why would Cointreau come up to the roof at a time like this? How exactly does he plan to leave this hotel? Surely no helicopter is coming to extract him.
Suddenly, his phone buzzed with a new message.
Akai let out a quiet breath of relief. So far, the plan seemed to be holding. And yet the sight of Cointreau ambling along without the slightest urgency — without a trace of tension — left a thin thread of unease snagged in his chest. That thread pulled tighter as he watched the man's back vanish through the rooftop door. He hesitated for a moment, confirmed with his colleagues that no ambush lay in wait beyond it, and followed him up.
Out on the rooftop, Akai frowned at the scene that greeted him: Cointreau standing right at the edge of the building, calmly letting the red dot of a sniper rifle come to rest on his vital points. "Cointreau. I don't know what you're planning, but you've got nowhere left to run. If you're willing, I'd like you to cooperate with us. From everything I can see, you're not exactly loyal to the Organization anyway — am I wrong?"
"I refuse."
The words had barely left Akai's mouth before Cointreau turned him down without so much as a heartbeat's hesitation.
Yes, he owed the Organization no loyalty — that much was true. But Cointreau knew better than anyone that without it, he had nowhere left to go. At least, that had been the case before Xia Yu appeared. And the state institutions were worse: the FBI, the CIA, Japan's Public Security — the moment any of them learned what made him different, they would likely prove more dangerous than the Organization had ever been. Immortality. What a staggering temptation it was. That old man understood this perfectly, and that was precisely why he trusted Cointreau so completely.
Akai, naturally, knew none of this. He had come prepared for a refusal — but its sheer, unhesitating speed still left him puzzled.
"Why? Honestly, you don't strike me as someone who cares about the Organization the way Gin does."
"Why, indeed..." The corner of Cointreau's mouth curled faintly. "For freedom, I suppose."
And with that answer — sincere or not, there was no telling — Cointreau drew his right foot back, planted it on the very lip of the rooftop, and gave the lightest push, tipping his body backward. Then, in Akai Shuichi's suddenly blown-wide eyes, he dropped from the roof like a bird taking wing.
From the answer to the freefall, the whole sequence had taken no more than two seconds.
Akai had bolted toward him the instant he registered the movement, but his fingers never got within reach. He skidded to the edge and looked down in alarm — straight into the muzzle of the gun Cointreau had raised at him. Without a moment's thought, Akai wrenched his body backward, trying to twist out of the bullet's path.
"Bang!"
"Ugh!" It had all happened far too suddenly. Even with his reactions, even jerking back the instant the muzzle came up, the round still caught him in the shoulder.
In fairness, he had allowed for the possibility that Cointreau had people staged for an extraction — snipers, even. What he had never imagined was that the man would simply step off the roof, much less put a bullet in him on the way down. Of course he hadn't been braced for it.
Akai staggered back a few steps until the wall caught his weight, then tilted his head and pressed a hand against the wound, taking stock of its position — not far from where the sniper's bullet had left its mark last time. A bitter laugh slipped out of him. His poor shoulder had gone from one disaster straight into another lately.
Just then, slightly hurried footsteps sounded nearby. Akai turned to find Jodie rushing over, his superior James close on her heels.
"Shuichi, are you okay?" The moment she spotted him, Jodie quickened her pace and hurried up to check his wound, worry written plain across her face.
"I'm fine. I kept it away from anything vital." Akai settled her with a few words, then turned to James for a status report. "What happened after Cointreau jumped from the rooftop?"
"Our snipers watched him go off the roof without making any attempt to slow himself — a clean vertical drop, all the way down to a dozen-odd meters above the ground, where the other buildings blocked him from view." James's brow was furrowed.
He found the whole situation baffling too. The man had fallen that low — by then, even unfurling a hang glider would have been too late, wouldn't it? Don't tell me Cointreau actually meant to kill himself.
"I've already sent some people down to search the area — to see whether there's a body."
That was what he said, but privately, James didn't believe for a second that anything had happened to Cointreau. He simply could not picture a man like that taking his own life. He had no idea how the man had pulled it off, but somewhere deep in his gut, James was certain of one thing: Cointreau had escaped yet again.
Akai's thinking ran along exactly the same lines. He said nothing more; everything could wait until the search teams reported back.
"One more thing. Pull everything you can on two people — Akemi, and Natsume Xiayu. Be as thorough as possible." Akai's voice caught, just barely, on Akemi's name.
"Eh? Why those two?" Jodie couldn't imagine why Shuichi would suddenly bring them up out of nowhere. Could it be... "Did Cointreau say something just now?"
"Mm." Akai nodded and gave a brief account of what Cointreau had told him.
Jodie looked at him, her eyes full of things she didn't quite know what to do with. So that was the situation: Shuichi had used his own cousin's feelings to infiltrate the Organization — and then, indirectly, gotten her killed.
A small knot of discomfort twisted in her chest. Dating your own cousin felt a little off, didn't it? Then again, she seemed to recall that Japan did allow cousins to marry, so it was probably fine...
Entirely oblivious to the storm churning in Jodie's chest, Akai went on to explain his reasoning. "Cointreau treats that Miss Xiayu differently from everyone else. I suspect there's some connection between them. She could be the crack we need to get at him."
James nodded his assent.
He threw a worried glance at Akai's gunshot wound and raised a hand to cut him off before he could say anything else. "All of that can wait. Right now, we get that wound treated. A bullet wound means Beika Central Hospital is our only real option — the director there will help keep it out of the news."
The mention of the director jogged something in James's memory. "That reminds me — that doctor I told you about, the one with the excellent hands? He's arrived at Beika Central Hospital. Perfect timing, really. We can have him treat your wound, and see for ourselves just how good he is."
Akai raised no objection.
Once they had wiped the rooftop clean of every trace of what had happened there, the group left the Beika Hotel.