Fixation

Chapter 17


Jou pulled the nearest pillow over his head when someone knocked on the door. As his hand brushed cold metal instead of his own headboard, he peeked out for a moment. The closed handcuffs were still looped though Seto’s ornamental headboard. He stared at them for a moment, reliving every detail of their marathon of activity the night before. Then he covered his head again. It was too damn bright. Some idiot had thrown open the curtains and Seto’s wall-sized windows let in enough sunlight that it looked like mid-afternoon outside.

“Fucking western rip-off luxury homes…” Jou grumbled. The old Japanese style compounds, with high, small windows covered with screens, were so much more comfortable in the morning. Jou reached out to the side of the bed where Seto had fallen asleep earlier that morning. He sighed as his hand brushed an empty pillows and a rough-textured paper.

Jou poked his head out of his cocoon again and found a sealed envelope on the pillow next to him. “Wonder how much last night was worth…” Jou mused aloud. He tore open the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of custom stationary.

Do not over-analyze this, Mutt. It’s just a note to let you know I got up to go check a few logs I forgot about. If there are implications in this note that I’m not aware of, I’ll expect a memo outlining how those implications would be interpreted by the lower classes so I can fix it. Do not run away again. –Love, Seto

Signed and on his personal stationary, Jou thought whimsically. Seto had to be totally committed to the idea if he was willing to provide Jou with physical evidence as fodder to black mail him. Jou wouldn’t black mail him, of course. Just the idea that Seto trusted him enough to risk it brought a huge smile to his face. After enjoying the glow that thought brought him, Jou climbed out of bed and tried to find what was left of his clothing from last night. His pants and boxers were still in one piece, but everything else was shredded. He dug through an ancient chest of drawers hoping to find a T-shirt he could borrow to sneak back to his guestroom, but all Seto had were wife-beater style white under shirts, along with enough black socks and underwear to keep half-dozen men in clean clothes for weeks.

Jou grabbed one of the tank tops and was nearly reduced to tears by how much he had to squirm to squeeze into it. Seto may be taller than him, but Jou had never really appreciated just how much broader he was than the other man. Jou couldn’t remember actually seeing the brunette eat or drink anything besides coffee in the last week, and his job wasn’t the most active one in the world, so Jou knew he shouldn’t have been surprised by how skinny he was. As soon as he was mostly covered, Jou headed for the door and found that it was locked. He looked for the lock on the handle and found nothing but smooth metal. The handle didn’t push in, and the door didn’t have any separate locking mechanism that could be accessed from the inside. Jou sat down in front of the door, staring at the innocent looking wood. He thought back over his adventures in the house control center yesterday, and then jumped to his feet, feeling stupid. He found the scraps of undershirt that Kaiba had cut off of him last night and carefully removed the pin that transmitted his access code for the motion sensors. Would it work for the door lock as well? If Jou had designed it, it would have. He walked towards the door with the pin in hand and chuckled when he heard the lock disengage. He wondered if it would get him into Seto’s office, too.

He headed towards his guestroom and noticed that this door unlocked from roughly three feet away. Jou wasn’t surprised to see that his entire room was in disarray. His suitcase was open on the bed and his things were scattered around the comforter. Empty drawers were pulled open, the closet door was ajar, and the bathroom door was open. Jou hadn’t been in the room since yesterday morning, and the Domino PD bomb squad had been through the room with dogs and hand-held metal detectors since then. In their defense, Jou knew that it was actually quite difficult to search a room without messing it up, but it was still annoying. He put on his last pair of jeans and an old Duel Monsters t-shirt, carefully pinned the transmitter to the collar, and headed down stairs.

Jou went straight to the house’s control center, letting himself in through the small door. He found Roland sitting along at the console.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Wheeler,” the bodyguard said without looking up.

“Hiya. Anything happening this morning?”

“This morning ended four hours ago, Mr. Wheeler. Mr. Kaiba has already been through an extensive interview with local police, spoke at a press conference, exploited the news coverage to promote his new role-playing game and returned home for an informal discussion with the police. They are in the game room. They requested I ask you to join them when you were awake.”

“There’s no way it’s three o’clock…”

“I assure you it is.”

“Damn.” Jou leaned on the console and studied the display of the house. “Is there a way to get passed them and into the kitchen without them noticing?”

“Yes,” said Roland. With a few commands, the display of the house vanished. “But you don’t need to. The kitchen staff delivered trays approximately twenty minutes ago.”

Jou stared down at the man curiously. “You’re not going to let me hang out in here today, are you?”

“No. I can’t afford t lose any more staff…”

“Ah… This is about those three guys who want to drool over Chantel, isn’t it?”

Roland stared at the screen where alarm status changes were scrolling up the screen.

“I am sorry about that. They were just so enthusiastic, and no one on my team likes to work with her. She seems to be a bit more popular over here than she is in LA. I didn’t mean anything by it, they’re great guys—I wouldn’t have offered them jobs if they weren’t.”

Roland brought the display back up and turned to face him, obviously annoyed. “I agree, they are. They are very good at their jobs, Mr. Wheeler; you won’t be disappointed in them. Now I have to fill their positions before I begin interviewing for my replacement. Between saving your life and this, you’ve delayed my retirement back to England by another two months, I’ll have you know.”

“You’re retiring? Why?”

“I’m an old man,” said Roland, exhaustion evident in his voice. “Thanks to Mr. Kaiba and his brother, I have a half-dozen old wounds that ache on rainy days, chronic high blood pressure that doesn’t respond to medication, and I’ve been here for so long that my Japanese is better than my English. I just don’t have the energy to keep up with it all any more—guarding the Kaibas, managing Kaiba Corp security, managing the household security… It’s exhausting.”

“Well, I’m sorry to see you stepping down, but there’s no better way to end a career.”

“I survived,” Roland agreed. “Get going, Mr. Kaiba’s been waiting for you to wake up all day.”

“Yeah, yeah. If you need any help with stuff in the meantime, let me know. I go a little nuts without something to do.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Mr. Wheeler.”

Jou left the small control room, wondering if it was too late to retract the job offers he’d made. It was better to get on Roland’s bad side, he decided eventually, than to risk telling Mario he had to go back to guarding Chantel. Mario would probably quit.

Jou didn’t need to look hard to find the game room. It was one of the only rooms of the house that he had ever spent much time in when he was younger, and always at Mokuba’s invitation. Jou expected to walk in on a hushed, formal meeting. He expected a room full of men in suits sitting staunchly around a table discussing important things. He did not expect to see Mario sitting on the floor next to Yugi, each one holding play station controller in their lap. Yugi’s controller was sitting untouched. The small man was leaning back on his hands, watching a gigantic television. On the sofa behind them, Seto, Mokuba, and Honda were finishing plates of food and watching the television with occasional laughs and groans.

“You’ve picked up the sequence fast,” Yugi commented in Spanish, making Jou do a double take. “It took Mokuba two hours to get that high of a score.”

“It’s been two hours,” Mario said softly, twisting the controller to the right. Mario’s eyes flicked towards the sound of Jou’s steps. “Sleeping beauty’s awake.”

Yugi turned around and jumped to his feet. “Bout time you woke up! Where you planning on staying in bed all day?”

Jou rubbed the back of his head and tried to avoid Yugi’s gave. “Well, come on, I think Mokuba saved some food for you.”

“I don’t eat that much,” Mokuba whined.

Yugi returned to his spot on the floor. Jou glanced at the television curiously. “What is this?”

“Katamari Damacy,” said Yugi. “A Bandai game Kaiba wishes he would have come up with. You have to roll a little ball around and collect matter to build stars. It’s fun.”

On the screen, a giant collection of stuff rolled around a city, picking up everything it touched and growing like a weird inorganic tumor. “There are people in that ball.”

“Yup! He almost has it big enough to start picking up the circus animals! Although it takes a bit more to be able to get the elephants.”

“You having fun?” Jou asked Mario. The other man glared at him. “I have forty minutes to beat Yugi, go find something else to do!”

“Why? What happens if you don’t beat him?”

There was a string of Spanish swear words that had Yugi giggling like mad.

“You don’t want to know,” Mokuba insisted. “For what it’s worth, I tried to warn him. But between gin, poker, checkers, chess, boggle, and three fighting games he still hasn’t figured it out.”

“Ah… You know what Yugi’s nickname is?” Jou asked his friend.

“Si, si, King of Games, I know. But Mokuba beat both of us at poker and chess, so I know ‘es possible. I just need to find the right game!”

“Don’t embarrass him too much, Yug’.”

“Oh, I’ll be nice about it.”

“Hi guys,” Jou wandered towards the couch and took a seat on padded arm next to Seto. “How’d last night go, Honda?”

Honda threw his head back on the couch. “You remember how much I enjoyed math?”

“I remember you scheduling a root canal to get out of a test in trigonometry.”

“Exactly. Multiply that by twenty and you have my evening. The next time this bastard pays to kill someone, he’d better actually do it so that there won’t be eight hundred pages of conflicting documents to search through.”

Seto smiled and stretched into the corner of the couch. “I told you, I am sorry that Hiroshi-san is an idiot. It’s not my fault the imbecile didn’t remember that every authorization code he changed would show up on our key capture log. I even sent out a memo about it two months before, to try to curb inappropriate use of people’s workstations. How did you sleep, Mutt?”

Jou tilted his head from side to side, letting his neck stretch a little. “Could have been better. I haven’t taken any painkiller since yesterday morning. I got sore.”

“I’ll bet you got sore,” Mario muttered in Spanish. Yugi squealed and rocked back and forth with his hands on his knees.

“So what’s going to happen today?” Jou asked.

“Today I’m waiting on bench warrants. Four members of the Kaiba Corp board of directors and Kaiba’s secretary refused to answer a subpoena this morning. Unfortunately, that means waiting for the city prosecutor to get off his ass and get in to see the judge. You know how it goes.”

“I know if he were screwing the prosecutor he could probably persuade him to get it done faster,” said Kaiba with a straight face.

Honda blushed but said nothing.

“Is there more food?” Jou asked.

“Right over there,” Seto motioned to a long buffet table along the side of the wall. It was covered with silver trays of food, each heated by a small canister of butane. Plates, flatware, and cups were stacked at one end, and an ornate silver coffee pot sat at the other. Jou quickly helped himself to a bit of everything he found, from European-style rolls to onigiri, which was always a personal favorite since he could always find it in any convenience store in Japan.

With a plate full of food, Jou returned to the arm of the couch only to find himself quickly pulled down into Seto’s lap. Honda and Yugi both glanced at them curiously.

“So,” Jou said between bites, “That’s it? You’re just going to let things take their course? Somehow that never really seemed like the Kaiba way of doing this.”

“Oh, don’t worry too much about it,” said Mokuba, stealing an onigiri off of Jou’s plate. “Seto’s already been Seto today. He destroyed that little bitch in his press conference, and implicated Hiroshi and those idiots so deeply that any allegations they make are going to look like a poorly thought-out, desperate retaliation. They could openly accuse him of being anything from Jack the Ripper to a gay, obsessive-compulsive psychotic killer and he would still come out looking fine.”

Jou felt Seto tense underneath him. The second allegation wasn’t so far off the mark.

“And you let me sleep through it! Damn it, next time wake me up!”

“There will be sound bites on the news, Mutt. Besides, you would have just gotten in the way or opened your mouth when you shouldn’t have. If there is anything I know, it’s how to spin a press conference, but I can’t do it with you jumping forward and barking at everyone in the room.”

“My fucking job revolves around discretion, asshole! You’re the one who never knows when to keep your fucking mouth shut!”

“Oh, did I hit a nerve? Someone needs a nap. Or a good spank-“

Jou pulled his elbow out of Seto’s ribs, grabbed his plate and climbed to his feet, stalking away from the couch and ignoring Seto’s snort and huff.

“Guess it’s true what they say,” Seto sneered.

“Seto…” whispered Mokuba.

“A dog’s bark is always worse than its bite.”

Jou smiled brightly, carefully set his plate down on the floor, and charged. He intended to punch Seto into that damn couch, but the brunette moved just before Jou reached him. Surprisingly enough, Seto ran. By the time Jou wheeled around to tackle him, he was out the door and around the corner. Jou didn’t think before he took off after him. He shouted instead. “Get back here you worthless rich shit!”

A firm hand caught his collar as he rounded the corner. He found himself pulled into Seto’s chest, his familiar arms wrapping around Jou’s back and shoulder. Seto was kissing him before Jou could attack. He felt himself being spun around and shoved against the wall. Seto’s lips devoured his, his tongue forcing Jou’s mouth open. Jou’s head swirled as Seto kissed his furiously. It might have been a quick moment or several minutes before Seto pulled away, but when he finally did, he cupped Jou’s face in his hands and smiled. “Gods, I love you.”

“Then what the hell?”

“I didn’t want an audience,” said Seto with an evil grin. “Plus, I wanted to talk to you, but Honda’s determined to hover today. Mokuba has requested that I let him deal with things. He wants us at Kaiba Corp tonight, along with witnesses. Shall we drag fin head along?”

“That’s not fair,” said Jou, trying to shift his hips to take a bit of pressure off his of hardening cock. “He only had that hair cut for a couple years, you know.”

“First impressions tend to stick with me,” Seto explained. “When I first saw you I thought you looked just like a puppy, the way you followed Yugi around without a clue about what was happening.”

“What? It wasn’t the whole Otogi thing?”

“That was a hell of a second impression,” said Seto. “The memory of you dressed like that had me so hard I wanted to fuck the costume every now and again. I tried everything to get that dice freak to sell it to me.”

“Gods you are such a pervert!” Jou hissed, trying to hide his blush but unable to get away from the blue eyes just inches from his face. “What time do we need to be at Kaiba Corp?”

“Mokuba said no later than ten. He gave me some pretty detailed instructions.”

“So until then we’re…”

“Entertaining fin head, I’m afraid.”

“Alright. I’ve got some things I need to get done, though. I’ve got to call Esme and make sure our contracts are covered, and find out if the insurance adjuster has contacted her yet.”

“Insurance adjuster?”

“The guys Asano-sama hired blew up my office. My premiums are going to be insane after this.”

“I think you’ve probably got enough capital to just rebuild, by now.”

“Not likely. Ally just became publicly traded a few months ago. We’re still a small start up.”

Seto leaned close and licked Jou’s nose. “You’re going to hit me for this… but have you checked your stocks lately?”

“What did you do?” Jou asked, pushing Seto away.

“I just bought stock!” Seto raised both of his hands and inched away from Jou. “But, when I buy stock it tends to make people who generally wouldn’t take a second look at a company buy every bit of it they can get their grubby little hands on. Last time I checked, Ally’s stock was worth twenty times what I paid for it a week ago.”

Jou pressed both of his lips together. “I’m not going to hit you for it. I wish you would have talked to me first, but I’m not going to hit you. I’ve still got to get stuff done, though. And damn it, I’m hungry.”

“Now that’s my Mutt! Do you want to use my office?”

“No. I’ve got my phone and laptop, I can manage just fine on my own.”

“Suit yourself then… Do you have time to slip away with me for a few minutes?”

“Seto, I’m sore. And there’s no way you can still be horny after last night.”

“That was last night,” Seto whined. “If you’re so sore that the only way I can get laid is if you’re on top, then I am all yours.”

“You mean it?” Jou asked, slowly raising his knee between Seto’s legs.

“Absolutely.”

“Well, you still gotta wait until tonight. I’m hungry!”

The evening came faster than Jou would have liked. He had just finished lunch a few minutes before Seto told him, Honda, and Mario that it was time to go. Seto led them into Kaiba Corp through a private elevator from the garage, Roland trailing close behind while another bodyguard strode a few paces ahead. He led them to an open office near the executive conference room. Several other people were standing around looking tired, bored, or angry. And they were all standing around in the dark.

“Kaiba-sama,” a young woman from his research and development department hurried over, “I realize that sometimes projects cannot wait, but what was so important that you needed the head of every major department here at this hour?”

“I am not sure myself. I am afraid I received a message to wait right here, at this time, and in this place. Something about the investigation the police spent the day conducting.”

“And why don’t any of the lights work? Every light in this office has been disabled.”

“I wish I knew. Is my brother here? He’s the one who told me to show up.”

“And me,” the woman acknowledged. “I know the level of dedication you expect from us, but I can’t stay for long.”

“I understand. Your husband is working tonight? Were you able to find a sitter?”

“My mother was kind enough to come stay with the children,” the woman admitted. “Thank you for your concern.”

“Of course. They’re as much a part of the Kaiba Corp family as you or I. And they’re great beta-testers, too.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mokuba hurried towards them, dressed in a formal suit.

“Mokuba, why are the lights off?” Seto asked.

“Contrast,” Mokuba said quickly. “You’ll see in a moment. The room is set up, security is recording everything, and our guests are on their way to the conference room right now. Is the lady from the Domino Post here?”

“Yes sir,” a petite woman with a camera around her neck wove through the crowd. “What’s going on?”

“Well, unfortunately, my brother, and all of these good people who represent the heart and soul of Kaiba Corporation, have been the victims of a malicious fraud. I have been monitoring some of their meetings for weeks now, and have been trying diligently to find out how they’ve misused two million dollars of our company’s money. Only today, thanks to the gallant efforts of Detective Hiroto of the Domino PD, I discovered that they not only intended to fraudulently expel my brother from his position as CEO of Kaiba Corp, but to commit murder in order to do it. I thought that it was time for them to explain their conduct to the whole of Kaiba Corp and the police.”

“And they’re coming here?”

“That would be them,” said Mokuba.

Approximately two hundred feet away, passed short cubicle walls and a dozen desks, the lights turned on inside of a glass lined conference room. A man Jou recognized as Hiroshi stormed into the conference room, pulling a young woman in a skirt suit around by her upper arm. He roughly threw her against the table, then wandered around to the head chair and sat down, running his fingers through his hair.

“The thing about windows,” Mokuba said in a conversation tone, “Is that when one side is well lit and the other side is relatively dark, the only thing you can see from the side that’s well lit is your own reflection. While someone on the dark side of the window can easily see through the glass and into the light.”

“So they can’t see us,” Seto whispered.

“Exactly.” Mokuba sat down on one of the desks and pressed a button on the intercom.

“—so stupid!” the man’s harsh voice came over the tiny speaker.

“I didn’t know he was still alive! If you had told me he wasn’t dead I never would have said anything!”

“You didn’t have to say anything! It would be enough for the police to know the contract existed, you idiot! Thanks to you they’re looking over every single record with a fine tooth comb!”

“But they can’t find anything! Every authorization code was changed and my signature is a perfect match for that faggot’s! I know I made a mistake, but it will still work out just fine. If nothing else, he will have to admit why he’s been so obsessed with finding that man, and then he’ll have to tell the entire world what he is!”

“You think the shareholders are going to care that Seto Kaiba’s gay!”

“The customers will!”

Jou felt the eyes of most of Kaiba’s high-ranking employees watching them uncertainly. Then he felt Seto’s hand on his hip, pulling him close. “I thought that was old news. I’ve been gay since before I took over the company and its profit margins haven’t suffered for it yet.”

“Despite the scandals,” Mokuba agreed. “Good business is good business, after all.”

That seemed to settle matters for Kaiba’s employees.

Three other men hurried into the conference room, all looking flustered. “Things have gone too far,” one of them said quickly. “The police delivered a subpoena to my house today, Hiroshi! They came to my house!”

“Of course they did. This is a very serious matter; you can’t expect that you’ll sail through things without putting on a strong front for the police.”

“But Jounouchi is alive!” Another one shouted. “How can Kaiba be arrested for murder if he’s not dead!”

“We’ll just have to rectify that, wont we?”

The three men stared at the seated man in silence. “You mean kill him? With the police watching everything we do!”

“You’re letting due process and procedures make you paranoid! Now is not the time to act stupid. As long as we continue to maintain that Kaiba’s guilty, the police will be forced to agree that the evidence shows he’s responsible. If we get scared or paranoid, we’re likely to do or say something stupid. For now, we’ll deal with Jounouchi and let the police sort out our dear little brat of a CEO.”

“I’ve heard he’s not that easy to kill,” said the last man, who until then had never said a word. “The Yakuza hired a professional to get to him in the States, and not only did he survive, but he came here to confront them. Now it’s the Yakuza who want to back out. We don’t know what type of man this Jounouchi guy is, but if he can make someone like Asano-sama back out of a deal…”

“He’s a man. He can be killed just like everyone else. And if he has a man’s weakness, maybe we can even manage to avoid getting our hands dirty…” Hiroshi smiled at Kaede and motioned for her to come to him. “If he’s easily turned by a pretty face,” Hiroshi caressed the woman’s cheek. With a quick motion, he ripped her blouse open, revealing large breasts that were barely contained in a tight bra. “You’ll find this Jounouchi tomorrow afternoon, Kaede dear.” Hiroshi rose from his chair, spun her around and violently shoved her onto the table. He pushed her skirt up over her ass, pulled aside a tiny pair of panties and began to finger both of her holes. “Of course, your pussy’s so loose you might need to offer him that tight ass of yours instead.”

“Hiroshi-san, you said we were going to discuss what to do about the police,” Kaede gasped.

“The police will have no choice but to make an arrest once Jounouchi’s dead. Hire another girl or two if you need to, but find Jounouchi and coax him out of the city, to the old Kaiba Corp manufacturing plant. The only thing left up there are ruins, now. Give him a proper send off, the shoot him in the back of the head.”

“A proper send off? You want me to actually fuck him?”

Hiroshi chuckled. “I think you would have learned by now that I like watching you fuck people. Text me when you’re on your way, I might come join you after he’s dead. Gozorboro always said blood makes things kinky.”

“Whatever you wish, Hiroshi-san,” the woman arched her back against the table, moaning.

The three other men had strolled around the table to where Hiroshi was fingering the girl. “Which part do you want?” one of them asked Hiroshi.

“I’d like to watch you all fuck her. At the same time.”

“That’s going to get tricky,” one of the men laughed.

“Oh,” Kaede moaned, “Not if you’re creative…” She guided one of the men down on the table, undid his pants and straddled him, then held her hips still as a second shoved himself into her ass. She moaned low, stretching her back forward like a cat. “Now you just need to crawl up onto the table,” she purred at the other man. He climbed on the table, grabbed her by the back of her head, and began to fuck her mouth. Hiroshi sat back down in the CEO’s chair and began to stroke himself.

“Well, I think I speak for everyone here when I say: ew!” Seto turned away from the orgy on his conference room table. “Can we put an end to this?” he asked Honda. “And get me a new chair and a new conference table! Ew! Roland, arrange for someone to steam clean in there!”

A few of the older employees chuckled at his antics.

“Security has that on tape?” Honda asked Mokuba.

“Security records everything in the executive offices,” said Mokuba innocently. “They don’t keep anything for more than twenty-four hours unless it’s important. But they record everything.”

“Right. Jou, you know how quick cuffs work?” Honda asked, pulling out a few pre-shaped black plastic straps, designed for use in crowd control and riots.

“You don’t have regular cuffs?”

“Only two sets and there are four of them…”

“Ah,” Mario smiled. “After I found Roland’s supply closet, I borrowed a few things… I came dressed for work,” he said innocently. He dug around his suit and pants and pulled out two pair of folded hinged cuffs, along with an expandable baton, pepper spray, a tazer and a small pistol. He handed the cuffs to Jou. “You got a key?”

Jou pulled at a large, pen-style handcuff key that he’d decided to keep in his shirt pocket that day, just in case Seto decided he wanted to play again. He replaced it quickly.

Mario nodded, then pulled off his suit jacket so his shoulder holster was visible, then placed the pistol carefully in the holster. Honda smirked and took off his jacket as well.

“Least you’ve got a duty belt to carry this shit,” Jou grumbled, putting one end of each pair of handcuffs into one of his back pockets.

Honda led the way, with Mario and Jou spread out behind him, around the maze of desks of modular corridors until he came to the door of the conference room. Then he pulled out his cell phone. First he called for backup and four cars to transport suspects, then he dialed another number. “Mokie,” he said when Mokuba answered. “Turn the lights on. I don’t want to walk in their blind.”

A moment later, fluorescent lights flooded the entire office, revealing the orgy’s horrified audience. Inside the conference room, Kaede moaned and rocked back and forth between the three cocks inside of her.

Hiroshi saw Kaiba and his employees first. He jumped to his feet, tucking himself back into his pants as his face turned first red and then purple. The man on the table and the man busily thrusting into Kaede from behind scrambled to straighten their clothes, while the man beneath her squirmed to get away. Instead of rolling out from under her, he ended up sending them both to the floor, still coupled together and dripping on the carpet. Jou followed Kaede’s gaze out the wall-sized window to where Kaiba stood. More specifically, to where the reporter crouched, snapping photo after photo. She screamed.

Honda acted quickly. He shoved the doors open so hard one of them cracked. “Gentlemen,” he said aloud, “I am Detective Hiroto of the Domino Police Department. It is my duty to inform you that you are under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder, although other charges will likely follow. Please stand up and walk to the far wall. Place your hands high up on the wall and stay there!”

The three men did as they were told, but Hiroshi seethed with rage and stood his ground. “How dare you! Do you have any idea who you’re talking to! What you’ve done!” When Hiroshi raised his hand, Honda grabbed his wrist, bent his arm behind him, and forcible walked into the wall, shoving his face against the same glass window that Seto and the others stood behind. He hand the man handcuffed in seconds. Jou handed a pair of cuffs back to Mario, who moved to cuff the first of the three men against the wall.

“Ma’am, you need to stand up and step over to that wall right now.”

“Oh, so you can have a piece too?” she snapped.

“Ma’am, the only thing I want after seeing that display is mouthwash. A lot of mouthwash. If you don’t stand up and place your hands on the wall I will use force to make you comply.”

“You asshole! No one talks to me that way!” She lunged at Jou, trying to scratch him, but he threw her to the ground and cuffed her behind her back. She kept fighting, kicking, screaming, and spitting at him the whole time. Once Jou had her handcuffed, he had to place a knee between her shoulder blades to keep her from trying to kick him, then held her head still because she spit at him every time he came into her line of site.

“This is where I miss the LAPD,” Jou said calmly. “We had restraint chairs and spit hoods to deal with people like this.”

Honda finished handcuffing the last of the men and pulled out his cell phone again. When the Domino Police stormed the office a few minutes later, one of them brought a thin mesh spit hood with them. With her skirt over her waist and her breasts dangling out of her bra, three female officers dragged her out. One of them was the corporal who had greeted him when he first returned to Japan.

“Careful,” Jou called after the officers, “She bites.”