What is Past is Prologue (Part 3)
Fandom: Detective Conan Rating: T for canon-typical violence Continuity: Post series
Part 1: The Detective Part 2: The Phantom Thief Part 3: The Agent
Jodie Starling spent more than half her life living in the past. She had allowed her past to define her identity and set the course for her future.
But no more.
She was defined by what had happened when she was a child. A fat lot of good it did her.
Despite dedicating her life to bringing the woman who all but destroyed her innocence to justice, she was thwarted, time and again, first by the organization shrouded in the darkness, and later by the institution she had sworn to serve and protect.
That was why when she was offered the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to walk away from her past, away from the bureau that betrayed her, away from everything, she took it with both hands and promised herself that never again would she allow herself to be this helpless, this powerless.
Therefore, when her past came calling, in the form of the man she once loved, she did not immediately respond. She had to make sure that she would not be meeting him out of some misguided hope that she would be able to fix the past. In the end, she said yes to meeting him because, like a cat, she could not help but know what had happened after she left.
“You’re a hard woman to find.” Shuichi Akai told her as he slid gracefully to the booth where Jodie Starling was sipping her coffee.
“I have to be,” she replied. She set down her teacup carefully to hide her hand’s subtle but unmistakable shaking. “A long list of people want my head on a platter.”
She absently noted that he was no longer wearing his disguise. He had ditched the blonde hair and the glasses that made him look harmless. He went back to growing out his dark hair. His look reminded him so much of the young man she met and loved so long ago.
Her heart ached.
Akai’s lips thinned as if her statement gave him displeasure, but he did not say anything until the server who approached their table to take their order had left.
“Don’t you think we’re too old to live like this?” He asked her honestly.
“By we, you mean me, don’t you?” She asked. As the head of a no-name, internationally funded, but globally disavowed organization, she knew that after helping bring down the Black Organization, Shuichi semi-retired from the FBI and concentrated on piecing back his family.
Unlike her.
Jodie shrugged when he didn’t reply to her question. “I actually spend more time behind the desk now,” she told him honestly. She was surprised how much paperwork being the head of a no-name organization generated. She took a deep breath; forced herself to relax and smile. “Hello, Shu. How are you?”
Taking his cue from her, he also relaxed. “I’m good.”
“Me, too. Let’s get straight to the point. After five years, why contact me now?”
“Direct, as always. I have information that your agency has in its custody an asset believed to be dead.”
Jodie struggled to keep the shock out of her face. It would have worked on any other person, but it was Shuichi watching her. He knew all of her tells.
One of the advantages of being the head of a no-name organization was that she could run it as she saw fit. And she saw fit that knowledge of her newly acquired asset would be known only to few people inside her organization: three people, to be exact: herself, one reluctant consultant, and the asset herself.
The consultant would literally die before he revealed information about the asset while the asset would not talk, also literally. Since the leak did not come from her, that could only mean—
“That bitch.” She muttered. Jodie winced. She did not like calling other women names. However, the shoe fits the woman now going by the name of Alicia Vineyard, the daughter of the late Chris Vineyard. To Jodie, that woman would always be Vermouth.
“That is why the PSB, the CIA, and the FBI all agreed to keep her alive and on the streets.” He told her gently. “She’s a veritable fount of information.”
“That woman needed to die. At the very least, she needed to pay for her sins. Putting her on the streets would only endanger more people.” Jodie told him vehemently.
“I agreed with your assessment five years ago,” he reminded her. “But we were outranked and outvoted by our superiors. “And you can’t place the blame entirely on her. Word on the street is that a certain Phantom Thief also had a run-in with your asset.”
A run-in which was not disclosed to her.
“How accurate is our asset’s information?” Shu asked, careful not to utter any names as one never knew who was listening. “Is your asset really the girl from Beika? All that the Kaitou Kid would say is that it’s her, but it’s not her.”
“I’m not at liberty to—”
“Don’t give me that, Jodie. Some people back in Japan deserve to know what happened.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Jodie looked away, figuring out how much she could tell him without her telling him anything. She knew that she would not get away with misleading him for information. Knowing him, he had already done his due diligence and confirmed what he could before confronting her with the information he already had.
“So, it is her?”
“If it’s not her, she’s an excellent imitation of the original.” She shrugged. “I tried to bring her home, but she had so many decisions taken away from her already. Now, I don’t think anyone could force her to do things she doesn’t want to do.”
“How is she?”
“She doesn’t speak much of what had happened to her.” She replied truthfully. “In fact, she doesn’t speak to me at all. She only talks to the doctor.”
“The doctor?”
Jodie nodded. “She found him and decided to trust him. She talks to him. He talks to us. She doesn’t trust me or anyone else. And he only talks to us only when it’s convenient for them. They help us, but they’re not with us.”
“Who are they with?”
“Who knows?” Jodie shrugged. “The Black Organization was weakened when its head died. A war broke out between many organizations, syndicates, and cartels to try to take its place. Rumor has it that the struggle unceremoniously and decisively ended two years ago. The victorious entity in the power struggle was more intelligent, secretive, and infinitely more dangerous than its predecessor. Law enforcement had tried and failed to identify, much less infiltrate, it.”
“You think your asset is with the new shadow organization?”
“Just a hunch.” She admitted. “Because there couldn’t be more than one organization so secret that not even my agency, with its infinite budget and network, could not know.”
“Is she in danger?”
Jodie paused. Considered. “I would have said no before. I believed that she had eliminated the threats to her life when she put out feelers to us.”
She saw the shock on his face at the revelation.
“Eliminated?”
“We still don’t know what happened to her. The only clues we could follow are the trail of bodies left behind.”
Shu hunched closer to her. “Are we sure it’s her?”
Jodie smiled bitterly. “As I’ve said, we have no idea what was done with her. But you and I both know that when the Black Organization puts its hands on you, it changes you.”
Shu let out a breath. He did know how much the Organization could change a person. He let that poison touch his life. And for what?
“The Kaitou Kid is right,” Jodie continued. “She’s the same person, but she’s no longer the same person they took from her home all those years ago.”
“Is she in danger?” He asked again.
“Before today, I would answer no. But knowing that the Bitch knows about her means that the remnants of the Black Organization know about her.”
“The remnants?”
“The Black Organization may have been cut at its knees, but it still has many loyal supporters, trying to find a replacement for its former leader, hoping to bring it back to its former glory. She’s doing what the FBI, the CIA, and the PSB should have done five years ago,” she told him. “Burn the organization to the ground. Have you heard of the Malta massacre?”
Shu leaned back and tried to recall a short news article he had read a couple of months ago.
“An office building in Malta burned down a while back. The firemen found about a dozen unidentified people in the building.”
“It was not just an office building,” Jodie told him succinctly. “And the people there are not office workers. It was a hideout for the Black Organization. About half of the dozen people who died were high-ranking officers. They did not die by fire as the news reported.”
“She did that?” He was unable to reconcile the sweet, innocent teenager he knew all those years ago with the portrait of a person Jodie was painting. “Alone?”
“She did that,” Jodie confirmed. “But we don’t know if she did it alone. And we didn’t know that the building was a front for the organization until after we received a tip not to allow the local law enforcement to force open the vaults inside.”
“And what did you find?”
“Information.” She replied. “Enough to justify the budget of my agency to my superiors ten times over. And Malta’s just the beginning.”
“Do you need help to protect her?” “Protect her?” She scoffed. “God help the idiot who tries to hurt her.” #tbc
