Author's Note: This was an idea I had based on the fact that yes, it is odd that Gin didn't shoot Akemi in the head and even that he left before he was sure she was dead. That was how he killed Pisco, that was how he ordered Kir to kill Akai, and even Bourbon confirmed that was his style. For somebody incredibly careful about not leaving any loose ends, shooting Akemi in the abdomen seems like sloppy work. It wasn't like when he chose to use APTX-4869 to kill Shinichi in order to avoid a bullet trail. This fic will only be two chapters long.

Disclaimer: Gosho Aoyama-sama own Detective Conan and I'm playing around with different concepts and characters.

Gin's Treachery

The Plan…

As someone very low-ranking in the Organization, Akemi knew it was never a good thing when one of the highest-ranking members, even if you knew them personally, called you out of the blue and ordered you to meet up as soon as possible in an isolated location. She supposed she should be thankful she was asked to meet at a park and not the empty warehouses by the docks. That would just set off all kinds of alarm bells in her head. Granted, the park was not much better off when the meeting was occurring in the middle of the night like now.

With a resigned sigh, Akemi left her car in the parking lot and made her way to the designated meeting point. The darkness and the half-light from the nearby city was wreaking havoc on her vision. Every bush looked like a crouching shadow and the rustling of the trees in the wind sounded like something sinister approaching. And yet, none of these things scared her as much as the creeping chill that seemed to ooze out of the darkness. The pressure it exuded was terrifyingly powerful and it crawled up her back like something alive. She recognized this presence and she dreaded it as much as she had expected it. Indeed, the source of this malefic black aura was the very person who had called her to the park in the first place. She had no choice but to obey and she could only hope as she drew nearer that Gin was not feeling nearly as murderous tonight as his aura otherwise indicated.

Several more meters forward and certain she was going to suffocate from the thick miasma of death and blood lust that surrounded her, she heard the deep, steady rhythm of his voice come out of the darkness. "You came alone?"

Akemi gulped and looked around, but saw nothing. It didn't help that he wore black. "Of course. You asked me to, so why wouldn't I?"

Gin chuckled darkly and she finally caught sight of movement from near a small stand of trees. "It can be very dangerous for a young woman like yourself to go wandering around in the dead of night. You never know what monsters lurk in the dark."

He was hardly more than an indistinct, shadowy figure to her in this darkness, but now she knew where he was. Akemi gave a short huff. "A known danger is never is frightening as an unknown one," she retorted.

"Ah, there's that brave spark of yours," he murmured with a satisfied air.

There was a quick scratching sound and a tiny flame appeared on the end of a match. It was incredible how bright the tiny light seemed after the deep blackness. Gin brought the match to the cigarette already between his lips and lit it. Orange embers burned at the end and he exhaled a thick cloud of the smoke. If he was smoking in the dark like this, then he was confident nobody else was around to see what he didn't want them to. Akemi was just glad that she now had something for her eyes to focus on, at least until the cigarette embers disappeared in a circular arc. Gin had turned around.

"Come, we're heading to my car," he said briskly.

"We are? I thought we were meeting here?" Akemi said, taking a few paces to catch up with the fair-haired assassin.

"Hmph. I had you meet me here on the off-chance that you were tailed. This was never meant to be our final destination."

Akemi rolled her eyes at his paranoia. "Well, where are we going then?"

Gin didn't answer her, but that didn't mean anything. Whether he chose to answer or not was his prerogative and she was hardly in a position to demand otherwise. Still, there was something in his silence this time that felt… disquieting. She followed him back to his Porsche in silence and sat in the passenger's seat once they reached it. It felt odd to be sitting right next to him in his car like this. It was only ever him or Vodka who sat here and all other passengers were forced into the back. He started up the car and accelerated from the curb onto the main street. It was still dark of course, but the passing street lights gave her some visibility.

"Alright, now down to the business of why I called you to meet me tonight," Gin said after a long period of silence.

Startled, Akemi looked around at the street and nearby buildings, but nothing popped out at her and Gin didn't seem to be stopping either. She gave him a perplexed look. "Are we having this meeting in the car?" she asked.

Gin gave a brief nod. "You are not supposed to know what I am about to tell you and not even the privacy of a bar is secret enough for this. This is the only location private enough for the discussion I intend to have."

Akemi stared hard at his profile, the sense of unease growing inside her. She was at the very bottom of the totem pole in the Organization, only allowed to know of its existence and some of its members. She was not someone in a position to be entrusted with secrets, especially not the kind of secrets that Gin carried, but he was telling her a secret anyway and it was definitely not one she had clearance for if this late-night rendezvous and meeting location were any indication. The idea that he would be telling her was absurd because Gin was fiercely loyal to the Organization and it went against his moral compass to betray it. And yet… and yet he was! He was betraying the Organization and that scared her more than the man himself.

"Gin… what's going on?" she said tentatively, unable to completely hide the fear in her voice.

His knuckles whitened against the steering wheel before he spoke in a low voice. "'That person' wants you eliminated."

Akemi jumped and she wasn't sure if she was more shocked that the Boss had ordered her execution or that Gin was telling her about it. "But why?!" she demanded after finally finding her voice. "What have I done to warrant it? I haven't revealed the Organization's existence to anyone or betrayed the few secrets I do know, so why does 'that person' want to get rid of me?"

"Because you were dating the FBI Agent and he wormed his way into the Organization through you. You're a weak link in the chain and your close relationship with him only further compromised the Organization's perception of you," Gin said, his tone as cold and emotionless as his eyes.

"But I don't… I don't understand… Why now?" Akemi said at last, unable to take her eyes off Gin, but he only continued to stare resolutely ahead. "I haven't seen or heard from him in the two years since he was ratted out. If the Organization was worried about the threat I posed to its security through my relationship with him, then shouldn't I have been killed shortly after it happened?"

"You should have, but you weren't because you are Sherry's beloved older sister," Gin sneered. "It appears 'that person' has been regretting it more and more ever since then, and has only now decided that the threat you pose to the Organization is greater than your status as Sherry's sister."

Akemi turned away from Gin at last and stared blankly down at her hands clasped tightly in her lap. The fact that she had only been alive this long because she was Shiho's older sister didn't surprise her that much. She knew she wasn't important to the Organization and especially not compared to Shiho who had been granted a codename, the highest honor. There was only one piece left in the puzzle that didn't make any sense at all. She glanced back at Gin out of the corner of her eyes. "Why are you telling me this?"

Gin exhaled a particularly thick cloud of cigarette smoke from between his lips before answering. "Because I have no intention of following through on my order to kill you."

Akemi's blue eyes widened in shock. She had guessed as much or he wouldn't be telling her, but she had never expected him to admit it so easily.

"Which brings us to why we're here right now," Gin continued. "I will not kill you, but that's not an option. Even if I had the power to change 'that person's mind, you were never important enough to bother keeping in the Organization forever once your sister was ready for her role. It's not safe for you to stay and it won't be safe for her to stay either. In many ways, she's too soft-hearted for the Organization's work and it will get her killed sooner or later. So while you're here, we need a plan to get the both of you out of the Organization alive without letting on otherwise. How would you try and escape on your own if I wasn't involved?"

"Oh, well… I'd want to get the both of us out, but knowing Shiho's important, the stakes would be high. Maybe I could play into the Organization's assumption about my uselessness? What if I tried to buy our way out? Yeah, I would strike a deal with you that I would pay one billion yen for the release of Shiho and myself from the Organization."

"Neither you nor Sherry make that much," Gin commented.

"I know. I would have to steal it. That could even be part of the deal I make. You require I steal the entire one billion yen all at once without getting caught with the caveat being that if I fail, you can kill us both as the price for my failure," Akemi explained. "I would never have to know you told me about the order of execution prematurely and it would give you the perfect excuse to get us out; we would just have to figure out how to make our deaths believable."

Before she could think any further about the plan, Gin gave a derisive snort and shook his head. "It's a good thing you're not really trying to do this by yourself, because what you've envisioned would never work."

Akemi glared at him and crossed her arms over her chest. "Then please, do go on and illuminate the flaws in the plan I literally just came up with on the spot without warning," she said acidly.

"Sounds like you're channeling Sherry right now," he said, and he sounded highly amused. "Very well, I shall 'illuminate the flaws' as you put it. The idea of using one billion yen to buy your freedom is well-justified, but the Organization will sense your lack of effort if you're aiming to fail, and it wouldn't fit your character to put your sister at risk like that. I and others would feel that something suspicious was afoot and then I would be scrutinized if I didn't act on said suspicions, which would defeat the purpose of trying to cover your deaths."

Akemi huffed. He had a point there. "Okay, what else?"

"My dear, this is the biggest flaw of all," Gin said with sinister amusement. "Your version may be what you believe would happen, but the truth of the matter is that no amount of money would be able to buy your way out and I would never let anyone as close to other high-ranking members as you leave the Organization alive, no matter if you were successful in stealing one billion yen or not. The excuse for your death sentence would be secured regardless. The other great flaw in your plan is that no matter what you do, Sherry is too important to the Organization to kill over your mistakes as long as she remains loyal. Your death would be secured because you would be taking measures to leave the Organization, the route of a traitor. If Sherry is to leave, she must take the same route and abandon the Organization on her own terms, or I can't touch her."

Akemi covered her chin with her hand and thought hard. "I don't think it would be too difficult," she said slowly. "Shiho's not a fan of the Organization; it's just a question of figuring out what would cause her to tip over the edge and decide she's had enough."

"Akemi, isn't it obvious?" he purred mockingly and it sent an uncomfortable shiver down her spine. He was loving this. "If Sherry's beloved sister is killed on the Organization's orders, I rather think that should prove to be a sufficient turning point for her."

She swallowed nervously and turned back to the window, looking away from Gin. "Yeah, probably," she murmured in agreement.

"I will take care of covering Sherry's death when the time comes. We have to focus on you first though. The best time to kill you would be after you completed the robbery. You'll call me to let you know you succeeded and we'll meet at a predetermined location – I recommend the warehouses by the docks since they're isolated and out of the way-"

Akemi nearly laughed outright at the irony of having thought that very same thing earlier in the evening.

"-and I will shoot you non-fatally in the abdomen. It's not my normal style, so if anyone questions me on that front, Vodka will vouch for me. He too might wonder why I don't shoot you in the head, but he would never dare ask."

"And I'm not going to be bleed to death in an isolated, out-of-the-way area with no foot traffic because…?" Akemi prompted.

"Because before the meeting takes place, I will call an ambulance and tip them off that a woman was shot at the docks at our meeting location so that they will already be on the way and arrive promptly to save you. You'll be in surgery at that point, so you will have to leave everything else to me to get you out of the hospital alive without anyone knowing. By shooting you in the abdomen, I risk someone like Bourbon finding it suspicious and deciding to check and see what happened to your body. If anyone gets as far as the hospital, the story will be that you died an unidentified woman on the operating table from your gunshot wounds and the trail will end there. The most important thing is to make sure that nobody suspects anything to the contrary. If anyone starts really digging, it would be incredibly easy to prove you're still alive. Preventing any suspicions from arising in the first place is the safest way to go."

Akemi's brow furrowed momentarily, a new thought coming to her mind. "What about Vodka? You intend to have him with you when you pretend to shoot to kill me, so is he going to be involved as well?"

A thick silence settled over the two of them with her words and she sensed Gin's answer before he even spoke. "Vodka's not to know about any of this, and neither is Sherry," he said in a deathly whisper. "Vodka's loyal to me, but he can be careless sometimes, and Sherry's too emotional. It would be too dangerous for either of them to know of this plan that many in the Organization, even I, would deem treacherous."

"Exactly," Akemi said sharply, still watching the scenery pass by through the window. "Even you acknowledge that what you're doing is treason. You who sniff out traitors like a bloodhound and eliminate them with impunity, so why? Why are you really doing this? Why are you going so far to protect my sister and I?"

Gin didn't answer and after a beat of silence, Akemi knew he wasn't going to. "Fine, don't answer me, but don't think I can't guess your reasoning," she warned and fell back into the thoughts swirling around her head.

She had correctly guessed that her boyfriend of three years was some kind of secret police officer using her to infiltrate the Organization long before he'd confirmed it for her and she was relying on that same intuition now. Akemi had a death sentence placed upon her head as surely as the seasons changed, and Gin had decided to prevent it. He was only a few years older than her, but they were not friends. They hardly saw each other and they had nothing in common beyond both being in the Organization. There was no reason for him to commit such high-level treason, to defy a direct order from the Boss for her sake, but Akemi didn't honestly believe he was doing it for her sake anyway.

No, she had good reason to believe he was protecting her because of Shiho. He had been obsessively-interested in her sister for years, ever since she came back to Japan from America five years ago. Of course, she did not approve of his interest since he was so much older than her, but she suspected Shiho might have some kind of relationship with him that she was hiding from her. Gin was incredibly confident that her death would cause Shiho's betrayal, so instead of letting everything fall apart, he was working to mitigate the damage that would be caused without his intervention. To be willing to go this far to protect her and Shiho though… even if her little sister ended up hating him afterward? Akemi wondered if she'd underestimated just how strong Gin's feelings for Shiho were. Maybe it really was love and not lust that he felt for her.