A/N: I'm terribly sorry - I didn't mean to wait this long to post this last chapter up. I got caught up in the hurricane that is Life. I hope you all can forgive me!

I want to thank everyone reading, reviewing, favoriting, and following this story. You guys are amazing. I'm not sure how long it'll be 'til I can come back and work on this fic, but hopefully it won't be too much longer. When I do come back, we can all have a party over at Sheldon and Leonard's - we'll have to make it a Thursday so Sheldon won't be too upset about it. xD

Chapter Seven
The Call

Leonard lead the way into the sushi bar, followed by Raj and Howard. Their heads were all down, shoulders slumped.

"Three?" the Asian hostess asked with a light accent as they approached the podium.

"Yeah," Leonard said, and followed her to an empty, high-top table positioned beside a suit of samurai armor in a corner. The three took their seats on the high stools and the hostess placed the menus in front of each of them before leaving.

Leonard opened his menu out of habit and stared at it. His mind was elsewhere, the same elsewhere it had been for days – since the day of the disappearance. He looked up at Howard, across from him on the left, then to Raj on the right. Both were absorbing themselves in the menu as if nothing were wrong.

Leonard bit his tongue. They were doing nothing wrong – they simply didn't know any other way to act. Neither did he.

Their waitress approached, all smiles, and took their drink order. Howard and Raj both got water; Leonard, a Coke.

"You okay Leonard?" Howard asked, bringing Leonard's mind to the forefront.

"Yeah, yeah." He nodded, lips pressed together. He pushed his glasses up his nose and interlocked his fingers together in front of him. "What are you getting?"

Howard looked back down at his menu. "Oh, I'm thinking..." His eyes fell down the page and he gave a curt nod. "...Salmon Special." He looked to his left, at Raj, and asked, "What about you?"

Raj's hand unconsciously went to his stomach as he looked over his menu, and Leonard knew he was stressing over his weight. Ever since the news of Sheldon and Penny's disappearance, he had been eating like an over emotional housewife.

"Get whatever, it's just sushi," Leonard said.

Raj's deep brown eyes flecked up to look at him uncertainly, then back down to the menu. He sighed, defeated, and dropped the menu down on the tabletop with a soft path. "I'm getting the Spicy Maki Combo."

"What about you?" Howard asked Leonard.

"I didn't even wanna come in the first place," Leonard snapped.

"Come on now, you gotta eat something..."

"I'll order double and you can have half," Raj offered.

Leonard didn't respond, but the matter seemed to be settled. He glanced at the time on his phone, wondering when he would get the call. He saw it happening one of two ways: the first, his phone would ring, he would answer, and Officer Williams would say, "Good news, we found them. They'll be home before you can say 'mission successful'." The second and not-so-desirable one, "Leonard? This is Officer Williams. We've found their bodies... Could you swing by the morgue later to identify them?"

"Are you ready to order?"

Leonard snapped out of his thoughts and gave a small forced smile to the waitress.

"Hi, yes," he said, picking up the menu and pretending to browse. His eyes landed on the rolls, so he looked up and said, "I'll have the Alaska Roll."

She smiled, wrote it down, and flecked her pretty almond eyes to Howard. "For you?"

"I'll have the Salmon Special," he said, a hint of Barry White in his tone. The waitress turned to Raj, who clenched up noticeably, but Howard broke in before she could speak. "Uh, he'll be having the Spicy Maki Combo."

Raj's index and middle fingers slowly rose before him in the form of rabbit ears.

"Make that two," Howard corrected.

The waitress thanked them and promised to bring them their food shortly, then walked away to place their orders.

"How old do you think she really is?" Howard asked, watching her walk away.

"What do you mean?" Raj asked.

"You know, Asian women never look their age. They always look young to me, know what I mean?"

"Maybe it's the rice," Raj offered.

Howard turned to him, putting an arm across the edge of the table. "Was that racist?"

"No! No, I didn't mean it like that," Raj said. "It's proven that rice is good for your skin – sake makers always have soft, smooth hands from working with rice." He smiled pleasantly. "That's why I use products from Skinfood. They use actual rice!"

As always, Raj's strangely feminine comments shut them up, and soon all three friends were doused in silence.

"...I'm worried," Leonard finally said.

Howard gave a thin-lipped smile of sympathy. "We all are."

Leonard's head swung left as he crossed his arms, thinking. He turned back to them with a frown. "It's been days."

"They're searching, Leonard," Raj said, leaning forward slightly. "They have most of their rangers searching all over the area."

"They'll find them," Howard said.

Leonard looked at their hopeful faces and felt disgusted by their optimism, but was able to keep it to himself. "You're right," he said, sighing.

His phone started to ring.

Howard and Raj disappeared from his vision in a blur as he reached for his pockets and clamored to his feet, headed for the bathroom. He finally got his phone and managed to slide the touch screen bar to the side to accept the call.

"Yes, hello?"

"Hello, is this Dr. Hofstadter?"

"Yes, this is he," Leonard said, anxiously holding the phone to his ear with both hands.

"This is Officer Peterson, I'm just calling to let you know that we haven't had any luck so far, but we're still looking."

Leonard's world slowed almost to a halt. He stammered, at a loss for words, and was able to push out, "O-Okay, thank you for...letting me know."

He hung up on him and looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He didn't even remember making it to the bathroom to answer the phone. It took all of two seconds for him to see red, and before he could stop himself, his phone was hurling through the air and clanked against the mirror, surprisingly doing no damage to the mirror, but splitting his phone into three pieces: the back, the front, and the battery; and those pieces fell to the floor with a clattering sound.

Shit, he thought, rushing to his knees before the wreckage. Please don't tell me it's broken...