Shinichi could tell when someone was following him. After years of assassins, murderers, and all too eager fan girls stalking him at every turn, he tended to recognize the signs of an unwanted companion quite easily. And to be quite honest, the ones following him now were nowhere near as good as any of the former. Not in skill, execution, or in good common sense. They hardly knew what they were doing.

For one thing, they knew next to nothing about dressing inconspicuously. Most people who walked the streets of Beika did not flaunt heavy coats and sunglasses. Granted, the detective would give them a pass on the heavy coats because winter was still holding onto the country with an iron grip. He would even excuse the clichéd using of the ever popular trench coats. They may have been commonly used in old black and white films, but if they were warm he had no place in commenting.

The sunglasses, though, those needed to go. The sun had barely graced the country with its presence since winter started. If they wanted to hide their faces, they would have been better off using ski masks, and that was saying something.

Kaito sure would have had something to say about the way they wore their wigs too. The magician always painstakingly made sure his disguises would never be questioned under normal circumstances. Meaning he never gave anyone a reason to think he was not who he said he was until it was time for a big reveal. These guys did not seem to take that kind of philosophy to heart.

It actually annoyed the detective. If they were going to wear wigs without properly fastening them, they could have at least picked ones that matched their current shade. Red with brown roots did not strike most people as normal.

Shinichi was also quick to notice that his followers, four separate men if he counted correctly, did not fully grasp the art of acceptable distance. They were too close at the wrong times and too far when the moments were too inappropriate. He knew for a fact they kept losing him because nine times out of ten they could not hide the exhaustion or irritation on their faces when he spotted them again.

Honestly, they did not have to work this hard at something so simple. They knew his schedule by now. Or, at least, they knew the schedule he had purposely allowed them to memorize. With that information they could have prepared a better plan of action than the one they were bumbling.

Did he not even deserve proper stalking anymore?

Apparently, he was not the only one dealing with a less than welcome entourage. Hattori had called him up not too long ago to rave about how some suspicious characters kept trailing his every move. The Osakan was even more irritated than Shinichi was. Did these people not realize how difficult it was to focus on your normal daily routine, or whatever daily routine you faked, when there were amateurs trying to hide out in every obvious corner?

It was sad really. Hattori likened the situation to a game of hide and seek with small children. Although the adults no doubt already knew where the small children were, they needed to play pretend and act as though they had absolutely no clue. However, it was difficult to act like you had no clue when the kid was two feet away from you, feet actually showing, from a bulging curtain that should not have been giggling. They were trying to spare these people's feelings, at least until they knew who they were, but the guys were not making it easy.

Hakuba was having troubles of his own. Though, perhaps because he was the child of a police chief, he was not seeing nearly as much of these men as his two friends were. And they certainly never appeared when he was with his family or other police officers. However, his favorite path to school had been plagued with several too obvious visitors who showed their faces nearly every other day.

The only one not getting tailed so carelessly was Kaito, and he was actually annoyed with that fact. "I mean, I can understand them stalking Shin-Chan, and maybe even Hattori, but Hakuba? I think these guys need to find something better to do with their time."

If the blonde had not had Eve in his arms, he would have likely reached over and slapped the magician in the face. As it was, he had to settle for glaring. It would be unwise to cause a scene anyway, regardless of who was baiting who. It had been nearly a month since the four of them had been able to get together like this, and spoiling the occasion so selfishly would quickly make him lose favor with his favorite colleague.

The four of them rarely had any spec of free time at all, let alone days off, and never had those instances fallen on the same time frame as the others. When one was free, the other three seemed to always be preoccupied with some business or emergency. At best, two of them could get together at one time without being called away.

Truth be told, it was so common amongst them that they had not given it a second thought until Eve's grandmother called Shinichi, asking for one of them to baby sit the little girl one afternoon. She would have to take her daughter to a therapy session, and for once Eve was asked not to attend. It left the old woman in quite a tough spot, so she called Shinichi as a last resort when begging and pleading did nothing to sway the therapist. She thought it was a good idea. They had not seen her in weeks, not after that frightening heist night, and the elderly woman thought that the baby might feel more at ease if one of her favorite boys were around as opposed to a complete stranger.

Needless to say, Shinichi called the other three boys in his circle of friends and they all immediately cleared their schedules for that day.

Presently, the four teenagers were in Sanako's living room, sitting on the floor passing Eve around every few minutes. These days the baby was moving her legs more and more, and she could stand well enough with one of the boys holding her up. She could also sit up on her own, though she did wobble from time to time. Their goal was to get her to crawl by the time her mother and grandmother came home. Smart as they were, they had not yet come up with a suitable method to accomplish that goal.

"I think you're missing the point." Hakuba told his classmate, passing Eve on to Hattori. "People we don't know are following our every move, and even though they are far from efficient, they seem to be serious in their intentions."

The magician rolled his eyes. "Ever heard of a joke, Hakuba?"

"I'll have to agree with Saguru on this one." Shinichi said. "Whoever these men are, they mean business, and they're dumb enough to think that what they do can't be noticed."

Kaito pouted. "Sorry. But don't you think you're taking this too seriously? If they can't even hide from you, what makes you think they can hurt you?"

"Even a broken clock is right twice a day," The detective reminded him. "And I wouldn't need to worry about it so much if they knew something about what they were doing. What concerns me the most is what might happen to other people if they manage to get whatever it is they're planning done correctly."

Kaito wished, as Eve was handed to him, that detectives would speak plain Japanese every now and again. Sometimes they failed to realize that not everyone spoke complex paranoia and puzzles every second of every day. Granted, he was not one to talk, being the keeper of two very mentally complex personas, but at least he knew to turn those on and off when the situation called for it. They could at least show him the same respect.

Of course, that bitter line of thinking could be attributed to the detectives in his life constantly thinking he was absolutely ignorant of the way things worked in the real world. He was a magician, which they were quick to forget was not the same as an ignorant clown. A clown made stupidity into something to laugh at because he knew nothing else. A magician made the ordinary into magic, something the world was seriously missing, and made people smile because he truly knew the horrors in the world. He just wanted people to be happy in spite of it all.

These three were apparently missing the point. "Sorry for not understanding. I'll try to stick to things I know something about for next time. Anything else I shouldn't bother thinking about?"

Shinichi's eyes softened, a silent apology forming in blue depths. "Kaito, I don't mean to sound cruel, it's just...I just..." He ran a hand through his hair. "Things are bad enough when evil psychopaths decide they want to make complex plans where nobody has any clue of what's going on. When that happens I can't stop any given target from being hurt."

"However," Hakuba decided that now would be a good time to jump into the conversation. Better to save the brunette a headache and constant explanations. "When these criminals have no clue what it is they're doing, getting their intended target becomes a game of Russian roulette. They either succeed or take down someone innocent as a result of their failure. Worse, even if they do fail that horribly, they won't care. They'll just try again."

Kaito shuffled about as much as he could while still holding onto Eve before deciding that the baby need to be passed onto Hakuba. "I didn't mean that I didn't understand why you were worried about them succeeding. I only meant that you know who these guys are, and you know how bad they are at what they do. Can't you just go and round them up now?"

Hattori snorted. At the glare he received, he smiled sheepishly and scratched at the back of his head. Right, help Kaito, not make him look like an idiot.

It was just that, how could he explain the situation so that Kaito could understand the dilemma? Kaito worked on an entirely different page than the three of them did. They were detectives, policemen in training basically, and they had their own belief systems that were very seriously based in working with the law, not against it. Their hands were tied until the wannabe assailants actually did something illegal. Which was why they were so worried. No one knew what these guys wanted, and no one knew whether they could resolve the problem peacefully, or if they were going to have to fight their way to a decent outcome. And if it came to such extremes, who would be taken down with them? How many innocent people would be hurt just so these goons could get what they wanted?

"We can't just go pick them up off the street." He settled for saying instead. "That's called kidnapping."

Eve shrieked loudly at the word, almost as if she had seen a dead body fall down before her, and Hakuba found that he could not hold onto her when she was flailing about and crying so terribly. After a kick came too close to his face, he handed her over to Shinichi, who rocked and cooed her back to a calm state. It was amazing how much of an easy time the brunette had with the child, considering that he was barely ever patient with anybody his own age. Or anybody who was old enough to know better, for that matter.

Hattori could only look on, confused and slightly guilty at the reaction that he had caused. "What just happened?"

Kaito looked at the baby, clutching for all she worth to the front of Shinichi's shirt. "Don't tell me she actually understood what he just said."

"I won't tell you then." The modern day Holmes muttered under his breath. "She's not dumb you know."

"No, but she's not even one yet."

Hakuba rolled his eyes. "I highly doubt she knows the definition of the word, but she's no doubt noticed that it's not a good thing. Every time someone's mentioned it aloud, the people around her react badly, either by crying or suddenly becoming solemn. Babies have been known to notice things most adults take for granted." He placed a hand under his chin in thought. "They're actually pretty observant as well. Some studies have shown that they can spot oncoming trouble a bit better than their parents."

Shinichi suddenly felt his body grow stiff. Eve was quick to notice, and she tugged a bit on his hair to get his attention. He hardly noticed.

Hakuba brought up an interesting point, and also brought to mind a particularly eerie pattern Shinichi had been noticing in the local media. Kids had been disappearing. To be more specific, very young children had gone missing. They were all under the age of one, and they all fit a very certain physical description. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and all of the female persuasion, the paper's had reported. Three had so far gone missing in the past few weeks, and two had been recovered in a nearby body of water. The third was still being searched for. From what the media presented, it was highly unlikely that the ending would be very pleasant.

Shinichi himself was not deeply involved with the case, most likely due to Megure-Keibu blatantly refusing to bring the boy into something that might destroy him. Because of that, the brunette could make no assumptions on who could have been behind it all or what their motives could have been. He could not even be certain that all the cases were related to one another in any way. He was as out of the loop as everyone else was.

However, he did know one thing for certain, and that was that he did not believe in coincidences. Not when there were so much of them in so short a time frame. Three babies of the exact same physical description, all but one murdered in the exact same way, separated in time by a mere seven days. He could say nothing about the time, but the method and description of deaths reminded him of something. Something he had been trying to push out of his mind since it had come to an end.

Simon had made mention of how Eve was supposed to die just before he was carted off to the local prison. To make it seem as though she had not suffered, the psycho had intended to put her to seep before drowning her in the bathtub. And now the detectives who had put Simon behind bars were being followed? As stated before, Shinichi did not believe in coincidences. Not when they were obviously something much more sinister.

He shivered and held the little girl close, placing his forehead to hers, trying as hard as he could to get comfort out of the gesture. Eve seemed to sense he was upset, and she tried to giggle and smile to get him happy again. He wished it were that simple.

He heard the makings of a small argument going on in the background. Kaito had said something Hakuba did not agree with, or so it seemed, and Hattori was doing his best to keep the both of them quiet while simultaneously trying to get Shinichi's attention. The detective of the east thought that maybe it was time to give the other a break, as those two could carry an argument into the netherworld if they really wanted to. Sometimes he thought they truly despised each other.

He balanced Eve on his knee and sighed loudly. In mere seconds he had the attention of the other three in the room. "I honestly don't see what is you two are fighting about." He also had absolutely no idea what the two of them were even talking about. He really should have been paying better attention, but they would be sure to tell him what was going on soon enough.

Kaito went first; pouting in a way that Shinichi could not help but smile at. "Shin-Chan, all I'm saying is that, if you guys know something's not right, then you should be able to protect yourselves no matter what."

To which Hakuba replied, "And I politely informed him that our hands are tied. We can't do something against these unknown individuals without proof of ill intent."

"They're stalking you! How is that not ill intent?"

"We happen to somewhat famous in our own right, Kuroba. Are you aware of many people follow, worship, and send correspondence to us on a daily basis? Mind you, most of which are not very age appropriate?"

That Shinichi had to somewhat agree with. Being looked at and followed, either in a metaphorical or literal sense, was the price you paid for fame. You had to get used to it or you risked looking wimpy and unprofessional. Shinichi could just see how he would look going into the Beika police station, saying he was scared of someone in a trench coat following him around. If they did not outright laugh at him, they would surely lose several notches of respect for his person.

"So you're just going to stand here and let it happen?" Kaito countered. "Can't you at least take some kind of precaution?"

Hakuba rolled his eyes yet again. "Who said we weren't going to take precautions? Regardless of what you may think, despite the fact that we are detectives, we don't welcome death to our dinner tables every week." He took a breath to calm himself. He was not looking very gentlemanly at the moment, and a whiny brat was not the image he wanted to portray in front of Shinichi. "I've actually come up with a few suggestions that could keep us out of harm's way, while simultaneously keeping others safe, until we figure out what on earth is going on."

"Which would be?"

"Well for one thing, it would mean we have to cut down the number of cases we accept on a weekly basis, as well as the severity of the cases we take."

It made a good deal of sense, but none of the detectives in the room were too keen on it. They lived for their work, tiring though it may have been, and they thrived on the thrill of the chase coupled with the satisfaction of solving the puzzle. Stopping such joys for something uncertain was not in any way an attractive option.

"We'll have to also have to rethink going anywhere that's not entirely necessary. Like, say, KID heists, for example." The blonde in no way missed the intense glare sent to him when Shinichi averted his gaze for a moment.

Even Eve shivered slightly when the temperature in the room seemed to magically drop.

Kaito, to his credit, simply smiled as though he did not want to seriously throttle the smirking English detective. "That sure would cut down our together time, don't you think?" All he received were confused blinks. "What I mean is, KID heists are one of the few times when we can all get together. Without them we run the risk of slowly forgetting the others exist."

Shinichi could not help but chuckle at the idea. "I can't count the number of times I've actually tried to forget that the three of you existed. If I couldn't do it by sheer will alone, I highly doubt some separation would do the trick."

Hattori nodded. "And anyways, it's not like we don't know where the other lives. I say we should start randomly start showing up at each other's houses and kidna-" He stopped when three very heated glares were sent his way. "...and borrow each other for a little while."

Kaito tilted his head. "Don't we do that now anyway?"

The Osakan shrugged. "We could just make it official."

Hakuba glanced over to Shinichi, who had for the moment set his gaze firmly on Eve. He had been doing that quite a bit during their short get together, and the look in his eyes was worrisome. Something was very wrong. Shinichi did not get such a heartbroken look in his eyes unless something extremely precious was about to be lost. And to see that look aimed at Eve, when the discussion was so very grim...

"What is it you're not telling us, Shinichi?"

The brunette looked up to the blonde, startled by the intrusion in his thoughts. "Pardon?"

Hakuba frowned. "There's something bothering you, I can tell, and you aren't saying anything about it."

Shinichi was surprised anyone had noticed the change in attitude. He was usually very good about hiding those sort of things. Still, he should have known better than to think his own peers, who were just as smart and intuitive as he was, would not notice eventually. "What kind of answer would you like me to give you?"

All eyes were now on him. "The truth."

So simple. So blunt. Yet so difficult to adhere to. "Alright, here's the thing,"

MistressOfTime1218: I apologize if this is not up to par with the other chapters, and if you spot things that need fixing then let me, and sorry it's really too much of a filler. I was just so rushed to get it done that I may have missed things in trying to post by today. Hope you enjoy it.