Chapter Three

Ranma jogged slowly back to the apartment, keeping a sharp eye out for the offending van, but did not see it or anything else unusual. He collected his mail in the lobby, throwing the junk in the perpetually overflowing wastebasket that was provided for just that purpose.

Upon reaching his apartment, he saw there was a message for him on his machine. Hitting the play button, he listened as he got a bottle of water out of the fridge. "Hi, Ranma, this is Akane. I really need to talk to you about the. . . research. Please give me a call."

"Akane, huh? Well, she can wait until I finish my shower," Ranma commented as he kicked off his running shoes on the way to the bathroom. He was rinsing the shampoo out of his hair when he heard the phone ring again and turned off the water as the machine picked up the call.

"Ranma," came Akane’s voice, sounding a little shaky, "I really need to talk to you about the project. Please call me." Frowning, Ranma finished drying off and wrapped the towel around his waist. He picked up the cordless phone from its cradle in the kitchen, scooping more food out for Kuso who had been meowing for attention ever since he got back from his run. He dialed Akane’s number and was only mildly surprised when she picked up before the first ring was finished. "Hello?" she said tensly.

"’Kane, what’s up? It’s me."

"Ranma, thank God you’re home. I need you to come over here right away." She seemed really relieved to hear from him and the tension in her voice let up a little.

"What’s going on? Are you all right?" Ranma was concerned, he’d never heard her like this before.

"Look, I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. Get over here as soon as you can, okay?"

"Come on, don’t keep me in the dark, what’s up? Are you planning a surprise party for me? My birthday’s not until next month," Ranma teased, trying to lighten her mood.

"You idiot! You think everything’s about you! I need you to get over here soon, okay? I’ll explain when you get here."

"Okay, okay. I’ll be there in 15 minutes, I just have to get dressed."

"Okay. Call me before you leave."

"Why?"

"Just do it, okay?" The tension was back in her voice and she was starting to sound scared.

"All right, I’ll call you," he relented. "See you in a few."

"See you."

Ranma hung up the phone, feeling extremely confused. "Great," he said to Kuso, "just what I need. A researcher going bugnuts on me. Why me?" Dressing in jeans, a navy polo shirt and his running shoes, he quickly combed his hair and tied it back in a neat ponytail, not taking the time to braid it as he normally did, remembering Akane’s earlier comments about it. He dialed Akane’s number again and told her he was leaving.

"Hurry, okay?" was her only response.

As he drove out of the parking garage, he saw the van again and made a decision. He made a left turn instead of the right that would take him to the expressway and Akane’s apartment and grimaced in the rear view mirror as he saw the van follow him. "Okay, Saotome, you have your answer. Whoever it is, they are definitely following you. Now, what do guys in the movies do when they want to lose a tail?" He turned to a busier street and began weaving in and out of traffic, watching the van fall farther behind and ran a red light, smiling in satisfaction when he saw the van trapped behind three other cars. He drove down for a block and turned back to the right, catching the expressway at another onramp. 10 minutes later, he was knocking on Akane’s door.

She opened it just a crack. "Who’s there?" she asked.

"Me, Ranma."

"Just a sec." She closed the door and Ranma heard the rattling of a door chain. The door opened again and she said, "Come in," closing the door behind him, locking it and putting the chain back in place.

Ranma stood in the center of the comfortable-looking living room and asked, "Okay, now I’m here. Would you mind telling me what’s going on?"

Akane shushed him with a finger to her lips and motioned him over to a window that had the blinds closed. She held open one of the blinds and gestured him to look through. Ranma put his eye to the slit and saw a van parked outside. Stepping quickly back from the window he turned to her and said, "You too?"

"What do you mean you too?" she whispered, moving back to the center of the room. "It’s been there all day. Ever since I got home from breakfast this morning. I didn’t notice it at first, but whenever I took a break from writing up the report, I would look out this window and there it was. I’m scared."

"I noticed one this morning at Sally’s and then I saw it again when I went jogging. It followed me to the park and it was following me when I drove here. I lost it in traffic and I can tell that’s not the same van as the one that was following me," Ranma whispered back, sitting on the couch.

"What are we going to do?" Akane asked anxiously, sitting on the chair to the side of the couch.

"Why haven’t you called the police?"

"I don’t know. I don’t want to sound stupid. Maybe it’s not me they’re following. There are a lot of people in this building. They’ll think I’m paranoid."

"Akane, you’re scared. The police are here to protect you. I’ll call them." Ranma got up to use the phone in the kitchen.

"No!" she whispered vehemently, taking the phone out of his hands. "What if they’ve got my phone tapped? I’ll call the police and they’ll go away and come back when the police are gone. Then I’ll really look stupid."

Ranma sighed exasperatedly through his nose. "What did you call me for?"

"I didn’t want to be by myself and I was hoping you could come up with a plan," Akane admitted in a small voice, looking down at her shoes.

"Okay. Well. A plan." Ranma looked at Akane and resisted the urge to try to hug her, not wanting to seem like the was taking advantage of the situation, but she looked so damned cute. "Well, it looks like we have to get out of here and my place is out of the question," he mused. Suddenly he snapped his fingers. "I’ve got it. I know where we’ll go for a little while. We’ll go there for a few hours, come back and the goons will be gone. Simple."

Akane gave him a relieved smile. There was that cute thing again. "I knew you could come up with something. Where will we go? The lab?"

"No not the lab, too obvious. I have somewhere else in mind."

"Where?"

"I’m not going to tell you now, just in case. We’ll sit tight until it’s good and dark and then we’ll leave. That’s a couple of hours from now. Have you got anything to eat?" he asked, feeling that old emptiness come creeping back.

"Uh, well, I’m not much of a cook. . ." Akane began hesitantly.

"No problem, I’m a great cook," Ranma declared confidently, no longer feeling the need to whisper. "Can I look in your fridge?"
"Sure. You may not find much in there, though." She followed him to her small kitchen and sat on one of the barstools at the counter.

Ranma opened the refrigerator and peered inside. "Boy, you sure are a bachelorette. Some tofu, mustard and juice. No wonder you’re so skinny."

"Look in the freezer," Akane huffed. "And I am not skinny."

"Ah, that’s better." Ranma took a package of frozen stir fry vegetables out of the freezer and set them on the counter. He opened the refrigerator again and took out the tofu, setting it next to the vegetables. Looking in the pantry, he spied a box of minute rice. "Minute rice?" he asked, shaking his head sadly. In no time it seemed there were tofu chunks simmering in a sauce made of soy, teriyaki and a little mustard and the minute rice was minuting. He added the vegetables and covered the pan with a lid. He turned to Akane with a flourish and said, "Dinner will be served in 15 minutes."

"Wow, you’re amazing. You’re lucky I had those vegetables and tofu in there. I usually eat out or do the frozen dinner thing," Akane laughed, finally feeling relaxed. For some reason, she always felt better when Ranma was around. She remembered her teenage years and how most of the time she felt like one big ball of stress. Her father tried to teach her some martial arts to drain some of that off and it had worked, a little, but she just didn’t have the interest to keep up with it. After she’d come to America for college, she’d stopped completely and now worked out in the gym in the building to keep the stress at bay. Well, it helped with the pizza too. When she was with Ranma, however, all of that drained away and she felt like everything was going to be okay. He had a knack for fixing things, he was well known in the department for putting out the fires that constantly cropped up from having too many scientists in too close of an association with each other, and that was precisely why she’d called him tonight instead of one of her neighbors or even the police.

Her sister, Nabiki, asked her constantly why she hadn’t gone out on a date with him, but she always told her she was way too shy, which was the truth. Akane still felt very much like the girl who’d gotten teased all through high school and college for having her nose constantly in a book. She’d had a few boyfriends and had very determinedly lost her virginity to a boy whose name she no longer remembered her senior year in college, but no lasting attachments, although she knew men found her attractive. She looked surreptitiously at Ranma, seeing the graceful, confident way he moved about her tiny kitchen and wished she could get over herself and tell him how she felt without masking it behind some kind of sarcastic remark and sighed quietly. ‘Maybe I’ll wait to see how he feels about me,’ she thought sadly.

They chatted quietly as dinner simmered away, resolutely staying away from the topic of Ranma’s real reason for being there. "You’ve changed a few things since the last time I was here," he noted, taking a look around. The last time he’d been there was a department function a year ago and the place had the sparse look of a newly inhabited apartment. Now there were some nicely framed Japanese prints on the walls along with several hanging scrolls. "I like the scrolls."

"Yeah. Those were presents from my family the last time they visited. They said my place looked too American."

Ranma snorted softly. "Your parents are traditional too, huh? Every time I go back to Japan for a visit, my mom trots about a dozen women for me. Every time I talk to her, she asks when she’s going to have a grandchild."

"My father is very traditional. My mother. . . died when I was very young," Akane said quietly.

"I’m sorry to hear that. I didn’t know," Ranma voiced awkwardly.

"It’s okay. It was a long time ago."

"So was it just your dad and you?"
"No, I have two older sisters. They raised me more than my dad did. Dad. . . kind of fell apart for a while after Mom died."

"Oh, so you’re the baby of the family. That explains a lot," Ranma quipped with a smile, glad to see her smile in return. He didn’t like talking about death and fathers falling apart. His father was kind of a nutjob, but his mother had been an extremely stable and encouraging force in his life. It had been her who’d encouraged Ranma to go to the United States for high school and college. She’d been disappointed when he’d decided to stay here, but she accepted it, vowing to herself she’d find him a traditional Japanese wife.

"Ha ha, Saotome. If we’re talking family, I’m going to say that you’re an only child. You act just like one."

"Oh, and how is that?"

"Let’s see, you’re bossy, always insisting things are done your way, you carry yourself like you’re the owner of the world and can’t understand when women don’t automatically offer themselves to you," Akane smirked.

"You say that like it’s a bad thing." Ranma laughed. "Yes, I am an only child and I was doted on by my mother. My father on the other hand, wanted me to follow in his footsteps."

"Oh? And what were those? Wage slave?"

"My father? A salaryman? No way, not for Genma Saotome. He is a martial arts master." Ranma said with no small amount of pride, turning the fire under the pan off and lifting the lid, poking the vegetables and tofu inquiringly. "Ready to eat?"

Akane nodded affirmatively and moved off of the stool to get plates and watched Ranma scoop the tofu-vegetable mix over the rice. "Do you have any wineglasses?" Again, Akane nodded and got two from the cabinet over the sink, placing them in front of Ranma and smiled as she watched him fill them with fruit juice.

They ate quietly on the small dining table, Akane complimenting him on his cooking. "Thank you, when I started college, I didn’t have a lot of money, so I learned how to make the strangest things taste good," Ranma responded with a laugh.

When they finished, Ranma insisted that they clean up. "I don’t want whoever it is down there to think we were leaving in a hurry or running away from them."

"That makes sense. I’ll dry," Akane offered, getting a dishtowel from under the sink. They finished quickly and Akane looked out between the slats of the blinds. "They’re still there, Ranma. What next?"

"Let’s see, you should gather some things for the next couple of days. I know we have the board meeting on Monday, but we may need to stay in a hotel. Grab your laptop as well. Do you have any notes on the project?"

"Yes, in the office. They are all in one folder on top of the laptop. Give me 5 minutes to gather my stuff."

"Okay. I’ll get the computer and the folder together." Ranma entered the office and saw the computer on the desk, surrounded by family photos. One very old black and white one stood out and Ranma surmised it was her mother from when she was a teenager. ‘Maybe around the time she met Akane’s Dad,’ he mused, captivated by the picture. Akane looked a lot like her. He shook his head and reminded himself they were about to try to run away from some psychos that were currently parked outside and found the carrying case. He secured the laptop and the folder along with the other computer accoutrements and went looking for Akane in her bedroom. "You almost ready, ‘Kane?"

"Yeah, wait right there, okay?" she said from the bathroom, thankful she’d worked off some of her nervous energy between finishing the report and Ranma arrival straightening up her bedroom. Okay, so she threw most of the clothes in the closet, but they were no longer strewn around the room, right?

Ranma stood by the bed and looked around this room. He saw more family photos on the dresser and a large decorative fan above the bed, which he thought was a nice touch. Akane emerged from the bathroom with a duffel bag slung over her shoulder and Ranma felt a little guilty about looking around her room, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong. "I’m ready."

"Okay. Let’s go down to the lobby and I want you to wait there. We’ll take my car. I’m going to check in the garage and see if I see anyone waiting there and come back to get you. Don’t go anywhere, okay?"

"Okay."

"Let’s go."

They made their way down the hall to the elevator after Akane locked her door securely and, leaving Akane in the lobby, went to check the garage. Seeing no one obviously around the car, they went to the garage and got in the car. "Akane, I want you to put your head down so they don’t see you and I’ll tell you when it’s okay to sit back up."

Ranma exited the garage and as he expected the van started up and began to follow. He told Akane to hang on and executed a sharp right turn, once again heading toward busier streets. He followed the same tactic he’d used earlier in the evening and to his satisfaction, lost their pursuers handily. "Okay, you can sit up now."

"Whew! Where did you learn to drive like that?" Akane asked, looking behind them.

"Kinda picked it up on the way over to your place. Did I tell you I was followed myself?"

"You did. You sure do tend to repeat yourself," Akane teased, feeling a need to break the tension.

"Smart ass. Anyway, the place I thought of is my buddy Hatta’s place. We can hang out there for a few hours at least, maybe even overnight. Sound okay?"

"Yeah, sounds fine. As long as I’m not alone." Akane settled back into the seat, once again glad that Ranma was with her and everything was going to be okay.