Two Warnings

Shiraishi studied the wording of the letter carefully—

It would be jumping at shadows to assume the sender knew or suspected Conan and Little Ai's true identities just because of the names on the letter.

After all, it only named "Sherry" and "Kudo Shinichi." Still, delivering a letter addressed to Sherry to Kudo's house seemed pointed.

More likely, the sender was testing whether Kudo Shinichi and Sherry were still alive. And if they were, Shiraishi might well know about it!

In other words—

The letter had almost certainly come from the Black Organization, but not from Vermouth.

Vermouth had already all but confirmed Conan's and Little Ai's identities. She wanted Little Ai dead, but she did not want Conan's identity exposed, which was why Shiraishi had been able to threaten her.

If Vermouth had sent it, the letter would serve no purpose.

Whoever had actually sent it clearly knew far less than she did.

"Then... do we pretend we never saw it?" Little Ai asked tentatively.

Before Conan could speak, Shiraishi shook his head. "No. It has both your names on it, but the letter was meant for me. Whoever wrote it must know I'm the one living here now—

"Even if I had no idea why it mentioned Kudo Shinichi and some random liquor name, I couldn't ignore a warning that someone was going to be killed." Shiraishi's tone remained calm.

That was right. If the letter was a test, Shiraishi was plainly the one being tested.

Ignoring it would only look suspicious.

"But—" Hearing that Shiraishi meant to go, Little Ai immediately tried to stop him.

She did not doubt that, in a direct confrontation, Gin and Vodka would be no match for Shiraishi even with guns. But a threat you could see was easier to dodge than