The more Gin listened, the more he felt something was wrong. Seeing Vodka turn around on his own, he reached out again in displeasure and pressed the muzzle hard against Vodka's throat. "You used email to keep in touch so you could change the transaction time whenever you wanted?"
With the gun pressed against him again, Vodka was no longer as panicked as before. Earlier, he had not known who was behind him and had thought he had encountered some vicious armed killer.
But now that he had discovered it was Brother Gin holding the gun, things were much easier—Big Brother simply liked poking people around with a pistol when he talked. That was normal.
As Vodka prayed that that tactless little bastard would not pick up big brother's bad habit, he explained, "Itakura Suguru is too suspicious and very perceptive, so we chose email, a relatively secure means of communication.
"Only tonight—no, strictly speaking, last night—when I contacted him by email, that coward had hidden himself in a villa deep in the mountains of Gunma Prefecture. The blizzard caused a power outage, so he couldn't check his email in time. That was why we switched to the phone."
As he spoke, he hurriedly turned around and tore the taped CD case off the Locker. Then he held it up to Gin like a treasure. "Look, this is the software Itakura Suguru made. He didn't dare show himself, but at least he delivered the deposit and the software."
Gin looked at the CD in Vodka's hand, then at the hand Vodka had removed his glove from to tear it off, and sneered inwardly.
Cowardly? It seemed that Itakura Suguru was not cowardly at all. On the contrary, he was outrageously bold. He had deliberately secured the CD to the bottom