~Bulletproof~ SasuSaku Mafia Story

Chapter 21 ~ Secret Gardens

The group got home at around midnight. Izuna drove Tobi home earlier, and Juugo stayed behind at the dog and slept over at some woman's house.

Sui was eventually found sleeping in a private room and dragged back to the second car Shisui had to call after Izuna drove back in their original vehicle.

Shisui drove back with Sasuke in the front seat and Sakura looking out the backseat window the whole drive. He described his encounter with the cat lady in great detail with a satisfied grin on his face while  his two companions sat in silence, with Sasuke occasionally glancing at Sakura through the rear view mirror, but her eyes averted his the whole ride.

"We all want her back, Naruto, but we have to be realistic. We have a limited budget, and other cases are really starting to pile up."

Naruto glared at Tsunade, who was just doing her job. Her office seemed more cluttered than usual, with piles of case files towering on her desk.

"So, what are you saying? We just leave her alone over there with those wolves? We give up on her?" He clenched his fist.

"Calm down, Naruto. No one is saying that. We just have to reallocate our resources, which could mean deprioritizing older cases."

"That's bullshit!" He yelled, but looked down after Tsunade glared at him angrily.

"You're not the one out there doing press conferences and being ripped to shreds in the public eye for putting all our efforts into old cases when new robberies and assaults are dumped on us every day." Tsunade's voice was cold and exhausted.

"Sorry, Tsunade. She is just one of us, you know? I think it should be a priority over some local convenience store robbery."

"And that's your problem, Naruto - it absolutely should not be a priority. We serve the public, and the convenience store owner who just lost months of rent money is not below any other citizen, even Sakura."

Naruto cursed under his breath, Tsunade's eyes softened.

"I want to find her as much as you do. We just can't neglect our jobs in the meantime."

Naruto did not want to hear it. He was much more hard-headed and had a harder time putting himself in others' shoes. The takeaway from this conversation for him was that he'd have to track her down alone, possibly with Shikamaru, who had been promoted to assistant detective and had a lot more work to do now than before. 

He'd track her down no matter what. In a way, he needed this win. His career trajectory had been drastically ruined by the Uchiha assignment and his consecutive failures. He needed to feel big again, and rescuing Sakura was exactly what he needed. So, he started using his sick days, overtime hours, vacation days and national holidays to trace any leads, as much as it started to hurt his relationship with Hinata.

Sakura lay in her bed motionless. The ceiling looked just like it had all the other times she spent hours looking up at it. She didn't know how to feel. Different parts of her brain wanted to cry her eyes out, scream into a void, burst into Sasuke's office and shoot him, pack a bag and sneak out of the mansion never to return again, go play pool with Sui, hook up with Shisui - anything really to distract her from the events that transpired a couple nights ago.

As much as she tried not to think about it, her thoughts periodically drifted to his farm hands on her waist and cheek, the force he held her with, the gasping for air. She screamed into the pillow. How did it happen? And how did it end?

She thought back to how she'd freaked out somewhere in the middle of the kiss, pushed him off - successfully this time - and ran back inside the club just to discover Izuna and Tobi already gone. What a frightful night it had been for her.