The Sun to my Moon

Chapter 16: Hints

Hwa-sook just stared at him. The air between them was charged, and the rest of the team had the distinct impression that the two of them had forgotten that anyone was in the room.

Tae-ung broke the moment. "So how did Pinocchio convince everybody that he was this great agent if he was such a coward?"

Se-hun looked away from Hwa-sook, looking confused at the interruption. "Molla," he muttered, though Captain Hook's question had really been addressed to Snow White. Hwa-sook, for her part, was blushing furiously.

Hae-ri cleared her throat, clearly wishing she could erase from her mind this new evidence that all non-partnerly feelings between her two agents were not so far in the past as they had been pretending. "What's your next move, Snow white?"

Hwa-sook had composed herself by this point. "I thought I might go out to Jeju for a couple days, actually," she said hesitantly. "I'd like to talk to Ki-soo's mom, see if she can shed any light on how he turned out like he did."

"Good idea," Hae-ri said. "You can get cash from Dal-geonssi for the airfare."

Hwa-sook shook her head. "No. I'll put it in as leave and go to see my family. They live in Jeju too where Ki-soo grew up. It will be easy to drive over and talk to his family while I'm out there, and it'll be less suspicious." She smiled weakly. "Eomma's been bugging me to visit anyway. And my sister had another baby a couple months ago, so I can go meet my nephew."

"Arasso," Hae-ri said. "Put it in as leave, but let Robinhood know if you need help on the airfare. No reason you should have to pay for a flight at the last minute when we have plenty in the petty cash fund."

"Gomawo, Timjangnim."

Hae-ri nodded curtly and addressed her second in command. "Hook, you're up. What have you got?"

"Kim Do-soo bought the gas station he owned about three months before he blew up Lee Poy," Tae-ung reported. "Paid for it in cash. I haven't found much of a paper trail for him before that. I took a look at the schematics on the bombs he rigged on Lee Poy and you and the details on his surveillance equipment, though, and he's definitely ex-military with explosives and surveillance expertise. I'm betting he was in a special forces unit, probably the ROKN. Right now I'm operating under the assumption Kim Do-soo is an alias and that he served in the military under another name. Given his age and the kind of weapons expertise he had, I think I should be able to find out his real name by cross-checking records of military personnel with everything we know about him."

"Think you'll be able to run his prints through the federal database and get a hit that way?" Hae-ri asked.

Tae-ung shook his head. "Tried that. Didn't get any hits. I asked Snow white to run his picture through facial recognition programs instead. We figure Edward Park must have hacked the records and swapped out the prints in Kim Do-soo's military file so he wouldn't pop up on our radar when we first found out the connection between them. We're still waiting on the results for that, though."

"Good work," Hae-ri said approvingly. "Anything else?"

"Not yet. I'm going to go over to the gas station tomorrow, see if I can find anyone who knew him personally. He had one employee who stayed on under the new owners, so hopefully I can get something on him."

"You're on desk duty," she reminded him. "You're not supposed to be going out in the field yet."

"I'm not going to be chasing anyone down. I'm just going to drive over there and talk to the guy."

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," Hae-ri said with a frown, clearly fretting over any potential risk to the health of her recently injured agent.

"I'll be cleared for active duty next week. It's only a few days difference."