Max sat alone in Logan's office, missing him. For all the obvious reasons, and also because Logan was a great guy to have on your side in a crisis. Funny, she thought. Before, my big problem was getting him on my side to begin with. Lately he hasn't given me a hard time about my family at all and now I'm the one messing it up, worrying all the time about the freaking virus and screwing up and killing him accidentally.
I could have used him tonight but it's better this way, she thought. This was the rule she lived by now: one moment of distraction was all it would take, one moment that could never be taken back, one moment that would change everything, forever. The work to be done tonight wasn't worth that kind of risk, not when there were other people to help. Let Grace figure out how to get this girl back where she belonged, and let Alec help her do it. She'd do whatever she could, but mostly she just wanted to get the girl the hell out of Logan's apartment as quickly as possible. It was one thing for Logan to help out now and then when a transgen was on the run, but this was different. This girl was famous and the last thing Max wanted was to bring the entire Metro police force down on either one of them.
A few minutes ago she'd asked Alec what he thought of taking Isabelle to Joshua's. Not much, it turned out. "Bad idea, Maxie," he informed her. "Old Dog Boy would scare the sh -- " a look at Grace "-- I mean, scare her to death. You don't want her running home to tell Daddy about that."
"Who's Joshua?" Grace asked.
"Transgen. Canine DNA," Max said briefly before Alec could give some kind of smartass answer. She didn't feel like playing around right now.
"Good luck getting her to go anywhere she doesn't want to go," Alec said. "She's untrained, but she's every bit as strong as you or me, and rich and spoiled rotten too." He disappeared into the kitchen, where Max heard him opening the refrigerator and offering Logan's food to Isabelle. That bugged her, but at least it would keep the pair of them busy for a few minutes.
Oh, why can't someone else take care of this, she thought, longing to go home to that hot bath and a long phone call with Logan. A conversation she could enjoy with him safely on the other end of the phone instead of close by, way too close by, freaking her out every time he even looked in her direction.
She didn't realize she had wished out loud until Grace said, "I have a suggestion."
"What?" Oh God, she had completely forgotten that Grace was still sitting there, on the floor for some reason. She didn't like to think about Grace, which was why she did so as little as possible.
"A suggestion. For what it's worth."
"Sure, whatever," Max agreed, only half-listening.
"Well," Grace began, "at the hospital, Psych has to deal with this sort of thing all the time. There are basically two approaches they use."
"Which are?" Maybe she ought to pay attention. She certainly wasn't coming up with anything on her own.
"Number one, force. Don't argue, just call the police. Report that you've got the missing girl. I know she threatened you but I'm here, right? Whatever she says, I just keep telling the cops that she's unstable. Hysterical. We take her right back to the hospital and it's all over."
Max considered. It might work but she wasn't in the mood to roll the dice tonight. She shook her head. "No cops anywhere near this place."
Grace nodded. "Okay, then. That leaves approach number two. Persuasion."
"As in?" At Manticore, "persuasion" came in many forms, not all of them nice. As if reading her thoughts Grace said,
"The nice kind and the not-so-nice kind. We play along a little bit, but at the same time we're backing her into a corner where she can't ignore the down side. Then we get someone she trusts to talk her out and back to Metro Medical where she belongs."
They both looked down the hall to the kitchen. Isabelle sat on the table, looking at Alec with undisguised interest, laughing as she ate. Max nodded thoughtfully. She'd have to figure out the details, but something along those lines just might work. "Well," she said. "Maybe we'll be dropping by Joshua's house tonight after all."
------------------------
Later Kara told herself that she had started out the evening with only the best of intentions. All she meant to do was pick up one package, drop off the other, and get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible. She didn't much want to go out, and she really didn't feel like dealing with Logan Cale, but Julie needed that favor. Later she decided that if Cale had just shown up in the wheelchair like she was expecting, nothing else would have happened. Not that it was his fault. It was just that seeing him on his feet took her by surprise, and made her reconsider what exactly might be in that envelope.
The guy was supposed to be an investigative journalist, but come on, exactly how much investigation had he been doing stuck in a wheelchair? She had read some of his pieces a couple of years ago and they were pretty much what you'd expect, in her opinion: earnest and academic, abstract and a little dry, like a grad school paper based mostly on Internet research. Which was probably all he was really able to do.
So Kara hadn't thought there would be much of anything useful in the envelope for Julie, nothing that couldn't have been emailed. Since the Pulse most Internet traffic had been either too unstable or too easy to hack; nobody used it for information that needed to be secure. When information came on paper, these days, it meant something. Something other people weren't supposed to see. Maybe this guy had started to do some real investigation after his health improved.
And that was why, after she got back in her car and got the heat running, Kara slipped open the envelope with Julie's name on it and looked.
At first, in the pinkish glow of the parking lot lights, she could hardly read anything. She flipped through the pages quickly, scanning, already feeling a little ashamed of herself for poking into Julie's business. And then she saw the page with the address and the directions. Suddenly she was excited. Could this be what Julie had been searching for, the location of the Steelhead hangout? Before she really had time to think over what she was about to do, she was pulling out of the parking lot and heading out of the sector.
She had a pretty good idea where the address was. Of course it was night and she was alone, but she wasn't going to get out of the car or anything. She was just going to take a look, see if there was anything to see. She even stopped for some takeout coffee just in case she ended up sitting in the car for a while and needed to stay awake.
There wasn't much of anything going on when she reached the street. She managed to squeeze the car into a tight space without scraping any paint, though God help her if she had to get out of there in a hurry.
And then she sat. For a long time.
At first she was excited and alert, but as the minutes passed, the car got colder, and nothing moved on the street except for the occasional rat digging through garbage, she started to get bored. She didn't even realize she had fallen asleep until she jerked awake suddenly, her neck stiff and the side of her mouth damp with drool. Wiping it away, she took a sip of the coffee. Ice cold. "Yuck," she said to herself, hoarsely. Time to get out of here.
Another cup of coffee before the long drive across town wouldn't be a bad idea. Kara remembered seeing an all-night grocery at the end of the block. There was absolutely no one around. How dangerous could it be to run down there, grab another cup, and head on home to start packing? Not very, she congratulated herself five minutes later, walking back up the block to her car with the steaming coffee burning her hand -- and still not a soul around.
And then she heard them. Steelheads, three of them, weaving drunkely around the corner and down the street, singing at the top of their lungs.
Fortunately, in their condition, they hadn't seen her. Frantically she looked around for a place to hide. There was a dark alleyway just a few feet ahead of her, the kind of place that normally gave her the creeps, but if she wanted to keep watching it was her only choice. Bending low behind a dumpster, she scooted into the alley. It stank of garbage and urine and she felt broken glass crunching underfoot, but she had a clear view of the loud procession coming down the street right towards her. She was fascinated. She hoped they got good and close so she could look at all that glittering metal.
And then someone behind her said quietly, "What are you doing here?"
---------------------
The group of four looked just like any friends out for an evening's fun. The attractive couple: the blond girl holding the cute guy's arm possessively. The single friends: the energetic dark-haired girl and the quiet brown-haired one following a few steps behind. Only if you looked closely could you see signs of conflict and frustration as the four made their way past bars and nightclubs. Max, Grace, Alec, and Isabelle were on their way to Joshua's house.
They couldn't argue openly on the street, which was a relief to Grace, considering the number of ugly things that had been said back at Logan's apartment when Max put her plan into action. The plan itself was simple: take Isabelle to Joshua's. Let her get cold, tired, hungry, bored, and maybe even scared. Then have Alec gently convince her that returning to Metro Medical would solve all of these problems. Alec and Max would get her as far as the door, after which Grace would bring her back upstairs. Grace wasn't sure how she felt about handling the cover story all alone, but Max looked at her in amusement when she brought that up.
"Are you kidding?" she asked. "You lie all the time. You're pretty good at it too, otherwise I wouldn't let you do it."
Grace didn't have an answer for that, unlike Alec who laughed scornfully when Max summoned him to the office.
"You're obviously not listening to me," he said. He turned to Grace. "Did I not just make myself clear about this fifteen minutes ago? She doesn't want to go. Have I not said 'no' to this already?" This with a lot of exaggerated gesturing. Then, turning back to Max: "What am I missing here? Aren't you the champion of every downtrodden transgenic in the state of Washington? But you don't want this one to be happy?"
"She's not downtrodden. She's a spoiled rich kid who needs to go home to her parents," Max began.
"What's this really about, huh?" For some reason Alec was beginning to get angry, Grace saw. "It's about her, isn't it?" He jerked his head towards Grace. "You don't want her anywhere near your man. Not that I blame you, considering," he added. "But you know, if you would just let nature take its course, it would sure make life simpler for all of us."
"What's that mean?" Max demanded. She was beginning to sound pretty angry too.
"Aw, come on. Do I have to spell it out for you?" He looked at Grace and back at Max. Meaningfully, except that Grace had no idea what he meant.
"Apparently you do," Max returned, eyes narrowed.
"Fine. Why don't you just accept the way things are? Let her have him. Let them read their boring books together and live their ordinary lives together and just stop all this melodrama and angst about the --"
"Shut up." Grace had never heard Max so coldly angry. "Just shut up!" She advanced towards Alec. "Here's the way things are. You are going to help us get her to Joshua's house or I will call the police and tell them you kidnapped her. And Grace will back me up every step of the way. Do you really want to see whether the cops will take your word against a chaplain's?"
For a moment Grace thought Alec would keep pushing it. Then he gave in, ungraciously. "I'm warning you, you won't get anywhere with her," he said, pointing towards the kitchen.
But Max did. She told Alec to bring Isabelle to the office. This time, instead of "sucking up" to Isabelle (as she explained it to Grace) she was commanding, decisive. "Sit down, all of you. There's not much time," she said dramatically. "The longer we stay here, the more danger we're in. We've got to move, and move now."
"Where are we going?" Isabelle demanded. "Cause I'm not going back to that hospital."
"No, you're not," Max agreed. "We're all going to another place. It's safe there. Much safer than it is here," she added confidentially.
Isabelle argued. Logan's place was nice, even if he was stricter than her parents. Max was firm. Isabelle got upset. She cried. She called Grace a spy and Max a control freak, and finally, a bitch. Max repeated her dire warnings. Finally Isabelle's fear got the better of her snobbery and she agreed to cooperate. Grace actually heard Max breathe a sigh of relief as they closed the apartment door and stepped into the elevator.
Amen to that, Grace thought. It had to get better now.
For a while, it did. No one spoke during the long walk, except once when Max said to Grace,
"Sorry about that, before."
Why is she apologizing for him? Grace wondered. "What's he so angry about?" she asked.
"Dunno, and, don't really care," replied Max.
"Ummm ..." Grace hesistated. She wasn't really sure she wanted the answer to this question, but she couldn't stop thinking about it either. "What was that stuff he said about my books?" she finally asked.
Max looked at her. "You know you were watched over the summer."
"Yeah?"
"He searched your apartment on orders from Manticore. And your office."
"You said that was you."
"I lied," Max said cheerfully.
"Oh," Grace answered, and that was the last thing anyone said until they reached Joshua's.
"Transgen. Canine DNA" didn't begin to describe the giant shaggy creature who answered their knock. Isabelle, as predicted, was terrified, which Joshua didn't help any by hovering anxiously around her, trying to make friends. Finally Max lured him out of the living room while Alec calmed Isabelle's fears. Grace was too tired at that point to know how she felt about him, or Isabelle either for that matter. Something to think about later, she promised herself.
Eventually Isabelle relaxed enough to pout about the dust and the lack of amenities and not having anything to do, until Max went out and got her some chips and soda and a couple of magazines. At that point a minor miracle occurred, when Isabelle discovered that Joshua was fascinated by celebrity photos and even more enthralled when she began telling him stories about the celebrities her father knew. "More downlow, please," he would request every time Isabelle stopped for breath. Finally, satisfied, Max nodded at Grace.
"Come on, let's get out of here," she said, and they headed for the front door. They were two steps behind Alec.
"Where are you going?" Max demanded.
"Home," Alec said, reaching for the doorknob.
"Oh no you're not. Someone's got to stay here with those two tonight or she'll walk all over him."
"You do it."
"Can't. Normal asked me to work tomorrow morning and I need the money, since someone whose name I won't mention blew all my cash --"
"Fine." Alec was clearly annoyed. "Have a nice evening. Hot shower, good night's sleep. Or are you headed back to Sector 9 to make sure a certain journalist doesn't hook up with his old girlfriend again?"
"Girlfriend?" Grace hadn't heard Joshua leave the other room, but now he stood there at the door, towering over them in a slightly threatening way.
Alec said carelessly, "Yeah, Grace here is an old girlfriend of Logan's --"
"Girlfriend?" roared Joshua. The last half-hour with Isabelle had made the meaning of that word perfectly plain to him. Before anyone could stop him he pushed Grace back against the wall, shouting, "Grace and Logan! That's not the plan!"
"Joshua!" Max called sharply, and he stopped pushing, though he didn't let go. "It's okay," she said soothingly. "Grace is our friend. Grace knows what the plan is. Right, Grace?" Behind Joshua's back she raised her eyebrows, mouthing something. It took Grace a second or two to realize Max was saying her own name.
"The plan," Grace said breathlessly. "Uh, Max and Logan, that's the plan." Max nodded approvingly. Alec rolled his eyes.
"Yes," said Joshua fiercely. "Max and Logan, that's the plan." Emphasis on the "Max." He released Grace but he was watching her every move.
"Grace, you go on, " Max said. "I'll meet you here at noon tomorrow when I get off work, okay?"
Gratefully, Grace let herself back out into the quiet dark night.
I could have used him tonight but it's better this way, she thought. This was the rule she lived by now: one moment of distraction was all it would take, one moment that could never be taken back, one moment that would change everything, forever. The work to be done tonight wasn't worth that kind of risk, not when there were other people to help. Let Grace figure out how to get this girl back where she belonged, and let Alec help her do it. She'd do whatever she could, but mostly she just wanted to get the girl the hell out of Logan's apartment as quickly as possible. It was one thing for Logan to help out now and then when a transgen was on the run, but this was different. This girl was famous and the last thing Max wanted was to bring the entire Metro police force down on either one of them.
A few minutes ago she'd asked Alec what he thought of taking Isabelle to Joshua's. Not much, it turned out. "Bad idea, Maxie," he informed her. "Old Dog Boy would scare the sh -- " a look at Grace "-- I mean, scare her to death. You don't want her running home to tell Daddy about that."
"Who's Joshua?" Grace asked.
"Transgen. Canine DNA," Max said briefly before Alec could give some kind of smartass answer. She didn't feel like playing around right now.
"Good luck getting her to go anywhere she doesn't want to go," Alec said. "She's untrained, but she's every bit as strong as you or me, and rich and spoiled rotten too." He disappeared into the kitchen, where Max heard him opening the refrigerator and offering Logan's food to Isabelle. That bugged her, but at least it would keep the pair of them busy for a few minutes.
Oh, why can't someone else take care of this, she thought, longing to go home to that hot bath and a long phone call with Logan. A conversation she could enjoy with him safely on the other end of the phone instead of close by, way too close by, freaking her out every time he even looked in her direction.
She didn't realize she had wished out loud until Grace said, "I have a suggestion."
"What?" Oh God, she had completely forgotten that Grace was still sitting there, on the floor for some reason. She didn't like to think about Grace, which was why she did so as little as possible.
"A suggestion. For what it's worth."
"Sure, whatever," Max agreed, only half-listening.
"Well," Grace began, "at the hospital, Psych has to deal with this sort of thing all the time. There are basically two approaches they use."
"Which are?" Maybe she ought to pay attention. She certainly wasn't coming up with anything on her own.
"Number one, force. Don't argue, just call the police. Report that you've got the missing girl. I know she threatened you but I'm here, right? Whatever she says, I just keep telling the cops that she's unstable. Hysterical. We take her right back to the hospital and it's all over."
Max considered. It might work but she wasn't in the mood to roll the dice tonight. She shook her head. "No cops anywhere near this place."
Grace nodded. "Okay, then. That leaves approach number two. Persuasion."
"As in?" At Manticore, "persuasion" came in many forms, not all of them nice. As if reading her thoughts Grace said,
"The nice kind and the not-so-nice kind. We play along a little bit, but at the same time we're backing her into a corner where she can't ignore the down side. Then we get someone she trusts to talk her out and back to Metro Medical where she belongs."
They both looked down the hall to the kitchen. Isabelle sat on the table, looking at Alec with undisguised interest, laughing as she ate. Max nodded thoughtfully. She'd have to figure out the details, but something along those lines just might work. "Well," she said. "Maybe we'll be dropping by Joshua's house tonight after all."
------------------------
Later Kara told herself that she had started out the evening with only the best of intentions. All she meant to do was pick up one package, drop off the other, and get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible. She didn't much want to go out, and she really didn't feel like dealing with Logan Cale, but Julie needed that favor. Later she decided that if Cale had just shown up in the wheelchair like she was expecting, nothing else would have happened. Not that it was his fault. It was just that seeing him on his feet took her by surprise, and made her reconsider what exactly might be in that envelope.
The guy was supposed to be an investigative journalist, but come on, exactly how much investigation had he been doing stuck in a wheelchair? She had read some of his pieces a couple of years ago and they were pretty much what you'd expect, in her opinion: earnest and academic, abstract and a little dry, like a grad school paper based mostly on Internet research. Which was probably all he was really able to do.
So Kara hadn't thought there would be much of anything useful in the envelope for Julie, nothing that couldn't have been emailed. Since the Pulse most Internet traffic had been either too unstable or too easy to hack; nobody used it for information that needed to be secure. When information came on paper, these days, it meant something. Something other people weren't supposed to see. Maybe this guy had started to do some real investigation after his health improved.
And that was why, after she got back in her car and got the heat running, Kara slipped open the envelope with Julie's name on it and looked.
At first, in the pinkish glow of the parking lot lights, she could hardly read anything. She flipped through the pages quickly, scanning, already feeling a little ashamed of herself for poking into Julie's business. And then she saw the page with the address and the directions. Suddenly she was excited. Could this be what Julie had been searching for, the location of the Steelhead hangout? Before she really had time to think over what she was about to do, she was pulling out of the parking lot and heading out of the sector.
She had a pretty good idea where the address was. Of course it was night and she was alone, but she wasn't going to get out of the car or anything. She was just going to take a look, see if there was anything to see. She even stopped for some takeout coffee just in case she ended up sitting in the car for a while and needed to stay awake.
There wasn't much of anything going on when she reached the street. She managed to squeeze the car into a tight space without scraping any paint, though God help her if she had to get out of there in a hurry.
And then she sat. For a long time.
At first she was excited and alert, but as the minutes passed, the car got colder, and nothing moved on the street except for the occasional rat digging through garbage, she started to get bored. She didn't even realize she had fallen asleep until she jerked awake suddenly, her neck stiff and the side of her mouth damp with drool. Wiping it away, she took a sip of the coffee. Ice cold. "Yuck," she said to herself, hoarsely. Time to get out of here.
Another cup of coffee before the long drive across town wouldn't be a bad idea. Kara remembered seeing an all-night grocery at the end of the block. There was absolutely no one around. How dangerous could it be to run down there, grab another cup, and head on home to start packing? Not very, she congratulated herself five minutes later, walking back up the block to her car with the steaming coffee burning her hand -- and still not a soul around.
And then she heard them. Steelheads, three of them, weaving drunkely around the corner and down the street, singing at the top of their lungs.
Fortunately, in their condition, they hadn't seen her. Frantically she looked around for a place to hide. There was a dark alleyway just a few feet ahead of her, the kind of place that normally gave her the creeps, but if she wanted to keep watching it was her only choice. Bending low behind a dumpster, she scooted into the alley. It stank of garbage and urine and she felt broken glass crunching underfoot, but she had a clear view of the loud procession coming down the street right towards her. She was fascinated. She hoped they got good and close so she could look at all that glittering metal.
And then someone behind her said quietly, "What are you doing here?"
---------------------
The group of four looked just like any friends out for an evening's fun. The attractive couple: the blond girl holding the cute guy's arm possessively. The single friends: the energetic dark-haired girl and the quiet brown-haired one following a few steps behind. Only if you looked closely could you see signs of conflict and frustration as the four made their way past bars and nightclubs. Max, Grace, Alec, and Isabelle were on their way to Joshua's house.
They couldn't argue openly on the street, which was a relief to Grace, considering the number of ugly things that had been said back at Logan's apartment when Max put her plan into action. The plan itself was simple: take Isabelle to Joshua's. Let her get cold, tired, hungry, bored, and maybe even scared. Then have Alec gently convince her that returning to Metro Medical would solve all of these problems. Alec and Max would get her as far as the door, after which Grace would bring her back upstairs. Grace wasn't sure how she felt about handling the cover story all alone, but Max looked at her in amusement when she brought that up.
"Are you kidding?" she asked. "You lie all the time. You're pretty good at it too, otherwise I wouldn't let you do it."
Grace didn't have an answer for that, unlike Alec who laughed scornfully when Max summoned him to the office.
"You're obviously not listening to me," he said. He turned to Grace. "Did I not just make myself clear about this fifteen minutes ago? She doesn't want to go. Have I not said 'no' to this already?" This with a lot of exaggerated gesturing. Then, turning back to Max: "What am I missing here? Aren't you the champion of every downtrodden transgenic in the state of Washington? But you don't want this one to be happy?"
"She's not downtrodden. She's a spoiled rich kid who needs to go home to her parents," Max began.
"What's this really about, huh?" For some reason Alec was beginning to get angry, Grace saw. "It's about her, isn't it?" He jerked his head towards Grace. "You don't want her anywhere near your man. Not that I blame you, considering," he added. "But you know, if you would just let nature take its course, it would sure make life simpler for all of us."
"What's that mean?" Max demanded. She was beginning to sound pretty angry too.
"Aw, come on. Do I have to spell it out for you?" He looked at Grace and back at Max. Meaningfully, except that Grace had no idea what he meant.
"Apparently you do," Max returned, eyes narrowed.
"Fine. Why don't you just accept the way things are? Let her have him. Let them read their boring books together and live their ordinary lives together and just stop all this melodrama and angst about the --"
"Shut up." Grace had never heard Max so coldly angry. "Just shut up!" She advanced towards Alec. "Here's the way things are. You are going to help us get her to Joshua's house or I will call the police and tell them you kidnapped her. And Grace will back me up every step of the way. Do you really want to see whether the cops will take your word against a chaplain's?"
For a moment Grace thought Alec would keep pushing it. Then he gave in, ungraciously. "I'm warning you, you won't get anywhere with her," he said, pointing towards the kitchen.
But Max did. She told Alec to bring Isabelle to the office. This time, instead of "sucking up" to Isabelle (as she explained it to Grace) she was commanding, decisive. "Sit down, all of you. There's not much time," she said dramatically. "The longer we stay here, the more danger we're in. We've got to move, and move now."
"Where are we going?" Isabelle demanded. "Cause I'm not going back to that hospital."
"No, you're not," Max agreed. "We're all going to another place. It's safe there. Much safer than it is here," she added confidentially.
Isabelle argued. Logan's place was nice, even if he was stricter than her parents. Max was firm. Isabelle got upset. She cried. She called Grace a spy and Max a control freak, and finally, a bitch. Max repeated her dire warnings. Finally Isabelle's fear got the better of her snobbery and she agreed to cooperate. Grace actually heard Max breathe a sigh of relief as they closed the apartment door and stepped into the elevator.
Amen to that, Grace thought. It had to get better now.
For a while, it did. No one spoke during the long walk, except once when Max said to Grace,
"Sorry about that, before."
Why is she apologizing for him? Grace wondered. "What's he so angry about?" she asked.
"Dunno, and, don't really care," replied Max.
"Ummm ..." Grace hesistated. She wasn't really sure she wanted the answer to this question, but she couldn't stop thinking about it either. "What was that stuff he said about my books?" she finally asked.
Max looked at her. "You know you were watched over the summer."
"Yeah?"
"He searched your apartment on orders from Manticore. And your office."
"You said that was you."
"I lied," Max said cheerfully.
"Oh," Grace answered, and that was the last thing anyone said until they reached Joshua's.
"Transgen. Canine DNA" didn't begin to describe the giant shaggy creature who answered their knock. Isabelle, as predicted, was terrified, which Joshua didn't help any by hovering anxiously around her, trying to make friends. Finally Max lured him out of the living room while Alec calmed Isabelle's fears. Grace was too tired at that point to know how she felt about him, or Isabelle either for that matter. Something to think about later, she promised herself.
Eventually Isabelle relaxed enough to pout about the dust and the lack of amenities and not having anything to do, until Max went out and got her some chips and soda and a couple of magazines. At that point a minor miracle occurred, when Isabelle discovered that Joshua was fascinated by celebrity photos and even more enthralled when she began telling him stories about the celebrities her father knew. "More downlow, please," he would request every time Isabelle stopped for breath. Finally, satisfied, Max nodded at Grace.
"Come on, let's get out of here," she said, and they headed for the front door. They were two steps behind Alec.
"Where are you going?" Max demanded.
"Home," Alec said, reaching for the doorknob.
"Oh no you're not. Someone's got to stay here with those two tonight or she'll walk all over him."
"You do it."
"Can't. Normal asked me to work tomorrow morning and I need the money, since someone whose name I won't mention blew all my cash --"
"Fine." Alec was clearly annoyed. "Have a nice evening. Hot shower, good night's sleep. Or are you headed back to Sector 9 to make sure a certain journalist doesn't hook up with his old girlfriend again?"
"Girlfriend?" Grace hadn't heard Joshua leave the other room, but now he stood there at the door, towering over them in a slightly threatening way.
Alec said carelessly, "Yeah, Grace here is an old girlfriend of Logan's --"
"Girlfriend?" roared Joshua. The last half-hour with Isabelle had made the meaning of that word perfectly plain to him. Before anyone could stop him he pushed Grace back against the wall, shouting, "Grace and Logan! That's not the plan!"
"Joshua!" Max called sharply, and he stopped pushing, though he didn't let go. "It's okay," she said soothingly. "Grace is our friend. Grace knows what the plan is. Right, Grace?" Behind Joshua's back she raised her eyebrows, mouthing something. It took Grace a second or two to realize Max was saying her own name.
"The plan," Grace said breathlessly. "Uh, Max and Logan, that's the plan." Max nodded approvingly. Alec rolled his eyes.
"Yes," said Joshua fiercely. "Max and Logan, that's the plan." Emphasis on the "Max." He released Grace but he was watching her every move.
"Grace, you go on, " Max said. "I'll meet you here at noon tomorrow when I get off work, okay?"
Gratefully, Grace let herself back out into the quiet dark night.
