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Special thanks to Cat Carroll for all her help with the dialogue. Show how much we appreciate her help and go read J&J and/or Gen X-6 and/or Terran. WE LOVE CAT!!





Chapter 20

Zane really wasn't paying attention to the road. The joys of parallel processing really didn't make it necessary. His thoughts were more or less circling around the hilarious mental image of Zack performing some sort of pagan dance around a bon fire with Logan's head on a stick. That's why when Max shot up in her seat and screamed for him to swerve to the left, instinctive reaction took over and he complied. The audible crunch and thump had Zane wincing. "Did I just kill a squirrel for you?" He asked with some trepidation.

Max was turned in her seat, looking out the back window just to make sure the creature was one hundred percent dead. "Yes." She said triumphantly. When she saw Zack's car move to avoid the smashed mass of evil that remained in the center of the road, she turned back in her seat to face Zane. "Thanks!"

"I hate when you take away my right to choose whether or not to participate in your genocide." Zane said with a sigh as he turned back to the road.

"I thought we're supposed to rid the world of evil." Max said as she flipped open the thick file on her lap.

Zane glanced in the rearview mirror at Zack's car. Zack's speed was slowly increasing. He did that when he was mad. "Speaking of ridding the world of things, I think we've discovered a way to rid the world of Logan Cale."

Max turned her head to glare at Syl, who was stretched across the back seat asleep. "That's *so* not funny." She muttered, trying to ignore Zane.

"You know what's not funny?" Zane asked. "The acting skills you demonstrated this morning. Tell me, sister dear, were they used all night long or just after you got home?"

"Aww." Max said reaching across to pat Zane's cheek affectionately. "I'm sorry!"

"For what?"

"I forgot you haven't been with a woman who hasn't had to use them." Max's smile widened when Zane didn't respond. His mouth did open and close a couple of times as if he was trying to say something, but the words wouldn't form. Finally his jaw snapped shut and his brainstorm became mental. Speechlessness was an effect she seemed to have on males lately.

"Nice one, Max." Syl murmured from the back seat as she rolled over onto her side.

"I thought you were on my side on this?" Zane asked, studying Syl's back in the rearview mirror.

"Whoever has the most self-esteem destroying comments. That's the side I'm on."

"You have *no* loyalty, Syl. None." Zane shot back with a smile. He wasn't surprised that she was already asleep.

"Okay, getting back to the matter at hand." Max said taping her fingers against the file. "Have you even looked at this yet?"

"Nope." Zane replied merrily. "You?"

"Nope. Didn't even dig it out from my pile of things on my desk till this morning."

"That's okay. We're genetically engineered bullshitters." Zane mentally checked the directions he had memorized, gauging how long he could go without pulling over to a convenience store to load up on sugar.

Max smiled but continued to study the file in front of her. It'd been a long time since she posed as an IRS agent. She needed to practice getting her Satan's Little Helper facial expression down. "Once, Lydecker got pissed at me and sent me to make calls for accounting one day. Bastard figured running laps was too easy for me. Have you ever tried to ask the IRS a simple fucking question? I mean, I just want to know if blowing up a car can be considered a business expense, and they read me fifteen different statutes, none make sense. My IQ is off the scale, and I still don't know what the fuck they are saying."

"It's a good thing Manticore has complete control over our assets. They can foreclose on our house, they can repossess our cars, and they can freeze our accounts. We don't have to fill out tax forms. Our lack of a childhood somehow seems worth it."

"Why do we have to be nice to the guy? Why can't we just tap the air supply, knock him out for a while, and get what we need?" Max complained, laying her head against the cool pane of glass to the right of her head.

"Nice? Max, we're posing as IRS agents. This guy isn't going to come out of this without at least six weeks of being institutionalized. IRS stands for 'I.R. Screwed.'"

Max laughed. "They don't even give you a kiss first, much less feed you."

"So that's how Cale scored? He whips out the French named foods and he gets a piece."

Max ignored the offensiveness of his words. It was the tone that counted. No matter what a smart assed son of a bitch Zane tried to be, he really did care what happened to her. "It's not like that." She said after long consideration. It was hard to explain to her brother something she hadn't even begun to understand herself.

"How serious are you about him?" Zane asked without preamble. All humor had left his voice when he saw the faintly ill expression cross Max's face. Max didn't say a word, only stared out the window watching the scenery blur by her unfocused eyes. "I guess it's to late not to warn you to get in to deep."

The corner of Max's lips quirked. "Probably."

Zane swore lightly. He'd heard Jhondie and Syl debating how serious Max was about Logan, but he'd never really believed it was as bad as they thought it was. They were his sisters, female, and had a tendency to over- exaggerate things. But here Max was, all.dare he say it.love sick. He could give advice one what weapon was most effective in what combat situations. What the hell was he supposed to do when his sister went and fell in love with a journalist that was on the verge of exposing their existence to the world? Love didn't just make life complicated to those directly involved. "Well, are you happy at least?" He asked with a vague hand gesture.

"Of course."

"Are you genuinely happy?" Zane repeated. "Or are you just drawn to the fact that he's the first person outside our family that knows the whole truth about you?"

For one, long, horrifying moment Max thought Zane might have been right. But all she had to do was remember the flutter in her stomach that she felt whenever their eyes locked to know it was more than that. She couldn't forget the tingling just under her skin when his fingers hovered over it. She wasn't making that up. Never, before Logan, could she have even imagined feeling that way about someone. It was beyond anything anyone imagined them capable of feeling.

The silence had just started to worry Zane when Max spoke. "I promise I'm happy." She said.

Both of them suddenly felt very uncomfortable and out of place. Max wasn't used to having to talk about her feelings and Zane wasn't used to trying to understand what was going on in his sister's mind.