Chapter Thirteen:

Return to the Scene of the Crime

"Oh shit." Max paused for only a moment at the doorway of Logan's apartment. The door stood ajar. Taking a deep breath and trying to still the racing of her heart, she supressed the urge to run in through the open door and quietly entered, creeping silently from room to room to be sure that there was no danger waiting within. She bit her lip to keep from calling out his name.

Jondy remained at the open door. There was no sign of forced entry, she noted, studying the door lock and the undamaged doorjamb, so either Logan had opened the door for them or they had picked the lock and snuck up on him. Leaning forward to peak in through the doorway of the apartment, she saw nothing out of place. The furniture sat straight and neat in the middle of the floor. Paintings hung evenly on the walls. Apparently there hadn't been any sort of struggle. Glancing down at an expensive looking urn, she frowned. Max was on the right track when she broke into this place, the thought. It's any burglar's dream. Unfortunately, the people who had stopped by tonight had been looking for something more valuable than art. She shook her head, glancing about the hallway for some clue as to how long it had been since Perez had been here, but she found nothing, only blank walls staring back at her.

Within the apartment, she heard Max ask, "Logan?" Her voice was unsure, almost a whisper. If she was speaking, then she had already swept through the apartment and determined it to be safe. Of course that also meant that she had discovered that Logan was not there. Jondy frowned, listening to her sister repeat his name.

Jondy already knew that Logan was gone. Perez could have broken in and killed him, but it wasn't his style. Eyes Only was the biggest fish in the pond, and Perez wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to play with him a bit before reeling him in for the catch.

As she walked through the apartment towards the source of her sister's voice, she kept an eye out for clues, but she found nothing out of the ordinary. She did, however, find Max standing in Logan's office. His computer was still turned on, and the desk chair lay on its side on the floor. Max's expression was difficult to describe, a cross between fear and disbelief, and she seemed to be numb. Jondy leaned over to touch the seat of the chair. "It's still warm," she said aloud. "It hasn't been very long since he was here."

At the sound of Jondy's voice, Max blinked out of her stare, but the worry shone in her eyes. "Where would they have taken him?" she asked aloud, though it seemed to Jondy as if she was speaking to herself. Max thought of her previous experience with finding Logan. She'd called his cell phone that time, but as she glanced down at his desk, his phone lay in clear view on top of a stack of folders. That option was out. Jondy shook her head.

"I don't know." She watched Max's expression for a moment, then grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the door.

"Where are we going?" Max asked. She didn't resist her sister's insistent tug.

"Back to the apartment where I saw Perez the other night. I've swung by every night since then to see if he might be there again, but he's too cautious for that. He'd never meet in the same place twice." She closed and locked the apartment door behind of them. "That urn is so ugly. It has to be expensive. I don't think he'll be too happy if he comes back and sees that someone waltzed in his open door and took it while he was gone." She gave Max a small smile, trying to lighten the mood. "Come on, baby sister," she said as Max followed her back down to the ground floor. "Let's go look for clues."

If there are any clues here, they'll be pretty easy to spot, Max thought as she glanced about the empty apartment. There wasn't a single rug on the worn hardwood floor, and the furnishings of the apartment consisted of only a desk and two chairs, one of which was broken. All three pieces of furniture sat in the main room where she now stood. They'd turned up nothing in the other rooms, so this was their last hope, but it seemed pretty hopeless. Or was that just her mood? She wasn't really ready to give up. She just had a terrible feeling.

She heard Jondy shuffling around in the back bedroom just moments before her sister emerged into the hallway. She held out her hands for Max to inspect. Empty. Max looked down towards the floor. There had to be something here. There just had to be . . .

Max sighed and took a final glance around the room, but all she could see was bare floor. Suddenly a flash of white caught her eye. A small piece of something seemed to be curled against the leg of the desk, and Max leaned over to pick it up. She groaned as she realized what it was. "What's the matter?" Jondy asked from across the room. Max held up an empty pack of matches for her sister's inspection. Jondy walked towards her and took it from her hand.

"Perez smokes," she said, turning it over in her palm. "He must have left it here." She read the advertisement on the front. "Yum Yum Tree Motel? Well, that sounds pretty high class," Jondy remarked sarcastically.

Max rolled her eyes. "Trust me, it's nowhere near . . ."

Jondy cocked her head to the side. "You're kidding me . . ." She held up her hands, the empty package still pinched between two fingers of her right hand. "Don't worry. I don't want to know what you were doing there or who you were with."

"That's good." Max shook her head as they headed for the door. The memory of dragging a drunken Lydecker out the back window of a motel room rose to mind. "You wouldn't believe me anyway."

Max and Jondy looked out from behind a parked car at the lighted windows of the rooms in front of them. The clerk hadn't been very helpful, even after they'd slipped him some money. Maybe this was hopeless, Jondy thought for a moment. No, she chastised herself. Don't you dare think like that.

She sighed, trying to peek inside the windows. She felt like a Peeping Tom, and she was sure that there were things happening in those rooms that she really didn't want to see, but she had to know. If any of Perez's men had some connection to this motel, it may be their only chance to find Logan. She sighed as she watched an old man and a scantily clad bottle blonde disappear into Number 18. They weren't what she was looking for. She moved her attention to the next room, but it didn't seem to be occupied. A moment later, a door opened a little farther down the row, catching Jondy's attention as light spilled out onto the pavement before the switch was flipped off and the light was extinguished. She grinned. Bingo.

"Bender," she whispered to Max. Her sister followed Jondy's gaze to a man locking the door of a darkened room.

"Great," she muttered. "It just had to be Number 12." As they crept deeper into the shadows, Jondy shook her head. Number 12? They watched as Bender got into a beat-up van and drove away. And then they followed.

Logan awoke slowly, blinking in confusion at the unfamiliar walls around him. They were covered in faded wallpaper, some sort of a striped floral print, though he couldn't tell for certain in the darkness of the room. He angled his head upward and glanced out the room's only window at the stars outside.

His last memory was of staring at his computer screen. Outwardly he'd been looking up information on some of Perez's associates, but his mind had been elsewhere, trying to plan a talk that he knew he had to have with Asha when she returned. But all he'd been able to think of were all the things he wished he could say to Max. There had been a sound, a quiet shuffling, and he had turned, expecting to see Max or Jondy, but he didn't remember seeing anything at all, only a blinding pain in his temple as everything went black. That was all that he remembered.

His head hurt, and he imagined that he was going to have a nasty bruise. He must have been out for a while because his shoulder hurt from the uncomfortable angle at which he'd been lying. He tried to move his arm, but found that his hands were tied behind his back, and he glanced down to find that his feet were tied at the ankles. He moved his leg experimentally. At least the exoskeleton was still in place.

The next thought to cross his mind was to wonder what he was doing here. Lying on the floor tied up, that much was obvious, but who had brought him here? And where was 'here?' How had they known to come after him? After a moment of struggling he managed to wiggle across the floor to a wall and sit up against it, no easy feat considering the way he was tied.

Footsteps approached from the distance, and a door opened, causing light to flood the room. Logan closed his eyes against it. Two sets of footsteps continued forward, one stopping several yards away from him, while the other continued before stopping just in front of his feet. He opened his eyes and squinted upward into Perez's face. A grin crossed the man's lips, but he was silent for a moment.

"So," he finally spoke, "this is our good friend Eyes Only." It was a statement, not a question. He flicked the ash off the end of his cigarette.

Logan took a deep breath. "I don't know what you're talking about." Okay, so it was a really bad bluff, he thought.

Perez leaned forward, chuckling softly. He turned his head to the side and spoke to his companion. "He says he doesn't know what I'm talking about, MacIntyre." The other man raised an eyebrow as Perez returned his attention to Logan. "You don't know what I'm talking about?" he asked calmly, batting his eyes. A moment of silence. "Bullshit!" The last word was yelled with such force that it made Logan squint. Perez leaned forward farther, his face now only inches away from Logan's. "Don't lie to me. I'm not in the mood." He stood up again and paced across the room.

Logan's eyes were adjusting to the light. He glanced over at the man Perez had called MacIntyre. He was very large, and so was the gun he carried. He patted the barrell and grinned wickedly at Logan.

Perez paced back across the room, blocking MacIntyre from view once more. "How would you like to make a deal?" Perez asked. He grinned in satisfaction at the confused expression which appeared on Logan's face and resumed his pacing. "Gerhardt Bronck." He paused to let the name sink in and took a puff from the cigarette in his hand. "An old friend of mine. A business colleague too, you might say. Too bad he's dead." He narrowed his eyes and shrugged. "Actually, dying was rather convenient of him. It saved me having to kill him." He shook his head and lifted the cigarette to his lips again. "The man had no business sense. He used to send me those bitches he swiped off the street. Do you know I had a guy in Beijing who would pay as much for one redheaded virgin as Bronck could get for half a damned plane full of girls?" He chuckled. "Of course I had to replace the ones I sold to him, but that wasn't a problem. There's no shortage of serviceable girls in LA, let me tell you." He chuckled at the memory, then sobered.

"See, I have a problem. Bronck died before I could take everything over, and that's what I'm here to do now. Take everything over." Another puff on the cigarette. "Unfortunately, I don't have it all sorted out just yet. Oh, I've got some names, some connections, but not enough to start up where he left off." He halted his pacing in front of Logan and leaned forward slightly. "That's where you come in. You're going to help me. You're going to give me all of that information."

Logan returned his glare. "What makes you think I would do that?" Perez shrugged.

"Because I have an offer that you can't refuse." The evil grin touched his features again. "A quick and relatively painless death." He straightened and paced away, returning MacIntyre to Logan's line of vision. The man now had a rather long and ugly looking knife in his hands. He held it up, letting the light gleam off the blade. "You know what?" Perez began again, gesturing towards his companion. "MacIntyre here used to work in a butcher shop. He really loves to carve things up. I think he misses it sometimes." He chuckled. "So, can I expect your assistance in this matter?"

Logan narrowed his gaze. "Don't count on it."

Perez dropped the cigarette to the floor and stomped it out. He paused to stare at Logan for a moment. "Don't count on it, eh?" He motioned to MacIntyre and turned towards the door. "Well, it's a big decision, so I'll just let you think about it for a little while." He exited the room, MacIntyre following closely behind. About three feet from the door, MacIntyre suddenly turned, lunging across the room. Logan froze at the sight of the knife blade as it descended towards his head. Instinctively, he closed his eyes, but all he heard was a 'thud' as the knife was embedded in the wall just inches above his head. MacIntyre chuckled, then removed the blade, his laughter echoing off the walls as he walked back across the room and slammed the door behind him, leaving Logan in darkness once again.

Logan waited for his heart to resume beating before releasing the breath he'd been holding in. Then and there he decided that every knife in his kitchen had to go. He glanced towards the window and wondered if he had a chance. Max had come to his rescue more times than he could count, but right now it felt pretty damned hopeless.

Strange, he thought as he bent his knees in front of him and leaned his head back against the wall. Here he was in Perez's clutches, wishing desperately that Max would come flying in that window, but it didn't have a thing to do with saving him. He just wanted to see her again. Maybe, just maybe, if he was going to die here tonight, God would be merciful and let him touch her again, let him hold her in his arms, let him kiss her once if he was going to die anyway, but he shook his head. He didn't want Max anywhere near this. He could hear voices down the hallway, and he knew that a gun belonged to each one of them. However much he wanted to get away from all this, he didn't want Max around where she might get hurt. Perez was determined to kill Jondy, and if he'd connected her to Max, he was already looking for them both. They'd be safer if they got as far away as possible.

Outside the window, two sets of eyes watched, and two sets of ears listened distinctly to the noises within the walls of the old apartment building. Like a moth to a flame, Bender had led them exactly where they wanted to go.

Jondy chuckled to herself. She had to give Perez credit, meeting at the address where Reggie had sent them in search of her. It was the last place she would ever have thought to look, and she was sure that Perez was there waiting, just in case she returned. Well, she had returned, and he was in for the surprise of his life. She smiled grimly. She would end this now, or she would die trying.

Turning, she made a series of hand gestures towards Max, who thought a moment and offered some gestures of her own. After a moment they both nodded in agreement, the plan having been made. They slithered off into the shadows, neither one aware that they were being watched.