Reaching for the Moon by ThePekingNoodle
-----------------------------------
Chapter Twenty-five: The Morning After
In which our hero suffers his just desserts and our heroine makes a new friend…
Logan groaned and rolled over. His mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton and as for his head…it felt like a crew of jackhammer wielding construction workers had taken up residence in it. He carefully opened his eyes, and was relieved to see that at least his bedroom drapes were closed and the room was dim. Not that he had any memory of closing them. He glanced down at himself and frowned. He didn't have any memory of undressing either.
Muddled pictures of trains and Ratburn warred in his mind with other images. Max lying underneath him on the floor of a shed and kissing him hungrily, Max looking up at him and calling him Prince Charming with a laugh in her voice, Max giving him a … lap dance?! That last had to be some kind of hallucination. That and memories of him serenading her with Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall. Not to mention memories of him attempting to rip her dress off of her in an elevator. He sat up in a sudden panic, and then dropped back down as the top of his head felt like it had just hit a brick wall.
Surely he hadn't tried to force Max last night…No. That part had to be a nightmare. He would never literally rip a woman's dress off of her. Not that he'd ever been in a position where that was even faintly a necessity. Another picture, this time of Max lying on top of him, kissing him, in this very bed, popped into his mind. Surely he hadn't. He couldn't have. He was supposed to take care of Max, not seduce her and take advantage of her…
Logan's gloomy thoughts were interrupted by the opening of his bedroom door. He looked up half hoping and half fearing that it was Max. Instead Bling stood there looking like a thundercloud. Things were not looking good.
"About time you woke up." Bling gave him a hard stare. "You know, I've known you for a long time, Logan. You aren't always the nicest guy when it comes to women, but you mostly go out with the ones who don't deserve any better than what you give them." He paused, "One thing I never thought, was that you were the kind to force a young girl under your protection. I sure hope you have a good explanation of this 'cause I don't wanna have to kick your ass. You being my boss and all."
Bling's words were followed by him tossing something midnight blue at Logan. Logan was sitting on the edge of his bed by now and it landed in his lap. He gingerly held it up and felt a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was Max's dress from the night before. Or what remained of it. The sweeping ruffle from the bottom was gone, evidently ripped off, and one of the side seams was ripped halfway up the remainder of the dress.
"Omigod. You think I did this?" Logan stared at Bling in horror. "Did Max say I did this?"
"Max isn't here. I found the dress on the floor of her room. It didn't look like her bed was slept in. She left this on the counter." Bling shot a narrow look at Logan's disheveled bed and threw an envelope at Logan. Logan took it and ripped it open, then pulled out the note inside of it.
"Well?" Bling demanded.
"I don't think I did anything too awful." Logan ventured, handing the note to Bling.
Logan,
I couldn't sleep after the excitement last night so I went out for a ride. We need to talk about what happened when I get back. Don't worry about me, I'm okay
Max
"Hmmm. Doesn't mean you didn't take advantage of her. What happened to you anyway? Never seen you overdo the liquor before."
"I'm not exactly sure. But I do have a strange memory of someone pouring champagne down my throat. And a train…" Logan thought. "Ratburn. He caught me in his study. He was going to leave me drunk in my car on a train track. And then Max was there…" he shook his head. "It's all mixed up. I don't know what's real and what are nightmares."
"I'm going to wait and see what Max has to say. But if you hurt that girl, Logan, you're gonna answer to me." Bling walked out of the room, deliberately closing the door with a slam that made Logan shudder and hold his aching head.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Max hadn't felt tired at all after she had left Logan asleep the previous night. She wandered around the apartment for a while until she remembered the computer disk that had slipped out of her dress when she had taken it off. She went to her room and retrieved it and soon had inserted it into Logan's computer. It didn't take her long to open it up. After a minute she realized that she was looking at Harrison Ratburn's financial records. Why had this been on the floor of his study, and did it have anything to do with Ratburn wanting to kill Logan? She studied the records more closely and quickly realized that they were proof that he had been embezzling money from the Save the Space Needle Campaign.
Was this why Logan had left her for so long the night before? She remembered him saying he was a wizard with computers. He must have slipped into Ratburn's study and downloaded this from the man's computer. Ratburn caught him at it, and she knew the rest. She also remembered Kendra talking about Logan wanting to save the world.
Her curiosity was fully aroused now. She closed down the disk, and left it on the desk next to the computer for Logan to find. Then she set to work on his computer system. Max was no slouch when it came to computers but Logan's system defeated her. She could tell there was a hidden file system that monopolized a huge chunk of his extensive hard drives, but try as she might, she couldn't find the door into it. She did notice that Logan had extremely sophisticated film editing software, as well as not a few programs that were certainly not meant for civilian use. She bet he could even hack into the military satellites that still circled the globe, with the stuff he had. What in the world was a wealthy playboy dilettante doing with this kind of software?
Giving up on hacking into his system, she was on her way out of the room when she happened to glance at the monitors to her right. There was a camera mounted there and it pointed right at the chair Logan usually sat in. The camera like his software was professional level. He could easily use it with the software to shoot and edit high quality videos. The question was why and what would he use them for? She hadn't found any videos on his hard drive.
Of course he could simply be a run of the mill porno pervert who happened to have his files well hidden, but somehow the idea of Logan making XXX movies didn't quite ring true. Not to the man she had come to know. He could easily have forced her last night for all he knew (not that he really could have, but he didn't know that) and he hadn't tried. He had tried to charm her and seduce her into his bed, but that was just Logan.
Max was still restless and it was only 7:00 AM. She decided that she needed to clear her head. Logan wouldn't wake up for hours, and she hadn't yet had a chance to take her baby for a real ride. It was the perfect time she decided. She quickly dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and threw on her leather jacket, then hurried out of the apartment. In no time she was roaring out of the parking garage and flying down the Seattle streets.
Logan had supplied her with a Sector Pass when she went out with Kendra, and told her that she needed to carry it at all times if she was out of the apartment. She had made sure to tuck it in her pocket and she was glad of that when she came to a barricade across the road. A bored looking cop walked over to her and held out his hand and she realized he wanted the pass. She pulled it out and handed it to him and after perusing it he looked at her doubtfully.
"You sure you wanna go this way? This neighborhood ain't exactly what you're used to. Unless of course you just found yourself a sugar daddy from the rich snobs." He took in her outfit and evidently decided that was the case.
"Just return my pass and let me through." Max demanded imperiously. Her tone would have done Margo Cale proud.
"Whatever you say, babe." He raised the barrier and waved her through.
Max soon decided he was right. This was evidently one of those depressed post-Pulse neighborhoods that Logan had told her about long ago. The streets were littered with trash, and bundles that were people, slept in doorways. She was about to turn around and head home when she heard a muffled feminine scream from an alleyway. She turned her bike into it and quickly found the source.
Two men had cornered a young black woman. A bike lay on the ground behind her and she was holding a metal bar she must have snatched up from the ground. They were standing at bay for the moment but they were circling around her like a pair of jackals, getting ready to pounce. The girl wouldn't stand a chance alone.
Max jumped off of her bike just as the two charged at the girl. She threw herself into a front handspring and as she came down she slammed into one of the men knocking him to the ground. When he got up, Max kicked out catching him square between his legs. He doubled over in pain and she finished him off with a hard chop to the back of his neck.
She turned to deal with the second thug but the other girl had things well in hand. She had used her weapon to good effect, and he lay gasping on the ground, cradling what looked like a broken arm.
The two young women sized each other up. The girl spoke first. "Thanks, sistah. Original Cindy woulda been a lamb to the slaughta if you hadn't dropped in and joined the party. You aiight." She held her hand out palm facing Max.
Max wasn't exactly sure what she had said, but she liked this girl on sight. "You're welcome." The girl continued to hold her hand up and Max put up her own in a similar fashion. The girl smiled and slapped her palm against Max's.
"What's your label?" she asked.
"Label?" Max asked.
"For a kick ass biker chick you sure don't seem to know the talk. Your name."
"Oh. Max. Call me Max."
"Well Max, you can call me Original Cindy. And let me just say that this girl's got your back anytime, sugah."
Max smiled at her, suddenly knowing that she had found a friend. Then she looked at her watch. "Oh geez, I better get home. Before Logan calls out the National Guard to find me."
"Yeah well, Original Cindy's gotta get to work herself. You wanna meet for a brew sometime and hang?"
"I'd like that." Max smiled shyly at her.
"There's a bar called CRASH. You can find Original Cindy there most any night."
"I'll be there." Max promised as she hopped onto her bike and roared away.
End of Chapter Twenty-five…TBC…
