Almost a week went by before Logan spoke to Max again. Much to his annoyance and frustration, there just wasn't any reason for him to call her, other than to ask how she was feeling, and he knew Max well enough to know what the answer would be:
"Fine."
To make matters worse, though Cindy reported in faithfully every day, he kept missing her calls. He would be coming in the door, getting out of the shower, taking a call on the other line -- the time of day never mattered. He was always a second too late to catch that final ring. She left messages, and he returned the calls, but for some reason she never answered them, even when it was literally only two minutes later. He wondered if she was avoiding him, then decided that he was too paranoid. OC wouldn't be that heartless. At least not until Max was back on her feet, anyway. Which, according to OC's messages, would happen soon.
Max, as he'd suspected, seemed fine.
Still, he longed to talk to her, hear the sound of her voice -- hell, even to hear the sound of Cindy's voice -- to the point where he found himself one morning putting off a shower just in case OC called before work. This is ridiculous, he finally scolded himself, catching sight of his messy hair in the mirror. Go clean up. He started to head for the bathroom, then wheeled around and grabbed the phone, dropping it in his lap. It wouldn't hurt to take it with him. Chances were, OC wouldn't call while he was actually in the water, and even if she did, he could always say he was washing dishes.
So of course the phone did ring when he was in the water, washing his hair no less, and he very nearly fell out of the shower trying to hang onto the bar and fish for the phone with a soapy shampoo hand. Somehow, though, he managed to answer in time and actually say, "Hello?' with some amount of composure.
To his surprise Max's voice said, "Hey. What the hell are you doing? Are you in the shower?"
At that he nearly fell out again. Damn her hearing! "Hang on," he gasped. As quickly as he could he put Max on hold, shut off the water, and dried his hands. Heart pounding, he picked up the phone and pressed the line again. "Sorry, just, ah, washing dishes, my hands were soapy --" he began. It sounded lame even to him.
"No problem," Max answered with amusement in her voice. She'd really be laughing if she could see me sitting here stark naked dripping shampoo, he thought.
"Sounds like I caught you at a bad time though --"
"Nope," he said confidently, feeling foam slide down the side of his face perilously close to his right eye. "What's up?"
"Well ... I was gonna ask if I could bum a ride from you this morning. I've got my post-op appointment and OC doesn't think I should ride my bike." This was said in a tone of voice suggesting that OC needed to lighten up and stop acting like someone's mom. "But if you're busy --"
"Give me half an hour and I'll be there."
Funny how a one-minute phone call could turn your whole day around, he thought as he dressed. He actually felt light-hearted. Not only was he going to spend a couple of hours with Max, he also wouldn't have to wait for OC to report in after the doctor's visit. When he powered up the exoskeleton servomotor, he hummed along like a kid making sound effects for his pretend spaceship. He was grinning as he left the apartment.
She was waiting outside her building when he pulled up. He saw right away that she really was fine. Her eyes sparkled and her hair, blowing in the afternoon breeze, was shiny again. She pulled the car door open and hopped in with her old energy. "Thanks for the ride," she said cheerfully.
"My pleasure," he replied, focused on pulling out into traffic. Which was why it took him a minute to realize she was staring intently at the dashboard. He watched her for a moment, puzzled. She looked up, frowning. Their eyes met.
"Why are you driving like that?" she demanded.
"What?"
"With those dashboard thingies. What do they do?"
Oh, great. The hand controls. In an instant his good mood vanished. Ten days ago, sick and in shock and in the back seat, she hadn't noticed his driving at all, and of course he hadn't had enough sense to see this coming. "Oh. That," he said conversationally, thinking frantically. What cool mechanical feature could he possibly invent that would get by her, the girl who had grown up with cutting-edge Manticore technology? "It's a gas mileage enhancer," he heard himself saying. "It's custom. Gives me manual control over the gas feed to the carburetor. That's a lot of extra miles to the gallon here in the city. Can't conserve too much these days, can you?"
She shot him a skeptical look. "Whatever," she said, then, almost to herself: "This car sure has a lot of issues."
After that they didn't talk much, which was all right with Logan. It gave him a chance to calm down and collect his thoughts, and anyway he knew Max wasn't one for a lot of chit-chat, at least not with strangers. Or people she thought were strangers.
At Metro Medical he stayed in the car, telling her that he had errands to run and would be back later to pick her up. Actually he meant to wait right there in the parking lot, but Max didn't need to know that. If he sat in the car, he figured, he stayed away from Sam, and any references to his legs that might get Max started again. Eventually he would have to come up with a better way of keeping his secret than hiding, but for today it would do.
Max returned forty-five minutes later, breezing into the car just the way she always had, like she owned his passenger seat. Does she actually remember? he wondered, momentarily hopeful.
"All set," she announced, buckling her seat belt.
"Get a clean bill of health?" he asked, backing out of the parking space.
"Yeah. Unfortunately, that means my doctor's note expires as of Monday morning." She made a face. "Whatever. I need the money, so I guess I'll suck it up and get back to work."
A block from the avenue where a right turn led out of Sector 9 in the direction of Sector 4, Max suddenly spoke. "We're pretty close to your place, right?"
"Yes," he said cautiously. What was this about? At the same time he felt a surge of excitement. She was remembering. She knew the way.
"Could we stop there real quick? I need to pee."
"You didn't think about that back at the hospital?"
She shrugged. "Didn't have to then."
"All right," he agreed, because he couldn't think of any reason not to, but he didn't believe her for a second. One of the many differences between Max and ordinary girls was that Max could hold it far, far longer than any human he'd ever known. His thoughts flashed back to their first meeting. Was she that broke? Was she checking him out for was anything worth stealing? If that was her plan, she was going to find a lot less than she had back in the day.
And she didn't know it, hadn't known it even before the Manticore raid, but he had the Bast statue safely put away. No matter what else he had to let go to keep himself in contraband information and black-market informants, that statue was sacred. When she was gone, he had thought it was all he had left of her. Now, maybe one of these days maybe he could dare to hope of returning it to her.
Speaking of put away -- what condition had he left the bathroom in? He had been in such a hurry. Forget the wet towels, had he remembered to put away all of his supplies? Hard to tell whether Max would have a clue what he was doing with medical equipment like catheters, but he wouldn't put anything past her. He concentrated as hard as he could, trying to visualize the bathroom as he'd left it, and finally decided he probably had cleaned up thoroughly. If there was something incriminating lying around, he'd just have to hope a used towel or a glob of shaving cream was covering it.
In the parking lot under Fogle Towers, he let Max get out of the car first, stifling his impulse to hurry ahead of her and run interference. She would be less likely to notice the exo if he stayed a step or two back. Too late he remembered the last time she'd been here, the night Zack tried to kill him. But she showed no sign of recognition or alarm. Quickly he caught up to her at the elevator bank.
In the elevator he had a moment of panic trying to gauge whether she could see his chair in the exercise area, until he remembered that he had left it in the bedroom. Then in the apartment he had another bad moment wondering whether she would glance into the bedroom on her way to the bathroom. Unfortunately he couldn't hang around watching her, not without looking like a real weirdo. Reluctantly he waited in the hallway by the front door, jingling his keys impatiently.
In just few minutes she sauntered back down the hallway, hands jammed into her back pockets. "Thanks," she said casually, glancing around. She was definitely checking the place out.
"Ready to go?" he asked, reaching for the front door handle. He couldn't wait to get her out of there.
Before she could answer, his cell phone rang. The caller ID showed the number of the secure phone only Matt Sung used. He hesitated, torn. He'd been waiting for this call, but he certainly didn't want Max listening in on it. "Just a second," he told her. If he went in the living room and spoke in a low voice, he told himself, it would be all right. The bedroom would have been more secure, but then he couldn't see her.
And he definitely wanted to keep an eye on her right now.
In the living room he made a show of turning his back and concentrating on his call, all the while watching Max from the corner of his eye. She wandered into the office, inspecting the remaining art work and the computer equipment. Could she fence any of that? he wondered suddenly. Something he'd never considered before.
Matt hung up, but on impulse Logan left the phone open as if he were still listening.
Suddenly, Max glanced back sharply over her shoulder. Seemingly satisfied that he was busy, she reached out a hand and slipped something from the desk into her jacket.
I knew it! he thought triumphantly. He closed the phone as if his call had just ended, returned it to his pocket, and walked casually back to the office. Max stood next to the shelving, inspecting his servers as if they were every bit as fascinating as his art collection. He went past her to the desk as if he were looking for something, then turned as quickly as he could and threw his arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides. "Stand still," he said in her ear.
"Let go of me, you jerk," she answered, pushing against his grip as if she expected him to back off just because she'd said so. For Max, she really wasn't trying very hard. He ignored the scent of her hair and the warmth radiating from her cheek.
"Not until you tell me what you took off my desk," he said calmly.
To his surprise, Max laughed. "Is that what you want?" she asked, twisting out of his grasp easily. She reached into her jacket and produced one of his checking account deposit slips. "Here," she said, throwing it down.
"What did you want that for?"
She shrugged, giving him a sideways look. "Maybe I was gonna surprise you with some cash."
"Thought you were broke."
"Okay, okay!" She folded her arms, glared back at him. "I'm just looking out for myself here. I have no idea who you really are. You've got a car full of bullet holes and mysterious gadgets and you know way too much about me. Maybe this didn't occur to you, but a girl on the run from a government agency needs to be careful about who she hitches a ride with."
"I'm sure you've already checked with OC. And did it ever occur to you that if you want to know something about me, you could just ask?"
She regarded him for a moment, then seemed to reach a decision. "Okay then, I'm asking."
He took a deep breath. "On one condition."
"Which is?"
"That we have this conversation in a civilized way. Over dinner. Here."
She frowned. "Is this some kind of trick to get into my pants?"
"You mean like the trick you used to get into my apartment?"
She laughed then, and it made her eyes dance. "Touche. What, are we gonna order takeout Chinese or something?"
"No. I'll cook," he said, trying to make it sound like no big deal. Suddenly his heart was pounding with excitement and he didn't want her to know. "Make yourself at home," he added, gesturing to the living room. "Just keep your hands off my stuff, okay?"
"Okay," she agreed sweetly, turning away with a last amused glance at him.
He went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and stood there for a long time, pretending to search the contents. She was going to spend the evening with him. And if he wasn't mistaken, she actually kind of liked the idea.