Chapter 7
Logan wheeled through to the bedroom, thinking wearily about the day's events. They had accomplished very little. "Once I've changed I'll contact Bling and boot up the laptop", he thought. Was it only lunchtime since he'd been in touch with Seattle? It seemed like days ago.
Stripping off his wet clothes with difficulty, he looked at his legs grimacing. They were mottled with the cold. Somewhere at the back of his mind, Bling's warnings came back to him. He shrugged fatalistically - he was too tired to be worried about it now. It was enough of an effort to pull on a pair of thick, warm track pants and sweat shirt.
Putting on dry shoes and socks, his eyes fell on the blanket folded at the end of the bed, but he gave it a dark look and wheeled through to the living room to get his laptop.
Logan was surprised to find the fire still unlit. He looked around to see where the wood and shavings were kept, but they didn't appear to be inside. The prospect of navigating an unknown yard in the dark, not to mention the rain, held no appeal for him at all.
"Do you want me to light the fire?" he asked Zack. It seemed a polite way to give a hint.
"I got it covered," glared Zack back at him.
"Okay," answered Logan, in a pacifying tone, which didn't seem to go down well either with Max's brother. Clearing his throat a little he said, "I think I'll just grab my laptop."
Zack didn't look up again, so Logan shrugged and went back to the bedroom.
*******************************
Max knocked at the bedroom door calling, "Logan?" Then, when he didn't answer, she called his name with more urgency.
"Logan! You comin' out?"
"I'm working,"
Opening the door, she was relieved to see him sitting in his wheelchair, staring intently at his laptop, which rested on his knees.
"How's it goin'?" she asked, walking further into the room.
He didn't answer immediately, and she was about to ask again, when something struck her as odd.
"Logan, it's not turned on," she pointed out.
He seemed to look at the screen closely for a moment, then replied seriously, "I knew that."
Unexpectedly he turned to her and said abruptly, "Dinner."
She smiled at that. "I got us something special." Sure of his reaction, she asked "What would you say to chicken?"
He thought for a moment. "Fifteen seconds."
"What?"
"That's what I told him, but I can't remember if that was right."
"What was right?" This was not the response she had expected to her carefully planned surprise.
"I think it depends how cold they are," he continued, obviously deep in thought about the matter.
Okay, so this is weird, thought Max looking at him.
"Did it run around at all?" he asked her.
Not realizing he was still talking about the chicken, she frowned suspiciously at him.
"Logan, how the hell would I know?"
"I gotta cook it!" he protested.
I gotta call Bling, was her next thought.
Watching him about to work on the laptop again that was still turned off, she decided she'd had enough.
"Okay, you're comin' through to the other room. We've got the fire goin'."
Without arguing, he wheeled himself towards the door. Halfway there he looked up at her and said, "Max," as if he'd just recognized who she was.
It seemed like a good sign. She preferred it to the whole chicken dealio.
Unfortunately he stopped at the door.
"Logan, come with me to the fire," she pleaded.
Surprisingly he said quite normally, "Okay. Is it cold in here?"
Rolling her eyes she waited for him to wheel through to the living room, where Zack had the wood beginning to crackle, the fire sluggishly emitting small puffs of smoke into the room before it caught properly and blazed efficiently.
Logan got halfway to the fire when his body seemed to catch up with his mind. He looked up at Max to find the room swaying alarmingly.
Something in his attitude made her look at him quickly.
This time he was unable to control the trembling that swept over him.
He took one look at her then admitted in a rush, "I don't feel so good."
Max couldn't decide if she was glad he'd finally admitted he felt bad, or whether she should be alarmed on the theory that he had to be feeling 'really' bad to make such an admission.
Men!
*********************************
"You were really spacin' there for a while," Max smiled at the memory.
Leaning forward in his chair, slowly thawing, the despised blanket tucked around his legs and two hot cups of coffee inside him, Logan looked into the now roaring fire. Unable to stop his own smile that was wide with embarrassment, he covered his face with his hands. "Don't remind me," he begged.
"I don't aim to let you forget," Max contradicted him, enjoying herself.
Logan narrowed his eyes, and looked at her. "Can't I give you some drug or something to make you forget?"
"Won't work, we were trained to overcome that sort of thing."
"Damn. Guess I'll have to resort to 'old fashioned - straight down the line' bribery," he finished.
"Yeah?" He had her attention now.
"But seeing as how you won't let me leave this fire..."
"I could get it for you," she suggested, with a hint of her sexy smile.
Logan considered her carefully. "I'd have to be sure you'd keep your end of the bargain. I mean, how do I know that you won't accept this fabulous bribe, then torment me for the rest of my life?"
Suddenly his eyes lit with the realization of what he'd just said. "Or you might go and blab to Bling or something," he finished quickly to cover his confusion.
"Guess you'll just have to trust me." Max looked steadily at Logan, something in her voice daring him to look in her eyes - very briefly, before he returned his own gaze to the fire.
"Anyway," he said, trying to cover the moment, "there's something in my bag that's for you. Just open it and it's sitting on top."
She gave him a small, suspicious smile as she stood up. "Don't move," she warned him.
Logan smiled to himself as she walked away.
He looked up to see her return a few minutes later, her look a mixture of surprise and pleasure.
"How does it rate as a bribe?" he asked tentatively.
"I thought you were too busy saving the world?"
"Well I'm not doing too great on that front at the moment," he stated, unable to hide a hint of the dissatisfaction he felt. "So," he smiled at her, making an effort to lighten the mood, "I think you said somethin' about kickin' back and eating S'mores last weekend."
"There's hope for you yet," she said admiringly.
"Yeah." He sounded a little unconvinced. "Anyway, I was sorry about how things turned out last week. I kinda hoped we'd have the chance this time."
"Maybe there's something to be said for hypothermia after all."
"Let's not get too carried away," he grimaced.
"Well, I got me a bag of marshmallows, a couple of Hershey bars and some graham crackers. We're gonna be makin' some S'mores and you're chained to the fire for the night."
She came round to sit in front of him on a small footstool that was in front of the fire.
"Are you gonna start making those?" asked Logan.
"Might spoil our dinner. Zack's cooking," she added.
"In that case, start making them." Logan made a face, "You genetically engineered types can't cook anyway."
Easily swayed, she opened the packet of marshmallows and attached one to a long stick of kindling.
Logan watched her look of concentration, her face glowing with the reflection of the dancing flames as she roasted it. Finally, after several inspections, she declared it to be perfect. She then put it between two of the graham crackers, making sure a couple of pieces of the Hershey bar were melting nicely between the crackers.
Turning to Logan, she held it out to him.
"Open up," she commanded.
"You first," Logan argued.
"Uh uh. I want to watch the look on your face when you realize what you've been missing all this time."
With a steady hand she held it up to his mouth, an expectant half-smile on her lips, waiting for his response.
Logan, with one of his own quirky smiles, leaned forward and slowly put it in his mouth.
"It's hot," Max suddenly warned him - too late.
"So that's what I've been missing?" Logan asked, several minutes and a burnt mouth later.
"Hey, it's all part of the experience."
"Dinner's ready," came Zack's voice from the doorway.
Logan wondered irritably why Zack always managed to sound so disapproving.
"Where do you want to eat?"
"We'll eat here in front of the fire," said Max. "I'll help you serve."
Passing Logan the stick she added, "You can make me one while you're waiting."
A short while later she returned with hers and Logan's dinner.
"Where's my S'mores?" she demanded.
"I ate it," he admitted guiltily, "but I'll ..." cook you another, he was about to say, when his eyes fell on the bowl with his dinner.
"Max, what is this?" he asked suspiciously.
"Well, with you 'off the planet' so to speak, we had to scrap the chicken idea. It might taste better than it looks," Max suggested hopefully.
"I know he doesn't like me, but don't you think this is taking it a bit far?"
Before she had a chance to contradict him, Zack returned.
Covering his trepidation admirably, Logan bravely put his fork into the bowl, trying to not wrinkle his nose as he did so. What was that smell?
He survived the first taste -just. "Mmm, Zack," he floundered on, "this is ." Struggling for the right word, he said, "It's..." Then swallowing hard he tried a different tack, "Is this a Manticore recipe?"
Max, on the other hand, wasn't nearly so polite. "Zack, what is in this?" she asked, with a look while not entirely of disgust, very close to it.
Zack seemed neither bothered by the comments or by the taste of the food. He ignored the one, and consumed the other with gusto.
"Just as well I still got my S'mores," Max consoled herself.
*****************************
Max left Logan in front of the fire with his laptop on his knees - this time turned on.
Logan had made sure that the cabin had a phone, and he'd spoken to Bling before dinner as soon as he had been feeling better. Max noticed he made no mention of the evening's events, but would have been surprised if he had. From the look on Logan's face, it was obvious no further news had come in.
As Zack helped Max with the dishes, she thought he seemed a bit uptight, even more so than usual.
Max passed a few comments about nothing in particular, when Zack said abruptly, "Is Logan okay?"
"Sure, he's fine," she replied surprised.
"I'm sorry about the fire, Max. I didn't know ..." His voice trailed off a little.
Max had the feeling that apologizing was a new experience for him.
"You know," he finished uncomfortably.
"It wasn't your fault, Zack," she told him simply.
"I had a look at the car heater. I can fix it in the morning."
Max was touched. "That's really nice, Zack," she said, thinking back to Logan's words before about Zack not liking him. "You wanna eat some S'mores with us?"
"Don't you think you and I should head back out to Charlie's and see what we can find?"
"We can do that in the morning."
"You said Logan's okay now."
"I know," she bristled at his words.
"So you'd rather spend the night in front of the fire with Logan, instead of doin' the job we came to."
"That's exactly what I wanna do," she thought.
When she didn't answer, he shot out, "You've got your head in the clouds, Maxie. I knew it would be like this if 'he' came along."
"His name is Logan," she reminded him, "and you don't call the shots around here, Zack."
He glared at her for a moment, then grabbing his jacket from where it was on the back of one of the chairs, he said coldly, "I'm goin' for a walk."
*******************************
Logan wheeled through at that moment.
"Was that Zack goin' out?" he asked, having heard the raised voices and putting two and two together. His math was correct.
"Yeah, he said he wanted to go for a walk." Logan could hear the confusion in her voice.
"He's a hard guy to have as a brother, huh?"
"It's like he's never gotten out of Manticore. He's still tryin' to live 'that' life out in the real world, and I don't want that," she finished intently, her dark eyes holding fast to Logan's green ones. She stood there thinking about all the things her life was now. "The truth is," she told Logan softly, "the more you let go of Manticore, the more you have in the real world."
He simply looked up at her, an unspoken current of understanding passing between them.
"C'mon," she said gently, reluctantly breaking the moment, "We got some S'mores to eat."
***************************
"So, you all warmed up now?" Max asked Logan some time later, the almost empty packet of marshmallows at their feet, and just the light of the fire to see by.
Max had insisted in turning all the lights off - "So that it'll be like a real campfire," she'd explained.
"Just about," he replied, debating if he should have one more S'mores to finish off. He was beginning to feel quite sleepy.
"Maybe you should sleep out here tonight," she had just said, when unexpectedly the lights came on.
Max jumped up to see Zack walking purposefully towards them. It was clear by his attitude he had something to say.
"While you two were making S'mores, someone's been burning down Charlie's place, and any evidence with it," he finished scathingly.
Max and Logan looked at each other.
"How do you know this?" asked Logan.
"I took a walk," he answered shortly.
"You wanna come and check it out 'now' Max?" he asked, implying by his tone that he thought it was already too late.
She looked down at Logan who was studying his feet. He let out a frustrated sigh. "We should'a stayed longer. We might've found something."
"You know we couldn't," she told him harshly.
"You and Zack had better go there now," he said, frowning up at her, "see what you can see."
"Keys?"
"Keys," he repeated, thinking hard. Everything before dinner was still a bit hazy. It didn't help to have Zack staring down at him.
Max headed off to his bedroom to look for them. "Got 'em," she called out, as she went to her room for her jacket.
Coming back to the fire, she said to Logan, with what she hoped was a small smile of encouragement, "We won't be long."
***********************
Max got silently into the car.
"We've lost our best opportunity to crack this thing," Zack told her, mind, as ever, on the mission.
"Don't go blaming Logan," she snapped, "he's hard enough on himself," she added almost inaudibly.
Zack looked at her thoughtfully for a minute, then said, as if he wasn't quite sure of her reaction, "You never told me how he came to be in a wheelchair."
She was silent for so long he thought she wasn't going to reply. At length she said in a neutral voice, "It was an Eyes Only thing. He was trying to get a mother and her daughter into witness protection."
"And?" he prompted her when she didn't continue.
She shook her head, remembering how she'd watched the shooting on TV.
"Entertainment for the masses," she thought sourly.
She forced herself to continue, giving him the edited version. "Logan had the little girl in his arms. He was shot in the back. Severed his spinal cord," she finished bleakly.
"Did you know him then?" asked Zack quietly.
"It was not long after we met," she finished, after a slight pause.
Zack nodded silently.
"He hates being in that chair," she added softly, thinking of Logan's words to her as he sat where she did now, something of his hurt reflected in her own voice.
Zack spoke with feeling. "I don't blame him."
She looked across at her brother, wondering why she'd shared that with him.
"Here we are, and there's not much left," said Zack at that moment, shaking his head at the still smouldering embers.
They got out and examined the scene. The fire had been so intense there was very little left.
"This was no accident," said Max, her senses detecting the smell of burnt gas. "Someone's torched the place. No way all these buildings would have gone up together in this kind of weather."
"Well, if there was anything here to link Charlie to that vigilante group, it's now just a pile of ashes," Zack stated.
"Shh, what's that noise?" asked Max suddenly. Following the sounds, she came to an old wreck of a car, and as she opened the door, a large black shape rushed out at her, barking a greeting.
"Hey there fella," she crooned to him. Overjoyed to have some company again, it obviously didn't have a problem with her cat DNA.
Zack, meanwhile, checked the shed where Charlie's body had lain. It too was a smouldering mess. He was quite sure the body would have been in there too.
"Solves the problem of any of Logan's prints still being detected on the murder weapon," remarked Max, coming up to him, the dog bounding at her side.
"Whoever it is, they've gone to a lot of trouble to cover their tracks. Question is, how far will they go?"
His words made her go cold. "Logan," she suddenly said, her eyes wide.
"Small town like this. It would be easy for someone to find out where we were staying," Zack replied matter-of-factly.
"We gotta get back," she said urgently, opening the hatch to let the dog jump in.
Her expression was etched on Zack's mind as they drove back to the cabin, forcing him to admit the truth that had been staring him in the face ever since he'd come to Seattle: it was he who held the key to her past, but Logan Cale held the key to her future.
TBC
Sorry about another cliffhanger!!
Logan wheeled through to the bedroom, thinking wearily about the day's events. They had accomplished very little. "Once I've changed I'll contact Bling and boot up the laptop", he thought. Was it only lunchtime since he'd been in touch with Seattle? It seemed like days ago.
Stripping off his wet clothes with difficulty, he looked at his legs grimacing. They were mottled with the cold. Somewhere at the back of his mind, Bling's warnings came back to him. He shrugged fatalistically - he was too tired to be worried about it now. It was enough of an effort to pull on a pair of thick, warm track pants and sweat shirt.
Putting on dry shoes and socks, his eyes fell on the blanket folded at the end of the bed, but he gave it a dark look and wheeled through to the living room to get his laptop.
Logan was surprised to find the fire still unlit. He looked around to see where the wood and shavings were kept, but they didn't appear to be inside. The prospect of navigating an unknown yard in the dark, not to mention the rain, held no appeal for him at all.
"Do you want me to light the fire?" he asked Zack. It seemed a polite way to give a hint.
"I got it covered," glared Zack back at him.
"Okay," answered Logan, in a pacifying tone, which didn't seem to go down well either with Max's brother. Clearing his throat a little he said, "I think I'll just grab my laptop."
Zack didn't look up again, so Logan shrugged and went back to the bedroom.
*******************************
Max knocked at the bedroom door calling, "Logan?" Then, when he didn't answer, she called his name with more urgency.
"Logan! You comin' out?"
"I'm working,"
Opening the door, she was relieved to see him sitting in his wheelchair, staring intently at his laptop, which rested on his knees.
"How's it goin'?" she asked, walking further into the room.
He didn't answer immediately, and she was about to ask again, when something struck her as odd.
"Logan, it's not turned on," she pointed out.
He seemed to look at the screen closely for a moment, then replied seriously, "I knew that."
Unexpectedly he turned to her and said abruptly, "Dinner."
She smiled at that. "I got us something special." Sure of his reaction, she asked "What would you say to chicken?"
He thought for a moment. "Fifteen seconds."
"What?"
"That's what I told him, but I can't remember if that was right."
"What was right?" This was not the response she had expected to her carefully planned surprise.
"I think it depends how cold they are," he continued, obviously deep in thought about the matter.
Okay, so this is weird, thought Max looking at him.
"Did it run around at all?" he asked her.
Not realizing he was still talking about the chicken, she frowned suspiciously at him.
"Logan, how the hell would I know?"
"I gotta cook it!" he protested.
I gotta call Bling, was her next thought.
Watching him about to work on the laptop again that was still turned off, she decided she'd had enough.
"Okay, you're comin' through to the other room. We've got the fire goin'."
Without arguing, he wheeled himself towards the door. Halfway there he looked up at her and said, "Max," as if he'd just recognized who she was.
It seemed like a good sign. She preferred it to the whole chicken dealio.
Unfortunately he stopped at the door.
"Logan, come with me to the fire," she pleaded.
Surprisingly he said quite normally, "Okay. Is it cold in here?"
Rolling her eyes she waited for him to wheel through to the living room, where Zack had the wood beginning to crackle, the fire sluggishly emitting small puffs of smoke into the room before it caught properly and blazed efficiently.
Logan got halfway to the fire when his body seemed to catch up with his mind. He looked up at Max to find the room swaying alarmingly.
Something in his attitude made her look at him quickly.
This time he was unable to control the trembling that swept over him.
He took one look at her then admitted in a rush, "I don't feel so good."
Max couldn't decide if she was glad he'd finally admitted he felt bad, or whether she should be alarmed on the theory that he had to be feeling 'really' bad to make such an admission.
Men!
*********************************
"You were really spacin' there for a while," Max smiled at the memory.
Leaning forward in his chair, slowly thawing, the despised blanket tucked around his legs and two hot cups of coffee inside him, Logan looked into the now roaring fire. Unable to stop his own smile that was wide with embarrassment, he covered his face with his hands. "Don't remind me," he begged.
"I don't aim to let you forget," Max contradicted him, enjoying herself.
Logan narrowed his eyes, and looked at her. "Can't I give you some drug or something to make you forget?"
"Won't work, we were trained to overcome that sort of thing."
"Damn. Guess I'll have to resort to 'old fashioned - straight down the line' bribery," he finished.
"Yeah?" He had her attention now.
"But seeing as how you won't let me leave this fire..."
"I could get it for you," she suggested, with a hint of her sexy smile.
Logan considered her carefully. "I'd have to be sure you'd keep your end of the bargain. I mean, how do I know that you won't accept this fabulous bribe, then torment me for the rest of my life?"
Suddenly his eyes lit with the realization of what he'd just said. "Or you might go and blab to Bling or something," he finished quickly to cover his confusion.
"Guess you'll just have to trust me." Max looked steadily at Logan, something in her voice daring him to look in her eyes - very briefly, before he returned his own gaze to the fire.
"Anyway," he said, trying to cover the moment, "there's something in my bag that's for you. Just open it and it's sitting on top."
She gave him a small, suspicious smile as she stood up. "Don't move," she warned him.
Logan smiled to himself as she walked away.
He looked up to see her return a few minutes later, her look a mixture of surprise and pleasure.
"How does it rate as a bribe?" he asked tentatively.
"I thought you were too busy saving the world?"
"Well I'm not doing too great on that front at the moment," he stated, unable to hide a hint of the dissatisfaction he felt. "So," he smiled at her, making an effort to lighten the mood, "I think you said somethin' about kickin' back and eating S'mores last weekend."
"There's hope for you yet," she said admiringly.
"Yeah." He sounded a little unconvinced. "Anyway, I was sorry about how things turned out last week. I kinda hoped we'd have the chance this time."
"Maybe there's something to be said for hypothermia after all."
"Let's not get too carried away," he grimaced.
"Well, I got me a bag of marshmallows, a couple of Hershey bars and some graham crackers. We're gonna be makin' some S'mores and you're chained to the fire for the night."
She came round to sit in front of him on a small footstool that was in front of the fire.
"Are you gonna start making those?" asked Logan.
"Might spoil our dinner. Zack's cooking," she added.
"In that case, start making them." Logan made a face, "You genetically engineered types can't cook anyway."
Easily swayed, she opened the packet of marshmallows and attached one to a long stick of kindling.
Logan watched her look of concentration, her face glowing with the reflection of the dancing flames as she roasted it. Finally, after several inspections, she declared it to be perfect. She then put it between two of the graham crackers, making sure a couple of pieces of the Hershey bar were melting nicely between the crackers.
Turning to Logan, she held it out to him.
"Open up," she commanded.
"You first," Logan argued.
"Uh uh. I want to watch the look on your face when you realize what you've been missing all this time."
With a steady hand she held it up to his mouth, an expectant half-smile on her lips, waiting for his response.
Logan, with one of his own quirky smiles, leaned forward and slowly put it in his mouth.
"It's hot," Max suddenly warned him - too late.
"So that's what I've been missing?" Logan asked, several minutes and a burnt mouth later.
"Hey, it's all part of the experience."
"Dinner's ready," came Zack's voice from the doorway.
Logan wondered irritably why Zack always managed to sound so disapproving.
"Where do you want to eat?"
"We'll eat here in front of the fire," said Max. "I'll help you serve."
Passing Logan the stick she added, "You can make me one while you're waiting."
A short while later she returned with hers and Logan's dinner.
"Where's my S'mores?" she demanded.
"I ate it," he admitted guiltily, "but I'll ..." cook you another, he was about to say, when his eyes fell on the bowl with his dinner.
"Max, what is this?" he asked suspiciously.
"Well, with you 'off the planet' so to speak, we had to scrap the chicken idea. It might taste better than it looks," Max suggested hopefully.
"I know he doesn't like me, but don't you think this is taking it a bit far?"
Before she had a chance to contradict him, Zack returned.
Covering his trepidation admirably, Logan bravely put his fork into the bowl, trying to not wrinkle his nose as he did so. What was that smell?
He survived the first taste -just. "Mmm, Zack," he floundered on, "this is ." Struggling for the right word, he said, "It's..." Then swallowing hard he tried a different tack, "Is this a Manticore recipe?"
Max, on the other hand, wasn't nearly so polite. "Zack, what is in this?" she asked, with a look while not entirely of disgust, very close to it.
Zack seemed neither bothered by the comments or by the taste of the food. He ignored the one, and consumed the other with gusto.
"Just as well I still got my S'mores," Max consoled herself.
*****************************
Max left Logan in front of the fire with his laptop on his knees - this time turned on.
Logan had made sure that the cabin had a phone, and he'd spoken to Bling before dinner as soon as he had been feeling better. Max noticed he made no mention of the evening's events, but would have been surprised if he had. From the look on Logan's face, it was obvious no further news had come in.
As Zack helped Max with the dishes, she thought he seemed a bit uptight, even more so than usual.
Max passed a few comments about nothing in particular, when Zack said abruptly, "Is Logan okay?"
"Sure, he's fine," she replied surprised.
"I'm sorry about the fire, Max. I didn't know ..." His voice trailed off a little.
Max had the feeling that apologizing was a new experience for him.
"You know," he finished uncomfortably.
"It wasn't your fault, Zack," she told him simply.
"I had a look at the car heater. I can fix it in the morning."
Max was touched. "That's really nice, Zack," she said, thinking back to Logan's words before about Zack not liking him. "You wanna eat some S'mores with us?"
"Don't you think you and I should head back out to Charlie's and see what we can find?"
"We can do that in the morning."
"You said Logan's okay now."
"I know," she bristled at his words.
"So you'd rather spend the night in front of the fire with Logan, instead of doin' the job we came to."
"That's exactly what I wanna do," she thought.
When she didn't answer, he shot out, "You've got your head in the clouds, Maxie. I knew it would be like this if 'he' came along."
"His name is Logan," she reminded him, "and you don't call the shots around here, Zack."
He glared at her for a moment, then grabbing his jacket from where it was on the back of one of the chairs, he said coldly, "I'm goin' for a walk."
*******************************
Logan wheeled through at that moment.
"Was that Zack goin' out?" he asked, having heard the raised voices and putting two and two together. His math was correct.
"Yeah, he said he wanted to go for a walk." Logan could hear the confusion in her voice.
"He's a hard guy to have as a brother, huh?"
"It's like he's never gotten out of Manticore. He's still tryin' to live 'that' life out in the real world, and I don't want that," she finished intently, her dark eyes holding fast to Logan's green ones. She stood there thinking about all the things her life was now. "The truth is," she told Logan softly, "the more you let go of Manticore, the more you have in the real world."
He simply looked up at her, an unspoken current of understanding passing between them.
"C'mon," she said gently, reluctantly breaking the moment, "We got some S'mores to eat."
***************************
"So, you all warmed up now?" Max asked Logan some time later, the almost empty packet of marshmallows at their feet, and just the light of the fire to see by.
Max had insisted in turning all the lights off - "So that it'll be like a real campfire," she'd explained.
"Just about," he replied, debating if he should have one more S'mores to finish off. He was beginning to feel quite sleepy.
"Maybe you should sleep out here tonight," she had just said, when unexpectedly the lights came on.
Max jumped up to see Zack walking purposefully towards them. It was clear by his attitude he had something to say.
"While you two were making S'mores, someone's been burning down Charlie's place, and any evidence with it," he finished scathingly.
Max and Logan looked at each other.
"How do you know this?" asked Logan.
"I took a walk," he answered shortly.
"You wanna come and check it out 'now' Max?" he asked, implying by his tone that he thought it was already too late.
She looked down at Logan who was studying his feet. He let out a frustrated sigh. "We should'a stayed longer. We might've found something."
"You know we couldn't," she told him harshly.
"You and Zack had better go there now," he said, frowning up at her, "see what you can see."
"Keys?"
"Keys," he repeated, thinking hard. Everything before dinner was still a bit hazy. It didn't help to have Zack staring down at him.
Max headed off to his bedroom to look for them. "Got 'em," she called out, as she went to her room for her jacket.
Coming back to the fire, she said to Logan, with what she hoped was a small smile of encouragement, "We won't be long."
***********************
Max got silently into the car.
"We've lost our best opportunity to crack this thing," Zack told her, mind, as ever, on the mission.
"Don't go blaming Logan," she snapped, "he's hard enough on himself," she added almost inaudibly.
Zack looked at her thoughtfully for a minute, then said, as if he wasn't quite sure of her reaction, "You never told me how he came to be in a wheelchair."
She was silent for so long he thought she wasn't going to reply. At length she said in a neutral voice, "It was an Eyes Only thing. He was trying to get a mother and her daughter into witness protection."
"And?" he prompted her when she didn't continue.
She shook her head, remembering how she'd watched the shooting on TV.
"Entertainment for the masses," she thought sourly.
She forced herself to continue, giving him the edited version. "Logan had the little girl in his arms. He was shot in the back. Severed his spinal cord," she finished bleakly.
"Did you know him then?" asked Zack quietly.
"It was not long after we met," she finished, after a slight pause.
Zack nodded silently.
"He hates being in that chair," she added softly, thinking of Logan's words to her as he sat where she did now, something of his hurt reflected in her own voice.
Zack spoke with feeling. "I don't blame him."
She looked across at her brother, wondering why she'd shared that with him.
"Here we are, and there's not much left," said Zack at that moment, shaking his head at the still smouldering embers.
They got out and examined the scene. The fire had been so intense there was very little left.
"This was no accident," said Max, her senses detecting the smell of burnt gas. "Someone's torched the place. No way all these buildings would have gone up together in this kind of weather."
"Well, if there was anything here to link Charlie to that vigilante group, it's now just a pile of ashes," Zack stated.
"Shh, what's that noise?" asked Max suddenly. Following the sounds, she came to an old wreck of a car, and as she opened the door, a large black shape rushed out at her, barking a greeting.
"Hey there fella," she crooned to him. Overjoyed to have some company again, it obviously didn't have a problem with her cat DNA.
Zack, meanwhile, checked the shed where Charlie's body had lain. It too was a smouldering mess. He was quite sure the body would have been in there too.
"Solves the problem of any of Logan's prints still being detected on the murder weapon," remarked Max, coming up to him, the dog bounding at her side.
"Whoever it is, they've gone to a lot of trouble to cover their tracks. Question is, how far will they go?"
His words made her go cold. "Logan," she suddenly said, her eyes wide.
"Small town like this. It would be easy for someone to find out where we were staying," Zack replied matter-of-factly.
"We gotta get back," she said urgently, opening the hatch to let the dog jump in.
Her expression was etched on Zack's mind as they drove back to the cabin, forcing him to admit the truth that had been staring him in the face ever since he'd come to Seattle: it was he who held the key to her past, but Logan Cale held the key to her future.
TBC
Sorry about another cliffhanger!!