23. Don't kill the messenger

Whatever would I do without my beta? Thanks, Dancinstar!
Lydecker looked at the man in front of him, wondering exactly how much he needed to tell him in order to get the help he required. The help they all needed. He had a hunch it would have to be a good deal more than he had ever intended. Unless...

Warily eyeing the gun he had left on the couch, Lydecker stood up and turned to Logan.

"What do you need to know?" Always the best strategy when the adversary didn't know exactly which questions to ask. Logan wasn't exactly his adversary, but Lydecker wasn't about to risk revealing too much to the pain- in-the-ass do-gooder that Eyes Only was.

Logan stood and approached the older man, trying hard not to appear overeager.

"For starters, where have you been and how did you find me?"

The grim expression on Logan's face conveyed a no-nonsense attitude that Lydecker was wise enough to take into consideration.

"By chance. I've had to hire a few new people at the base I've set up and couldn't screen them all properly. Information was leaking out and I just followed the trail that led me to you."

For a moment, Logan eyed him suspiciously, not buying it entirely. How come he was following a trail by himself, all drunk and beaten up? But then all the implications of his words sunk in and he tensed, clenching his hands into fists. If the pictures of Max and Zack had originally come from Lydecker.

"What have you done to Max?!" Logan spoke in a low tone, but the threat in his words was evident, just as it was in the glare he was bestowing on his opponent.

"I rescued her from White and proceeded to remove the implant by which he had managed to track her." Lydecker kept his cool, remembering he had the advantage of sufficient information. "She came out of it all right," he continued, sensing the rush of emotions Logan tried in vain to suppress.

Logan looked relieved and for a moment Lydecker was touched. But there was no time for niceties; if he had protected her in the first place, this wouldn't have happened. Taking advantage of his adversary's weakness, he rushed on, so that Logan wouldn't have the time to think things over.

"Keep the questions for later. White is looking for her and I can't keep him away too long. Since you're alive, you might as well help me get rid of him. This is what I need you to do."

*

Logan suddenly started up, wide awake, trying to discern something, anything, in the darkness of his new apartment. But all was quiet and only the familiar hum of the computer could be heard in the sparsely furnished room. There was no echo of any sound reverberating between the bare walls like he usually heard. There was no sign of any moving shadows like the ones that had been haunting his imagination since the penthouse incident. Once Logan's eyes got accustomed to the obscurity, he tried to make out what had cheated him of another troubled night's sleep.

Lydecker! He should be dead to the world on the couch somewhere. Logan strained his hearing, not daring to move too much from the chair he was sitting in, his throbbing head half resting on his arms, for fear the last shreds of his dream of Max would desert him. This dream had been strange to say the least, nightmarishly real. Not remembering how it had ended tormented Logan to the point where he was fully alert. Where was Lydecker?

Logan finally stood up, willing his aching limbs and pounding head along. Last night's planning and plotting, trying to coax Lydecker out of his shell, had born fruits. The old Manticore fox had certainly not revealed as much as Logan would have liked. Then again, it was enough for him to act on, if he followed Lydecker's orders to expose White, without leaving all the threads in the Colonel's hands. Eyes Only would have a lot to do, hacking, researching and planning.

Meanwhile, there was also the issue of Max's whereabouts. Lydecker hadn't revealed much, but Logan was not about to leave Max in his hands - if the Colonel still had her, that was - for any reason, however rational and benevolent it might have been.

Finally reaching the couch at the far end of the huge one-room apartment, Logan groaned with frustration. Damn! He rushed toward the only light switch available and squinted as the flash of the bare light bulb revealed the empty couch and the scribbled note that seemed to mock him.

"I'll call you."