Thanks once again to everybody for their very, very encouraging reviews.
To Alaidh – my thanks as always for the beta – particularly when you are so busy at the moment. It is greatly appreciated.
Story 3 chapter 15
"You wanna tell me the real reason you got me looking for Emma Belding?"
Logan's question seemed to echo throughout the apartment, while Martin ran an unmistakably nervous hand over his mouth, his face looking more and more strained with Logan's relentless revelations.
"I'm not sure that I know what you mean," he tried, but with little conviction. As he stood in front of the couch, the clenching and unclenching of his fists was a telltale sign of his discomfort.
"It's all gonna come out. So..." Logan stated with confidence, leaving the rest of his sentence to hover enticingly in the air as he released his brakes and swung away from the table to move a little closer to the couch.
Max silently leant against the dining table, resisting the temptation to intervene as she watched Logan at work.
He could be remarkably compelling in a quiet, insistent way.
She wondered if this was how he had put his informant net together. Well, he was a journalist after all, she mused. Words had always been his weapon, rather than the sword, and she had to admit his use of them was masterful.
Max wasn't particularly surprised to see Martin suddenly crumble – drop to the couch as if his legs were unable to hold him up, and put his face in his hands.
"I might have got her killed," he muttered into his hands.
"Start at the beginning, Martin," Logan told him bracingly as he shot a quick upward glance at Max.
She raised her brows ironically, as if to say, "I told you so."
"You're right. Damn you," Martin added with a spark of defiance. "I was stupid. I got hooked. You were right on all accounts," he admitted through clenched teeth. "Jonas found out I'd been ...'borrowing'... Cale money."
"So they offered you a deal?" Logan suggested without inflection.
Martin nodded guiltily. "The head guy, Petrovsky, said he'd rub out the debt if I did a small job for them."
Max was already looking less than impressed. "And you fell for that?" she asked incredulously.
Martin jumped up uneasily, running a hand through his hair as he strode to the windows where he looked down longingly – perhaps with a desire to escape the sordid situation he found himself in.
"I didn't know what else to do. You know, they're all your friends when they know you're from a wealthy family, but as soon as they get a whiff that the money has run out, they become real mean."
"What else did you expect?" Logan commented dryly. "You were dealing with people who make their living out of bleeding people dry. You're probably only still in one piece because they saw a use for you."
"So just what use did they see in you?" Max asked cynically.
"It didn't sound so bad," Martin shrugged. "They just wanted me to make friends with this girl... splash some money at her... get her interested in me."
"Emma Belding," Logan filled in quietly.
Martin nodded as his hand clawed through his hair again. His highly paid hairdresser would have been aghast.
"I couldn't see any harm in it. I just did what they said."
"Only things turned ugly?"
Martin shoved his hands in his pockets.
"I started to like her. It became harder and harder reporting back all the stuff they wanted to know."
"What kinda stuff?" Max shot at him.
"Where she worked. Who her friends were. What she did with her time. Anything really. And then, out of the blue, she broke it off."
He put his head down and kicked at the baseboard with his foot. "Thing is...I'd come to like her. I realized I was worried about her, and I started wondering why they wanted to know all this information. Then she disappeared."
For the first time Max felt he was telling the truth. She doubted he was a good enough actor to convey the look of guilt, confusion and perhaps even remorse that she saw in his eyes.
The room suddenly went very quiet, eventually broken by the slight creak of Logan's wheelchair as he shifted his position a little.
"Did you really see her the night she disappeared?" Logan asked, still not prepared to accept everything his cousin said at face value.
"I told you," Martin said, lifting his head to look over to Logan, "I took her out to dinner at Alexander's. Spared no expense," he laughed humourlessly. "You know how expensive that place is, Logan."
Not bothering to fill him in on the fact that it was some time since he'd been there, Logan asked instead, "And you never saw her again?"
Martin shook his head.
"Don't you have any idea why Petrovsky and his peeps wanted the 411 on Emma?" Max put in.
"Not a clue."
Martin turned around with an apprehensive expression as the front door opened, but Logan, deep in thought, didn't even bother to look up.
"It's Bling," Max announced for both their sakes.
"Hey, people," the therapist greeted the assembled company.
"Bling, you remember my cousin Martin from the other night?" Logan said, still with a slightly distracted air.
"Sure. Give me a yell when you're ready to do your reps," he said to Logan with his usual quick perception before heading towards the kitchen.
Martin, having nodded a hello, turned his gaze back to Logan.
"So what are we going to do?" he asked hopefully.
"You are gonna do nothing for the time being. I gotta sort through this mess and see what I can come up with," Logan added, taking a deep breath and feeling less than inspired. Since Martin had turned up six days ago his life had become even more complicated than usual.
"Logan..."
"I need something to eat," Logan cut in, releasing his brakes with a snap as he realized he'd been running on nothing but caffeine for the last twelve hours and his body was beginning to protest.
Martin would have pressed the point, but receiving a telling look from Max, he closed his mouth and slumped dejectedly against the windowpane instead.
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Bling was already in the kitchen making tea.
"You want some?" he asked Logan as he came in.
"Anything but coffee," Logan grimaced, taking a box of cereal out of the cupboard, then grabbing a bowl and spoon on his way to the counter.
"I could do you some eggs if you like," Bling offered, casting a discerning look his way before getting the milk out of the fridge and putting it in front of Logan.
Making a face, Logan said, "Nope. This'll do," as he poured the cereal and milk into his bowl.
Bling watched him as he made his way to the dining table, his breakfast on his lap, before taking a glass and filling it with water.
"Girls about?" he asked as he set it down in front of Logan.
"Mmm, in the guestroom...and thanks," he added with a slight smile as he took the water and drank half in one go.
"Mind if I take a shower, Logan?" Martin asked quietly, coming through from the living room to stand in front of him.
"Fine by me. You need a change of clothes?"
Martin shook his head. "I'll get some clean stuff later." He'd already removed the dirty overalls, and fortunately the jeans and shirt he wore underneath were still clean.
"You'd better use my bathroom. That way you won't disturb the kids. There are fresh towels..."
"Why don't I take him through and show him?" Bling suggested.
Martin muttered his thanks as Logan nodded, and followed the muscular trainer down the hallway.
"You want some more water?" Max smiled at Logan as she wandered in and watched him drink the last of it.
Beginning to feel more human again after having eaten, Logan shook his head slightly, but clearly his thoughts weren't on himself.
"What did you think of all that?" he asked her quietly, pushing away the almost finished breakfast bowl.
"I thought for once he was laying it straight."
"Me too."
Logan sighed. "It would have made life a whole lot simpler if he'd come straight with this the first time he showed up here."
"Not to mention a whole lot less dangerous," Max muttered darkly.
"Mmm," murmured Logan, not thinking of his own situation, but Martin's. He was seriously concerned for his cousin's safety.
"Do you really have a contact at the casino?" she asked suddenly.
Logan smiled a little. "Yeah – but he's never seen a photo of Martin."
"Logan Cale stooping to ..."
"Hey, fight fire with fire," he quipped back.
"Yeah, with Martin it's a veritable raging inferno," Max responded, her face darkening once more. "He's brought a whole heap a trouble down on you Logan. I don't like the idea of the FBI camping on your doorstep," she added with meaning, sitting on the chair opposite him, her eyes level with his.
"Question is, why are they camped there? They know we've got the girls. If they wanted them back..."
"Why don't they just come up and get them?"
"Unless they think we can lead them to something, someone...I just don't know," he finished with a sigh of frustration.
Max looked across at him. She couldn't decide if it was the strain of the last few days she could see in his face or just the discolouration from the slowly fading bruise.
"Maybe I should change tack and look into the Russians' involvement in all this. They were the ones behind it all in the first place."
Max pressed her lips together. She'd been expecting this ever since Martin had finally come clean.
"They play dirty," was all she commented.
"I don't want to play with them, just check 'em out a little," Logan corrected her.
"Sometimes yah can't have one without the other," she pressed a little harder.
Logan looked across at her. He knew it wasn't her own skin she was concerned about.
"Max, you know we're in way too deep to walk away from this now," he told her quietly. "What about the girls, Matt ... Emma Belding?"
"What about you?" she wanted to say. This was more than investigative journalism – all the players had played dirty right from the start – and Martin had put Logan bang-smack in the middle of all this crap.
"Things have been kinda blowing up in our faces lately," she pointed out to him instead, her eyes going to his hands, which were loosely clasped in front of him on the table.
"Must be our turn for a little luck, then, huh?" he asked her, his mouth slowly widening into a grin.
"So, you all powered up to do your reps?" Bling asked as he returned.
"I'm good," Logan responded, backing up from the table.
Monique and Genevieve were holding onto his trainer's hands.
"Do we get a piggy back later?" Genevieve was asking.
"We'll see," Bling answered diplomatically. "I've gotta do some work with Logan, first."
"Maybe we'd better do my reps later," Logan back-pedalled of a sudden, clearly not thrilled with the idea of an audience.
"No time like the present," Bling replied unhelpfully.
"Right," Logan agreed a little unenthusiastically.
"You got a problem with that?" Bling asked him, knowing full well that he did.
"No. It's fine. Let's do it," Logan replied in a business-like manner.
"You girls are probably hungry," Max suggested, "seeing as how you didn't have your breakfast at lunchtime like lazybones here."
Both girls looked at Logan and started to giggle, particularly Genevieve who had soon dissolved into a veritable fit of giggles.
Logan smiled a little at the strange ways of ten-year-old girls, then looking up, he happened to catch both Max and Bling with a knowing grin on each of their faces.
He felt slightly annoyed.
He had the distinct impression that he was missing something.
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"You sure love peanut butter," Max told Monique after rescuing the jar, and the spoon she was dipping into it, from her yet again.
"Yummy!" Monique smiled back. Well, Max assumed it was a smile because there was so much peanut butter around her mouth that it was kind of hard to tell.
"Genevieve, how about you watch her while I get a washcloth?"
"Sure, Max".
It's good to see the girls kickin' back a little, Max reflected as she headed down the hallway towards their bathroom.
She was thankful that, at least for the moment, Logan hadn't decided to send them away, but with that thought came the weight of the decision she had promised herself. She was determined that Logan wouldn't be put in another situation such as the one he had found himself in yesterday - she'd do anything to protect him from any similarities to what she now understood to be his own perceived failure to save Sophy.
I may be kinda slow at all this, but I'm beginning to see through some of your walls, Logan Cale, she thought to herself as she grabbed the wet cloth from the bathroom.
"Max!"
Max turned her head as she heard Martin's voice coming from Logan's room as she walked passed his door.
"What does he want now?" she muttered to herself as she put her head around the open doorway.
Martin stood in the middle of the room.
It annoyed her that the familiar post shower smell of Logan now lingered on him. The two definitely didn't match.
"Don't suppose you know where Logan keeps a comb?"
Max nearly laughed outright at that one.
"You just don't know him at all, do you?" she mocked him.
Martin's heightened colour told her she'd hit her mark.
"Look, I know you don't like me..."
"You're not even close to the mark."
"You just see me the way you want to," he snapped.
"Guess I do," she responded unperturbed, "but it works for me," she added brightly.
She was about to turn and walk away when she swung around again as another thought occurred to her.
"I guess everyone sees people the way they want to, to a certain extent. Now Logan, for whatever strange reason, (and I can only guess it's because you're his cousin), sees some redeeming qualities in you. Personally, I can't see why, but I guess that's what makes him different from most folks."
"Listen, I never meant for Logan to get so involved in all this."
"Maybe not, but you knew who you were dealing with from the beginning and just how dangerous it might be and you didn't even have the decency to tell him what he was getting himself into," she hissed savagely.
"I didn't think he'd ..."
He stopped suddenly.
"Help?" she finished succinctly for him.
"Like I said, you don't even know him," she spelled out slowly. "I doubt if any of you Cales do," she added scornfully. "Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta go wipe some peanut butter off Monique's mouth – it'll be a lot easier than washing the bad taste outta my own."
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"How's your shoulder feeling?" Bling looked down and asked Logan as he slowly lifted his right leg, letting it bend at the knee.
"I hardly noticed it this morning."
"Good. All the same, we'll take it easy on that side when we do your weights."
Logan didn't comment, which Bling knew didn't necessarily mean he hadn't heard – it just meant he didn't reply.
"You and Max getting this whole Martin thing sorted out?" he tried again, feeling in a talkative mood.
Logan shrugged resignedly. "Let's just say that Martin is my uncle's son."
"Bad as that?" Bling murmured.
"I dunno," Logan sighed, admitting in a disappointed voice, "I thought not."
"Whatcha doing, Bling?" asked a voice from the doorway.
"Hey, girls," he greeted them, before motioning with his head. "You'll have to ask Logan that. They're his legs," he told them with a smile.
He suppressed a smile as he caught the look that Logan threw at him. He didn't believe in making things too easy for him and he liked to see Logan forced out of his comfort zone, having to deal with other people rather than just Max and those in his informant net. Bling thought it was far too easy for him to live the life of a recluse in his perfectly appointed apartment, centred solely on whatever Eyes Only case he was working on.
Logan turned his head to see Genevieve looking at him with interest and remembered how surprisingly easy it had been to talk to her outside the department store.
"Well," he started, wondering where to begin.
"Simple'd be good," hinted Bling humorously.
Logan threw another dark look at his good-natured trainer, and said, "Well."
"That's twice you've said that," Genevieve pointed out helpfully.
"Right," he agreed, still hoping for inspiration. He'd had the biological explanation spelled out to him ad infinitum after the shooting, but they'd never given him the simplified version.
"It's like this," he said, as Bling swapped to his other leg, "if you don't regularly use parts of your body they go all stiff and if you let it go long enough they'd sort of lock up - so Bling moves my legs for me because I can't..."
"And you don't want them to go stiff," Genevieve completed for him.
"Yeah," he drawled slowly, looking across at her with slightly narrowed eyes to see how the explanation went down. He could see her mind working through it as she watched Bling.
"Kinda like going rusty," she suggested suddenly in a matter of fact manner.
"I guess," he agreed a little hesitantly, not sure he liked the analogy.
"Logan's going rusty," Monique unexpectedly piped up in a sing song voice, doing little skips about the room.
"Not if I can help it," laughed Bling, holding out a hand for Logan to grab onto to help pull him upright.
"At least Genevieve understood," Logan pointed out with a certain amount of satisfaction to Bling.
"I wanna a drink," Monique stated bluntly.
"You hafta say please," Genevieve reminded her.
"Please could I have a drink, Logan?" she asked very sweetly.
"Come with me, Monique, I'll get you one," Bling offered. "You want some milk?" he asked her as he took her hand and led her into the kitchen.
"What are you gonna do now?" Genevieve asked Logan.
"Next I gotta work on my arms," he started to tell her as he positioned himself to use his weights, only to look up in surprise as Martin came storming through to the front door.
"Martin. What are you doing?" Logan called sharply to him.
Martin paused, one hand on the doorknob, before turning around decisively.
Logan only needed to take one look at his face to have a pretty good idea of what had gone down while he'd been doing his reps.
"Yeah, she's right," he stormed at Logan as he walked up to the workout table. "I screwed up. Big time – in everything! But it's too late to undo it all now, isn't it? Isn't it?" he reiterated with fury, his voice going up another decibel, much to Genevieve's patent dislike as she moved closer to Logan, the sound of Martin's voice sending thrills of fear down her spine.
Martin looked down at her, noticing her reaction, his own sense of shame manifesting itself as irritation with her. "No, I won't hurt your precious Logan," he stormed at her, misreading her reaction.
Turning to Logan, he muttered, "The stench of perfection around here is getting a little too hard to take," before heading back to the door.
"Martin!" Logan called after him, quickly edging himself along the table to get to the end where his wheelchair was.
"Martin, wait!" he called again, concentrating more on stopping his cousin than the transfer and nearly ending up on the floor in the process.
"Whoa," said Bling, alerted by the loud voices, putting out a quick, firm hand to steady him. "Not so fast."
"I gotta stop him," Logan ground out as he put his feet on the footrest.
"Logan, the elevator's on its way to the bottom by now."
Seeing Logan's expression, he added, "But I can go and check if you like."
Logan stopped and took a deep breath. "No. Don't bother."
"Max," Genevieve said with relief, running into her arms and unexpectedly sobbing loudly.
"Genevieve, I'm sorry about all that," Logan said gently.
"It wasn't your fault, Logan," she stammered between sobs. "I don't like your cousin. He scares me."
He raised his eyes to Max's, but their expression was questioning and perhaps a little accusatory behind his steel framed glasses.
Sensing their tension, Bling beat a diplomatic retreat to check on how Monique was doing.
Max shrugged.
"I take it that Martin skipped. Can't say I'm surprised."
Logan held her gaze unflinchingly, finally breaking it after the third ring of his phone, but he made no move to pick it up, only half listening as the answering machine switched on.
"You've reached the number you dialled."
"Logan, are you there? It's Charlie, Emma Belding's roommate. I didn't know who else to call. Can you help me? They've ..."
Logan had already swung around when he recognized the voice, but the unmistakable tremor in it spurred him on quicker as he headed the short distance to his phone in the study.
"Charlie?" he spoke quickly into the phone. "It's Logan Cale. Has something happened?"
"They've trashed everything," she wailed in a high-pitched voice. "I don't know what to do!"
Logan thought quickly, then said to her in a calm voice, "Have you got neighbours you can stay with until I get over there?"
"Yeah," she replied, sounding miserable.
"Is anything missing?"
"Yeah," her answer came back, inclining towards tears again.
"Okay, don't tell me on the phone. I'll be around as soon as I can."
"That was Emma Belding's roommate?" asked Max as he hung up, having encouraged Genevieve to go and find Monique and Bling while Logan was talking.
"Someone broke in and robbed her," Logan told her a little heavily, quickly checking the progress his computer was making.
"You got a plan?" asked Max a little edgily, standing at the entrance to his study by the computer, only too aware of the subtle barrier that she now found between them.
"I told her I'd be around," he stated a little obviously, knowing full well that she had heard both sides of the conversation.
"You gonna ask Bling to mind the kids?"
He looked up at her. "I thought you'd be best for that."
"Logan, have you forgotten that Seth is wandering around beating up on people he thinks have taken Emma?"
"Well, he knows I didn't take her," he stated decisively as he swung around and headed away from her, towards the kitchen.
"You have no idea how stable he is. He could be a complete whack job for all you know. Maybe he broke into Charlie's," she added with a shrug, "And what about our FBI friend? How you gonna get past him?"
Max watched him as he wordlessly paused in the doorway to his study.
Eventually he spoke without turning around. "I'll talk to Bling."
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"So?" Logan asked her shortly as she returned to the car.
"He's gone," she stated as she climbed into her seat.
"What d'you mean he's gone?"
"As in poof, no longer there," she retorted with a snap of her fingers.
"You're sure you..."
"Logan," she cut in dryly.
Logan took his hand off the wheel and sat back, clearly mystified by this latest revelation.
"I guess there's a good chance they're following Martin instead," Max suggested bluntly.
Logan wordlessly put the car in gear - he'd come to the same conclusion himself – and drove out into a pleasantly sunny afternoon.
Max put up with his silence for some time before finally saying, "You mad at me?"
"Should I be?" he asked abruptly, not taking his eyes off the road.
"Logan, sooner or later Martin had to face up to reality, and what his responsibilities are in all this mess, instead o' just dumpin' it all on you."
"You don't think it would have been kinder to let him reach that point by himself instead of pushing it upon him?" Logan suggested dryly, seriously worried that Martin may try to do something foolhardy in an effort to redeem himself.
Max looked out her window.
Why did he have to always be the voice of reason?
She struggled with her thoughts for a while. It went against the grain to admit to him that she'd made a mistake.
"I'm sorry, Logan," she said eventually. "I guess it just bummed my ass off that he knew what he was getting you into and he didn't tell you."
She didn't miss the smile that twitched at the corners of his mouth.
"Well, I guess he figured I might not help him if he did."
She looked across at him suddenly. "That's exactly what he thought."
Logan shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe you're right, too. I just hope he doesn't have some wild idea of doing something heroic."
"Martin?" Max snorted. "I doubt if he's got it in him."
"He is a Cale, you know. Some of us have a history of doin' dumb things."
"Present company excluded," she told him promptly, but from his ironic expression she suspected that it was very much the present company he was thinking of.
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"Look at that - told you our luck had to change," Logan said, a touch triumphantly, as he pulled the Aztek into a parking space almost immediately in front of Charlie's apartment building.
Max stood by his door, watching for traffic while he transferred. Fortunately the road was relatively quiet.
The sidewalk was another matter entirely, though.
They'd only just made it to the pavement when all of a sudden a youth came out from Charlie's building with the unmistakable air of one who is pursued – his face strained and white as he charged into the street, his legs pumping with increasing speed as he put every effort into his escape.
Only a few seconds later his pursuers emerged – a ragtag lot brandishing sticks and bats.
Max had instinctively taken a step closer to Logan as soon as she realized the chase was heading directly at them, but she immediately changed to full alert when she saw the tell tale glitter of sun on sharpened silver.
Less than a year ago, in all likelihood she would have simply turned and walked the other way: Ho hum – simply another day in post Pulse Seattle.
Instead she felt decidedly torn. Sometimes caring was a bitch, she'd thought more than once.
With Logan by her side, she was extremely reluctant to take on the gang, but could she do nothing and let them catch their quarry, as they inevitably would, with that ugly look of bloodlust on their faces?
"Max, they've got a knife," Logan said warningly. "They'll catch him soon."
She rolled her eyes. Did he ever think of himself? Did he have to right every wrong?
And since when did I come to think like him! she wondered with exasperation.
The desperate boy was upon them now – scarcely throwing a glance their way in his attempts to outrun the gang.
Damn, thought Max. She doubted that Logan would be able to make it to Charlie's building before all hell broke loose and he'd be in the middle of it.
The thought came to her that she could simply grab the back of Logan's chair and get him out of harms way whether he wanted it or not. Of course he'd probably never speak to me again.
Making up her mind, she stepped forward with a definite sigh of aggravation.
At precisely that point, the young guy in front stole a quick fearful glance behind him, only to find himself sprawled flat on the ground as his foot caught on the treacherous pavement.
The gang surged forward with an almost primeval growl of approaching victory.
"Stay back," she warned Logan curtly over her shoulder, her mind picking out with tactical precision the first gang member she should deter from his life of crime.
"Do not move. You are under police surveillance."
Max looked up. For the first time that she could remember she was genuinely glad to see the arrival of the hated hoverdrone.
The affect of its appearance on the would-be attackers was almost comical as, without a word, they split in all directions, carefully keeping their heads down as they themselves now became the pursued.
In a matter of seconds, the cracked, uneven sidewalk was deserted once more.
Max exchanged a look of relief with Logan, then looked upwards as her eye was caught by a gaudy billboard on the building next to Charlie's apartment, extolling the virtues of the area in an effort to encourage a possible buyer.
"Location, location, location," she remarked with an ironic tilt to her head at their, now peaceful, surroundings as he headed towards the double doors of Charlie's building.
"Yup, that's what it's all about," Logan murmured dryly.
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Charlie's place was a complete shambles.
The orange door was as bright as ever, but that was where any similarities to their last visit ended.
There was so much strewn about the floor that the purple carpet was barely discernible and Max and Charlie had to go before Logan and clear a pathway for him to be able to get his chair into the room.
"Well, they were nothing if not thorough," Max noted regretfully as she took stock of the way every drawer had been pulled out and turned upside down, cupboards emptied, food tipped out, even the bean bags had been slit, the tiny white balls now a menace as they seemed to be spread all about the apartment.
Even worse was the wanton destruction of all her crockery and anything else that could be smashed. It was as if whomever had done this had been determined to break everything in sight.
The 'flower power' wallpaper now looked incongruously bright and happy amidst such destruction.
"Sorry, Charlie," she offered with feeling.
"Any idea what they were looking for?" Logan asked her quietly as he looked about with sympathetic eyes. He didn't relish the job Charlie had of cleaning this mess up and trying to restore it to some kind of order.
"I don't know what they were looking for, but I know what they took," she answered.
Max and Logan looked at her.
"My sketches," she almost cried. "They took all my sketches."
"Just the hand sketches?" Logan clarified, thinking of the few paintings he'd seen as well.
"They were the only sketches I did," she told him, as if offended that he would suggest that she'd sketch anything else.
"Years of work," she stated miserably, the heavy eye make-up she wore taking a beating with each fresh outbreak of tears.
"Well, if it was someone looking for Charlie's sketch of Emma's hands, at least that's safe and sound at your crib," Max mentioned.
"As long as it is safe there," Charlie added darkly.
"It's kinda hard to break-in to my apartment," Logan told her with a glance in Max's direction, which she blithely ignored.
"You got one of those security places? I don't blame you. Wise move. I'd have one myself if I could afford the money."
She looked about her apartment sadly. "It's gonna take me years to get all my 70's stuff again."
"Maybe you should go radical and change decades?" Max suggested.
Charlie shook her head. "I'm just a 70's girl at heart – but it's my sketches that really upset me. Years of work...gone," she said sighing, the tears welling up in her eyes once more.
Logan felt bad for her.
"Maybe ... if you still want me to of course ...I could ..." Somehow the words wouldn't quite come out.
"Logan! Would you?" she smiled suddenly, turning to him and enthusiastically throwing her arms around his neck.
"Well, when we've got this thing sorted out," he added, carefully avoiding Max's eyes and now hoping that it would take weeks to sort out Emma's disappearance.
"Have you seen a guy called Seth around here lately?" he asked, keen to change the topic.
"Seth's always around here," Charlie told them without a second thought.
"Has he ever been violent?" Max asked intently.
Charlie shook her head. "I've never seen anything, but, you know, you hear things sometimes," she told them as she leant down to pick up a cup that had escaped the carnage and appeared to be in one piece.
"What kinda things?"
The red headed girl stopped rummaging through the debris for a moment. "You know how people are. Just because he's a little ...simple ... some of the kids around here make fun of him. He doesn't always take it too well ...from what I've heard," she added in quickly.
"Is his apartment on this floor?" Logan put in.
"One below. He's got 408."
"Mind if I check Emma's room?" Max asked.
"Same mess as here," Charlie told her a little pathetically with a wave of her hand. "Look for yourself."
Logan was puzzled by the amount of destruction. It was one thing to ransack a room, but this was more than that.
Charlie moved about the room, sadly propping up bits and pieces that looked salvageable.
"Well, here's something that escaped," Logan told her, holding up a bottle of red wine for her to see.
"I'd offer you a drink if I could find a glass," she said with sad humour.
"Hey, I'm sure there's one here somewhere," Logan told her, thinking a glass of wine might do her good. She was looking particularly pale – whether an affect of her, by now, hideously streaked eye make-up, he couldn't be sure.
"Here's one," he told her, reaching down for a glass that was half-hidden amongst a snowdrift-like pile of beanbag filler.
"Ouch."
"Don't put it in your mouth," Charlie exclaimed quickly.
Logan stopped with his finger halfway to his lips, about to suck what he had expected to be a little bit of blood away.
"What did you cut it on?"
"Guess the glass was broken after all," he told her, now examining the forefinger of his right hand. "Don't suppose you could find a bandaid amongst all this mess?"
Charlie looked around pointedly.
"Just a try. Kleenex?"
"You'd better come through to the kitchen and wash it. You may have a few glass fragments in it," Charlie suggested, clearing a few more things out of his way so that he could get to the kitchen.
"What do moms say about always carrying a clean handkerchief?" he murmured as she turned the faucet on and, to his surprise, in the manner of a nurse, grabbed his hand and held the cut finger under the stream.
"What's up?" Max's voice came from the doorway.
"Logan cut his finger," Charlie answered, pulling it out of the water and examining the wound. Once out of the water, the blood welled up again and began to drip quite steadily into the sink.
"Oh, I thought it was something serious," Max commented with sweet disappointment as she examined the cut as well.
"No. It's just a small cut that won't stop bleeding," Logan said quickly as he pulled his hand out from Charlie's grasp
Turning to Charlie, Max said, "I saw a box of Kleenex on Emma's bed."
Completely oblivious to any undercurrent at all, Charlie nodded as if remembering seeing them there herself and headed out to get them.
"Hope this isn't the end of your career as a hand model," Max commiserated.
Logan coloured a little.
"I'm just doin' her a favour."
"Sweet," she told him sassily, looking airily about the room.
Logan held his hand out over the sink again, annoyed that something so little could bleed so much, when he felt Max's hand on his shoulder.
"Logan. Look."
Following the direction of her own unblemished finger, Logan found himself staring at Charlie's refrigerator.
Beneath a daisy shaped magnet was a phone number and the name, Vladimir.
"Russian - coincidence?" she mouthed to him.
Charlie returned at that moment with an intact Kleenex box and a clean hand towel.
Ordinarily, and especially with Max's presence, he would have simply taken the towel and dried off his hand himself, wrapped a couple of Kleenex about his finger and been out the door, but instead he held it out for Charlie, who pulled up a kitchen chair and sat down opposite him.
"Ever been a nurse?" he asked her as she took his hand once more, gently drying the area around the slightly jagged cut.
Max leant against the fridge, watching his performance with interest, in her mind a memory flash of another Logan striding into Crash, full of the confidence that a handsome face, taut body and a mountain of money could bring.
"I was a manicurist ... close," she laughed, looking into his eyes and a little startled at the depths she found there.
"You know, I can tell a lot about a person from their hands," she told him, inexplicably feeling suddenly a little shy.
"Yeah?" he said encouragingly.
Charlie looked down at the hand she held in hers. "This is a strong hand," she told him, turning it over and gently running her thumb along his knuckles, "for a strong personality. You like to get your own way, and you usually do," she added with a smile, letting her gaze rest on his face again. Almost wonderingly she said, "I think you're a very powerful man."
It was Max who broke the silence.
"Do we pay our fifty dollars now?" she asked lightly.
Charlie laughed. "I used to set up booths at fairs when I was a student. It helped pay my way through college."
"Did you ever do this for Emma?" Logan asked, gently taking his hand from hers.
"No. She said she didn't believe any of it." Charlie smiled at them ingeniously. "What can I say? I make most of it up ... most of the time," she added with a distinctly flirtatious glance at Logan.
Logan didn't waste the opportunity.
"Charlie, are we the only ones who've shown any interest in Emma since she disappeared?"
Charlie bit her lip as if unsure as to how she should answer.
"We only want to do what's best for Emma," he added persuasively, letting his voice drop to what Max thought was a particularly attractive, throaty whisper.
Charlie risked looking into his eyes again, obviously more than satisfied by what she found there.
"There was another man, a few days before you showed up."
He was good, Max had to admit admiringly, as with a cynical smile she remembered another time - Logan's breath seductively warm against her neck, the ornate mirror merely the backdrop to his intricately woven plot. Even know she cringed a little at how quickly she'd fallen for it, how easy it had been for him to captivate her.
"A friend of Emma's?"
Charlie got up and went over to the refrigerator, pulling off the scrap of paper with the name on it.
"This guy called. He said he worked with Emma and they were all worried about her."
"Did you believe that?" Logan asked.
Charlie grinned a little self-consciously. "For a coupla hundred dollars I'll believe any story."
"I'm guessing he wanted you to tip him off if anyone came asking about Emma?"
"Yeah, but after today I'm wondering if I've done the right thing," she admitted a lot less confidently.
Logan's eyes met Max's.
"You got any friends outta town?" Logan asked her seriously.
Charlie nodded a little nervously.
"Maybe this would be a good time for you to visit them. Just for a while. Until this whole thing blows over," Logan smiled encouragingly at her.
"You're dripping again," Charlie told him, indicating a couple of red spots on his cargo pants.
"Oops," Logan remembered, grabbing two of the Kleenex to wrap around his finger.
"Am I in some kind of danger?" she queried reluctantly.
"I'm not sure," Logan admitted, "but we've had a few strange things happen to us since we tried to find her."
Charlie nodded. "Well, I've got your number. I'll look you up when I get back, huh?"
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"That was pretty smooth in there," Max complimented him in an ambiguous tone as they made their way down the hallway.
Logan shrugged a little self-consciously. For a while he'd let himself forget quite a few things.
"You think we should pay Seth a little visit while we're here?" Max suggested.
"The thought had crossed my mind."
Max looked down at him while they waited for the elevator, thinking of his good-natured promise to let Charlie sketch his hands, vaguely aware of an emotion she had never experienced until she'd met Logan Cale.
It's a rough neighbourhood, she told herself. I'd better make sure I go with him... Just in case.
TBC