Many, many thanks to all those who reviewed – they were very much appreciated as always.
Special thanks to Kyre for her excellent and thorough beta. She stepped in and kindly agreed to beta for me at the last minute when Alaidh was unable to – and scored my longest chapter to date in the process!
And of course a big thanks to Alaidh who proved invaluable in finding a missed typo and for her many words of wisdom!
CHAPTER 16
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The elevator lurched once, then began its short but jerky way down to the floor below.
Max made a face.
"Another smooth ride in a rusty crate."
Logan looked around, taking in the faded, cigarette-burned carpet and dirty walls. At some stage, someone had tried to keep abreast of the continual stream of juvenile witticisms that were scrawled on the faded, fake wood panels, but it looked like they had finally accepted the inevitability of it and left the miscreants to their creative ways.
"You know how many cages like this one I have to put up with every day? I tell you, Logan, there's hardly a decent elevator left in Seattle."
"Yeah, well, do me a favour and don't tell me about it – I'd rather live in blissful ignorance."
She looked down at him and smiled a little at his dry tone, then turned back to the door, realizing that it hadn't opened.
"What the..."
"Yeah, that happened to me the first time. Seth said you just have to press the 'open' button a few times," he told her, glancing at the wall as he tried to make sense of a particularly bizarre group of words.
"And...?" she asked sweetly, as nothing happened.
Logan turned and shrugged. "It worked for him," he muttered, looking around again and noticing for the first time how unpleasantly stuffy the air in there was.
Noticing his glance, Max murmured provokingly, "You got a problem with small, stuffy, confined spaces as well as heights?"
"As a matter of fact – no."
Max pushed the button with an impatient prod for the fourth time.
"Logan..." she warned him, as if somehow this was his fault.
"Let me look at it."
Moving forward, Logan gave the button one push, only to look up with a certain amount of satisfaction when the doors shuddered a little, then slid open.
"I wouldn't look too smug yet, hotshot," she told him smartly. "We still gotta get down in this later."
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If anything, the floor below was even less prepossessing than the one above, certainly if the smell was anything to go by.
"Ugh, what died?" Max grimaced, tempted to put her hand over her nose.
"Don't joke about it," Logan warned her as he pushed his way toward Apartment 408. "The way things have gone lately, it'd be just our luck to find a room full o'bodies."
"What are you gonna say to Seth anyway? Hey, Seth, how come you've been beating up on my cousin? Maybe I should thank him," she then pondered aloud, not entirely joking.
"Max."
"Just a thought," she returned quickly with far too innocent an expression.
Max reached the door to Seth's apartment first, and turned to Logan with an enquiring look.
"Go ahead," Logan said quietly.
Max knocked on the door, then stood in the hallway, listening intently for any noise from within.
When there was no answer, she tried again. After waiting another moment or two, she put her hand on the doorknob.
Logan cast a quick glance at either end of the hallway, but apparently no one else enjoyed the smell wafting down the hallway, and the other doors remained firmly closed.
By the time Logan had looked back to Max, she had picked the lock and was turning to him with a warning finger held to her lips, then a hand raised to tell him to wait there.
Feeling curiously on edge, Logan waited for her return, his eyes doing several sweeps of the hallway this time. The thought crossed his mind that he should have some excuse made up about why he was loitering in hallways, but all he could think of was the fact that he hoped Max would hurry because the horrible stench was beginning to get to him. It made him think how unpleasant her life as a bike messenger must be at times – having to deal with Normal and his idiosyncrasies, unreliable elevators, smelly apartment blocks – probably smelly people, if it came to that. They were sobering thoughts; he knew he had a lot in life to be thankful for.
"Hey."
He looked up, feeling a little relieved to see Max signalling him to enter.
Once he was through the doorway, she stepped behind him, checked the hallway herself, and closed the door.
Logan took a tentative sniff of air, then a larger one as he realized thankfully that the repulsive aroma was not emanating from Seth's room. Mind you, once he looked around, he wouldn't have been surprised if it had. For a non-ransacked room, it looked particularly ransacked.
"Guess his mommy never taught him to pick up after himself," Max said quietly, unconsciously mirroring his thoughts.
"At least he's left a clear path," Logan replied, sticking to the only area not covered with clothing, old papers, pizza boxes (obviously a favourite meal), dirty dishes, and anything else he could possibly think of that should have been put away, thrown in the trash, or washed, and hadn't been.
"He's kinda neat with his newspapers," remarked Max, motioning to a pile of them that were more or less stacked up in some semblance of order in a corner of the living room.
Logan wandered over and started flicking through the stack that rose as high as the back of his chair. "They don't seem to be anything special," he started to say, only to stop abruptly and pull his hand back hastily when he disturbed a particularly ugly, fat black spider that had probably been living there undisturbed for some time.
"What...you find something?" Max asked quickly.
"No, just old newspapers," Logan replied casually, backing away from the pile.
"What's with all the half-eaten food?" Max wondered aloud, looking at yet another plate of pizza scraps that were growing a lovely colony of fungus.
Logan simply raised an eyebrow. "What's with any of this?" he commented, looking around the gloomy room. There was no bright wallpaper here. The single window was covered in curtains that looked like they were held together by the years' worth of dust that clung to them.
"Can we turn on a light, or open the curtains or something?" Logan suggested, finding the half-light hopeless for his vision.
Max strode over to the door and turned on the solitary overhead light that hung down from the ceiling.
"The man's a complete pig," Max said with disgust. "You think we're gonna find anything here that would help us? I guess it's just possible that Emma Belding could be living under one of those piles of old newspapers and dirty clothes."
"I'm half expecting to find the remains of a wedding banquet, complete with mice and cobwebs," Logan whispered wryly. "There's a distinctly 'Dickensian' feel to all this."
"I don't think Seth is old enough to have been jilted at the altar and then spent the next twenty years among the ruins of his bridal table."
"Give him time," Logan muttered.
Suddenly Max put an imperative finger to her lips.
Logan had heard nothing, but he trusted Max's heightened senses in circumstances like this. Frowning a little, he watched her as she silently made her way over to the bedroom door.
Then he heard it too.
Instinctively Logan put his hands to his wheels. He didn't like the idea of her walking into the room – unpleasant surprises seemed to have a habit of lurking behind closed doors.
Max paused an instant, almost at the door to Seth's bedroom, then quickly turned to Logan with another warning look that said, "Stay there."
Wishing he'd brought his gun with him, Logan watched her as she disappeared through the doorway. His eyes widened a little as he heard a distinctive thump, as though something was hitting the wall with force.
Ignoring Max's advice, he pushed forward, only to stop short as she emerged, holding a very large, slightly stunned rat by the tail.
"Well, he may not have the wedding cake, but he's got the mice and the rats and the cobwebs..."
"And the spiders," Logan added, looking at the rodent with obvious distaste.
"Guess you don't have these at your place - you lead a deprived life," Max commiserated him as she saw his expression.
Logan threw her a sidelong glance, always a little touchy about his wealth, then just managed to stop himself from instinctively rolling back a little as Max let the rat down and it headed straight towards him, at the last second veering off to head for the pile of newspapers and squeeze itself safely behind them.
"I think we should get outta here," Logan called to her softly as she disappeared into the bathroom to wash her hands.
She came out triumphantly a few minutes later, holding up a box of Band- Aids.
"Max, I can't steal Seth's things," he protested a little.
Max looked at him. "Logan, we've already done the whole 'breaking and entering' dealio. This is the part that's s'posed to come next." Then adding with dryness, "Logan, it's just a Band-Aid."
"It's Seth's Band-Aid, and besides, it's probably not even sterile."
Ignoring his protests, Max walked up to him, pulling a Band-Aid from its packet in a businesslike manner. She peeled back the paper to reveal the sticky edges.
Giving in, Logan pulled off the two Kleenex he'd wound tightly around his finger.
"It's probably not even bleeding now," he muttered as he realized she expected him to put his finger out for her.
"It is quite deep, Logan," she murmured as she wound the strip around the cut, which, as Logan had said, had stopped bleeding.
"So what else was in the bedroom?" he asked, clearing his throat a little as he found to his discomfort that the sensation of Max holding onto his hand was totally different from the one of Charlie holding onto his hand.
"Yeah, I was going to check on that," she remembered suddenly, turning around. "There were some handwritten notes on a bedside table next to his phone."
Logan watched her disappear into the bedroom again, casting another wary glance around the room while he waited.
"You'd be amazed with this," Max said, popping her head around the bedroom door. "Take a look."
Logan moved forward curiously, stopping at the door to Seth's bedroom.
It was a small room, dominated by the king-size double bed that stood in the middle of it, but what was surprising was the almost total lack of mess in this room. The bed was made, and the top of the bureau was generally free of trash. It was like stepping into another apartment entirely.
"I am amazed," he acknowledged, pausing at the door of the cramped room.
"Logan, look at this," Max said intently as she scanned the papers in her hand.
"What is it?"
Max wordlessly walked around the bed to the doorway and handed him the notes she'd found.
Logan peered at them, but the light was bad. Putting them in his lap he pushed back a little until he was back under the dreary light in the living room, then perused the papers once more.
"Murdoch's Bar?" he said quietly.
"Yeah, it's a dive next to South Market."
"I know that - I meant why would Seth be hangin' out at Murdoch's?"
"The second page might tell you."
Logan studied the second page carefully.
Did it mean what he thought it did?
He looked up, not quite willing to speak out his assumptions.
"Well?" Max finally prompted him.
"These are the locations of the places they found the severed arms."
"You think he's doin' his own detective work?" wondered Max. "...or maybe he likes to keep track of where he left his spare body parts," she added bluntly.
Logan shook his head. "I can't believe Seth's killing those girls."
"What, just because he helps you in the elevator he becomes an all-around good guy? I think not."
"Max, you met him ...he seem like a killer to you?"
"Logan, all I know is that he's big enough and strong enough to take out almost anyone he wants to with his bare hands."
"Just because he's physically able to do it doesn't make him guilty."
"I'm just saying make sure you don't bump into him in a dark alley."
"You'd better put these back before we leave," Logan murmured a little distractedly.
Max raised her eyes a little, but did as he said.
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The elevator responded perfectly to all their demands on the way down and they made it back to the car with a surprising lack of excitement, which, Max had to reflect, suited her fine. If the next few days remained similarly boring, she'd be more than happy. A week of some nice, dull Eyes Only 'break in and steal a disc'-type dealios looked remarkably good right now.
Her one goal in life presently was to see the girls reunited with their parents and Martin out of Logan's hair, one way or another.
The sun that had shone so pleasantly earlier in the afternoon had beaten a hasty retreat behind a huge bank of ominous grey clouds. The sudden drop in temperature was noticeable, and even Max noticed that the denim jacket she wore was not protection enough against the biting wind that had sprung up.
The traffic was a lot heavier now; Logan would have to get in the passenger side and swing across.
"You want me to stow your chair in the back?" she asked him, to save him the bother of dismantling it.
"Logan?" she asked again when he didn't respond.
He looked up at her, and she could see his mind replaying the words that he'd only half-listened to.
"Sure," he agreed as he unlocked the door, then as an afterthought, "Thanks."
When he'd driven for ten minutes through the slow-moving traffic without saying a word, as if he were on auto-pilot, she finally said, "So, are you masterminding a plan to blow up 'The World's Biggest Coke Can?"
Logan, who'd just stopped for a red light, turned his head very slowly. "Should I be?"
"It is pretty ugly. Then again you might be planning on blowing up The World's Biggest Fire Hydrant, Or The World's Biggest Piggy Bank or even The World's Biggest Cookie Jar," she finished thoughtfully.
She definitely had his attention now – even if it was simply annoyance with her.
"Do I even want to know where these fascinating treasures are to be found?" he asked with careful restraint.
"Well, while you were probably touring Europe with your folks, I was checking out our Northern neighbours. Would you believe it, there's also..."
"I don't wanna know about it," he interrupted repressively.
Max smiled a little.
"Cool," she agreed, then a little more aggressively, "So why have you gone so quiet?"
Logan debated the pros and cons of telling her. His instincts warned him against it.
"I guess I'm thinking about a lot o' things," he told her vaguely.
"You care to be a little more specific?"
Throwing caution to the wind, Logan admitted, "I'd like to talk to Seth."
"Not a problem. He seems to be hangin' out at South Market. No reason I can't swing down there and find him."
Sensing Logan's hesitation, she said, "What?"
"Max, I don't wanna scare him off. If he knows anything at all about Emma, we need to keep him on our side."
"What, you think I can't handle him?"
"I think if he sees you or gets wind of the fact that you're looking for him, he's gonna bolt."
"Well, he can't bolt faster than me," Max told him with a certain amount of satisfaction.
"If you remember, the first time you met him you knocked him to the floor and shoved him up against a wall."
"You think he holds a grudge?"
"Max," Logan said with exasperation at her refusal to see it his way, "I can't afford to alienate him. He may be our only link to Emma. Did you wonder why his bedroom was so clean?" he added on a more thoughtful note.
"You think they're an item?" asked Max, wrinkling her nose at the thought. The young giant hadn't made a particularly big impression on her, other than his remarkable strength and size.
Logan shook his head with a touch of impatience. "I just said I'm wondering, that's all."
"Wondering I'm cool with - it's the other stuff you've got in your mind I'm not so sure about."
"Max, if he thinks for a moment that we mean anything other than Emma Belding's good ..."
"Yeah, yeah. I get it, Logan."
By this time they were almost at his apartment building.
"Any of our friends in suits around?" Logan asked her, thankful to change the subject.
Max studied the area carefully. "Not unless they're invisible," she finally replied.
Logan's eyes went to his phone. "No word from Martin."
Max felt a slight stab of guilt.
"Maybe he called the other line," she offered, but in her heart she doubted it.
Logan nodded imperceptibly, as much an acknowledgement of her words as the sentiment he knew she was offering behind them.
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They were greeted with enthusiasm by both girls when they came in, and to a lesser extent by Bling.
"How'd it go?" the trainer asked, trying to hush Monique a little at the same time.
"Well, Charlie got what she wanted," Max told him blandly as she moved to Monique and picked her up.
"You girls had fun with Bling?"
Bling looked toward Logan, but wasn't the least surprised when no answer was forthcoming from that direction and he headed straight into his computer.
"Max, you promised," Monique was now insisting very loudly.
"Apparently you told her that Logan would give her a ride. She hasn't stopped talking about it all afternoon," Bling told Max with a slightly harassed smile as they walked through to the kitchen.
"I did," she admitted, looking tentatively over at Logan, who was already busy checking on the program that was still attempting to hack into the witness protection files. He had the same distracted air about him that he'd had ever since they'd left Seth's place. Instinctively, she knew this was not the time to ask him.
"How about if Logan gives you a ride at bedtime? Would that be fun?" Max asked the child hopefully, sitting her down on one of the kitchen counters.
Monique's expression said that it would be anything but fun.
"Wow, that'd be great, Monique," put in Genevieve enthusiastically, doing her part to brainwash the child that later would be much better than now.
Monique looked unconvinced for a long moment, but after some further persuasion she eventually gave in.
"Looks like the program's almost through," Logan told Max a few moments later, the barest tinge of hope creeping into his voice as he wheeled out to the kitchen. They so needed something to go right.
"So, I'd better get some dinner happening," he murmured, going over to the refrigerator.
"I'll bathe the girls... well, Monique," she added, seeing the look of protest on Genevieve's face.
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Logan was saved from having to give Monique a ride on his lap when the child virtually fell asleep at the dinner table. Genevieve, definitely feeling more relaxed with them, while still cautious to not reveal anything of great import, managed to chat on quite happily about this and that.
Max, smiling at something she had said, looked across at Logan. He'd been staring at his almost-finished plate for some time.
She suspected he'd eaten it without even tasting it. What a waste.
Max had just picked up Monique to carry her to bed when she heard an unusual kind of popping sound and saw Logan suddenly put his head up. With a tense expression, he backed up from the table and quickly headed toward his computer.
"Oh, no," she heard him mutter as she followed him and saw that his computer screen was now ominously blank.
"Power surge?" Max was about to ask when the entire apartment was unexpectedly plunged into darkness.
Logan sat in the darkness, not trusting himself to speak with Genevieve close by.
His computer had now gone completely dead.
Max looked immediately toward Logan. The expression on his face said it all. Those hours of work trying to hack into Witness Protection – useless. He'd have to start all over again – or start looking into the Russian connection.
Genevieve, who had been sitting next to Logan, immediately jumped up and tried to find him. Heading in the direction of his study, she put a hand out to feel for him, thankfully finding his arm, then his shoulder.
"Is it something bad? What happened?" she asked nervously.
"Just another brownout," Logan told her tersely, still trying to hold onto his patience as he tried to get his head around this latest calamity.
"Nothing to worry about, Genevieve," Bling called to her, "I'll get some candles, and we'll have light in no time."
"I'll put Monique into bed then come and help," Max told them, the only one untroubled by the sudden plunge into darkness.
"How will she see?" Genevieve asked Logan, only just beginning to be able to make out the outline of his face as her eyes gradually adjusted.
"There's a little bit of light coming through the windows," Logan explained, looking about as he spoke and wondering dryly where this mythical light might be. The apartment was now incredibly dark. "Max has good eyesight," he added, noting the dullness of his own voice. He reflected sourly it was damned hard to not let his frustration show.
"There you go," said Bling, striking a match and putting it to a candle that Logan kept on top of the wine rack for emergencies such as these.
Logan turned his face away for the moment, tightening his lips as he felt another surge of disappointment The darkness had been more suited to his present frame of mind.
Perhaps knowing a little of what Logan was thinking, the trainer said to Genevieve, "How about you come and light some more candles for me?"
Taking the solitary one that was lit, he led the child into the kitchen where Logan kept other candles in a drawer.
Logan stared stonily ahead as he was slowly left in a deepening darkness as Bling walked away, his candle casting weird and wonderful shadows as he went.
He'd just let out a particularly explosive, angry sigh when Max's voice said, "Sorry about the programme."
His shoulders jerked suddenly - the surprise she had given him doing absolutely nothing for his present frame of mind.
Max struck the match she held along the side of the box then watched with fascination as the one flame quickly flared to become two as the wick from the candle she'd grabbed from the kitchen ignited.
With enough light to see by, Logan pushed himself slowly towards the windows and looked out at the unrelenting darkness of the night, his own face reflecting back to him against the windowpane.
"Looks like I'll have to change my tack after all," he finally murmured, aware of Max's presence behind him.
"The power surge blew out the UPS?" she asked gently.
"Yup," he replied in a dry, upbeat tone that fooled no one.
"But the computer itself is okay - you could always run your program again as soon as the power comes on," Max suggested.
"Yeah. Sure."
She winced a little at his tone of voice.
Genevieve came through at that point with another candle and placed it on the glass-topped table in front of the couch.
"Bling told me to ask if you wanted a drink," she said, coming around to stand next to Max. When they both declined, she said with big eyes, "Bling's gonna make me a hot chocolate."
Logan waited until he could no longer hear her retreating steps, then said abruptly, "I gotta talk to Seth."
"Fine. I'll find him and bring him back here."
"Max..." Logan began, only to stop as the noise of his phone ringing echoed through his apartment.
Hoping it was Martin, he quickly swung around as Max hastily stepped out of his way.
Max leaned against the window, aware of the cool feel of the glass against her back, and watched Logan in his study. The news didn't appear to be good. The shortness of the one-syllable words told their own story. "Right...fine...let me know."
He didn't turn back around immediately. Not Martin, she suddenly thought – more concerned with how Logan would react should any harm have befallen Martin than for the man himself.
"Hey?" she queried gently across the room, hesitant to go too close in case it was bad news and it was somehow her fault.
"That was security downstairs. Apparently the emergency generator hasn't kicked in."
Max looked at him. "That means their security is inoperative?" she asked uncertainly, walking through to his study.
"It means the elevator's out of action," he told her evenly.
"Oh."
"I guess you get to find Seth your way after all," he congratulated her ironically.
She thought this wasn't the time to point out that her way was probably the safer one.
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Logan sat by the windows in the living room, but tonight the usually impressive vista was almost nonexistent. The high-rise area remained in darkness and the only light that Logan could see in the other buildings was the scattered emergency lighting in any buildings that had a working generator, or sometimes the telltale flicker of light from a candle in a window.
He'd blown out the candle that Genevieve had left on the coffee table, and had taken off his glasses, preferring the almost total darkness. With no view to distract him from his thoughts, Logan leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, his eyes probing the darkness where somewhere he knew his feet to be, vaguely aware of the chink of glass and crockery as Bling and Genevieve washed the dishes.
He'd watched Max leave with mixed feelings.
He knew she was the best one to locate Seth, the only one really, but he still felt the strong need to retain the young man's confidence in them. Max holding him in a headlock was hardly likely to inspire trust.
Then there was Martin. There'd been no word from him all day, and Logan's mind was already preparing him with 'How to tell Jonas and Margo their son is dead' scenarios. Bennett's wedding had only been weeks ago – How do I tell him his brother's dead?
Suddenly, his decision to not tell Jonas the complete truth appeared a conceited mistake. Martin was his son after all. Surely he had every right to know what mess his son was in?
A distant flicker of light somewhere outside caught his attention. Outside...where Max was.
She was going home to pick up her motorcycle, then heading down to Murdoch's Bar, hoping to find Seth hanging there.
So here I am sitting safe and sound, while Max checks out one of the worst parts of Seattle – alone.
"Your candle went out."
Logan grabbed his glasses from his knee, slipping them on one-handed as Genevieve approached with a burning candle. He didn't want to tell her that he'd blown it out. He doubted that a child would understand that sometimes the darkness could be more of a friend than the light.
The child gave him a big smile, and Logan felt a little ashamed of his own maudlin thoughts. What evidence did he have that Martin was dead, even hurt? In all probability, his cousin had simply found himself a comfortable hotel for the night, and Max could take care of herself. She didn't need him worrying about her.
"Hey, why don't you pull up a few cushions," he smiled at Genevieve. "Nothin' else to do."
He put his hand out for the fat candle she held in her hand, and placed it on the window ledge while she did as he suggested, returning with three of the cushions from the couch. She put them on the floor in front of Logan and sat down on them cross-legged.
"Comfy?" he asked her.
Genevieve nodded, then turned her head to look outside.
"Not much of a view tonight," Logan told her. "Too dark."
"Is Max your girlfriend?" Genevieve asked unexpectedly, taking Logan completely by surprise.
"No, we're just friends," he replied quickly.
"Is she your best friend?"
"Yeah, I guess you could say that," he finally admitted slowly, smiling at her childish way of simplifying everything. He couldn't imagine any of his other friends throwing themselves from buildings to rescue him.
"You hurt your finger," she suddenly stated, looking at the one with the Band-Aid that rested on the wheel of his chair.
Logan went to shrug and say, "No big deal," when she looked up at him and asked, "How did it happen?"
Intuitively he knew she wasn't talking about his cut finger.
As though a little afraid of his reaction, she said quickly, "Max said you don't like to talk about it."
Logan rubbed the back of his neck where the hair had been cut short, then let his hand slide down to the top of his shoulders, before letting go.
When he looked down, she was still looking at him with a mixture of curiosity and hopefulness. At the same time, he had the distinct impression that if he'd simply said, No, I don't wanna talk about it, she would have said, okay.
Logan took a deep breath. Max was right; he didn't like to talk about it. The whole thing was an issue he did his best to ignore as much as possible.
"I was trying to help a little girl - about your age - and her mom get away from some bad guys," he told her, but to his own ears this sounded far too altruistic. "Well, it was more like they were doing me a favour," he admitted instead, "and because of that, the bad men wanted to hurt them."
"Did you save them?" she asked, and even Logan could see that she was hoping he'd say yes.
"No. I got shot," he told her a little brutally. "I didn't do anything ...for quite a long time after that."
"What happened to the little girl and her mommy?" she asked in a hushed tone.
"The mother got away, but Max saved the little girl," he told her, careful to keep his tone even. "Max is good at things like that," he added in as matter-a-fact a manner as he could.
Genevieve had gone very quiet.
Well, it's good for her to know the truth – I'm no hero, he thought grimly.
Genevieve suddenly looked up at him, but instead of her long, fair hair, he saw Sophy's long, wavy, dark hair...brown eyes instead of blue...another childish face that had looked up at him with trust.
He turned away from her quickly, returning to the safety of his motionless feet. They didn't ask him questions he didn't want to answer or force him to remember situations he had purposefully tried to forget.
"I'm sorry, Logan."
His eye caught the slight movement and he shifted his gaze to see one of her hands resting on his knee.
"My mom says I ask too many questions," she said in a small voice.
"Hey, it's okay. It's just that sometimes remembering is ..." his voice trailed off a little.
"My mom says the same thing. She wouldn't let me talk about the time Monique..." Suddenly she stopped, her eyes going large.
"Genevieve, did something happen to Monique?" Logan asked with sudden interest, but he saw the reserved look back on Genevieve's face. He wondered a little wryly why she could extract secrets from him with such ease, yet be so good at keeping her own.
If only he had a little more to go on. Even with the suspicion that the family was in some kind of witness protection program, he'd purposefully not pressed the child for more details about her life. She was being obedient to the things her parents had told her, and had obviously had it drummed into her so thoroughly that he felt to press her for details would be just way too stressful for her.
Now, however, he felt a subtle change in her. It was as though she wanted to talk.
"Genevieve, I want to find your mommy and daddy, but I don't know where to look because I don't know enough about them. I won't tell any of their secrets to the wrong people," he promised her.
"The bad men took Monique away," she told him quietly. "Mommy cried for a long time."
"When did this happen?" Logan asked intently.
"When Monique was only little - about one and a half years ago."
"But the men brought her back?"
Genevieve smiled a little as she remembered this part. "We went to a park, and she was there on a baby swing. She screamed when we tried to take her off," she laughed a little through some unshed tears.
"Sounds like Monique," Logan grinned at her. "How long was Monique gone for?" he asked, his voice still gentle.
Genevieve thought back. "About four days I think."
"Did things change for you after that?" he asked her, a wealth of meaning behind the simple words.
The child lifted wide, solemn eyes to his face, and nodded just once.
Logan returned her nod and gave her one of his wide smiles, covering her hand with his own.
"You did right to tell me, Genevieve. Your mom won't be angry," he assured her.
"Are you still mad at me?"
Feeling bad that he'd made her think such a thing, Logan told her quickly, "I was never mad at you. I'm mad at myself sometimes," he admitted with uncharacteristic honesty.
"I've been thinking about it. What you said...about the other little girl."
Logan looked at her with a faint smile hovering at the corner of his mouth. The child continually surprised him.
"What words of wisdom do you have for me this time?" he wondered to her out loud with a touch of suspicion.
Getting up on her knees, and putting a hand on his arm that rested on the wheel of his chair, she explained to him, "My mom always says that friends help each other."
"I can't fault that logic," Logan agreed.
Genevieve smiled widely at him. "That's good," she enthused, "because if Max did it, it's just like you did it."
Not quite able to follow the logic of this one, he tried a polite nod of understanding, but she obviously wasn't fooled for a moment.
"Well, Max is your best friend, and that's what best friends do for each other," she told him simply.
"Right," Logan responded with a slight frown.
"So...if Max does something for you because you can't, then it's just the same as if you did it," she concluded happily, "because she's your best friend."
"I guess so," Logan agreed with a slightly amused, but definitely thoughtful expression.
"Genevieve, Max said you had to be in bed by now," Bling called to her from the kitchen.
Her face fell at the thought, and she looked to Logan hopefully.
"No, you've gotta got to bed. It's late," he told her, "and I don't want Max mad at me," he added with a grin.
"She wouldn't be mad at you, Logan. She's only mad at Martin."
Thinking of a number of times when Max had been angry with him, not to mention the times when she'd been plain furious with him he let that one go by with a firm, "Good night."
Plunged once more back into semi-darkness when Genevieve took the candle with her, he frowned a little, remembering the child's words.
Why had Max shown up that night at the hospital when Bruno had tried to take him out a second time? The rescuing-Sophy part he could understand – but Max's version of events that night had always confused him a little. Why had she gone back to his apartment? She'd told him it was because she was trying to ID Anselmo, but what did Anselmo mean to her at the time?
Could there be some truth to what Genevieve said? Had she done some of it, even the tiniest bit...for him?
Logan looked up as the phone rang, but didn't bother to move as Bling picked it up.
The call was brief.
"Logan, they've got the elevator working again."
"Great!" Logan enthused with relief. Sitting around without even his computer to distract him was beginning to wear very thin. "You'll watch the girls for me?"
Bling looked at him with suspicion.
"You goin' out?" he asked with surprise.
"I need to talk to Seth. There's a good chance if he sees Max first, he'll make a run for it," he explained, the enthusiasm that a purpose brings strong in his voice.
"I don't like to burst your bubble, but I thought I heard Max saying she was gonna bring him back here. She wanted to do this alone."
"Max doesn't know Seth," Logan explained a little tersely as he headed past the kitchen toward his bedroom.
"South Market Street at night..." Bling let the words hang in the air.
"I'll take my gun, and I'll meet up with Max. Besides, she hasn't found Seth yet. She told me she'd call me when she did, so she could probably do with some help," he told Bling as he shrugged himself into his leather jacket.
"Maybe she couldn't get to a phone..." Bling began, but stopped at the look Logan was giving him.
"Don't wait up for me, Mom," were Logan's last words to his less-than-happy trainer as he went out.
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Logan handed his card to the sector guard, trying to conceal his impatience and sense of growing unease. For once he hoped that Max hadn't done her job with her usual skill and precision. He just wanted the chance to talk to Seth alone and gain the boy's confidence. He suspected that if he didn't deal with Seth gently, the giant would never reveal to them what he knew about Emma's disappearance, and Logan was almost sure he knew something.
"You're out late," the sector cop growled suspiciously at Logan through his open car window.
"I've got a sick friend to visit," Logan replied straight-faced.
The cop stared into the car again, as if expecting four escaped prisoners to be lurking there, but when none jumped out, he had no choice but to wave Logan through.
Logan knew exactly where Murdoch's Bar was, and he knew exactly what type of seedy establishment it was, remembering the couple of times before Bruno Anselmo's handiwork that he'd gone there to meet with one of his less- salubrious informants.
He kept an eye out for Max's motorcycle, but was undecided as to whether or not he was disappointed when he didn't come across it.
The area itself was reasonably quiet, which surprised him, but the noise from Murdoch's coming through his open window as he drove by seemed to make up for it. At least the power was on here, he noticed with satisfaction, as he was fortunate enough to find a place to park his car underneath one of the few streetlights in the area.
Logan was thankful that the transfer was particularly quick and smooth – it was the time he felt at his most vulnerable in an area like this. It would be far too easy for someone to...He quickly stopped his thoughts from going in that direction. Must be all Bling's worries rubbing off on me, he thought, a little annoyed to find himself feeling so tense now that he was here.
Not as if I've never been to South Market by myself this time of night before, he told himself a little sarcastically, blocking out the voice that said, Yeah, but last time you were on two feet.
Making sure he slipped both his gun and his phone into his jacket pocket, and being doubly sure to lock his car, he set off toward Murdoch's Bar. It was about 150 yards down on the opposite side of the street.
A sudden shout of laughter from across the way made Logan warily observe a group of five drunken youths as they came toward him. Purposefully not looking in their direction, he pushed on to the other side of the road, and was a little relieved as they took no notice of him. He didn't want to be caught up with other matters tonight. His single goal was to find Seth.
He hadn't paged Max yet and he knew he should. Now that he was here, she'd just have to accept the fact that they were doing it his way, he decided grimly, wondering how many fireworks there might be.
The night air was decidedly chilly, but he was glad for the feel of the cold wind on his face; it added a sense of clarity to his thoughts that hadn't been there earlier. The admission from Genevieve about her sister's disappearance had given him a lot to think about as he drove. Had someone kidnapped the child to force her parents into doing something? It appeared highly unlikely that she would have been kidnapped for money.
Logan was now passing a road that ran a few doors down from Murdoch's.
He glanced into the darkness casually, checking for oncoming traffic before continuing on his way.
He was about to cross when something made him look closely down the road again.
It was hard to make anything out. The road was narrow, and the three- and four-story buildings that faced it mostly seemed to be in darkness as well.
When his eyes failed to detect any sign of movement, he went to move on, but then he remembered that he still had to contact Max. He grabbed his phone from his jacket pocket and paged her.
He waited for a minute in the cold, half-expecting her to call him immediately if she'd been within distance of a phone. Now that he was here, he had to admit that he didn't really look forward to entering Murdoch's Bar by himself. The thought made him wonder since when had he come to rely on Max's presence - not so much for her protection as for her companionship. He'd bet she'd have a few witty remarks to make about some of the clientele to be found there.
Realizing that she wasn't about to call, he left the phone on his lap, in readiness to pick up when her call came through.
He forced himself into action and was about to head on toward the bar when this time he could have sworn he heard a noise somewhere in the vicinity where he thought he'd seen the movement down the narrow road.
Unexpectedly, a light in one of the buildings suddenly came on. Logan was startled to get a quick glimpse of a man hovering over something on the ground, and in that instant he looked straight at Logan, who was clearly revealed by the light from the street behind him.
One point struck Logan immediately. The man he'd seen had been big – not just tall but a mountain of a man. Instinctively, Logan got his gun out and placed it between his legs.
"Seth," Logan called to him, quickly swinging around and heading down the road to the point where he could still make out the definite figure of Seth. His eyes narrowed suddenly as he realized that Seth was hovering over the body of a man in a suit. As Logan got closer, the young man stood up suddenly, a stunned look on his face as he held out hands darkened with something.
"You shouldn't be here, Logan," he heard the boy say, before everything became very confused.
He turned quickly as he heard the sound of a car driving down the narrow road. Before he had a chance to protest, Seth grabbed his arms and lifted him in a fireman's hold onto his enormous shoulders, and began running as fast as he could with Logan's added weight.
Completely taken by surprise, Logan tried to resist the iron-like grip that held his arms, but he soon gave this up as futile. In his next thought, he hoped his glasses didn't slip off as the laws of gravity probably decreed that they should.
"Seth," he tried to protest as he became aware of the fact that the young giant was now carrying him up a narrow flight of stairs.
Logan lost track of how many floors they'd gone up. The sensation of blood rushing to his head was beginning to feel extremely unpleasant. He'd tried raising his head once or twice but had been forced to put it down again quickly as a corner of the stairwell loomed perilously close.
He was beginning to wonder how much more he could take and how much further Seth would be able to carry him, as the boy's breathing was beginning to sound very laboured, when Seth stopped at a doorway with the obvious intent of opening the door.
The huge boy carried Logan in, and without a word dumped him down heavily on a bed. Without giving Logan even a moment to take a breath, he turned on his heel and headed out again.
Logan opened his mouth as if to speak, but stopped suddenly.
The click as the key turned in the lock sounded ominously loud in the gloom.
TBC
Special thanks to Kyre for her excellent and thorough beta. She stepped in and kindly agreed to beta for me at the last minute when Alaidh was unable to – and scored my longest chapter to date in the process!
And of course a big thanks to Alaidh who proved invaluable in finding a missed typo and for her many words of wisdom!
CHAPTER 16
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The elevator lurched once, then began its short but jerky way down to the floor below.
Max made a face.
"Another smooth ride in a rusty crate."
Logan looked around, taking in the faded, cigarette-burned carpet and dirty walls. At some stage, someone had tried to keep abreast of the continual stream of juvenile witticisms that were scrawled on the faded, fake wood panels, but it looked like they had finally accepted the inevitability of it and left the miscreants to their creative ways.
"You know how many cages like this one I have to put up with every day? I tell you, Logan, there's hardly a decent elevator left in Seattle."
"Yeah, well, do me a favour and don't tell me about it – I'd rather live in blissful ignorance."
She looked down at him and smiled a little at his dry tone, then turned back to the door, realizing that it hadn't opened.
"What the..."
"Yeah, that happened to me the first time. Seth said you just have to press the 'open' button a few times," he told her, glancing at the wall as he tried to make sense of a particularly bizarre group of words.
"And...?" she asked sweetly, as nothing happened.
Logan turned and shrugged. "It worked for him," he muttered, looking around again and noticing for the first time how unpleasantly stuffy the air in there was.
Noticing his glance, Max murmured provokingly, "You got a problem with small, stuffy, confined spaces as well as heights?"
"As a matter of fact – no."
Max pushed the button with an impatient prod for the fourth time.
"Logan..." she warned him, as if somehow this was his fault.
"Let me look at it."
Moving forward, Logan gave the button one push, only to look up with a certain amount of satisfaction when the doors shuddered a little, then slid open.
"I wouldn't look too smug yet, hotshot," she told him smartly. "We still gotta get down in this later."
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If anything, the floor below was even less prepossessing than the one above, certainly if the smell was anything to go by.
"Ugh, what died?" Max grimaced, tempted to put her hand over her nose.
"Don't joke about it," Logan warned her as he pushed his way toward Apartment 408. "The way things have gone lately, it'd be just our luck to find a room full o'bodies."
"What are you gonna say to Seth anyway? Hey, Seth, how come you've been beating up on my cousin? Maybe I should thank him," she then pondered aloud, not entirely joking.
"Max."
"Just a thought," she returned quickly with far too innocent an expression.
Max reached the door to Seth's apartment first, and turned to Logan with an enquiring look.
"Go ahead," Logan said quietly.
Max knocked on the door, then stood in the hallway, listening intently for any noise from within.
When there was no answer, she tried again. After waiting another moment or two, she put her hand on the doorknob.
Logan cast a quick glance at either end of the hallway, but apparently no one else enjoyed the smell wafting down the hallway, and the other doors remained firmly closed.
By the time Logan had looked back to Max, she had picked the lock and was turning to him with a warning finger held to her lips, then a hand raised to tell him to wait there.
Feeling curiously on edge, Logan waited for her return, his eyes doing several sweeps of the hallway this time. The thought crossed his mind that he should have some excuse made up about why he was loitering in hallways, but all he could think of was the fact that he hoped Max would hurry because the horrible stench was beginning to get to him. It made him think how unpleasant her life as a bike messenger must be at times – having to deal with Normal and his idiosyncrasies, unreliable elevators, smelly apartment blocks – probably smelly people, if it came to that. They were sobering thoughts; he knew he had a lot in life to be thankful for.
"Hey."
He looked up, feeling a little relieved to see Max signalling him to enter.
Once he was through the doorway, she stepped behind him, checked the hallway herself, and closed the door.
Logan took a tentative sniff of air, then a larger one as he realized thankfully that the repulsive aroma was not emanating from Seth's room. Mind you, once he looked around, he wouldn't have been surprised if it had. For a non-ransacked room, it looked particularly ransacked.
"Guess his mommy never taught him to pick up after himself," Max said quietly, unconsciously mirroring his thoughts.
"At least he's left a clear path," Logan replied, sticking to the only area not covered with clothing, old papers, pizza boxes (obviously a favourite meal), dirty dishes, and anything else he could possibly think of that should have been put away, thrown in the trash, or washed, and hadn't been.
"He's kinda neat with his newspapers," remarked Max, motioning to a pile of them that were more or less stacked up in some semblance of order in a corner of the living room.
Logan wandered over and started flicking through the stack that rose as high as the back of his chair. "They don't seem to be anything special," he started to say, only to stop abruptly and pull his hand back hastily when he disturbed a particularly ugly, fat black spider that had probably been living there undisturbed for some time.
"What...you find something?" Max asked quickly.
"No, just old newspapers," Logan replied casually, backing away from the pile.
"What's with all the half-eaten food?" Max wondered aloud, looking at yet another plate of pizza scraps that were growing a lovely colony of fungus.
Logan simply raised an eyebrow. "What's with any of this?" he commented, looking around the gloomy room. There was no bright wallpaper here. The single window was covered in curtains that looked like they were held together by the years' worth of dust that clung to them.
"Can we turn on a light, or open the curtains or something?" Logan suggested, finding the half-light hopeless for his vision.
Max strode over to the door and turned on the solitary overhead light that hung down from the ceiling.
"The man's a complete pig," Max said with disgust. "You think we're gonna find anything here that would help us? I guess it's just possible that Emma Belding could be living under one of those piles of old newspapers and dirty clothes."
"I'm half expecting to find the remains of a wedding banquet, complete with mice and cobwebs," Logan whispered wryly. "There's a distinctly 'Dickensian' feel to all this."
"I don't think Seth is old enough to have been jilted at the altar and then spent the next twenty years among the ruins of his bridal table."
"Give him time," Logan muttered.
Suddenly Max put an imperative finger to her lips.
Logan had heard nothing, but he trusted Max's heightened senses in circumstances like this. Frowning a little, he watched her as she silently made her way over to the bedroom door.
Then he heard it too.
Instinctively Logan put his hands to his wheels. He didn't like the idea of her walking into the room – unpleasant surprises seemed to have a habit of lurking behind closed doors.
Max paused an instant, almost at the door to Seth's bedroom, then quickly turned to Logan with another warning look that said, "Stay there."
Wishing he'd brought his gun with him, Logan watched her as she disappeared through the doorway. His eyes widened a little as he heard a distinctive thump, as though something was hitting the wall with force.
Ignoring Max's advice, he pushed forward, only to stop short as she emerged, holding a very large, slightly stunned rat by the tail.
"Well, he may not have the wedding cake, but he's got the mice and the rats and the cobwebs..."
"And the spiders," Logan added, looking at the rodent with obvious distaste.
"Guess you don't have these at your place - you lead a deprived life," Max commiserated him as she saw his expression.
Logan threw her a sidelong glance, always a little touchy about his wealth, then just managed to stop himself from instinctively rolling back a little as Max let the rat down and it headed straight towards him, at the last second veering off to head for the pile of newspapers and squeeze itself safely behind them.
"I think we should get outta here," Logan called to her softly as she disappeared into the bathroom to wash her hands.
She came out triumphantly a few minutes later, holding up a box of Band- Aids.
"Max, I can't steal Seth's things," he protested a little.
Max looked at him. "Logan, we've already done the whole 'breaking and entering' dealio. This is the part that's s'posed to come next." Then adding with dryness, "Logan, it's just a Band-Aid."
"It's Seth's Band-Aid, and besides, it's probably not even sterile."
Ignoring his protests, Max walked up to him, pulling a Band-Aid from its packet in a businesslike manner. She peeled back the paper to reveal the sticky edges.
Giving in, Logan pulled off the two Kleenex he'd wound tightly around his finger.
"It's probably not even bleeding now," he muttered as he realized she expected him to put his finger out for her.
"It is quite deep, Logan," she murmured as she wound the strip around the cut, which, as Logan had said, had stopped bleeding.
"So what else was in the bedroom?" he asked, clearing his throat a little as he found to his discomfort that the sensation of Max holding onto his hand was totally different from the one of Charlie holding onto his hand.
"Yeah, I was going to check on that," she remembered suddenly, turning around. "There were some handwritten notes on a bedside table next to his phone."
Logan watched her disappear into the bedroom again, casting another wary glance around the room while he waited.
"You'd be amazed with this," Max said, popping her head around the bedroom door. "Take a look."
Logan moved forward curiously, stopping at the door to Seth's bedroom.
It was a small room, dominated by the king-size double bed that stood in the middle of it, but what was surprising was the almost total lack of mess in this room. The bed was made, and the top of the bureau was generally free of trash. It was like stepping into another apartment entirely.
"I am amazed," he acknowledged, pausing at the door of the cramped room.
"Logan, look at this," Max said intently as she scanned the papers in her hand.
"What is it?"
Max wordlessly walked around the bed to the doorway and handed him the notes she'd found.
Logan peered at them, but the light was bad. Putting them in his lap he pushed back a little until he was back under the dreary light in the living room, then perused the papers once more.
"Murdoch's Bar?" he said quietly.
"Yeah, it's a dive next to South Market."
"I know that - I meant why would Seth be hangin' out at Murdoch's?"
"The second page might tell you."
Logan studied the second page carefully.
Did it mean what he thought it did?
He looked up, not quite willing to speak out his assumptions.
"Well?" Max finally prompted him.
"These are the locations of the places they found the severed arms."
"You think he's doin' his own detective work?" wondered Max. "...or maybe he likes to keep track of where he left his spare body parts," she added bluntly.
Logan shook his head. "I can't believe Seth's killing those girls."
"What, just because he helps you in the elevator he becomes an all-around good guy? I think not."
"Max, you met him ...he seem like a killer to you?"
"Logan, all I know is that he's big enough and strong enough to take out almost anyone he wants to with his bare hands."
"Just because he's physically able to do it doesn't make him guilty."
"I'm just saying make sure you don't bump into him in a dark alley."
"You'd better put these back before we leave," Logan murmured a little distractedly.
Max raised her eyes a little, but did as he said.
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The elevator responded perfectly to all their demands on the way down and they made it back to the car with a surprising lack of excitement, which, Max had to reflect, suited her fine. If the next few days remained similarly boring, she'd be more than happy. A week of some nice, dull Eyes Only 'break in and steal a disc'-type dealios looked remarkably good right now.
Her one goal in life presently was to see the girls reunited with their parents and Martin out of Logan's hair, one way or another.
The sun that had shone so pleasantly earlier in the afternoon had beaten a hasty retreat behind a huge bank of ominous grey clouds. The sudden drop in temperature was noticeable, and even Max noticed that the denim jacket she wore was not protection enough against the biting wind that had sprung up.
The traffic was a lot heavier now; Logan would have to get in the passenger side and swing across.
"You want me to stow your chair in the back?" she asked him, to save him the bother of dismantling it.
"Logan?" she asked again when he didn't respond.
He looked up at her, and she could see his mind replaying the words that he'd only half-listened to.
"Sure," he agreed as he unlocked the door, then as an afterthought, "Thanks."
When he'd driven for ten minutes through the slow-moving traffic without saying a word, as if he were on auto-pilot, she finally said, "So, are you masterminding a plan to blow up 'The World's Biggest Coke Can?"
Logan, who'd just stopped for a red light, turned his head very slowly. "Should I be?"
"It is pretty ugly. Then again you might be planning on blowing up The World's Biggest Fire Hydrant, Or The World's Biggest Piggy Bank or even The World's Biggest Cookie Jar," she finished thoughtfully.
She definitely had his attention now – even if it was simply annoyance with her.
"Do I even want to know where these fascinating treasures are to be found?" he asked with careful restraint.
"Well, while you were probably touring Europe with your folks, I was checking out our Northern neighbours. Would you believe it, there's also..."
"I don't wanna know about it," he interrupted repressively.
Max smiled a little.
"Cool," she agreed, then a little more aggressively, "So why have you gone so quiet?"
Logan debated the pros and cons of telling her. His instincts warned him against it.
"I guess I'm thinking about a lot o' things," he told her vaguely.
"You care to be a little more specific?"
Throwing caution to the wind, Logan admitted, "I'd like to talk to Seth."
"Not a problem. He seems to be hangin' out at South Market. No reason I can't swing down there and find him."
Sensing Logan's hesitation, she said, "What?"
"Max, I don't wanna scare him off. If he knows anything at all about Emma, we need to keep him on our side."
"What, you think I can't handle him?"
"I think if he sees you or gets wind of the fact that you're looking for him, he's gonna bolt."
"Well, he can't bolt faster than me," Max told him with a certain amount of satisfaction.
"If you remember, the first time you met him you knocked him to the floor and shoved him up against a wall."
"You think he holds a grudge?"
"Max," Logan said with exasperation at her refusal to see it his way, "I can't afford to alienate him. He may be our only link to Emma. Did you wonder why his bedroom was so clean?" he added on a more thoughtful note.
"You think they're an item?" asked Max, wrinkling her nose at the thought. The young giant hadn't made a particularly big impression on her, other than his remarkable strength and size.
Logan shook his head with a touch of impatience. "I just said I'm wondering, that's all."
"Wondering I'm cool with - it's the other stuff you've got in your mind I'm not so sure about."
"Max, if he thinks for a moment that we mean anything other than Emma Belding's good ..."
"Yeah, yeah. I get it, Logan."
By this time they were almost at his apartment building.
"Any of our friends in suits around?" Logan asked her, thankful to change the subject.
Max studied the area carefully. "Not unless they're invisible," she finally replied.
Logan's eyes went to his phone. "No word from Martin."
Max felt a slight stab of guilt.
"Maybe he called the other line," she offered, but in her heart she doubted it.
Logan nodded imperceptibly, as much an acknowledgement of her words as the sentiment he knew she was offering behind them.
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They were greeted with enthusiasm by both girls when they came in, and to a lesser extent by Bling.
"How'd it go?" the trainer asked, trying to hush Monique a little at the same time.
"Well, Charlie got what she wanted," Max told him blandly as she moved to Monique and picked her up.
"You girls had fun with Bling?"
Bling looked toward Logan, but wasn't the least surprised when no answer was forthcoming from that direction and he headed straight into his computer.
"Max, you promised," Monique was now insisting very loudly.
"Apparently you told her that Logan would give her a ride. She hasn't stopped talking about it all afternoon," Bling told Max with a slightly harassed smile as they walked through to the kitchen.
"I did," she admitted, looking tentatively over at Logan, who was already busy checking on the program that was still attempting to hack into the witness protection files. He had the same distracted air about him that he'd had ever since they'd left Seth's place. Instinctively, she knew this was not the time to ask him.
"How about if Logan gives you a ride at bedtime? Would that be fun?" Max asked the child hopefully, sitting her down on one of the kitchen counters.
Monique's expression said that it would be anything but fun.
"Wow, that'd be great, Monique," put in Genevieve enthusiastically, doing her part to brainwash the child that later would be much better than now.
Monique looked unconvinced for a long moment, but after some further persuasion she eventually gave in.
"Looks like the program's almost through," Logan told Max a few moments later, the barest tinge of hope creeping into his voice as he wheeled out to the kitchen. They so needed something to go right.
"So, I'd better get some dinner happening," he murmured, going over to the refrigerator.
"I'll bathe the girls... well, Monique," she added, seeing the look of protest on Genevieve's face.
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Logan was saved from having to give Monique a ride on his lap when the child virtually fell asleep at the dinner table. Genevieve, definitely feeling more relaxed with them, while still cautious to not reveal anything of great import, managed to chat on quite happily about this and that.
Max, smiling at something she had said, looked across at Logan. He'd been staring at his almost-finished plate for some time.
She suspected he'd eaten it without even tasting it. What a waste.
Max had just picked up Monique to carry her to bed when she heard an unusual kind of popping sound and saw Logan suddenly put his head up. With a tense expression, he backed up from the table and quickly headed toward his computer.
"Oh, no," she heard him mutter as she followed him and saw that his computer screen was now ominously blank.
"Power surge?" Max was about to ask when the entire apartment was unexpectedly plunged into darkness.
Logan sat in the darkness, not trusting himself to speak with Genevieve close by.
His computer had now gone completely dead.
Max looked immediately toward Logan. The expression on his face said it all. Those hours of work trying to hack into Witness Protection – useless. He'd have to start all over again – or start looking into the Russian connection.
Genevieve, who had been sitting next to Logan, immediately jumped up and tried to find him. Heading in the direction of his study, she put a hand out to feel for him, thankfully finding his arm, then his shoulder.
"Is it something bad? What happened?" she asked nervously.
"Just another brownout," Logan told her tersely, still trying to hold onto his patience as he tried to get his head around this latest calamity.
"Nothing to worry about, Genevieve," Bling called to her, "I'll get some candles, and we'll have light in no time."
"I'll put Monique into bed then come and help," Max told them, the only one untroubled by the sudden plunge into darkness.
"How will she see?" Genevieve asked Logan, only just beginning to be able to make out the outline of his face as her eyes gradually adjusted.
"There's a little bit of light coming through the windows," Logan explained, looking about as he spoke and wondering dryly where this mythical light might be. The apartment was now incredibly dark. "Max has good eyesight," he added, noting the dullness of his own voice. He reflected sourly it was damned hard to not let his frustration show.
"There you go," said Bling, striking a match and putting it to a candle that Logan kept on top of the wine rack for emergencies such as these.
Logan turned his face away for the moment, tightening his lips as he felt another surge of disappointment The darkness had been more suited to his present frame of mind.
Perhaps knowing a little of what Logan was thinking, the trainer said to Genevieve, "How about you come and light some more candles for me?"
Taking the solitary one that was lit, he led the child into the kitchen where Logan kept other candles in a drawer.
Logan stared stonily ahead as he was slowly left in a deepening darkness as Bling walked away, his candle casting weird and wonderful shadows as he went.
He'd just let out a particularly explosive, angry sigh when Max's voice said, "Sorry about the programme."
His shoulders jerked suddenly - the surprise she had given him doing absolutely nothing for his present frame of mind.
Max struck the match she held along the side of the box then watched with fascination as the one flame quickly flared to become two as the wick from the candle she'd grabbed from the kitchen ignited.
With enough light to see by, Logan pushed himself slowly towards the windows and looked out at the unrelenting darkness of the night, his own face reflecting back to him against the windowpane.
"Looks like I'll have to change my tack after all," he finally murmured, aware of Max's presence behind him.
"The power surge blew out the UPS?" she asked gently.
"Yup," he replied in a dry, upbeat tone that fooled no one.
"But the computer itself is okay - you could always run your program again as soon as the power comes on," Max suggested.
"Yeah. Sure."
She winced a little at his tone of voice.
Genevieve came through at that point with another candle and placed it on the glass-topped table in front of the couch.
"Bling told me to ask if you wanted a drink," she said, coming around to stand next to Max. When they both declined, she said with big eyes, "Bling's gonna make me a hot chocolate."
Logan waited until he could no longer hear her retreating steps, then said abruptly, "I gotta talk to Seth."
"Fine. I'll find him and bring him back here."
"Max..." Logan began, only to stop as the noise of his phone ringing echoed through his apartment.
Hoping it was Martin, he quickly swung around as Max hastily stepped out of his way.
Max leaned against the window, aware of the cool feel of the glass against her back, and watched Logan in his study. The news didn't appear to be good. The shortness of the one-syllable words told their own story. "Right...fine...let me know."
He didn't turn back around immediately. Not Martin, she suddenly thought – more concerned with how Logan would react should any harm have befallen Martin than for the man himself.
"Hey?" she queried gently across the room, hesitant to go too close in case it was bad news and it was somehow her fault.
"That was security downstairs. Apparently the emergency generator hasn't kicked in."
Max looked at him. "That means their security is inoperative?" she asked uncertainly, walking through to his study.
"It means the elevator's out of action," he told her evenly.
"Oh."
"I guess you get to find Seth your way after all," he congratulated her ironically.
She thought this wasn't the time to point out that her way was probably the safer one.
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Logan sat by the windows in the living room, but tonight the usually impressive vista was almost nonexistent. The high-rise area remained in darkness and the only light that Logan could see in the other buildings was the scattered emergency lighting in any buildings that had a working generator, or sometimes the telltale flicker of light from a candle in a window.
He'd blown out the candle that Genevieve had left on the coffee table, and had taken off his glasses, preferring the almost total darkness. With no view to distract him from his thoughts, Logan leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, his eyes probing the darkness where somewhere he knew his feet to be, vaguely aware of the chink of glass and crockery as Bling and Genevieve washed the dishes.
He'd watched Max leave with mixed feelings.
He knew she was the best one to locate Seth, the only one really, but he still felt the strong need to retain the young man's confidence in them. Max holding him in a headlock was hardly likely to inspire trust.
Then there was Martin. There'd been no word from him all day, and Logan's mind was already preparing him with 'How to tell Jonas and Margo their son is dead' scenarios. Bennett's wedding had only been weeks ago – How do I tell him his brother's dead?
Suddenly, his decision to not tell Jonas the complete truth appeared a conceited mistake. Martin was his son after all. Surely he had every right to know what mess his son was in?
A distant flicker of light somewhere outside caught his attention. Outside...where Max was.
She was going home to pick up her motorcycle, then heading down to Murdoch's Bar, hoping to find Seth hanging there.
So here I am sitting safe and sound, while Max checks out one of the worst parts of Seattle – alone.
"Your candle went out."
Logan grabbed his glasses from his knee, slipping them on one-handed as Genevieve approached with a burning candle. He didn't want to tell her that he'd blown it out. He doubted that a child would understand that sometimes the darkness could be more of a friend than the light.
The child gave him a big smile, and Logan felt a little ashamed of his own maudlin thoughts. What evidence did he have that Martin was dead, even hurt? In all probability, his cousin had simply found himself a comfortable hotel for the night, and Max could take care of herself. She didn't need him worrying about her.
"Hey, why don't you pull up a few cushions," he smiled at Genevieve. "Nothin' else to do."
He put his hand out for the fat candle she held in her hand, and placed it on the window ledge while she did as he suggested, returning with three of the cushions from the couch. She put them on the floor in front of Logan and sat down on them cross-legged.
"Comfy?" he asked her.
Genevieve nodded, then turned her head to look outside.
"Not much of a view tonight," Logan told her. "Too dark."
"Is Max your girlfriend?" Genevieve asked unexpectedly, taking Logan completely by surprise.
"No, we're just friends," he replied quickly.
"Is she your best friend?"
"Yeah, I guess you could say that," he finally admitted slowly, smiling at her childish way of simplifying everything. He couldn't imagine any of his other friends throwing themselves from buildings to rescue him.
"You hurt your finger," she suddenly stated, looking at the one with the Band-Aid that rested on the wheel of his chair.
Logan went to shrug and say, "No big deal," when she looked up at him and asked, "How did it happen?"
Intuitively he knew she wasn't talking about his cut finger.
As though a little afraid of his reaction, she said quickly, "Max said you don't like to talk about it."
Logan rubbed the back of his neck where the hair had been cut short, then let his hand slide down to the top of his shoulders, before letting go.
When he looked down, she was still looking at him with a mixture of curiosity and hopefulness. At the same time, he had the distinct impression that if he'd simply said, No, I don't wanna talk about it, she would have said, okay.
Logan took a deep breath. Max was right; he didn't like to talk about it. The whole thing was an issue he did his best to ignore as much as possible.
"I was trying to help a little girl - about your age - and her mom get away from some bad guys," he told her, but to his own ears this sounded far too altruistic. "Well, it was more like they were doing me a favour," he admitted instead, "and because of that, the bad men wanted to hurt them."
"Did you save them?" she asked, and even Logan could see that she was hoping he'd say yes.
"No. I got shot," he told her a little brutally. "I didn't do anything ...for quite a long time after that."
"What happened to the little girl and her mommy?" she asked in a hushed tone.
"The mother got away, but Max saved the little girl," he told her, careful to keep his tone even. "Max is good at things like that," he added in as matter-a-fact a manner as he could.
Genevieve had gone very quiet.
Well, it's good for her to know the truth – I'm no hero, he thought grimly.
Genevieve suddenly looked up at him, but instead of her long, fair hair, he saw Sophy's long, wavy, dark hair...brown eyes instead of blue...another childish face that had looked up at him with trust.
He turned away from her quickly, returning to the safety of his motionless feet. They didn't ask him questions he didn't want to answer or force him to remember situations he had purposefully tried to forget.
"I'm sorry, Logan."
His eye caught the slight movement and he shifted his gaze to see one of her hands resting on his knee.
"My mom says I ask too many questions," she said in a small voice.
"Hey, it's okay. It's just that sometimes remembering is ..." his voice trailed off a little.
"My mom says the same thing. She wouldn't let me talk about the time Monique..." Suddenly she stopped, her eyes going large.
"Genevieve, did something happen to Monique?" Logan asked with sudden interest, but he saw the reserved look back on Genevieve's face. He wondered a little wryly why she could extract secrets from him with such ease, yet be so good at keeping her own.
If only he had a little more to go on. Even with the suspicion that the family was in some kind of witness protection program, he'd purposefully not pressed the child for more details about her life. She was being obedient to the things her parents had told her, and had obviously had it drummed into her so thoroughly that he felt to press her for details would be just way too stressful for her.
Now, however, he felt a subtle change in her. It was as though she wanted to talk.
"Genevieve, I want to find your mommy and daddy, but I don't know where to look because I don't know enough about them. I won't tell any of their secrets to the wrong people," he promised her.
"The bad men took Monique away," she told him quietly. "Mommy cried for a long time."
"When did this happen?" Logan asked intently.
"When Monique was only little - about one and a half years ago."
"But the men brought her back?"
Genevieve smiled a little as she remembered this part. "We went to a park, and she was there on a baby swing. She screamed when we tried to take her off," she laughed a little through some unshed tears.
"Sounds like Monique," Logan grinned at her. "How long was Monique gone for?" he asked, his voice still gentle.
Genevieve thought back. "About four days I think."
"Did things change for you after that?" he asked her, a wealth of meaning behind the simple words.
The child lifted wide, solemn eyes to his face, and nodded just once.
Logan returned her nod and gave her one of his wide smiles, covering her hand with his own.
"You did right to tell me, Genevieve. Your mom won't be angry," he assured her.
"Are you still mad at me?"
Feeling bad that he'd made her think such a thing, Logan told her quickly, "I was never mad at you. I'm mad at myself sometimes," he admitted with uncharacteristic honesty.
"I've been thinking about it. What you said...about the other little girl."
Logan looked at her with a faint smile hovering at the corner of his mouth. The child continually surprised him.
"What words of wisdom do you have for me this time?" he wondered to her out loud with a touch of suspicion.
Getting up on her knees, and putting a hand on his arm that rested on the wheel of his chair, she explained to him, "My mom always says that friends help each other."
"I can't fault that logic," Logan agreed.
Genevieve smiled widely at him. "That's good," she enthused, "because if Max did it, it's just like you did it."
Not quite able to follow the logic of this one, he tried a polite nod of understanding, but she obviously wasn't fooled for a moment.
"Well, Max is your best friend, and that's what best friends do for each other," she told him simply.
"Right," Logan responded with a slight frown.
"So...if Max does something for you because you can't, then it's just the same as if you did it," she concluded happily, "because she's your best friend."
"I guess so," Logan agreed with a slightly amused, but definitely thoughtful expression.
"Genevieve, Max said you had to be in bed by now," Bling called to her from the kitchen.
Her face fell at the thought, and she looked to Logan hopefully.
"No, you've gotta got to bed. It's late," he told her, "and I don't want Max mad at me," he added with a grin.
"She wouldn't be mad at you, Logan. She's only mad at Martin."
Thinking of a number of times when Max had been angry with him, not to mention the times when she'd been plain furious with him he let that one go by with a firm, "Good night."
Plunged once more back into semi-darkness when Genevieve took the candle with her, he frowned a little, remembering the child's words.
Why had Max shown up that night at the hospital when Bruno had tried to take him out a second time? The rescuing-Sophy part he could understand – but Max's version of events that night had always confused him a little. Why had she gone back to his apartment? She'd told him it was because she was trying to ID Anselmo, but what did Anselmo mean to her at the time?
Could there be some truth to what Genevieve said? Had she done some of it, even the tiniest bit...for him?
Logan looked up as the phone rang, but didn't bother to move as Bling picked it up.
The call was brief.
"Logan, they've got the elevator working again."
"Great!" Logan enthused with relief. Sitting around without even his computer to distract him was beginning to wear very thin. "You'll watch the girls for me?"
Bling looked at him with suspicion.
"You goin' out?" he asked with surprise.
"I need to talk to Seth. There's a good chance if he sees Max first, he'll make a run for it," he explained, the enthusiasm that a purpose brings strong in his voice.
"I don't like to burst your bubble, but I thought I heard Max saying she was gonna bring him back here. She wanted to do this alone."
"Max doesn't know Seth," Logan explained a little tersely as he headed past the kitchen toward his bedroom.
"South Market Street at night..." Bling let the words hang in the air.
"I'll take my gun, and I'll meet up with Max. Besides, she hasn't found Seth yet. She told me she'd call me when she did, so she could probably do with some help," he told Bling as he shrugged himself into his leather jacket.
"Maybe she couldn't get to a phone..." Bling began, but stopped at the look Logan was giving him.
"Don't wait up for me, Mom," were Logan's last words to his less-than-happy trainer as he went out.
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Logan handed his card to the sector guard, trying to conceal his impatience and sense of growing unease. For once he hoped that Max hadn't done her job with her usual skill and precision. He just wanted the chance to talk to Seth alone and gain the boy's confidence. He suspected that if he didn't deal with Seth gently, the giant would never reveal to them what he knew about Emma's disappearance, and Logan was almost sure he knew something.
"You're out late," the sector cop growled suspiciously at Logan through his open car window.
"I've got a sick friend to visit," Logan replied straight-faced.
The cop stared into the car again, as if expecting four escaped prisoners to be lurking there, but when none jumped out, he had no choice but to wave Logan through.
Logan knew exactly where Murdoch's Bar was, and he knew exactly what type of seedy establishment it was, remembering the couple of times before Bruno Anselmo's handiwork that he'd gone there to meet with one of his less- salubrious informants.
He kept an eye out for Max's motorcycle, but was undecided as to whether or not he was disappointed when he didn't come across it.
The area itself was reasonably quiet, which surprised him, but the noise from Murdoch's coming through his open window as he drove by seemed to make up for it. At least the power was on here, he noticed with satisfaction, as he was fortunate enough to find a place to park his car underneath one of the few streetlights in the area.
Logan was thankful that the transfer was particularly quick and smooth – it was the time he felt at his most vulnerable in an area like this. It would be far too easy for someone to...He quickly stopped his thoughts from going in that direction. Must be all Bling's worries rubbing off on me, he thought, a little annoyed to find himself feeling so tense now that he was here.
Not as if I've never been to South Market by myself this time of night before, he told himself a little sarcastically, blocking out the voice that said, Yeah, but last time you were on two feet.
Making sure he slipped both his gun and his phone into his jacket pocket, and being doubly sure to lock his car, he set off toward Murdoch's Bar. It was about 150 yards down on the opposite side of the street.
A sudden shout of laughter from across the way made Logan warily observe a group of five drunken youths as they came toward him. Purposefully not looking in their direction, he pushed on to the other side of the road, and was a little relieved as they took no notice of him. He didn't want to be caught up with other matters tonight. His single goal was to find Seth.
He hadn't paged Max yet and he knew he should. Now that he was here, she'd just have to accept the fact that they were doing it his way, he decided grimly, wondering how many fireworks there might be.
The night air was decidedly chilly, but he was glad for the feel of the cold wind on his face; it added a sense of clarity to his thoughts that hadn't been there earlier. The admission from Genevieve about her sister's disappearance had given him a lot to think about as he drove. Had someone kidnapped the child to force her parents into doing something? It appeared highly unlikely that she would have been kidnapped for money.
Logan was now passing a road that ran a few doors down from Murdoch's.
He glanced into the darkness casually, checking for oncoming traffic before continuing on his way.
He was about to cross when something made him look closely down the road again.
It was hard to make anything out. The road was narrow, and the three- and four-story buildings that faced it mostly seemed to be in darkness as well.
When his eyes failed to detect any sign of movement, he went to move on, but then he remembered that he still had to contact Max. He grabbed his phone from his jacket pocket and paged her.
He waited for a minute in the cold, half-expecting her to call him immediately if she'd been within distance of a phone. Now that he was here, he had to admit that he didn't really look forward to entering Murdoch's Bar by himself. The thought made him wonder since when had he come to rely on Max's presence - not so much for her protection as for her companionship. He'd bet she'd have a few witty remarks to make about some of the clientele to be found there.
Realizing that she wasn't about to call, he left the phone on his lap, in readiness to pick up when her call came through.
He forced himself into action and was about to head on toward the bar when this time he could have sworn he heard a noise somewhere in the vicinity where he thought he'd seen the movement down the narrow road.
Unexpectedly, a light in one of the buildings suddenly came on. Logan was startled to get a quick glimpse of a man hovering over something on the ground, and in that instant he looked straight at Logan, who was clearly revealed by the light from the street behind him.
One point struck Logan immediately. The man he'd seen had been big – not just tall but a mountain of a man. Instinctively, Logan got his gun out and placed it between his legs.
"Seth," Logan called to him, quickly swinging around and heading down the road to the point where he could still make out the definite figure of Seth. His eyes narrowed suddenly as he realized that Seth was hovering over the body of a man in a suit. As Logan got closer, the young man stood up suddenly, a stunned look on his face as he held out hands darkened with something.
"You shouldn't be here, Logan," he heard the boy say, before everything became very confused.
He turned quickly as he heard the sound of a car driving down the narrow road. Before he had a chance to protest, Seth grabbed his arms and lifted him in a fireman's hold onto his enormous shoulders, and began running as fast as he could with Logan's added weight.
Completely taken by surprise, Logan tried to resist the iron-like grip that held his arms, but he soon gave this up as futile. In his next thought, he hoped his glasses didn't slip off as the laws of gravity probably decreed that they should.
"Seth," he tried to protest as he became aware of the fact that the young giant was now carrying him up a narrow flight of stairs.
Logan lost track of how many floors they'd gone up. The sensation of blood rushing to his head was beginning to feel extremely unpleasant. He'd tried raising his head once or twice but had been forced to put it down again quickly as a corner of the stairwell loomed perilously close.
He was beginning to wonder how much more he could take and how much further Seth would be able to carry him, as the boy's breathing was beginning to sound very laboured, when Seth stopped at a doorway with the obvious intent of opening the door.
The huge boy carried Logan in, and without a word dumped him down heavily on a bed. Without giving Logan even a moment to take a breath, he turned on his heel and headed out again.
Logan opened his mouth as if to speak, but stopped suddenly.
The click as the key turned in the lock sounded ominously loud in the gloom.
TBC