Many, many thanks for the reviews! They're a great incentive!
Special thanks to Alaidh, who has been in particularly fine touch this chapter, for sorting out my grammar.
Story 3 Chapter 19
There's nothing quite like someone yelling very loudly in your ear, "It's morning. Wake up!" to bring an unwilling body unpleasantly back to consciousness.
While Logan found the manner unsubtle, he couldn't fault it for effectiveness.
Both eyes snapped open as if they were on springs. He didn't have to move his head far to the left to see the small foghorn that had woken him up.
Even without his glasses he could see her quite clearly. He hadn't bothered to close his curtains when he'd finally dragged himself into bed a few hours ago and while the sun had lost its just-up crispy look, his bedroom was still bathed in the fresh light of mid morning.
Monique was kneeling on the seat of his wheelchair with a particularly pleased smile on her face as she saw the fruits of her labour.
"We made breakfast for you," she whispered to him with a slightly guilty look as if she were telling him something she shouldn't.
His mind still struggling to catch up with the whirlwind before him, Logan watched her bemusedly as she hopped down from his chair and ran across to the other side of his bed. With a small grunt she hooked one leg up on the bed, the other following quickly, then in a flash she stood up and with a look of glee, started jumping.
"Logan, you awake?" came Max's voice from outside the door.
"We've got a surprise for you," Genevieve's voice added brightly.
"Come on in," Logan called to them, quickly pulling himself up into a sitting position and grabbing his glasses from the bedside table.
"Sorry," he said to Genevieve when he saw the tray she carried. "Seems like you have an informer in your ranks."
"She told you?" Genevieve asked, looking a little crestfallen before giving her sister a dark look.
"Only some of it...not what you made for me," Logan told her quickly, eyeing the tray a little dubiously. "At least she didn't run off with my chair this time," he told Max, squinting up at her as if the sunlight coming through the window was too bright.
"I helped," Monique announced a little breathlessly as she attempted to twist and clap hands while continuing to jump.
She looked more than a little annoyed as Max reached out and grabbed her before she'd completed this complex feat.
"Whoa, not on Logan's legs," Max told her, managing to catch her before she fell.
The child immediately began to squirm with frustration that she'd been denied one of her favourite pastimes, and tried to get out of Max's arms.
"Hey, let's watch Logan eat his breakfast," Max suggested to distract her, giving Logan one of her cheesy smiles.
He swallowed a little as he looked back down at the breakfast tray Genevieve had so carefully placed on his lap.
"This looks great," he told her, doing his best to muster a smile.
"I made you toast this time," she pointed out a little obviously to him. The thought crossed his mind that he wished she'd stuck to the plain cereal she'd made him last time.
"Yup," he nodded, trying to gather enough courage to actually pick up a piece and take a bite.
He knew Max was looking at him. She seemed especially bright-eyed this morning.
It never failed to annoy him that when he felt like he'd been run over by a truck after a night of little or no sleep, she looked like something from one of those pre-Pulse mattress advertisements where the couple spring from the bed all brimming with health and vitality. Logan couldn't remember if he'd ever woken up looking like that. He strongly doubted it. Must be a Manticore thing, he mused darkly.
"So, we have peanut butter and...?" He gestured towards the tray.
"Well, Monique likes peanut butter, and I like Nutella ..." Genevieve started.
"And they both wanted to put their favourite spread on your toast," Max told him with a straight face.
"So Max suggested we put both of them on together," Genevieve concluded triumphantly.
"And with all your training you couldn't come up with the simple equation of two spreads/two slices of toast?" he asked Max innocently.
"Couldn't. It was the last slice of bread," she told him, seemingly apologetic.
He wasn't fooled.
"Lucky me," he smiled at Genevieve but not until after giving Max a dark look.
A sudden thought occurred to Logan. "I didn't know I had chocolate spread in my cupboard."
"Chocolate/hazelnut spread actually," Max corrected him. "And you don't. Genevieve told Bling that she liked it so he bought some yesterday for her. Bet he paid a heap for it," she added thoughtfully. "He's waiting out there for you, by the way."
"You'll hafta remind me to thank him," Logan replied, his smile a little forced.
Max gave him one of her most dazzling smiles. "Eat up," she encouraged him, swapping Monique to her other arm.
Logan looked at the expectant smiling faces of Genevieve and Monique and knew he couldn't stall any longer.
He took a smallish bite then quickly swallowed it down with the hot tea that accompanied it.
"Mmmm, good," he managed.
He couldn't help but think his sacrifice was worth it as he saw the now contented smiles of the two girls.
"Hey Max, you were right. He does like it," Genevieve beamed at her. In a conspiratorial tone she turned to Logan. "Max must know you reeeel well, 'cause I didn't think mixing them would taste too good – but Max told me you'd love it!"
Max showed him her even, white teeth. "Us girls gotta do the dishes," she told Logan quickly before adding with deceptive meekness, "We'll leave you to it."
Logan watched her go with a look of extreme exasperation.
He couldn't help but wonder when 'tormenting Logan' had become one of her favourite occupations.
Absently he picked up the toast and took a bite, screwing up his face a little as the taste hit his tongue.
'Max told me you'd love it,' he muttered darkly.
The clock beside his bed told him it was already 10:30am . It had been just after 6:00am when he'd finally put his head on his pillows and almost immediately fallen asleep.
He let out a long breath and closed his eyes for a moment. He'd been fighting the queasy feeling in his stomach that comes with lack of sleep since he'd woken up.
He looked down at the toast. He'd eaten a very respectable half of it, but the thought of taking another bite was just too much. So as not to hurt the girls' feelings, he decided to toss the rest in the small trash receptacle in his bathroom.
After a few more gulps of tea, Logan put the tray down beside him on the bed and threw back the covers, ready to transfer.
At that moment he knew he had trouble.
He hadn't bothered to turn the light on when he'd got home in the final hour before dawn. Instead, he'd simply gone to the bathroom then undressed, pulling a fresh pair of plaid pyjama pants on by the dim light creeping into the room from his bathroom.
Big mistake, he thought now as he looked at his legs.
Both knees had a large, suspicious wet patch on them and he could see that the pants on his right leg were stuck to the blood.
Stupid, he berated himself, knowing that he should have checked them when he got home. He could imagine what Bling would say.
Well, I'd better get this over and done with," he thought sourly before calling loudly for his therapist.
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"Dammit Logan," Bling uttered explosively when he saw the state his knees were in. "I thought you told me they were healing."
"They were," Logan ground out, not bothering to tell him that his knees had taken a beating again last night.
Bling had had to wet the pant leg with warm water so that he could ease the material away from the now weeping abrasions that covered his knee.
Bling surveyed the mess with lips pressed tightly together. "This is too far gone for me to deal with. You'll have to see your doctor," he told Logan curtly.
"Great," Logan muttered.
Ignoring his comment, Bling reached out and grabbed the phone, stabbing at the numbers for Metro Medical.
"You got a temperature?" Bling asked him while waiting for reception to pick up.
Logan shrugged disinterestedly, his face hardening a little as he found his day being planned for him against his wishes.
"You're lucky, he's on duty this weekend, but he can't see you till about six tonight, he's fully booked, but if you wanna come in and wait around a bit, he thinks he can probably squeeze you in somewhere earlier."
"I'm not sitting around a waiting room all day staring at stupid posters on the walls," Logan protested at once. "Tell him I'll take the six o'clock appointment."
Bling looked at Logan as if he were about to protest the point, but in the end, merely spoke into the phone and secured the later appointment time.
"So how yah feeling?" Bling asked, reaching for the box of meds he'd retrieved earlier when Logan had first called him.
"Pissy," said Logan bluntly as he watched Bling get out an array of bandages and ointments. "Before you do all this stuff, I need to have a shower."
"I wouldn't advise you getting your knees wet," was the mild protest, but he stood up accordingly, watching with a slight frown as Logan transferred to his chair.
"It sounds kinda quiet out there," Logan said suddenly. "What are Max and the kids doing?"
"She took them up to the pool for a swim. Figured it'd do them good to have a change o' scenery for a bit."
Logan nodded as he wheeled towards his bathroom. He was wondering how best to phrase his request to Bling when his trainer beat him to it.
"I'm guessing you won't want Max in the loop on this?"
"Sure, no reason for her to be bothered by all this stuff," he answered with a contrived casualness that didn't fool Bling.
The trainer nodded wryly. "Be quick. I'll be waiting here for you," he added, which only annoyed Logan more and he muttered something under his breath about not being able to shower in private as he headed through the bathroom door.
Logan was surprised how shaky he felt when he swung himself into the shower. It did nothing for his mounting resentment and frustration of the situation that this should happen when he felt like they were finally getting somewhere in finding the kids' parents.
At least he could tell Martin he found Emma Belding – That's if I can find Martin, he thought sourly. Then there was Emma herself. He didn't see how she could ever be safe from Petrovsky if she chose to stay in Seattle. The thought made him feel extremely uncomfortable.
He found himself wondering if Emma stayed because she loved Seth or because she felt she had to watch over him. Was it guilt that kept her there or love?
The only threat to her safety is you...and one day it's gonna get her killed.
Logan felt the familiar surge of guilt and doubt as he remembered Zack's words. He'd fired them at Logan like bullets from one of the guns he'd been trained to handle with cool, Manticore precision: She should have left but she stayed because of you...
In moments of unusual honesty, Logan admitted to himself that he wanted Max to stay – more than that he dreaded her going - but it had to be on his terms. He was happy if she stayed because she wanted his help in finding the others who'd escaped back in '09; he was happy if she stayed because she had friends here in Seattle; he was happy that he was one of those friends; he was happy if she stayed because somewhere along the line she did give a damn after all; but he wasn't happy if she stayed because he had screwed up circulation and the other hundred and one things he had to deal with because of his paralysis.
Those were the things he kept from her. The things that would make her stay for the wrong reasons.
"You getting out?' came Bling's voice from the doorway.
Logan thought about all the things he would like to say to his trainer, but after a moment of considerable restraint, he settled for 'Yeah' instead.
"You'll have Max and the girls back soon," Bling added none too subtly as a further persuasion.
"I hear you," Logan snapped as he turned off the shower, determinedly not looking at his knees while he dried himself.
---------------------------------------------------
"Genevieve was sure in a mess last night," Bling commented as he pulled up a chair to sit in front of Logan.
Logan, dressed in T-shirt and boxers, looked across at him in surprise.
"You had her worried sick," Bling went on while he dabbed at the ugly wound on his right knee with some antiseptic lotion.
"I guess she's depending on me to find her folks," Logan murmured, "I did promise her that," he added darkly.
Bling shook his head a little, remarking mildly, "You know for someone who calls himself Eyes Only you can be remarkably blind."
"And what's that supposed to mean?" Logan snapped.
Bling laughed outright now. "Man, you don't have any idea at all, do you?"
"Bling..." said Logan in a warning tone.
"The kid thinks you're hot. She's got a crush on you!"
Logan felt the blood rushing into his face and put his head down ostensibly to watch Bling working on his battered knees.
"I'm old enough to be her father!"
"But you're not her father. That's the point," Bling told him. "'Sides, a ten year old recognizes a pretty face when she sees one. Damn, this is a mess," he added with annoyance as he took Logan's foot off the footrest. He stretched it out to rest it on the bed so that he could bandage the knee.
Not getting any response from his employer, Bling looked across at Logan to judge his reaction. He wasn't sure if he looked so annoyed because of the comments he'd made about Genevieve or the one he'd made about his knee.
"So you never noticed the way she blushed every time you spoke to her?" he prodded, enjoying himself a little.
Logan grunted with exasperation. He wondered darkly why Bling always chose to have these discussions with him when he was more or less tied to the one spot.
"Sure, I noticed her acting a bit funny sometimes," he answered his therapist a touch defensively, "but it wasn't like you think. The kid was just being a ...a ten year old!" he finished for want of a better word.
"Why don't you ask Max. She'll tell y'the truth."
"Max thinks this too?" he asked Bling with a guarded expression.
"Dammit Logan, what makes the whole idea so strange to you?"
Bling wasn't surprised when he didn't answer. Having dressed and bandaged his right knee he signalled for Logan to put it back on the footrest.
Bling worked silently on the left leg, and didn't speak until he'd finished bandaging it then checking that the bandages weren't too tight when both legs were back in position.
"You know, one of these days you're gonna stop worrying about this," he said to Logan, putting a hand on the wheel of his chair, "and start seeing yourself as a person again. If a ten year old can see you that way, why can't you?"
"Because a ten year old sees things differently," he retorted.
"Yeah? Well I can think of someone who's not ten – and she doesn't have any trouble seeing you and not the chair either," he told him coolly as he packed up the first aid kit.
Logan didn't have an answer to that one.
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"So, I hear you went swimming?" Logan smiled at the girls some time later as he looked up from his computer screen, leaning back with one hand on his wheel.
"I went in the deep water, Logan," Monique told him as she ran in to his study.
Max's hair was wet too.
"I didn't know you all had swimwear," he commented with surprise.
"We didn't," said Max airily, not missing the slight flush to his cheeks as the meaning of her words sank in.
"There was no one there, Logan," Genevieve explained with the patronizing tone a ten year old assumes when pointing something out to an adult.
Rather than embarrass himself further, Logan kept his mouth firmly shut.
"Is there anything for lunch?" Max asked. "The girls are pretty hungry after their swim."
"Yeah, Bling went out and bought some fresh bread and milk."
"Great," she smiled back at him.
The swim had been particularly relaxing after the stress of the previous night, and she'd had fun teaching the girls a few swimming strokes. She wondered what Logan was thinking about their skinny-dipping. She purposefully didn't tell him that she'd messed with the lock on the door so that it could only be opened from her side.
"You having some lunch?" she called to him as she took out some salad items from the refrigerator while instructing Genevieve to butter some bread.
"Logan?" she asked again, this time walking through to his study when he didn't answer. "You want a sandwich?"
His face was glued to the information he was scrolling down the screen, but as he caught sight of her, he casually exited the screen and picked up the large glass of water on his right.
"I'm looking into the list of calls from Martin's cell phone in the last twenty-four hours," he told her before taking a long drink.
"Find anything helpful?"
"Not really. Looks like he hasn't used it much. Although there is one call to Jonas listed early this morning, so I guess we can conclude from that that he's still alive."
"I guess that's a good thing," Max commented dryly. "About that sandwich?"
"Yeah, I'll come out and help in a minute."
"No big dealio. The girls an' I have it covered."
"Hey, Max. How was the swim?" asked Bling with a smile as he walked up to Logan.
"Liberating," she answered for Logan's benefit, watching as Bling put two white tablets into the palm of Logan's hand.
As if aware of her eyes on him, Logan looked up at her and murmured something that sounded like, "Headache."
"No wine for you at lunch, then," she commented lightly.
"I'll be back to do your reps later," Bling told Logan. "If there's nothing else you need for the time being, I'll get going."
"No, it's fine, Bling ...and thanks...for babysitting last night. Hope the girls didn't give you any trouble."
Bling laughed at that. "Piece o' cake as compared to my usual charge," he shot back at Logan.
Max had the impression the trainer was stalling for time as if he wanted to talk to Logan privately, so she excused herself and headed back to the kitchen where the girls were waiting for her.
"You will keep that appointment, won't you?" Bling said to Logan as soon as she'd left the room, speaking in a low voice.
In answer, Logan gave him an angry, exasperated sigh as he unlocked his brakes and swung around to accompany Bling to the door.
"I'm serious about this, Logan," he added with a look of exasperation himself.
"Yes. I will keep my appointment," Logan spelled out for him slowly. "Happy?"
"Guess I'll hafta be."
"Any other advice for me?" Logan asked at his most sarcastic.
"Sure. I think you oughtta go swimming with Max some day," Bling suggested with raised brows.
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Genevieve and Monique had finished their lunch quickly and had rushed off to play a new game Genevieve had invented that seemed to be something about hospitals and operations.
Logan had tried to look enthusiastic when she'd explained it to him, but his worry the infection in his knees was serious enough for his doctor to insist on admitting him to the hospital to give him the required drugs by IV prevented him from getting too excited by her description.
Today was Sunday, but tomorrow Max would need to be back at work and he was feeling the pressure of trying to wrap the whole case up. More than anything he wanted to reunite the girls with their parents.
Once the girls had left the table, Max filled both their glasses with water from the pitcher.
Her brown eyes were thoughtful as she watched Logan from over the rim of her glass. He'd slipped his sweater off before lunch and now she quietly admired his toned physique in his black T-shirt as he downed half the glass of water in one go.
"You on a diet or something?" she asked him casually, lazily looking across at his scarcely touched sandwich.
"Just not that hungry. Maybe it was that breakfast," he added with meaning.
"Aren't the girls sweet?" she smiled innocently.
"Yeah. Sweet," he echoed dryly.
Suddenly serious she asked him, "You been in contact with Emma today?"
"I called her earlier. She seems to be doin' okay."
"You never told me what happened ... in the alley," she prompted him. "Emma said something about Seth saving your life?"
Logan thought back to the night before. "I caught Seth hovering over a body on the road," he admitted to her quietly.
"One of Petrovsky's peeps?"
"Supposedly."
Max studied his face while his thoughts were obviously a long way from her. The scruff was slowly returning and his hair was its usual messy self, but she frowned a little as she noticed a touch of moisture around his temples and the top of his forehead as if he were out in the sun on a hot day.
"Who killed him?" she asked bluntly.
At her words Logan's gaze swept back to her. The intensity in his eyes took her by surprise. "It wasn't Seth," he told her with finality.
"You don't have t'bite my head off," she said mildly. "You think it was this other guy Seth was raving about?"
"Emma said Seth wanted to 'get me away from the other man'... whoever that is."
"Maybe another player who wants a quick four million," Max suggested. "Y'know, Logan, we should head on down there and find out exactly what Seth knows. I wouldn't be surprised it there was all sorts of information locked away in that mind of his. We just have to ask the right questions."
"That's exactly what Emma said," Logan said wryly.
"I gotta pick up my bike from there anyway," Max reminded him.
He'd been so tired that when Max suggested leaving her bike at the safe house to travel home in the car with him, he hadn't even bothered to argue.
Logan suddenly looked at her as if he just understood what she'd said. "You wanna do this now?"
"Sure."
"We can't."
Max looked at him in surprise as he unlocked his brakes and headed back to his study.
"Am I missing something here?" she asked ironically as she followed him.
"We couldn't take the girls," he pointed out to her.
"It's Sunday. I'm sure Original Cindy would come over and watch them for us if she's home," Max suggested.
Logan looked distinctly uncomfortable at her suggestion. "You wouldn't wanna put her in any sorta danger would you? You said yourself we don't know who may be watching the apartment."
Max just looked at him for a moment. "I've still gotta pick up my bike," she reminded him.
Logan hesitated. Now that he knew the girls' real names, he hoped that would help him in the search for their parents, then their was Martin to contact, and he was feeling guilty about not having contacted Matt Sung for a few days, and above all he had to make sure he was in time for his appointment at the hospital and lastly, to be honest with himself, he just didn't feel up to it. He knew his temperature was starting to climb. He just hoped he'd be able to hold out until six.
Logan looked up at Max feeling suddenly very tired. I could just tell her the truth..."Why don't I call you a cab? I really wanna check out the leads I've got."
Logan looked up at her, but he couldn't hold her gaze. Those brown eyes of hers had a way of seeing right though him.
"Okay. So, you'll watch the girls, then." He thought her voice sounded a little brittle.
"Yeah."
"Okay," she said again, still looking directly at him. He was being nailed to the wall with those eyes and he wasn't finding it a pleasant experience.
"I might as well go now," she told him coldly.
Logan reached around to his desk to grab his wallet, but Max merely said, "No. Don't bother."
Then she was gone and he was left with his guilt.
-------------------------------------------------------
"Hey, Matt."
Logan looked out at the blueness of the sky, the sun glinting off the other high rises around him, a solitary airplane in the distance carrying people away from Seattle.
"Logan." Matt's voice was bright.
"Listen, Matt, I haven't been able to look into that suspension stuff for you yet. It's been kinda busy around here lately."
"Don't sweat it, Logan. My Captain's a good guy – he went through the complaint with a fine tooth comb and found enough holes in the perp's story to sink the Titanic."
"Great," Logan told him with feeling. "You find out who the guy was working for?"
Matt said two words succinctly, "The Russians."
Logan nodded. "It figures. So how's the head and the shoulder?"
"I must have a hard head." He could almost hear Matt smiling into the phone. "It feels great and the shoulder's healing nicely. I'm back doing light duties starting tomorrow."
"Tomorrow!" Logan repeated incredulously. "That's too soon!"
Matt sounded a bit embarrassed. "Well, a cop's base rate doesn't cover the bills. I need the overtime to survive."
Logan felt bad. "Matt, you just had to say..."
"Hey, Logan, it's not your worry. I don't expect the man to pick up the tab for me on this thing."
Logan was silent for a moment, pressing his lips together with annoyance at himself that he hadn't thought this out sooner and covered the short fall for Matt instead of him having to go back to work before he was ready.
"Logan. It's fine, really," Matt assured him.
"Right," he murmured with dissatisfaction into the phone.
"I'll see if I can run down that lead I had, too...someone always has a theory on where a leak comes from. It'd be good to check if it definitely came from Witness Protection in the first place."
"Matt, that's what got you shot in the first place," Logan protested.
"Well, this time I'll be ready for them," Matt replied seriously before hanging up.
Logan sat back with a thoughtful expression. He had the impression there was a personal note to Matt's suggestion.
"Hi," said a tentative voice from behind him.
Dumping the phone in his lap he turned around to see Genevieve.
"Hey," he smiled up at her as she came around to stand next to him, her face serious as she surveyed Seattle in the glow of the afternoon sunshine.
"It looks so nice out there," she said a little wistfully, eyes intent on the expanse before her.
Logan watched her. It seemed to him that her face was a little paler than usual, and were those dark smudges beneath her eyes? Remembering Bling's words, he felt bad that she'd spent such a bad night.
"I hear you didn't sleep so well last night." he said to her gently.
She shook her head.
As Logan watched the pale, blue eyes he was surprised to see two large tears well up in each one. She tried to blink them away, but that only made them course down the slightly freckled cheeks. More quickly followed.
"Hey," he said again, not quite knowing what to say or do. He wished Max were here.
A little tentatively, he reached out and took her hand in both of his, and she turned to face him with her tear stained face.
But he didn't see just her face – he saw the faces of hundreds of kids like her, the ones he'd seen aimlessly wandering the streets who had strengthened his resolve to start Eyes Only, the ones he hoped would grow up not knowing the corruption of the present post Pulse society. And too often, at times like this, he felt that Eyes Only wasn't doing enough. There was simply too much darkness out there for him to fight.
"I'm okay, Logan," she said a little brokenly, giving him a teary smile. "I just miss my mommy."
Logan swallowed hard at her words. He felt he wasn't doing enough. He had to try harder. He'd made her a promise.
"It won't be too long now," he told her, wondering how long he could keep saying that.
Letting go of her hand he wheeled over to his study and brought back a box of Kleenex.
"I thought maybe you could do with some of these," he smiled.
She took them, still a little tremulous.
"It's kinda quiet down there," Logan said, suddenly realizing that he hadn't checked on Monique for a while.
"She's in the kitchen. I gave her a drink of milk," Genevieve told him, motioning airily in that direction.
"I'd better check," Logan decided aloud as he manoeuvred around the couch.
She wasn't in the kitchen when he got there and he was a bit surprised to find the refrigerator door open wide, as was every kitchen cupboard door.
"Okay, so this is what three year olds do when left to their own devices for too long," he muttered as he closed the refrigerator door. He had swung around to close the cupboard doors when a small voice inside his head warned him that the child was very quiet and it would really be far wiser to check up on her before he did anything else.
With a thoughtful expression he wheeled out of the kitchen and headed around the corner towards the bedrooms, only to stop suddenly as something caught his eye.
Quite clearly, along the glass panelling, was a suspicious, brown, smeary mark.
He sincerely hoped it wasn't what it looked like.
The next mark he saw, this time on the wall a bit further along, was the very distinctive outline of a child's handprint.
He thought it was all becoming a bit clearer now as he quietly wheeled further along the hallway until he got to the guest bedroom.
The door was closed, but he thought he could hear a shrill little voice singing what sounded like a self-composition about rain, and swimming and teddy bears.
Quietly Logan swung open the door.
The culprit turned to face him with startled eyes – not unlike the look of a cat caught by the blinding beam of a car's headlights.
Her face was covered in it, her clothes were covered in it, and her hand was stuck in it.
"Monique!" said Genevieve, now standing behind him, looking with fury at her little sister. "That's my Nutella!"
Monique looked nervously from Logan to Genevieve.
Apparently deciding that escape was out of the question, she tried her first defence – she smiled. It was the type of smile that says: I know I've been really naughty here, but I am very cute, and after all, I'm only three.
Logan looked at her. He bit down hard on his bottom lip to stop it twitching as he manfully decided what course of action to take. He didn't really know much about it, but he had an idea that chocolate/hazelnut spread would be difficult to budge from the highly expensive deep pile rug that adorned the floor of the guest room.
Then again, he mused a little deviously, it was Bling who had bought the spread for the girls in the first place, and this was the second calamity to come of it, so it only seemed fair that he should be the one to get down on hands and knees to clean it off. The thought brought a gleam to his eyes and the beginnings of a smile to his face.
Monique, who'd been watching each passing expression carefully in case she needed to resort to defence number two, took this to be a good sign, and her own smile became a little wider.
"Logan angry?" she asked.
He tried to frown, he even tried to look angry. Finally, he came to the conclusion that he would be a failure as a parent.
"Logan, you've gotta be firm with her. She needs to be punished," Genevieve insisted with sisterly outrage as she looked at the prized jar of spread.
"I'm trying," he assured her, reaching down quickly for his phone as it unexpectedly started ringing.
"Hey."
"Logan Cale? It's Gwen from Metro Medical calling."
"Right," he responded curtly.
"I'm calling on behalf of Dr Forrest. He asked me to tell you that if you can be here in thirty minutes, he'll be able to fit you in as he's had a sudden cancellation...Mr Cale?" she added, as the other end of the line remained quiet.
"Right. I got that," Logan said quickly, trying to get his thoughts together.
"Good. We'll see you in half an hour, then."
Logan hung up then immediately punched in Bling's number. He waited tensely for some moments, then with a look of annoyance left a curt message on the voice mail.
"Logan, I'd better get a washcloth to clean her up," Genevieve said as he got off the phone.
"Okay," he agreed a bit vaguely as he looked at Monique, who'd happily gone back to licking the brown, gooey, mess off her hand. She seemed to prefer her fingers to the more conventional method of a spoon.
Logan considered the phone in his hand for a long moment. He seriously thought about calling Max, but he knew even if he wanted to she wouldn't be back in time.
Genevieve had come back from the bathroom by now and was trying to coax Monique into being cleaned up. Needless to say, the child was not co-operating.
"Hey, you girls wanna come on a drive with me?"
They both stopped and looked across at him.
"Where to, Logan?" asked Genevieve with a tinge of excitement.
"I gotta see my doctor," he admitted to them a bit reluctantly. "So it might not be all that exciting, but how about I buy you some candy while we wait?"
"You sick or something?" Genevieve asked.
"No," he assured her, adding, "well, not exactly." For some reason he was having a hard time answering her naïve question with anything except the truth.
She continued to look at him, as if expecting him to continue.
"I've got a cut on my knee that's infected," he finally admitted to her shortly and slightly inaccurately.
The child just nodded and jumped up saying, "I'd better change Monique. I'll meet you at the front door in five."
Feeling like he'd been summarily dismissed, Logan agreed with an, "Okay...five," and left her to the job of cleaning up Monique.
He felt dissatisfied that he had to go out before he'd done the tasks he'd set himself.
Pausing outside the door to his own room, he picked up the phone from his lap and punched in Martin's number one more time, but to his disappointment, it was the same result as the last four times. Nothing. The phone had been switched off.
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They hadn't plunged the room into darkness and shone an achingly, glaring, bright light into his eyes.
They hadn't attached him to a charge that would send jolts of electricity sparking with an intense pain into his body.
They simply stood there, in front of him, and he was deathly afraid.
Petrovsky was an imposing man, tall with broad shoulders, and thick, dark, wavy hair.
In his pin stripe suit he looked more like a matinée idol of the forties.
Martin, however, found his smile sinister rather than charming, his eyes calculating rather than warm and his stance that of a predator rather than a lover.
"We want the girls," he told Martin in a mellow voice that held only the merest hint of an accent.
"What girls?" tried Martin, still man enough to be annoyed that his voice squeaked a little on the first word.
Petrovsky looked at his two henchmen who stood either side of him. Martin noticed warily that they all seemed to share some private joke.
"We know your interfering cousin has the girls in his care. You are going to get him to hand them over to us."
Martin actually laughed at that, such was his confidence in Logan.
"My cousin would never give those girls to you," he told Petrovsky scornfully.
Now it was the other man's turn to laugh, which he did – loudly.
"We don't plan to ask him nicely. You will help us. He trusts you – you're his blood relative after all," the mobster told Martin silkily.
"Look, I only did the stuff with Emma because I owed you money but I've raised the money now to pay you back. I want out of this deal!" he told them as determinedly as he knew how.
The gun Petrovsky produced wasn't huge, but Martin knew it didn't have to be to kill him.
The Russian studied him with an insolence he found infuriating, but that emotion was quickly replaced by another as the Russian walked around to stand behind him.
"We know about your cousin," he murmured into Martin's ear. "Did he ever tell you what it was like to be shot...how it felt when the bullet slammed into his back...what it's like to spend every day in a wheelchair with half a body that doesn't work? It would only take one shot. Here," he told him, digging the gun sharply into his spine, "and you'd simply crumple to the ground."
Martin could feel the beads of perspiration breaking out on his forehead.
"We will get the girls with or without your help," Petrovsky added coldly. "It matters little to me how I do it - it will simply save me a bullet."
Martin felt his knees buckling already, and then they turned to rubber as he heard the cocking of the gun.
"I'll help you," he cried out as his knees sagged to the ground. "I'll help you."
TBC