Thanks so very much for all the encouraging reviews – they are always highly appreciated.
My apologies that this chapter took a while – life's been a bit busy lately.
My special thanks to Alaidh for taking the time to beta this for me – great job as always!
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CHAPTER 23
Logan stared at his computer screen with an ever-growing resentment as it repeatedly refused to yield even the slightest scrap of information that would shed any light on the FBI agent Jaeger's possible location or plans.
The FBI profile he found on the agent told him little of interest other than the fact that Jaeger was a native of New York and that he'd been involved in the witness protection program for five years.
Backing up a little, Logan coasted the short distance to the printer with one push. His face was expressionless as he picked up the print of Jaeger's FBI security photo. The quality was good, revealing a man in his mid forties who he supposed you'd describe as reasonably handsome in a kind of forgettable way. Twice he'd seen the man shoot someone without pause...in cold blood...whatever that means. The expression didn't help him – it didn't tell him how far Jaeger was prepared to go for four million dollars.
Finally, he put the image down and pushed away from the desk with an attitude of disgust. He wheeled out of his study to verify that he had definitely not heard the sound of Max returning. The door remained depressingly closed. No Max...no information...no girls...
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"Oh my God...we got the wrong shoes."
Max's brown eyes had stared at Logan for an instant with a look of frozen disbelief as every possible scenario that his words implied streamed through her mind like an endless movie trailer. The girls...Genevieve, Monique...
Her eyes focused once more on Logan lying against his pillows, but this time her thoughts were calculating, composed. "Are you sure?" She spoke coldly, almost unemotionally.
Logan barely heard her - he was still lost somewhere in the depths of self-recrimination.
"I should have seen all this before. What was I thinking?" he chastised himself with a simmering, self-directed anger as he reached over to pick up the phone from his bedside table.
Last night – not much, thought Max, as she looked at him. "It's not like this is your fault, Logan" she said aloud, a little angry with his immediate assumption that the blame for this latest dilemma should be left at his door.
"You two wanna tell me what this is all about?" asked Bling quietly, looking from one to the other.
"I shoulda seen it,' Logan contradicted her flatly as he punched in the number and held the phone to his ear.
"Is this about the girls?" Bling put in tensely.
"I think we just found out that grandma is really the wolf," Max admitted tersely. She stood quickly as she spoke – one of the few signs of her agitation.
"Emma's not answering at the safe house," Logan told them both with a look of frustration before replacing the phone.
"Logan, are you sure you got this right? With everything that went down last night...you said yourself you hardly remember any of it," she finished curtly. Maybe he was wrong...maybe the girls were still safe.
"Black – it had to be black, shiny shoes - that's the most obvious way Seth's mind would work. I noticed his shoes myself the first time I saw Jaeger in the alley outside the department store – just before you hit him."
"Black – that's it?" Max queried a little sceptically.
Bling patiently kept his mouth shut as he tried to grasp what they were talking about – from their expressions he knew it couldn't good.
Logan's mind was furiously analysing information. "Maybe Jaeger himself was the leak..." he suggested with a frown.
"Whatever...but what do we do about it?" snapped Max. Not only was her mind racing, her body felt tense and tingly – coiled tight and ready for action. "If Jaeger has Emma, as well, where would he have them?" she pressed further.
Her hands hung by her side, but Bling was impressed by the sense of restrained power that seemed to emanate from her. This was a different Max from the one who waltzed into Logan's apartment at all hours of the day and night with a sassy smile and a smart comment.
"I don't have a crystal ball, Max," Logan snapped back as he pushed himself into a sitting position and prepared to slide across to his chair. Somehow all her questions only served to exaggerate his shortcomings.
Logan paused a moment as he remembered what happened the last time he'd sat up – thankfully this time the world stayed on an even keel.
He studied the texture of the sheet for a few seconds, then looked up at Max as she stood watching him from the window. He wondered how she could make him feel so guilty when her lips hadn't moved. On a more even note, he said, "Give me a moment to get dressed...maybe I'll come up with something."
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Max entwined all ten fingers around the mug of coffee she held to her mouth. The liquid was so hot it almost burnt her skin, but she ignored the pain. It seemed in some way a just retribution for the lack of insight that had placed the girls in such danger once more.
The irony of a startlingly blue sky wasn't lost on her – it would have been a perfect day for the children to enjoy their time together with their parents after the uncertainty and tension of the past week.
She hated not knowing where they were. She hated being wrong.
Max turned from the windows as she heard the faint squeak, then the soft gliding noise of rubber wheels on the polished wood floors.
"You come up with anything?" she asked at once, walking over to his study where he was already stabbing at the keyboard. He looked like he'd dressed hurriedly, not having even bothered to put shoes on over his thick, woolly socks.
"First off I thought I'd try giving Special Agent Thomas Jaeger a call," Logan murmured as his eyes scanned the screen for the number he wanted.
"You number FBI agents among your peeps?" Max asked him dryly.
"Never know when you might need a good FBI man," Logan told her a little distractedly as he searched for the name. "There it is," he added sharply.
"Let me do it," suggested Max quickly, picking up his phone before he had a chance. "Less suspicious," she added with her deceptively innocent tone. "Guys like talking to women and women like talking to women."
Logan paused a beat, looking up at her a little quizzically, then with a slight shrug, made a gesture of acquiescence with his hand.
Max threw him a small smile, then held her breath as she waited for the phone to be answered.
"I'd like to speak to Special Agent Thomas Jaeger," Max spoke in her most polite voice to the receptionist.
"I'm sorry, he's not available right now – could another agent be of service?"
Max made a face, but got out smoothly as if she'd misheard the other speaker, "Out of town? He must've forgotten. We were supposed to be having dinner together."
The voice at the other end changed subtly in tone. "Is this a personal call?" the woman asked with a warmer note.
"I can't believe he stood me up," Max fabricated, her brows raised for Logan's benefit.
"I'm sorry – this may be a personal call, but I'm not at liberty to divulge information about any of our agents over the phone." The voice was sympathetic, even apologetic, but firm.
"Maybe..." tried Max, but the line had gone conclusively dead.
Max hung up with a shrug, then turned back to Logan. "No go, there. What's Emma's apartment number? Maybe she went home."
Logan found her the number of the apartment she'd shared with Charlie, but there was no answer their either.
Max handed Logan his phone. "Looks to me like a little legwork may be in order," she suggested, grabbing her jacket from the back of the computer chair and shrugging it on.
Logan spelled out his concerns emphatically to her as he dumped the phone in his lap and followed her out of his study. "I have no way of knowing what we're up against here– we don't know how many people Jaeger has in the loop on this."
Max shrugged as she walked between his study and exercise room toward the door. "Not many I'd say. If he's been feeding either Petrovsky or Greville information, I'd say their deaths mean he's another one who doesn't like to share."
Logan called after her. "We don't have much to go on. Jaeger nearly has a full hand, bar Seth."
"You think he'll try and hook the brother?" Max asked intently, suddenly turning around. At least it was something to go on.
Logan shook his head. He was annoyed by his lack of confidence in his own assumptions. "I dunno...maybe," he answered quietly, not prepared to meet her gaze.
"I could swing by Seth's place, then the safe house," Max murmured, mentally working out her plan of attack.
"You should start with the warehouse where we picked the girls up in the first place," Logan told her thoughtfully.
Max nodded. "Okay," she said, turning to go.
"Max," Logan said quickly, halting her before she put a hand to the doorknob.
She turned around, almost a touch impatiently.
Logan looked up at her as if he were about to say something, but then another expression crossed his face and he closed his mouth instead.
Max raised her eyebrows another notch in mute enquiry.
"Just remember the wolf had big teeth," Logan told her quietly.
"As I recall the kid in red with the hood was still able to whip his ass," she grinned at him before heading towards the door with a backwards wave of her hand and not so much as a glance in his direction.
Logan turned back to his computer, remembering too late that in the version his mother read him, the woodsman had returned in time to chop off the wolf's head.
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So it was, some time later, that Bling came out from the exercise room in time to catch Logan's grunt of frustration as he'd wheeled out from his study, to find his front door still firmly closed.
"Max not back yet?" he asked redundantly, more as a stating of facts.
"Nope," Logan told him curtly, his eyes still fixed on the door.
Bling studied the man in front of him for a moment. "I take it you didn't come up with anything on Jaeger?"
"No." Logan exhaled slowly. "Man's been an FBI agent for twelve years." He swung around to look up at Bling, reeling off the few facts he had in a matter of fact tone laced with a hint of sarcasm. "Clean record...solid agent...no hint of scandal...not even a reprimand for a long lunch."
"Well, seems to me if we're gonna worry, we might as well occupy ourselves at the same time. Sittin' here willing the door to open won't achieve much," Bling pointed out bluntly. "Why don't you head on through to the table and we'll get your reps done."
Logan shook his head. The last thing he wanted right then was to be chained to any one place. "I still got some stuff to do, a few leads to check on," he told his trainer firmly, if a little vaguely, before heading back to his study.
Bling gave up and headed back to the kitchen, leaving Logan to stare futilely at his computer. His spacious apartment suddenly seemed a lot smaller - he felt stifled, constrained.
Why hadn't Max at least called?
Logan swung around and looked across at the floor-to-ceiling windows. He hardly noticed the blueness of the sky or the shafts of sunlight penetrating his sanctuary and falling on the couch.
What he really wanted to do was pace.
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Max drove to the warehouse on Branson Street, where they'd initially found the kids, with no regard for any type of speed limit.
The only sign of life she saw down there were the ever-present squawking seagulls that were sunning themselves noisily down by the waterfront.
The warehouse itself was empty.
Max pressed her lips together with dissatisfaction. She'd been hoping...
A quick check through the warehouse revealed not a single clue. Guess they taught you well, she murmured as she stood where the car full of Russians had stopped four days ago.
With one last flick of her eyes around the area, she headed back to her motorcycle and proceeded to Seth's apartment.
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There were quite a few people on the cracked sidewalk outside his apartment building – the warm sun was an alluring feature.
The sight of a woman walking along with two girls brought her up short for a moment as she tried to ignore the sudden, sickening thud somewhere deep within her. Manticore had taught her to focus on the task – recriminations were for the mentally weak, but her mind kept going back to the smile of childish pleasure on Monique's face when she'd held out her arms for her doll in the car the previous evening...just before Max had left her in the arms of a dirtbag who had greased at least two men, presumably to get his hands on the four million.
As the elevator jerked its way up, she stared with unseeing eyes at the graffiti covered walls.
"Jaeger."
She spat the word out with disgust for the man and disgust for herself. Her lips curled as she remembered Jaeger's supposed concern for Logan the night before. The fact that he'd stopped Logan from taking a header from his chair did nothing for the man's case – it only made her even more annoyed with herself that she'd walked away to check on the girls when she had.
The elevator finally stopped jerkily on Seth's floor. Max wrinkled her nose instinctively as the same stench she remembered from her previous visit assailed her.
The door to Seth's apartment was still closed. No one answered her quiet knock.
In a matter of seconds Max had the door open and had cautiously eased her way into the room.
She didn't jump when she heard the sound – apparently Seth's apartment was a veritable haven for all types of vermin. Her only disappointment was that she'd only found the four-legged variety.
Seth's apartment didn't appear to have been touched since she'd visited it with Logan.
That left the safe house as their last opportunity, and if there was nothing there to go on, then Logan was going to have to come up with something else.
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Bling felt edgy.
Logan wasn't the only one looking up every time a sound was imagined at the door.
Not long after Max had left, another uneasy thought had crossed his mind. He wondered if Logan had considered this angle as well – the man didn't usually miss much. All the same, he decided to head downstairs and talk to building security personally.
The trainer had busied himself with everything he could possibly think of, but it didn't help to ease the tension as his thoughts drifted constantly to the uncertainty of the girls' situation.
Those two sure have a way of gettin' under a person's skin, he mused as he stood up and surveyed his efforts with a small smile of satisfaction. Now that shoulda saved my job. It had taken some time – gentle dabbing had been required rather than elbow grease, but he felt satisfied as he studied the rug closely. The Nutella stain was well and truly gone.
Bling glanced at his watch yet again before reaching down to pick up the paper towel and carpet stain remover. He was thankful that the readout gave him another task to occupy his hands and mind and made him wonder how Logan was doing.
Walking through to the kitchen he left the cleaner and paper towels on the counter and threw the used paper towels in the trash. There wasn't an exciting selection to be had for lunch, but he did the best with what there was. Once both sandwiches were made he grabbed a glass of water and the meds Dr. Forrest had prescribed and walked through to the study. He wasn't entirely surprised to find it empty. He walked through instead to the living room. His eyes fell immediately on the figure sitting by the window. Logan sat with a stillness that came with a deeply preoccupied mind.
Bling started to call out to Logan, "Time for your meds."
His expression changed to a rueful grin as Logan, without looking up, put his hand out in readiness to receive the pills before Bling had even had a chance to get the words out.
"So, you psychic or something?" Bling grinned.
"Nope, I can read a watch, that's all," Logan drawled back, permitting himself something that could have been construed as a smile.
"You gotta eat after you've taken them. I've made us both a sandwich."
Logan merely nodded as he swallowed the pills with a large gulp of water, this time letting his eyes focus on the brightness of the Seattle afternoon.
His apartment seemed overly quiet now without the constant hum of chatter and squabbles and giggles and snippets of inaccurately sung songs repeated over and over by Monique. He'd never considered his apartment too quiet before – normally he revelled in the solitude...embraced it. Now, however, the silence gave him a sense of incompleteness – like the time the power had gone out near the end of a tense basketball game and he'd been left in the stillness of the brown out wondering what the score was and feeling vaguely jealous that somewhere, in other parts of town, people were still sitting in their brightly lit apartments, electricity humming efficiently, while they held their breaths as the clock ticked down.
Logan forced himself to bring his mind back to a solution rather than useless regrets as he became aware of Bling waiting at his side for the glass.
Something in his trainer's manner made Logan look up at him.
"Max has been gone quite a while now with no word," Bling commented to him as he met his gaze, taking the glass in one of his strong hands.
"And?" queried Logan a little dangerously.
"If Jaeger got wind of her snooping, he'll know you're onto him. There's a good chance he's suspicious even if he hasn't come across Max."
"We don't have any reason to suspect he's caught Max," Logan announced with an air of finality, releasing his brakes with a snap and heading through to the kitchen. He didn't like Bling's line of reasoning – it far too accurately mirrored his own thoughts.
Logan had just put his sandwich on the dining room table when Bling came through. He looked at the gun Bling was expertly loading with an expressionless face.
"It is one of the things you pay me for," Bling murmured, "An' I figure it pays to be cautious when dealing with someone like Jaeger."
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Max stood at the door and listened intently...hopefully.
This time she didn't knock – instead she put her hand on the doorknob and tried the door. There was nothing stopping it – it quietly swung inward.
Max looked around the room with the beginnings of hope stirring inside her.
The room looked the same as it had when she had last seen Emma – except for the fact that the contents of Emma's bag was now strewn across the double bed as if somebody had gone through it looking for something.
Max walked over to it, carefully studying the contents before she moved anything – but there was no obvious clue as to whether this had been the work of Petrovsky when he'd grabbed Emma or whether it was the more recent work of Jaeger.
Of Seth, there was no sign.
Max's eyes suddenly narrowed as her senses honed in on an unwelcome sensation.
Without turning she knew that someone was watching her from the doorway.
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Logan couldn't remember a time when a sandwich tasted so inedible. Convinced he was eating cardboard, he lifted up the top slice of bread to check out what was inside.
"Something wrong?" Bling asked mildly as he flicked an astute glance in Logan's direction.
"Nope," he answered shortly, regretting as soon as the word was out of his mouth that he'd sounded so ungrateful. He washed down the mouthful with some water and then stoically took another bite. He knew if Max were here she would have eaten her own lunch plus his as well.
"Been feelin' okay today?"
"I feel fine," Logan answered, not entirely untruthfully. He knew the present knot in his stomach was the result of worry rather than anything more sinister. "Looks like Hal found the right meds this time," he added, trying to sound more sociable. The thought crossed his mind that it would have solved a heap of problems if he'd been given the other meds in the first place. He couldn't help but wonder if he would have picked up on Jaeger yesterday if he hadn't had a jackhammer tearing into his skull the previous night.
"Great," Bling went to say, but the word died on his lips. He looked at Logan tensely. They'd both heard the sound outside his door.
"Wait here," he told Logan curtly with the tone of one who expects to be obeyed before picking up the gun.
Bling moved silently to the double, redwood doors, his gun held in front of him.
Someone was turning the doorknob.
Bling tightened his finger on the trigger ever so slightly as a man's foot appeared at the bottom of the door.
In the next instant the door flew open and Bling swung his gun in the direction of the next threat.
"Don't tell me - you're the woodsman," Max commented with raised brows to Bling as she walked past him coolly, unperturbed by his Rambo-like reception. Her eyes went immediately to Logan, who by this time had come through to the foyer.
"So, you didn't find the big, bad wolf, huh?" Logan commented, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
"Well, he's big," Max pointed out, throwing a glance at Seth who was looking around wide-eyed at Logan's apartment.
"What's with the hundred and one questions downstairs - you got a new security guy?" Max asked Logan as she directed Seth further into the room.
Logan looked surprised. "Not that I know of...unless..." He looked toward Bling questioningly.
"I just wanted to make sure we didn't get any uninvited guests," the other man answered evenly.
"Good to know someone around here uses their head," Max congratulated him.
"Hey, Seth," Logan said to him in a friendly tone. Seth appeared to be overawed by the spaciousness and obvious wealth in Logan's apartment.
He looked about the apartment with interest as he walked through to Logan's study.
"You live here, Logan?" he asked in wonderment, looking carefully at the extravagant set- up in the study and then at the living room beyond.
"Yeah," Logan answered.
"With your family?"
Feeling a little self-conscious of his wealth in a time when so many had so little, Logan admitted, "No – just me."
Seth typically showed no reaction to the answer, which only served to make the sudden expression on his face even more noticeable as he almost pounced upon the image of Jaeger that Logan had copied. "That's him. The man in the alley," the boy called out in a scared tone, staring at the picture.
Max felt her last vestige of hope that somehow Logan had been wrong hit the deck like one of Sketchy's bike stunts.
Seth's gaze shifted from the picture to Logan. "Do you know where Emma is?" he asked intently.
Logan glanced towards Max, then admitted quietly, "No. We don't...sorry."
"You found her last time," Seth pointed out to him hopefully.
"We aim to find her again," Max told him abruptly.
Seth had his eyes fixed on Logan. "We'll do our best," he told the boy quietly. Wanting to talk to Max in private, he asked Seth, "Hungry?"
Seth nodded eagerly at that.
Picking up on his cue, Bling suggested, "Why don't you come through and I'll make you a sandwich?"
Seth looked warily at the gun in Bling's hand.
"I'll put this away," Bling smiled.
Seth looked at the gun once more, but this time the wariness was replaced by a spark of interest. "That loaded?"
"Come on through and I'll tell you about it," Bling told him genially as they headed to the kitchen.
"What happened?" Logan asked Max intently as soon as the other two were out of earshot. His eyes went to the bag he recognized as Emma's as he followed her through to the living room.
Max stood behind the couch and tipped the open bag upside down, letting the contents cascade onto the cushions.
"I checked out the warehouse – it was clean, not a thing. Next port of call was Seth's crib. That definitely wasn't clean, but it didn't look like anyone had been there since we had. This," and she indicated the bag and its contents, "I found at the safe house."
"Where'd you find Seth?" Logan asked as he wheeled forward and quickly scanned Emma's things. Now that he knew her, he felt even more reluctant than he had the first time about rifling through her things.
"He turned up at the safe house. Apparently Matt had arranged for him to spend the night in the hospital. He made his way back there expecting to find Emma..." Max hesitated a moment, causing Logan to look up at her.
"I felt kinda sorry for him. Matt had told him it was all over," she said quietly, her eyes meeting his.
Logan quickly looked down at the couch. He wondered if Genevieve would ever trust him again. If there was one memory he had from last night, it was those very same words that he'd spoken to the child.
"You check through all this stuff?" he asked Max.
"Just a pile of clothes, underwear, socks, usual stuff...except for this," she added, holding up a piece of paper in her hand.
Logan looked up quickly, but it was hard to see what she was holding against the light coming in from the windows. "What is it?" he asked curiously, his green eyes narrowing thoughtfully behind the steel framed glasses.
"A ticket stub to a place called 'Old Seattle.' You heard of it?"
Logan frowned. "I thought that place was closed down," he murmured, taking one hand off his wheels to reach across to take the ticket Max was holding out to him.
"What the hell is it and why would it be the only personal item Emma would hold fast to?" Max asked curtly.
"It's a used ticket all right," Logan said, turning it over in his hand.
"You lookin' for an 'X marks the spot'?" Max asked with a touch of sarcasm.
Logan threw her a dark look. "Old Seattle was a tourist village that had the bad timing to open a few months before the Pulse hit. You know, one of those 'come and see how they lived in the1800s' type places, but I thought it had been boarded up for some time."
"Why would Emma have a ticket to a closed tourist attraction?" Max asked him impatiently. "This is whack!"
Logan shrugged. "Maybe Seth knows."
"Hey, Seth," Max called at once, heading out to the kitchen where Seth was seated at one of the counters.
The big man turned his head.
"Can you come in here? Logan wants to ask you a few things." She hoped it sounded more like a request rather than a command.
Seth looked at Bling as if for reassurance, then rose slowly from his stool and walked through to the living room. He stood silently by the couch in front of Logan, looking a little blank.
Max looked at Logan expectantly, wondering why he hadn't started asking Seth what he knew. Time was slipping away far too quickly for her liking.
Logan meanwhile was thinking back to Emma's words regarding Seth. He knew he had to put his questions carefully if he wanted a definitive answer.
"Why don't you sit down, Seth," Max suggested. She found it uncomfortable enough even from her height to be looking up at him.
The large, young man sat down in one of the armchairs, but his expression was one of apprehension.
"We just want to find Emma," Logan assured him. "We're hoping you can help us." Logan held up the ticket in his hand. "Have you seen this ticket before?" he asked gently.
Seth nodded his head. "It belongs to Emma."
"Has she shown this to you before?"
Once again, Seth nodded his head, very seriously.
Logan thought carefully for a moment, debating in which direction to turn with his questions. Finally he said, "Did Emma ever go to this place?"
"Yes," Seth agreed, nodding vigorously this time. He appeared to be pleased that he could answer in the affirmative.
"Do you know why Emma would keep this ticket, Seth? Was 'Old Seattle' an important place to her?"
Seth positively beamed this time. "Emma likes Old Seattle because that's where Grant asked her to marry him. He 'proposed' there," he stated slowly, as if it were a word he'd had to memorize.
Logan looked up at Max, who had gone back to stand by the windows. It was the only scrap of personal information that they had come across so far in regards to Emma Belding. The rest of her life was a closed book. Max recognized the faint glimmer of hope in his eyes.
"You think Emma really knows where the money is?" Max managed to put both a tinge of surprise and scepticism into her voice.
"What would you do if someone was threatening someone you cared about?"
Max was a little thrown, both by his words and the intensity behind the seemingly casual tone, but Logan appeared to be too absorbed in his own memories to notice her slight hesitation.
"I guess I'd tell them something...anything...t'get them to back off," Max said thoughtfully, then added with characteristic charm, "before I kicked their ass."
Logan leaned forward earnestly. "I don't think Emma's up to kicking ass, but I do think she'd do whatever she could to save the girls. Maybe Jaeger's threatening her with Seth's safety, as well. Under that sort of pressure..."
"Maybe she'd admit to knowing where the money was to buy herself some time...left the ticket there for us as a clue maybe?"
"This ticket is the only sentimental thing Emma kept," Logan told her, his voice full of meaning as he released his brakes with a sudden renewed energy and swung around. "If Jaeger saw it, it's just possible, since he's so caught up with finding that four million, that he'd be ready to jump to the conclusion that she kept the ticket for another reason," he added over his shoulder as he headed to his computer.
Seth remained where he was, apparently content to wait until his next instruction.
Max followed Logan through. She could feel a familiar tingle in her fingers and toes at the thought of some action as she studied Logan's computer screen with interest. Several links for Old Seattle came up.
"Not very original," she commented as she leaned over his shoulder, one hand on his desk.
Logan frowned a little with a slight sideways movement of his head.
"The name, I mean," Max answered him. "No wonder they went outta business."
"Well, we can probably blame the Pulse for a fair share of their financial troubles," Logan murmured as he called up a tourist site that still featured the embattled tourist park.
Max's expression said her opinion of Old Seattle was anything but favourable as she looked at the pictures on Logan's computer. "I'd blow the guy off too if this was where he chose to do the whole 'bended knee' dealio," she muttered.
The photos revealed a fairly simple construction of what was meant to have been a logging town in the early 1800s. The main road was realistically unmade and rutted with the wheels of the wagons and stagecoaches that jolted visitors around the site in the manner of the day. The buildings themselves were a fairly rustic, timber construction, some double storeyed, some single.
"Looks like the back blocks of Hollywood to me," Max said dismissively.
"I take it Westerns weren't on the Manticore curriculum," Logan remarked wryly, calling up another site.
Max shrugged. "Six shooters are hardly cutting-edge technology." Max leaned forward even more, until her mouth was next to Logan's ear. "You really think Emma'd bring Jaeger here?" she asked him quietly.
Logan didn't answer immediately.
"Unless there's something you're not telling me," added Max in a deceptively mild voice, stepping back a little so that she could see his expression.
This time Logan was quick to set her straight.
"Nope. Truth is I'm just clutching at straws," he admitted, "and not very good ones at that."
"We've got nothing else to go on," Max pointed out.
At that point, Logan's phone shrilly made its presence felt causing Seth, still in the living room, to look up with a startled face. Logan wasted no time in picking it up.
"Matt," Logan spoke quickly into the phone as he recognized the voice on the other end.
"Logan, we've got trouble," Matt said at once.
"Jaeger?" Logan rapped out the word.
The slight pause told its own story. "You know?" Matt's voice rose on the last word.
"A hunch," Logan told him. "Too many things didn't add up." He glanced briefly up at Max as he spoke.
"My source says the leak points to Jaeger. Logan, he must have been setting Petrovsky up all along – leaking him the information, letting him do the dirty work..."
"So that he could turn up at the end and grab the goods," Logan finished for him, "and we played right into his hands," he added bitterly.
"Logan...I'm sorry...the girls...if I'd known." Matt's words were abrupt, awkward, full or regret.
"Any lead on where Jaeger could be holed up?" Logan asked, reverting to his usual controlled tone of voice.
"The only thing I can come up with on him is that he'd booked a whole lot of surveillance and tracking equipment out."
"That must be how Petrovsky found Emma at the safe house," Logan realized out loud as another piece of the puzzle slotted into place. "He must've had a trace on my car."
Matt's voice dropped even lower. "Listen, I gotta go. The heat's on here – Jaeger must have some influential contacts. I've had my ass hauled over the coals for last night's affair but I've managed to keep your name out of it. No way are they gonna let me outta here before my report is on the desk, short of losing my job...I'll do what I can this end but I doubt if I'll be able to come up with a location on Jaeger."
Logan replaced his phone, aware of Max's intent scrutiny. "What do we do now?" she asked, the irritation beginning to show in her voice. "There's no knowing what that dirtbag could be doing."
Logan's mind was rapidly sorting through possible scenarios. He didn't like any of them.
"Should we 'take a walk back through time'?" Max asked dryly, echoing some of the banal slogans found on the Old Seattle website.
"Jaeger's obsessed about finding the money. If he saw that ticket stub, whether Emma's suggested the money could be there or not, and he saw me driving there, maybe it would be enough to start making him do his math."
"You think he'd be still tracking your car?" Max asked purposefully.
"I think he's the type to consider all options," Logan replied, still not sounding totally convinced. "First we need to check if there's a tracking device on my car."
"I'm on it," Bling said from the doorway where he'd been listening.
"It'd be easier if we knew what Emma had told him," Logan ground out with frustration. "This flying blind..." He looked up at Max. Her chocolate brown eyes reflected his fear for the girls.
"Why don't you call her?" a tentative voice spoke from the living room.
Logan and Max both turned quickly to look at Seth.
"Emma has a cell phone?" Logan asked, completely floored by this revelation. He'd found no evidence of her having owned one when he'd originally been trying to track her down.
Seth reeled off a string of numbers. "Emma's number," he told them clearly.
Logan looked at Max with any number of conflicting emotions crossing his face momentarily, then reached out for his phone.
He stopped at the touch of Max's hand on his own. "What are you gonna say to her, if by some stroke of amazing luck you even get her?"
Logan froze for the moment as the sense of her words sank in, his eyes distractedly resting on her hand that still held his.
"We gotta have a plan, Logan." Max's voice cut through his thoughts
"I need to feed Jaeger the idea that we know where the money is," Logan told her thoughtfully. "See if I can lure him into the open. What was that number again?" he called to Seth, but it was Max who repeated it.
Logan dialled slowly, his thoughts intent on how he would handle the conversation – if by some chance their luck held out and Emma actually picked up.
The phone rang and rang, and Logan had just turned to Max with a look that said 'I was crazy to think this would work' when unexpectedly, the ring cut out and he heard Emma's voice clearly on the line.
Logan, who'd been aware of Seth's heavy breathing behind him since he'd dialled the number, suddenly had a flash of inspiration. He quickly took the phone from his ear, pressed the button for 'speaker' and handed it to Seth. "Say hello," he mouthed to him quickly.
"Hello, Emma."
"Seth. Is that you?" Emma's voice sounded both relieved and concerned. "Are you okay?"
Seth looked across at Logan, then said, "Yes. I'm okay," as Logan nodded.
Logan meanwhile had grabbed a piece of paper and was furiously writing the words: Logan wants me to go to Old Seattle Town with him. He didn't say why.
Seth repeated the words verbatim and even Max was impressed by his acting skills.
"Why does he want to take you there?" Emma's voice came back a little breathlessly.
This time, Logan simply mouthed, "Don't know."
"I'm not sure why, Emma," Seth spoke slowly into the phone. "Should I go with him?"
Logan and Max cringed a little as he deviated from the script, but both let out inaudible sighs of relief when Emma simply replied, "I don't mind."
"When are you coming home?" Seth asked, his voice tinged by sadness.
"Soon, Seth...as soon as I can," his sister replied slowly, then suddenly her phone cut out and she was gone.
The sudden silence in the apartment only emphasised the tension in the air as Seth wordlessly handed the phone back to Logan.
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Emma jumped a little as the phone was wrenched from her grasp.
Jaeger looked at her and smiled. "Funny how all roads seem to lead to Old Seattle Town," he told her with a pleasant smile.
TBC