Chapter Four: Suspicion

When Max walked into Jam Pony the next morning, she was less than pleased to see that the posters the DA's goons were distributing had been posted up throughout the building. In fact, one entire wall had been completely covered by the audacious fliers announcing that her boyfriend was a wanted man. Max stopped, and fought the desire to rip the damnable things down. Instead, she made a show of crooking her head and reading the notice all the way through. An entire wall filled with Logan's eyes stared back at her.

"What do you think?" Original Cindy asked quietly as she stepped next to Max.

"I think even I could use an extra half-mil," Max replied cheekily, just loud enough for those nearest to her to hear. Then she lowered her voice so that it was barely perceptible, "This sucks."

"You got that right," Original Cindy answered. She did Max a favor and tore down a poster in each hand.

"That's right," Normal shouted, "Get that graffiti out of here! How many times do I have to tell you deadbeats not to tape things on the wall? Huh? Who's gonna clean up this mess?"

"I will," Sketchy offered, sauntering down the ramp and into the building. He had his arm raised, not unlike a little kid asking a question of his teacher.

"Fine, get on it," Normal grumbled.

With a grin, Sketchy set himself to the task of cleaning the wall, carefully removing each flier. He used his nail to scrape the tape off the wall, then gently folded it behind the paper. After watching him for a minute, Max lost patience. She wanted those fliers down, and she wanted them down now. With a little grunt of exasperation, she ripped four of the posters from the wall. Recovering her composure quickly, she flipped her hair over her shoulder and handed the wadded up papers to Sketchy, who was looking at her in a way that brought his little coincidence of the day before to the forefront of her mind.

"Just trying to help," she shrugged nonchalantly. "Hey, how's your head?"

"Uhhh… fine," Sketchy replied absently, looking first at Max, then at Original Cindy, and then back to Max.

"Good. You trying to apologize to the trees or something?" That earned Max a strange look from both her friends. She rolled her eyes and explained, "It's a wanted poster, not the man himself."

"Well, I was thinking I might…"

Max didn't stop to listen to him. She could have kicked herself for losing control like that. It was pathetic that she couldn't keep her cool over a couple of stupid posters. She shouldn't let Sketchy get to her. They were all just a bit more excitable after the DA's announcement. In six days, Max was sure, the DA would look like a fool, and everything could return to... well, their sort of normal. With a small sigh, she slid up to the dispatch desk.

"What?" she asked Normal, who was eyeing her suspiciously.

"Nothing," he replied calmly, and handed her a large package. "6150 College."

"You got it, boss," she smiled. He ignored her. At least some things never changed.

As she departed Jam Pony, Max threw a glance over her shoulder to the wall where Sketchy was working. He was still standing there, carefully scraping and folding with the utmost concentration. So what? Sketchy was a fan of Eyes Only. He'd probably cut up the papers and tape them to t-shirts or something. Maybe he would start a picket line in front of the DA's office - one of those "Free so-and-so" rallies. Though, that would generally mean that there was someone in custody…

Stop! Max commanded herself. This was Sketchy. Sketchy was a good guy. He'd helped them escape from Jam Pony during the siege. He's helped run supplies into Terminal City. He adored Eyes Only, he admired the transgenics, and Eyes Only and the transgenics were practically a package deal - where there was one, the other was bound to be somewhere nearby. On the other hand, Sketchy also loved money. In fact, he had been known to do some very dumb things for even the smallest amounts of pocket change.

It was going to be a long six days.

A/N: Hooray! It's Friday. I absolutely adore Fridays. In fact, inhonor of Friday, well, actually, because it's Friday, I may be able to post another chapter, or possibly two, before the day is even over. Stay tuned...