Thanks to all those who gave me feedback on the last chapter – it's very, very much appreciated.
My special thanks as always to the patient Alaidh for applying all her betaing skills to this chapter, correcting my grammar, deleting words I've made up and being generally patient with my nonsense.
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DEEP
CHAPTER 13
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Max's thoughts were uneasy as she walked alongside Logan from the campground restrooms.
The forest was too silent, too still, even though the first inklings of dawn were filtering through the trees. The winds had died down almost as abruptly as they'd begun.
"Y'think the birds know something we don't?" she commented quietly, looking around her for some sign of life in the trees.
"Maybe," Logan grunted shortly, his breathing a little laboured with exertion. At least he hoped that was all it was. His perspective seemed to be doing strange things, too – one minute blurrily out of focus, the next unrealistically sharp.
"Course, could be they're just smarter than us, know when to blaze." She threw an ironic glance in Logan's direction.
"I thought Manticore would've been big on teaching all that kinda stuff...moss growing on trees…migratory patterns of birds…rats leaving a sinking ship," he added dryly.
"That musta been the lesson I missed when I snuck out to smoke up behind the gymnasium," Max replied airily.
"Don't tell me - Zack's idea as well?"
Max snorted. "Oh, yeah, sounds just like the sorta thing Mr. 'I was born t'lead' would do."
"He was the one who broke you out," Logan reminded her.
Max determinedly stared ahead. She didn't want to think about that night or Manticore or Lydecker or even Zack but ... Damn, what is it about this place that's got me so screwed up that I can't get freakin' Manticore outta my brain, all of a sudden?
"What's wrong?" Max snapped abruptly, turning to find Logan stopped about five paces behind her, looking down at his legs.
"Nothing," he called back quickly as he looked up at her.
Max, in turn, silently pointed an accusing finger at his wheel, her fine brows rising at his reaction. She thought if he could have he would've jumped out of his chair. "Damn, where?" he snapped, brushing repeatedly at the leg of his pants.
"Logan, there's a stick caught in your wheel, that's all," she hurried to explain, looking at him curiously. "No big dealio."
"Oh…that all," he muttered, reaching down to loosen it from the spokes.
Max regarded him curiously while she waited for him to catch up to her. "Never would've taken you to be the jumpy type." Seeing the look he threw her way, she continued, "You know, it's this whole creepy place, don't you think? No wonder no one comes here – it's like stepping into one of those horror flicks you're so fond of."
"I don't watch horror flicks."
"TV show – whatever."
"And I watched it when I was a kid," he pointed out.
"That why you don't have enough sense to get outta here? You think we're Mulder and Scully?"
Max was pleased to catch the flicker of surprise in his eyes. "Is there anything you don't know?" he murmured as he caught up with her.
Max flashed him her superior smile then admitted, "I caught sight of the vintage collection of DVDs you've got stashed in your cupboard."
I'd hardly call it vintage," Logan protested.
"Whatever," she shrugged mildly, content to have reeled him in so easily. "Scenario: some hotshot goes around investigating the paranormal."
"And your point is?"
"You're as whack as Mulder…"
Logan stared heavenward with an exasperated sigh.
"And if you had any sense at all, which you obviously don't, after what happened last night, you woulda packed up and gone home."
"We've been through all this before. I need to talk to Tex," he explained to her emphatically and with as much patience as he could muster. "He seems to be the only one who can fill us in on what's happening around here."
"Cool. Then we blaze."
"I thought you enjoyed kicking ass," he ground out in annoyance.
"If I can see the ass I hafta kick – yeah, I'm fine with it."
"Max…"
"Logan, we've got nothing to go on up here except a whole lotta unexplained deaths and a mad scientist running around jabbing people. I'm not afraid to say that I don't like our odds. I've got nothing to prove," she finished meaningfully.
"You have my congratulations."
Max bit back a retort.
"First, I need to find Tex," Logan continued single-mindedly.
"I need to find Tex. Legwork's my department…right?" she insisted coolly.
Logan held out a hand in acquiescence. "All yours."
"Cool," she agreed lightly. "Do you think…?" A rustling sound in the undergrowth to her right made her swing suddenly in that direction, hands at the ready in a combat pose, poised and ready to take on any threat.
You're soldiers. You can never relax your guard. You must be on the alert at all times. To relax is to…
"It's a squirrel, Max."
Max's vision cleared and she found herself back on the path with Logan.
Purposely ignoring his gaze, she turned on the animal and hissed, "Bite me!" then watched it dart back into the undergrowth without a second's pause. "Dumb-ass things," she muttered.
"An X5 taking on a squirrel…now that's something I'd like to see."
Max looked down at him, hoping her smile wasn't too forced. "I could teach that squirrel a move or two," she boasted.
"Oh, I'm sure you could," Logan agreed, pushing on once more, a trace of ironic admiration in his tone.
Max threw a sidelong glance at him. "You know, seeing as how you've chosen such a whack profession, maybe you should let me teach you a move or two," she suggested lightly.
"Yep, you never know when I may have to take on a squirrel."
"I'm serious, Logan. I could show you some basic self-defence techniques that would be perfect for…"
"I don't think so," he broke in with unmistakable finality.
"K. Just an idea," she murmured, quickly changing the subject. "So, whadayou make of Mueller's dealio in all of this?"
"I have no idea."
"I found our thieving raccoon dead last night."
Logan paused for a brief instant before looking up at her. "I found four dead deer up by the homestead chimney, too," he admitted.
"Someone or something's been kinda busy." Her tone was casual, but the intent look in her eyes gave her away as she carefully scanned the forest while they walked. There was no reason for her to suppose that they were being watched, but she felt uneasy all the same. Some kinda whack instinct, she wondered? Instinct she understood, but this felt like something more than that – deeper, almost primal – more like the urge to survive. Its intensity unnerved her. Damn it, Max… chill! she berated herself
"So, you have any idea where Tex hangs out up here?" Logan was asking as he stopped at a fork in the path they were on. "This is the path I saw him take the other morning," he told her, hands on wheels, motioning with his head towards an overgrown path that headed towards the river then away from their own campsite.
Max stared, distracted by a huge, black raven that soared into the air as if it had been disturbed by their arrival.
"Max?" Logan prompted.
Concentrating with a little difficulty on their conversation, she answered, "I got the idea he was somewhere downstream from us. Guess I'll swing that-a-way – see what I can see. You should head back to the car. I'll bring him to you."
Logan heard her out, but shook his head a little at her words. "I'm not sure it's such a good idea to be seen talking with him, just in case anyone's around. We don't know when the sheriff'll be back."
Max nodded, thinking quickly. He had a point. On the other hand, she didn't want him to wait out in the open. "Why don't you follow the path with me to the river? It gives good cover – you can do your meet there."
Logan looked down the narrow dirt track. Reading his thoughts, Max commented, "The path to the river should be clear enough for you."
In answer, Logan pushed down hard on his wheels to get moving again, following Max, who'd quickly moved in front of him to take the lead.
A few times she had to hold back low hanging branches for him and clear the path of forest debris, but generally the track was well suited for their purpose. It certainly provided plenty of cover from prying eyes. Picking up a particularly large branch that had obviously come down in the latest wind, Max tossed it to the side then turned back to Logan.
"Everything okay back there?"
"Everything's fine. Why do you keep asking that?" he replied testily as he caught up with her again.
"Why do you keep stopping?" she countered.
"Just checking for more twigs."
"I cleared them, Logan."
"You missed some," he ground out, pointedly not looking at her as he paused to look at the view before him.
It opened out into a small clearing where it hit a sloping, muddy riverbank then meandered off in either direction following the course of the river itself.
Logan was about to move on when Max held up her hand for him to stop.
"Someone's been here," she told Logan, catching site of a single footprint in the soft mud. Squatting down by the water's edge, she examined every inch.
"What is it?" Logan called to her from higher up, hesitant to get his wheels jammed up in the mud.
Max studied the area closely. Something didn't feel right. Finally her eyes settled on the river itself. The water flowed slowly at this point and a small indentation in the bank had become a natural reservoir for any flotsam drifting into the area. Suddenly her eyes narrowed and she looked upstream.
"Wait here," she muttered in a terse undertone as she rose to her feet and grabbed a branch above her head. "I gotta do some recon," she snapped as she swung herself along to the next branch within reach then lifted herself up onto the bough.
"Max?" Logan called to her in a loud whisper, but by that time she'd disappeared into the foliage. "Damn," he muttered, listening intently for something that would explain Max's behaviour. A few times he thought he heard the snap of a twig – the first sound was enough of a warning to have him reaching for his gun in the bag behind him.
After a few moments of tense silence, he put the gun in his lap and gently eased his brakes off and faced upstream, the direction he'd seen Max disappear.
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"Don't come any closer," cautioned Max. "Looks like they duked it out for quite a while."
"Right," Logan murmured vaguely, eyes locked on the sight before him.
"Sorry, I shoulda given you some sorta heads up," Max apologised as she saw him finally look away.
Logan swallowed then steeled himself to look again.
"By the looks of it, we weren't the only ones who figured he could drop the knowledge."
"Damn," Logan answered blankly as he wondered what sort of person would do that to another.
"I wouldn't have called it a handsome face, but at least he used t'have one," Max commented as she dragged Tex back by his legs another few feet from the river.
"I don't suppose…"
"I didn't see anyone. I found him half lying in the water. He didn't drown," she added expressionlessly.
"Then…?"
"His face has been beaten to a pulp and he's been stabbed, Logan," she told him bluntly.
Logan looked up at her sombrely, considering all she was. He didn't like the hardness he saw in those dark eyes. It was too much like the homicide cops he used to interview in his early days as a journalist - the ones who were battle weary of death, viewed it as a commonplace everyday occurrence. Only thing was, Max was barely twenty. Part of him wanted to judge her; the other part wanted to change her. He knew both instincts were probably wrong.
Logan looked back to Tex. It was a little easier if you didn't look at what had been his face. "We should…"
"...check the body," she finished for him.
Logan nodded mutely, looking at the distance between him and Tex, the steep slope, the mud slick with blood.
"Way ahead o' ya," Max added, tossing him a small, tattered spiral-bound notebook before returning to the body.
Logan flicked through it. Mostly it seemed to be empty, other than what appeared to be some dates randomly scattered through the dog-eared pages.
"Looks like he might've had a name after all," commented Max, holding up a wallet for Logan to see.
Impatiently, Logan put aside his squeamishness and released his brakes, pushing forward as Max continued her search. "Anything else there?"
"You wanna be careful," Max cautioned, standing up fully as she saw his intention and cringing a little inwardly that maybe she sounded like a smartass or even worse, like his mother.
Seeing that he chose to ignore her, she walked up the slope towards him, intending to give him the wallet.
"Find anything else on the body?" he asked her tersely once she was only a few feet away.
Max was about to answer when Logan's front wheels hit a particularly boggy patch and sank without warning into the mud, stopping his chair with an abrupt, jarring jolt.
Caught off guard, Logan started falling forward. Instinct made him put his hands forward instead of holding onto his wheels.
Max tossed the wallet into his lap and quickly placed two restraining hands on his shoulders as she saw him caught unawares.
"I would've thought one swim in this river would've been enough for you," she murmured, her face only inches from his own as she applied a little pressure to push him back to a safer equilibrium.
Keenly aware of their position, Logan replied, "Guess you can never have too much of a good thing," but his eyes never left her face. As he stared into hers he wondered how he could have ever thought their darkness looked hard and unfeeling. From this distance, they were anything but.
"Right," Max murmured, slowly stepping back, her eyes falling on the wallet. Logan followed her gaze. "You should check…/I should check this out," they said almost in unison.
"I'll just make sure I didn't miss anything down there," Max added with a nod towards Tex.
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Logan had manoeuvred himself into a better position and was opening the well-worn brown, leather wallet by the time Max returned from a swift final inspection.
"This is it," she stated, holding up an almost completed figure of a girl whittled in wood.
Logan looked up. "No knife?"
"Nope."
Max watched Logan's fingers rifle through the wallet.
"Not much money in here," he commented.
"Who needs scrilla up here?" Max shrugged, moving to look over his shoulder.
"He's got a driver's licence. According to this his name is Cary Beaudine, born in seventy three, of no fixed address."
"Cary – no wonder he called himself 'Tex'," Max commented derisively.
"What's wrong with Cary? I had an uncle called that."
"Cary Cale?" Max smiled.
"My mother's side."
"Oh. Still, pretty dope, don't ya think?" Max said with raised brows. "I would've bet his name was Smith or Jones or…I've heard that name before…" she trailed off, thoughtful all of a sudden.
"That's it," Logan told her flatly, looking up at her from the closed wallet. "Not much to go..."
"The newspaper clippings!" Max interrupted.
"He was in them as well?"
"No, but one of the hikers that disappeared was a Marcus Beaudine. Coincidence?" she asked in a voice that said she clearly thought not.
"We shouldn't jump to conclusions," Logan murmured cautiously.
"Damn, he told me he didn't like murderers…said he'd met one of the hikers that disappeared. Logan, what if it was his son or something?" Max was surprised to feel a sudden rush of pity for the dead man.
"I guess it would explain him hanging around up here all these years," Logan said quietly with a glance down the slope at Tex's feet. "The warnings he gave me..."
Logan stopped abruptly and stared up at Max. "You about to do the Tarzan thing again?" he asked, not entirely joking. "Max?"
Max turned around quickly, almost positive she'd seen something...the hint of movement from behind the trees.
An uncomfortable fear rose in her throat; it had been a long time since she'd felt quite like this.
There it was in her mind all over again - a flickering newsreel of searchlights, snow, guns, dogs.
She remembered her terror. She'd held it fiercely in check - her childhood training taught her emotions weren't to be trusted. They were the enemy. They could get you killed.
More than anything, she remembered her determination that she was never going back there…would do whatever it took…stop whoever tried to stop her...and now they were coming for her again.
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"Max, what is it?" Logan called to her in a deep whisper as he saw her glassy-eyed stare.
"They're coming," Max murmured, her eyes searching every inch of their surroundings as if the trees themselves were about to attack.
"Who's coming?" Logan whispered back, easing off his brakes in readiness as he hastily glanced about.
They both heard the noise. Logan couldn't be sure what it was he thought he heard but whatever it was it made Max take action.
Turning to him, she snapped authoritatively, "Logan, you've gotta get down, now."
"Max!" he cautioned her, definitely uneasy as he saw the determined look in her eye.
The next second he was watching the muddy ground rush to meet him and he landed with a soggy thud, spread-eagled on the muddy slope, just below the crest of the hill.
Max stared at him impassively for an instant then, in the manner of a panther stalking their prey, she moved up the slope.
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"Max!" Logan hissed, twisting his head around. He had little more than a glimpse of her as she disappeared over the crest of the hill. "Max!"
"Why am I not surprised?" he muttered when there was no sign of her return.
For the moment he couldn't decide if he was furious with her or alarmed for her. It felt as though she'd almost pulled his arm from its socket. "Damn it," he muttered, deciding on angry as he thumped the ground with a clenched fist. The spattering of mud that sprayed up on his face and glasses did nothing to improve his state of mind or aid his vision.
Getting up on his elbows he looked around cautiously. He couldn't see over the crest of the hill but everything else appeared as it had when they'd found Tex's body. Logan frowned, not quite sure what to make of things. He didn't trust his own eyesight. Max was physically superior to him in every way – if there was something to be seen, chances were she would have spotted it. Great…meanwhile she leaves me here stranded.
The glint of metal further up the hill made him remember the gun that had been on his lap when Max had dragged him from his chair.
Pulling himself forward, Logan was making reasonable progress until he noticed the ground ahead of him looked far muddier than what he'd landed in. He stared at the patch vindictively. The way things were going, it seemed only natural that his gun would land in the middle of that particular patch. Logan let out an exasperated sigh. They sure didn't cover this scenario in rehab.
A few choice adjectives to describe Max and life in general occurred to him at this point before he determinedly pulled himself forward again.
He could imagine how one of the young PTs in rehab would have dealt with this. Her singsong voice echoed annoyingly in his ears: Today, Mr. Cale, we're going to teach you how to drag yourself through mud. For this exercise you'll get a total upper-body workout using the deltoids, pectorals, triceps, and biceps. Not something we're likely to need to do every day (accompanied by an annoying giggle), but it's always best to be prepared, isn't it?
Guess so, Logan answered her image dryly, by this time, thoroughly muddy, wet, and disgruntled but within reach of his gun. He noted quickly that it had somehow managed to stay mostly on top of the mud…unlike me who feels like I'm swimming in it.
Once he'd grasped the gun, Logan took the time to carefully check his surroundings once more. The muted grey of dawn had lightened considerably since he and Max had set out for the restrooms, but he still saw no sign of any sinister figures in the bushes either side of the clearing he was in.
His overturned chair looked particularly tempting now that he was closer to it but he didn't like his chances of being able to haul himself into it on such a steep, slippery slope. He wondered irritably what the high-voiced PT would have said to him on that score. He definitely hadn't been her star pupil. All he'd wanted to do was learn the basics - enough to enable him to get out of rehab as quickly as possible.
Propped on his elbows, he turned his attention to his gun, checking that it was loaded and ready for firing after first finding a clean spot on his clothing to wipe his hands. The top of his arms seemed to have fared a little better than the rest of him and made a good 'towel'.
A quick glance still showed no sign of Max or anyone else. He discovered how unnerving solitude could sometimes be. Listening intently for what seemed ages, all he could hear was the quietness of the now still forest echoing in his ears. The birds were eerily silent once more and it made him wonder uncomfortably, yet again, if the animals around here knew something that he didn't.
Logan shook his head, a worried expression on his face. Dammit, Max. What's going on here, anyway?
His anger was beginning to make way for a creeping, steadily growing alarm.
I should've heard something from her by now.
Suddenly, Logan heard a flapping sound. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a black shape rising high into the air. Logan nervously twisted his head in that direction and gripped his gun that little bit tighter as he watched the scavenger's outstretched wings hover over Tex's body.
Scanning the area by the river carefully, he could see nothing there to cause him alarm - that is if he ignored Tex's bloody body. He wondered what the hell Max was thinking when she ran off…If she was thinking at all, he added with a frown. There'd been an expression in her eyes he'd never seen before.
Not quite sure what tipped him off, he whipped his head back the other way and this time lifted his gun. The click as he released the catch seemed to echo all around him.
He recognised those legs. They seemed to hesitate in coming closer to him, stopping by his upturned chair.
A guarded, distant look in her eyes told him all he needed to know. Relief surged through him that she was safe, quickly followed by a resurgence of his earlier emotion.
"Hey."
He was glad that her voice sounded uneasy…maybe even guilty, but he had no inclination to let her off the hook too easily.
Slipping the catch on, Logan met her eyes coolly. "So, that one of the moves you wanted to teach me, Max?"
Max hesitated, wincing inwardly. His expression and tone of voice told her all she needed to know – he was pissed with her, big time. Well, can't say I blame him.
"Not exactly," she admitted. She took a breath before continuing. "How whack is that? Looks like I screwed up. I couldn't find any…"
Ignoring her words, Logan broke in coldly, "There's a shack over there by the river. You should check it out. You might wanna pick up Tex's notebook and wallet while you're at it," he added dryly, motioning with his head to where they lay.
Max felt a telltale surge stain her cheeks. Okay, if that's the way he wants to play it, Max glared at him, brown eyes stormy.
If she thought to stare him down, she was wrong. Even from his difficult angle, Logan gave her back look for look.
Max eventually gave in, dropping her eyes as her conscience nagged her that perhaps he had every right to be pissed with her this time.
"'Kay," she muttered, with a slight nod, silently righting his chair for him and setting it on even ground before she walked away.
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"Thank you," Logan, now seated in his chair on even ground, said with cold politeness as he took the couple of Kleenex she'd pulled from her pocket and offered him.
Max watched him take off his glasses and rub at the lenses to get them clean. For once words failed her. X5s weren't supposed to make mistakes like this. She winced as her eyes took in fully the extent of the damage she'd inflicted on him. OC had extolled the virtues of mud in unclogging the pores…she hadn't said anything about what it did for clothes and shoes and wheelchairs.
She wanted to explain it all to him – how wound up she'd felt, how she'd wanted nothing more than to protect him, to save them both. Save him from what…phantoms? her mind ridiculed. Face it, Max – you screwed up, big time…acted like a complete flake.
Damn, first I nearly drown him then I throw him head first into a mud bath. Just great!
She wondered how many apologies it would take to at least establish, at best, some sort of working relationship with him again. That's an awful lot of mud he's got on him, Max…
"So, just how far do I need to grovel?" she tried tentatively. "I know my MO kinda left a lot to be desired." When he still didn't answer, she put a hand to her hip and admitted bluntly, "I should have come real that there was no one out there. I'm sorry, Logan."
Logan slowly finished wiping his hands then thoughtfully screwed the tissue into a tight ball. "You didn't screw up, Max," he admitted to her quietly without looking up.
Max frowned, confused, "Logan, there was no one there. I'm trained to observe, not imagine."
"Mueller must have given you the same thing he gave me," he told her calmly. Looking up he admitted, "I was pissed with you…but what you did wasn't your fault. Whatever the drug is, it plays with our minds…hooks onto things maybe way down in our subconscious. It's simple – you heard a noise, thought it was Lydecker or whoever."
"It was so real," Max murmured uncomfortably.
"Thing is, something triggered your behaviour, Max…maybe some sorta déjà vu thing…the river…Tex's body…the forest… I don't know."
"Thank you, Sigmund Freud," she shot back, but her eyes had hardened at his words. The body in the forest…would she ever forget that day?
"Max, the same thing is happening with me. I'm…seeing things that aren't there."
"You see dead people?" she quipped.
"Nothing quite so interesting," he replied evasively. "Wish it were."
"What do we do about this, Logan?" she asked hopelessly.
"Not much we can do. I don't think it'll happen again."
"You don't know that," she countered bluntly.
"I've been thinking about Chad."
Max raised both brows in enquiry. "You thinking about when he went all psycho on you?"
"That and Lucy's paranoia about the water. They seemed to be isolated incidences."
Max looked closely at Logan as a new thought occurred to her. "You think Mueller's involved in growing the dope?"
Logan shrugged. "Either that or he's clever enough to recognise what it is and help himself to it."
"That Mueller's going down," Max promised intently as her eyes rested on Tex's bloody body down by the river.
Logan looked up at her in surprise. "I thought after all this you'd be more determined than ever to get outta here."
Max's brows lifted in astonishment. "What? Leave now…when we've only just got our first lead?"
Logan opened his mouth to make a comment, then closed it just as quickly as he realised he was almost arguing against the very thing he wanted to do.
"So, what's our plan, Sherlock?"
"You find anything in the shack?"
"Looks like it was where Tex hung out, all right. Pretty basic…just him and the cockroaches, by the looks of it."
"Nothing else?" Logan prompted hopefully.
"That notebook's the only clue he's left us," Max replied, glancing at the muddy notebook and wallet now on Logan's lap.
"And all this gives us is some random dates."
"We need to see if they tie in with any of the dates in the newspaper clippings we took from Bowie's office."
"I'd kill for an internet connection out here," Logan sighed.
"You've got that intel you collected yesterday on your laptop."
"I'm gonna have to do some cross-checking," Logan answered thoughtfully, unlocking his brakes. "I need to check the date Marcus Beaudine disappeared."
"Tex musta been up here all this time looking for his son's killer," Max murmured sombrely.
"Possibly, but we need to check that Tex is definitely related to the Beaudine who disappeared."
"You wanna visit the sheriff's office again?" Max asked with a sinking sensation. It had been a close enough call the last time.
"Maybe just you this time," Logan told her wryly. "I can give you my passwords. You should be able to get the intel without me."
"Looks like we'll need to break out the van again."
"I just said I wasn't going," Logan reminded her.
"We need to stick together. Besides, I could do with a look-out - who knows what Sheriff Bowie's movements are."
"Right," Logan agreed, quickly changing his mind. "I guess we should notify Bowie about Tex anyway. We can hardly leave his body here like this."
"It's a good cover story if he happens to be in his office." She frowned suddenly. "Although I'm not sure it's the type of attention you want from Bowie – this'll be the second body you've discovered."
Logan shrugged. "Considering it would probably be physically impossible for me to inflict that sort of damage on someone, I'm not too worried. When do you wanna do this?"
"No time like the present. Why don't you start heading towards the van. This path'll take you to it. I'll detour and grab your laptop from the car."
Logan nodded, setting his chair in motion upstream. Max detoured off a little further on, leaving Logan to proceed towards the site where she'd left the decrepit VW van the previous day while she took a path that would lead her to their own site.
Max moved quickly but almost noiselessly along the trail. She hadn't forgotten that maybe somewhere out there lurked a killer who apparently enjoyed his work.
Within seconds the Aztek was in site and she immediately froze, shrinking back further into the cover of the trees.
A big, black shiny SUV was parked next to the Aztek. One man still stood by the driver's side but it was the other man that caused Max the most concern. He was unarmed, dressed in black pants and a three-quarter length woollen jacket. In fact, Max would have been happier if it had been a gun he held in his hand as he jumped down from their tent.
Anything would have been better than Logan's laptop.
Damn, the one time he doesn't take it with him, she cursed inwardly. She knew Logan had sophisticated passwords and protection but an icy chill had flowed through her at the thought that this could somehow lead to exposure for Eyes Only.
"Well, two should be child's play," she reasoned as she stealthily made her way closer to the Aztek, running from tree to tree.
Once she was as close as possible, she waited for the man with Logan's laptop to go around the side of the Aztek, where he was almost hidden from view to his colleague and closest to her.
Max didn't hesitate. Catching the man off guard, she lunged forward and wrested the laptop from his grasp with a vigorous twist. Swinging it protectively under her left arm, her right foot kicked out and sank with full force into the man's gut.
He let out an agonised 'oomph' as he doubled over, scarcely able to stand. His partner, alerted by the sound, drew his gun and raced around to the other side of Logan's car, only to waste a few precious moments staring in amazement at the sight of a strikingly beautiful young girl standing over his colleague.
When he saw Max turn in his direction, he quickly trained his gun on her and tightened his finger on the trigger.
Max didn't wait to see what he intended. Too far away to kick the gun from his hand, she ran to her right as the man fired, then swerved back in the other direction with a speed that totally confounded him and had him firing randomly in frustration trying to keep up with her. He was totally unprepared when she leapt in close. This time her foot smashed into the man's wrist and his gun went flying as his wrist bone shattered.
Max was about to congratulate herself when the sound of an approaching car made her look up and several voices startlingly close at hand started yelling at her, "Stay still! Don't Move! Drop it!"
Max immediately stood stock-still. So much for child's play, she muttered as she sensed them approaching from the direction of the forest. Looks like growing up's a bitch. Damn, where the hell did these guys come from?
By this time the second black SUV had pulled up. Max cautiously looked around. Two similarly dressed, black-coated men had her covered and another two were rushing in her direction from the car. One sidetracked to help the two injured men to their feet while the other man joined his companions who held their guns on Max.
Max calmly stood still, her mind swiftly running through her options.
"Drop the laptop!" one of them called to her.
Max eyed the arsenal trained on her. "Don't ya think this is a bit of an overkill?"
"Just do it!"
"Whatever," she shrugged, placing the laptop next to a fallen branch as they walked closer. Once they were within range, her hands snaked out with a speed that was almost hard to follow and grabbed the branch. Swinging it viciously like a baseball bat at their legs, Max hit them with enough force to completely knock the first man down and totally upset the balance of his companions as his momentum carried him sideways and onto them. Before they had a chance to stand, Max swung around and hit the other man, who was trying to assist his companion with the broken wrist. Another flurry of movement had her swinging back to the fallen men who had almost untangled themselves only to be attacked by Max again. They weren't sure what it was that was hitting them, but in the space of a few seconds they found themselves unarmed and in considerable pain.
Max grabbed as many guns as she could and threw them into the forest before scooping up the laptop and running at top speed in the direction of the homestead ruins.
She didn't notice the white-haired man in the back of the second SUV who watched her movements admiringly. You're quite exceptional, my dear…quite exceptional.
"Sorry, sir. She got away."
Horst Mueller looked up at the man who stood panting heavily by his open window.
"Catch her. I want that girl!"
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To be continued…