Seattle, Washington.
Logan had to admit that Tim did make a valuable informant. In his position at the attorney general's office, he was privy to a wealth of information about the corruption that still stood in the way of the prosecution of numerous local thugs. He had also hinted at bigger fish, state officials who were being bought off. So far, however, Tim had danced around the bigger fish, saying that he needed more time. Logan, for his part, was getting worried the fish had been played too long on the line, that they might have swam away already. Did Tim really need more time, or was he less committed to Eyes Only than Logan thought?
Logan turned these thoughts over in his mind as he waited for Eva outside her kindergarten class. Ever since the Pulse, the school had been housed in an old house on an even older block. He threaded his way up the cracked sidewalk to the house.
Eva saw him through the window and burst out the door and down the steps.
"Daddy!" She planted a kiss on his cheek and proceeded to dance from one foot to the other, chatting excitedly about her day.
Logan and Max had long ago noticed that Eva could do things that other children could not do. When she first began to walk and climb, they found her climbing to the top of bookshelves and cabinets. Her daredevil abilities threatened to make her parents old before their time. Much to their relief, she seemed to have also acquired some amount wisdom along with her physical talents. She rarely showed off in front of her friends. In fact, she was often the one to slow down to wait for last kid on the walk. If Max thought that Eva had acquired this early sense of compassion by watching her father coping with his paraplegia, she kept it to herself. In any case, Eva rarely hurt herself, despite a degree of jumping and swinging that left her kindergarten teachers speechless.
Max and Logan debated about when they should tell Eva about her special genetically enhanced DNA, but in the end, Eva figured it out for herself. Her teacher had been showing the children the letters of the alphabet. She held up a poster from a local park, intending for the children to pick out the letter "d". Eva had shouted out "duck observation n ature walks." There was a stunned silence. Eva sensed that she had said something wrong and sat very still. She refused to repeat it and the class eventually moved on. She had burst into tears when Max picked her up.
"Why is there something wrong with me, Mommy?" she had asked tearfully. Little by little, Max and Logan had told her about her abilities, about her Mom, her uncle Alec, and their brothers and sisters. She had surprised them all by flushing with pleasure that she had something in common with her big, Uncle Joshua, whom they occasionally visited in Oregon.
One night, two weeks after Max had left, Alec let himself into the penthouse.
"You're crazy if you think I'm going to send Eva out on survivalist training with you," Logan had yelled, snatching the coffee cup back from Alec and slamming it into the sink.
"I'm not taking her to the shooting range! She just needs to know how to call for help, escape from a trunk, activate the GPS tracker, find her way to Bling's or Sebastian's – by herself."
"Escape from a trunk? Are you insane? Do you want to give her nightmares for a year? She's supposed to be learning how to be a normal five year-old. She's supposed to be learning how to ride a bike."
"Logan, it's not normal to be a daughter of an X5 and some lunatic journalist who insists on digging into the affairs of Seattle's most wanted list. You're the one who refuses any kind of security detail. And, in case you haven't noticed, Eva's been riding a bike since she was two!"
Alec had stormed off, slamming the front door so hard the walls shook. Two days later, Alec had come to the door to find Logan glaring defiantly up at him with Eva at his side.
"I'll pick you up in a couple of hours, Ev." He fixed Alec with a stare.
"Alec, if I hear about one nightmare, or whatever…I'm shutting down this insane project of yours." With that, he had spun his wheels and headed back down the hall.
That had been nearly three months ago. Logan had dropped Eva off with Alec each Sunday afternoon for their "training sessions." When Logan had casually asked what she did during the training, Eva had breezily replied, "I forgot, Dad." Of course, this was the same reply that Eva gave when he asked her what she did in school every day. Eventually, Logan gave up asking. He had to admit that, since she had been born, Alec had proven himself to be exceptionally responsible when it came to Eva's safety. So, he let it go.
Eva climbed into her car seat and buckled herself in. Logan drummed his fingers impatiently on the dash. He had arranged to drop her off with Original Cindy before going to the meet, but informant had just called to push up the time. The traffic looked horrendous, even by usual rush hour standards. Well, at least it was just a pickup, not really a meet. Hell, it wasn't even a live drop. He'd actually been notified a couple of days ago, but hadn't gotten around to pickup it up until today. Now, he'd been told that the opportunity would be gone if he didn't pick it up now. Eva had nodded off and he wasn't about to wake her now. He shifted into drive again and made his way slowly along quiet Green Street.
Logan had just pulled up to a stoplight as the last rays of sun had disappeared. Suddenly, a masked face appeared at his passenger window. The barrel of a gun, trained steadily at him, peeked out from one long sleeve.
"Don't make a sound. And open this door, now" the man hissed through the ski mask. Logan didn't dare glance toward the backseat, which had grown oddly quiet.