Boathouse near the university waterfront, Lake Washington, Seattle
Logan had lain on the concrete floor for only twenty minutes when he heard footsteps echoing across it. A pair of hands hauled him up roughly and pushed him up against the wall.
"Boss wants you awake and listening," came a hoarse whisper.
A voice, amplified and distorted, came over a loudspeaker.
"Logan Cale, how nice of you to join us. You've been a hard man to track down, although I have to admit that I never thought I was looking for a guy in a real wheelchair. When Lempkin told me to look for a cripple, I always laughed it off as a fake. Besides you can never trust those Steelies anyway. Some of that grey matter's been replaced by steel too, if you ask me."
The voice paused.
"You have something that belongs to me and I want it back."
"Now," the voice reverberated in the silence.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Logan shouted to the air. "You drag a guy out of his car in the middle of the night, scaring him out of his mind…"
"Do not try to bullshit me! You're the one who went down to the docks to buy 'roids from those freakshow Steelheads seven years ago. I had a nice scheme going. Their merchandise made a nice little disguise for mine. Until they lost one of my shipments handing off some vials to you. I thought they were holding out on me so I squeezed those pretty metal heads till I got some answers. But after I went through a couple and they were still singing the same tune, I figured they had to be telling the stupid truth – that they sold you the vials with my stuff by accident.
"The next thing I know, the Steelheads and Lempkin get hauled off to the state pen after some "tell-all" expose by none other than Eyes Only. Then, I'm left to find figure it out on my own."
"Eyes Only. Now there's someone I'd like to get my hands on. Of course, I've been a lot smarter than Lempkin. I've managed to avoid being nailed directly by Eyes Only, so far. But, he's ruined some excellent arrangements and cost me a lot of money."
"Finally, my luck turned. One of the harmless little weasels on my payroll stumbled onto you while looking for Eyes Only. I started thinking about the fact that Lempkin was put away only a few months after you showed up."
"You should feel flattered, Mr. Cale. Your connection to Eyes Only is probably the only thing that might interest me more than getting my merchandise back."
"You lead me to Eyes Only and I might spare your life. Now, where is he?"
Logan's mind spun. His heart had skipped a beat at the mention of Eyes Only. It stung more deeply than he would admit that his life might be spared because this crook thought a wheelchair-bound cripple could never be Eyes Only himself.
"Small favors," he thought ironically.
Who was this guy? The Steelhead mission? His mind went back to the mission with Alec so long ago. Alec had given him info on the Steelheads selling steroids, which had turned out to be a scheme for smuggling all kinds of other drugs. The memory came back vividly. Max had been out of town, so he had gone himself to make the buy and to search their building. One of the Steelheads had shown up unexpectedly and they had struggled in the alley. Somehow, Logan had escaped.
"Look," Logan spoke again to the air. "I don't know anything about Eyes Only, but I think I remember buying the steroids from those metal heads. If you think there was something else in those vials, I might be able to track them down for you."
"I'm not stupid, you know. Eyes Only is a much bigger jackpot than a couple of shipments. You tell me how to find him or you die. It's really very simple," the voice intoned.
"You gotta admit, you really want your stuff back," Logan offered again, wondering, all the while, what the stuff was."
Perhaps he imagined it, but Logan thought he could hear the man behind the voice pausing, thinking.
The squat man beside him spoke into a com link in his ear, "I really don't know if he's the real deal. The chair? I've dumped him out of it more than a couple of times already. Guess he's a pretty good faker."
Logan's captor listened to the comlink response and signed off
The man brought the wheelchair over to Logan and dragged him into it. He cut the tape from Logan's wrist, then taped them together again behind the back of the chair. He then proceeded to push him back out of the office into the alley behind the boathouse.
Abruptly, Logan was left alone. Whereas the boathouse had been pitch black, the alley was bathed in moonlight. The empty windows of waterfront apartments stared down at him sitting in the middle of the bare patch of dirt. Although the boathouses were sometimes used by locals, the pricier vacation rentals had been largely abandoned after the Pulse. The wind whistled down the tunnel created by the buildings, stirring up dust clouds. There was a dark stain on the concrete next to him. Logan glanced up at the buildings that would muffle any sound that came from the alley. Logan knew why they had brought him out to the alley.