Anacortes, Washington
Matt Sung, Assistant Chief of Police, ran his fingers through his hair and sank down into his desk chair. It was the first time he had sat down in all day. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, trying to decide what to do next. When Matt had gotten the call from the chief about Eyes Only, he had been 70 miles away meeting with a D.A about a case. For the past four months, he had been making weekly drives out to the site of a massive arms sting operation. They were finally getting close to closing it down.
"Wait a second, Chief. Slow down, I couldn't hear you for a second."
"I said, if it's true, don't you think that's crazy? All of Seattle's been looking for Eyes Only for 10 years and it turns out he's some guy in a wheelchair. Don't know who he is yet. Guess the M.E. will tell us if he's in the system."
Suddenly, it felt as though the whole room had gone cold. Matt could only think of one name.
Logan Cale. And Matt doubted very much if he would be in the system.
It had been twenty years since Matt had entered the police academy just before the Pulse. He had made it through to the rank of detective before he realized that a blue cop uniform could hide a multitude of sins. All his professional life, he had never known any world other than the insanity of the post-Pulse world. It seemed that everyone was on the take. Beat cops took kickbacks in exchange for protection from the local "businessmen." Matt knew he had friends and relatives in Chinatown who could have used a little protection, but he just couldn't bring himself to take the money. He kept seeing his son's face looking up at him and he just couldn't do it. Then one day, he had found a folded note on the driver's seat of his car.
"I know you want to do more," it had said. "Make it count."
The note had ended with an address and a time. Matt had snorted and tossed the note in the trash. But later that week, after he saw one of his collars breeze out the door an hour after his arrest, he had found his feet straying over to the West Seattle bar. He had arrived an hour early and sat facing the door. Logan, who had been sitting in the back of the smoky room, rose to his feet and slid into the chair opposite Matt.
Logan had begun to talk, breezily, almost casually. Ever the detective, Matt had tried to size him up.
"Expensive 'non-haircut', nice glasses, snobby east coast white guy, trying too hard to be northwest Seattle cool, weekend idealist, fresh out of grad school, nothing to lose." Matt had smiled to himself.
At least, Logan's boss, Eyes Only, seemed to have thought of all the details. The instructions for contacting him with "intel" had been meticulous, detailed to a fault.
That was how it had begun for Matt. He started watching the Eyes Only cable hacks with a sort of grim delight. The daily grind of his job had begun to feel a little less grimy. In spite of his initial impression of Logan, Matt had taken a liking to the brash, confident young man. Actually, they were close to the same age. Maybe, if he hadn't had a wife and son to consider, he would have had the same attitude of invincibility about life that Logan had.
Then, one day, Logan stopped returning his calls and emails. The Eyes Only cable hacks stopped for three months too. He hadn't heard anything about trouble for Eyes Only from the station, so he figured that Logan's boss had felt a threat and gone deeper underground for awhile. Following Logan's instructions, Matt had stopped all contact and waited. Matt had almost given up hearing from Eyes Only, when he finally received a call from Logan.
"Haven't heard from you guys in a while," Matt had chuckled in relief, "Where you been?"
"Sorry, but Eyes Only wanted me to lie low for a little while, but I'm back now." Logan's voice had sounded different, more measured, more serious. "Can we meet tomorrow night?"
"Sure. The usual place?"
"Uh…no. I can't. I mean, that's not going to work for me. How about The Arrow, on Ash Street? First floor, okay? "
Matt had stepped into the dimly lit bar, allowing his eyes to adjust to the light as he stood by the door. Wooden tables lined the walls. A few men gathered around an old dartboard.
Logan was waiting for Matt at one of the tables. He was thinner than before and his face looked gaunt and pale. Then, as Logan pulled his hands off his lap to fiddle nervously with his glass, Matt saw what he had missed at first - that his friend sat in a wheelchair.
"Man, are you all right?" Matt asked softly, lowering himself carefully into a chair. The words hung in the air.
"I…I wasn't doing too well, but I'm things are getting better now. Trying to make the best of it, you know." Logan looked up at Matt and gave him a look that had just enough upturn to qualify as a smile. "Let's move to the back where it's darker."
Logan lifted his beer off the table and set it between his legs, backing away from the table. He wheeled around and headed off to the back of the bar. Matt followed, trying to disguise the shock at seeing his friend so changed.
"What happened? Did you get hurt doing a job for Eyes Only? Why was everything so quiet on the informant net?" Matt's questions spilled out.
Logan ignored Matt's questions and stopped at one of the back tables.
"We don't have a lot of time" Logan spoke quickly, pulling out an envelope from a bag hanging behind his chair. He pressed it into Matt's hands. "I need you to contact this list of informants with new passwords, then wait for further instructions. Can you do it?"
"Sure, Logan. Hey, where are you going?"
Logan was already heading toward the back door. He paused to look over his shoulder. Their eyes met and his gaze softened.
"I had an accident, but I'm working on getting better, really. Relax Matt, don't worry." Logan smiled as he pushed his way out the back door. "Give me a 15 minutes head start before you leave, will you? It takes me a while to get into the car now."
Logan was gone before Matt had to chance to ask any other questions.
When Matt saw Logan the next time, there was no mention of the chair or his injury. Matt let it go. They rarely spoke of the chair again. And Matt never again saw him without it.
Matt began to bring in more important information, helping to expose corruption in the mayor's office. Then, one day, he and Logan must have dug a little too deep, trying to expose a crook named Bronck. He and Logan were caught and held captive together, two Eyes Only operatives about to be sacrificed for the good of the cause. Matt had tried to fight the haze of pain as long as he could, but he had eventually passed out. Somehow, Eyes Only had rescued them. He had awoken on the cold concrete floor to find that Bronck had been killed.
Logan should have been overjoyed that they had been rescued. Instead, he became withdrawn. He contacted Matt less and less often, citing that Eyes Only wanted him to lie low. Matt tried to reassure his friend.
"Logan, I told you I'm fine. If I didn't know better, I'd think that you were somehow blaming yourself for our little adventure. I signed up on my own to be an informant for Eyes Only, same as you. I can't help it if Eyes Only had me pegged as a softie for his cause, can I? It'll all blow over." Matt had joked sympathetically. .
How wrong he had been. A month later, he received the terse email from Eyes Only.
"We have evidence that a security breach may have led to an unfortunate incident involving two operatives. We cannot be sure of your level of involvement. You will cease all communication at this time."
"Son of a #! Matt had shoved his desk hard against the wall, cracking the plaster and drawing the eyes of every detective in the department. Despite the warning against contact, Matt had a left desperate message on Logan's voicemail.
"Logan, you're got to believe me. I had nothing to do with that Bronck incident. You know I'd never do anything to put you in harm's way or to jeopardize Eyes Only. This is a formality, right? You'll get back to me when it all blows over?"
But his voice mail and email had remained silent. Why hadn't Logan defended him, explained to Eyes Only that Matt couldn't have been the leak? They had been friends, hadn't they?
Matt remembered his last conversation with Logan before Bronck's men had shown up. Logan had been asking him about his marriage and whether his wife gave him a hard time about his work.
"Matt, does it bother your wife that you spend so much time at work? Does she ever think you're obsessed with work? Do you think I'm obscessed?" Logan had asked out of the blue.
"I find it very hard to believe that I would have to give you advice about women. I spent all my formative years trying to pick up tips from guys like you." Matt had laughed.
"Maybe, Matt. But things are different for me now," Logan had said softly. That was the closest that Logan had come to talking about his new life in the chair. Maybe he would have let him in on that new life. Who knows, maybe he had met someone. But Matt had never had the chance to find out.
Now, the memories came flooding back to Matt, jumbled in a heap. How could he have been so stupid? He had been too angry at Eyes Only for mistrusting him and too angry at Logan for not defending him that he hadn't allowed himself to think about other possibilities. What if they were one and the same? Had Logan been Eyes Only from the beginning?
Matt had to see the body. It was too late to change the past, but maybe there was a way he could still help Eyes Only.
Matt picked up his phone again and started dialing.
"Hey, Jean, it's Matt. Can you tell me where the body from that Eyes Only shooting went?"
"What? What do you mean it's been transferred? Who approved that?"