Max Collins - Before the Dawn

“A bone like the details from the disc?”

“The disc I stole for you... Logan, you can stop these guys or not — you decide.”

With the biggest sigh he had ever heaved, Logan said, “All right... Do what you have to do... short of homicide. Then you bring me the painting, and keep the cash.”

“How much is that thing worth?” Seth asked, trying unsuccessfully to keep the question casual.

Logan read the sheet aloud. “ Cow’s Skull Red, White, and Blue by Georgia O’Keeffe. The buyers are Korean and the price is supposed to be a million-one.”

Seth fell back onto the sofa and grinned like a kid contemplating a double-dip cone. “That’ll do the trick, man. That’ll do the trick.”

“You’ve decided to disappear, then? What about Manticore?”

“Let me count my money first, and get back to you. Where and when does the deal go down?”

Logan’s eyes returned to the printout. “Top of the Space Needle...” he looked at his watch. “... in about four hours.”

“About time I took in the tourist sights,” Seth said.

“Needle hasn’t been a tourist site in some time.”

“Whatever... meantime, I gotta get back to my crib, get prepped.”

Rising, Logan faced the X5, who stood and the two men exchanged smiles that had embarrassment and maybe, just maybe, some affection in them.

“Good luck,” Logan said. “Partner.”

“Thanks, bro.”

Seth arrived at his tiny apartment forty minutes later. Little more than a cell with a cheap blackout curtain over the single window, the apartment had a mattress, dresser, minifridge, hot plate, microwave, two chairs, card table, minuscule closet, and a small bathroom with a tub you could shower in but not bathe. A dozen or so books lay in a couple of haphazard piles near the head of the bed, mostly a mix of pre-Pulse horror fiction and weapons/martial-arts manuals.

This was, Seth knew, not quite as nice as Logan’s pad.

After changing into his work clothes — black fatigues and black boots — he also laid out a black jacket, gloves, and stocking cap. The weather had turned nasty on his way home, a driving rain rolling in like it planned to stay a while.

It hadn’t rained in over a week — which was a drought in Seattle — and it seemed that just when Seth needed a dark, starless night, he was going to get one. What he didn’t need, though, were these relentless sheets of torrential rain. He hoped it would let up before he had to go out.

With some time left, he picked one of the books out of the pile. An old travel guide of the city, it helped him to quickly learn about the Space Needle.

Built in 1962 for the World’s Fair, the Needle rose 605 feet, was protected by twenty-five lightning rods, and, at the time of its construction, was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. Three elevators led up to the observation deck and the revolving restaurant below. One hundred feet up, the Needle had a banquet facility, and on the ground floor a gift shop. It wasn’t a lot of information — the guide had been written in the heyday of the now dead tourist attraction — but it was more than he’d had.

That was when he heard the car on the street.

In this neighborhood the sound of an automobile motor was rarer than laughter — few around here could afford to own a car (Seth kept his own wheels, an old beater Toyota, off the street, hidden in a warehouse blocks away). Car motors meant cops, nine times out of ten, so the sound of one always set off Seth’s mental alarms.

And when he heard the second car, he really knew something wasn’t right. He moved to one side of the window and edged back the curtains enough to see down on the street.

Two police cars were parked diagonally, blocking the way. Just behind one of them, a third vehicle — this one a SWAT van, pulling in now — meant not only was something wrong, that something was probably him...

He invested another second of watching, to get a better sense of what was coming down...

... and saw Lydecker getting out of one of the cars.

Seth lost another second, frozen by the sight. How the hell had his old Manticore keeper tracked him down here?

He grabbed his jacket, gloves, and cap, jerked open the door, and went flying up the stairs. Lydecker would have the building surrounded, but they could only work their way up from the bottom. By the time they got to Seth’s place, he’d be vapor.

Slipping on the jacket, cramming his hands into the gloves, and tugging on the stocking cap, he kept running up flights of stairs. When he reached the door to the roof, he tried it and found it locked. On the other side, he could hear the rain noisily pounding on the door, anxious to get in. A howling wind cried out in protest of its own existence.

He took a step back, and threw a shoulder into it and the door gave, splintering at the jamb, lurching open while Seth jumped through, the rain slashing at him like a killer with a knife.

Turning back, he slammed the door, then picked up a stick from the roof’s blacktop and jammed it under the knob.

Drenched already, he struggled to see through the downpour. He could make out the edge of the building, and sprinted there, to look across a fifteen-foot gap between his building and the next... a matching tenement, also six stories. Gazing down, the unyielding rain pointing the way, he saw cops and SWAT running around the building, some heading up the fire escape on that side.

Seth backed up, took a running leap, jumped the gap, landed on the other building, turning his sliding arrival into a roll, and came up running, to head for the far side of this neighboring building. Two jumps later, he was at the corner building and calmly walked, feet splashing on tar, to a rooftop door that took him down the stairs to the street.

On the sidewalk now, looking back toward his building, he saw Lydecker pounding a fist on the roof of the police car, his clenched teeth flashing in the night like tiny lightning.

It delighted Seth that he could still get the smugly self-controlled Lydecker that pissed off.

Turning, Seth started off at a slow trot. No point drawing attention to himself. Now, he just needed to put distance between himself and Lydecker’s team.

On thing was certain, though: tonight would mark the last act of his new fledgling partnership with Logan Cale. Seattle was used up for the X5.

If his old commander had found him once, he’d do it again. Seth knew the man would never give up. Lydecker didn’t know how to quit — it wasn’t in the bastard’s makeup. The cash that would be exchanged, when Sterling and Kafelnikov’s art deal went down a few hours from now, was more important than ever... it was a future for Seth, maybe the only one he had...

Everything was riding on what happened tonight, and that was fine by Seth. The Manticore X5s had been designed for difficult missions — the greater the pressure, the better they performed.

With the possible exception of Zack, Seth felt he was the best of the X5s.

Tonight, he would get his chance to prove it...

... though he doubted his former teacher would take much pleasure out of Seth’s graduation ceremonies.

In a dark T-shirt, blue jeans, and running shoes, Max sat perched on the edge of the chair across the desk from Vogelsang. The office of the goateed, overweight detective had its own unique bouquet — a distilling of egg rolls, detergent, cigarette smoke, and something that was either cleaning fluid or really rank barbecue sauce.

The funds Max was contributing to this small business were obviously not going into cleaning the place, nor for that matter was there any sign Vogelsang had upgraded his wardrobe: the private eye still dressed as though he picked his clothes at random in a very dark room... unless actual thought had gone into the choice of a slept-in sky-blue shirt and a pair of alarmingly bright green pants, which together turned his waistline into a bizarre, convex horizon where the sky and grass met.