Max Collins - After the Dark

“Which is where you come in,” Alec said.

While Alec put his plan into action, Max would contact Logan’s family in hopes of gaining their financial assistance. She only hoped the Cales would still be capable of coming up with the cash for whatever undoubtedly lunatic ransom demand the street gang would make.

The Cale family’s money woes had begun in earnest when Logan’s uncle Jonas was gunned down by a hoverdrone programmed by Jonas’s business partner, Gilbert Neal. The deal that Neal had made after he killed Jonas cost the family millions; fortunately, Jonas wasn’t the only rich Cale in the clan.

Logan’s uncle Lyman — a legendary reclusive billionaire who was often compared by the media to that twentieth-century fruitcake moneybags, Howard Hughes — lived in a compound on Sunrise Island, a private island in Puget Sound. All Max knew about the eccentric uncle was that he was estranged from the rest of the family, with one significant exception: he was said to love his nephew, Logan. Logan rarely talked about him, though Max sensed that the two of them got along very well.

The media also reported that Lyman Cale’s estate had cutting-edge high-tech high security. And Max knew it wasn’t like she could let the old boy know she was coming to call. Wasn’t like Lyman Cale was listed in the white pages... and Logan’s computer was so encrypted that not even the cyberadept Dix could make a dent in it.

That meant she would simply have to flex her old cat-burglar muscles to get inside Uncle Lyman’s compound and have a friendly chat with him about his favorite (and kidnapped) nephew. The prospect worried her not a whit — she’d had a good teacher in Moody, back in L.A.... Few could rival her breaking-and-entering skills.

While she was doing that, Alec would be infiltrating the Furies.

“I know those guys,” he said. “Used to run into ’em, in certain parts of town, back when I worked at Jam Pony. They were always tryin’ to recruit me.”

“Isn’t everybody?” she said with a faint smile.

“It’s a gift,” he said, returning the smile.

Seemed to Max that Alec thought everybody wanted him for everything. He appeared certain that all women wanted to jump his bones and all men longed to be like him. It was a small world he lived in, but he was happy there.

“Maybe it’s a little late in the game,” Alec said, “but I figure I can look those bros up, and tell ’em I’ve finally come to my senses and realize the only future for me is as a Fury.”

Such was Alec’s plan — not very complicated, especially by Alec’s Machiavellian standards, though the element of egomania marked it as his.

Barely sixty minutes had passed since the abduction, and they were ready to roll. It did not warm her within that she would have to trust Alec; she’d just found out that the steadfast, dependable person she figured she could trust the most in the world had lied to her — and now she was putting her faith in a handsome congenital liar.

And while Alec could go out and work the streets immediately, she would have to wait for nightfall to see Logan’s uncle. Good as she was, like most cat burglars — most cats, for that matter — she was at her best under the cover of darkness.

She thought back on the estate of Jared Sterling, the computer billionaire she’d had a run-in with when she first got to Seattle. Sterling’s estate had boasted state of the art security and she’d cracked that, hadn’t she? Of course, she’d also been caught and had to kick the asses of four armed men, just to jump the fence again with her skin intact; but she had gotten in. Could Lyman Cale’s estate be any tougher?

Probably.

So Max decided the best thing she could do in the daylight was some research on what awaited her on Sunrise Island.

As she and Alec rose from the table, each to pursue a plan, Alec looked at her with something akin to sympathy.

“I gotta hand it to you, Max — you’re taking this well.”

“Logan’s not in any danger, not immediately — he’s too valuable.”

An atypically grave expression took over the handsome face. “Max... I hate to say this, but... in a certain number of cases like this, the kidnappers just ice the victim right outta the chutes. A lot of people have paid ransom money for a corpse.”

“You’re saying this why?”

“You just need to face that.”

“If he’s dead, what can I do about it? If he’s alive, we’ll get him back.”

Alec nodded, smirked humorlessly. “I thought you were just holdin’ it in... Anyway, I kinda got a hunch what you’ll do about it, if he is dead. Just remember, I’m not really a Fury, okay?”

And he gave her that cocky grin.

Max smiled a little and nodded. Probably were quite a few females who wanted to jump those bones, at that...

And the deadly government-trained killing machine, the female X5 who knew a thousand ways to destroy her enemies, sprang into action — heading to Logan’s computers, to do research.

Alec cruised his motorcycle on up to the checkpoint at Sector Eight. Trying to blend in, he wore a black ensemble of jeans, a turtleneck sweater, and a leather jacket. He flashed his old Jam Pony ID, held up an envelope he’d stuffed with old newspaper clippings, and got waved through by the sector guard who was too busy with the long line of pedestrians to pay much heed to a pain-in-the-ass messenger.

What with the difficulty of passing from sector to sector, and with gas so high and the streets and highways in such wretched shape, many businesses used services like Jam Pony, which meant the sector guards found messengers an all-too-common annoyance, and had a nice habit — nice from Alec’s point of view, anyway — of just waving ’em through.

As he accelerated out of the checkpoint, Alec kissed the Jam Pony ID. This had been the easy part, he told himself; he’d only needed to be a little bit lucky. No time to get cocky. Getting into Sector Eight? A snap. Finding the information he needed and getting back out alive? A whole ’nother deal.

Sector Eight — tired and old and tucked beneath Portage Bay — served as the base of ops for several street gangs, and the Seattle P.D. seldom ventured far beyond the checkpoints. This far north, the shabby urban landscape provided lots of places to stash a body out of the way of prying eyes, official or otherwise.

The Furies operated out of Lakeview Cemetery and Volunteer Park, but had also been known to frequent the woods around Interlaken Boulevard and the Broadmoor. Once a very popular golf course, the Broadmoor now housed a good-sized Jamestown that provided plenty of potential victims for the ruthless violence of the Furies.

Alec knew the Furies manned an observation station atop the Volunteer Park water tower. So this seemed as good a place as any to start. Not at all surreptitious, a man clearly confident about who he was and what he was doing, he rode into the woods, and then, not far from the tower, parked his cycle and strolled forward to within twenty yards of the building.

The tower was four squat stories of faded red brick, rising through the trees like a huge fat chimney, topped by a conical roof perched there like a Chinese farmer’s bamboo hat. The structure seemed vaguely medieval to Alec, as he drew closer, though the historical edge was taken off by black spray-painted Furies graffiti.

Within the brick facade, a giant metal tank had at one time been filled with water. Talk now was, the tank was piled with the bodies of those who got in the way of the Furies. Alec figured this was an urban legend — after all, the only smell was of pine trees — but nonetheless he didn’t know anyone who had been brave enough to go find out for themselves.

The way — a white, recessed door also adorned with Furies graffiti — was guarded by a pair of the bangers. In broad daylight, Alec saw only one way to do this: walk up like you own the place. It wasn’t a foreign approach to the X5.