Max Collins - After the Dark

“However,” their superior was saying, “I think Ms. Guevera’s visit is at an end, since I don’t see any way of helping her at the moment.”

She said nothing — just looked hard at him, letting the private secretary know she sensed something was not right.

All this inspired in Bostock was another smile — he had displayed perhaps a dozen variations, all of which she was learning to despise. “Otto? Franz? Would you escort Ms. Guevera off the property, please?... I’m sure she’ll be glad to show you where she left her means of transportation.”

The two goons followed her all the way down to where she’d beached the raft. She dragged the raft to the edge of the water, then glanced up at them. “How long has the old man been sick?”

No reaction — the heads didn’t even swivel on the no-necks.

“What’s Bostock like to work for?”

No response. They just looked at her like two more Dobermans contemplating an attack; and her all out of hamburger...

“You two just don’t have any lines in this little melodrama, do you?”

Contradicting her, Otto (or was it Franz?) said, “Just get the hell out of here.”

“You made us look stupid,” Franz said (or was it Otto?).

“I had help,” she said, and eased the raft in.

She rolled in over the side and picked up her oar. She slid the oar into the water and gently turned the raft toward Puget Sound proper and the speedboat that waited for her a mile out.

As she rowed into the darkness, Otto (Franz?) yelled, “Next time you’ll look stupid!”

Thinking that Franz (Otto?) might well be right, Max kept rowing. The darkness out here was complete. The moon hid behind a cloud and the stars seemed to have run for cover as well.

Her spirits were low, as the thought occurred to her that she might have seen Logan for the last time. Twenty-four hours ago she’d never wanted to see him again, and was willing for the last words he ever heard from her to be words of anger, even hatred.

And at that moment, she had hated him. Or thought she did.

Logan, of all people, knew that everyone she had ever known had lied to her from the day she was born. He was supposed to be different, better than the rest of the world. But was that fair? Or even possible? Did Logan have to be perfect?

She shook her head as she rowed, getting angry all over again. Not perfect, she thought, just honest.

The waters remained as smooth as the emotional whirlpool within her was not. From a flash of yesterday’s anger to the overwhelming desire to see Logan again, to hold him, to forgive him, to give him a new start to make new promises that he damn well better—

She shivered at her own inner turmoil. As she stroked with the oar, she listened to the gentle lapping and she forced the emotions down. She had been trained to be a soldier, and goddamnit, she would be a solider.

She would fight for the man she loved.

And God help anyone who had hurt him, and if someone had killed Logan, that person would be beyond even God’s help... because she would bring hell down on the killer.

Looking uncharacteristically disheveled, Alec sat in the Terminal City control room while Luke hovered over him like an onion-headed mother hen. The core crew of transgenics worked the monitors — Mole (absent momentarily on a bathroom break), Luke, and Dix, the latter occupying his commander’s chair. Right now, however, Luke was stitching up a wound in Alec’s hand.

“You’re exaggerating,” Luke said, but there was awe in his voice.

“No, I’m tellin’ ya,” Alec said. “That tree was five feet from the roof, and twenty feet down.” And he wasn’t overselling the length of his jump from the roof of the Volunteer Park water tower, either. He’d had plenty of time to gain velocity as the tree rushed up to meet him.

“I thought pine was supposed to be a soft wood,” Alec said. “Well, I’m exhibit A — that theory’s BS. Owww!”

“Sorry,” Luke said.

Luke had already wrapped two cracked ribs, applied some smelly homemade salve on half a dozen bruises, and stitched up a cut on Alec’s arm. The black eye, he’d told Alec, would have to heal on its own.

“They used to put a piece of raw steak on ’em,” Alec said, gesturing to the shiner.

From his high command seat, Dix growled, “I’ll get right on that.”

Despite his sprained ankle, Alec had managed to make it back to his motorcycle before Badar Tremaine’s orders for his boys to search the woods had gotten under way.

“I’ll wrap the ankle next,” Luke said, “then we’re done.”

Mole strode in then and looked Alec over from top to bottom. “You look like shit,” he announced.

“So do you, buddy, but I’m gonna heal.”

Grinning as he chomped on his cigar, Mole bumped fists with Alec. “Glad that five-hundred-foot fall didn’t break your funny bone.”

“Broke pretty much everything else, though.”

Mole pulled up a kitchen chair; the seats were salvaged from here and there, this and that — Alec was in a frayed stuffing-spouting easy chair, and Luke was up and down out of an office swivel job.

“What,” Mole asked, “are we going to do if Max comes back without the money?”

Alec shared what he’d overheard at the tower.

Then Mole said, “Any suggestions?”

“We know where the money drop is — why don’t just get there first?”

The ransom note, delivered to Logan’s apartment, said the drop would be at sunup at Gas Works Park, near the old plant.

Completing Alec’s thread, Mole said, “And hit ’em when they show up?”

Nodding, Alec said, “What better time? Hit ’em before they even get set up. You know damn well they’re planning some sort of trap or double cross.”

The lizard face wrinkled further. “We do?”

“I been thinking — this could be about Max.”

“Max. But it’s Logan they kidnapped.”

“Right, Mole... and they left a ransom note at Logan’s apartment. And who was that ransom note intended for?”

Mole shrugged. “Those dipshits didn’t ‘intend’ it for anybody special — they just knew Logan was a rich guy and figured his rich family would pay the ticket, or his people, or... whoever.”

“It was addressed to Max.”

“A four-million-dollar ransom note... addressed to Max. Alec, look at where you are — who sends a ransom note to Terminal City, expecting four million bucks to be layin’ around?”

“My point exactly. More precisely, who knows about Logan’s apartment?”

“Nobody,” Mole shrugged.

“ Somebody knows about it — or otherwise a bunch of nobodies called the Furies wouldn’ta snatched Logan.”

Mole’s cigar traveled from the corner of one side of his mouth to the other one. “So... what does it mean?”

Alec shrugged. “I’m smart enough to come up with the questions. I was hoping somebody else’d be smart enough to come up with the answers... They called Logan ‘the troll’... What could that be about?”

“The troll,” Mole said. “You’re sure they called him that?”

“Well... no. I’m not sure what the hell they meant.”

“Could be a place.”

Alec made a face. “A place called the Troll?”

“The Fremont Troll?” Mole offered.

Alec shook his head. “No clue. Try English.”

Mole shook his head. “You don’t know about the Fremont Troll? How long have you lived in Seattle, man?”

“Fremont Troll,” Alec echoed.

“Yeah. You know the Aurora Avenue bridge?”

“Been over it a few times.”

“Ever been under it?”

Alec gave him a look. “Maybe that’s where you take your dates, but I’m a little classier kind of guy.”