Still, she figured they would have to do whatever White asked; her only hope to save Logan—and herself, and the lives of those helping her, and the boy Ray, for that matter—would be to walk into the lion's den and beard the bastards.
The problem was, she wasn't sure how to accomplish the vital first step—finding the boy Logan had so skillfully hidden away, a step that Ames White no doubt assumed she would be able to accomplish easily. Without Logan to help her, Max's efforts would be blocked by Eyes Only's own security measures, designed to protect the boy from White and the Familiars.
In the kidnappings she and Logan had thwarted together, Logan found the clues, and Max grabbed up the missing person—that was the program, that was how it had always gone down.
Now, with Logan MIA—in fact, with Logan one of two key MIAs—she was left to her own devices to locate the other missing person, Ray, and secure him . . .
And it wasn't like Ray was a normal missing person. Logan—a master at concealing people, at giving them new starts—had made the boy disappear, so that he would never be found even by his own father and White's formidable network of NSA and snake cult allies. She'd be finding a needle in a haystack—only she didn't even know where the damn haystack was.
They left the carnage of the cemetery behind—should the cops show, they didn't want to seed the press for another transgenics media storm—and repaired to a small café. Nestled in a back booth, over the warmth of hot steaming cups of coffee, the four comrades sat—Joshua, Alec, and Mole watching her, waiting for her decision.
She was their leader, and they would follow her through the gates of Hell, if necessary; she knew as much, and she appreciated it . . . and this time, the gates of Hell were exactly where she'd be taking them.
On her cell phone, Max called Dix and quickly laid out the situation.
“Who do you want me to kill?” Dix asked.
“We'll get to that,” she said. “Right now, it's your brain I need.”
“Good. I just hate it when women want me for my good looks.”
“Bet you do. I need you and Luke to take a crack at decrypting Logan's hard drive.”
“Ouch. Couldn't we just crack the Pentagon data banks, or somethin' easy? Frickin' Logan, he's the best, y'know.”
“I know. But Logan says you and Luke are the best hackers he ever ran into.”
“No shit?”
“None at all,” she said, lying through her teeth. “Get on it.”
“All over it,” Dix promised; but uncertainty peeked out around the edges of his bravado.
She clicked off and looked at her three friends, Joshua next to her in the booth, Alec and Mole across. “Logan hid this kid away so that God couldn't find him. But we have to.”
“What?” Alec said, frowning. “And turn him over to White?”
Shifting his dead cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, leaning forward, Mole said, “Max—you know I will follow your lead.”
“I appreciate that.”
“But this—big mistake.”
“Why?” she asked, and she couldn't keep the defensive edge out of her tone.
Mole relighted that stogie; got it going good; then he gazed at her, hard. “Why did Logan hide that kid away? To keep him away from daddy dearest. Now we're going to do White's damn dirty work for him? Tell me there's another way.”
“Is there another way?”
All three just looked at her.
Finally Alec said, “You figure we go through with the exchange and, what? Just vamp? Improvise our way out of it, shooting up as many snake-cult goofballs as we can? And hope for the best? . . . Again, I have to say it: and you think my plans suck?”
Max said, “What . . . other . . . choice . . . do . . . we . . . have?”
“You know what choice we have,” Mole said.
Max said nothing.
“He takes one for the team,” Mole said.
“Logan?” She practically shrieked this response, and hated herself for the “girl” softness of that.
Alec shook his head, but he was agreeing with Mole as he said, “Man knew the risks of gettin' involved with Eyes Only—that's how he ended up in the wheelchair in the first place.”
Sitting forward, Max said, “No one knows that better than—”
“You're a solider, Max,” Mole cut in. “We all are . . . And so, in his way, is Logan. Do you really think Logan would want you to turn the kid over to White, just like that? After you risked so much rescuin' the brat? After he put so much effort in saltin' the kid away? No. No way.”
Max turned to Joshua, whose lionlike features were draped with sorrow. “What do you think, Big Fella?”
Joshua covered his face with a pawlike hand. He was crying.
Max touched his arm. “Joshua . . .”
“Logan,” Joshua said. “Have to respect . . . what Logan would want.” He lowered his hand and gazed at her, his hairy face matted with tears. “Mole is right. Logan. Take one. For the team.”
Even Joshua could see it—and now so could she. Everything they were saying was true. But that did not mean she would roll over and allow Logan to die at the hands of Ames White—not while there was breath in her body.
“You're right,” she said, “and you're wrong.”
Alec arched an eyebrow.
Mole rolled his stogie around.
Joshua dried his eyes with a napkin.
“You're right that we can't just turn Ray over to White,” she said. “That would negate everything Logan stands for—everything we've stood for . . . But we don't walk away from a brother. We don't sacrifice any one of us unless we absolutely have to.”
Alec said, “I'm sensing a Plan B.”
She nodded. “We still need to find Ray White. We still need that boy.”
Alec frowned. “We find him . . . blow his cover . . . yank the kid out of hiding . . . and then we don't turn him over . . . ?”
“That's right—and, Alec, my plan doesn't suck.”
“Of what use is Ray White to us,” Alec said, “if we don't turn him over?”
But Mole was ahead of the X5, eyes tight in the lizard face. “Bait.”
Max smiled and nodded. “Got it in one, Mole.”
But Alec and Joshua weren't on the same page, the former shaking his head, the other squinting in confusion.
Max pressed on: “Ames White is going to insist on talking to Ray at some point.”
“A given,” said Mole.
“Well, if we've got the kid, even for White just to talk to on the phone, if he knows we really have the boy, we've got a chance of getting Logan back. Or do you really wanna walk away and let Logan Cale ‘take one for the team'?”
Alec, typically, just cocked his head like a beagle who wasn't sure he'd understood the question.
“We gotta try,” Mole said. “He'd do the same for us.”
“How about you, Alec?” Max asked.
“What?”
“Do we walk away?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I mean . . . hell, no.”
The self-absorbed X5 still didn't seem to be fully on board, but at least he wasn't fighting her anymore.
Mole said, “Max, one thing is understood . . . we don't give the kid up to White under any circumstances.”
She'd lost her head for a while, allowing her feelings for Logan to cloud the bigger picture. Now her friends had her back on track. They would use Ray to draw White out, but that was all.
She said, “No way White gets the boy. No way in hell.”
Alec lifted his coffee cup. “I'm in,” he said, and they toasted—Joshua hitting the cups a little too hard, spilling some coffee.
A lot more than coffee would be spilled in the days ahead.
“Here's where we are,” Max said. “Dix and Luke are trying to crack Logan's computer, but I doubt they'll have much if any luck. White and his NSA goon squad took the old one, when they raided Logan's prior apartment, and they still haven'
t cracked the codes.”
“You know that for sure?” Alec asked.
She nodded. “Comes straight from Otto Gottlieb.”
Gottlieb, White's former partner in the NSA, had seen the light and helped the transgenics capture Kelpy and bring White down at the NSA. Max wondered if Gottlieb could be of any help on this outing.
But Gottlieb had been rewarded by the NSA with a raise and promotion, for his whistle-blowing on White, and Max was afraid his loyalties these days might be too strongly NSA for her to risk trusting his involvement.
Alec said, “Why don't I talk to Matt Sung—he might be able to help.”
Matt Sung, an Asian-American detective for the Seattle P.D., had helped Eyes Only on numerous occasions.
“Good call,” Max said. “Logan trusts Matt completely.” Then, turning to Mole, she added, “Can you track down Bling?”
Mole's cigar bobbed as he nodded. “Count on it.”
Bling—Logan's African-American physical therapist and occasional driver/bodyguard—knew more about Eyes Only operations than anybody this side of Logan himself.
With Logan wearing the exoskeleton more and more, Bling found himself with free time, now that Logan was doing less rehab and getting himself around. They hadn't seen Bling for several months, but she knew Logan talked to him regularly and was sure he was still in the city somewhere.
“How can Joshua help?” Joshua asked.
Max couldn't exactly send a six-foot-four-inch Dog Boy out to do anything inconspicuous; when it came time to kick ass and take names, Joshua would be the point man. But she couldn't bench him now—it would hurt Joshua, whose fondness for Logan she found touching.
She said, “Go over to Father's house and look around. Logan laid low there for a while—maybe he left something behind that'll lead us to the boy.”
Father's house had once belonged to Sandeman, the enigmatic and benign figure behind the transgenics program that Manticore had corrupted; Joshua had lived there for a while, and Logan had been a frequent visitor who'd often crashed there, after his apartment was trashed by White and the NSA.
Joshua nodded eagerly, happy to be part of the effort.
“What about you?” Alec asked.
“I've got a plan of my own,” she said.
Alec gave her a wicked little smile. “Hope it doesn't suck.”
She traded him smirk for smirk. “Me, too . . . We'll meet back at Terminal City in two hours. Use the cell phones to keep in touch—if you find something, don't save it up for later. Call me right now.”
They all nodded.
She let out a huge sigh and slid off the booth. Outside on the street, she said, “Okay—let's go find that kid.”
“Why don't we?” Alec said. His black eye had healed already—those good transgenic genes.
Fists were bumped, and they went their separate ways. Joshua—understandably shy about being seen in public—opted to return to his old house via the sewer system. Max would pit Joshua's knowledge of the sewer system against anyone's, even the engineers who designed it. When it came to underground travel, Joshua was king.
It was agreed that Mole would drop Alec at Matt Sung's precinct, after which Mole would continue on with the X5's cycle in search of Bling. For her part, Max was off to some old stomping grounds.
Might have been yesterday that she last leaned on the bar in Crash; but in reality, she hadn't set foot in the place in six months, not since that day everything went sideways at Jam Pony.
The converted warehouse was separated into three rooms by its rounded brick archways. Video monitors attached to the walls and the big screen TV in the middle room all still showed footage of violent collisions between cars, trains, buses, motorcycles, anything mechanical, providing the crashes that were the bar's namesake. Manhole cover tables were scattered around, each surrounded by four or five chairs. The far room held pool and foosball tables. The entire wall behind the bar was a backlit Plexiglas sculpture constructed of bicycle frames.
Max sat at the bar nursing a diet cola. The scene at the Furies' mausoleum had put her in the mood for something harder, but she needed to keep her wits about her. For now, all she could do was cool her jets and hope she wouldn't have to wait too long.
She didn't.
In less than ten minutes a woman opened the door and stood in silhouette against the bright sunshine. The door closed slowly and Max's eyes readjusted to the dim light as the woman came down the stairs, spotted Max, and came over to take a seat next to her at the bar.
A slim blonde with her short hair tucked neatly up under a stocking cap, the woman was mannequin thin with alabaster skin, standing slightly taller than Max, with large dark eyes. When the blonde sat down, Max got a glimpse of the tattoo on the woman's back, just about waist level.
“Asha,” Max said, by way of hello.
The blonde's smile showed some teeth, but seemed forced. She and Max had never been friends, exactly, even if they had been allies much of the time. Max knew Asha had a thing for Logan, and she wouldn't have been at all surprised if the blonde still resented Logan picking her.
“Max,” Asha said, with a curt nod.
That was the extent of their chitchat.
After Asha ordered a coffee for herself, Max laid out the situation—Asha's only reaction to hearing of Logan's kidnapping was a tightening between her eyebrows, but that spoke volumes—then Max told Asha what she needed.
Asha's eyes tightened, and her mouth did, too. “You really think I'm gonna betray Logan's trust?”
Max shrugged. “Only if you want to save his life.”
The blonde took a sip of her coffee and carefully set the cup on the bar in front of her. Her eyes never left the cup as she said nothing for a very long minute.
Then her eyes rose and she said, quietly, “If I tell you anything, Logan will never speak to me again.”
“If he's dead,” Max pointed out, “he'll never speak to anyone again.”
She shook her head, and the blonde hair shimmered with barroom neon. “He'll never be able to trust me.”
Max let out a breath. “Asha, he'll never know I got it from you. You have my word.”
Asha studied Max for a good thirty seconds—it seemed an endless time to Max, but she let the blonde make up her own mind.
Finally Asha spoke. “I believe you, I really do. Despite our . . . differences, you've been honest with me. And I would help you if I could.”
“But?”
“I really don't think I know anything.”
“Sounds to me like you're not sure . . . Any little thing you could share would be more than I have right now.”
Again Asha shook her head. “You're asking me to betray a trust. Do you know what it does, between two people, when trust is shattered? When one betrays the other?”
Max looked away.
“What?” Asha said.
“Nothing.” Max shook her head, smiled a bitter little smile, and said, “We don't have the luxury of social niceties right now, Asha. I'm afraid ‘betraying' Logan's trust is the only way of saving Logan's life.”
Looking back into her coffee, Asha kept her voice low, barely above a whisper. “All right . . . all right. But I don't remember the woman's name—the aunt?”
Max nodded slightly, one eye going to the bartender to make sure he wasn't watching them.
“And I didn't have all that much to do with it,” Asha continued. “I tracked the woman down, introduced her to Logan. The rest was Eyes Only.”
Like most of Logan's operatives, Asha did not know that Logan was Eyes Only.
“I understand,” Max said.
“All I can tell you is, the aunt lived in Fremont. Once Logan reunited her with her nephew, he gave her the money and the new papers to make the move. I did hear him mention Appleton.”
“Appleton . . . about an hour and a half from here? Upstate?”
“I don't know. Could be some other Appleton in Arkansas or Maine, who the hell knows. Would Logan salt somebod
y away so close to home?”
“Actually, he might. It's unexpected enough . . . Asha, think—”
She shook her head, hair shimmering with neon again. “Max, honestly—that's all I know. Really.”
“Thanks, Asha.” And she touched the woman's hand on the bar. “I appreciate it.”
Asha gripped Max's hand; the squeeze they exchanged was the most personal, warmest moment they'd ever shared. “You save his fine ass, girl—understood?”
“Understood.”
“And you didn't hear any of this from me.”
“Also understood.”
Appleton.
It wasn't much.
But it was more than she had when she came in to Crash, wasn't it? Tossing some money on the bar, Max retreated up the stairs and out into the bright sunlit day. As she rode back to Terminal City on her Ninja, she wondered if the others were having any luck. Her pickings were pretty damn slim.
Alec was already there, in the control room, when Max strode in.
“How'd you do?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Zip, zally, zero. Sung didn't sing—he doesn't know anything about the White kid.”
“Says he doesn't know, or doesn't know?”
“I didn't hook him up to a lie detector, Max, but I know a lot about lying . . . and I don't think he was. Besides, you know how highly Logan regards Sung.”
She wondered if Alec had run into another Eyes Only loyalist who was refusing to share info out of respect to Logan.
“How did you do?” he asked.
Shrugging, she said, “Not much. Small lead. Maybe.”
Dix and Luke came in next, Luke carrying a small black box in his arms like it was a new puppy. Max cocked an eye; the “puppy” seemed to be smoking from one end.
Luke looked up, tears in his black eyes. “This little box has broken every code I've ever turned it loose on.”
“It doesn't look so good,” Max said.
“No, it doesn't,” Dix admitted. “We've what you might call a setback.”
“Yeah?”
Luke, nodding, said, in the voice of a school kid who'd been beaten up on by a playground bully, “Logan's computer burned up my codebreaker.”
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