After the Dark

by Max Allan Collins

  As she realized what she was seeing, Max felt the bottom drop out of her stomach and a chill sweep over her.

  From behind her an icy male voice intoned, “Say hello to Lyman Cale, why don't you?”

  Chapter Six

  * * *

  AS THE CROW FLIES

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  DECEMBER 22, 2021

  Max whirled to face a handsome blond man of about six feet and 180 pounds; he wore a black blazer over a white shirt with no tie, though his gray trousers had a disturbingly crisp crease for this time of night.

  “Max . . . Guevera, isn't it?” he asked. His voice was a baritone that somehow managed to be both smooth and husky.

  “Do I know you?” she asked, placing her hands on her hips, raising her chin, sending out confident body language that didn't truly reflect her current state of mind.

  Even in the half-light provided by the television screen, the thirtyish man had piercing blue eyes—icy eyes; his pretty-boy looks were slightly undercut by a pug, piggish nose. His thin lips created a straight line that turned up maybe a tenth of an inch at each corner in what was, technically at least, a smile.

  “We've not met,” he admitted. “But I recognize you.”

  “From the TV,” she said flatly.

  “Yes . . . and I make it a business to know who's a friend of the Cale family, and who isn't.”

  “Then you know I'm a friend.”

  “A friend of Logan Cale's.”

  “Yes.”

  That assertion drew a leering appraisal, and the smile broadened into something uglier. “Logan always had an eye for the ladies.”

  “I am so flattered,” she said dryly. “You know who I am. Be a good host—who the hell are you?”

  He raised a scolding finger. “Be a good guest . . . I'm an old family friend—Franklin Bostock. Logan and I went to private school together, as boys. Ask him about me, sometime. I'd be amused to see if he recalls me fondly or not.”

  “I'll do that. Why is a family friend in Lyman Cale's bedroom at this hour?”

  “A better question might be, why is a friend of Logan Cale's in Lyman Cale's bedroom at this hour? . . . My position right now is as Mr. Cale's private secretary.”

  Max gestured to the array of machines—one to help the patient breathe, a monitor that showed a stable heartbeat, reasonable blood pressure, and a barely perceptible nudge in the line that indicated brain activity. “What's wrong with Mr. Cale?”

  Bostock made a clicking sound and shook his head. “I'm afraid Mr. Cale's had a series of debilitating strokes.”

  She frowned, wondering how Cale could have degenerated to this degree in so short a time. “Recently?”

  “Fairly recently. He's been in a vegetative state for most of the last year and a half.”

  Eyes narrowing, she shook her head. “That's impossible. I just saw a video of him addressing Congress, what? Barely two months ago?”

  The private secretary's smile returned, showing her another shade of self-satisfaction. “Video technology has come quite a long way, hasn't it? Feed some actual footage into CGI generating programs, and a person can live forever.”

  Max stepped near the bed, looked at the small pitiful form there, barely discernible as a human being. Quickly, she did the math on this situation, and strode over to Bostock, standing just a foot from him.

  “Mr. Bostock, I came for Logan's uncle's help. But it looks like it's your help I need.”

  He bowed his head slightly. “As one family friend to another, I assure you I'll do what I can to be of assistance . . . Shall we go to my office?”

  She followed Bostock out of the bedroom, leaving the frail old comatose figure to his unknowing privacy, and down the stairs to what must have been Lyman Cale's book-lined study until his private secretary had moved in and arrayed the massive mahogany desk with computer equipment. She was shown to a dark dimpled leather couch, and Bostock pulled a heavy chair around and sat, ready to listen attentively.

  It took her less than five minutes to lay out the whole story for him. When she was finished, Bostock made that clicking sound again.

  “I see,” he sighed, shaking his head. “Obviously you believe Mr. Cale could put up that ransom.”

  She nodded slowly. “It would be a big help. It will probably be the thing that saves Logan's life, and I promise my first priority after recovering Mr. Cale's nephew will be to get that money back for you.”

  “From what I understand about your abilities,” he said, “I believe you could return the ransom.”

  “Then . . . ?”

  “I only wish we could provide it.”

  She gestured to the lavish surroundings. “Why can't you, Mr. Bostock?”

  He arched an eyebrow, shrugged. “For the simple reason that we don't have the money. Or at least I can't access it.”

  She sat forward, almost climbing onto the man. “What's the problem here, Mr. Bostock? Surely you know that Logan is your employer's favorite nephew . . . and this is a family matter, an urgent, life-or-death—”

  “Ms. Guevera—please. Your indignation is misplaced. Please keep in mind, I would have every right to call the police and have you taken out of here, bodily—for breaking and entering?”

  Max did not back down. “What's going on in this house, Bostock? What the hell are you up to?”

  “Nothing nefarious, I assure you. There is no money to access.”

  She pointed a finger ceilingward. “He may be in a coma, but Lyman Cale is wealthy as sin.”

  “He's sick as sin, too, Ms. Guevera. And his money is tied up in a conservatorship overseen by the trust department of the First National Bank of Seattle. The attorney in charge of the estate's fund would never agree to provide that ransom . . . and even if he did, I'm fairly certain the estate's full worth is well below your ransom figure of four million, at this point.”

  “But this mansion . . .”

  “The mansion would find a fair price, even in today's market, yes. But do you really think a trust officer would allow this house to be quickly sold, or loaned against, to meet a kidnapper's demands?”

  “Where's the money gone?”

  “Being in a coma is an expensive hobby, Ms. Guevera—drugs, the nurses, the machines, the doctors, well . . . you get the drift.”

  “Dying costs as much as living.”

  His smile grew tight. “In Mr. Cale's case, much more.”

  Max could see that this guy was smooth and he was convincing, but bottom line? Bostock was nothing but a damned bureaucrat, and she could see that he wasn't going to try to help her. Her radar was tingling—she felt something was amiss here, and Bostock himself might well be behind it.

  But she had no time to follow the trail of that instinct, not with the clock on Logan's life ticking . . .

  And there was no talking to Lyman Cale. The uncle who would instantly have helped his beloved nephew had so many IVs and tubes running into him, no telling whether he was alive or dead . . .

  A knock at the study door secured a “Come!” from Bostock, and two goons stepped in, both reacting to Max's black-clad presence with a lurch that Bostock froze with a raised hand.

  “She's my guest,” he told them.

  These were the blond- and the brown-haired guards in TAC fatigues, the two who'd looked like pros. Closer up, they might have been twins; it was as if they'd been spawned from the same test tube, much like Max and her sibs. Both had Cro-Magnon foreheads, deep-set blue eyes, and tiny, nearly lipless mouths. What neither of them had was anything resembling a neck, their skulls seeming to simply swivel atop their shoulders, their attention on her even as they listened to Bostock.

  “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 di
splayed 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.”

  “No, shit-for-brains,” Mole said, and the cigar butt traveled again, “it's this giant sculpture under the bridge. Looks like a big bearded dude on his belly.”

  “What have you been smoking?”

  “He's got this car in one hand, like a bug he snatched up.”

  “What have you been drinking?”

  “Thing is freakin' huge, man. I can't believe you've never seen it.”

  “A bearded guy with a car in his hand? You expect me to buy that.”

  Mole slapped himself on the forehead and utter
ed a string of four letter words, in the process chewing the end of his cigar to pulp.

  “What idiot thing did he say now?” Max asked, striding into the center and looking down at the seated Alec, still being mothered by Luke.

  “Dude never heard of the Fremont Troll,” Mole said, trying to relight what was left of the butt.

  Max looked at Alec's pitiful-looking black eye and said, “No way.”

  “I'll believe it when I see it,” Alec said. “You're all just jerkin' my chain.”

  Crossing her arms, Max eyed the handsome, bandaged-up X5 suspiciously. “And who did you lose a fight with?”

  “A tree,” was all he said. “How did it go with Logan's uncle?”

  She told them. “Any ideas?”

  Alec filled her in about his expedition, and he and Mole described their plan for a two-pronged invasion before the scheduled sunup drop-off of the “supposed” ransom—one team going to Gas Works Park, the other to the under-the-bridge troll statue.

  “It's a plan,” Max said, nodding.

  The Furies were a large, powerful gang, but they were ordinaries, which meant that Max and her crew of transgenics had a big advantage. What the Terminal City team lacked in numbers, they made up for in genetics and training.

  “I don't want Clemente down on us for this,” Max said, referring to Detective Ramon Clemente, the Seattle cop who had collaborated with her to keep both the Jam Pony hostage crisis and the siege at Terminal City from turning into bloodbaths.

  “Don't give it a thought,” Alec said. “We'll be in and out before the cops even know what happened.”

  Mole nodded. “They won't know what hit them.”

  “Two groups, then,” Max said.

  Another nod from Mole. “I'll go with Alec—you round up Joshua.”

  “All right,” she said. “In one hour, we're in position.”

  “Better make it an hour and a half,” Alec said. “Luke hasn't finished taping up my ankle yet.”

  Mole glowered at him. “Pass for an ordinary long enough, you get to be a wuss like one.”

  Alec gave him a sarcastically beaming look. “And yet still you choose me to team up with.”