c o m m o n . t h i e f
by bulletproof ([email protected])
characters owned by cameron/eglee productions.
my first dark angel fic

PART 1

"I need to talk to her."

"I can't help you, man."

Logan ran an exasperated hand through his hair and considered the man before him once more. He'd seen this kind before. Stubborn, unwilling and unhelpful as hell. He pulled a fifty out of his pocket.

"How about her name and address?"

* * * * *

Finding the apartment wasn't hard. Predictable, really. Max Guevera lived in a block once considered your standard urban high-rise lot, housing small time executives and young middle-class families. Funny how a single moment, a single pulse, could change everything.

Images of poverty confronted Logan on every street corner, every sidewalk. It hadn't been so long ago that chic cafes and bright shop-fronts lined the streets. Now they were just untouchable memories, outlandish fantasies from a time so out of reach.

The door to her home didn't even have a lock on it. Or one that worked, at any rate. He pushed the old wooden door forwards and could feel his pulse quicken as her sanctuary was opened for him.

Taking a gulp of the air that still held a trace of her lingering scent, Logan Cale stepped forward and invaded her home.

* * * * *

Max sighed as the honking of a car's horn behind her broke her from her reverie.

She had been daydreaming about the same pair of blue eyes that had been haunting her all day.

Mentally chastising herself, Max pedalled harder, passing her own neighbourhood only to stop abruptly at the sight of a figure in her window.

Strange. Kendra wasn't due home for another couple of hours at least...

* * * * *

Max flung open the door just as the intruder was about to exit from it.

She looked at his face and her breath caught as she recognised those same eyes, that same deep ocean of blue she'd almost drowned herself in last night.

"See anything you like?" She quipped, her mouth moving faster than her brain. She did a quick visual check of his hands but found them empty.

"Maybe." He returned cryptically. She could almost hear the workings of his mind as the underground cyber-journalist thought on his feet.

Max's head snapped forward as her head cleared and she started to back him into the apartment, leaning into him in an interrogating manner, "What are you doing here?"

"Returning the favour." he retreated, but wasn't intimidated. The still nameless man began strolling around her lounge area, fingering the paraphernalia that littered the room, "Nice set-up you got here."

"Thanks." Max replied curtly before standing in front of him lightning fast and grasping his wrist, "*Don't* touch the bike."

The man's fingers hovered over her Ninja, "A little edgy, aren't we?"

He looked directly at her, their faces, their mouths so close, she could swear he could taste her cherry lip gloss.

"What can I say?" Max retorted, almost against his lips, "Virtual strangers rifling through my stuff gets me a little touchy."

Mr Eyes Only returned in a crooked half-smile, "Now you know how I feel."

She shifted slightly, her leg coming into contact with an obtrusive bulge and she subtly wet her lips, "Do you have something in your pocket, or..."

Her sentence trailed off as her fingers trailed past his hip and into the deep recesses of his pocket, finding a bottle-shaped object there. She pulled the small container free and froze. It was a bottle of her Tryptophan.

"What are you doing with these?" She sneered as she retreated like a caged animal, "Who are you?"

"Actually, I was here to ask the same of you. Never met anyone who survived a fifty storey fall before."

"Guess I was lucky."

"Or genetically engineered."

Max's eyes snapped their attention at his infuriatingly placid features, "What do you know?"

"That you have super-human capabilities, that you have incredibly low seratonin levels... and that you probably have a barcode at the back of your neck."

Max's hand went of its own volition to touch that part of her skin that was permanently blackened by ink.

She growled as she caught her own action, "Then you should probably also know that I can snap your neck before you take your next breath."

"No doubt about it." He replied in the skip of a heartbeat. "It's why I came to you."

The caged beast cocked her head, but eyes remained no less stormy.

He continued, "My latest Eyes Only informant, the woman you saw at my place, is a little reluctant to come forward, but I think I could change her mind if the protection of a government-issued chimera was part of the deal."

"And why should I help you?" Max queried between the hint of fangs, "I don't even know who you are and you seem to know my life story."

"Logan. Cale. And you should help me because otherwise, *I'm* gonna have to be the one to smuggle her out of the city and probably land a couple of bullets in my vital organs for my trouble."

"Not seeing the bad, Mr Cale." Max countered and started pushing Logan out the door.

"I can help you."

Max let out a bark of laughter, half at the desperation in his voice, half at his incredulous statement, "Really?"

"Really. You were part of the dozen or so kids that escaped Manticore ten years ago, right? I can help you find the others."

"Sorry," Max gave back shortly, renewing her offensive of clearing him out of her apartment, "that position's already been filled."

It was Logan's turn to laugh, "What, by that hack private investigator working out of a Laundromat? How long do you think it'll take the guys at Manticore to find the information trail he's left behind?"

"And what makes you think that me doing this job for you will attract any less of their attention?" Max shouted back, "I start pulling stunts and Manticore starts pulling guns."

"Who are you kidding, Max?" Logan returned evenly. She bristled at the use of her name, but was by no means surprised. "You eat, you breathe, you sleep and Manticore is breathing down your neck. You were bred to pull stunts. What better way to bite the hand that fed you than by showing them you have a mind of your own? By using their own weapon against them? You have the chance to do real good here and to work out your past at the same time."

Max turned to the window, unable to face him. She knew he was right.

"Give me some time to think about it."

"Alright. But we're leaving tonight at ten. You don't show before then, and I'll know your answer."

Logan left the apartment, brushing by an early Kendra.

"Max?" She implored the figure standing by the window, "Who was that?"

"Thief." Max replied, pulling her arms around herself, "As common as they come."

END PART 1/4
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