Read Online Aftermath by Michael Kerr - Free Book Online

before going out to speak to him.
    “A penny for your thoughts, Logan,” she said, standing next to him, looking up at his face in profile.
    “I’m just enjoying the view,” he replied.
    “Doesn’t all this worry you?”
    “All what?”
    “You know what.  There are killers after us, and you act as if there was nothing out of the ordinary happening.”
    “I deal with things as and when necessary.  I try to not to lose sleep over events that haven’t happened yet.”
    “Who are you, Logan?”  Sharon said.  “Where are you from?”
    “I’m just a guy that moves around.  I’m not from anywhere.”
    “That doesn’t make sense.  Where were you born?”
    Logan said nothing.
    “Please, Logan, I need to know you as a person.”
    “You don’t.” he said.  “When this is over I’ll just walk away and you’ll never see me again.”
    “Humour me.”
    He sighed.  Getting too close to people didn’t work for him.  It was a distraction that he could do without.
    “OK,” he said, sitting down and swinging his legs over the water again.  Sharon sat next to him.  It crossed his mind that they should have had fishing poles.  “My name is Joe Logan.  I was born on Staten Island, did a stint in the military, and then became a cop.  And now I just drift.”
    Sharon waited, but that was it, he said no more.
    “And?”
    “And what?”
    “Don’t you have a home, family, and friends?”
    “No.  My parents are both dead.  And I don’t like being too long in one place, so I don’t tend to make friends.  I feel trapped if I’m in one location for any length of time.  Maybe I’m like a wild animal.  I remember being taken to the zoo when I was a kid and feeling sorry for a polar bear that was pacing up and down in a confined space, slowly going insane.”
    Sharon couldn’t imagine why anyone would choose to be by themselves and have no meaningful connection with others, or not want to have a place that they could call home.
    “Have you ever been married?”  Sharon asked him.
    “Hell, no.  Women need a whole lot more than I could give them.  I owned an apartment once, in the Bronx.  Living in it made me unhappy.  I have no wish to wake up in the same bed every morning, or to be a prisoner of taxes, utility bills, and all that goes with that kind of structured life.”
    “Don’t you worry about where you’ll end up?”
    “No.  We’re all headed to the same destination; just going there by different routes.”
    Before the sudden violent deaths of her father and her friends, Sharon would not have been able to understand Logan’s values or take on life in general.  Now, she believed that she had some insight to his way of thinking.
    A shape hurtled across their field of vision, just a few feet away from the jetty.  Sharon gasped and pulled back, but Logan didn’t move a muscle.  The night owl vanished into the trees that fringed the lake.
    “Doesn’t anything frighten you?”  Sharon asked him.
    “No.”  Logan said.  And he meant it.
    They walked back to the cabin.  Rita had made fresh coffee.  Logan drank a cup and washed his mug out and placed it upside down on the drainer before saying goodnight to them both and going to his bedroom.
    He lay on the bed and clasped his hands behind his head.  Thought about how the world was populated by good and bad people, and how he always seemed to unwittingly find himself between the two factions, taking sides and doing what needed to be done to protect the sheep from the wolves, and wondering why he did it.  He then ran through the present danger that Rita and Sharon were in.  He knew that he would have to go to Charleston and make certain that Jerry Brandon ceased to be a threat to them.
    He got up and went to the bathroom.  Brushed his teeth and went back to undress and get into bed.  As usual he was asleep in a minute.
     
    Sal offloaded Roy at his apartment on Pacific Street in Edgewood, near Cato Park.  He was relieved to be