Hunted - 15

A week after his talk with Logan, Brice drove from his condo to his new house—this time late in the afternoon. He had spent some of the intervening days trying to find out more about Logan---in the hope that he’d left something out about himself—only to discover that what Logan had told him had been the full truth. Still something niggled at him. It had been the truth, but there seemed to be things missing—details. He had managed to get in contact with a couple of people from the small town where Logan grew up. They remembered him and his family, but only vaguely. One of the people, a sheriff’s deputy who was willing to talk to him, once he found out who Brice was, said that the family had apparently moved away about the same time Logan had left school.

“Just up and disappeared, as far as we can figure,” the deputy told him. “Left the house vacant, didn’t take much with them either from the look of it.”

“Was it a large family?” Brice had asked.

“Parents, three siblings---Logan was the youngest—and a few relatives who came and went. The father owned a small store in town. It could have been larger but he had no head for business. Let his kids run it half the time, or his brother, while he went off and did who knows what with the rest of his family. They were strange ones but never caused no trouble.”

The fact that Logan’s father wasn’t a business man at heart might explain why Logan had majored in business, to help him out, Brice thought. He did wonder why, if the family moved to somewhere else, Logan hadn’t gotten his degree and then joined them rather than quitting and moving out here on his own.

If nothing else, Brice thought wryly as he parked his car across from the house, his interest in Logan had kept him from going totally bug-fuck from his enforced time off from the show.

When he entered the house he was surprised at how much progress had been made since his last visit. But then again given what I’m paying for this, they’d damned well better be moving along quickly. The rooms on the first floor were walled in now and the crew had begun adding the hardwood paneling and wainscoting. The sweeping staircases were complete and he took one set up to the second floor where his library, study and the master bedroom would be. Again the interior walls of each room were well on their way to completion, as were the hardwood floors.

He smiled to himself, forgetting for the moment why he was there. The dream he had had for more years than he cared to think about was finally coming together. This was place that was truly his own—and would prove to everyone that he had some real worth. That he wasn’t just ‘that actor’ from television dramas who made the tabloid headlines with his outrageous antics.

A voice from behind him gruffly asked him to get out of the way. He immediately stepped aside to let two workmen carrying supplies get by. That reminded him of his original purpose in being there. He stopped another man to ask if he knew where Logan was. The man pointed and Brice headed up the stairs to the third floor.