Little Girl Gone Read Online Free PDF Page B

student.
    When the guy saw Logan, he said, “Sorry, man. We’ll try to hold it down.” He looked back at his apartment. “Hey, turn the volume down!” The sound from the TV dipped.
    “Play it as loud as you want. I don’t really care,” Logan told him.
    The kid took a longer look at him. “Oh. Thought you were the guy from downstairs. Don’t think he likes us very much.”
    Logan gestured down the walkway. “I was looking for your neighbors in number seventeen, but no one’s home. Do you know if they’re still in town, or have they all gone away for the break?”
    The guy stepped back into the doorway of the apartment. “Angie, someone wants to talk to you.”
    “Me?” a girl inside said.
    “Yeah, you.” He looked back at Logan. “You want Angie, right?”
    “Yes. Angie.”
    A few seconds later a short, blonde girl wearing sweats and holding a bottle of beer, joined the guy in the doorway.
    “I don’t know you,” she said.
    “No, you don’t,” Logan replied. “I’m here about your roommate.”
    “Which one?”
    “Elyse Myat.” Tooney had said native Burmese didn’t have last names. So Elyse’s parents had decided to stick with the one Tooney had taken when he’d moved to the States. Logan could tell there’d been more to it than that, but that was all Tooney had said.
    The girl hesitated for a moment, then her eyes narrowed. “What about Elyse?”
    As if mirroring her, the look on the face of the tall kid beside her grew suddenly serious.
    “Maybe we could talk alone for a moment?” Logan suggested.
    “I don’t think so.”
    “I’m only trying to find her.”
    “Well, you’re not going to find her here,” the guy told Logan, drawing to his full height. “Now I think maybe you should just leave.”
    It had been a few years, but Logan had taken down men a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier, so the kid didn’t scare him.
    “Did I say something wrong?” he asked.
    “You’re giving Angie the creeps, okay?”
    Keeping his voice calm and disarming, Logan said, “Look, I’m a friend of Elyse’s grandfather. He asked me to—”
    “I don’t care who you say you are,” the guy said.
    He started to close the door, but Logan pushed it back open.
    “Buddy, there’s no reason to be rude,” he told the kid.
    Several people rushed over from inside, and soon there were two more girls and another guy standing behind Angie.
    “What’s going on?” one of them asked.
    The plaid shorts guy was staring at Logan. “You leave now, or I call the cops.”
    The only explanation Logan could come up with for the guy’s reaction was that he was grandstanding for the girls. “I’m not trying to cause a problem, I just want to ask a few questions.”
     “All right, I’ve had enough.” The kid stepped out of the doorway and into Logan’s personal space. “Get the hell out of—”
    Logan could see the fist coming from about two blocks away. As it sailed toward him, he easily guided it upward with his hand, then slipped under the kid’s arm, whacking his shoulder into the idiot’s chest.
    The kid’s feet flew out from under him, and he landed, ass first, on the walkway. Shoving him all the way onto his back, Logan placed his leg across the boy’s clavicle, then stared down at him.
    “If I lean forward just a little bit, that bone’s going to snap in two, and that’s going to screw you up for quite a while. Do you want that?”
    The kid shook his head.
    Logan took a look at the doorway. The others were still standing there, their eyes wide in surprise. To the kid he said, “How about we start over? Why don’t you tell me your name?”
    A pause, then, “Ryan.”
    “All right, Ryan. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to answer a few questions for me, okay?”
    Ryan nodded. “Okay.”
    Logan didn’t move. “Are you going to invite me in? It would be a lot better to sit down than do it like this, don’t you think?”
    “Yeah, uh, please, let’s go