The Lies He Spoke

NINETEEN

OLIVIA 

Olivia laid on the couch in the living room, her textbook lacing face down on her stomach, her pencil and calculator on the floor. She glanced up at the wall clock again. It was 10:53pm. 

Logan had gone out ages ago. Decades. Centuries, maybe. And he hadn't even told her where he was going or when he was going to be back. He'd just patted her head in that half-awkward, half-endearing way he did when he didn't know what else to do and told her not to open the door for anybody, not even the WITSEC guard still standing at the front door of the apartment complex, and said he'd be back soon.

And now it was getting close to two hours.

Olivia turned over on the couch and shoved her face into the cushions and groaned. She should've demanded to go with him. She should've hung onto his arm no matter how angry he got and insisted that he take her with him.

She picked up her phone and her finger hovered over his name in her speed dial.

Then she remembered how Logan would always be annoyed at her for trying to make something out of nothing, and then they would yell at each other, and then it wouldn't be nice, and she was supposed to be trying hard not to fight with him.

She grimaced and scrolled down to Blake. Maybe he knew where Logan was.

Her finger froze right before she hit the icon next to Blake's name.

This was exactly what happened with Elijah. Elijah had gone out without telling her any details, and she'd called Logan to see what he was doing, and even though Elijah made a ton of excuses, none of those were real, and he really was in trouble.

She pressed down on Logan's name.

As the line began to ring, Olivia heard a very, very faint noise coming from their apartment door. Ordinarily, she wouldn't be bothered by it; there were hundreds of people living in the complex and it was nearly always noisy because of the thin walls.

But she was pretty sure that was Logan's ringtone, the default factory-set ringtone that Blake always pestered him to change to something else but one that he never would.

As she was straining to hear it, the loud chime of the doorbell rang through the room. Olivia jerked upwards when she heard it, hitting her leg inn the coffee table and snapping one of her pencils under her foot. She scowled and rubbed her sore knee and toes.

Who on earth was at the door at this hour?

The doorbell rang twice again and she clenched her fists and waited for the sound to die down before she closed her eyes and tried to focus on whether she really could hear the ringing of Logan's phone or whether it was all just in her head.

The automated voice message came on. This is Logan Powers, grumbled his voice from the messaging system. Leave a message.

It clicked.

Olivia hung up and slowly, slowly walked towards the front door. Logan would open it himself if that was him outside. She wasn't supposed to open the door for anyone. But why would someone who had his phone be outside? Was that him? Was it someone else?

She stood up on her tiptoes and looked through the peephole. There was no one standing in front of the door. All she could see was the door to the apartment opposite to them.

Dammit, where was he?

She pulled out her phone and dialed him again.

This time, she clearly heard his phone ringing just outside the door. She looked through the hole again. Maybe he'd dropped his phone there? But then who had rung the doorbell?