Vengeance (15 page)

T
he gunshot cracked through the cemetery, drowning out every other sound so all Val could hear was its echo ringing in her ears. Dean's head jerked back with the blast and his body slumped to the ground, six feet above his dead son. She watched blood leak out of the back of his head and pool in the grass, the gun still in his limp right hand.

Did she just goad Dean into killing himself? Or had he planned to commit suicide before he'd even shown up? Maybe he'd been on the edge, and Val had pushed him over. God knows he looked like hell, was drunk and probably not thinking straight. Racked with grief as his murder-for-campaign-donations scheme had spiraled out of his control, culminating in his son's death for reasons even he didn't understand. Dean made a terrible mistake entering into a deal with the devil in the form of Barrister, but Robby wouldn't have wanted this. She'd pushed Dean too hard.

I killed him
, she thought as she stared at his body, the gunshot still ringing in her ears.
I killed Robby, and then I killed his father.

Dean's figure began to recede from her vision as if her mind left her body and floated away from the cemetery. After a moment Val realized that her mind was still in fact attached to her body—it was her body that moved, dragged away from the gravesite by Max. He held her arm tight and pulled her across the grass, dodging headstones and members of the funeral party that had suddenly appeared all around them.

“Oh my God!” “Was that a gunshot?” “There's a man on the ground over there!” “Is that a pistol in his hand?” “I think they shot him.” “Is that Maxwell Carressa?” “It
is
Maxwell Carressa, and his girlfriend!” “Someone call the police!”

Their voices drifted past her, faces blurs as Max pulled harder on her arm, forcing her to move faster. She tried to yank herself away and tell him she could walk on her own, but her body wouldn't respond to her commands.

“Somebody stop them!”

They stumbled downhill, her legs struggling to keep her body upright out of reflex. Max stopped her in front of the car, threw open the door, and shoved her inside.

“Get the license plate number!”

Max jumped into the driver's side, started the car, and punched the gas. He threaded around the vehicles that surrounded them and swerved to avoid a would-be vigilante who jumped in front of their path. The single lane of pavement that wound through the cemetery turned into a side street, and the side street turned into a main street. Grocery stores and coffee shops zipped by.

With a shudder, Val's mind snapped back into her body and she regained control of herself. She opened her mouth to ask Max where they were going, but a sob burst forth instead. It seized her whole body and surged in a tidal wave of grief she was helpless to stop. She pulled her knees to her chest as the pain flowed out in heaving sobs while Max drove. What had she done? How many people would die because of her? He'd put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, no hesitation. She'd pushed him.
It was my fault. My fault…

My fault
echoed in her mind until darkness enveloped them and the car stopped.

Val sat with her head buried in her arms until the flow of anguish ebbed and her thoughts began to clear. She looked up. “Where are we?” she asked between hiccups.

“A parking garage in Eastlake,” Max said, his face still a sickly shade of white. “Parents of an ex-girlfriend of mine have a boathouse here that's in foreclosure. She asked me for a loan a couple months ago. It's probably still empty.” He leaned back into the headrest and squeezed his eyes shut. “We need to ditch this car. I couldn't think of anywhere else to go that was close to the cemetery.”

She wiped the tears from her face with her sweater sleeve. Streaks of black stained the gray cotton, runoff from her Goth Girl eyeliner. She almost laughed; now they both looked like strung-out junkies.

Max lifted his head upright and let out a long exhale. “We have to walk four blocks.” He opened his eyes and stared at the concrete wall on the other side of the windshield for a few seconds, like he steeled himself with what little strength he had left, then looked at her.

Val took a deep breath, pushing away the image of Dean eating a bullet. “Okay.” She took Lester's gun and the burner phone out of the glove box and shoved them into the deep pockets of her hoodie, and handed Max the stack of Lester's cash to carry. Then they left the car and everything in it, a bunch of stuff they wouldn't need anymore and couldn't carry down the street without attracting attention anyway.

Outside the parking garage, cars ambled past as streetlamps popped on in the twilight. They were in what looked like a quaint tourist area, with restaurants and antique shops lining both sides of the narrow road. Val listened for police sirens and heard none. Max began walking down the street, his head down and hood up over his baseball cap. She hurried to catch up with him, then grabbed his arm and swung it over her shoulders as she hooked her arm around his waist. He didn't ask what she was doing, so he must've understood—a young couple arm-in-arm who looked like hell might just be trust fund kids coming back from a rough party, while two shady characters stalking down a well-to-do street would garner more suspicion from curious onlookers. Max walked at a good clip but she felt his chest heaving with the strain, and his hand was like ice in hers. Every second they strolled in the open felt like dodging a prison spotlight.

He cut across the street and down a hill into a posh residential area nestled against the waters of Lake Union. Many of the houses stood dark—either second homes that were empty for the season or homes that were for sale. Max turned right and stopped at a small two-story house with lush wood siding, a burnished blue front door, and a sign that said “Foreclosure” next to the mailbox. After confirming that no one in the sleepy neighborhood was obviously around, they walked to the back along a porch that floated over the water. Max punched a code into a keypad at the back door—of course he would know the code, probably guessed it based on the Julian date of his ex-girlfriend's sister's birthday or something—and the door clicked open. Val followed him inside.

The house was dark and cool, permeated with the musty smell of a place that hadn't been occupied in some time. Val squinted to make out the kitchen they stood in, counters bare save for a decorative bowl with plastic apples in it, the hallmark of a home staged for open houses. She followed Max through the kitchen, into a living room, then up a set of stairs. A master bedroom occupied the entire second floor, with a sliding glass door that led out to a deck overlooking the lake. Max closed the blinds while Val fumbled in the dark of an adjoining bathroom for a hand towel. She yanked one off its hook and draped it over the nightstand lamp before turning it on, giving them a dim halo of light to see with.

Val went back to the bathroom and used one of the two sinks to wash the black crap off her face. Max appeared next to her and used the other sink to splash water on his face. Then he lunged for the toilet and threw up.

She was surprised he'd gone this long without losing it. He was already weak with a lingering concussion when they'd arrived at the cemetery. Then he had to watch a man who confessed to being his real father blow his brains out,
and then
drag his partner to safety after she froze up. God—all the ways she'd fucked up, and forced him along for the ride. Maybe it would've been better if she'd stayed out of his life.

When his retches stopped, she handed him water in a fish-shaped glass she found next to the sink. Without looking at her, he took the cup from where he slumped over the toilet and rinsed out his mouth, then drank the rest in desperate gulps. He pushed himself up, stumbled to the bed, and collapsed into a sitting position on the floor, his back against the mattress.

Val took off her laden hoodie and gun holster and let them fall to the floor. She sat on the ground across from Max. “Is it true?”

“How the fuck should I know?” He took off his baseball cap and ran a trembling hand through his dark hair. “Dean was a friend of the family—my parents' friend, not mine. I saw him maybe twice a year at most before my father—Lester—died.”

“Robby was your half brother—”

“If Dean was telling the truth. He wasn't thinking clearly, obviously. Who knows what the truth is.”

“I don't think he'd lie and then kill himself.”

“Then why'd he leave me there?” Max's hands balled into fists. “If I was his son, why'd he leave me with a piece of shit like Lester? Because Lester had money? Because money makes people good parents? Because a guy who murdered his wife would make a wonderful father?”

“Are you sure Lester murdered your mother?”

“I don't know! I don't know anything!”

Max took a deep breath and raked another hand through his hair as he struggled to calm himself. They needed to keep the noise down. If the neighbors noticed activity from a house that was supposed to be empty, they'd surely call the police.

“I'd always suspected,” Max said, his voice quieter. “I was told she died in a car accident. I hoped it was true.”

“Okay, well, the past is the past.” Val stood and paced across the shag throw rug as Max eyed her with heavy lids. “Now that Dean is gone, all we have is the accountant who helped embezzle the money to corroborate the murder-for-political-donations scheme. And maybe Delilah, if whatever evidence she has is worth anything. But it could be nothing, so you need to remember the accountant's name.”

Max sighed. “I can't.”

“Try again.”

“I already have.”

“Try harder!” She rounded on him. “If you can't remember, then we have nothing! Dean and Chet and Robby will never be avenged. You'll go to prison for a crime you didn't commit, and Barrister will get away with multiple murders.”

“So what if I go to prison? I don't have any family left, and my ‘friends' are acquaintances at best. No one would care.”

“
I
would care!” She scoffed. “You know what? Fuck you, Max.
Fuck you
for making me care when you can't even be bothered to give a shit that you're being framed for murder.”

“I'm not being framed.”

“The hell you're not.” Val wanted to yank him off the floor by his shirt collar and shake the apathy out of him. “Dean told us Norman killed your father. It must've been either Dean or someone else working for Norman that leaked fake evidence to the police that you killed Lester. That's a pretty classic frame job to me.”

Max looked at the floor. “Norman Barrister didn't kill my father.”

“He probably hired someone else to do it, but if he ordered it, then he might as well have done the killing himself—”

“I know Norman didn't do it because I did it,” Max said. He looked at Val. “I killed my father.”

V
al thought she'd heard him wrong. She stared at him, waiting for him to explain how she'd misunderstood what he said.

“You know how Lester made his millions?” Max said, his eyes filling with fire. “By molesting me. For years. As soon as he realized what I could do. He was already a wealthy stock broker, but it wasn't enough. He needed
more
. So he used his stupid little boy to get it, a kid who had no idea what sex was or what the weird images I kept seeing were, who thought his dad could teach him something about becoming a man. I don't even think he was really a pedophile. I was just a means to an end, a golden goose. Probably killed my mother so she wouldn't find out what was going on and stop the gravy train. And like an idiot, I went along with it out of a pathetic sense of loyalty. Eventually he let me handle it myself, and I thought we were some kind of fucked-up money-making team, equal partners.”

He laughed, a cackle so mirthless it felt like sandpaper to Val's ears.

“Until a couple months ago, out of nowhere, he orders me to have a baby. With anybody, he didn't care. Said it was my duty to carry on the ‘special' Carressa line. I told him I couldn't because I'd had a vasectomy years ago, as soon as I could give legal consent. I'll be damned if I'm going to bring a child into the world that could end up like me. He freaked and attacked me, punched me in the face because I ruined his plans to become richer than God by destroying some other kid's life. He hadn't hit me since I was a kid, and I realized that nothing had really changed. We weren't equals. I was still his slave. So I snapped. I hit him back, so hard I broke his jaw. Then I threw him off the balcony. I hated him.
Hated him.
He was a sick fucking bastard. His death was merciful compared to what he deserved.”

Max breathed hard as if he'd run a sprint. Val stared at him, slack-jawed. After a few seconds, the anger leaked out of him like a popped balloon and his body began to shake.

“You know what the worst part was?” he said, sadness quieting his voice. “Up until that moment, I thought even though he'd let his greed get the better of him, deep down he loved me like a father's supposed to love his son. But he never did.” His shoulders slumped, and he squeezed his eyes shut as tears leaked down his cheeks. He wrapped his arms around his chest as his face warped into a mask of concentration, like he was trying very, very hard to regain control of his emotions.

All of her life, Val had considered her visions to be a burden with limited utility. She'd even given up sex for a while during her enlistment in the Army, when she'd tired of witnessing her platoonmates' deaths before they happened. She'd cursed the fact that her visions weren't more useful, been jealous of the normal lives others seemed to have. How petty she'd been. It could have been so much worse.

“So that's it, that's everything,” he said, his voice choked up. “I'm a murderer. I make excuses, but that's the truth. I should've confessed and turned myself in to the police from the beginning. If you want to part ways now, I understand.”

She studied his despondent face, his dark eyes wet with tears. A face she thought she knew. She'd warned herself not to trust him.

Close to a whisper, Val said, “You lied to me.”

“I did,” he said. “I didn't know you then.”

She didn't know him then, either. Who was she to judge? She might have done the same under similar circumstances. Not to mention how she'd unwittingly led Robby to his death, and pushed Dean to his. She was a killer herself.

Val slid down the wall into a sitting position across from Max. She touched her foot to his, connecting them. “This means our initial guess was correct. Only someone like us could have known you would kill Lester in a spontaneous fit of rage. They must have told Norman about it, and then Norman told Dean it was a planned hit, to dupe Dean into giving him access to the money Lester embezzled from the company.”

Max didn't agree or disagree. He looked at her like the Barrister conspiracy was the farthest thing from his mind.

“I'm tired of running,” she said. “I want my life back. Norman's a monster in sheep's clothing, just like your father was. Someone needs to stop him like you stopped Lester.”

A slight smirk cracked his somber face. “You wanna throw him off his balcony?”

“I would if I could, but I'd rather expose him for the piece of shit that he is.”

“How?”

“Get Delilah to back us up. If she turned on him, she could ruin his career and send him to jail. She might also have evidence that exonerates you. When I talked to him at his house, he almost attacked me just for mentioning Chet and a possible connection to your father. He's ashamed of his sexuality and also has no impulse control. He's a loose cannon. It only takes a little push to set him off.”

“When?”

“At the Pacific Science Center outreach thing tomorrow. We'll go in there, find her, and bust her out.”

“So your plan is to pop in, look around for her, and hope no one notices us?”

“It's our only option, okay? Either that, or find the accountant whose name you can't remember and get him to spill his guts to the media before Norman uses his stable of dirty cops to murder him, if he's not dead already. Or better yet, do both. If we split up, we can find the accountant
and
grab Delilah. Divide and conquer.” She folded her arms at the incredulous look on his face. “I'm open to any better ideas—and turning yourself in is not an option, so don't even start with that again.”

Max threaded his hands behind his neck and closed his eyes in contemplation. He'd stopped shaking, and some color had returned to his cheeks. “Okay, but first: we no longer have a car. Second: the rally will be swarming with security. Third: I'm not lying when I say I can't remember the accountant's name. Those are fairly sizable obstacles.”

“I can beg Stacey to borrow her car. She's still pissed at me, but she'll come through. And you ask Kitty for her car, if you think she can be trusted. You go get the accountant, I'll get Delilah, then we'll meet at the back of the Pacific Science Center either right before or right after the event starts. As for how we get to them…we'll have to look.”

His eyes snapped open. “I thought you didn't want to do that.”

“We don't have a choice now. We're up against someone like us who's always one step ahead. It's time to start fighting fire with fire. You said the visions are stronger together than apart, right?”

He nodded slowly.

“We need all the help we can get.”

“Are you sure?”

Val took a deep breath. “Yes.”

“I don't have my books. I won't be able to completely interpret what I see.”

She rolled her eyes. “God, Max, just do the best you can, all right? We have these tools, we need to use them. So let's just do it and get it over with.”

He deadpanned, “You make it sound so romantic.”

“Romance and desperation don't go together well.”

With no fanfare or foreplay, she kicked off her boots, stood up, and pulled off her skirt, leggings, shirt, bra, and panties while Max stayed seated and watched her with a mix of curiosity and awe. It might have been the least sexy strip tease ever. When Val stood naked before him, it occurred to her how bad they both looked—exhausted, disheveled, strung out from yet another day that ranked among the worst of their lives. She realized he'd never actually seen her looking good, in makeup or a flattering dress or something else a normal girl might wear. Now that she'd presented herself to him, she felt embarrassed, then stupid for feeling embarrassed.

But hey, she finally had an excuse to fuck the hottest guy she'd ever met, even if he was more than a little beat up, had serious psychological problems, was the secret half brother of her murdered fiancé, and a part-time heroin addict…Oh yeah, and he also killed his child-molesting father. Robby would be so happy for her.

Scowling at her selfishness, Val walked past Max to the other side of the bed, where the sliding glass door looked out over the black waters of Lake Union. Through slits in the closed blinds she saw the surface glitter with lights from the shore and ships passing in the night. She heard Max stand up behind her, his sneakers drop to the floor.

“Robby wanted to live by the water,” she said. She hugged herself against the chill in the room. “He didn't even like water sports. He just wanted to buy a house where he could get on a dingy and paddle around. ‘Our kids will like it someday,' he told me.” Her eyes filled with tears, and the lake became a blur. “I thought it would be dangerous for kids to live next to water—someone else's kids.”

Val felt Max approach her from behind. He stepped close, the heat from his body warming her through the thin fabric of his clothes and the sliver of space that separated them. He touched her arms and slid his fingers along her skin, up to her forearms. His lips brushed against her shoulder.

“We don't have to do this if you don't want to,” he said, his voice husky.

A tiny groan escaped her throat in response. She closed her eyes and leaned back against him as a fire ignited in her belly and overwhelmed all her other senses. God, she wanted him, all of him, despite what a mess he was. She wished it wasn't so, for Robby's sake, but it was. She couldn't recall wanting anything so badly in her life.

He kissed every inch along the soft arc up to the nape of her neck. “Tell me when to stop.”

His breath against her skin was so hot, it nearly burned. Val lifted her arms above her and wove her hands around the back of his head, curling her fingers through his hair, pulling him closer. His lips traveled up her neck, to her ear, where his tongue caressed her earlobe. His hands slowly slid across her flesh, drifted to her front, and cupped her breasts, his fingertips tracing arcs across her nipples.

His left hand moved down her torso, and a jolt of lightning shot up her spine when his fingers slipped between her legs, then inside her. She moaned as he caressed her in slow, deep strokes, her head nestled into the crook of his neck, his flesh against her lips made moist by her breath. Her hips moved to his tune as he played the string that threaded its way through her gut and into her spine, until she danced at the precipice of climax.

No
—it was too soon.

“Stop,” she said, breathless, and he did. She turned to face him. His face had gone slack like a drunk man's, though his gaze gripped her with an animal intensity. Her fingers traced the contours of his rough mouth, the cut healing at the edge, wetness gathering where she skimmed the soft inner flesh of his bottom lip with the tip of her thumb.

Don't kiss him
, she ordered herself.
I owe Robby at least that much. I'm only doing this because I have to. Stay focused on the real goal. Get the vision and be done with it.

Before he could pull her flush to him, she grabbed the bottom of his sweatshirt and yanked it up to his chest. She helped him work the hoodie and T-shirt underneath over his head, slipping the clothes off his skin with the same satisfaction she felt when peeling the lid off a pudding cup to get to the sweet insides. She pressed her bare chest to his and slid down his torso, gentle over his patchwork of bruises. Falling to her knees, she unbuttoned his jeans and pushed his pants and underwear to his ankles. Her eyes followed the thin trail of black hair that led from the faint fist-sized diamond on his chest, through the hard folds of ab muscles, to his erect penis.

He inhaled sharply when she wrapped her lips around him. A steel rod in a velvet sheath, he tasted like she imagined he would—sweet and salty, musky and hot. Her hands traced the soft slopes of his backside, leaving goose bumps in their wake. She played him like he'd played her, sliding her tongue up and down his shaft in long, luxurious strokes. The essence that leaked out was delicious because it was his, and she lost herself drinking it up.

She nearly fell forward when, without warning, he stepped out of the clothes bunched at his ankles and away from her. He backed up and sat at the edge of the bed.

“What are you doing?” she asked, still catching her breath.

“It has to be like this.”

Oral wasn't enough? “But…you're hurt.”

“So be gentle.”

“We don't have protection.”

“I can't have kids. And I don't have any STDs. Do you?”

“No.”

“I guess we'll have to take each other at our word then.”

He might have been lying, but she didn't have the mental strength to argue. Even if she did, she trusted him completely. It was herself she didn't trust. She needed to stay focused, make this act more than a lust-fueled romp. If he was inside her…well, she'd have to concentrate harder. She stood and walked to him while he watched her, motionless except for his heaving chest. For a moment all she could hear was his breathing.

“Think about the accountant,” she said. She gripped his muscular shoulders and swung her leg over his lap so she straddled him.

“Okay.”

Max grasped her hips, slid his hands along the small of her waist and up her back. He pressed his face to her chest and she felt his mouth engulf her nipple. A wave of dizziness hit her. She cradled his head in her arms and clutched his hair as she struggled to stay upright and concentrate on anything that wasn't him.

“Think about…the Pacific Science Center event tomorrow,” she said, her voice strained as his lips worked their way up her neck, tugging at her skin with such force it almost hurt.

“Mm-hmm,” he mumbled into her flesh. He cupped her backside in his hands.

“Think about—”

Her words caught when he pulled her onto him and thrust deep.

“
Oh, God
,” she muttered as every nerve in her body seemed to fire at once.