Retribution
A Valentine Shepherd Novel
Shana Figueroa
New York Boston
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Shana S. Figueroa
Excerpt from Reckoning copyright © 2017 by Shana S. Figueroa
Cover Illustration by Craig White
Cover design by Scott Silvestro
Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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ISBNs: 978-1-4555-6750-8 (paperback, print on demand), 978-1-4555-4011-2 (ebook)
E3-20161221-DA-PC
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Epilogue
Also by Shana Figueroa
A Preview of Reckoning
Acknowledgments
About the Author
You Might Also Like…
To Chris, my husband and love of my life,
who will only know this book is dedicated to him if somebody else tells him,
because he will almost certainly never read it.
Chapter One
Valentine Shepherd ran so fast she thought her heart might explode from the strain. Her suburban neighborhood was quiet in the late morning as she rounded a corner and sprinted down the street. With the mid-July sun hard on her back, she crossed the invisible finish line in front of her house and slowed to a halt, put her hands on her knees, and threw up into the bright green grass. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and took deep breaths until the nausea subsided. No workout felt good enough without a dollop of pain—sore knees, joint pain, pulled muscles, nausea. Going easy on herself meant letting weakness fester, giving her enemies the upper hand. She’d be damned if she let that happen again.
Val walked half a block away from her house to cool down. She stopped mid-stride and stared at a car she didn’t recognize, parked on the corner in front of a fire hydrant.
“BFG three thousand fifteen. BFG three thousand fifteen,” she said to herself, committing the car’s license plate number to memory so she could track down who it belonged to, who Delilah Barrister had sent to watch her. She hadn’t had any contact with Delilah since the now-mayor of Seattle sent a batch of e-mails mocking Val for falling for her scam to kill her husband, but it was only a matter of time. Then again, why would Delilah bother to have someone stake out Val’s house? She was a goddamn prophet—like Val, but better. More devious at least. Norman Barrister’s widow probably knew what Val was doing every second of every day.
Val shook her head at the mystery car. It was likely nothing, and she was being paranoid again. “Shit,” she muttered, turning away from yet another shadow to obsess over.
She stalked back into her house and kicked aside one of Stacey’s raincoats splayed on the floor next to the door. She’d need to have another talk with her friend about leaving crap lying around for clients to stumble upon. Very unprofessional for the recently popular Valentine Investigations. Business had been booming since she’d “solved” the mystery of who killed Seattle millionaire Lester Carressa and exonerated his son and heir, Maxwell, of the crime last October. They’d even had to turn some clients away. Val hated saying no; she was often their last resort for justice. But even with Stacey’s help and her own ability to glimpse the future, she was only one person against a world where cruelty and injustice were the norm.
Val rubbed her sweaty face on a dishcloth and threw open her fridge, shoving aside bundles of kale Stacey bought, but would never eat, to grab a beer from the back. She touched the cold glass bottle to her hot cheek, rubbed the condensation on her skin, and let it trickle down her neck. Then she twisted off the top and took a long drink. The immediate buzz was comforting. Dwelling on things she couldn’t change would drive her mad. She should accept it and move on, like Max had done—
A lump grew in her throat. Don’t even start, she admonished herself as she chugged the rest of her beer. Don’t think about him. He went on with his life. You can, too. She looked at herself in the gold-burnished decorative mirror—the one she’d put up in the hallway across from the kitchen a million years ago, when she’d lived there happily with Robby and gave a shit about home furnishings. Her strawberry-colored hair hung in a high ponytail glistening with sweat, flushed face dominated by gray eyes the color of steel. She sneered at the woman behind the glass.
“How’s being mayor?” she said to her reflection. “Working your way up to governor, still milking your dead husband’s glorious legacy?” She stepped closer to the glass, imagining Delilah’s premonition of this moment, the good laugh the mayor would have about it. “You know I’ll kill you, right? I never thought I was capable of cold-blooded murder, but you’ve made me reconsider.”
Her heart began to race again as she ground her teeth. She would stop Delilah somehow, and make her pay for killing Robby and trying to destroy her and Max’s lives. Justice delayed wasn’t justice denied, she reminded herself…except when someone had an entire evil organization protecting them. Goddammit, she needed another beer.
After she grabbed a fresh bottle from the fridge, she walked to the spare room she used as an office. Setting her beer atop one of the jumbled stacks of papers on her desk, she pulled aside a curtain that covered half he
r wall. For the millionth time, she stared at the collage of pictures, newspaper clippings, articles, and handwritten notes she’d pinned up, all connected with little strings. On the bottom: photos of her and Max, along with reports on the Science Center fiasco last year. To the side, two items: a picture of Sten Ander, corrupt Seattle PD Vice Squad detective and, unfortunately, her ex-boyfriend. The other item was a Post-It Note with a big question mark on it, representing Kat, Stacey’s shady ex-girlfriend. Both had strings leading up to Delilah, their puppet master. Above Delilah: the “woman in white,” who was another question mark, along with a secret group of powerful people she either worked with or for.
Val had pinned pictures of Robby and his sister, Josephine, on the left. They connected to Max—he, Robby, and Jo shared a father, Dean Price, though Jo had no idea. She hadn’t heard from Jo since Dean’s funeral; maybe Jo blamed her for Dean’s suicide. Hell, Val still blamed herself sometimes. The image of Dean eating a bullet on his son’s grave still shocked her with a jolt of despair that only copious amounts of alcohol could fix.
One string made a big half circle down the center of the collage, from the group at the top to a single pin below her and Max—their future child. That’s what the cabal really wanted, the one thing Val knew for sure about them. Another knot tightened in her throat, and she chugged her beer to loosen it up. If that pin didn’t exist, those evil people would never get what they wanted. Of course, it also meant she would never get what she wanted, either. But Max seemed to have found happiness, so at least they both didn’t have to suffer.
More pictures and notes dotted the periphery, people and events around the world she suspected were connected to the mysterious group at the top—airline crashes, assassinations, coups, etc. Locally, just last week a Seattle union leader who’d been at odds with Delilah over some ordinance she’d wanted to pass died in a hiking accident. How convenient for the mayor. Val had already investigated the incident and come up with nothing incriminating, again. But one day soon, very soon, Delilah would slip up. Val would find some tangible connection between the mayor and this group, or some other evidence of her wrongdoing, and bring her down—
“That’s some crazy shit, Shepherd.”
Val jumped at the man’s voice behind her. She dropped her beer bottle and lunged to her desk, where she kept a gun taped underneath the pencil drawer—one of many she positioned around the house in case of emergency. She ripped the weapon free and pointed it at the voice. Her eyes narrowed when she recognized Sten Ander leaning against the room’s door frame, legs crossed and hands in his pockets as if he’d just stopped by to say hi.
“You know, you don’t need to make a crazy wall collage on your actual wall these days,” he said. “A computer will do the same thing. Get an app for that.”
Val stared down the man who’d tried to murder her and Max on three separate occasions. She hadn’t seen Sten since he’d shot Max in the stomach at the Science Center. He’d shaved off his giant 1980s beat cop mustache; now he looked like a darker, crazier version of Jeremy Renner. “Come here to finally kill me?”
“Yes, I came to kill you. That’s why I’m unarmed—to show off my head-exploding psychic powers.” He stared at her and scrunched his face in mock concentration, then relaxed and sighed. “Damn. I was sure that would work.”
Fucking Sten. She’d never met a person so full of shit, and she’d met a lot of shitbags in her line of work. Val kept her gun trained on him. “What do you want, Sten?”
“I came to deliver a message.”
“So spit it out.”
“See, here’s the thing. It’s kind of complicated. I think—”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Val lowered her gun and yanked the curtain back into place, covering the collage so clients couldn’t stumble upon it and think she was…well, crazy. She shoved past Sten on her way to the kitchen. It was a risky move; he could probably kill her with his bare hands if he wanted to. But hell, she was angry—and intoxicated. She’d like to see him try.
Val threw open the fridge and pulled out another beer. “If you’re gonna start with the bullshitting, I’d rather you just kill me.” She popped the top off the bottle and took a long swig.
He sauntered into the living room and propped himself up on the sofa’s arm. Addressing her over the partition that separated the kitchen from the living room, he said, “I think, before I give you the message, we should talk about your drinking problem. You’ll never score another rich boyfriend as a paranoid drunk.”
Val slammed her bottle down on the countertop. Fucking Sten and his mind games. “You wanna talk?” She stomped around the partition and shoved her gun in Sten’s face. “Let’s talk.”
He looked down the barrel of her Glock and lifted an eyebrow, more surprised than scared. For as long as she’d known him—since serving in the Army together, where they’d had a brief, intense fling—he’d never been particularly concerned about his own safety. It made him an excellent soldier, and predator. Fear for life and limb didn’t motivate Sten, unfortunately for her.
“Tell me why you’re working for Delilah.”
“‘Working’ is a strong word. ‘Indentured’ is more accurate.”
“Why?”
Sten sighed, and for half a second his laidback-asshole demeanor betrayed a hint of sadness. “Because I owe a debt I can never pay back.”
Val gritted her teeth. “What does that mean?” She grabbed the lapel of his cheap suit, yanked him to his feet, and yelled into his face, “What the fuck does that mean? Why does everyone have to talk in goddamn riddles?”
“That’s the condensed version,” he said. “The full story would take all day, maybe all week…” Sten trailed off as his eyes drifted down to her wet cleavage, bulging over the top of her sports bra.
Of course he’d be thinking about sex as she assaulted him. Or maybe he was just pretending. He’d throw up any distraction to avoid telling her the truth about whatever game he and his co-conspirators were playing. Screw his games.
Val slapped him hard across the face. He jerked back a couple of inches at the shock of it, then rebounded toe to toe with her, dangerous anger flashing across his face. Good. Now he could have a taste of what she felt every day.
“Who’s the woman in white?” she demanded.
He took a slow, measured breath, as if trying to summon his previous calm. “Who?”
“The woman who wears the white suit. Long black hair, thick British accent. I saw her in a vision. Who is she?”
He pressed his lips together, as if considering every possible way he could answer. Finally, he said, “Cassandra, the Alpha.”
“The what?”
“They call her the Alpha because she sees all possible futures, all the time, or something like that. Without the sexing. As far as I know, she’s the only one in the world. The rest of you future-fuckers are chumps compared to her.”
So the terrible images of death and destruction that Val only had glimpses of, Cassandra saw every waking moment of her life? Sounded awful.
“What does she want?” Val asked.
“Hell if I know. I’m pretty sure she’s insane. It doesn’t matter what she wants anyway. She’s more like a consultant. Northwalk gives the marching orders.”
“Who?”
“Northwalk—the people at the top of your crazy wall. That’s what they call themselves. Some kind of ancient surname.”
“They’re people like me?”
He sighed. “No. Jesus, Shepherd, keep up. As far as I can tell, there are maybe fifty or so of you future-fuckers in the whole goddamn world. Northwalk is just one of the organizations of rich, control freak assholes that pull your strings.”
Just one? There were other evil cabals? Oh, hell no. “Why are you telling me all this now?” He’d never been this forthcoming before.
He enunciated each word, the anger she’d sparked with her first slap beginning to simmer again as he seemed to tire of their conversation. “Because it’s pe
rtinent to my message.”
She scoffed. “Fuck your stupid message. What’s Northwalk’s endgame?”
“How the hell should I know?”
She slapped him again, as hard as she could. “Make an educated guess!”
Damn, it felt good to hit something. He rebounded closer to her, the anger in his eyes deepening. Where she stood less than a foot away from him, she caught a whiff of his scent. He smelled hot and dirty—like a delicious man. Sten was also easy on the eyes, she had to admit—dark and fit, with a dangerous aura about him. Just the way she liked her men, before she met Robby and discovered the joys of nice guys, while Max had embodied the perfect combination of good and bad. Sten had also been great in bed, she suddenly remembered. Rough. She’d liked it, back then. She hadn’t been with anybody in a long time; not since Max. Oh, Jesus, she must really be drunk and desperate if Sten was turning her on.
“Ow,” was all he said.
Guess the time for disclosure was over. “Get out.”
“I haven’t delivered my message yet.”
“I said get out!”
She tried to shove him, but all the damn beer made her clumsy. He easily grabbed her arms and flipped her faceup onto the couch, pinning her down with his body. A moment of panic seized her as she lay helpless beneath him. If he decided to kill her after all, it would take him little effort now—oh God, and she felt the hardness of his erection pressing against her belly. Son of a bitch. For the last eight months, she’d been haunted by this goddamn Northwalk conspiracy, where the only measure of control she could exert over her life was to cut out her own heart by pushing Max away. And here was Sten, physically restraining her and getting off on it. She was so tired of being the one on the bottom. She couldn’t take it anymore.
“Here’s the message,” he said, his face a couple of inches from hers as she struggled underneath him. “Northwalk would like to extend you an invitation to work for them.”
“Why the hell would I work for them?”
“In exchange for your cooperation, they’ll take care of Delilah for you.”
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