Retribution

by Shana Figueroa

“He’s about to become an accessory to murder, so what would you prefer?”

  “Do you know what he’s doing for Lucien?” Max asked.

  “I didn’t see that.”

  “So try the nonviolent approach first. Follow him, see where he goes and what he does when he’s not bugging the shit out of Abby and me.”

  Val considered an old-fashioned stakeout. “You know him, you can tell me if he does something unusual. Come with me?” She bit her lip, then forced herself to stop before he could see her anxiety. She’d probably be fine without him, but…hell, she just needed to be near him, to see him in the flesh, smell him, talk with him, listen to him, laugh with him. Maybe their hands could brush together sometimes. Nothing sexual had to happen between them. But being with him recently, if only for a few short hours, made her realize if she couldn’t be a part of his life in some way, she’d die. She almost felt dead already. Maybe he could bring her back to life.

  After a long moment when he stared out the window, Max said, “Fine.” He opened the car door and stepped out.

  “When?” she called after him. “It has to be soon.”

  “I’ll call you,” he said, and shut the door.

  Val watched him walk away and smiled. He’d thrown her a bone, thank God. She could go on living one more day.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Which do you prefer for the fourth appetizer at our reception: sweet Maryland crab cakes, or crab and lobster Louise salad?” Abby called to Max from the kitchen.

  In the living room, Max didn’t look up from the tablet he’d propped on top of Toby, the dog planted in his lap. “Do I need to have an opinion? It’s your big day.”

  “But it’s our wedding.” She sighed. “It’d be nice if you at least pretended to care.”

  “I do care. I want the second one, the crab cakes.”

  “That was the first one.”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  He heard her sigh again and say something about the importance of communication in a relationship, but he wasn’t listening. He tried another search for Lucien Christophe, this time in his old Carressa Industries files. Max frowned when only two documents popped up, both related to the old lab equipment company acquisition. Neither contained any mention of Lucien’s residence or office address.

  After calling in a favor from an old business associate with real estate connections, Max had discovered Lucien not only patronized but owned the Pana Sea, though other people managed it for him. More publicly available information about Lucien proved difficult to find. For a rich jet-setter, he kept a suspiciously low profile. Other than the Pana Sea, his name wasn’t connected to any property in the United States, either as a renter or an owner. He didn’t want people to find him. Val probably knew all this already.

  Abby’s cell phone rang; she answered it. Max glanced up when he heard Ginger’s name.

  “Yeah, okay. Hope you’re not stuck there too long. See you tomorrow. Love ya.” She hung up.

  “Who was that?” Max asked, knowing full well it had been her brother.

  “Eugene,” she said. “His flight out of L.A.’s been delayed. He won’t be able to make dinner tonight.”

  “Oh.” Max queued up an Internet search for every flight out of LAX to Sea-Tac that night. None were delayed. He turned off the tablet and chewed his thumb for a moment, deep in thought.

  He should let it go. So Ginger had lied about his flight. Didn’t mean he was up to something nefarious…though he probably was. Max could just give Val the information and let her follow him alone, but he promised he’d go with her. Worse, he wanted to go with her. Be alone with her. When he’d woken up in her bed, a part of him wanted to believe they’d made love. He would never cheat on Abby, but he couldn’t deny a craving for Val that continued to grow in his heart, like a blooming crystal cutting up everything around it. But the feeling would pass if he kept his distance. It had to pass. He’d barely gotten over her the first time. He couldn’t do it again.

  Max pushed Toby out of his lap and stood. He strolled up the stairs to their bedroom, quietly shut the door behind him. Then he took out his cell phone and called Val.

  She answered on the first ring. “Hi.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Right outside your house, stalking you. I’ve been lax on my crazy ex-girlfriend duties. Making up for lost time.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re staking out the Pana Sea, aren’t you?” If she was low on leads, he guessed the best way to track Lucien down was to wait for him to return to a location she knew he frequented—like the Pana Sea.

  “Margaret’s been missing for twenty days,” she said, a new edge to her voice. “Besides her mother, I’m the only person looking for her. When I find Lucien, I’m going to cut off all his fingers, one by one, until he tells me where she is.”

  Max cringed. He knew she wasn’t exaggerating. She must’ve seen some horrible things in her vision. He hoped someone had been there to comfort her, even if it couldn’t be him.

  He glanced at the door, huddled over his phone, and spoke in a hushed voice. “Ginger’s supposed to be flying in from Los Angeles tonight. He was going to meet us for dinner at our place, but he just called to say his flight’s delayed. I checked every flight he could possibly be on. They’re all on time.”

  “So where is he really going?”

  “Exactly. He gets in at six thirty tonight. I’m sure he’ll take a taxi from the airport. You should follow it and see where he goes.”

  “Okay. Where should I pick you up?”

  Max hesitated. Nothing good could come of this. He should really say no. Pacing in a circle, he ran a hand through his hair and pressed his lips together. Say no, Max.

  “Outside Wicked Brew,” he spat out. Shit, he couldn’t say no. He’d already promised he would help her. He couldn’t back out now. He’d allow himself to see her one last time, get his fix of her, then go cold turkey and get her out of his system. After this, he was done. “But I need to be back by eight, at the latest. I mean it.”

  She laughed. “Don’t worry, Cinderella. I’ll get you back before the clock strikes eight.”

  “See you in twenty minutes.” He hung up, sure he was making a mistake. At least if he was with Val, he could stop her from maiming Lucien or Ginger. Maybe.

  * * *

  Parked at the airport’s departures curb in Val’s car, they caught Ginger leaving the terminal of his on-time flight. With an unusually determined spring in his step, he hopped into a cab. Max and Val were quiet as she concentrated on following the taxi from a distance that wouldn’t arouse suspicion, though Max doubted Ginger was aware of his surroundings enough to notice a tail in any circumstance.

  When the cab pulled up to the Pana Sea, Val hissed, “Motherfucker,” with a malice that made him wince. He’d never seen her with so much barely contained rage before, not even toward Norman and Delilah Barrister. For Ginger’s sake, Max hoped Abby’s brother was a mere patsy in Margaret’s kidnapping. God help him if he wasn’t.

  Only three minutes later Ginger emerged from the bar holding a plain cardboard box about six inches square. He jumped back into the cab, and it pulled away.

  Val gave the cab a ten-second head start, then followed. “He usually do courier work?” she asked Max.

  “I don’t think so. I’ve never known him to do any work, honestly.”

  “He and Lucien spend time together?”

  “Not that I know of. But I’m not his keeper. I don’t know what he does all the time.”

  “How about…Michael Stevenson?”

  “Nah, Stevenson’s too much of a snob to be seen with Ginger. Why’re you asking about Michael?”

  Val shrugged. She was quiet after that. He didn’t press. If it was important, she’d tell him. For close to an hour they followed the cab through rush-hour traffic to a seedier part of town, where it stopped in front of a rundown redneck bar called Billy’s Roadhouse. Ginger got out, cardboard box in hand. He took a few steps tow
ard the entrance, then stopped when someone called out to him from the adjacent parking lot. A thin, balding man wearing a pair of blue coveralls hustled over to Ginger. The two shared a quick fist-bump.

  “Know that guy?” Val asked.

  “No.”

  The thin man admired Ginger’s box, then they disappeared into the bar together. Val opened her car door to follow them inside.

  Max grabbed her arm, and something that felt like electricity passed between them at the touch of her skin, just like when she’d touched him during their first meeting at Wicked Brew. She looked at him with her storm cloud–colored eyes, face framed by her gorgeous red hair cascading down the shoulders of the leather jacket she wore, and he forgot what he was going to say. Then it came back to him.

  “Don’t,” he said as he forced himself to let go of her arm, to stop touching her. “Ginger will recognize me.”

  “He won’t recognize me.”

  “No, but you can’t go in there alone. Wait until he comes out. Then we’ll follow him again. The cab’s still waiting for him. He won’t be in there long.”

  Val huffed in protest but shut the door. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and stared at the bar’s entrance, while he tried to stop thinking of excuses to touch her again. After a couple of minutes of silence passed between them, she asked, “Have you heard of a company called Asclepius Incorporated?”

  “No. Why?”

  Val grabbed her tote from the backseat, pulled a manila folder stuffed with papers out of it, then dropped the folder on his lap. “It’s a company I think Lucien might have used to rent a house for a recent Blue Serpent party. I did some digging, and the only address listed for the company just happens to be where the Pana Sea is.”

  Max picked through Val’s case file, filled with newspaper articles, website printouts, and handwritten notes. “Asclepius is the Greek god of medicine.”

  “Okay?”

  “The Pana Sea…pretty close to panacea, now that I think about it. A remedy for all diseases.”

  “So they’re obviously connected, then. They’ve got to be. Lucien owns the Pana Sea, you know.”

  “I know.”

  She frowned at him. “You knew before or after I asked you about it the first time?”

  He returned her frown. “After. If I’d known, I would’ve told you. I only found out today, after making some phone calls.”

  Her frown turned into a smile. “You looked into it for me. You didn’t have to. Thanks.”

  “I know I didn’t have to,” he said a little too defensively. Max looked away so she couldn’t see the frustration in his eyes. Logically, he wasn’t obligated to do anything for her, but he always did anyway. He had no goddamn willpower when it came to her. After he took a slow, measured breath, he said, “I figured you’d find out anyway. I was curious.”

  “Oh. Sure.” Val resumed drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. A minute of awkward silence later, she seemed to remember something and began riffling through the folder in Max’s lap. He froze while she dug so close to…well, between his legs. Oh God, he felt himself growing. Son of a bitch, she still did it to him, and with embarrassing ease.

  She held a grainy printout of an old photograph up for him to see. “Who does the guy in the back look like to you?”

  “Um…” Swallowing hard, he took the photo at the same time he subtly pushed the papers closer to his stomach, hopefully hiding his erection. “Which one?”

  “Him.” She pointed at a figure in the third row of an old-timey black-and-white faculty photo. A placard on the bottom read, “Université de Montpellier, 1931.” The man in question had an unmistakable hawk nose and the sharp cheekbones of an aristocrat. A Christophe.

  “A distant relative of Lucien’s?” Max asked.

  “I found it while looking for any possible relatives he might still have in France. That guy is Gérald Gahariet. I figured if Lucien got a medical degree in his home country, like most people do, then maybe he went to a university his parents or grandparents attended, which isn’t uncommon. When I saw this picture, I assumed that man was a distant relative of Lucien’s. Thing is, Gérald didn’t have any children, or siblings. He fell off the grid somewhere around 1953. No death certificate.”

  Max raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying you think this is Lucien?”

  She threw up her hands. “Fuck, I don’t know. He makes weird drugs that do weird things. Maybe he found one for immortality.”

  “That’s a stretch…”

  “He’s also got a drug that can completely wipe a person’s memory for at least twelve hours with no dizziness or side effects, something I know doesn’t exist in modern medicine. And I saw him doing awful Nazi-type experiments on Margaret. If he’s been at it for more than half a century, maybe he did stumble on something that extended his life.” She gritted her teeth, then sighed. “It’s crazy. I’m crazy. I don’t know. Forget it.”

  Val grabbed the folder out of his lap and tossed it in the backseat. She fell silent and went back to staring at the bar.

  He didn’t think she was crazy, but definitely stressed. Max snuck a good look at her. She was still beautiful, but she also looked tired. Unnatural lines creased her face, her cheeks and lips a shade paler than normal. The aged jeans she wore looked looser than he remembered, as if she’d lost weight. Her eyes harbored a sadness that hadn’t been there before.

  “We’ll find Margaret,” he said to her. “If there’s any chance she’s alive, we’ll find her.”

  We—he hadn’t meant to use the plural. It’d been a Freudian slip. She’d done the same thing at her house, the morning after the Blue Serpent party: We need to get to Margaret before Lucien kills her. They were in this together now, whether he liked it or not. As long as Ginger remained somehow involved in the woman’s disappearance, he couldn’t back out. Max had to shield Abby from whatever her idiot brother was up to. And Val needed support. The case was obviously wearing on her. He knew her in a way no one else did. He wanted to be there for her—as much as he could, anyway, without crossing the line.

  She met his gaze. A slow smile spread across her face as if she took in all the meanings of what he’d said. Her cheeks flushed, and she closed her eyes and leaned her head against the driver’s side window. In a flash he saw her lying naked in his arms, felt the warm skin of her neck against his lips, her soft breast in one hand while he stroked her hair with the other—

  Max forced himself to look away and push the image out of his mind. Sweat broke out all over his body. He rolled down the window to get some air flowing, yanked up the arms on his long-sleeved shirt, and wiped his wet hands on his jeans. Goddammit, this closeness was killing him. He’d accepted it was over and moved on from their relationship, even though doing so had nearly destroyed him. His plan to see her once more and get her out of his system was backfiring. With every second he spent in her presence, he felt the connection that bonded them together strengthening, his desire for her growing. And it would only get worse.

  “Where’s my invitation to the wedding?” she asked, a slight grin still on her face.

  That’s right—he was getting married to another woman in two months. Shit. Max wiped sweat from his brow that’d gathered underneath his baseball cap. “It’s in the mail.”

  “Liars go to Hell, Max.”

  He let out a wry laugh. “You really wanna hang out with four hundred of Abby’s closest friends and relatives?”

  “No, but I want to eat free fancy food. Wow, four hundred on her side? For real?”

  “A big chunk of that number are her father’s business associates. Why pass up an opportunity to make more money just because it’s your daughter’s wedding?” Fucking greedy bastard. Patrick Westford reminded Max too much of his own father—Lester, not Dean. Luckily Max wasn’t marrying Patrick, and didn’t intend to spend any more time with the man than absolutely necessary, despite Abby’s desire for the two to become besties.

  A hint of a frown played acr
oss Val’s lips as she seemed to consider his words, and what he actually meant by them. Val could accurately guess what he was thinking. She knew him better than anyone. “How many total?” she asked.

  “Four hundred and three, plus or minus two.”

  “Come on.” She gave his arm a playful slap. There was that electricity again. Ignore it, Max. “Who’d you invite?”

  He puffed out a breath of air. “Let’s see: Michael Beauford, the CFO of Carressa Industries—you’ve met him before—and Juanita, my father’s longtime housekeeper, and…Yeah, that’s it.”

  “What about all your new charity circuit pals?”

  “They’re Abby’s friends, not mine. I can’t stand most of them. Bunch of boring blowhards.”

  Val laughed. “Oh, Max. Still as antisocial as ever.”

  He cracked a smile. “I can’t help that nobody likes me.” His smile fell into a frown. “I thought about inviting Josephine, but decided that would be weird.”

  Val lifted her head off the glass. “Does she know?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think she ever will. She won’t talk to me.”

  “Do you want me to talk to her? I could—”

  “No. It’s…better this way.” He wasn’t sure it really was better, but it was what it was.

  They were quiet once more, until Val slapped his arm again. “Tell her in code. Send her a series of puzzles of increasing difficulty that spell out ‘I am your brother’ in Latin. As your sister, she’ll be helpless to resist trying to solve them.”

  He snickered. “Or I could rent a biplane and write it in the sky with smoke.”

  “Or hire a singing telegram lady.”

  “Announce it on the Jumbotron at a Mariners’ game.”

  “Perfect solution—rent out time on a cable access channel, hire a professional choreographer, and have dancers perform ‘The Secret Connection between Maxwell Carressa and Josephine Price’ in interpretive dance.”

  They belly-laughed together until they ran out of breath. “I think that’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard, for anything,” Max said, wiping tears from his eyes. Damn, it felt good to have a real laugh with someone. He could do this all day…they could do this all day, if Val wanted to…No. She didn’t want to be with him. She’d made that clear. His usual frown settled back into place and he stared out the window, striving to look at anything that wasn’t her.