Vengeance

by Shana Figueroa

  “Come on,” she whispered, strong-arming it open one inch at a time. It squeaked as she ratcheted it up. She had seconds before they noticed the noise. “Come on. Come on.”

  Finally she forced the window open enough to squeeze through. With her heart pounding so hard her ribs hurt, Val pushed herself through the tiny opening as the bedroom’s doorknob jiggled.

  She stepped out onto a fire escape just as the bedroom door crashed open.

  As fast as possible, she moved her arms and legs down the ladder, zigzagging the building’s flank on rungs slick from the unending Seattle rain. On the final section she slipped and fell hard onto her back, knocking the wind out of her for a moment. She gasped for breath as she scrambled to her feet, then looked up in time to see a head poking out of Chet’s window.

  Sten. Fucking Sten. That son of a bitch. He was involved. And he was a murderer.

  Val cried out when Sten stuck his gun out the window and fired at her. The fire escape prevented Sten from getting a clean shot, and the bullet clinked as it ricocheted. Val heard two more shots bank off the metal as she fled down the wet alleyway, then another that exploded the brick next to her head as she cut to the left, into another connecting alley.

  Val sprinted down the narrow passage, crashing through mud puddles and leaping over bags of trash that littered her escape route. She followed the alley when it turned right, scanning her path for any opening into the street that might save her life. Before she found a way out, the alley dead-ended at a tarp-covered chain-link fence with barbed wire on top and a padlock trapping her inside.

  “No!” Val yanked on the padlock. It didn’t budge. She tried the only door in the alley, a metal behemoth flush with the brick—locked. “Goddammit, no!” She kicked the door, and it barely moved.

  Val pulled out her pistol and pressed herself into the corner of the alley’s dead end. She’d been in firefights before while in the military, though not against American citizens, and not alone. She didn’t stand much of a chance against two armed cops when she had nowhere to hide and no cover for support. In all her visions she’d never seen her own death. There was no reason this couldn’t be it.

  But she’d be damned if she was going down without a fight.

  Chapter Nine

  Val planted her feet on the wet pavement, gun trained at the alleyway’s bend, ready to shoot the first thing that entered her line of sight. The rain picked up, an icy October shower that matted her hair to her face and would have chilled her to the bone if not for the wild adrenaline racing through her veins. For what seemed like an eternity she listened to the approaching footsteps and stood her ground, waiting to die.

  Then she heard it—a chain rattling. Val ripped her gaze away from where her killers were due to arrive any second to see a set of bolt cutters slip through the fence and snap the padlock off. The chain slinked to the ground, and someone pulled the gate open.

  One of her pursuers had somehow doubled back, and now they surrounded her.

  Val spun around to face her flanker, finger on the trigger to let loose a hail of bullets into Sten or his friend’s smug face. She gasped and just barely stopped herself from firing as she registered Max Carressa standing in front of her, holding the bolt cutters and recoiling from her gun. She hardly recognized him in jeans and a black motorcycle jacket, a baseball cap deflecting the rain out of his startled face, though his gorgeous eyes were a dead giveaway.

  “What the hell?” she said.

  Max grabbed her arm. “Come on!” He glanced behind her, where Chet’s murderers thundered up, just around the corner. “Do you wanna die here or not?”

  No, she did not especially want to die there. With no time to consider any other option, she followed Max to his car, idling at the curb, and jumped into the passenger’s seat. He flew into the driver’s side and punched the gas. The car tore away as Val caught a glimpse of Sten and another man round the alleyway’s corner and begin running toward her in a futile attempt to catch up or read the car’s license plate number as it sped out of sight.

  Val watched the world fly by through the back window as the car cut left and right down side streets, then merged onto the highway, until she was sure they’d lost her pursuers. She turned back and put her head between her legs for a minute, trying to catch her breath, then stole a glance around Max’s car. It looked average, something a middle-class professional might drive, not a flashy status symbol of a rich playboy. He was trying to blend in, avoid notice from the cops. He’d planned this.

  “How did you find me?” Val asked, still short of breath.

  “The same way you found Chet.”

  For a moment Val didn’t understand what he meant, because what she thought he meant couldn’t be true. “No, I mean how did you know where I’d be at that moment?”

  “I mean, I saw it in a vision of the future.” He glanced at her. “Like you, right?”

  Val stared at him, slack-jawed, and her heart began racing again. Was he telling the truth? How could he know otherwise? Could there be others like her, and how had she never encountered any of them until now? What did any of this craziness have to do with Robby’s murder or Norman Barrister or Lester Carressa?

  “You look like you’re going to be sick,” Max said. “Please don’t throw up in this car. I’m borrowing it from a friend.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she snapped. “Just pull over somewhere. I need a drink.”

  He exited the highway and drove to a bar with peeling paint and a broken sign, careful to park out of view of the street in case someone was looking for their car. Blue-collar locals filled half the dimly lit tavern as country music crooned from an ancient jukebox in the corner. Max and Val sat at a booth in the corner, away from curious ears. An older waitress with too much eyeliner asked them what they wanted to drink.

  “Bud Light,” Max said, keeping his head down so the waitress wouldn’t recognize him from news coverage of his father’s death. Even a day’s worth of stubble and a ball cap covering half his face couldn’t hide the fact that he was an unusually handsome man with a mug that was hard to forget.

  Val pushed her wet hair behind her ears and wiped away a smear of mud from her cheekbone. “Shot of tequila, please,” she said. “Actually, make that two shots.”

  The waitress nodded and disappeared, leaving Max and Val alone. They sat in silence for a while, studying each other. He looked calm, normal—a ridiculously attractive version of normal anyway. But she looked normal, too, and God what a lie that was. She’d often wondered if people could tell she was off, sensed the oddness in her somehow. Now that she’d met another like her—assuming he spoke the truth—she knew her secret was well hidden. She would never have guessed he was a freak, too.

  And what a beautiful freak he was. His light brown eyes with starbursts of green around the pupils raked over her features and made her blush again. Why did he have to stare at her like that? He didn’t make her uncomfortable as much as painfully aware of exactly how many inches apart their bodies were. Her heart still ached for Robby, but she wasn’t blind.

  He slipped off his coat, uncovering a Soundgarden T-shirt over exquisitely sculpted biceps, and handed it to her. Val looked at the coat for a moment, not sure what to do with it, until she realized that not only was the hand holding the coat shaking, but her entire body shook from the cold that saturated her wet clothes and chilled her to the core. She took off her own jacket and put on his, still infused with his body heat and masculine scent. His warmth soaked into her like a hot bath, and her tremors subsided.

  “Thank you,” she said, “for the coat, and for saving my life.”

  He nodded in response as the waitress returned with their drinks, eyed the unusual fractal tattoos on Max’s forearms, then left again. Val threw back the first tequila shot and let it burn a path down her throat. She took a deep breath as her resolve fortified again and her thoughts untangled themselves.

  “What the fuck is going on?” she said.

  Max took
a swig of his beer and shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

  “You can…You can really…”

  “See the future when I come? Yes.”

  “Since when?”

  “All my life. Since my first wet dream. As far back as I can remember. You?”

  She raised her eyebrows at him. “Why would you ask me that? Aren’t you the expert?”

  He laughed. “Hardly. You’re only the second person I’ve ever met who can do it.”

  “There are others? Who? Where?”

  “I only met the one guy. He was looking for something, like you. He implied there were others, but he came and went quickly—in more ways than one. I didn’t get many answers out of him.”

  “If you knew there were others, why didn’t you look for me—I mean, people like me? Like us?”

  His eyes fell and he fidgeted with his beer bottle. “It’s complicated.”

  She balled her hands into fists as a spike of anger surged through her. “I’ve felt alone my entire life. Even when I was with other people, I still felt alone. And you were just a few miles away the whole time? Did you even try to look?”

  His face darkened, and when his eyes met hers again, she could practically count the bricks in the emotional wall he’d erected. “It’s complicated.”

  Fine, he didn’t want to talk about it. She knew how difficult it could be to discuss your deeply personal and weird ability with other people who’d probably dismiss you as a delusional sex addict. Whatever—his previous disinterest in finding others like himself wasn’t important now.

  “How did you know about me?” she asked.

  “A hunch. I confirmed it right after you visited me at the Red Raven.”

  She smirked. “Did your little pussy cat help you with that?”

  “Kitty’s gotta work her way through nursing school somehow,” he said with lazy sarcasm.

  Val rolled her eyes, then asked, “What do you mean ‘confirmed it’?”

  “I saw a string of prime numbers. That’s the same thing I saw with Ethan—the other guy with our condition.”

  “Condition?”

  He sighed and took a long drink of his beer. “At first I saw images, and I couldn’t figure out what they meant until I started interpreting them as numbers, because I’m decent at math. Now all I see is numbers. I’ve gotten pretty good at deciphering what they mean. But I still think of it as more of a sexual dysfunction than a gift.”

  “But it’s how you got rich, right?”

  Max’s face hardened and his eyes turned cold. “Yeah, it is.”

  “At least you don’t see dead people all the fucking time.” The image of Chet in his death throes popped into her head—yet another person she’d failed to protect—and her hands began to shake again. She downed her second tequila shot, then slammed the glass on the table. “What’s your connection to Norman Barrister?”

  “The guy running for mayor?”

  Val nodded.

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Bullshit.” Gorgeous knight in shining armor or not, she was going to get some damn answers out of him. “Before Chet was gunned down in his own apartment by a couple of Seattle’s finest, he told me that he heard Barrister talking about your dad’s death two weeks before it happened. How would Barrister know that?”

  Max furrowed his brows in deep thought. “I don’t know. Maybe Chet was lying or misheard.”

  “Well, someone plugged him to shut him up, so I’m guessing there’s at least a kernel of truth in what he told me.” Val let a silence fall between them for a few seconds so Max could think about what she’d said. “Did you murder your father?”

  He flinched, and his eyes turned cold again. “No.”

  “Then either someone else murdered him and is actively framing you—or at least letting you take the fall—or your dad really did accidentally trip and fall off his balcony, and someone like us predicted it. Which do you think is more likely?”

  Fidgeting with the label on his beer bottle, after a pause, he said, “The latter.”

  “Why?”

  “Because what are the odds that you and I are randomly involved, two people who just happen to be able to see the future?”

  “True,” Val said. She sighed, then stood.

  “Where’re you going?” Max asked.

  “I’m going to call a friend to come pick me up and take me back to my car, and then I’m going home.”

  Max got up and blocked her exit. “You can’t go home. The cops that chased you from Chet’s place have probably run your license plate by now and know who you are and where you live.”

  Val frowned. He was right. In fact, they didn’t need to run her plates. Sten knew who she was. It would take him a matter of minutes to track down her address. She imagined him parked across the street from her house right at that moment, just waiting for her to come home so he could choke her to death in her sleep, right after he raped her for shits and grins.

  “Stay with me,” Max said. “Whoever’s after you doesn’t know that we’re together yet. We probably have a few days before they figure it out. Until then, we can have visions with each other, and compare what we see until we piece it together. That’s why Ethan sought me out—two people with the condition have much stronger visions together than paired with normal people.”

  She cocked an eyebrow at what that information implied. “Was it true?” she asked. With an assistant like Kitty, there was no way he wasn’t at least mostly heterosexual.

  “Yes.” He shrugged, reacting to the incredulous look in her face. “He needed help, so I helped him. If we ever meet again, he’ll owe me a big favor. It’s always good to have a healthy roster of people in your debt.”

  It was tempting to take him up on his offer, to see what sex was like with another of her…her kind, she guessed the correct term was. She’d slept with Dirty John just a few days ago, and then Stacey a few hours ago, but both encounters had been born of desperation. Something about Max gave her pause.

  Despite how he’d helped her, she still didn’t know much about him—or if she could trust him. She knew for sure, though, that he was dangerous. She still felt the fire in him that’d been there the first time they met, intense and tempting. He might kill her—in more ways than one. Maybe kill her softly with those goddamn eyes. Make her feel things she wasn’t ready for. Not to mention how cavalierly he’d proposed the idea, like being ungodly handsome and rich meant she’d jump into his bed on command. Fuck that. She was nobody’s submissive.

  Val folded her arms. “I’ll pass on being your crystal ball whore, thanks. I’ll stay in a hotel.”

  “With what money? If you use your credit cards, they’ll find you.”

  “I’ll stay with a friend.”

  “Then you’ll be putting that person in danger.”

  Val rubbed the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut, too tired to counter his argument.

  “If you don’t want to have sex, then we won’t. It’ll still be easier to work together if we’re in the same location.”

  “Jesus Christ, we’re two people who can see the goddamn future and somehow we don’t know jack shit.” Val shook her head and let out a long exhale. “We’re doomed. Fine, I might as well stay at your place. Let’s just get out of here.”

  Chapter Ten

  The last time Val had been at the Carressa mansion, she hadn’t made it past the gate. This time, Max punched a code into the keypad underneath the intercom and the wrought iron fence swung open with ease, welcoming its owner. The mansion itself was about a quarter mile from the gate, after a winding single-lane road that cut through a tiny patch of northwest wilderness with sky-high evergreens and ferns carpeting lush forest ground. Val gawked like the middle-class bumpkin she was when Max pulled up to a giant asymmetrical house made of vaulted glass walls framed by smooth pinewood beams, an integration of nature and the cosmopolitan that only a seasoned architect paid millions of dollars could have achieved.

  Max unlock
ed the door and held it open for her, then punched another security code into the keypad adjacent to the entrance. It beeped, and the house lit up like the stage lights on an orchestra about to perform. The first floor was a sprawling open space that reminded Val of a Northwest Living magazine cover, with polished wood décor balanced against glass and steel fixtures. Everything was in its place, immaculately clean. She followed him up a spiral staircase to a guest bedroom on the second floor, done up like a posh hotel room at the Seattle Westin with dark gray silk bedding, solid oak furniture, and framed pictures of pressed Northwest flowers. Nothing personal distracted from the room’s elegance.

  “Where’s your room?” Val asked.

  “I stay in the guest house,” he said. “It’s about a hundred feet away, on the west side of the property. There’s a path that connects the two.”

  “You don’t need to vacate your own home for me. I can stay in the guest house.”

  “Actually, the guest house is my home. I hate this place. It was my father’s, not mine. I’m planning on selling it and moving to the city after the investigation into his death is over. I should have moved away a long time ago, but…” He trailed off, lost in a thought that darkened his eyes, before pulling himself back to the present. “Anyway, I’ve dismissed the help, so it’s just you and me for now. Help yourself to whatever you want. I’ll have Kitty bring by a change of clothes for you. Let me know if you need anything else.”

  Before she could thank him for his hospitality, Max said, “Good night,” turned, and left, as if he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  Val would’ve loved to take a look around, but exhaustion from her long day dragged her brain into a stupor she was helpless to resist. She stripped off her moist clothes, slipped her gun underneath her pillow, and passed out on the guest bed.

  * * *

  Val woke with a start, not sure where she was for a moment until the previous day’s events came flooding back in heart-pounding detail. She eased her hand off her gun, then checked her cell phone; four missed calls from Stacey. Val queued up Stacey’s number, but stopped herself from dialing when she considered the massive amount of explanation she’d have to go through, as well as the inevitable talk about where their relationship stood. She texted Stacey instead: I’m fine. 2 much 2 explain now. talk to u soon, then turned off her phone.