Son of a bitch, Sten knew about her, too. He wished he’d thought to call Val and warn her when he’d had the chance, before he’d lost reception in the stairwell. “I have lots of best friends,” Max said, keeping his voice measured in an attempt to hide his growing panic. “You need to be more specific.”
“The hot redhead. You know who I’m talking about.” Sten winked. “You guys fucking yet?”
The rain picked up, matting Max’s hair to his forehead. Water dribbled down his face and into his eyes. He blinked it back as best he could and considered spitting some in Sten’s face. “Kitty has blond hair, not red. And yes, we’ve been fucking for about a year now.”
Sten laughed. “You’re clever. I like you. What’s it like being smart and rich?”
Max stared at him for a moment while Sten waited for a response. And waited. He really wanted an answer. What the hell was this guy up to? At least if he was busy messing around with Max, then he wasn’t hunting for Val.
Max thought of a smart-ass answer and said, “It’s like—”
Sten punched him hard in the stomach before he could finish. He doubled over and fell to his knees, gasping for breath as pain seared through his torso.
“I’m just kidding,” Sten chuckled. “I don’t really care what it’s like to be smart and rich.” He pulled Max back to his feet again. “I do want to know, though, what it’s like to have everything and nothing at the same time. What’s that like?”
What the fuck? How did he know these things? Who told him? The mysterious people who’d e-mail his father, trying to pull the strings of his life?
“Lonely, right?”
Sten seized Max’s jaw and dug his fingers into the sides of Max’s cheeks. He writhed in Sten’s grasp, struggling to breathe, old memories clawing their way to the forefront of his mind. This time he would fight back, goddammit.
“So lonely you wanna grab the closest thing you can find and fuck it rotten, just to feel a connection, like in a Hallmark movie?” His tone was jovial, like the two men were chatting at a sports bar. “Even fall in love with someone you just met?”
“Fuck you,” Max managed to force out through Sten’s vise grip on his face.
“You know, I think I’ll do that when I see Shepherd again. I’ll fuck her rotten, and we’ll come together like two halves of the solstice moon, or whatever metaphor works here. She might say no at first, but if I’ve learned anything from reading romance novels, it’s that every woman secretly wants to be dominated. They all have rape fantasies. I can do that.”
Sten shoved Max away from him, a giant grin slapped on his face. The pain in Max’s stomach and face dulled beside the rage that coursed through him, the desire to break every bone in Sten’s body. To do everything in his power to keep this psycho away from Val.
“Aw, pwetty boy mad?” Sten opened his arms wide in front of Max, like a bird flapping its wings, or a toreador taunting a bull. “Now’s your chance to prove you can take me with both hands behind your back. I know you’re thinking it.”
Max’s world turned red. He struck out with his leg and nailed Sten in the chest. The cop stumbled backward and fell onto his side. His gun bounced out of his hand and slid ten feet away when he hit the ground. With a primal growl Max kicked him in the chest again, the urge to destroy him like a runaway train in Max’s mind, barreling over all rational thought.
Max chambered his leg back to deliver another vicious kick, but before he could connect, Sten lunged forward and grabbed Max’s front leg with both arms and yanked it toward him. Max slipped backward, unable to catch his fall with his hands cuffed behind him. He landed hard on his back, his head ricocheting off the pavement. Stars exploded in his eyes, and when they cleared, Sten stood over him, a joker smile back on his face.
“You just assaulted a police officer.”
He kicked Max in the gut. More searing pain shot through Max’s body as the air rushed out of his lungs.
“And you just resisted arrest.”
Sten kicked him again. He wheezed out everything that was left in his chest, his insides turning to mush.
With the pain came a strange lucidity. He’d walked right into this trap. How much dumber could he have been? Sten wanted him to fight back, so the cop would have a plausible excuse for killing him. Sten’s story might not hold up under scrutiny, but it didn’t matter when the entire police force had his back. Like an idiot, Max had fallen for it. He’d let his anger get the best of him, just like with his father.
Sten kneeled down and punched Max in the face. Then he punched him again, and again, and again, and again, until the taste of blood and the dull thumping of flesh impacting flesh were the only sensations that reached him as the world spun away.
Sten’s words floated to Max as if the cop spoke through a thick sheet of glass. “Temper, temper,” Max thought he heard Sten say. “How am I going to live with myself, knowing what I was forced to do in self-defense?”
Chapter Seventeen
Val drove past the Thornton Building, home of Carressa Industries Headquarters, as slowly as she could without drawing attention to herself. Three police cruisers were parked out front, boxing in a Porsche that Val guessed belonged to Max, though Max was nowhere in sight. Two men in the cheap suits of police detectives talked to a valet driver, who pointed at the car and shook his head. By the way they blocked the entrance, she assumed they were there to arrest Max—which meant that Sten was close by, riding the wave of the arrest to waylay Max somewhere toward the back of the building.
“Shit,” she said, scanning the outskirts of the building for a discreet way past the cops to the back.
She drove around the block and made two left turns until she could see the back of the glass skyscraper, then parked at a nearby gas station. After she checked her gun, she exited the car, glanced around to confirm that she’d still gone unnoticed, and cut through a patch of woods that separated the gas station from the headquarters building. Rain slipped through the evergreen canopy as she trotted along the soft earthen floor, cold darts of water spearing the top of her head, worry a vise on her chest. Dear Lord, please say she got here in time. As she crossed the well-worn trail, the outline of the Thornton Building began to emerge through the trees, along with the dark plane of pavement and the silhouette of a backhoe. She saw movement—two figures on the ground.
Oh no.
Val sprinted forward, bursting through the wood’s edge and into a parking lot behind the building. Fifty feet in front of her Max was sprawled on the ground, unmoving, as Sten knelt on one knee and loomed over him, the retractable baton raised in the air, ready to strike.
“No!” Val pulled out her gun as she ran toward them.
Sten swiveled his head toward Val. “Oh, there you are.” He lowered his baton when he saw her Glock.
She slowed to a quick walk to steady her aim at Sten’s chest. Her eyes cut to Max. “Jesus Christ,” she breathed.
He was just as she’d seen him in her vision, but the severity of his beating still shocked her. Blood soaked the front of his white dress shirt, his gray suit wet and streaked with dirt. His face looked like he’d been hit by a dump truck while his arms crooked painfully behind his back. Unlike her vision, though, his eyes were closed. She couldn’t tell if Sten had already delivered the blow that would ultimately put him in a coma and end his life.
“Get those cuffs off him right now,” she ordered Sten, her voice sharp with adrenaline and rage, “or I swear to God I’ll blow your fucking kneecaps off. I am not bluffing.”
“I know.” Sten sighed, more disappointed than anything. He fished a key out of his pant pocket, unlocked, and removed the cuffs. Max’s arms relaxed, but he still showed no signs of consciousness.
She nodded toward the backhoe. “Walk over there.”
“We’re playing ‘Shepherd Says’ now?” Sten said as he walked, Val following two strides behind so he couldn’t wheel around and get the jump on her. “It’s fun having a gun, isn’t it? Such a ve
rsatile toy.”
“Handcuff yourself to the boom.”
He shook his head. “You drive a hard bargain.” He snapped one handcuff onto his wrist and the other to a boom piston the size of Val’s forearm.
“Tighten it.”
“Ooh,” he said as he pushed the metal bands closer together. “I’m starting to like this.”
With all her strength, she kicked him in the groin. He collapsed into a writhing ball on the ground, and she pistol-whipped him as he lay prone, his handcuffed arm flailing awkwardly against the boom.
“You murdering”—she whipped him—“son of a”—she whipped him again—“bitch!”
He spit out a mouthful of blood and looked at her through more blood oozing from a gash above his eye. “Stacey’s looking everywhere for you, just so you know.”
She kicked him in the chest; he made a satisfying oof sound as the wind was knocked out of him. “I’ll mail her all your goddamn teeth!” She raised the butt of her gun to continue pounding his face in—
“Val.”
She froze, then spun around to see Max sitting upright, shoulders slumped and legs splayed like he could barely keep himself from falling over again.
“They’re coming to arrest me,” he said, his voice a disturbing monotone. “You should run. I tried to call you. I was stupid.”
Thank God. Ignoring Sten, she ran to Max and knelt beside him, put a tender hand on his cheek, and looked into his eyes. With effort he met her gaze, though his eyes had a glassy sheen that made her stomach lurch at the possibility of a brain injury.
“Can you walk?” she asked him.
“I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to try. We can’t stay here.”
“Leave me,” he said, and his face went slack like he might pass out again. “You should run.”
“That’s not happening.” She threw his arm around her shoulders and struggled to pull him to his feet. “Come on,” she said, grunting under his dead weight. “Get your ass up. Do you wanna stay here and die?”
“Yes.”
Damn him—why did he hold such little value for his own life? “Then I’m going to stay here and die, too. Is that what you want? Because I’m not leaving you.”
He looked at her again, and she saw the normally quicksilver wheels in his head turning like molasses. After a moment that felt like an eternity, he gripped her shoulder and pulled his legs in. Then, leaning on her heavily, he stood up. They stumbled forward together, almost falling over as Val scrambled to support most of his weight. When they were steady, they began to shuffle back the way she’d come.
“You guys are too cute together,” she heard Sten say as they walked away.
She thought about sitting Max back down to get one more good punch into Sten, but grudgingly decided against it.
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Sten added. “They’ll find you. They always find you.” He laughed, a deep-throated wheeze on the cusp of a sob.
She could still hear him laughing as they fled into the woods. She dragged Max over the nature trail, the soothing smell of wet pine a sharp contrast to the urgency with which she pulled him along, as fast as his barely conscious body could go. Val was breathing hard with effort by the time they reached the opposite end of the wood patch at the edge of the gas station. After confirming there was no one around to see them, she hurried the final few feet to the car, threw open the passenger’s side door, and dumped Max inside. She jumped into the driver’s side and started the engine with shaking hands. As she reversed out of the parking spot, tires squealing in her haste to leave, she spotted the baseball cap Max used to hide his identity lying behind his seat. Val grabbed it and set it gently on his head, cocking the bill over his closed eyes. He looked unconscious again.
She turned left out of the gas station, away from the Thornton Building and the chaos that would erupt there when someone stumbled onto Sten. A police cruiser flew past with its lights blaring just as Val merged onto Interstate 5 going south.
She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself as they barreled down the freeway, checking the rearview mirror every few seconds to confirm they weren’t being followed. They’d escaped by the skin of their teeth. For now.
They’ll find you. They always find you.
Sten knew the score, but she didn’t even know what game they were playing. Too bad she hadn’t had more time to beat some answers out of him. She should have frisked him and taken his phone, or searched his car. Or kicked him a few more times for good measure. Or not dated his sleazy ass when they’d served in the Army together.
She gripped the steering wheel and tried to concentrate on the present rather than second-guess the past. Her eyes cut to Max, passed out with his head slumped to the side, his face red all over. Maybe the baseball cap wasn’t necessary; she doubted anyone would recognize his pulverized face, though the clothes were a dead giveaway.
Val remembered getting kicked in the head with a soccer ball when she’d played varsity in high school, the confusion and stumbling around that had ensued afterward—a concussion, the doctors had diagnosed her with at the time. She guessed Max suffered from the same thing, albeit a much worse one. A concussion needed only time to heal, which they could do in hiding. But what if he had something worse? She had no medical training, other than the basic first aid she’d been taught in the military. If he had broken bones or brain swelling, she would need to take him to a hospital, where he’d be arrested on trumped-up murder charges, or murdered himself. Who knew how many accomplices Sten had? She prayed it didn’t come to that.
After thirty minutes of driving, when the cityscape of Seattle had receded behind them and yielded to the suburbs, Val pulled off the highway and parked in front of a Walmart.
“What are you doing?”
Val jumped at the sudden sign of life from Max. He looked at her with groggy eyes.
“We need to load up on supplies before our faces appear on every news broadcast in the state,” she said. “I figure we have about a sixty-minute window, which started forty minutes ago.”
Voice flat, he said, “Let’s go to Fiji.”
“We can’t clear your name from Fiji. We need to stay nearby.”
“Then let’s go to Fiji.”
She couldn’t tell if he was being facetious or brain damaged. “Dammit, Max! When I first met you, you told me that no one was more interested in proving your innocence than you were. Now you’re telling me you suddenly don’t care anymore?”
“I never really cared. I just want to be left alone.” He closed his eyes again. “You should run.”
“I don’t run from my problems,” she snapped. She reached into the backseat and retrieved Lester’s cash and gun from the wastebasket. She pulled three hundred-dollar bills from the stack and shoved the rest into the glove box. “Stay here and act unassuming. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Max didn’t respond; he’d passed out again.
Val left the car, locked the doors behind her, and entered the giant store. She glanced at the cameras perched in each corner, recording footage the police would probably show the public to aid in their manhunt for the rich murderer and his accomplice, the cop beater, depending on what version of events Sten told. She grabbed a cart and made a beeline for the medicine aisle, loading up on pain relievers, disinfectants, swabs, and bandages.
In the makeup aisle she grabbed fistfuls of lipsticks, eye shadows, and mascaras in the most garish colors she could find, the better to distract people from her actual facial features. She threw in a bottle of black hair dye. In the clothing section she snatched up clothes for herself and Max with no regard to color or style, ballparking Max’s size. Finally she swung by the electronics section and grabbed a prepaid burner phone, then the first few games and books within arm’s reach on her way to the cash register. The entire whirlwind trip through the store took her just short of ten minutes.
Val dumped her merchandise on the conveyor belt and kep
t her head down as the cashier spent about a hundred years scanning each item. Two shirts required a price check to confirm if they were twenty or twenty-five percent off.
“I’ll just pay full price, I love them so much.” Val slapped her cash down before the cashier could get on the intercom and spend more precious minutes haggling over how many cents she could save.
“Thanks,” Val said after the cashier dropped change into her hand. She grabbed her bags and hurried for the exit. Her stomach dropped when she glanced up at a television screen on her way out the sliding glass door.
Breaking News: Multimillionaire Maxwell Carressa Charged with Murder, On Run with Girlfriend…
Chapter Eighteen
The black lipstick had an unappealing waxy taste that made Val cringe as she lathered it on her lips. When she was done, she checked her face in the car’s vanity mirror—thick black eyeliner and shadow, no blush, the black lips, and the top of a fake barbed wire tattoo she’d drawn on her neck with the eyeliner pencil. She twisted her hair into a bun, then pulled the hood of her black sweatshirt over her head. Her red locks were her most recognizable feature, and she needed to keep them hidden until she could apply the black hair dye.
Val looked at Max, still asleep as he’d been the entire three-hour trip. She’d driven south along Interstate 5, then east on Route 12 until they’d come to a fleabag motel deep in the Cascade Mountains, a place that probably saw decent business from cash-strapped college students during ski season. In October, the off-season, the motel stood maybe a quarter full, occupied by truckers and malcontents passing through. A good place to lie low, she figured, while Max healed and they figured out what to do next. The police were unlikely to cast their net this far outside Seattle, but close enough for Max and Val to return within a day when the time came.
Taking a deep breath and praying her disguise would hold, Val left the car and walked across the dark parking lot, past the neon “Stardust Motel” sign with the “o” burned out, and into the lobby that stank of stale coffee and cigarette smoke. The area was deserted save for an old woman behind the check-in counter. She clutched a cigarette between two prunes for fingers topped with long red fingernails, leathered face blank as she watched the local news on a cathode ray tube television perched on the counter.
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