Gino glanced to the side where his visitor stood behind him. “You checked with friends and known acquaintances?” His grip on Kitty’s thighs tightened, and he thrust faster. Sweat bloomed on his brow.
“This ain’t my first rodeo,” the visitor said through a mouth full of apple. “Shepherd’s a PI. She knows how to hide. Probably in Mexico by now.”
“It doesn’t matter where they are as long as they stay gone until after the election. So keep it that way.”
Gino stiffened and he groaned, finally climaxing. He let out a long exhale, then slipped out of Kitty and pulled up his pants, retrieved his drink from the end table, and took a long gulp. His tongue flicked out and licked vodka off his upper lip. “Where are my manners? Sten, Katya. Katya, Sten.”
Kitty rolled onto her side to face Sten, arm propping her head up, not bothering to cover herself. “Privyet,” she said to him.
Sten cocked an eyebrow at her, then focused back on Gino. “And what about the accountant?”
“We need to get as much money as possible out of that account before turning off the spigot. Wait two weeks, until right before elections, then make it look like an accident. Or a suicide, whatever. God knows I’d off myself if I woke up one day as a lonely, fat-ass accountant.”
Sten shrugged. “Sure.” He set the apple core down on the kitchen counter. “Though if I can give you some advice that I read in Cosmo, don’t push your luck.” He eyed Kitty for half a second. “Sometimes the hare doesn’t know that the warren it’s dug is actually a lair for snakes.” His mustache ticked upward; it took Kitty a moment to realize he was smiling.
She frowned at him, and his eye twitched into an almost imperceptible wink.
“Gee, thanks,” Gino said, “I’ll file that nugget of wisdom right next to my Confucius verses.”
“Just trying to help you out, bro.”
A knock on the door interrupted their conversation. Sten answered on his way out.
“Ah, a distinguished visitor,” he said as Norman Barrister entered the suite.
Norman’s granite face, already etched with disapproval, fell farther when he spotted Kitty on the couch. She sat up and leaned back, draped her arms across the back of the sofa, and waved at him.
Sten tipped an imaginary hat to the mayoral candidate. “Have fun, Colonel,” he said, winked, then left.
Fun indeed. Let the games begin.
“You know what I had to go through to get here without being seen?” Norman barked at Gino as the letch refilled his drink. “Why can’t you live a little more modestly?”
“Because if I wanted to live modestly, I wouldn’t bother helping you, and you’d be floundering in the polls right now. It’s a win-win for everybody.”
Norman kept his eyes resolutely off Kitty as she sat with her legs crossed and made circles in the air with her foot. He marched to the kitchen counter and slapped down a wad of cash. Gino picked up the stack and flipped through the bills with his thumb.
“It’s all there, twenty thousand,” Norman said.
“I never doubted you. I just like the feel of it. I’ll need another infusion next week in order to keep operations running smoothly.”
“I seriously doubt that this suite, and whatever she is, are necessary for your operations.”
“Every good fighting force needs some R and R.”
“Maybe take care of that after you do your job. Valentine Shepherd and Maxwell Carressa are still at large. They could know everything by now. What if they resurface and go public? I’ll be sunk. All of this will have been for nothing!”
Gino slammed his glass down on the marble countertop. “They know nothing and they’re long gone,” he said with an intensity that finally matched Norman’s. “Stop panicking. If you can’t handle the risk of having your deep, dark secrets exposed, then you should’ve stayed out of politics. You’re all in now. There’s no going back.”
Norman turned away, his face taut with anger before it collapsed into a defeated frown.
“Might as well enjoy yourself while you can,” Gino said, his voice light again. “Have you met my friend Katya?”
“I’ll see you next week,” Norman said and took a step toward the exit.
“She’s really something else,” Gino went on, “enough to make a gay man go straight, even. Would you like a taste?”
Norman stopped and looked at her. Kitty uncrossed her legs and let them fall wide open. She ran a hand up her thigh and smiled at him.
“No,” Norman said, but he stayed where he was.
Kitty wondered if he felt anything when he looked at her—every straight man and gay woman’s wet dream—or did he react out of conditioning, willing himself to feel something, anything rather than his desire for men?
“Are you sure?” Gino said, sensing weakness and moving in for the kill. “I’ve got her all night.” He walked to Kitty and pulled her to her feet, then turned her to face Norman. He stood behind her and ran his hands up her torso, squeezing her breasts and putting a hand between her legs. “Any real man would want this.”
Gino stripped all his clothes off and sucked on Kitty’s lips while she stroked his penis into a steel rod. He pushed her head down, and she fell to her knees and took him into her mouth.
“Mmm, yeah,” he moaned, thrusting himself down her throat.
From the corner of her eye, Kitty saw Norman look back and forth between Gino and the door. Come on, Norman. Take the bait.
“This is what men do, Norm,” Gino said.
Successfully browbeaten, Norman slipped off his trench coat and sharp suit tailored to make his massive figure seem distinguished until he stood naked and wild-eyed, desperate. He approached Kitty from behind, and she had the surreal sensation that she was about to be mauled by a bear. Her lips still around Gino’s cock, Norman hitched up her hips and entered her. He pumped, more determined than enthusiastic.
Gino pulled away from Kitty and moved to Norman’s rear, then slid himself into Norman. Norman grunted, and she felt him enlarge in her with each thrust from Gino until his bear-sized cock filled her up nicely. His thick fingers dug into her hips as the three of them moved together in one continuous piece of hot, sweaty flesh.
This was fun. Max should run from the law more often. Kitty chanced a glance at her coat and winked for the camera hidden inside it. She could only hope Mayor Brest turned out to be this good of a time, too, when she paid him a visit.
Chapter Twenty
Val bit her lip as she stared down at her white knight, a cheap piece of horse-shaped plastic half the size of her thumb. She surveyed the tiny chessboard where it sat in the middle of the bed, sandwiched between her and Max.
“So I could move the knight here, or here, right?” she asked Max, pointing at different squares on the board. She’d only played chess a handful of times in her life, but their limited options for entertainment forced her to revisit the game.
“Yes.” He drummed his fingers against his cheek, his head propped on one arm while he sat cross-legged, eyes half open.
“But I could move the queen here, too?”
“You could.”
“Or the bishop here?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
Val could tell he worked hard not to roll his eyes. He’d sworn he wasn’t a chess fan, either, but of course he knew all the rules and could even rattle off popular strategies involving openings and gambits. It seemed his mental faculties had returned in full despite his beat-down, though he still couldn’t remember chunks of the day shortly before and after the attack, nor could he recall the damn name of the accountant who was somehow involved.
She hesitated for a few more seconds, then lifted the knight and moved it to a new square. “There!” She beamed at her cleverness.
For a moment Max chewed on his thumb, something she’d learned he did a lot when he was thinking hard. She almost grabbed his thumb to stop his fidgeting, but instead laced her own fingers together. If she took his hand, she wasn’t sure she would l
et go. The last thing she needed was another spontaneous roll in the hay she’d probably regret the moment her vision cleared.
It’d been hard not to give in to desire when they spent every waking moment together, as well as slept in the same bed at night. Each day it got harder. But she had to resist. She couldn’t get distracted from her goal—find Robby’s killer and bring that person to justice. Whatever she felt for Max had to wait.
After a few seconds of intense concentration, he relaxed, slid off the bed, and sat down at the pockmarked table covered with their food supply—mostly bags of chips and beef jerky. He grabbed a bottle of water and aspirin and threw some pills in his mouth. The old chair groaned when he leaned back and sipped water as he stared out the window through a break in the curtains.
“What are you doing?” Val asked. “It’s your turn.”
He shrugged. “I’ll win in seven moves.”
“Seriously?” Val shook her head. “This is why I wanted to play Go Fish.”
“I would play Go Fish if you didn’t cheat all the time.”
“It’s called strategic thinking.” She dumped the pieces back into the Cracker-Jack-size box they’d come in and folded the chessboard in half. She’d need to look up a way to cheat at chess next time she got a chance.
Watching him gaze out the window—slouching in oversized jeans and a gray T-shirt, a ray of early afternoon sun playing through his shiny black hair—he reminded her of an indoor cat that mewled each time a car drove by. For six days they’d been holed up in the hotel room, waiting for Stacey to call Val with a meet-up time for Dean. Max got a little bit better each day, until the swelling in his face was gone and only the bruises remained, black rings around his eyes and jawbone and streaks across his chest. He was almost recognizable, which could be a problem for them when they finally got the go from Stacey. No media outlet had mentioned that Max was injured, so no one would be looking for a black-and-blue version of the Carressa heir. Seemed Sten left out of his police report the part where he almost beat Max to death.
Val stretched out on the bed and clicked on the TV. She watched a local news anchor prattle on about the five-day weather forecast through a permanent line of static that cut across the ancient screen.
She glanced at Max. “Your favorite movie about weather…Go.”
“The Core.”
“Isn’t that about astronauts who tunnel through the earth’s crust to restart the core spinning?”
“Yeah, but space weather is critical to the plot.”
“Goddammit, Max, can you not be a total nerd for even five seconds?”
He chuckled, then winced and touched his cheek.
“Tooth hurt again?”
“Yeah. I think it’s cracked.” His cheek bulged where he felt it with his tongue. “I hope they have decent dentists in prison.”
Val sat up. “Don’t you dare start with that again,” she said in a voice sharp enough to kill their light conversation. She didn’t know where his fatalist attitude came from, but he had no motivation to fight for his life as it had been before. When he wasn’t talking about giving himself up to the murderous police, he badgered her to run away with him to Mexico or Fiji. Maybe he didn’t want his old life back, but she did. “If I have to hear you whine one more time about how you should turn yourself in, then I just might let you do it. Your ‘woe-is-me’ rich boy act was old from day one. I’m sorry a life with infinite money was so tragically hard for you, but do you really want to be raped in prison? Because look at you—that’s what would happen.”
Max glared at her, and for a moment she thought her tirade had crossed a line. Then his gorgeous hazel eyes warmed and he gave her a half smile. “You’re a hard woman.”
She couldn’t tell if he was being sincere. Max excelled at masking his feelings—until they exploded to the surface.
She crossed her arms and looked away. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have many rich friends, do you?”
“I don’t have any rich friends. Except you now, I guess.”
Were they friends? They hadn’t done anything romantic together, but he felt like something…more. She was grateful he hadn’t brought up using their abilities to track down Dean themselves. Despite her concern for his injuries and her love for Robby, she wasn’t confident she could say no again.
“Almost all my friends are rich, by necessity. We run in the same circles. When all your friends are wealthy, you don’t have to worry if someone is only with you because of your money.”
“So, say, in an alternate universe, if you had held some glitzy charity gala for war orphans and invited Robby and me, and we’d have met there and hit it off, you’d never ask me to hang with you, even as just a friend?”
“Probably not, if I only knew you casually. It wouldn’t be anything personal.”
“Well, now you know what you would’ve been missing—constant insults and bad chess games.”
“Yep, now I know.”
Their eyes locked for what seemed like an eternity as the television droned in the background. God, she wanted to kiss him so badly. Even with his current injuries and ill-fitting clothes, he was still the handsomest man she’d ever met, as well as the smartest. The fact that she’d never have known him if she hadn’t barged into his weird sex club one night seemed like a narrowly avoided tragedy.
Not for Robby.
Val looked away from Max, her cheeks flushed. The urges to jump into his arms and run away from him both seized her at the same time.
“Do you think your girlfriend’s worried about you?” Val asked, her tone a hair too forced to sound natural.
“Kitty’s still not my girlfriend. She never was. I haven’t had a girlfriend in a long time…a really long time.”
“Does she know what you can do?”
“Yeah. I’ve told her anyway. I’m not sure she believes me. She might just think I’m crazy, like almost everyone else I’ve told.”
Val understood firsthand. She could count the number of people she’d told about her ability on one hand. Even fewer had believed her. “So you look into the future with her—for business?”
“Sometimes with Kitty. But”—he looked down at his feet—“mostly with just myself. No love life necessary. I don’t need deep visions to get useful financial information. I always see the major stock exchanges, represented by certain strings of numbers. Then, based on the numbers clustered around those numbers, I can tell if they’re going to be up or down, and by how much. It’s pretty easy, actually. I don’t even have to concentrate anymore.”
“I wish mine were more useful. I usually see a bunch of junk, and dead people. Robby helped, though.”
She played with a strand of her dull black hair. An ad for a nonpartisan science outreach event taking place at the Pacific Science Center tomorrow played through the silence that fell between them. Smiling children held up lab beakers while cartoon donkeys and elephants frolicked together against the backdrop of the Center’s white arches. A political ad for Mayor Brest followed the spot. With the election less than two weeks away, every commercial break featured at least three of the damn things.
Max drank from his water bottle, making loud gulps as if his throat had gone dry. “When was your wedding date scheduled?” he asked, wiping his mouth.
She frowned and pulled her knees to her chest. “We didn’t have one.”
“How long were you engaged for?”
“About a year.”
“That’s a long engagement with no date.”
“The timing was never right.” For me. “I don’t think I’m the marrying type,” she mumbled.
I didn’t really want to marry him. The thought hit her like a stake to the heart. She loved Robby, she had no doubt about that.
But he wasn’t the one.
So who was the one, then? Some guy she’d known for two weeks who had more skeletons in his closet than a Halloween party store? She willed herself not to look at Max, still slouching in his ch
air next to the window, picking the label off the water bottle, oblivious to his central role in the struggle she waged with herself. They’d spent too much time alone together. It clouded her judgment, made her feel something that wasn’t there.
Val scowled when Barrister’s face floated onto the TV. She stayed her hand from throwing something at the screen. She still didn’t know how the bastard was connected to Lester. Max continued to claim he had no idea when she quizzed him on it, and he refused to entertain the possibility that Norman might have had an affair with his mother. Just talking about Lydia made him shut down, as if it caused him physical pain to unearth those memories. So she avoided the topic for his sake, though the question still gnawed at her.
Old hometown photos of Norman faded in and out of the television: a plump-cheeked boy in front of his childhood home, a smooth-faced kid in his junior Army ROTC uniform, a lanky teenager in short-shorts posing with his basketball team in the high school gym. Norman Barrister: Hometown Hero. Change you can believe in!
“Seattle Lutheran High School,” Val muttered as a voice in the back of her head screamed something important but indistinct. “Robby went to Seattle Lutheran, too…”
And then she understood the voice.
…just like his father!
Val sprang to her feet. “Dean and Norman went to the same high school!” she yelled into Max’s stunned face. “That’s how they know each other. They were schoolmates!”
“Um, okay. What does that mean in the grand scheme of things?”
“It means Dean has to be involved somehow. There’s no way it’s a coincidence they went to the same school.”
“Actually, there’s a very good chance it could be—”
“We are two people who can honest-to-God see the fucking future. What are the chances that anything in our lives is a coincidence?”
Max raised an eyebrow. “So he killed his own son to keep him quiet?”
Vengeance Page 14
