Stacey lifted an eyebrow. “From visions?” She looked curious, like a friend and not a romantic rival. Thank God.
Val shrugged. “We had to. We were getting nowhere without them.”
“Was it at least good?”
A slight smile touched Val’s lips. “Yeah, it was.”
“You don’t love him, do you?”
She stared out the window from beneath the hood of her sweatshirt and frowned. “I don’t know. I still love Robby.” She looked at Stacey. “Can you love two people at once?”
“Yes, you can.” Stacey pulled into a mini-mall and parked in front of a glass storefront with a coffeepot-shaped sign hung out front, “The Pothead” emblazoned on it in big looping letters. “This is it. You sure you know what you’re doing?”
Val snickered. “Hell no. But it’s now or never.”
They leaned over and hugged each other tight.
“Please be as careful as possible while confronting a homicidal lunatic,” Stacey said. “And don’t scratch the car.”
“I’ll do my best to honor those requests.”
Stacey hopped out. Val slid into the driver’s seat and waved to her friend as she drove away, hoping it wasn’t the last time they’d see each other.
Val doubled back and followed Mercer Street until the white arches of the Pacific Science Center loomed on the horizon. The dashboard clock told her she had about half an hour before the science outreach event was scheduled to start. Select side streets had already been cut off and were thick with foot traffic meandering to the event—bearded hipsters and their kids, Republican parents who supported “change they could believe in.” Val surveyed the landscape and pinpointed the spot where the fire would be that she’d run from in her vision. She drove around to the other side of the complex and parked on the street. The more details she changed from her vision, the better chance she had of living. Val checked the revolver one more time, lining up one of the two bullets in the chamber. Then she pulled the sweatshirt’s hood down over her face and got out of the car.
Faint rock music wafted from the Science Center, dark green pines peeking into an azure sky while the Space Needle ruled over them all almost directly above her. It was a gorgeous fall day in progress. Her gaze swept over her surroundings and homed in on potential threats: a small group of excited college students; a middle-aged couple walking their sweater-clad pug; a couple of police officers down the street giving directions to a woman and her young daughter. For the moment she’d gone unnoticed. Please let it stay that way, at least until she found Delilah.
Adopting a casual slouch, Val crossed the road and began to walk up a soft grassy slope. She was halfway up the hill when a concussive force slammed into her from behind, knocking her forward onto her knees. The explosion roared through her ears for a terrifying second, replaced a moment later with a cacophony of car alarms and shrieks of horror. She looked back and gawked at the husk of Stacey’s friend’s car engulfed in flames, a black ring scarring the pavement around the explosion’s epicenter—the trunk.
“Holy shit,” she muttered. “Holy sh—”
An elderly man rolled around on the ground close to the remains of the car. Val scrambled to her feet and took a step toward him, then stopped when she spotted the direction-giving police officers sprinting to his aid. She looked around her and saw onlookers either panicked or in shock. Every cop within a ten-mile radius, plus the entire Seattle Fire Department, would be there in less than five minutes.
Run.
Val turned away from the chaos and ran.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Max nudged Val’s gun in his waistband until it stopped digging into one of the bruises on his back. He didn’t like guns, had never felt comfortable with one. Maybe it was the frequent urge to put the barrel in his mouth and pull the trigger that turned him off. He distracted himself by studying the crumpled stationery papers covered with numbers from his vision as he waited in the passenger’s seat of Kitty’s car—at least, he thought it was her car. Didn’t seem like her to stack the dashboard with bobble heads and pile the backseat with junk, but he’d never been in her car so he wouldn’t know for sure. He certainly didn’t expect her to pick him up wearing cargo pants and a hemp-woven sweater, a knit cap wedged over her lustrous blond hair.
“Why are you wearing that?” Max finally asked after they’d been sitting in silence for ten minutes, parked two blocks away from the intersection of Main and Third Streets. She’d been his assistant for over a year, and he’d never seen her in anything besides short skirts and halter tops, or nothing at all. “Are you on your way to a Lilith Fair revival or something?”
“I’m meeting a friend after this,” she said in a silky voice at odds with her earthy outfit. “We’re getting coffee, then going hiking.”
“I’m sorry if I screwed up your plans.”
Her lips curled into a sly smile. “As long as that twenty percent raise is forthcoming, it’s fine.”
“I can only guarantee you a raise if I live, and then don’t go to jail.”
“That means it’s in my best interests to help you.”
“Yes, I…suppose so.” His chances of success were small; it was in her best interests to extricate herself from the situation, but she kept helping him anyway. She didn’t actually care about him, did she?
“Are you still getting paid from my account?” he asked.
“No, your assets have been frozen.”
He sighed. “Shit.”
“Also, you’ve been voted off the Carressa Industries board of directors, almost unanimously—Michael Beauford was the only holdout. I think they’re working on changing the name of the company, too.”
“Well, that’s…exactly what I expected.” Max shrugged. “We should stop pretending I’ll ever be able to pay you for this. Consider yourself a free agent. If anyone fingers you for helping me, I’ll say I blackmailed you into it.”
“You’re so sweet,” she said in her usual sphinxlike way where he couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. “I’ll help you pro bono, then, as your friend.”
“I don’t have any friends.”
“I’ll be your first.”
Max let out a dry laugh. He couldn’t recall how many times they’d had sex on his payroll, and now she cared enough to want to be friends. Maybe they’d grow to love each other in about two hundred years.
Kitty nodded toward his papers. “You get those with her?”
“Yeah.”
“Congratulations.”
Max rolled his eyes and felt himself stupidly blush. Was she really congratulating him for finally having sex with someone other than her? A lesser man would have been embarrassed by the reference to his pathetic love life, and he…was a lesser man. He refolded the pages and shoved them back in his pocket.
“We have one minute,” he said, pointing to the dashboard clock. “Get ready to drive to the intersection.”
Kitty started the car, waited thirty seconds, then pulled into traffic. They rolled up to a red light at the intersection of Main and Third as the clock flicked to two thirty-three. Max sat up in his seat and scanned the cars around him until he saw it—the white Ford Taurus, one lane over and two cars down. He opened the car door.
“Good luck,” Kitty said.
Max nodded at her. “Thank you, Katherine.”
She smiled warmly, though her eyes remained little orbs of blue Arctic ice. Always the sphinx.
He stepped out of Kitty’s car and stalked down the side of the road with his head lowered, then cut across two lanes to the Ford. Max opened the passenger’s side door, slid into the seat, and shut the door behind him in one smooth motion. The pudgy man behind the wheel snapped his head toward Max and gaped in horror.
“Georgie,” Max said at the sight of the accountant. The name had popped into his head like a forgotten song. “Your name is George McOwen, but people call you Georgie!”
Georgie grabbed Max’s sweater with both hands and yanked Max’s face to his. “They�
��re coming after me!” Sweat rolled down his red cheeks, his Coke bottle glasses askew. “You have to help me! They’re gonna kill me! They’re gonna—”
“Stop it!” Max slapped one of Georgie’s hands away while the other maintained a death grip on Max’s collar. “When you worked for Dean, did he order you to help him embezzle money for my father?”
“They’ve been watching my house for days. They’re just waiting for the right moment to kill me.”
A fluffy yellow cat mewled from a crate in the backseat next to a suitcase with clothes bulging out the sides, tossed together for a hasty escape.
Max frowned at Georgie’s panicked face. “Then you routed that money back to Dean Price after my father died, didn’t you?”
“Why won’t they leave me alone?” Georgie cried. He glanced at his cat. “I’m sorry, Bing. I’m sorry I got you into this—”
Max seized Georgie’s coat lapels. “Answer me!”
Georgie yelped. “What?”
“Did you embezzle money away from Carressa Industries for my father?”
“Y-yes.”
“Using an account in Dean Price’s name?”
“Yes.”
“Then, after my father died, you began siphoning that money back?”
Georgie’s face crumpled and tears leaked out his eyes. “Yes.”
A tirade of car horns erupted behind them when the light turned green and the Ford Taurus failed to move.
“Who did you give it to?”
“I don’t know,” Georgie said, his lips quivering, voice a high-pitched whine. “Dean told me to put it into a bunch of different accounts so I did.”
“Shell accounts?”
“Probably, I don’t know. I didn’t ask questions. Dean told me years ago to create the account and set up the financial architecture so the flow of money couldn’t be traced, so I did. Then I heard nothing about it for decades, until last month he told me to bring the money back, so I did it. I just did what I was told!”
Max scowled at Georgie’s willful ignorance, though it wasn’t surprising given the accountant’s complete lack of a spine. So that’s how Barrister was funding his campaign—using Lester’s embezzled money out of an illegal account in Dean’s name and funneling it into shell accounts where it could be “donated” to Norman’s political action committee in amounts small enough to avoid drawing the FBI’s attention, with Dean’s help. Max doubted Norman or Dean would, or could, set up a complicated network of false accounts on their own. Even if either of them had the criminal know-how, there’s no way they’d risk a paper trail leading back to them. Norman must have a criminal middleman, maybe the same guy providing the muscle to intimidate Georgie.
“You’re going to tell the media what you just told me,” Max ordered Georgie.
Georgie’s eyes widened so they took up the entire diameter of his Coke bottle lenses. “What? No!”
“You conspired with my defense attorney to steal my company’s money! I would drag you to the police station, but they tried to beat me to death so the media it is. We’re going to the Pacific Science Center. Now.”
Georgie shook his head. “No, no, no,” he chanted.
“Yes. Drive.”
Georgie kept shaking his head in silent shock.
Max gritted his teeth and pulled Val’s gun from his waistband. He hated having to wave the Glock around, but Georgie wasn’t budging without a little motivation. Max took care to aim the barrel away from Georgie. “I said drive.”
Georgie’s breath caught when he saw the gun, and for a moment he completely froze. Then he burst out the driver’s side door and ran for it.
“I’m not gonna shoot you!” Max called after him. “Come back! Fuck.”
Max scrambled out the driver’s side and took off after Georgie. The accountant sprinted across the road, arms flailing as he moved his thick legs as fast as they’d go. Cars slammed on their brakes and swerved to avoid him. Max chased him, enduring the onslaught of horns and obscenities that followed in Georgie’s wake. Whether Georgie’s panic made him unusually fast or Max’s injuries made him unusually slow—probably both—Max failed to catch him before he ran into a Starbucks. Max burst into the coffee shop a few seconds later to find Georgie ranting at a terrified barista while a stunned crowd waiting for their cups of joe looked on.
“They’re trying to kill me! They’re trying to—”
“Georgie!” Max said.
Georgie’s head snapped toward Max. “He’s trying to kill me, too!”
Every pair of eyes cut to Max.
“No,” Max said, “I’m not trying to—”
“That’s Maxwell Carressa!” someone yelled.
“He’s got a gun!” another person said.
The crowd gasped. Max looked down at the gun still in his hand—he’d forgotten he still held it—as people backed away from him, then fought to reach the exits.
“I’m not going to shoot anyone.” Max shoved the gun into the back of his pants. “I’m not—”
His words were drowned out as the crowd’s haste to escape reached a fevered pitch. Pumpkin spice lattes crashed to the ground, overturned chairs clanged against the tile floor. A hysterical middle-aged woman in a black track suit slammed into Max, knocking him backward. For a second the coffee shop spun around him as his fragile brain struggled to absorb the blow. Max held his head and squeezed his eyes shut until the spinning stopped. When he opened them again, he saw Georgie fighting his way to the side exit. There was no way he was letting that bastard get away again.
Max was hot on Georgie’s heels as the accountant stumbled out the door and into the drive-thru lane. Georgie tripped and fell into the road between two cars in line for their afternoon coffee. At last Max got his hands on Georgie. He hauled the panicked man to his feet and slapped him hard in the face. Georgie reeled for a moment, but finally stopped struggling.
Max held tight to Georgie’s coat so he couldn’t run again. “I’m not gonna kill you!”
Georgie whimpered. “I knew stealing the money was wrong but my mom had credit card bills. Dean said he’d pay them. All I wanted—”
“I don’t care! You helped start this mess, and you’re going to help me fix it. You—you…” Max lost his train of thought when he noticed the car in front of them—a silver SUV. The driver craned her neck at them, eyes wide and mouth agape.
He remembered the message from his vision: Silver SUV—stay to the right.
Max pushed Georgie to the right just as a shot rang out. The SUV’s rear window cracked into a spiderweb of shattered glass, its center a bullet hole where Georgie’s head had been half a second before. The driver shrieked as she pointed a tiny gun at them, something she probably kept for personal protection. She jumped out of her car and backed away, her face twisted in panic. Max pulled Georgie to the ground with him as she waved her gun wildly in their direction. Georgie screamed when she let off another bullet that went wide and pierced a hole through the drive-thru menu sign.
“I am not a victim!” she shrieked, and sprinted out of sight.
“Holy fucking shit,” Max said. He shoved Georgie into the passenger’s side of the SUV, then crawled over him into the driver’s seat and punched the gas. Great—now he could add carjacking to his list of crimes.
“This isn’t happening. Isn’t happening…” Georgie muttered.
Max ignored him and cast frantic looks in the rearview mirror, searching for police or any other tail. He glanced at the clock: two forty-one. No time to lose before the Pacific Science Center event began at three.
“We’re almost there,” he said to himself. “Goddammit, Val, please wait for me, just this once.”
Chapter Thirty
Val ran from the fire that engulfed the car she’d arrived in.
Jesus.
Curious bystanders who’d heard the explosion without seeing it began to converge on the scene. The group she recognized from her vision emerged from over the hill on her left.
Don�
�t look back.
The man who’d flagged down the policeman who would shoot her spotted Val running, and followed her with his accusing eyes.
Just keep moving.
She slowed to a trot and tried to look terrified rather than guilty as she hurried away from her potential murderer and toward the Pacific Science Center’s tantalizingly close white walls.
She cut to the right off the paved path and made a beeline to the first door she saw into the Center. When Val neared the entrance, she recognized it as the same one she’d used in her vision, from the opposite direction. Beyond lay the storeroom where another murderer waited. Walking past it, she resolved to use the next one she came across until she saw a string of police officers running straight toward her on their way to the scene of the explosion.
“Shit,” Val muttered under her breath. Now she had no choice but to use the storeroom entrance, and pray that one bullet was all it took to bring down the psycho within.
As police sirens began to waft through the air, she doubled back and slipped through the unlocked side entrance. She drew her gun and advanced through the storeroom with her back against the wall, alert to any movement, any human-shaped shadow, any noise that wasn’t the wailing of emergency vehicles or her pounding heart. A wave of cold relief spread over her when she reached the other side with no sign of her killer. Either she was early, or he was late. It was possible that the explosion happening on the opposite side of where it had originally taken place caused him to alter his plans. In any case, the future was already changed. Maybe this time she would live.
Val ran into the service hallway, silent save for the echo of her footsteps and the muffled sirens outside. She passed pallets stocked with cellophane-wrapped merchandise, just as she’d done in her vision. Breathing hard, her periphery flying past in a blur, she saw the fork in the hallway ahead.
Take a right this time, she told herself. On the left is the space exhibit maze. That way leads to death.
Her breath caught when a figure emerged from around the corner in front of her. It grew into a hulk clad in a crisp black suit, a red tie dangling from his neck like a bloody tongue. She stumbled to a halt as Norman Barrister turned down the service hallway toward her. He stopped midstride. His eyes widened as recognition flashed across his face. In his right hand he held a gun.
Vengeance Page 21
