Compulsion (Max Revere Novels Book 2)

by Brennan, Allison

  “Sarcasm,” Marco said. “Always a good sign.”

  She was not up for an argument with Marco. She wasn’t up to anything. But she wanted Carter Duvall caught. She would do anything to see him behind bars.

  She detailed leaving her office and meeting the driver in front of the NET building.

  “I didn’t suspect anything was wrong until I was in the car for about five minutes,” she said. “It doesn’t take long to get from the studio to my apartment. I looked up and noticed we were about to turn on to the Brooklyn Bridge. I was irritated—I was tired and needed to pack for my trip. He stopped at a light and I leaned forward to explain that he was going the wrong way, and he sprayed something in my face. I tried to get out of the car, but my arms and legs didn’t cooperate.”

  She’d been confused. Then scared.

  Scared is an understatement.

  “I woke up in a warehouse. They’d blindfolded and undressed me. I didn’t know it was a hospital gown until later. No one was there when I woke up. I tried to get free, but I was restrained and whatever drug they’d given me made me queasy.”

  “They? There were two?”

  “Yes. Carter Duvall and his bastard goon. Cole Baker. The guy from the sketch.” Before Pierce and Marco arrived, David had filled her in on what they’d learned about Bachman’s cohort, Cole Baker. He’d also told her Riley was in the hospital in a medical coma because she’d overdosed while going undercover at Greenhaven.

  Max blamed herself. She’d known Riley wanted to follow in her footsteps and Max hadn’t impressed on her that she didn’t have the experience yet and that she couldn’t be responsible for her. Didn’t want to be responsible. Max put herself at risk, but it was her life. She wouldn’t ask others to do it.

  But Max feared her guidance had been faulty, that she hadn’t trained Riley properly, that maybe she’d even given her contradictory orders. Max may not have wanted responsibility for Riley, but the responsibility was nonetheless hers.

  “Duvall was behind everything.”

  “Dr. Carter Duvall,” Marco said bluntly.

  She stared at him. “Yes,” she repeated.

  “We checked him out. Santini and I interviewed him yesterday. What’s his motive?”

  She looked over at Nick. He was standing apart from everyone, in the corner, watching the interview as if he were in another room. But he smiled at her, just a little smile, and nodded his head. She wished he hadn’t seen her like this. What a disaster she’d been after her escape. She must have smelled worse than the garbage she’d hidden in.

  Why was she even thinking about it? She’d fought back and won. She would not let Duvall and Baker make her weak.

  “I don’t know why he targeted me,” she said. “He thinks I slighted him or did something to him—I don’t know what. I don’t know him, never heard of him before this week. He knew everything about me. Everything.”

  “You can ID him?” Agent Pierce asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You saw him,” she repeated. “You stated that you were blindfolded until you fought with Baker.”

  “Yes, but I recognized his voice.”

  “So you met him before.”

  “Briefly. At Greenhaven on Wednesday.’

  “And you’re certain.”

  “Yes, I’m certain!” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Duvall was the ringleader of the whole thing. Talk to Bachman. If you push it just right, he’ll confess. He’s the weakest link.”

  “Bachman’s dead,” Marco said. “He committed suicide Friday night.”

  She was stunned. She’d been completely out of it for three days. Why had Bachman killed himself?

  Rose said, “Can you pick Duvall out of a lineup?”

  She opened her mouth to say yes but couldn’t. “I’d recognize his voice.”

  “You didn’t see him.”

  She shook her head.

  “Did you hear Baker call him by name?”

  Again, she shook her head. “He only referred to him as ‘doc.”

  “We’ll talk to him,” Pierce said.

  “Arrest him,” Max said.

  “We’ll talk to him,” she repeated.

  “He has an alibi, Max,” Marco said.

  “For all three days I was gone? Bullshit. He was there!”

  “He has an alibi for when you were kidnapped, and for a large chunk of the time you were missing. But the FBI Evidence Response Unit is going through the entire warehouse. If his prints are there, they’ll find them.”

  Max knew they wouldn’t be. Duvall was a smart, crafty, manipulative bastard.

  “I already told you it was Baker who kidnapped me.”

  “And you didn’t recognize him from the sketch that”—Pierce checked her notes—“Melinda Sanchez approved?”

  “He looked different. Had a hat. And it was dark. He was in a suit like all Horace’s drivers wear.”

  “You saw what you expected to see.”

  Not very observant of her. “His tats were covered and he’d cut his hair short since Melinda saw him. I was tired and distracted. Get that bastard in a room and interrogate him.”

  “He’s dead,” Marco said. “Fleeing the scene, he pulled a gun and I shot him.”

  She caught his eye. This wasn’t the first time Marco had killed in the line of duty, but Max had been there the first time and it had torn him up. Even though it was justified, even though he had no choice. She reached for his hand and squeezed, though she had little strength to impart.

  “You talked to him?” she said. “To Duvall?”

  “Santini and I went out to his house in Stamford. He was the keynote speaker at a conference in Boston. My office checked it out. He flew back Friday arriving at LaGuardia at ten in the morning.”

  “He could have been at the warehouse,” she said. “I had no concept of time. Between the drugs and lack of windows, I didn’t know if hours had passed or days.”

  “We’re going through every minute of each day. If there are any holes, we will find them.”

  “You do believe me?”

  He didn’t say yes or no. He simply said, “Trust me. We are running a full background on him and Baker. We’ll find out why you were targeted. If there’s any connection to Duvall, we’ll find it.”

  “There’s something I missed. I must have known him, or known of him, he had read all of my books, every article, he knew things about me that I implied but never spoke. He said he wanted to break me.”

  It was David who caught her eye. And he didn’t have to say a word for her to know that he was her rock. She wouldn’t care if everyone left, except for David. David would find the truth and that made her feel like everything was going to be okay, someday.

  Agent Pierce watched the nonverbal exchange and said, “Mr. Kane, you need to let Agent Lopez and I handle this investigation.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “David,” Marco snapped. “We’re serious.”

  David didn’t say anything. Max said, “Go talk to him. It was him. I know it, I heard his voice. I’ll swear to that under oath.”

  “And you may be telling the truth—” Pierce began.

  “May be telling the truth? I know what I heard. I’ll find the connection and prove it!”

  Her machines started beeping almost before she realized that her heart was racing and her hands were shaking. A nurse rushed in and said, “Everyone out now.”

  “I’m. Fine.” Max barely got the words out. She knew she wasn’t fine. Her heart was beating too fast and she couldn’t breathe right. Was she still going to die? After all of that, after surviving and escaping, would she die?

  “I’m staying,” David said and sat down. Marco gave her a look, then left with Pierce, but Nick didn’t leave with them. Immediately, Max began to relax, but those damn machines kept beeping.

  The nurse injected something into her IV. “This is a very mild sedative. We still don’t know what he drugged you with, but this will help slow your heart ra
te.”

  Max nodded.

  She turned her head and looked at Nick. She tried to smile. “So much for our weekend in bed.”

  He walked over, took her hand, and kissed it. “There’s always next weekend.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  “You’d better. I’m going to go annoy the feds, ask some questions.”

  She smiled. The machines stopped their beeping and the nurse glared at Nick, but both of them ignored her. “That makes me feel better,” she said. She wanted to say more, but it was a rare moment when words failed her. “Thank you for coming,” she whispered, her voice cracking. God, she didn’t want to get emotional. She didn’t want to lose it again.

  He winked, kissed her forehead, then left.

  The nurse looked pointedly at David. “She needs to rest.”

  “I’ll be quiet,” he said.

  The nurse didn’t approve. “If her heart rate elevates, I will have you removed from the room.”

  “Understood,” he said.

  The nurse finally left and Max closed her eyes. She was so tired, but couldn’t sleep. Whatever the nurse had put in her IV had taken the edge off the pain, and she was grateful, though she wanted to clean out her entire system. She wanted to go home, sleep in her own bed. But she could barely move.

  “I’m sorry, David,” she whispered.

  He didn’t say anything. A moment later, she felt a dip on the edge of her bed. She opened her eyes and David was sitting there, looking at her. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Not this time.” He tried to smile, but he couldn’t, and neither could she. “I should have been there. I should have driven you home. We knew that Bachman had a partner—”

  “Don’t. This has nothing to do with you. I’m selfish, David. You know that. I’m grossly arrogant, a narcissist, and it came back to bite me in the ass.”

  “What did he do to you?”

  “He told me the truth.”

  “Maxine, you know better than that.”

  “Riley is worse off than me, because she wanted to please me.”

  “Riley ran off on her own without telling anyone. That isn’t on you.”

  “She kept asking me about my investigation in Florida, where Lois alerted me to the atrocities being committed at the senior care facility. I think Riley thought that I sent Lois in there, as if I’d send an octogenarian to do undercover work for me. Lois had no one—her family never visited, her friends were dying off one by one because of old age. I fell in love with her, David. I told Lois once that I wanted to be her when I grew up.”

  Max’s eyes watered, but she refused to cry. She took a couple of deep breaths, calming her nerves.

  “Riley asked me about going undercover at the women’s prison, and so I told her about it,” Max continued. “I was proud. Too prideful. She ran off and now she’s in a coma. That’s on me, David. I didn’t train her properly. You warned me, and I didn’t see.”

  “All I said was that she wasn’t you and never could be. Max, you take risks, some I don’t agree with, but you’re smart about it. She wasn’t. I hope she comes through—I really do. She’s not a bad kid, she just needs to grow up. I talked to her father. He’s torn up, but she has her family.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Max closed her eyes again, but she saw Baker coming after her. She heard Duvall’s voice in her head.

  She whispered, “He knew everything, David. He knew things about me that I didn’t think anyone knew.”

  “Do you really want to talk about this now?”

  “I can’t sleep. I’m exhausted, I know I need to rest, but right now I can’t.” She needed to talk even though she was so tired.

  David said, “Baker quit Greenhaven two years ago and moved to New York. He hooked up with Bachman then, but he’d known him at Greenhaven. Both Baker and Bachman were patients of Duvall, but at different times. What happened two years ago?”

  “I don’t know. I started the show two years ago—the next show, in July, is our two-year anniversary. Six months before you came on board.”

  “The same month Baker quit.”

  She frowned. She couldn’t remember which show aired then. “Ask Ben. Maybe you’re right, and it had something to do with whatever investigation I was either working on or that aired around that time.”

  “Ben’s already been working everyone around the clock.”

  “Ben’s a good guy, even with all the shit I give him.”

  “I don’t think it’s about the show,” David said.

  “But you just said—”

  “It’s about your books. Bachman said you were required reading. We found all your books in Baker’s apartment. During Marco’s interview with Duvall, he said he’d read your books. He knew about Marco’s career.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He knew Marco was a fifteen-year veteran of the FBI. He’d read the article on the Maximum Exposure Web site about Nick’s investigation in Atherton.”

  Max wanted to forget almost as much as she wanted to remember everything Duvall said. “Things are fuzzy,” she admitted. “Time was out of whack.” She paused. “He said I took from him, so he’ll take from me. He wanted to destroy my reputation, sue my estate—after I was dead. It sounded personal.”

  “That’s what Arthur Ullman said. You’re certain that Duvall’s name isn’t familiar?”

  She shook her head, then winced.

  “Didn’t your fourth book come out after you started the show?”

  Max had to think about it, because her memories were fuzzy, as if everything she thought came to her through a thick fog.

  “I’d turned it in before I agreed to the show. It came out in November.”

  “The November after Baker quit.”

  “Yes. And we did a special on it, something Ben and my publisher worked out. Discounted orders through the Maximum Exposure Web site. A show with behind-the-scenes information that didn’t make it into the book. Personal interviews.” She smiled. “I interviewed Lois on the set. She’d never been to New York before.” Then she frowned. “David, can you check on her?”

  “Of course.”

  Max couldn’t see any connection between Duvall and Lauren Smith, the brutal administrator who’d psychologically and physically tortured the elderly patients in her care. She couldn’t see why that investigation would have anything to do with what was happening now. But she couldn’t discount it.

  “Then in January I covered the trial in Chicago.”

  “The one where Ben hired me because of the death threats.”

  It was a standard trial, something Max normally wouldn’t have been interested in because it wasn’t about a cold case. A woman allegedly killed her husband in cold blood, but Max thought she was innocent. There was something about the case that had been familiar, and she dug around and proved that the woman on trial wasn’t guilty.

  It had been the woman’s sister. A case of envy and jealousy that had turned to violence and revenge.

  But Max hadn’t made a lot of friends. Even the woman who had her life back told Max she hated her. The only person who wanted Max involved at all had been the victim’s mother.

  Ultimately, the death threats hadn’t come from that trial, but from something Max had written years before. David had saved her life then, and he’d saved her life now. He’d acted when others wouldn’t have. He’d brought Nick and Marco in to help when Max didn’t think he particularly liked either one.

  “There’s something I’m not remembering.”

  “Go to sleep,” he told her. “I’m not leaving. I’ll be here if you need me.”

  “David, I’ve never told you how much I appreciate you.”

  “You have.”

  “No. I haven’t. Not what you mean to me.” She felt the tears in the back of her eyes, but she didn’t want to cry. She took a deep breath. “You’re my rock, David. I’ve never loved anyone. I realize that now—I didn’t think I was capable of it. I’m self-absorbed. I’m
selfish. I’m independent. I love my family, but even that love is marginally conditional. It shouldn’t be. I wish I was more trusting, less selfish, more … I don’t know, open.

  “I love you. I need you to know that. We’re friends, but you’re more family to me than I’ve ever had. When I thought I might die, the one thing I thought about, that I regretted, was that you would suffer for not knowing. That I knew you’d blame yourself, when you are blameless. I couldn’t stand thinking about what you would go through. And knowing I’d never told you how I felt.”

  “Max.” His voice cracked. “Max, you’re stuck with me.” He kissed her forehead. “Sleep.”

  She slept. Until the nightmares woke her.

  Chapter Thirty

  Nick sat in the backseat of the sedan and listened to Marco and Rose Pierce discuss Carter Duvall as they drove to Stamford. Pierce had already contacted Duvall about meeting at the local FBI headquarters, but he refused. They didn’t have enough to arrest him, but they were hoping this conversation would give them something.

  Nick wasn’t holding his breath. Duvall was a psychiatrist. He was a smart guy. He wasn’t going to trip himself up, not at this point. But sometimes, it was what the suspect didn’t say—or didn’t ask—that helped build a case.

  “I know Ms. Revere is a friend of yours,” Rose said to Marco, “but no U.S. attorney is going to indict based on voice recognition. Not without sufficient evidence to back it up.”

  “He’s connected to two of the killers—Bachman and Baker.”

  “Weak, Marco. You verified his alibi yourself.”

  “Max said Baker kidnapped her. The dead driver was in the trunk of the Town Car he wrecked. We’ll be able to tie him to that murder.”

  “The case against Baker is tight, I’m not arguing with you there,” Pierce said.