Unfiltered & Uncensored

by Payge Galvin

He couldn’t do it. To either of them. Jasmine’s hands groped toward his belt, and he pushed them away, feeling guilt and shame rise in him. “Listen,” he said. “There’s a reason I called you. I need you to ID some fingerprints for me.”

  Jasmine’s hands froze in mid-air, then fell to her sides. “What?” Her voice went cold, as Jasmine’s voice never was. Abruptly she pulled away from Max, shoving him against the closed door.

  “Ow!” His head banged against the cheap wood, even as his hard-on rapidly deflated. Max forced his smile into place. “That didn’t come out right, did it? It’s—it’s not how it seems.” Except it was. It was exactly how it seemed.

  “When most people need fingerprints IDed they go to the police, not their ex-girlfriend.” The ice in Jasmine’s voice would have given Megan a run for her money. “What the hell’s going on, Max?”

  “Yeah, I know. Normally the police would totally be the place to start.” Max kept smiling. “But I’m a journalism major now, and I was researching a story for my—for my internship and ...”

  “Research?” Jasmine put more distance between her and Max. “After three years you call me for help with your fucking research?” Ice turned to fire in an instant. Apparently Jasmine could get angry after all.

  “No. Not just for that. I—” Max shook his head, thinking fast. “I didn’t call just because of my research. I called because someone didn’t like the direction my research was heading in. Here, I’ll show you.” He headed into the bedroom, and Jasmine warily trailed behind him.

  Max reluctantly showed her the note. He didn’t want to, but he had to convince her he needed those prints, and since he’d just ruled out an utterly unethical seduction attempt, he didn’t have much left.

  Jasmine’s eyes went wide as she read. “Max, this is some serious shit. You really do need to call the cops.”

  “I can’t.” He couldn’t lose this story. He wouldn’t. “Not until I nail the story down. They’ll just take over.”

  Jasmine grabbed him by the collar and drew him close, fixing him with a surprisingly sharp gaze. “So you thought you’d just ... what? Get me into bed first and convince me to ID the prints for you later? Is that the only reason you called? Really, Max?”

  “No! Not unless you wanted me to get you into bed! I mean—” Max sighed and pressed his head against his hand. “That didn’t come out right, either. Listen, I need to know who was here. I’ll give you anything you want to ID those prints. It doesn’t have to be—”

  “Sex?” Jasmine said flatly. “What do you think I am, Max? No, I take it back. What do you think you are? You’re not the guy I fell for in school. You’re not even the guy who broke my heart because he couldn’t face failing a class. I never understood what your problem was with that anyway—we all fail at stuff before we get our shit together. But this... what were you looking for, some creepy sex for positive ID exchange?” Her face was flushed.

  “No!” Hadn’t Max just definitively decided that wasn’t what he was looking for? “Listen, I never should have stood you up when I left the department.” Max held his hands out in what he hoped was a conciliatory gesture. “You deserved better. But I need your help.”

  “Yeah,” Jasmine said. “I did deserve better. And whatever’s going on with you now, it’s not something I can help with.” Her eyes scanned the room, as if looking for something, and then they went wide. “Oh, hell no.” She crossed the room and walked over to the webcam. “What, were you planning to record this all, too?”

  “Wait, it was on?” Max didn’t have to fake how startled he was. Claire had turned the webcam on when she’d left, not off? How had Max not noticed sooner? He’d had a few other things on his mind, true, but even so.

  Jasmine’s look made it clear she didn’t buy that the cam was an accident, made it clear she wasn’t buying any more of anything from him tonight. “You want to get off to video, give your credit card to one of those take-it-off cam girls.” Her gaze slid to the note in Max’s hand, and for an instant anger gave way to worry. “You want to deal with a criminal break-in, you call the police. This time I’m the one making the call, and you’re the one who can live with it. We’re done, Max.”

  She walked across the apartment, ignoring Max’s good-natured protests as he followed her. She only stopped once, briefly, to glance back at him, and a flash of the old concerned Jasmine showed through. “Be careful, Max. No story’s worth your life.”

  And then she was gone.

  For the second time that night, he sat down and cursed loudly and at great length, because he’d just blown it in more ways than one.

  Now what? He was nowhere close to IDing those prints, and knowing he’d treated Jasmine like crap—and almost treated Claire like crap, too—just made things worse. He typed out a quick text. Sorry, Jasmine.

  He didn’t expect a response, but a moment later, his phone chimed a return text. Max grabbed it again, expecting to see Jasmine’s name—and nearly dropped the phone when he saw Claire’s name instead.

  Claire? Was she finally done ignoring him? Was something going to be all right, after all? Heart pounding, Max read the text: What’s going on? Claire wrote. Looks like someone broke into the apartment. You okay?

  For an instant Max wondered what she was talking about, and then he realized: the webcam. She’d not only left it on, she’d been using it to spy on him. Speaking of what-the-fucks.

  Max stared at the phone. He wanted to call Claire right now. Maybe she’d actually answer. God, just to hear her voice ... that was one of the few things Max could think of that might make this whole screwed-up night all right.

  But why the hell had she left the cam on? Max wrapped his arms around himself. He told himself maybe it didn’t matter that she was stalking him through his own webcam. At least that meant ... well, Max wasn’t sure what it meant, but something else was tugging at his thoughts. Bothering him. It took a moment to work out what.

  Claire had seen the break-in.

  The webcam had gotten the intruder on camera.

  Max threw the phone down, grabbed his laptop from the living room, and booted it up on his bedroom desk. He pulled up the cam account and logged in, heart pounding.

  The phone chimed again, but he ignored it and scrolled through the footage. There was an awful lot of footage there, much of it of an empty bedroom during the day, an embarrassing amount of him jerking off at night. Claire had seen that. Anger rose in Max, and for the first time it was aimed at Claire. She wouldn’t return his calls, but she would watch ... this? He scrolled quickly forward, doing his best not to focus on the humiliating images on the screen. Thank God she hadn’t turned the sound on, too.

  As he neared the end of the footage, he began scrolling more slowly.

  There. He saw a door thrown open and saw a compact, muscled figure moving across the room, shoulders hunched, back to the cam. Max watched as the man stalked through the room, emptying drawers and his closet much more methodically than the mess Max had come home to had made it seem. The intruder kicked the walls, as if he might shake something out of them, then turned around, scowling.

  Max hit pause and stared at the figure on the screen. Muscles or no muscles, straight-on he looked like nothing as much as a dark-haired, gray-eyed weasel—a weasel Max was one hundred percent sure he’d never in his life seen before.

  Max hit play, watching as the guy went on to slash his mattress and write the note he’d left behind. This man was a complete stranger. If one of Max’s coffee-shop compatriots had been involved in the murder, they hadn’t been working alone. Of course they hadn’t. No one worked for more than a million dollars in cash all alone.

  This was even bigger than Max had thought.

  He watched as the dude scowled, dropped the note on the bed, and stalked from the room.

  Max needed that guy’s name. He looked to the fingerprint card still lying on his dresser. He needed to either get these prints IDed, or find someone else connected to the murder who could ID the guy
himself.

  His phone chimed a third time. The most recent message from Claire read, Seriously, Max, are you okay?

  The one before it said, Also, was that really Jasmine Cooper in your bedroom? Apparently, Claire and Jasmine knew each other from work after all. Didn’t take you long to run into her arms, Claire wrote.

  It was thinking about Claire that had kept Max from running into Jasmine’s arms. Didn’t that count for anything? Max started to type, It’s not like that ... stopped, and flung the phone down on the bed. He was getting seriously angry now, angry as he hadn’t been the night Claire left. She was the one who’d walked out on him, flipping on the cam to spy on him as she went, and now she was asking him to justify his behavior? Really?

  Max deleted the text and typed a new one: Have you been spying on me?

  Do I need to? Claire replied almost instantly.

  Max didn’t answer that. This wasn’t how their getting back in touch was supposed to go. He glanced at his laptop, which was frozen on the final image of Jasmine turning the cam off.

  Another message came in from Claire. But you can’t just ignore a break-in, Max. You need to report it. She was back to being concerned, apparently.

  Max should just call her, call her for real and try to work this out, but he didn’t. After months of being ignored, followed by—by this—he was just too furious. Max turned the TV back on, as if he could drown Claire out, which was crazy, because until now he’d wanted nothing more than to hear from her. He grabbed the phone. Maybe I don’t need to report it, he typed. Maybe it was just a ... friend. I do have them, you know.

  On the TV, someone named Savannah Miller was belting out Pink’s “Who Knew,” pouring into its lyrics all the angst of missing a lover and a friend. Claire’s reply flashed onto Max’s screen. Fuck, Max. Tell me that guy wasn’t a friend of yours. I don’t care if you’re sleeping with Jasmine, we can work that out—just tell me you’ve never met the guy who broke in. Tell me you don’t know anything about it.

  Max didn’t even know what to do with that. He watched as the TV flashed back to Dillon’s clip. Max had no idea whether Dillon was involved in the Coffee Cave murder, but he did know he was a damn fine singer. Savannah was the only one he’d heard who was his equal.

  With a voice like that, Dillon had reason enough to want to get ahold of that cash and throw it all into a plane ticket and a shot at American Voice. He’d probably flown first class. Maybe Max should do something about finding out if Dillon was involved. It wasn’t like Max couldn’t afford a plane ticket of his own now.

  A quick Internet search on the show gave Max all the info he needed. A credit card and an airline website later, and he had his ticket as well. It was Friday night, and they wouldn’t expect him back at his internship until Monday morning. Who knew—maybe by then he’d have his story.

  Early the next morning, he got one final text from Claire. I don’t like this, Max. I’m filing a report and sending someone over.

  Screw that. Did she think he couldn’t even take care of himself? Too late babe, Max texted back as he packed an overnight bag and wiped the fingerprint dust from his bedroom door. Already on my way to Vegas.

  Chapter 8

  Claire

  Claire went through the file she’d downloaded from the webcam for what had to be the millionth time. As if watching yet again would change what she knew.

  The intruder in that video—in Max’s apartment—was undeniably Jason Chamberlain.

  What the fuck was Chamberlain doing in Max’s apartment?

  Claire could only think of two possibilities, and both of them sucked. The first was that she hadn’t been as stealthy as she thought working on this case, and that somehow Chamberlain had seen her, and linked her to Max, and broken into his apartment because of it. That was a long shot, since Claire hadn’t even been there in two months; but if it was true, it meant Max was in more danger than he knew, and all because of her.

  The other possibility was that Max either knew the dealer personally, or had been messing around with the sort of stuff that got the attention of a guy like Chamberlain.

  Claire just couldn’t make herself believe that. Max wasn’t the innocent good boy everyone seemed to think he was—she sighed, thinking of just how not-a-good-boy he was—but he wasn’t a user, let alone a dealer. An occasional beer was the hardest mind-altering substance she’d ever seen Max consume.

  Yeah, and Max was convinced Claire had a harmless desk job, too. What if he was as good at keeping secrets as she was? What if the whole not-so-good-boy thing was as much an act as Claire’s paper-pushing career?

  Especially now that he was running off to Las Vegas. Why the hell would he do that? What was he running from?

  No. Not Max. There had to be another explanation.

  She’d heard the loved ones of hardened criminals say the exact same thing when Claire and her colleagues showed up at their doors. Was she as much a fool as any civilian?

  Claire couldn’t even bring the tape in as evidence, because then she’d have to explain why she had it. Recordings taken without the knowledge of at least one of the people being recorded weren’t valid in court anyway, not in Arizona. She’d told Max she was filing a report and sending someone over, but she couldn’t do that either, for the same reason.

  Having lied about her career and her life was bad enough. Between that and the cam, why would he ever want her back, now that he knew?

  Between that and the cam and Jasmine Cooper. Jasmine? Seriously? Claire liked Jasmine fine, and the woman was good at her job. But Jasmine was also nice, down to her bones, and nice wasn’t what the Max beneath that good-boy surface needed. If it couldn’t be Claire with Max, it should at least be someone right for him. Her chest hurt at the thought.

  You’re the one who lied to him, girl, she reminded herself. You’re the one who created this mess. One thing she’d learned at this job is that there was no point denying your crap was your crap, because one way or another you’d find yourself walking in it eventually.

  She drew a deep breath. One problem at a time—first she had to get Jason, and then the bastards he worked for. This mess with Max didn’t change that, and it didn’t change that Thomas Holloway was dead and Douglas Coughlan was missing, either. She knew some of her colleagues felt like drug dealers killing other drug dealers was just a problem taking care of itself. But people changed. Not all of them. Maybe not most of them. But you couldn’t always predict who was who. She thought of her parents, who’d never kicked the habit and the entrepreneurial pursuits that went with it, and of her brother, who had, thanks to a ton of hard work and months of rehab courtesy of New Beginnings down in Tucson. She thought of Douglas Coughlan’s sister, who’d come to them looking for answers when her brother disappeared. The fact that her brother was a dealer didn’t make him less her brother, and it didn’t make her any less entitled to answers. Sure, there were way too many shitheads out there who never changed. Let them reflect on their sins by doing serious time, not by winding up dead. Dead was easy. Way easier than twenty-years-to-life.

  Chamberlain was going down, and his bosses were going down with him.

  Someone knocked on Claire’s office door. She looked up to see Detective Perez standing there.

  “I thought I heard someone else working late,” he said with a smile.

  Claire quickly switched her screen from the cam footage to a solitaire game. “Yeah, well, what else would I be doing on a Saturday night?” she said with a laugh. Like her, John Perez cared about his job, and often put in late hours catching up on paperwork when he wasn’t in the field. He was in the middle of a rough case right now, too, one that had begun with a couple campus dorm break ins and led to a multi-state human trafficking ring.

  “I’m heading out,” John said. “Want to grab a drink on the way home?”

  For an instant, Claire considered it. John was kind of cute, with his buzz cut and earnest brown eyes, and he was also decent enough that if all Claire wanted w
as a drink and to unwind, he’d be good with that. But he’d been leaving hints the past few weeks that if she was open to trying something more than that, maybe he would be, too.

  Claire shook her head. She knew there was no going back to Max, so why was she hesitating? John already knew what she did, no lies to get tangled up in there. She glanced at the pile of paperwork on her desk with a rueful smile. “Sorry. Got to get this filed and get some research in before a meetup tomorrow night.”

  John nodded his understanding. “Have a good night, Claire.”

  “Yeah, you too.” She watched him go, and then she turned back to her computer screen, but she couldn’t seem to focus.

  Whether Max was directly messed up in this or not, he was in more danger than he knew. Claire knew well enough the locks on his door were crap. She’d been after him to change them for months before she left. If Jason could break in once, he could do it again.

  Claire still had a key to Max’s place. She couldn’t be with him, but she could do what she could to protect him.

  If doing that meant adding sneaking in to his empty apartment on top of lying and stalking him by video on her list of crimes, well, it wasn’t like she could make things any worse, could she?

  But she could try to keep him safe. She would at least do that much.

  Chapter 9

  Max

  Rio Verde wasn’t big enough to have its own airport, so Max caught an overpriced cab down to Phoenix. He had the cab stop by the bank on the way to the airport, where he took just enough cash for the trip from his safe deposit box and left copies of the cam video alongside the rest of the cash and the thumb drive photos of Joe and Whitney. Max’s laptop was safely in his carry-on bag. There hadn’t been time to change his locks, which meant the stranger on that tape could get in any time he wanted, but the laptop was the only thing he had of any real value. Well, besides more than a hundred grand of dirty cash, of course.

  Anyway, not having a key hadn’t stopped the intruder from getting in the first time, so Max wasn’t sure changing the locks would even have mattered.