Vengeance (20 page)

“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.

M
ax 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.”

V
al 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.

Shoot him. Shoot him! SHOOT HIM!

Val raised her gun a half second before he raised his. She pulled the trigger and let fly one of her two bullets. It whizzed half an inch past his head and blew a hole in the cement wall behind him.

Shit.

She dove for cover behind a pallet as Barrister let loose a volley of his own bullets while ducking back behind the corner. The echo of gunfire hung in the air after the firing stopped. Val panted where she crouched against the wall. Where the hell had he come from? Maybe the other person like her, the one on his team who could see the future, told him she'd be here. Thank the Lord none of the bullets had connected. Well, maybe one had—she touched her upper arm and saw blood on her fingertips. A scratch compared to what could have been.

“You're like a bitch with a bone, Sergeant.” Barrister's voice reached Val from where he stayed out of sight around the corner. “You're just gonna keep chewing until you choke on it.”

They were both Army-trained, both in defensive positions, waiting for the other to make a move. Val glanced behind her. She'd never make it back the way she'd come without drawing his fire; it was too far, and there wasn't enough cover. She looked to her left; an alcove with a door at its terminus marked “Wing C” was about a twenty-five-foot sprint away. A wide-open chasm in his line of fire separated her from the alcove. If she could distract him, she might make it.

She tried to steady her voice, eliminate the breathiness that gave away her fear. “At least I'm willing to admit that I like bones.” Val searched the cracks between the pallets for a view of him. “How does it feel to be the worst kind of hypocrite,
Colonel
? To hate gay people while being gay yourself, to lecture everyone who will listen about integrity while committing murder and theft for your campaign?”

“You've got some strange ideas,” he said, his voice dark and steady. “You're the one who's snapped and come after me. You couldn't hack it in the Army, and now you blame me for your pathetic wreck of a life. Your sister killed herself because she couldn't stand being a slut, right?”

Val's grip tightened on the revolver. Goddamn him. She almost threw back an insult about what a wife-beating bastard he was, but stopped when she realized, if he ended up killing her, he'd know his wife had turned on him. He might then go back and kill Delilah over the betrayal. If Val had to die today, she wouldn't take innocent people down with her.

She finally spotted him through a sliver of space in the pallets. He peeked around the corner for a fraction of a second, then disappeared again.

“I guess you've got no problem sleeping your way up the economic ladder. Spreading your legs for Maxwell Carressa's money must have been easy, with a face like his. You know how many cunts offered themselves to me to secure a promotion or get out of a deployment? Whores, all of them.”

Barrister poked his head out to survey Val's position again, then withdrew it. Through the sliver, she trained her gun on that spot.

“Max is going to the media with everything we know,” she said. “He's telling them right now how you framed him for murder, how you and Dean stole his father's money to fund your campaign. How you murdered Chet and Robby to keep them from exposing you.”

He scoffed. “If that's true, then what are you doing here?”

“I'm offering you a chance to come clean, to salvage whatever human dignity is left in you. It's over.”

He laughed. “You do know Maxwell Carressa is guilty, right? No one's going to take his word on anything.”

“We've got the accountant who helped you.” God, she hoped that was true.

Barrister was silent. He didn't move.

This isn't working
, she realized. He wasn't going to back off, and there was no way Val could get to Delilah without a fight.

He's going to kill me, or die trying. And I'm going to do the same to him.

With a laser-like focus, she summoned all her concentration on the spot she knew Barrister would emerge from, her gun steady as a compass needle pointing north. One bullet left—it had to count.

“Why did you kill Robby, huh? Why not kill Chet
before
he met with Robby? Pretty stupid move on your part.”
Come get me, you son of a bitch.
“My only awareness of you would've been as the most overrated commander I'd ever had—and as a failed candidate for mayor. Now I won't leave you alone until everyone knows what a piece of human waste you really are.”

She saw his black sleeve edge up to the corner, then his foot.

Come on, come on…

The crags of his face appeared. Val pulled the trigger—

An arm like a steel rod hooked around her neck and yanked her backward at the moment the bullet left the chamber. The plastic-wrapped merchandise exploded in front of her as her final bullet shot upward and hit the far wall to the left of Barrister.

Well, that's that, then
, she thought as she and her attacker stumbled backward. Now all she had were her bare hands.

She slammed her elbow into her attacker's chest. His grip around her neck slackened and she shoved him away. She spun to face him and recognized her potential rapist and murderer from the storeroom, a thin, Italian-looking guy with oily hair and a shiny suit. Val spotted a Glock in his hand as they faced each other down. She dropped her own gun and lunged for his before he could lift his weapon. Her body crashed into his skeletal frame, her hands latching on to the forearm holding his Glock, keeping it pointed away from her. They spun in a circle like two hawks joined in a death spiral, his liquor-soaked breath heavy in her face as he grunted with effort. Val tried to twist his arm into a submission lock as they struggled chest-to-chest, but the agility with which he'd been able to sneak up on her also allowed him to slip out of her grasp. With a final snarl he shoved her away and backed into the hallway. She stopped short and stayed behind the pallet, unwilling to step into Barrister's line of fire.

The Italian looked from her to the abandoned revolver at her feet. He smirked and flexed the fingers still wrapped around his Glock while Val stared him down. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of cowering or pleading for her life. She only hoped Max would succeed where she had failed.

“Well, look at this,” the Italian said. He raised his gun at her. “Norm, she's out of—”

Two bullets ripped through the Italian's chest. He collapsed, flailing his arms and legs as he gawked at the new holes in his dress shirt leaking crimson gore. Still clutching his gun, he coughed up blood.

“You… idiot…” he gasped in Barrister's direction.

His startled eyes drifted to Val. With nowhere to run, she recoiled as he lifted his gun off the floor with a shaking hand, desperate to take someone else's life as his slipped away. His finger twitched against the trigger, but the life drained from his eyes before he could fire. The Italian's arm fell back to the ground, and he was still as a pool of blood grew around him.

Val sucked in breath for the first time in what felt like an eternity. She huddled in the corner made by the wall and the pallet, totally defenseless.

“One problem solved,” she heard Barrister say, “one more to go.”