Vengeance (7 page)

T
he Barristers' white Colonial-style house in Arbor Heights reminded Val of something a Civil War general's wife might run out of to hug her husband returning from battle, but surrounded by evergreens instead of weeping willows. Val and Max drove past the house, not too slow to be suspicious, then parked a block away.

“How do you plan to catch the conscience of the king?” Max asked, baseball cap pulled down over his face again to avoid being recognized by passersby.

“What?”

“Catch the conscience of the king—convince him to incriminate himself. It's from
Hamlet
.”

Val snickered. “You are such a nerd. Don't worry, I'll think of something. A showboat like Barrister will want to talk.”

“At what point should I charge in to save you?”

“Give me thirty minutes, or until you hear gunshots. Then call the fire department. I think they're less likely than the police to try to murder me.”

Max's lips tightened like he might try one last time to talk her out of it, but instead he said, “Be careful.”

“Being careful doesn't get shit done,” she said as she got out of the car, “but thanks.”

Val walked down the sidewalk, past white picket fences with immaculately manicured lawns of green grass turning brown with the season, up to Barrister's heavy white door with a wreath of red and gold polyester leaves propped on the front. She rang the doorbell, heard the
BONG-bong
on the inside. A few seconds later, a prim brunette in her early fifties answered. Val recognized her from Norman's campaign ads as his wife, Delilah.

“Good morning, I'm Val Shepherd. Is Colonel Barrister home?”

Delilah smiled a big toothy grin, exposing teeth as perfect as the milky white pearls strung around her neck. “No one's called him that in a while.”

“I served under him while I was in the Army five years ago. Best commander I've ever had. I want to offer to help his campaign, testify to what a great leader he is. I'd like to say ‘hi' and catch up first, before going to his campaign headquarters.”

“That's sweet of you. Come on in, I'll take you to him. I think he's doing yard work out back.”

Val followed Delilah through the house, an homage to French country living that was a spiritual twin to the Carressa mansion—beautiful and soulless. As they crossed through the kitchen, Val saw flyers for the Washington State Ladies for Family Values, a conservative action group based out of Olympia, stacked on the countertop. Delilah must be an active member. It made sense, given her husband's Republican leanings.

Past the kitchen and out the sliding glass door, the backyard extended for a quarter of an acre and included a rock garden with foot bridges over wildflower beds. Delilah asked Val to wait while she announced Val's presence to her husband. Norman Barrister, a six-foot-plus hulk of a man, stood at the edge of his yard, his back to the house and a shovel in his hand, watching something next to his iron fence posts. Tight piles of raked leaves were scattered about, waiting to be scooped into his meaty arms and dumped into the nearby compost heap. Val watched as Delilah walked to her husband, and at her words Norman smiled and waved Val over. Delilah met her halfway.

“Norman loves meeting people he used to serve with; so do I. It's the highlight of his campaign, really. Unfortunately I've got a meeting with the Washington State Ladies I need to go to.” Delilah touched Val's shoulder like a doting mother. “It was great meeting you, Val. I hope I'll see you again.”

Val forced out a warm smile in response.

After Delilah left, Val approached Norman where he stood at the edge of his lawn. A scraggly cat with a tail like a toilet brush dug its teeth into a dish of soft food at the base of the fence.

“We get a lot of stray cats around here,” Norman said to her. “Poor things, half starved. No one will take them in.”

“That's kind of you, sir.”

Norman smiled at her, making his battle-weathered face somehow soft and approachable. He had a mug cut like granite, a thick jaw and flat nose, with piercing brown eyes tempered by laugh lines at their edges. It was a face a person could rally behind, friendly yet strong. Charismatic. Maybe she'd been wrong about him—though she remembered thinking the same thing the last time she'd laid eyes on the colonel, right before he sent his troops into an ambush.

“I'm Valentine Shepherd. Used to be Staff Sergeant Shepherd, part of the 510th Infantry Regiment. We met very briefly in Afghanistan when you went on a tour of the forward operating bases. It's okay if you don't remember me. You probably shook hands with thousands of people.”

“Ah yes,” Norman said. “I do remember you, actually. One of the first women assigned as a squad leader on the front lines, correct? How could I forget that red hair of yours?”

She smiled. “Your memory is impressive, sir. I hadn't realized that you grew up in the Seattle area until I saw your ads. I wanted to offer my help with your campaign, if you'll take it.”

“Of course I'll take it.” He laughed. “I'll take any help I can get, Sergeant. I'm behind in the polls right now, but not by much. This city needs some positive change, and fast. The crime rate has spiked under Mayor Brest, you know. This city runs through my veins like blood—yours, too, I'm assuming.”

Val suppressed an eye roll. “You are one hundred percent right about that, sir.”

He brushed some leaves off his flannel shirt and put his hands on his hips while he took a closer look at the woman in front of him. Val held the controlled demeanor and passive smile she'd perfected in the face of scrutiny by a superior officer.

He arched an eyebrow. “Are you packing?”

She glanced down at her coat, surprised he could tell. “For protection, just in case. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, right?” She pointed her index finger at his chest, thumb pointed up, and pretended to shoot him. She chuckled like she'd made a joke.

He grinned, a little tighter than before. “So true. A lady can never be too careful. I didn't want to put you all on the front lines. I'm sorry you had to bear the consequences of the liberal faction's misguided attempts at ‘equality.' The
things
they do to women in the war zone.” He narrowed his eyes at her, the tempering laugh lines falling away to leave only piercing brown. “
Awful things.
”

He took a step toward her, his grip tightening on the shovel as he stared her down. Her breath caught in her throat. Jesus, he was
big
. His hands were nearly the size of her head. He could snap her in half if he wanted.

Don't let him intimidate you.
She steeled her nerves and took a slow, deep breath, in and out through her nose. No way he'd try anything in his own home.

“So I've heard,” she answered, forcing calm into her voice.

He switched his shovel for a rake and began corralling leaves. “What did you have in mind for this ad of yours?” he asked, chipper again.

“I wanted to get your opinion on that. I got the idea from a friend of mine who worked on your campaign. Chet's his name.”

Norman stopped raking.

“I met him at this art class I was taking at a community college. He told me that he knew you well. He said I should do a TV commercial where I talk about what a great commander you were, and how you're the epitome of honesty and integrity. He was supposed to meet me here this morning to talk to you, but I guess something else came up.”

Val tried not to hold her breath as she waited for his reaction. He stared at the leaves for a long moment, his face blank. When his gaze met hers again, his eyes were so cold she'd have sworn the dead of winter had rushed over them in the span of a few seconds.

“Chet, huh? I
do
know Chet, but not well. He was caught stealing from the headquarters building, so I fired him. You should think twice about who you associate with, Sergeant Shepherd.”

“Are you sure you don't know him well? Because he sure seemed to know a lot about you. He said you guys were
tight
. He also told me how broken up you were when you heard about Lester Carressa's death. Was Mr. Carressa a friend of the family?”

Norman's lips peeled back from his teeth in a fanged smile. He tossed the rake to the side, then picked up the shovel again and gripped it to his chest with white knuckles. Adrenaline surged through Val as she stood motionless before him, doubting she could reach her gun before he could swing his shovel, but refusing to back down.

After a few tense seconds that felt like an eternity, he turned away from her and walked back to the mangy cat. She noticed now that it lay on its side, twitching as vomit trailed from its mouth.

“Wretched creatures,” he said as he loomed over the poisoned animal. “They keep fucking breeding, and no one will do anything about it. No one cares.”

He swung the shovel through the air and brought the flat aspect down on the cat's head. It made a sound like stomping on an orange. Val gasped and looked away as he slammed the shovel down two more times, until the cat's head was a pulverized mass of flesh and fur. Val cupped a hand over her mouth to suppress her gags.

Norman turned back to her, gore dripping from his shovel. His friendly mask had dropped away to reveal a man barely in control of himself, a knife hovering at the world's throat. “Get out of here, cunt.”

Val stepped back, her resolve cracking under his primal glare. She turned and walked away, as fast as her legs could go without running.

Val jumped into the passenger's side of Max's car and heaved a sigh of relief.

A weary smile flickered across his lips, like he was thankful she'd come back in one piece. “Well? Did you get what you needed?”

“Oh yeah.”

“So he incriminated himself?”

“No, but he's guilty as hell. He pulled a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on me.”

His hazel eyes widened, the green starbursts at their centers becoming visible. “Did he try to hurt you?”

“No.” Val gave him a cockeyed smile. “Your concern is touching, though.”

He looked at her thoughtfully, reading her as he'd done in his office the first time they met, until his gaze intensified and turned into something primal and hot. The car felt painfully warm, as if he'd jacked up the temperature, but the heat wasn't coming from the car's vents. It came from
him
, she realized, from the inferno that burned just underneath his outer façade, the hidden fire that drew her to him when she knew she should keep her distance.

He blinked, and his outer cool snapped back into place. “What now?” he asked in a calm, even tone.

Val cleared her throat and mentally slapped herself.
Of course he's not
on fire.
That's not even physically possible. Jesus, woman, pull it together.
How Max had learned to control his emotions so well, she could only guess. He put her lame poker face to shame.

She crossed her arms and looked off into the distance. “He didn't like when I talked about Chet, but he really lost his shit when I mentioned Lester.” Her gaze cut back to Max. “You're sure that neither you nor your father has any connection to Barrister?”

“I know I don't. And I never heard my father mention Barrister, ever. He was totally uninterested in politics.”

“Then we're missing something, because they're definitely connected somehow.”

Max drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, then sighed through a grimace. “My father's home office is on the third floor of the main house. I haven't been in there since the day he died. It's packed full of papers and other junk I ignored. Could be useful information squirrelled away somewhere in there.”

Val frowned. “Why didn't you mention this before?”

“Because you were dead-set on talking to Barrister as soon as possible, remember? And…I don't want to go in there unless I have to. I'm trying to keep it preserved for the police, in case they want to take another look around.”

He looked away, and Val saw the darkness in his eyes again that made her wonder what his true reasons were for avoiding his father's office. Despite their unique connection, she knew next to nothing about him—he could have killed his father for all she knew, though the more time she spent with him, the more she doubted he was capable of murder.

“Then we need to go back to your house to poke around your father's office,” she said, “right after we make one more stop.”

He started the car. “Hera's House of Gyros?”

“After. First, the Washington State Ladies headquarters in Olympia.”

N
orman scowled at Valentine Shepherd's back as she marched away, swinging her hips like she outranked him. It was all he could do to keep himself from chasing the bitch down and beating her face in. Why his Army contemporaries saw fit to give people like her leadership positions, he'd never understand. If the military insisted on clinging to the notion of diversity while ignoring the obvious differences between men and women's physical capabilities, they could at least put a premium on respect.

When he was sure she was gone, he tossed his shovel to the side and hurried back inside his house. In his den, he whipped out his cell phone and dialed as he paced across the Oriental rug.

“What do you want, Norm?” Dean Price answered. “I'm meeting with a client in five minutes.”

“Do you know a woman named Valentine Shepherd?”

After a long pause, Dean said, “She was an acquaintance of my son's. Why?”

“Because she was just here asking questions about Lester Carressa. Why the fuck would she do that?”

“I don't know. She's aware that Robby was on the team of lawyers representing Maxwell Carressa—”

“How did she connect us? What did you tell her?”

“I didn't tell her anything.” Dean's voice took on an edge of anger. “For some reason she thinks Robby's death is related to Carressa's case. Why would she think
that
?”

Norman cringed. Calling Dean had been a mistake. Just when Norm had finally managed to quell Dean's suspicions that his son's “accidental” death was nothing more than a coincidence, Norm had stoked the flames again. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Gino behind him, lounging on the russet-colored leather sofa with his arms and legs crossed as he bounced a foot in the air, his thin lips twisted in a crooked smile. Goddamn Gino was like a fucking ninja—or a shadow, always there but only sometimes visible.

Norman turned away from Gino's distracting presence. “She didn't mention Robby,” he said to Dean, “but she's connecting the dots somehow. You need to get her off the trail.”

Dean scoffed. “She doesn't know anything. She
can't
know anything. Just ignore her. I need to go.” He hung up.

Norman gripped his phone hard, then harder, until a crack appeared at its edge.

“Overreacting again, I see,” Gino said in his obnoxious singsong voice.

“Shut up.” Norman tossed his phone on his antique desk and took a couple of deep breaths. “How much so far?”

“Seven point six eight million.”

“Goddammit. There's no way to move it faster?”

Gino laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back. “Not unless you want to catch the attention of the FBI. Oh, by the way—I saw Maxwell Carressa parked in a car a block from here, waiting for that woman who paid you a visit, I'm guessing.”

Norman slammed his fist down on the desk. “Fuck!”

“Don't get mad at me. I did what you told me to. Killing the Price boy was supposed to clear our path to success, right? So you tell me why we've got Lester's kid and Little Red Riding Bitch on our case.”

“I don't know why. It wasn't supposed to be like this…” He'd been told eliminating Robby was critical to the plan—exactly how, he still didn't know. He ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. It was a little longer than he preferred, but his campaign advisers told him that voters wouldn't warm to the close-cropped military look. He glanced at Gino. “Criminal activity is your area of expertise. So how would you handle it?”

Norman watched Gino run his tongue across his lips as he considered their options—first his top lip, then the bottom. A heat clawed its way out of Norman's belly and down to his groin, pushing bile up his throat in its wake.

No, not here. Not again.

“Keep eliminating the weak links,” Gino said. “Robby's gone—though that turned out to be pointless—and your boy toy's been removed from the picture—”

“Don't call him that,” Norman growled. “He wasn't my ‘boy toy.' We just…I just…That little faggot tricked me.”

Gino laughed. “Sure he did, Norm.”

Norman's fists tightened into leathery balls.
Goddamn
Gino, he knew how to push his buttons. He hadn't even known Gino for that long, met him through a friend-of-a-friend with connections to the criminal underground, but the skinny Italian man with shiny suits and a smart mouth had managed to work his way under Norman's skin in record time.

“Next in the chain would be Georgie Porgie,” Gino said. “Get as much out of him as possible, then put him down. That piggy'll squeal eventually.”

“Fine. Do it. The Carressa kid, too.” War always involved casualties. The weak were the first ones to go.

“Uh-uh. We won't get away with killing a rich white boy, not so soon after Robby. Better to convince your pal Dean to pull the trigger on slipping the incriminating evidence he's got on Maxwell to the DA. That'll get the Carressa kid out of the picture. Maybe the redhead will disappear with him.”

Norman nodded and cracked his knuckles. Dead people were easier to deal with, but Gino was the expert. Maybe after he became mayor and some time had passed, he could arrange for Maxwell and his whore to have an accident. Tie up those loose ends.

“You look stressed,” Gino said. His eyes drifted down from Norman's face.

“Don't.”

Gino chuckled. “It's hard running for office. Everyone needs to let off steam now and then.” He stood and walked toward Norman.

Every muscle in Norman's body tensed, ready for a fight—a fight within himself. “Stay away from me, you fucking fruit.”

Like the ninja that he was, Gino's hand shot out lightning-quick and grabbed Norman's groin. Almost as fast, Norman grabbed the lapels of Gino's suit coat and yanked him close, staring murder into his eyes, ready to slam his skinny ass into the ground and end this game once and for all.

“How will you clean up this mess you've made without me, Norm?” Gino said as he ran his fingers across the outline of Norman's hard cock beneath the khakis.

Norman moved his lips to tell Gino to go to hell, to crawl back under the rock he'd come from, that he didn't need him for anything, that he had it all under control, but nothing came out. Gino popped the button off Norman's pants, the sound of unzipping as loud as a freight train, the feel of the air on his bare butt as sharp as a needle to the eye.

“No…” Norman said, but it came out as more of a moan when Gino knelt down and dug his fingers into Norman's ass cheeks, then flicked that sharp tongue against the tip of Norman's penis exactly four times before taking the whole thing in his mouth. Gino took his time sliding his lips up and down Norman's cock so Norman could feel every movement of Gino's tongue, every millimeter his wet lips slid down the shaft, every squeeze of his hand cupping the testicles. He was so excruciatingly slow that his legs began to shake and he whimpered like a baby for Gino to get it over with.

When Norman teetered at the precipice of his shame, Gino shoved him away like a child he'd gotten tired of playing with. They faced each other for a moment, the Italian's flushed mouth warped into an evil grin, snickering, as the colonel considered snapping his neck.

“Turn around,” Gino said.

“Fuck you.”

Gino grabbed Norman's arm and spun him, then bent him over his desk. Norman's bear-like body could have easily resisted, but his mind was weak. When the urge seized him, his military training and moral scruples dissolved in the sickening heat of the moment.

“I hate you,” Norman murmured when Gino thrust himself into the colonel and painful ecstasy shot through every nerve of his body. “I fucking hate you.”

“I know,” Gino said, his voice slick with contempt. In and out he went, over and over, faster and faster, their thighs slapping into each other, grunting together in mutual desperation for release.

This is the last time
, Norman swore as he came with a shudder on the rug under their feet. Every time he told himself it would be the last, but he meant it this time. Like last time. Norman cringed as Gino tensed with his own climax, pushing his life force where God and nature didn't intend it to go, just to spite Norman.

The last time.