Retribution Read online

  Max counted the ceiling tiles until he drifted into a fitful sleep. Snakes slithered through his dreams, eating little birds by swallowing them whole. Then they crawled into his mouth and took the place of his intestines, until his gut writhed with snakes. The clang of his cell door woke him.

  “Come on,” a policeman said as he held the door open. “Your lady made bail.”

  Max staggered to his feet. He noticed for the first time his swollen knuckles, blood splotches on his dress shirt, bow tie hanging crooked off his collar, scuffed shoes. The fog over his brain was lifting, leaving behind a growing nausea in his stomach and an emptiness in his chest. He glanced at the ancient clock bolted to the wall; half past 1 a.m. Max followed the policeman through the station and felt the stares of curious onlookers more acutely than the night before. The cop led him somewhere other than the entrance; a back door of some kind. Abby waited there, still in her silk gown though her hair looked messed and makeup faded. Dark circles lurked under her eyes. She regarded Max with tight lips.

  “We have to leave this way,” she said, her voice hoarse. “There’s media out front.”

  He walked past her, out the door, and to her car. She drove while he sat in the passenger seat and stared out the side window.

  “Why did you do that?” Abby asked when they were halfway home.

  Max continued to stare out the window.

  “Max, why?”

  He couldn’t explain.

  “Please tell me.”

  If he told her, it was over. Officially over.

  By the time they reached his condo, Max’s palms were sweaty and his stomach was gripped by nausea. His head was beginning to split open. He needed more pills. Rushing inside, he blew past Toby and ran up the stairs to the master bathroom. Max threw open the medicine cabinet’s door, knocked a bunch of other bottles to the ground, and dug out his OxyContin. He pawed at the cap. The goddamn thing was stuck, and his sweaty hands weren’t helping. He slammed the bottle against the sink basin, trying to loosen up the cap, harder each time, until blood from his bashed fingers stained the porcelain.

  “Goddammit, talk to me!” Abby yelled from the bathroom’s doorway.

  He spiked the bottle in the sink. “What do you want me to say, Abby? You want me to confess my deep, dark secrets to you? I already fucking did that!”

  She gasped at his sudden outburst, then lifted her chin, ready for a fight. “Tell me why you attacked Lucien.”

  “You really wanna know? Fine. I’ll tell you fucking everything. Lucien runs the Blue Serpent cult and he rapes people. Sometimes he tortures and murders them, too. And Ginger helps him. Your brother rapes, tortures, and murders people. Because all those rich fucks at the charity events we keep attending think it’s fun. It’s their idea of a good time when they’re not pretending to give a shit about poor people or the environment. Happy now? Are you happy you know?”

  Abby gaped at him, her big blue eyes made wider with disbelief, and disgust. “That’s what you’ve been investigating with Valentine Shepherd?”

  “Yes, that’s what we’ve been investigating.” He snatched up the OxyContin bottle again. The cap finally gave and twisted off.

  She eyed the pills he dumped in his hand. “What is that, really?”

  “OxyContin,” he said without looking at her. He threw pills in his mouth—he didn’t know how many—and leaned his head under the faucet. Water poured straight into his mouth and sprayed his shirt.

  Her eyes filled with tears. “I…I think you might be having a break from reality.”

  He choked out a mirthless laugh and ripped off his bow tie. “Yeah, sure.”

  “You need help. Anyone who endured what your father did to you would need—”

  “I am not a fucking invalid! This has nothing to do with him! Nothing!”

  “It has everything—”

  “My father is dead. Lucien is still alive, and your brother’s working with him.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Did you know this whole time?”

  “Is that what Val told you?”

  “No, I saw it for myself. With her…I saw her…” Max closed his eyes and leaned against the sink as a wave of nausea passed through him. The pills weren’t working fast enough. He saw Val on Lucien’s computer again, felt her pain…When Max opened his eyes, tears flowed down Abby’s face.

  “Do you love her?”

  All at once the anger left him, replaced by cold despair. Whatever he felt for Abby, it wasn’t enough. It never would be. He loved Val—only Val, and no one else. He’d love her until the day he died. And she didn’t love him.

  Though he didn’t speak, the look he gave Abby must have told her everything. Her face crumpled. “Did you ever love me?”

  The words stuck in his throat. He forced them out like one might induce vomiting after swallowing poison. “I tried.” It was the meanest thing he’d ever said. But she wanted the truth, and he couldn’t live a lie anymore.

  A sob ripped from her throat. She fled from the bathroom and ran down the stairs. He heard the front door open and slam closed, then all was quiet.

  Max’s legs gave way and he sat in a heap on the edge of the bathtub. He let his head fall into his hands. What had he done? His cruelty toward poor Abby made him sick. He should’ve let her go before things got this far, but instead he’d lied to himself, pretended he could be a normal person and live a normal life. Tricked himself into thinking he could love anyone but Val. Not only had he murdered his own father and let everyone think it’d been a tragic accident, but he’d fallen desperately and completely in love with a woman who wouldn’t have him. Then he’d ruined someone else’s life because he couldn’t face the truth. If he’d succeeded in ending it all years ago, the world would’ve been spared the wreckage of his continued existence.

  Max eyed the pill bottle still in his hand, more than half full. He swallowed all the rest of its contents, then threw the empty container across the bathroom.

  It never worked. He’d tried many times, and it never fucking worked. Those attempts were before the red raven, though. She’d seen him die, and then saved him. But she wasn’t around now. Maybe she’d changed something in the order of the universe, and he could finally leave this hopeless world.

  Max picked up a crystal seashell at the head of the tub, part of a set he’d bought before Abby moved in. He hadn’t picked it out; an interior decorator did. Make it look like a human being lives here, he’d told her. He threw the shell across the room. It shattered against the wall. Toby whined from the bedroom, cowering out of sight. Max picked up another shell and threw it, then another, and another, until the bathroom tiles were littered with broken crystal.

  Then he tore through his condo, smashing and tearing apart anything he’d bought specifically for the purpose of looking normal, which was almost everything. Commissioned portraits, tchotchkes from around the world, hand-crafted furniture, finely etched glassware. Useless junk, all of it. After an orgy of destruction, he stumbled back into the bathroom. He took a framed picture of a seascape off the wall and spiked it into the bathtub. Glass erupted, and he felt a sting on his palms. He thought he might’ve cut himself, but his eyes wouldn’t focus on his hands when he looked for blood, and the bathroom spun, and cool floor tile touched his face. The last thing he sensed was the stupid dog barking furiously.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Stacey’s voice reached Val through a haze of sleep. “Get up!” She kicked the bed.

  Val’s eyes cracked open. The sun burned. She blinked and wiped away crust from the corners of her eyelids until the world focused. After a moment she realized she wasn’t in her bed but on the living room couch, where she’d passed out the night before after drinking a few beers…More than a few.

  “I said get up!” The couch rocked with another swift kick.

  “Jesus, Stacey,” Val muttered. “I’m tired. Leave me alone.”

  “Bitch, please. It’s almost one o’clock in the afternoon.”

  Val mo
aned and forced herself to sit up. Her arm ached through the bandage wrapped around her elbow, dressing the stitches she’d had to get after shoving her arm through the car window. A headache pounded behind her eyes, and her mouth tasted like spoiled milk. Then she remembered why she’d done this to herself. She’d killed a man.

  Stacey stalked to the coffee table. “I’m officially tired of this,” she said as she snatched up empty beer bottles. “It’s time for you to get your shit together.”

  Val rubbed her temples and let out a long sigh. “Can you lay off? You wouldn’t believe the day I had—”

  “You wouldn’t believe the hoops I’ve had to jump through to convince our clients we’re still working on their cases. You know, the clients that aren’t Nora Monroe and her missing daughter? If we don’t work on other cases, then we don’t get our fee and the mortgage doesn’t get paid and I can’t believe I’m the one telling you this.”

  Val stood and shuffled to the kitchen. She found a bottle of Tylenol in a drawer, poured herself a glass of water, and downed a couple of pills, like they’d relieve her guilt somehow. “Monroe’s the only life-or-death case we have. It takes priority.”

  Stacey dumped her armful of beer bottles in the recycling bin. “I understand that, but I think at this point we’ve done all we can. You said the police are finally looking for her, so let them take responsibility.”

  Val scoffed. “You mean let her die?”

  “I mean this case is killing you. Look in the mirror, for Christ’s sake. You’re a mess—and not a hot mess, just a mess.” She threw up her hands. “And where the hell have you been disappearing to lately?”

  “Where the hell have you been? Every time I come home, you’re not here. Why am I the bad one because I’m not around?”

  “I’ve been juggling all our other cases, Val, while you’ve been getting blitzed. Where were you yesterday, before you stumbled home and drank yourself into a stupor? What happened to your arm? Just be honest with me, for fuck’s sake!”

  Val looked away. She took a deep breath, her shoulders slumped. Stacey was her best friend. She deserved the truth. Maybe her reaction wouldn’t be as bad as Val feared. “I was with Sten.”

  Stacey’s mouth fell open, her silence a substitute for a thousand questions.

  “Sten agreed to help me with the investigation. In return, I agreed to do him a favor.”

  Stacey folded her arms and glared at Val. She nearly whispered the words, “So you trust a man who almost killed you, but not me.”

  “I had to. There was no one else—”

  “You had me!”

  “No I don’t! I don’t have you!” Tears welled in Val’s eyes, and she grabbed her head as if it might explode. “You don’t understand what it’s like to be violated, to be used, to be alone, to be angry and sad all the time, or to love someone who doesn’t love you! You have no fucking idea!”

  Stacey folded her arms and took a long, trembling breath. “But Sten understands?”

  Val rubbed her wet eyes with the palms of her hands. “Yes.”

  They stood in silence for what seemed an eternity. Stacey’s arms stayed folded as she regarded Val with a new skepticism. The kitchen counter separated them, but it might as well have been a hundred-foot chasm.

  Stacey’s voice had a cold edge. “I’m sorry you can’t deal with what happened to you in a healthy way. And I do, in fact, know what it’s like to love someone who doesn’t love you. I’m intimately familiar with that feeling, actually.”

  Val felt her cheeks heat up as a fresh lump grew in her throat. Was this the end for them? They’d been through a lot together, known each other almost their entire lives. But after the chaos last year with Delilah and Norman Barrister, after Robby’s death, after Max entered Val’s life, things had been different. They’d both changed in ways that were beginning to seem incompatible with the other.

  A chime from Val’s cell phone interrupted the painful standoff. The special double-chime. Oh no. Val rushed to her phone.

  “What’s that?” Stacey asked.

  Val tapped her phone awake and maneuvered as quickly as possible through the menu. “I set my phone to double-chime if Margaret’s name popped up on a Google Alert.”

  Their showdown temporarily suspended, Stacey unfolded her arms and bit her lip as Val pulled up the alert—a news article, just posted: “Local Woman’s Body Found—”

  “No,” Val whispered. “No. No. No.” She dropped her phone and ran to the TV, flicked it on, and scrolled through the menu with shaking hands until she found a network airing the local news. Stacey and Val watched the screen together, both slack-jawed.

  A blond woman in a clear rain slicker addressed the camera as police lights flashed behind her in the rain. “Sources confirm the body that washed ashore this morning as that of a local woman named Margaret Monroe, first reported missing two weeks ago. No word yet on the cause of death, though foul play has not been ruled out…”

  They found Margaret on a rocky beach, just as it had been in Val’s vision. Val had killed a man the day before by changing his future, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t save Margaret. Everything she’d done had been for nothing. A sob exploded from Val’s chest, so powerful her whole body spasmed. A tsunami of grief poured forth, out of her mouth in wails and into her cupped hands. She cried so hard she thought her body might turn itself inside out. Stacey’s hand touched her shoulder, but instead of turning to her friend for comfort, Val ran up the stairs and shut herself into her room.

  All she saw was death. Sometimes she caused it. Only twice had she been able to change it—she’d saved Stacey from drowning years ago, and Max from being beaten to death by Sten. She hated her ability. Hated it. It cursed her with the knowledge of terrible things to come, dangled the possibility of changing the future for the better, then crushed that hope. A vow of celibacy might not be so bad. At least then she could pretend she had a normal life, without knowledge of the future to torture her.

  Val didn’t know how long she lay on her bed, impotently crying. A voice of reason in the back of her mind told her to put on her big girl panties and get up, but the voice wasn’t strong enough.

  A soft knock sounded on the bedroom door. “Val?” Stacey opened the door a crack. She held their home phone, the one they used for business. “There’s someone on the phone for you—Michael Beauford, I think he said his name was. I told him to call back later, but he says it’s urgent.”

  Val sat up. If one of the only people Max trusted was calling her concerning an urgent matter, she’d better damn well answer. She’d be putting on her big girl panties sooner rather than later after all.

  Working to steady her voice, Val took the phone. “Hello?”

  “Valentine Shepherd?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You might not remember me, but we met last year when Max was shot and—”

  “I remember you. What’s urgent?”

  He sighed. She heard a deep strain in his voice. “It’s too much to explain over the phone. You need to come here.”

  “Where?”

  “Harborview Medical Center—the psychiatric ward.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The psychiatric ward of the Harborview Medical Center glowed with natural light. The sun’s rays softened through frosted glass skylights that warmed the pale wood décor. As Val walked through the lobby, she sensed the façade was meant to be inviting and comfortable. It almost worked. From somewhere inside the ward, a woman screamed. Val jumped.

  She ignored her unease and forged ahead, scanning the area for Michael Beauford. Val turned and saw him walking toward her, a man in his late fifties wearing an immaculately tailored suit, though his laidback demeanor made him seem approachable nonetheless. The genial expression she remembered from last time they met had been replaced with somberness. Knots of worry stiffened his shoulders.

  “Hello again,” he said in a friendlier tone than she would’ve had given the circumstances.


  Val took in the ward’s pretense of safety, its fake promise that everything would be all right despite the screaming. She swallowed back a lump in her throat. “Max is here.”

  Michael nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “Well…” He seemed to consider how honest he should be. A slight shrug of his shoulders told Val he’d settled on the brutal truth. “He overdosed on pain pills. The docs aren’t sure if it was an accident or an attempted suicide. Given how badly the paramedics say he trashed his condo, they’re leaning toward the latter explanation.”

  Val rubbed her mouth in what she hoped looked like thoughtful contemplation, and not barely contained panic. She thought Max had finally achieved the perfect life—perfect house, perfect fiancée, freedom, respect—even though she’d seen and sensed the cracks in the mask he presented to the world. But suicide? Max had tried to kill himself before, when he’d been under the thumb of his brutal father. But whatever gave them their prophetic abilities also wanted him to live, and he’d somehow always survive to stay trapped in a life he had no control over.

  Val looked past Michael at the far wall, a pleasant shade of yellow. “He’s had a hard life,” she said, her voice strained with tears she struggled to keep in.

  “I know. I figured as much about a decade ago.”

  Val met his gaze and saw deep wisdom in his eyes. Did he know Max killed his father? She guessed he did, but also knew why, and stood by Max anyway.

  “His fiancée found him?”

  “Actually, his neighbor found him. Max’s dog was raising holy hell, so the neighbor went over to investigate, let herself in, then called an ambulance. Good thing the desire to shut up a yippy dog is more powerful than social decorum. Otherwise, Max would be”—he swallowed, and for a second fear dominated his friendly eyes—“he’d be dead.”

  So this time Max’s dog served as the agent of fate. She didn’t even know he had a dog. It occurred to Val that Michael still hadn’t told her why he’d asked her to come. “Where’s Abby?”