Retribution Read online

She stopped struggling and stared at him. Were they offering to kill Delilah? When she was with Max, she’d had a vision of Delilah as president of the United States, initiating a nuclear war. Maybe Northwalk knew about this possible future, and didn’t want to see it come to pass, either. But Northwalk was evil, and they wanted her child. She’d never help them do anything, no matter what they offered.

  “Tell them thanks for the offer, but the answer is no,” she said. “I’ll never be a slave like you.”

  What was left of Sten’s smarmy demeanor cracked, and the anger she’d stoked finally overtook him. “I am not their slave! You don’t know anything about me, Shepherd.”

  “Oh yeah?” she said, relishing every second she got under his skin for once. “Poor lonely Private Ander, won’t talk about his past but fucks like a beast and takes orders like a champ! Too used to pleasing his masters to even consider having any agency of his own. Just point him at whatever you need killed, no questions asked!”

  His grip tightened around her wrists. As his hard body pressed down on hers and his hot scent filled her lungs, he glared at her with rage and frustration that matched her own. Sten didn’t want to work for them any more than she did, she realized. He hated them, too. He felt what she felt. A burst of heat shot through her body. She hadn’t connected with anyone on a raw emotional level since Max, and it felt…good. Holy shit, did it feel good.

  “Sometimes,” he said through gritted teeth, “you have to let people use you to get what you want.”

  “Keep telling yourself that. I’m nobody’s bitch like you are. Nobody’s!”

  When she thought he was close to breaking her wrists, he let go. “Fine. Take it out on me if you want, see what happens,” he growled. “Do it!”

  With her hands free, she shoved him to the side, and together they fell to the ground. She scrambled on top of him and punched him in the face. Finally, she was in control. She punched him again, the need for release so potent her skin trembled like a live wire. Sten was right; she needed to take it out on someone, use somebody.

  A frantic euphoria hijacked her brain. Two more times she hit him, and he didn’t fight back. As she lifted her arm to hit him again, he sat up and yanked her sports bra off, stitches ripping as he forced it over her shoulders and head in one quick jerk. With a grunt like an animal, he grabbed her nipple with his mouth and sucked hard. She gasped—sweet Jesus, that felt good. A noise between a whimper and a groan escaped her chest as a wave of desperate lust wiped away all rational thought. She needed something, anything, to dull the pain—

  Val pushed him back to the ground. She reached into his coat breast pocket, took out his wallet, and flipped it open. Of course he had a condom with him—he was on the Vice Squad, after all. She pulled his pants down to his thighs, ripped the package open, and slipped the latex over him while he watched, his chest heaving and black eyes burning. Then she threw off her running shoes, shorts, and panties.

  What the hell are you doing, Val? Stop—

  She sat back and let him enter her with a thrust so strong it sent shock waves through her entire body. A guttural moan surged from her throat as she rocked on top of him. She licked her lips, closed her eyes, and thought of Max. The smell of his mountain spring shower gel, the bay rum aftershave on his neck, the way he’d felt inside her. God, she missed him. She hadn’t known she could long for another person so much until he wasn’t there anymore. Even the pain she’d felt after Robby’s murder paled to the hole Max’s absence left in her soul. Now she was willing to take anyone who came along to fill the void, anyone who made her feel something good, even her enemy.

  Sten grabbed her and pulled her deeper onto him, directing her hips with strong, rough hands. She grabbed his dress shirt in her fists and blinked back stars that popped into her vision. A wave of dizziness swept over her, from the run and the beer, and now the sex. Her mouth watered and muscles tensed while growing weaker at the same time. She needed release. Needed it.

  She struggled to breathe as the heat in her belly grew, until the pain she’d been holding in for eight months finally exploded—

  I’m standing on the balcony of Max’s house, the balcony where he threw his father to his death. The sky is overcast, the water is black. All the glass is cracked and trash is strewn everywhere. At my feet I see a weathered newspaper with a headline that reads: “President Barrister Declares War.” Before I can check the date or read the article, the brightest light I’ve ever seen bursts in the sky and mushrooms upward. I hear and feel a rumbling that grows louder, shattering the glass around me, until a shock wave hits and I’m engulfed in flames—

  Blur.

  A light rain falls on a choppy expanse of water I recognize as Elliot Bay. Across the water, the Space Needle pokes through the skyline, glinting where the sun strikes it in breaks between roiling clouds. A group gathers on the rocky beach, just off a two-lane road: police officers, medical personnel, random onlookers behind a cordon. A coroner. Splayed on the rocks at the center of the throng is a body—a woman in a cocktail dress that used to be white, now soiled brown. Her matted blond hair bobs in soft waves of water that lap at her bloated, pale face. Milky eyes that used to be brown bulge from their sockets. Black ligature marks streak across her wrists and ankles. Nearby, a woman wails—

  Like cigarette smoke, the vision faded from Val’s view, and she was back in her living room.

  Underneath her, Sten blinked as if trying to snap out of his own trance. The desperate anger they’d shared faded from his face, replaced by his usual smarmy mask. “Got tomorrow’s lottery numbers?” he asked. “If you did, I think it’s only fair I get half.”

  Val sighed and closed her eyes, trying to push away the image of yet another dead person from the future, as well as her recurring vision of Delilah destroying the world. She’d never had a real orgasm before, only these terrible—and mostly useless—glimpses of the future. Max was the one who saw numbers—stock market data and other financial information that had made him his millions. Val saw dead people, either during or shortly after their often horrific and painful-looking demises—none of it financially lucrative. The visions were weak when she was alone, stronger with another person, even stronger with someone she was attracted to, and strongest with another person with the same ability—someone like Max or Delilah. If she concentrated right before orgasm, she could sometimes guide her visions to reveal useful information to help her solve cases, like manipulating a dream. Unfortunately, she wasn’t very good at it.

  She’d wanted a distraction from her miserable life. Instead, she saw a random dead woman. Goddamn this horrible ability.

  Val felt something brush against her face. She flinched and her eyes popped open. Sten’s fingertips caressed her cheek.

  “I thought you passed out again,” he said, his voice soft with a tenderness she didn’t know he was capable of. “I don’t think you’re cut out for day drinking, Val.”

  “Shut up.” Light-headed, she slowly pushed herself off him and sat in a heap on the couch.

  Sten stood, peeled the condom off, and dropped it on Val’s coffee table. He picked up her gun off the floor and put it on the table, too, as if replacing a tchotchke he’d knocked over. As he pulled up his pants and tucked in his dress shirt, his eyes lingered on her. Val sat slack on the couch, tired, naked, more than a little drunk, and covered in sweat. Shame flushed her cheeks. What the hell had she been thinking? Sleeping with Sten had been stupid, reckless, and worst of all, pointless. It felt great for a few fleeting moments—to experience control, to feel pleasure—but now she was back down the hole she’d started in; deeper, even. She should have shot him instead.

  After a few seconds of staring at her, Sten straightened out his jacket and fished a business card out of his wallet. “If you change your mind about Northwalk’s offer, or ever need to talk again, give me a call. Anytime.” He set the card down next to the used condom. “Carressa doesn’t know what he’s missing with that vanilla fiancée of his.”
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  She flinched. Of course he’d bring that up. Fucking Sten.

  He finally left, giving her a couple of hours alone to prepare for the arrival of a new client—after she took a long, cold shower.

  Chapter Two

  Val handed a tissue to the sobbing middle-aged woman seated at the dining room table. Nora Monroe dabbed at her eyes and sniffled until Stacey returned from the kitchen with a mug of hot water, a tea bag bleeding into it.

  Nora accepted the mug with trembling hands. “Thank you.”

  Stacey nodded and sat next to Val, in front of a pen and notepad she’d prepped. They waited as Nora sipped her tea. In the pause, Val took a long drink of black coffee from her own mug, trying to ease the hangover headache thumping between her eyes. She ignored the disapproving glance Stacey shot at her. Another lecture about Val’s self-destructive behavior was brewing. Fantastic.

  The hiccups in Nora’s breathing eased, and she was able to talk again. “Margaret’s been missing for about two weeks,” she said. Stacey took notes and Val listened. “I usually hear from her once every couple of days. She’ll tell me about what she’s been up to, how work is going, if she’s found a boyfriend yet—typical mother-daughter stuff. She’s never gone this long without calling me. I know something’s wrong.”

  Nora choked back another sob. Stacey patted the older woman’s hand while Val scrutinized Nora’s words.

  “The police won’t do anything since she’s twenty years old and there’s no evidence she’s been kidnapped, or…or that some other bad thing has happened to her.” Nora cringed and shook her head. “They say she’s technically an adult and can disappear if she wants. But I know my daughter. She wouldn’t just walk away from her life.”

  “When did you last have contact with Margaret?” Val asked.

  “Right before the holiday—July second, I think it was. I talked to her over the phone. She said she was going to some fancy bar in downtown Seattle with her friends. Pan-something, I think it was called.”

  “Did her friends tell you when they last saw her?”

  “Yes. They said she wasn’t feeling well and left early, alone. That’s the last time anyone saw her, as far as I can tell. But I’m not a professional investigator so I don’t know for sure.”

  “Any crazies in her life?” Stacey asked. “Psycho ex-boyfriends—or ex-girlfriends—that sort of thing?”

  “No…Actually, there was a boy in her sophomore year of high school who came on pretty strong. He sent her flowers and chocolates, and love letters. Margaret’s very pretty, so she gets a lot of attention from the boys. She told him she wasn’t interested and he backed off. Margaret never mentioned him again, so I thought he’d moved on. But maybe he didn’t?”

  “It’s worth checking out,” Val said. “Do you remember his name?”

  “Yes—Connor Reston.”

  Val saw Stacey jot down the name. “We need a list of all Margaret’s friends that you know of, the places she frequents, and a time line of her activities throughout the last month—everything you can remember.”

  Nora nodded, and a tiny smile flickered across her tear-streaked face—someone was finally taking her daughter’s disappearance seriously. Val lived for these moments, when she gave people hope.

  “Do you have a picture of her that you can give us?”

  “Oh, yes.” Nora reached into a tote bag she’d brought with her and pulled out a stack of flyers. “I’ve been putting these up around her neighborhood.” She handed Val a flyer with a black-and-white picture of a smiling young woman, “MISSING” emblazoned underneath. Nora also passed Val a color photo. “That’s the original picture, if it helps.”

  Val forced her face to remain neutral as her breath caught and her stomach fell. Blond-haired, brown-eyed Margaret was the living version of the dead woman washed up on the rocky shore Val had seen in her vision with Sten. Either this poor girl was already dead, or would be soon.

  “Can you find her?” Nora looked at Val with wide, pleading eyes, her desperation settling over Val like a thick fog. “Bring my baby back to me?”

  Val studied the picture. If Margaret was still alive, she didn’t have much time left. Val’s visions of dead people rarely prophesized events farther than a few days out. She needed to act fast.

  She looked Nora straight in the eyes. “I’ll find her. I’ll bring her back to you. You have my word.”

  * * *

  Val stood in front of her closet and held up a long-sleeved black cocktail dress. “Think this one will work?” she asked Stacey.

  “Too conservative,” Stacey said from where she was splayed on Val’s bed. “If you want a bunch of rich assholes to talk to you, you need to ho it up, big time. Wear the skimpiest thing you’ve got.”

  A quick Internet search had identified the “Pan-something” bar Nora had mentioned: the Pana Sea, a swanky place on Fifth Avenue frequented by traveling businessmen and Seattle’s financial elite. She also searched for any reference to Northwalk; of course, nothing came up. Assuming Sten had told her the truth, she didn’t expect a powerful and secretive organization to pop up on Google, but it was worth a shot. She’d start some serious digging after they found Nora’s daughter.

  With no time to lose, Val planned to poke around the bar and try to retrace Margaret’s steps while Stacey tracked down Margaret’s friends and the Connor creep. Showing up to the Pana Sea in Val’s usual jeans-and-T-shirt combo was unlikely to get the wealthy clientele talking, though. She returned the black dress to the back of her closet.

  “I can go if you want,” Stacey said, “You can stay here and sleep off your party of one—”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Really? ’Cuz you looked hungover as shit—”

  “I ran too hard this morning, all right? I’m fine. And anyway, you’d set off everyone’s gaydar.”

  Stacey sighed. “If you say so. At least consider passing on the booze while you’re there. Stay sharp.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  She rooted through her slim collection of fancy dresses—dresses she hadn’t worn in years—until she found a red one with spaghetti straps, a heart-shaped neckline, and a skirt hem that ended at her mid-thigh. She’d forgotten she even owned the dress, and couldn’t recall why she’d bought it to begin with. She held it out to Stacey.

  Stacey nodded. “That’ll do.”

  Val tossed the dress on her bed and began taking off her clothes. “So…I had a vision this morning.”

  “Really?” Lifting her head, Stacey gave Val a purposefully neutral look. “Alone or with another person?”

  Shit. Val didn’t want to open old wounds, but there was no way she couldn’t mention it to her best friend and business partner—and ex-girlfriend. Damn that last part. She’d manipulated Stacey’s latent romantic feelings for her too many times, and now any talk about affairs of the heart was fraught with uncomfortable tension between them. It was Val’s fault. If she could make it right, she would, but—true to form—she didn’t know how. Cultivating healthy relationships wasn’t a skill she excelled at.

  “Alone,” Val lied.

  Stacey relaxed. “Oh. Good for you. A nice solo-fuck is healthy. It’s the first step in moving on.”

  Val looked away and suppressed a cringe. Her friend had never warmed to Max, but she’d go ape-shit if she knew Val had slept with Sten while drunk. Stacey would hog-tie her and ship her off to rehab for sure. She’d never told her friend that Max had the same sometimes-useful/usually-terrible ability Val had; after she and Max had broken up, it didn’t feel right to expose his biggest secret, even to her best friend. Were they best friends anymore? Hell, Stacey was her only friend at this point in her sad life, despite the strain sharing the same roof had put on them. Maybe it’d been a bad idea letting Stacey move in after Robby died. Having another person to split the mortgage with was helpful for sure, but the additional scrutiny into Val’s admittedly poor life choices was beginning to chafe.

  “I saw Margaret dead on
a beach somewhere.”

  Stacey gasped and sat up. “Oh my God. Do you know when it’ll happen?”

  “No. It was raining, though. Can you check the weather forecast for the next two weeks and find out which days it’s expected to rain?”

  “I’m on it.”

  “She had marks on her wrists and ankles, like from ropes or straps.”

  Stacey bit her lip. “You know what this means?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s probably been kidnapped.”

  “I know.”

  “And they’re holding her. Or she’s already dead and they haven’t dumped her body yet.”

  “I know.” Val pulled the dress over her head and shimmied it into place.

  “Do you know which beach she’ll turn up on?”

  “No,” Val said as she walked into the bathroom, “but it was across the bay from Seattle.” She penciled on some black eyeliner. “So maybe Bainbridge Island or Harbor Viewpoint, I don’t know. I couldn’t tell.”

  “I can research water currents in the bay,” Val heard Stacey say from the bedroom. “It’s a shot in the dark, but might give us a clue to where she came from, if they dump her in the water and she washes up on the beach. It might not be a bad idea to drop an anonymous tip to the police, too.”

  Val scoffed as she brushed blush on her cheeks. “Yeah, right. Might as well tell them I saw Margaret get abducted by Big Foot for all the shits they’ll give. Even if they took the tip seriously, she’ll be dead before they get their act together and launch a real search. If we don’t save her, chances are no one will.”

  She slathered on some lipstick, gave her head a couple of pumps of hairspray, then posed for Stacey in the bathroom doorway. “Well?” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “If you were a rich asshole, would you confess your possibly criminal activities to me?”

  Stacey’s eyes ran up and down Val’s body. “I can only speak as a lesbian asshole,” she said with fake bravado, “but I’d tell you anything you wanted to hear, baby.”